The 95% versus the 5%

When the 5% rare or important opportunities arise... maybe it's a competition, a job interview, or someone you're interested in... people like to throw out how they usually behave in the 95% of their regular time and do something completely different in the 5%.

For example with the situation of someone you're interested in. In the 95% they're relaxed and expressing themselves honestly. Then you see someone you're interested in and all of the sudden you feel you need to do something different. Something amazing. Something revolutionary. Something perfect. Basically, something that isn't you. Yes, let's throw out everything we know so that we can try something we have no experience with on this important situation. That's insane.

This is how people in competitions / performances freak out. They think they have to do something different from how they've been training. Fuck all that training, there's no way all those things I've been practicing is going to work... there has to be something better... something more... something that isn't what I currently know or have practiced... I'm not good enough for this.

It's a fear of their identity being rejected. If they get rejected or fail, then what's going to happen to who they are? It feels like dying in an emotional or mental way. So their solution is to do something completely different. To be someone completely different. Which ends up crashing and burning because it's completely non congruent. Then they can weasel out of being hurt by thinking "but it wasn't really me they rejected... they just didn't see me for who I really am...". Yeah no shit, because you didn't express yourself honestly because you can't handle negative experiences.

When people give the advice of "just be yourself"... it means be your current self (with all your current shortcomings and weaknesses) and take the outcome for what it is. The time to improve yourself or work on something is during the 95% of your daily life. Not randomly during the 5% important opportunities. Then they beat themselves up for failing at something that they've never practiced. Then they don't practice it again until the next rare opportunity comes along. It's a recipe for a downward spiral.

Who you are is just a series of patterns that you've repeated. Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that you've repeated. So you can't suddenly become something extraordinarily different whenever a rare opportunity comes and expect solid results.