Break The All-Or-Nothing Trap that Keeps Your Progress Stuck: 3 coaching tools that help my clients to break this vicious cycle.

One “bad” meal. One skipped workout. One night of doom scrolling. Then the familiar thought hits: I blew it, so why bother?

That is not a personality flaw. It is black-and-white thinking, a common cognitive bias that kills more progress than failure ever could.

We walk through how all-or-nothing mindset shows up in dieting, intermittent fasting, exercise routines, reading goals, and even work habits.

You will learn 3 practical tools you can use immediately.  

If you want a stronger growth mindset, better follow-through, and sustainable behavior change, press play.

After you listen, share it with a friend who gets stuck in all-or-nothing thinking, and please subscribe, rate, and review so more people can keep growing.

Transcript

Why All Or Nothing Backfires

#1 Good Better Best Plans

#2 Use Failure As Data

#3 Become The Observer

Why The Brain Thinks In Extremes

Recap

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, executive coach 360, health, high performance, sleep stress management, and living with more strategy, focus, and priorities aligned with who you want to become, the future that you want to create. And today, guys, I'm going to share with you three tools that will help you to overcome this very common brain bias that all of us have by default. And the bias that stops you from reaching your growth, your personal potential, the bias that stops you very often from moving forward in your life, in your work, in your relationships, in your fitness, the bias that uh stops you from getting better instead of sort of swinging between perfect and not doing anything at all. You know, I so often hear this phrase, I'm just all or nothing person. You know, it's either zero or hero. And that's how it is, you know, that's how I am, and that's why I can't really have half of the cookie, or I can't really have a piece of chocolate, I need to eat like the whole thing, or I can't really do short workout, I either go or I don't do anything for like, I don't know, a week or a whole month. I'm just all or nothing person. But I'm here to tell you that all or nothing, black and white thinking, it's actually a very well-known, you can look it up, all or nothing bias or black and white bias. It's actually very well known in psychology. It's studied in behavioral science, it's something that again prevents people from taking smaller steps that are available right now because they can't have it perfect, or because in a week or month there's gonna be an imperfect situation. Well, first let me know. Does this sound familiar? You start a diet or intermittent fasting or some all clean eating approach. It's day seven, it's I don't know, Sunday, and you're at dinner with friends, and the plan isn't really being executed for whichever reason. And you decide, well, it's not working. I can't do it, it's not worth it, it's too complex. Like I can't not live my life. And you forget that you executed well for six or seven days, and guess what? Doing six days out of seven every week is heck of a lot of better than doing nothing the whole week. Don't you think so? You actually can hit all of your goals and get most of the benefits from doing six days or even five days, or whatever that is. Better is always available, and better gives you results. Heck, maybe not as fast as 100% would, but definitely a heck a lot of a faster than doing nothing or doing uh one day a year, right? Let's say you are starting intermediate fasting. Did you know that you can do it only, I don't know, five days of the week? Or some days of the week? Did you know that there are actually prodigals where people you know don't follow any prodigals for half-level nutrition, and then for uh two or three days of the week they do it, and they still get a ton better results than people who just decide to give up because they can't have it perfect? Right? Oh, another story. You commit to reading an hour a day instead of scrolling. Friday night, and you find yourself on your phone instead of reading a book, and you decide you just don't have what it takes. Conveniently forgetting the four days that you showed up just fine and got three-thirds of the book. You commit to an exercise routine, and midweek, you know, you did really well on Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday hits, and like things just pile up, and you tell yourself, well, heck, this, you know, I'm too busy for exercise right now. While not seeing that you could have perfectly done a 20, a 10-minute Tabata workout, it was there, waiting and possible and available, if only for a brief moment you'd let go of this idea of perfection or nothing. My favorite phrase to use these days with myself and to interrupt this kind of thinking uh with my clients better is always available. There is always a step you can take right now toward your aspiration. Stepping halfway through the cookie that somehow got into your mouth counts too. It's a half cookie less and half cookie closer towards your dream, whatever that dream is. In skill acquisition, in habit formation, you don't go from zero to hero, you go from where you are today, right now, to better. That's how growth works for all of us. Physically, when an athlete earns additional 10 kilo lift kilo by kilo, sometimes 500 grams by 500 grams, and mentally, when you get to feel more optimistic about failures, for example, seeing them as a part of your growth journey, just a second faster, easier each time, lingering in the doom and gloom a bit less. And of course, just like any skill, just like any habit, getting yourself over all or nothing thinking and black and white thinking and getting yourself to more effective mental models. It takes time, it takes practice, and step by step you get better. Today I wanted, as I promise, to give you three tools that I personally really like. I found them very effective, and they work for a lot of my clients who, over the course of our work together, get over their black and white, you know, personality train and train a skill of thinking in all kinds of shades of gray that help them to move closer and closer towards that ultimate goal of perfection, or just having their life better. So, tool number one set good, better, best options in advance. Plan for the range, not just the ideal, right? So some days your workout is a five-minute tabata and walking to the bus or the train, and some days it's a full gym session, and most days it's something