PFL 34: Overcome The "All Or Nothing" Mentality

Hi everyone! This is Connie Sokol, and you're listening to Balance Redefined Radio. I've spent over 20 years teaching people how to redefine what balance really is, meaning a more purposeful and joyful life.

 

They’ve paid off credit cards, lost weight, organize their homes, and created a meaningful life plan and they've managed their time, changed habits and experience greater success both at work and at home.

 

So now I decided to take the plunge and help about 100,000 new people who want to redefine balance in their lives. People ask me all the time, “How do I go from an overwhelming and chaotic life to more purpose and organization and joy?”

 

That's the reason why I'm doing this podcast, to give you trusted answers and create a space where you could find balance. My name is Connie Sokol and welcome to Balance Redefined Radio…

 

[00:00] Hi, welcome back to Balance Redefined. I'm Connie Sokol.

[00:04] I'm thrilled to share with you today some thoughts about getting rid of this all-or-nothing mentality and instead being able to ameliorate it, being able to expand it, being able to work with it...

[00:15] Instead of saying, "I've just got to get rid of it, which is so all or nothing, I'm going to get rid of it today. Just today," We're not gonna do that.

[00:21] We're just going to consider some things that we can do to overcome and even expand this all-or-nothing thinking. So I want first for you to consider if you have an all or nothing mentality.

[00:33] It could be just occasionally...

[00:34] It could be about a certain category of things in your life, whether it's food, working out, working period. Maybe it's the way that you approach your life...

[00:35] If it's more of like, "This is kind of an overall mentality mindset that I have," consider where you are on this all or nothing scale because this can be so damaging and you might be thinking, "Well, I don't know."

[00:56] "I don't know if I have it that much," and if you're thinking that you probably don't have the all or nothing, but you'll know it because you can go immediately, "Oh yeah, I'm a perfectionist. I get really anxious if I don't do it exactly right," and you'll find that all or nothing mentality tends to lead to depression, tends to lead to that anxiety tends to lead to low self esteem.

[01:16] We tend to define ourselves by these "I am this" or "I am that" and there's no gray area in between. The difficulty that you could probably recognize, and I think most all or nothing people really do recognize it, is that we're growing developing people...

[01:32] So when we make such a hard and fast rule about what we are, what we aren't, what we'll do, what we won't in such a set way when it's not maybe something to do with morals or those kinds of core concepts, then we really start narrowing ourselves and limiting ourselves to who we are, what we can do, what we can become, and what we can have...

[01:56] When we do that, we start automatically limiting other people. Have you noticed that when we start getting super strict with ourselves, then we start to limit and start to kind of judge and say, "Well I know that person shouldn't be doing that. They're kind of out of their box."

[02:14] As we start to feel like other people are out of their box, then this all or nothing mentality kind of kicks in and you'll notice that people with this mentality, they sort of grab and push people down.

[02:24] It's that law of the crabs where if you remember, you can leave a bucket of crabs without a lid because the other crabs will pull them down and so that law of the crabs kicks in because it's, "Well, if I can't have it and I can't be it, then you can't either."

[02:39] And so these two contend to go together if you have this.

[02:44] Have you noticed that? So this is something to keep in mind because as you engage in this sort of mentality, it just limits and decreases your ability and your enjoyment of life and then it does that for those around you and that means it's going to negatively affect your relationships.

[03:03] And we know everything in life comes back to those relationships...

[03:07] So let me share with you a few thoughts today. I'm sharing some things with my own and some things from a great article from Psych Central called, "Five Ways to Expand All Or Nothing Thinking," from Margarita Tart Kowski if I said that correctly...

[03:20] Anyway, there are some great things in there, and I have some things that I want to share. So I'm adding just a little bit of things that she has mentioned.

[03:25] But the first thing I'd like to share is if you have this mentality, I would encourage you to have a sort of a visual, a mental or physical jar in your mind or in your hand that you can grab something you can have around the house that you can use or in your mind, a mental jar...

[03:43] Think of a clear, maybe glass jar and then consider what you think about yourself, who you are, what you like to do, what you believe in, what you feel is a good use of your time, and just some different things to describe you, then write them on little pieces of paper and put them in that jar mentally or physically, so a mental or physical jar and just write a word on there.

[04:09] "I'm organized, I'm happy, I'm a contributor, I am a positive person," Whatever that you feel is really, really you in something that is core. Something that's going to be kind of a terminal, something that's really lasting for you.

[04:24] "This is who I am and or this is what I love to do. This is what I enjoy. This is what I feel passionate about," right?

[04:32] Write some of those things down on these little pieces of paper and put them in that jar and then wait a week, come back, pull out those pieces of paper and just start pulling them out and asking yourself, "Is this me?"

