7 Jan
The “All Or Nothing” Attitude
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
I have the great opportunity to work with extremely accomplished individuals. Many of them hire me to help them create more balance and inner fulfillment in their life.
A common struggle that tends to creep up is the “All or nothing attitude”.
Now don’t get me wrong, this behaviour can serve in many ways – you tend to achieve more in life, you end up highly skilled in variety of areas, you are able to focus on one thing and go for it, you have high expectations of yourself and therefore, not only accomplish great things but accomplish great things at an extraordinary level.
But at the end of the day, the All or Nothing thinking says, “You either do this perfectly, or you don’t even bother.” Whew what pressure! It can be one of the biggest blocks to making positive changes in your life and most importantly it doesn’t always bring out your best traits or a great quality of life. With this attitude you tend to be a bit highly strung; it is difficult to kick back and relax; you find it difficult to just do things for fun without wanting to achieve excellence; it adds grittiness to one’s character (which isn’t always pleasant); you are hard on yourself , and there is a feeling that nothing is ever good enough.
Take making a lifestyle change for an example you may have experienced a version of this internal dialogue: You decide Monday is the best day to start a new lifestyle change but when the next Monday falls at the end of the month, your all or nothing attitude convinces you that you may as well wait until the 1st of the next month! Ok a bit of an extreme example but I am sure some of you can relate.
All or nothing thinking leads you to believe if you are not going to do it %100 then don’t do it at all. It says nothing counts unless you’re doing it “all the way”. Nothing is further from the truth in living a healthy fulfilling lifestyle. Every thing counts. And it’s the small stuff, day after day, that will make the biggest difference. Do you have a tendency to have the all or nothing attitude? Here is the key: when the mind is in All or Nothing mode, it sees the world in black and white. In order to modify this mindset, and allow ourselves to integrate balance and daily wins we need to train ourselves to focus on the in between shades. Throw out your “all or nothing” attitude and learn to adjust mid-course, cut your losses and move on. At the end of the day the losses are less then the attitude of if I can’t do it perfectly I am not going to do it at all.
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