The All or Nothing Myth

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Chinese Proverb

Ever get paralyzed by the changes you need to make in your life? Its a terribly debilitating feeling. It flows from a mindset that if you don't make the biggest change required in your life you might as well make no changes at all. Of course, its faulty and illogical thinking that if followed will only rob your life of growth you could accomplish relatively easily. Here are some examples of ways this kind of thinking can manifest itself as well as what healthier thinking would suggest is the proper way to handle the situation:

Ex #1:

Wrong: You need to lose 50 lbs but just don't feel mentally ready to begin the five month "diet" you think it will require. So you do nothing to improve your health or move toward fat loss. In fact, you eat worse, because you do believe that you'll be able to "begin" soon and since you are, you may as well have a few more days of eating garbage!

Right: Ask yourself if there is ANYTHING you can EASILY do toward your overall goal. You decide that while you aren't ready to "start your diet", you can get rid of your afternoon soda and replace it with water. You cut 125 calories of pure sugar from your diet which amounts all by itself to a loss of 1 pound a month. (Dont look now, but if you do nothing else you will be quarter of the way to your overall goal of losing 50 pounds in one year. And remember, you weren't willing to "start yet").

Ex #2

Wrong: You and your spouse aren't communicating well on a subject and it is causing alot of friction in the house. You become more withdrawn on the issues and things where you both DO see eye to eye. You start pulling back from the things that ARE strong in your relationship because you are so focused on the disagreement. Your spouse reciprocates by responding the exact same way. Physical intimacy is pulled. Laughter is pulled. Hobbies you shared are pulled. Before long, you and your spouse are fully disengaged from each other. When it becomes unbearable you will still have to address the disagreement that started the whole thing but you will also have to address the withdrawl of affection and the hurt each of you caused by withdrawing from each other.

Right: You tell your spouse that you recognize that there is an issue in the relationship and that both of you are emotional about it. Over the ensuing days instead of withdrawing you sink extra effort into the strengths of your relationship. You aren't dismissing the diagreement or pretendig it doesn't exist. If you and your spouse usually go for a walk in the morning, invite him or her to still go despite the disagreement. You make an increased effort to give a hug, a kiss, or any other small indication of value and intimacy. You continue to care for your spouse and fulfill your role in the relationship. Eventually, the disagreement will still be there to discuss if it really was a genuine issue to begin with. You may find that by focusing on the strengths in the relationship the "issue" ultimately is revealed to be nothing more than a bad mood and the mere passage of time and intimacy have resolved the issue completely.

Ex #3

Wrong: You hate your career and long to be doing something else. As a result you do the absolute minimum that you can get away with at work but because you still have to be at the job at all you do nothing when you get home from work to get you into a new career. You claim you don't have time and fall into the poor thinking where you believe that you are trapped in your job. You start to tell yourself that you can't get away from your career because you have to go to work. You spend the rest of your life in a dead career for you, and bypass your true calling.

Right: You find ways to enjoy your current job more. You keep an organized desk and try not to get yourself overwhelmed. The job seems more tolerable when you are doing it well. Doing poor work because you hate it will only make you hate it more. At the same time, if it really isn't the career for you, you must take steps to get out. Although you are tired from work, when you get home you spend just 1/2 hour on your new career. You could of course do this first thing in the morning or any other time of day. The point is , while you won't be moving as fast as you would like toward your new career, you will be moving toward it. The alternative is to be completely stopped.

You will see the principle of "all or nothing" manifesting itself in all areas of one's life if that is a mindset they generally subscribe to. You must do an assessment in your life of whether or not you have adopted the "all or nothing" mindset and if so you must excise it completely from your thoughts and replace it with a "small step" philosophy. Whether it is health, career, relationships, passions, or finances, get your hands dirty with action. Small, smart action applied consistently. Then another small step building on the first. If you do this, you may find that you actually accomplish big goals before you ever officially "start".


The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smal manageable tasks and then starting on the first one. - Mark Twain