"All or Nothing" Is the Perfect Excuse To Fail!

One of the biggest struggles I see many of my clients go through when they first come to work with me is getting over the mindset of all or nothing. Now, the catch is it's nice to want to kind of go all in and do everything you can and have this idea of, well, if I get my diet perfect, my exercise perfect, and so on, then I'm going to get perfect results. I'm going to get awesome results. I'll lose the weight quickly, I'll get the body I want, and then I'll be forever happy. The catch is, in my experience, even with myself when I've tried it in the past, the all-or-nothing approach always just ends up being the nothing approach, because it's impossible for us to completely flip our whole world upside down overnight when we've been leading a lifestyle that's not conducive to the outcomes that we want. So I want a fitter, leaner, healthier, stronger body, but if for the past year, 2 years, 5 years, decade or more I've been living this lifestyle and this habit set that leads me to being weak, tired, lethargic, overweight, and so on, then it's generally speaking impossible for me to completely flip my world upside down overnight and now live as this perfect being that's going to suddenly achieve this amazing, perfect body in a matter of weeks or just a few months. Now, that's not to say you can't make massive difference and make huge changes. Of course you can. But the catch is making them in a way where it's sustainable so that we don't have to go through this flip-flopping back and forward and this struggle and strain of the stop-start, stop-start, which many of us, of course, get stuck in because we keep trying to take this all-or-nothing approach. All right, on Monday I'll get everything perfect. On Monday, everything, I'll get it in place, I'll get it all lined up, and I'll make sure that it's perfect. And then what we find is that generally speaking, by Wednesday or Thursday, nah, fuck it, it's too hard, it's too difficult, this shit doesn't work. And then again we'll drag it out for a few weeks before we get ready to then hopefully attempt again. But if there's one tip that I can give you guys, that would be to ditch that all-or-nothing mindset and to switch it for instead an all-in mindset. Now they kind of sound similar. It's like, what, all or nothing or all in? Is that not the same thing? And it's different because the all-or-nothing approach says, well, if I can't do it all, then I'm going to do nothing. Whereas all in says I'm fully committed to the result and the outcome regardless of what I need to do to get there. Now, regardless of what I need to do to get there doesn't mean I have to do all of it immediately and perfectly from day one. What that means is I'm happy to start taking action at a level that will get me results. And once I discover for myself, oh, actually I can maintain this, then I will add on the next piece and then the next piece and the next piece and so on. So eventually we do get to the point of doing all, but that doesn't necessarily mean we begin with all. We just begin with enough action to start getting results. And to be honest, for most of us, it's not huge changes. For many of us, we could almost carry on doing exactly what we're doing already and just add in 3 30-minute walks a week and suddenly we would start to lose weight. Now, of course, that's not going to be applicable for everybody. It depends how extreme and how far off your diet, etc., is. But for many of us, just simply increasing that activity level is going to make a big difference already. Suddenly energy starts to increase. Suddenly we start to feel a bit more like, oh, I can do this, I'm more capable. We start to notice certain little aches and pains go away and the scale weight starts to come down because we're starting to burn off additional body fat and so on just by making a small change like that. Now, of course, when we make a small change like that and also make a few tweaks here or there in the diet, Maybe we reduce the amount of alcohol we're drinking. Maybe we reduce the treats, the sweets, the snacks, and so on. Or maybe we increase protein intake or something like that. By just making small minor adjustments, we start to see fairly big and fairly quick results on the other side of that that actually move us towards what we want, whether that's just simply getting out of pain, just being more energetic or more healthy, or actually burning off a shit ton of body fat. So that we can reveal the body that we know we're supposed to have. But it just starts with us giving ourselves a bit of grace and giving ourselves a bit of, I guess, a bit of help in reality, because many of us don't help ourselves because we try too much too soon. Whereas if we are willing to step back and take a moment and go, well, you know what, I've tried this all-or-nothing thing many times now, which is the case for most of us and probably the case for most of you. I've tried this all-or-nothing thing a lot, and every single time I end up back in the same place. And in fact, on often— on many occasions, what ends up is— or what ends up happening is I end up even further back than where I was before, because I go in with this intention to get it all done and all sorted straight away. But then when I don't, I get pissed off, demotivated, blame myself, shame myself, and so on, and therefore sabotage for even longer. And because I want to feel better in the moment I will then binge and eat crap and sedate with Netflix and things like that and junk food, which then obviously pushes us even further away from the goal. So now each time we come back to try this all or nothing, it requires an even larger amount of all before we'll actually even get a result. So as I mentioned to you guys, the one thing that I would recommend is we switch from that all or nothing to an all-in mindset, meaning we don't try to get it perfect from day one. But we make enough of a change to start moving us forward, and then we accumulate new changes on top of those that we get laid down as habits and new behaviors. Without that ability to kind of establish a habit or a behavior before trying to add on a new one, what often happens is we just overwhelm ourselves, and then we just feel like it's more obligation than opportunity, which of course we don't want, because if we feel obligated to do it then we're not going to follow through anyway because it feels like we're constantly being made or told or forced to do this thing, even though ultimately we do want the outcome on the other side. We don't necessarily want to feel like we're being pushed through it. We want to actually feel like we're moving towards it. We want to choose it if we can. But of course, that takes time, and it also takes you having that mindset reframe where you say, okay, well, it's not about being perfect, it is about making progress. And rather than trying to go all or nothing, I'm just going to go all in, commit to the result and commit to just enough activity or just enough change and habit change and behavioral change to start moving the needle. So that's what I'll leave you guys with today. Any questions, as I always say, drop them in the comments below. And if you want to know more about what we do or how we could help you get to your results, check us out at StrongerThanLife.com. And I look forward to seeing you all in my next video. Take it easy, people.