[04:43] Is this true? Is this really true?

[04:47] And if it is, keep it and if it isn't, reject it. You can read it, revise it, reject it, whatever it is that you want to do with it, but it is good for us to sit down and take a moment and really review what we think because so much of what we think is what actually becomes an action.

[05:07] So if you have all or nothing thinking, it's so vital for you to sit down and see it on paper to see it so that you can review it and then revise it or reject it. So consider doing that little activity.

[05:22] Again, if it's a mental charge, put it up on that shelf and add as you go along...

[05:28] You know what? I used to think that I was someone who loved the outdoors and you know what?

[05:34] I did that because our family had to go camping almost every weekend. I'm actually not an outdoors person. I actually prefer going to museums.

[05:41] Maybe you can start thinking like that. So you can take that paper, throw it out and or revise it and say, "You know what? I like to occasionally camp."

[05:50] Well put that back in so you can decide what's true for you. The second thing is to give yourself and others daily praise. Now, this may sound like what I'm going to praise myself, but the tendency for all or nothing people is to create extremes and sort of impossible expectations.

[06:10] We'll talk about dealing with that specifically in a minute. So what happens with that is what follows is a lot of negative because that's a very high bar. So if you don't reach that, "Oh boy, you failed, you've lost, you're done. You didn't do it, and now you're a loser."

[06:25] And it's so funny. My sweet daughter, one of my daughters, deals with anxiety, well a couple of them do, but this one, she was talking with a psychologist and he was giving her a great analogy.

[06:34] She was talking about how she was getting nervous about some different things. He said, "Yes, it's like going in to take an act test then, and you forgot your pencil and then you say, 'I forgot my pencil. I'm not going to be able to finish this test. I'm not going to be able to get into college. I'll just find myself being homeless. I'm going to live in a van in a box down by the river.' "

[06:51] And so by the end he has this little analogy at the very bottom. It's, "I'm going to live in a box," and so now to help her with anxiety when she starts kind of magnifying and distorting, that's what I call it.

[07:03] As soon as something happens and we're so extreme, we magnify and distort it...

[07:08] If you have that kind of mentality, then what happens is that you start going from, "I forgot my pencil," to "I'm going to live in a box." And so now when she has a moment like that, it's so funny because she'll say something and then I'll look at her to go, "And I'm going to live in a box."

[07:23] So it lightens the mood and it gives her a coping skill to be able to say, "Okay, it's all going to be good. So in order for us to get to that place, and maybe I'll just start with the B plusser thing because that's the B plus, and we'll come back to daily praise.

[07:37] But the B plusser mentality is where that comes in and helps with that, where if we don't have these impossible expectations, we don't have these extremities, then we can keep it at a B pluss.

[07:47] Did I do an 80 percent today? Did I do an 80 percent today? Yes, I did. And so good job, great job. And that's where we get to the daily praise when we keep our expectations realistic. We also realize that there are some things that need to be 100 percent. Right? One hundred percent honesty, 100 percent fidelity in marriage, those kinds of things...

[08:07] But when we go, "Oh, you know what, today I didn't get all those projects done. I didn't get those things turned in like I had wanted to. You know what? I was going to be super patient with my children and I yelled."

[08:17] So we get to that point and we go, "Okay, there you go. B plusser."

[08:22] You go back. You say, sorry, you go back. You say, "You know what? I'm going to stay up and turn that in. You go back and you redo it."

[08:29] That's being a b plusser because you're doing the best you can that day.

[08:34] So let go of these extreme rigid expectations and do the best you can by being a B plusser, and then you can see by my little example there how it naturally follows to the daily praise because if you were doing a b plusser idea of your day, then there's lots to praise.

[08:52] "Hey, I went to work today even though I was totally sick and yeah, everybody may do that, but I did it." Well, not sick, contagious, but you know, didn't feel well...

[09:01] "You know what? I finished that thing and I gave my word that I would and I did it."

[09:06] That's great. Even if it wasn't beautiful, even if it wasn't perfect, maybe that cake didn't look just right for that charity event you said that you would bring it for and maybe you know that it could look better, but B plusser...

[09:17] So you can praise yourself and others for the good that you did.

[09:20] "Wow. You know what, that turned out good. Even though I had to do it on the fly, it turned out good."

[09:25] That is not being egocentric and you'll notice as I mentioned earlier, the more that you are positive with yourself, the more you will be positive with others.

[09:35] Now, of course the caveat, we're not sitting and being like in the mirror adoring yourself, okay? That's not what I'm talking about. Too many people walk around saying negative things to themselves.

