The All-or-Nothing Mental Trap

I discovered something interesting this week. In the middle of a busy day, staring at my long to-do list, I caught myself thinking, “I know that I need to exercise today. But I don’t have 45 minutes to do the workout I had planned. So, I’ll just skip exercising today and do it tomorrow when I have enough time.”

Although I didn’t realize it in the moment, I had just fallen victim to the infamous All-or-Nothing thinking.

All-or-Nothing thinking is classified as a cognitive distortion. That is, a flawed pattern of thinking often not based on facts.

It involves interpreting the world by two extremes without any possibility of a middle ground. It’s also commonly known as Black & White or Either/or thinking.

Although all-or-nothing thinking is commonly associated with mental health issues like anxiety and depression, it often appears in a milder form in majority of people.

All-or-nothing thinking reasons that if something can’t be done perfectly, then it isn’t worth doing at all.

It convinces us that we need to have the “perfect” conditions to do something right, otherwise why bother?

This is exactly what happened with my workout. I didn’t have 45 minutes so I thought that I’d skip the whole workout altogether and do it on a day when I had enough time.

This “go big or go home” approach to health and fitness can really sabotage your health goals because it doesn’t leave room for flexibility.

It gets you stuck in not doing anything while waiting for the “right time”.

Some examples of how this mindset may show up are:

• You start an exercise routine. You’re consistent for a few days, then you miss a day or two. The all-or-nothing mentality tells you that you’ve lost all progress you’ve and you need to start over in order to do it right. It takes you a couple of weeks to gain enough momentum to restart.

• You only have 10 minutes in your day to exercise. The all-or-nothing thinking says that a 10-minute workout isn’t enough to count for anything, so why even bother.

• You start a new diet which seems to be working well at first, but then you start to feel frustrated because you can’t eat your favorite foods. The all-or-nothing mentality tells you to quit the whole diet plan and you fall back to your old eating habits.

• All-or-nothing thinking tells you that you need the perfect time to start a healthy habit, so you keep telling yourself that you’ll start at the beginning of the month. When the month starts, it still doesn’t feel quite right, so you keep postponing.

Do any of these things sound familiar? Well, you're not alone. I have also fallen into this mental trap a couple of times.

The good news is, with a few tweaks, you can ditch this mindset and set yourself up for sustainable success when it comes to your health goals.

Breaking Free…

Look for the third option

All-or-nothing thinking only offers two options—you either do something perfectly or you don’t do it at all.

But what if you found a way to create a third option that’s more balanced?

Example: If the “all” is to exercise for 1 hour and the “nothing” is to not exercise at all, what would be the middle ground? Maybe you can take a 30-minute walk.

You may not have done your ideal exercise, but you didn’t do nothing either. You still found a way to move your body.

Doing something is always better than doing nothing.

So, when you find yourself stuck in this all-or-nothing thinking, ask yourself what the third option would look like and then do that.

Embrace flexibility

Let’s say you’re going on a road trip then 1 hour in you take a wrong turn. You don’t go back home to start over. You just re-route yourself back on track.

The same applies when it comes to your health journey.

When you experience a setback, it doesn’t erase all the progress you’ve already made. You don’t have to start over again. You just need to re-route yourself and keep going.

In his LinkedIn post, Jon recommends treating your health journey like a dial that you can turn up and down depending on life’s circumstances instead of a switch that can only be on or off. You can read the full post here.

Life happens – work emergencies, family obligations, unexpected events etc. Having a flexible mindset instead of a fixed one allows you to adapt to life situations without feeling like you’ve failed.

Set achievable goals

Setting ambitious goals can be inspiring, but it can also be deeply frustrating when you’re unable to achieve them.

All-or-nothing thinking will get you thinking that you can go from nothing to exercising 6 times a week when your motivation is high. That is often a recipe for disappointment.

The best way to start a healthy habit that you’ll be able to sustain over a long time is to break down big goals into smaller, manageable ones.

Example: If your goal is to exercise everyday, start by committing to move your body twice a week. Once you’ve been consistent with that, then you can increase the frequency to three times a week, then to four times, and so on.

Breaking down a big goal into smaller chunks is great because it builds your confidence and momentum as you achieve each small goal, and it feels less overwhelming.

These small changes done consistently add up to big results.

Aim for progress, not perfection

All-or-nothing thinking convinces you that you need the perfect conditions so as to do something—the perfect time, the perfect day, having the right resources etc.

But this is all an illusion. There’s no perfect day or time of year to start practicing healthy habits.

Instead of being fixated on perfection, focus more on the any progress you make towards achieving your goal — whether big or small.

Habits are often formed through imperfect action done consistently.

So, don’t wait to have the perfect conditions. Use the time and resources you already have.

Focus on making small positive changes and do them consistently. This is what will produce steady progress towards achieving your goals.

If there’s something that you’ve been putting off to do at a later date when the time is just right, make a plan today and just start.

Celebrate effort, not outcome

Giving maximum effort all the time isn’t attainable long-term.

Some days you’ll be able to give 100%, other days you can only give 20%.

This doesn’t mean that the days you gave 100% were a success and the 20% days were a failure. What matters is you showed up on both days and gave it everything you had to give.

The truth is, the amount of time and effort you’re able to give will change from day to day depending on different life factors, some of which may be completely out of your control.

Therefore, to remove the pressure having to get it right all the time, reward yourself for simply showing up.

Example: If you planned to go for a 30-minute run but only managed 15, celebrate that you went out and got moving. 15 minutes is better than zero.

Remember, something is always better than nothing. Every little bit of effort counts.

The goal of any health and wellness journey should be to improve your life, not make it harder.

Changes won’t happen overnight, so remember to be kind to yourself. Understand that everyone has off days and that one misstep doesn’t define your entire journey.

What matters is that you keep moving forward, one step at a time.

Here’s to a healthier, happier you!

Thanks for reading! I hope you found something valuable :)

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