How to Overcome All or Nothing Thinking

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What IS all or Nothing Thinking?

All or nothing thinking is considered a cognitive distortion - a negative or irrational thinking pattern. It is a learned behavior that categorizes thoughts, experiences, and outcomes into strict categories - good or bad, success or failure, always or never, etc. Often people who experience this type of thinking take a situation and attribute it to their self-worth - this may look like “I ate too much over the holidays, I am a glutton without self-control” or “I didn’t exercise 5 days this week because I am lazy and terrible at time management.”

All or nothing thinking can lead to loss of motivation - “if I can’t do it perfectly, I am not even going to try". It can also lead to loss of self-compassion, self-esteem, and resilience. All or nothing thinking often shows up in two forms:

1. You don’t give yourself credit if you do not operate or perform perfectly. This may look like considering yourself a failure if you miss a workout (even if you did 3/5 planned workouts), and giving up on your exercise goals planning to start with a “clean slate” next week, month, or year.

2. You consider yourself a failure if you do not feel well enough (physically or mentally) to do 100% of what you planned to do. This may look like considering yourself a failure for not folding laundry today because you were feeling exhausted after grocery shopping and needed to rest in the afternoon instead of doing housework. You may even convince yourself that your whole household is falling apart and there is no way you will catch up all because you couldn’t 100% complete the tasks you planned to do today.

7 Tools to Overcome All Or Nothing Thinking

1. Identify and label your thinking. Each time you are noticing yourself experiencing all or nothing thinking (this is different to everyone it may be “good or bad”, “responsible or irresponsible”, “success or failure” or others) rather than using your polarized label of choice, instead label the entire thought process as “all or nothing thinking” the more often you do this, the easier it becomes to pinpoint this thinking in the future and utilize some of the other tools below.

2. Respond first with self-compassion. How you treat yourself is one of the few things in life that you fully control. When you notice you are experiencing all or nothing thinking, take a pause and re-frame your thoughts with compassion. Self-compassion may look like - “I missed a couple of workouts this week because I had a lot going on. I did the best I could considering my schedule and that’s all I can fairly ask of myself.” It is important that your self-compassion is coming from an honest place, it may help to consider what you may say to a loved one if they were in your situation.

3. Look for the positives and celebrate progress. Celebrate the positive things and all of the steps you took toward your goal. Going back to our example this may look like - “despite my busy schedule, I was able to exercise 3 days this week! That is a huge step up from not exercising at all, and I felt great on those 3 days.”

4. Be curious. Getting curious about your all or nothing thought process can help you unravel it. Try asking yourself - “Are my expectations for myself realistic?” “Am I making assumptions?” “Am I being too hard on myself?” “Is this thought helpful?” Asking these questions may help you to slow detrimental thoughts and find positives and self-compassion more easily.

5. Allow for paradoxes. Consider that two things can be true at the same time. Your job can be both boring and challenging. You can be both motivated and overwhelmed. Your spouse can be both infuriating and loving.

6. Learn from mistakes. Think about trying anything for the first time - children learning to walk or ride a bike, your first time playing an instrument or playing a new sport - learning a new skill is riddled with big and small failures. The important thing is you learn from those past experiences and try doing things differently the next time. Eventually you find what things work well for you.

7. Learn from yourself. Think about an area in your life where you are successful (it may be as big as being a VP or CEO of a company, or as small as starting a habit of flossing every day). Did you get there without any negative experiences or failures? Certainly not. Sometimes it is easy to give ourselves permission to experience failure and growth in some areas of our lives, but not others. Borrow from those areas where failures were easier to learn from and consider what skills and tools you can apply to areas where you are experiencing all or nothing thinking.

Try using some of these tools, and see what works well for you. If you continue to struggle with all or nothing thinking or lack of motivation, you would benefit from one on one health coaching. Schedule a free 15 minute consultation with me to see if we are a good fit.