The "99% Paradox" and How It Stops Us From Reaching Our Full Potential

Hello, 

This is my first post after being monetized which is very exciting! I have always enjoyed writing about the topics that keep me up at night and to even have a large enough audience to be approved by Google AdSense is incredible. So, thank you so much to everyone that reads and finds some value in the blog posts. 

Today's post is something that I have been contemplating for a couple of weeks but have been unable to completely wrap my head around and succinctly explain my personal experiences. Finally, today, I saw a YouTube video that coincidentally covered similar ideas and felt like some sort of "sign" that I should just write this post despite initial hesitation. Before I begin, I wanted to express that the "99% paradox" - as I have coined it - does not have empirical evidence to support it, yet I still feel many of these more subjective emotions are something many, if not all of us, encounter. 

The basic premise of the 99% paradox lies in receiving a 99% on an exam. It should be clear that this is something to take pride in - something to enjoy, cherish, etc. It is incredibly logical to understand why: you were basically perfect. Keyword - basically. But, the reality of the situation is that you weren't perfect - you didn't get that 100%. The bittersweet sentiment of being "so close, yet so far" encapsulates your emotions about that 99%. You missed that 1%, and that's frustrating. It becomes easy to obsess over the 1%, wondering where your fallacies lie and finding fault in the questions, grading style, whatever is available for you to blame. 

I know this sounds incredibly unintelligent, or let's be honest - it's stupid. From an external perspective, this logic is flawed and irritating. What about that kid that got a 65%? Who cares if you got a 99% - your grade remains untouched? You were only 1% away from the perfect score. That isn't "so far". And to that, I say you're right. But, I invite you to look at your own life and see the ways in which you may have been faced with the 99%. Is there ever a time you got a job that you wanted for years but the number of holidays or the salary was slightly under what you expected? Have you ever made an incredible sports team, been invited to speak at a trailblazing conference, or been rewarded an opportunity, honor, prize, etc. that you had genuinely wanted? And, what do you tend to focus on - your accomplishment or the lower salary, the new coach that may not be the all-star player you were expecting, how you were invited to be a part of the panel and not give an individual presentation, etc? I know I certainly focus on the latter. More often than not, our attention quickly leaves the feeling of accomplishment and success and returns to contemplating the comparatively small deviation from our arbitrary expectations of perfection. 

Now that we have established that many of us in some capacity have the tendency to ignore the 99% and the 99 reasons to be happy and find the 1% or that 1 reason to not be content. I know when I figured out I followed this thought pattern, my next logical question is "Why do we do this?" My hypotheses are not empirically-based; however, I think the cause for this tendency is multifactorial. I often find that as a consequence of being conscious, we are on this constant journey of improvement, including self-improvement. Typically, we improve by finding a fault and using our discontentment with the fault (or that 1%) as motivation to develop a solution and improve. Therefore, instead of wanting to relish our success, compounded with the social stigma of coming across as "bragging", we find it much more natural to turn to our discontentment to keep us busy and continue fueling the fire of self-improvement. Secondly, we often as humans "attach" ourselves and our happiness to tangible goals in order to create some sense of meaning in the abstract. We believe "once I cross this milestone, I will feel happy and content". The problem comes with, once again, our love for self-improvement. If we reach this milestone, our minds will find something else to fantasize about and obsess over: there is no end goal with this thinking. I have definitely fallen into the trap of this thinking, and because we attach our happiness to a random objective when we fall that 1% short, we feel we can't be happy. These two deeply interconnected ideas, our constant desire for self-improvement and the unrealistic attachment of our well-being to milestones, allow us to obsess over the 1%.

However, this mentality in my experience has not been helpful: it has only bred feelings of disappointment and frustration. When you fail, you are disappointed, and when you do nearly a perfect job, you are frustrated. So, how can we get ourselves out of this lose-lose battle that seems so clearly devastating to an outsider? There are two ways. The first way is to completely abandon all ambition. For most of us this obviously isn't achievable, so here is how I believe we can continue self-improving and even enhance our performance while not feeling negative. First, I think we can target the second cause of the issue - our attachment to milestones. I think allowing ourselves to realize that happiness is a choice (even cliches hold some truth) and finding contentment with not achieving an arbitrary point but being content with the fact that we're are even moving in the direction of that arbitrary point is good enough. When we find happiness "in the journey" (yes, I am also getting annoyed with myself for using all of these cliches) or in the process of moving towards our goals and when we realize we are capable and deserving of happiness in the present, we have changed the conversation. Additionally, the next time we get a 99%, we should recognize our innate tendency to obsess over the 1%. And with grace, we should redirect ourselves to that 99% and begin to use that as fuel. We can actively decide to be motivated not by trying to prove to ourselves that we can do better next time (1% mentality) but instead by the idea that we have already done well, and therefore, will only continue to grow (99% mentality). You now have not 1, but 99 reasons to continue moving along towards your aspirations. By redirecting our attention to our success and our accomplishments, we have 99x more fuel that we can use to work more fiercely towards the goals we have set for ourselves without compromising our happiness. And, at this point, we have rendered that 1% powerless and reclaimed control over the 99%. 

Thank you so much for reading, 

Janvi :)

I hope you enjoy reading this post. Although everything was based on personal experience, this video inspired me to actually write this post instead of remaining fixated on the 1% of the idea that I didn't have figured out (see what I did there). I highly recommend you watch the video if you are interested. I also would love to hear your feedback about posts like these and would love to hear any recommendations for future posts!