Can You Actually Give 110% Percent?

I want to change my stance on something...

Have you ever heard someone say as a line of encouragement “Give it 110%”? Every time I did, I’d roll my eyes. My logical brain would write it off as nonsensical. Anything more than 100% is literally impossible because it’s by definition, beyond capacity. That’s what 100% represents… Everything that’s available.

But that’s only when you look at it completely literally. Now, I think you can actually give 110%, and here’s why.

David Goggins is known to be “the hardest, toughest man on Earth”. He’s a former Navy SEAL, ultramarathoner, used to have the world-record for pull-ups in 24 hours, and is the best in the world at pushing his mind and body to its fullest. In his book ‘Can’t Hurt Me’, he introduced the concept of ‘The Governor’. 

The Governor is our brain’s voice of reason, trying to tell us to slow down and back off. It’s responsible for the thought that creeps in telling you to stop in a hard workout, skip making a ridiculously bold request, or give up on a stressful project. 

Goggins believes that this ‘Governor’ gets activated at a certain threshold that is 40% of our body’s true capacity. And that when we push through the mind’s attempts to make us slow down or quit, we can push through to unlock that fuller capacity.

Basically, what we’ve learned to be our 100% - everything we’ve got - only gets you up to the threshold that activates the ‘Governor’. The mind is often unwilling to see beyond that amount because it exposes our body to levels of strain and difficulty that are considered to be unsafe. Like a reflex to faint, it’s a psychological off-switch the mind uses to keeps us from doing what it believes to be dangerous. The mind doesn’t want you to reach your fullest capacity. It just wants to protect you. 

In reevaluating this concept of giving more than 100%, it’s with this new understanding that what we call 100% is only what your mind is telling you is your 100%. But it’s not accurate. It’s a facade. It’s a programmed maximum velocity that keeps the car from going as fast as it truly can.

So if I were to use other words to summarize what giving 110% really is… It’s to push yourself beyond what’s comfortably possible. To exceed the expectations you have for yourself. To go beyond the limitations of the governor and into the unknown depths of your greater potential.

Giving 110% isn’t an impossible task, it’s just an incredibly uncomfortable one. But, at the same time it’s the mechanism for redefining what you believe you’re capable of. Each time you do it, you update your reference point for what ‘giving it your all’ means to you, and unlock your own ability to believe in yourself that much more.