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Each season, I offer a group coaching program for women called MOVE And The Way Will Open.
The MOVE program, as I call it, is where I teach women how the power of movement and connection with their bodies will revolutionize every area of their lives.
My MOVE ladies have just completed their six week program and have made beautiful changes and strides in their lives.
There have been pounds lost, routines created, old beliefs shed and new ideas come to life. I’m so proud of them and all that has come to pass.
As part of the program, I teach four live classes where the group members come together and I offer them inspirational, motivational education and coaching to amplify their MOVE experience.
We always have time for individual group members to ask questions or offer up situations where they want 1:1 coaching from me.
One night during class, one of the ladies spoke of how she feels she gets impatient and stuck when it comes to changes she wants to make with her health and lifestyle.
She said it’s always a loop of “If or when ________________ happens, then I will __________________.”
I dug a little deeper as I was coaching her so I could help her excavate the core belief that was causing her the most most pain and was at the root of her “stuckness.”
It was this:
“If I don’t do EVERYTHING that needs to be done here, then it’s not even worth starting.
I’ll just keep waiting and putting it off until the right or perfect time.”
As a therapist and coach who’s grounded in looking at the cognitive / thought patterns of my clients, I hit paydirt.
She served it up to me on a platter:
All-or-nothing thinking.
It’s a classic thought pattern that inhibits the actions / behaviors we want to take to make changes or create positive momentum in our lives.
All-or-nothing thinking is something human beings do; we never really get rid of it, and that’s okay.
I have a good case of all-or-nothing thinking at least a few times a week:
● “If I don’t write all of this month’s blog posts today, then I’ll never get them done for the month. What’s the point of even starting one today?”
● “If I don’t get all of the grocery shopping done today, we won’t eat well at all this week.”
● “What’s the point of getting the closet organized / the receipts filed / the emails answered if I can’t get it done all at once and without interruption?”
And, like my client, I all-or-nothing think myself into doing nothing sometimes.
Or I will do a little something and then get pissed if I don’t do it “perfectly” or complete every single task associated with it.
AND THEN, I sometimes go further by telling myself that because I can’t do it ALL, then I must not be ALL-IN with myself.
I can trick my brain into a belief that I must not really want to live the way I want to live or make the changes that are important to me if I’m not going at it full-force all of the time.
It’s exhausting.
It’s no wonder we hang our heads and stay in our stuckness and frustration.
Here’s what we learned on that call today with my MOVE client:
YOU CAN BE ALL-IN WITH YOURSELF AND LET GO OF YOUR ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING.
I do the work I do because I love seeing women realize that life is never too small for big dreams.
Years ago, I transformed my life when I let go of all-or-nothing and decided I was ALL-IN with myself.
No matter what.
I wasn’t going to hang out in the land of:
“If I can lose 25 pounds, then I will _______________________.”
“I will do __________________ when my kids are older.”
“If I can kinda fly under the radar and not raise too many eyebrows, then I’ll ___________________________.”
No more.
Instead, I took simple and significant steps to go ALL-IN with myself.
Decisions came from a place of curiosity and love versus whether it was going to give me all of the answers and solve all of my problems.
Letting myself climb out of that box was the best thing I ever did for myself.
Life opened up in incredible ways and I rewired my brain to take simple and significant steps that would prepare me for the big leaps I would also take.
The good news is that all-or-nothing thinking is a construct — it’s not a fact.
The even better news is that you can go ALL-IN with yourself to break it down and improve or transform your life.
