All or Nothing

How are those New Year’s Resolutions coming? Has an all-or-nothing way of thinking hindered your progress?

I am a perfectionist. I may have even confessed this to you before. And my perfectionist mentality would have me believe life is all or nothing.

I am not naturally satisfied with anything besides “all or nothing,” and I feel safe inferring that the world around me isn’t, either. Take, for instance, the Super Bowl, which will be played in just a few days. The only team that will matter a few weeks from now will be the one that won the game.

I am conditioned to focus on the all; anything less must be nothing.

But life isn’t all or nothing. Life is a whole lot of in-betweens, such as almost, not quite, you’re getting there, and the infamous better. I am not satisfied with these affirmations. They only confirm I still have more work to do—a concept that is difficult for an all-or-nothing girl!

My unrealistic way of thinking sets me up for failure every time, because the prize is not won in one moment—it is won over a series of moments on the way to our individual intentions.

A series of moments that will not all be perfect.

Typically, our goals aren’t the Vince Lombardi trophy or a Super Bowl Ring, or even an Olympic gold medal for that matter, yet the all-or-nothing mentality can make them loom just as large. One slip on our diet and we throw the whole diet out the door. One missed day at the gym turns into two, then three, then … a cancelled membership.

This is where the nothing takes hold.

Life is full of ups and downs—the peaceful moments and the chaotic moments, the moments full of expected events and the moments full of unexpected events.

Somehow, instead of riding out these moments, we get stuck … defeated. The grand visions we hoped for seem too difficult and too far out of our reach. Suddenly, we can’t celebrate the 5 pounds we lost because we are too focused on the 20 pounds we still want to lose or the single pound that reappeared this morning.

These exact moments—when we are more focused on the goal instead of the steps in between—are when the all-or-nothing way of thinking impacts our progress the most.

Every success has a series of failures that came before it. Notice that I said “series.” It’s not getting knocked down just once, but repeatedly. That is where grit and perseverance are refined.

Grit—the courage to push through, never losing sight of your goal.

Perseverance—unwavering steadfastness no matter what path you have to take to accomplish your goal.

“All or nothing” takes grit and perseverance out of the equation. All focuses only on the goal, and nothing reinforces the faulty view that I don’t have what it takes to achieve it.

The true all or nothing is accepting that there are going to be good days, even great days, when we surpass every expectation we created for ourselves, along with bad days when everything seems to stand in our way.

We have to push through all of the days—the days we give it all we have and the days we have nothing left to give, and every day in between—and accept no less than the conviction that we can and will make it to our goal.

I hope that, as you move into month two of 2017, you can remember the goal you resolved to achieve this year, and with new determination you can continue to move towards your dream that seemed so clear and attainable only one month ago.

Remember that when we do achieve our goals, it’s not always the material takeaway that we cherish, but the pains (yes, pains) we overcame during the refinement process.

Have you found that the struggle only makes the reward that much sweeter? What has helped you move past an all-or-nothing mentality?