[09:47] If you ever found that you have a negative dialogue running in your head and before you even know it, you're knee deep in it. It's, "Oh my gosh, I should not have said that. Why did I do that? I always say the wrong thing. Why do we even open my mouth? I should just not. You know what? I'm not even going next time. I'm just going to stay home and be by myself. I'm not even going to open my mouth..."

[10:06] Do you find yourself getting to those and then it's to that extreme place and I have these conversations with my daughters all the time because especially as teenagers, that negative voice is so loud in their head and it's so sad.

[10:20] We just went to an activity, it was a more of a spiritual activity yesterday. I'm a leader of a group of young women and they're between the ages of 12 and 18...

[10:28] In the spiritual activity, one of the other leaders and I just leaned over. We were watching them and they were engaging and doing something really wonderful and service oriented for others and these kids just glowed. Oh my gosh.

[10:39] They were just beautiful and lovely and wonderful and I thought, "These are such good kids and young men, young women, they were just taking their time after school, busy schedules of high school, all different ages and they were just serving and helping and I leaned over to this leader and I said, "They don't know..."

[10:56] "They don't see it. They don't see how beautiful and wonderful they are."

[11:00] I know those girls, and I had some conversations on the drive there. The things that go through their heads, the low self esteem, the I'm-still-less-than and, "Oh, I don't look right today," and all of those things...

[11:11] You remember that back in the day being a teenager, right?

[11:13] Everything was just so questionable and you second guessed yourself and you felt less than so often, and yet we as older leaders looked them and just went, "Oh my gosh, you're amazing. You're incredible." And I looked at her and I said, "You know what? When we're 20 years older from now, we'll probably look back and say the same thing. What was I stressed about? What was I second guessing myself about? I was amazing, right?"

[11:38] It's always that way about weight...

[11:39] You look back and you say, "Oh, I looked so bad in that outfit," and "Oh, I was so big", and then 15, 20 years later, you look back and you say, "I wish I weighed that. I wish I looked like that."

[11:49] So it's just this natural cycle, but when we're aware of it, then we can stop it.

[11:54] So I so encourage you to look at this daily praise and say, "Wow, I did a good job with that." It doesn't mean you're going on and on about it. It means you're just saying, "Well, I'm validating that I did that, validating my efforts, validating my work, validating my intention, and validating that I did good."

[12:10] So it's a daily praise, and as you do that for yourself, you will find yourself doing it for others...

[12:16] Now, I would encourage you, if you're not comfortable doing that, starting with yourself, then flip it around. Start it with praising others, and I love doing this because you never know what might be the only compliment that person has had all day, especially our children.

[12:32] We don't realize how often we're just saying negative thing after negative thing where it doesn't sound negative to us, it just sounds like, "Get this done. Go do this."

[12:40] But it sounds negative to them and they're yet to hear something wonderful from us. So guess what? That helps to eliminate that all-or-nothing mentality and the possibility of passing that onto our children.

[12:52] The last thing to help combat this, overcome it, and expand it is what are your options?

[12:58] Instead of saying "it's this or that," what are the options?

[13:01] I love this concept of the "third way." You have the one way that you can see the other way that you can see, but you just can't see any other way out of it.

[13:13] This is kind of the Moses principle from the Old Testament where he's got the Israelites. They have left from the slavery and the pharaoh's chasing after them. They've got chariots behind them. They get a whole lot of water in front of them. They see no option out. There is no other way. They are stuck by this big sea and go, "What in the world have you gotten us into." That's when he prays and he is able to part the red sea and I call that the "third way."

[13:42] It's the third way. It's the way they didn't know was available. They didn't know it was an option. They just didn't even consider it, but guess what? God knows there's an option.

[13:51] He knows there's a whole lot of options...

[13:53] We just can't see it, and especially when we're in an all or nothing mentality, or we're in a stressful situation. It's extremely difficult to be able to see more creative options and think outside the box.

[14:06] So I invite you when you're in a situation or you're doing something, consider what are all the options? What could be the third way?

[14:15] Alright, so there are some options for you to try to overcome or expand this all or nothing thinking, right? It's creative, physical, or mental jar of who you are and put those papers in.

[14:26] Take them out and revise and reject whatever it is you want to do with it...

[14:29] Second, B plusser. Get rid of those extreme limiting expectations.

[14:34] Third, involve yourself in daily praise of others and yourself, that positivity of great job, good effort, whatever that looks like for you...

[14:42] And lastly, what are the options? What could be the third way?

[14:46] Alright, stay tuned for more from Balance Redefined.

You got it. Thanks for listening and remember to rate and subscribe. And if you are feeling the need for real balance in your life, get your free 3-Step Life Plan, and get started today! Just go to conniesokol.com/download.