in between. Right? I personally committed to 30 minutes of movement every morning and 30 minutes of walking or some sort of movement after dinner. Like some sort. On some days when I'm feeling under the weather or flying or the weather is shitty, or something else, I can walk in the airport for 30 minutes with my luggage doing additional like weight load. I can do yoga in my room as long as I have like meter by meter space. I do walk outside, I can do again five-minute tabata right by my uh room, by my bed in my hotel room, right? Good, better, best options. And most of the time, you probably do better. The second one is learning from your failures as from a data point, right? So when you miss the plan, get curious instead of critical. What can I learn from this? Not what's wrong with me, or why don't I have more willpower and can figure shit out? But instead, what can I learn from this? What is not working about my system or in my set of assumptions or about like the way my life works right now? Where do I need more support? Where do I need my systems? Where do I need some sort of uh skill or equipment, a tool? Right? What was different the times that I succeeded, even once? How did I do that? And how can I do more of that? Not every time, not perfect, but just more, just better. Failure is a data point, not a final verdict on your change and growth capacity. And tool number three, become your own outside observer. It's actually a very well-known technique and therapy and coaching to learn to distance yourself from yourself, either through talking to yourself in second and third person, like Angela, we are not exactly moving our business forward, dude. Why do you think this is happening? Who can you ask for advice or for help or for tips, right? How can you do better? What would you what would if you were a own friend, like what would you say to yourself? Talking to yourself in second or third person, but specifically for I find the next question very useful and effective. If a friend was watching the situation and had to offer advice on what to do next, how to handle perhaps this failure or the setback, what would she or he say? That's how you get outside of your head, get less emotional, gain better perspective, and see a lot more options and see that this is just a step on the journey, not the end of the road. Right? So get outside of your own head. Black and white thinking exists for a reason, guys. It's not some flaw of your character or your brain. It helps you make really fast decisions in situations where speed is survival. Like if you were in some savannahs of Africa many hundreds of years ago, and you saw a shadow at night, and your brain wasn't sure, like, is it gonna kill me, or is it just I don't know, something, uh a thing of my imagination. You know, one could have you killed. So having black and white thinking was really useful. You would just run and take your chances elsewhere. It's a useful tool we often use in the wrong context. Growth is not that context. Most of life is not that context. Skill development and habit formation is not that context. In those circumstances, in most circumstances in our lives, where it's not life or death situation where the decision has to be made right now and the final verdict has to be done now, so you act right now. You know, most of life situations are the things that more perspective taken, that more long-term thinking, that thinking in shades of gray, not black and white, will work a lot better for your consistent and persistent growth. So, to sum up, the tools that will help you to coach yourself out of black and white thinking and more of a growth mind kind of thinking. Do you know that growth mindset is not something you have or don't have? It's something you develop and use better in some situations than others, right? So, this is your exercise routine to start uh in ledging, working on, flexing your growth mindset muscle. But before you do that, don't forget to please share this podcast episode, send it to a friend who's stuck in this black and white thinking, and it's like I'm a success or I'm a failure, and I can't do anything in between. And very often they end up doing a lot more of nothing than anything at all, which obviously, maybe not that obviously for them, uh, works a lot better when it comes to consistently getting some improvement on the goals that are important to them. So share this with a friend who might be stuck in black and white thinking so they could get over it and start getting better. Instead of swinging between 100% that really exists and nothing at all, staying most of the time in nothing at all. So, three tools, but I but guys, please do share, review, rate. That's how we all of us improve the mindset of the entire world so we get get to create more positive growth, growth mindset kind of world. So share. And then to sum it up, three tools, coaching tools that will help you to get over black and white thinking and get more into consistent growth. Even walking through a lot of setbacks that life will provide plenty of. Number one, set good, better, best options in advance. And whenever life throws something at you, ask yourself, what kind of day is it? Good, better, best, and do that. There is always one small step that you can take towards better. Tool number two, when you fail, when there is a setback, don't well get curious instead of getting critical. What is about the situation that made me fail? What is it that didn't go as well as I expected or as I assumed? What support or tool or system do I need to get it better next time? And in the times when I succeeded, what did I do differently so I can learn from my own successes, right? So get curious instead of critical. Learn from failure as a data point. And number three, become your own outside observer. If a friend were to watch me or the situation and had to offer advice on what to do next, what would she or he say? And you'd be surprised how much better advice you give to yourself when you're seeing yourself from the outside. And that's it for today, guys. I hope you found this podcast episode very useful and you're gonna start flexing your growth mindset muscle, one exercise, one rep at a time. And over time you'll notice how you become less of a black and white thinker and become more of a person of getting better, even when life doesn't give you the perfect situations and outcomes you expected. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Have a beautiful day, the growth kind of day further. Until next time, keep growing.