“The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.” -James Clear

 

What if I told you that you could be more stressed out than you already were? Or that you could have feelings of regret and not achieve your goals? If so, you’ll want to adopt the all-or-nothing mentality because it’s great for that. Oh, wait, you don’t want to feel that way? Well, cool, I’m glad to hear that. Glad because, the all-or-nothing mentality usually causes more problems than it solves, and it’s best to use other mentalities instead.

There is a difference between perfection and greatness. One of those differences is that greatness is achievable while perfection rarely is. We should strive to do the best we can in life–of that there is no doubt—but this must be a realistic striving. When we adopt the all-or-nothing mentality though, which has ties to perfectionism, we get into trouble. Because when we don’t get the “all” in all-or-nothing, we’re often left with the “nothing.”

This mentality is black and white. We either crush our nutrition habits for the day or it was a disaster. We either have a great workout or a horrible one.

This mentality is a slippery slope that yields little benefit. We hear this mentality in phrases such as: “I ate a cookie and ruined my diet for the day.” Or, “There’s no point exercising for 10 minutes because I can’t do my whole workout, so why bother working out at all.”

Except, life isn’t always black and white like the all-or-nothing mentality suggests it to be, because there is gray to it. If we don’t have the “perfect’ amount of time to workout, then doing something is still better than doing nothing. If we stay up late watching re-runs of The Office, and it screws up our sleep, then we can get better sleep the next night.

 

 

One mistake on your diet, one missed workout in the gym, or one bad night of sleep won’t do much harm—unless it’s repeated. If we miss a workout then we make the next one. If we binge on a huge dessert then we can get back on track with our nutrition habits at the next meal. A failure doesn’t have to become a disaster unless we let it. Luckily for us, there is hope in overcoming this mentality.

 

A Better Mentality

I’ve spoken of the growth mindset before in a previous blog (which you can read here), so I won’t spend too much time on it, but it is worth mentioning.

Inherent within the growth mindset is the belief that we are always capable of growing and becoming a better version of ourselves. This implies that we aren’t perfect beings and that we can always grow and become more. Our skills aren’t fixed and unchangeable.

Earlier in this post—and along the same line of thinking as the growth mindset—I said we should always strive to do our best, and I whole heartedly believe that.

But sometimes we mess up.

This is normal and natural since we’re human; we can’t be perfect. Something that I have found helpful to understand this idea, though, is a passage by Eric Greitens in which he said:

“If your best is not enough, make your best better. If you tried and failed, then try harder, or find a new way to try until you succeed. Trying hard is trying hard. Success is success. There is a difference.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have success than just toil away for years trying hard with little to show for it.

So even if we only do the minimum of something—whether that be writing two sentences of a blog, doing one exercise at the gym, or drinking one extra glass of water a day—the effect on our lives is profound. We’re building the habit of showing up and as I’ve discussed before—consistency is one of the most important ingredients for success.

 

 

Let’s say you ate a small dessert after lunch and feel that your entire diet for the day is ruined—so why not keep eating like crap and restart tomorrow, right?

Except, that’s not right, because now we’re creating a problem that didn’t have to exist.

Running late due to traffic and you’re going to be late to your workout?

Just show up.

Getting in one set of squats is better than no squats. Going through a good warm-up routine is better than simply sitting in your car and going home.

Life rarely unfolds the way we want it to and that’s okay, because we can pick up the momentum the next day and carry on.

 

Gretchen Rubin’s Four Quarters

Coach Greg shared an insightful post on Facebook a few weeks ago that contained a helpful concept. He talked about Gretchen Rubins’ method for cultivating a healthy and productive outlook each day.

Think about each day as divided up into four quarters, similar to that of a football game. You can think of the four quarters as the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. We use this approach to guide our actions each day.

Just like a football team can be down in the first quarter, and can come back to win the game in the end, so can you salvage a seemingly bad day.

 

 

It’s Monday morning and you wake up excited to go the gym when you get a call.

You answer it to discover it’s your boss and he needs you to come into the office to take care of something crucial.

So, your first quarter is now taking a hit, but you have three left.

Get your head in the game and do what you can to prioritize the next quarter. Maybe that’s going for a walk in quarter 2, scheduling your gym session for quarter 3 after work, or doing a home workout in quarter 4. Either way, there’s still a chance to do better.

And what if you mess up in the last quarter?

Well, assuming the other three quarters were solid you’re good to go most likely.

Worst case? You lost that one day and you have tons more left to win the season.

So, what are you going to do to win next quarter?