“Full send,” “Go for it,” “Be all you can be.” What does it really mean to give 100 percent?

The concept is as old as human ambition, and has been co-opted by marketing agencies ad nauseam (there is even a “100%” emoji for those who are hieroglyphically inclined).

But what does it mean to “go all in,” and why don’t more people “go for the gusto”? (OK, sorry. No more slogan slinging…)

There are two sides to every issue, including this one. Total commitment has both a light side and a dark side.

Let’s start with the dark.

100 Percent Terrifying

Fear of failure is the most obvious psychological roadblock. What isn’t so obvious is the depth of this fear and the power that it wields.

The scenario is predictable.

You realize that there is more to life, and you want some of it. Something or someone motivates you, your dopamine kicks in and you decide to pursue your dream. Not just any old dream, but The Dream. The Dream is so far out of your reach that you can barely conceptualize it, but you know others have realized similar feats, so you decide to take your shot.

Collins and Porras called this a “BHAG” (bee-hag) in their 1994 book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. The Big Hairy Audacious Goal has since become a corporate battle cry for those who seek to innovate and progress.

So far, so good: you have made the decision to reach for a star (sorry…) and are prepared to do whatever it takes to get there. But… This goal will take years to complete and success is far from certain.

In fact, the vast majority fail.

Most businesses fail in the first year; more in the first five. Of those who decide to pursue a college degree, only 34 percent graduate with even an associate’s degree. The Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard is populated with servers who moved to California to “make it” in show biz. Music students who spend the better part of $100,000 to get degrees from well-known music institutes and colleges (and thousands more on equipment) will be unlikely to sell out arenas or produce a platinum album. Sixty percent of applications to medical school are rejected.

But hope springs eternal (as it should). After all, you could be the one that makes it. It is worth the effort for you to become the next McConaughey or Zendaya, Bezos or Zuckerberg, Drake or Dion.

There must be a way to reconcile the fear of failure with the massive potential rewards.

Don’t Give 100 Percent?

You start out energetic and positive (as you should). After a few months or years, you know quite a bit about this journey you have chosen. Among the things you learn: Odds are, you won’t make it all the way to your BHAG.

So what now?

Recent research (Rodebaugh, Levinson, Langer, and Weeks (2021)) links significant anxiety with the very realistic fear of failure. That anxiety increases as you predictably tell yourself you might not be up to the task.

Patall, Cooper, and Robinson (2021) investigated the impact of failure on students’ motivation and performance. They found that students who experienced failure were more likely to have lower levels of motivation and perform worse on subsequent tasks, especially if they had a strong fear of failure. This is the start of a downward spiral, where failure decreases motivation, which increases the likelihood of failure, and so on.

Failures are inevitable in the pursuit of a significant goal. Not everything will go as planned. How do you keep it from becoming overwhelming?

Your subconscious predictably leaps forward to protect you. It whispers. “Maybe we don’t give 100 percent.”

The benefits are obvious. If you don’t give 100 percent, you can still do a good job and maybe still make it to the top! Probably safer to just go in the general direction and see what happens, right?

And – whether you realize it or not – here’s the big one: If you fail, you can always say, “I didn’t really try that hard anyway.”

And that is planning to fail.

What does it mean if you give 100 percent, fully commit, sacrifice everything, pour the totality of your effort and intent into this thing – and you crash and burn?

Then you could be faced with the darkest part of the quest; the most feared realization.

You weren’t good enough, after all.

And maybe this is enough to finally get you to quit. You gave it your best (kind of). Not everyone can be a superstar, after all.

But I’m here to tell you there is another path.

Go Towards the Light

Let me show you two indisputable facts that will redeem your situation.

First, transformational accomplishments will demand everything you’ve got. Every time, without fail.

The muse doesn’t appear only when you win. Victory doesn’t give a damn how many times you had to start over. An ancient Japanese proverb encapsulates this idea: Fall down seven times, get up eight. (七転び八起き)

Failure – at any stage and of any magnitude – is not a final judgement. It is merely a necessary step in a long walk.

You have to experience mistakes to learn from them. Allow suffering to strengthen your resolve to carry on. Courage is moving forward even when all seems lost.

If your dream really is The Dream, get up, child. There’s work to do.

Second, you are focused on the wrong target.

An immutable Law is at play here, one that you can’t avoid:

You are only responsible for your effort. You can’t ensure the outcome.

The problem comes when you define success based on a variable that is not within your control. This is the road to demoralization and loss of The Dream.

The only failure is to quit.

What, then, is the right target, the proper way to think about The Dream?

Always Give 100 Percent

Anything with doing is worth doing right. You’ve heard it before, and with good reason. If your goal is truly the highest good you can imagine, you must pursue it with all of your being. You see, The Dream is your purpose.

This is why you are here.

The real goal is the effort you put into your purpose. Success is in the actual work, not the accomplishment.

Let’s say you decide your purpose is to be the best parent. Your job is to do everything within your power to set the stage for your children to realize their own dreams. But they are individuals just like you, with their own hopes and fears. You have no say in their ultimate outcome, no matter how much you wish it to be so.

I had a friend who was in medical school, destined to be a brilliant physician. She devoted the whole of her effort to the study of medicine and no one doubted her purpose. When she died of a brain tumor in her fourth year, no one said, “What a failure. She didn’t even make it to her residency.”

Accomplishments will come as a result of your effort, but they are fickle and transient. And they are not within your control.

My dad used to say, “You just take care of you.” You are not responsible for the ultimate outcome of any endeavor, good or bad. You are responsible for how you spend your time on this planet.

Define your goals (your purpose) and give them your all. This is the only game worth playing. And you can win, every time.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. You can reach me through the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or the blog section on my website. If this article as of value to you, please follow my Instagram and Twitter accounts. And be sure to subscribe to my River Of Creation podcast – The Podcast for Creators! – coming later this year.

Be well; do good!

• JWW