I think I need to back pedal a little bit. Not in a bad way. I need to explain what this whole 100% thing is about. It's not about running off and having these amazing adventures that have me hang gliding off of cliffs in the Caribbean. People who do that are great, but my question is did you love your family with all your heart and action? Did you succeed in loving yourself and who you are? If not why were you doing something so stupid without accomplishing something far greater. If so great, then jump off the cliff! It's about a life of actually giving a 100% into everything I want to do, especially if those things are what I choose to do. It's about loving my wife and family 100% and not going through the motions some mornings or night or whenever. It's about being in the present with those people when I am with them. It's about not waiting until the commercials to do something for a loved one. It's about attempting to actualize my own dreams and launch a career that I want, not the one that everyone else thinks I should have. It's about the little things that can be taken care of just by getting up and doing them rather than just talking about them or complaining to the person that will listen. 100% means you are giving it all you can, it does not mean that you will be instantly successful. Not everybody's 100% is the same, I would say Warren Buffet's 100% is a  little higher in the field of economics and investment than mine. Play the game the best you can and if you look and see that you did everything you could and it didn't work out, then I don't think you can hang your head on that. It is all 100% application to get a desired result whether it's love, kids, work, or self. The point is you choose to do something you choose to do it 100%, or don't do it and explain why, or even remove yourself from that situation when neither your heart nor your head are in it. The best results are always when you have given 100% and achieved a win-win!

Dreams and thoughts happen in your head, they do not conjure themselves into the real world without a call to action by yourself. If there is no call to action then your dreams will remain in your head. Ask anyone I know what my dream used to be, it would be that I wanted a restaurant. Any day of the week I wanted a restaurant. I get to call the shots, I'd get to design it top to bottom, blah blah blah blah. Now ask me how much thought I put into action. I've spend most of my life living the boss' dream. I have no money. I didn't know anyone with money. I didn't want investors because then it wouldn't be my restaurant. All the stories I ran in order to prevent myself from buying into a conjured goal I never wanted. I chose that line of thinking. I chose not to try and fulfill what I perceived as a dream at the time. Two things good came out of the fact I don't own restaurant. The first is I don't own a restaurant and the 2nd is I don't own a restaurant. My mind turned that into a form of ambition and would be a measure of my success. Instead of really looking at it and saying "You don't even want this dream." Perhaps I did at one time, and I might again in the future. When I'm ready for that and I want to do it, I will and I will put 100% behind the action of bringing it to fruition. The worst thing about having this kind of dead-end Dream, I never moved past it to really see the Dream I wanted. I would set no other goals, because I had told everybody else this is what I wanted. In hindsight it might be actually the only time not putting 100% into something produced an inadvertent win-win. I didn't end up with a restaurant I didn't want to own, which is a win! And I didn't drag anyone else along for the ride of a dead-end Dream! A win for them, though they'll never know it!

Setting goals is probably second nature to people. I have set goals. Not often and had really no plan behind the goal, other than I am going to do it. I'm sure many people that read this might think I am just plain weird. How in all these years could I possibly never set any real goals? I really just back-burnered any goals I set for work and just took those work-oriented goals as my own. Goals you don't set for yourself are very rarely successful in my opinion. Even if they are, they don't have any real meaning. Those were someone else's goals I just succeeded at. That's pretty joyless. In order to achieve anything in this life it's imperative to set a goal that I want, and I'm pretty sure most people could agree with that line of thinking. However, if the work is your goal and you are doing the goals because of work, then that would play out in your favor.

Not giving 100% robs a lot of things from a lot of people. If I don't give your family 100% emotionally it robs them of truly getting to know someone they love and vice versa. If I don't give a 100% in taking care of my health, it robs me of the energy I need to achieve my goals! If I don't choose a career I want to give a 100% to, it robs the employer or myself, and my family of a lot. If I don't give a 100% to anything I choose to do it hurts someone or myself.
I've done all of those things. it's not something you want to stand up in a room full of people and throw out there as an ice-breaker.

Now, this might seem rather bleak than a victory after running down those paragraphs. I will turn the conversation towards good news! I have been setting goal after goal, and with great success! My wife and I have a weekly goal chat, as well as work on our relationship through a specific set of goals. I am writing 1 page(or more) a day in one shape or another. We are helping our kids set small goals and getting them started on making that a part of their lives so they can make it a habit. I am running 1 mile a day. It's not much but when you see 240 pounds thundering at you, it's truly a sight to behold! I am not stating these goals to brag. I am calling myself to action. The consequence of failing at any of these goals means I have to answer people to asking me and either answering honsestly or flat out lying. Living at 100% doesn't necessarily include lying, except for telling people that you haven't planned them a surprise party when you have. I love tips, tricks and any other little tidbits you may have personally to help me out, and in turn I agree to keep writing these blogs as payment. I choose to do this, it did not choose me. Living 100% is not easy, and I don't know if I'll ever TRULY achieve it in an existential sense, but it's good to have goals.

(Some quick housekeeping:Yes I am moving the blog from simplesite.com over to BlogSpot.com. It is an infinitely better blog site and instead of lamenting and trying to force the issue on the other site, this one has a lot more versatility. I choose to move it! I will cut and paste and move all previous blogs over to this site and let the other one go bye-bye. Moving the blogs over is one of the reason I rehashed the theory behind living 100%. Another sidenote, I infinitely love the restaurant business and everything it entails. The people are some of the best friends I will ever have. Anyone opening a restaurant has my support. I just don't want one of my own or to work directly in the managing operations of one.)