The crossroad of ALL or NOTHING!

“ I couldn’t answer that one question in the interview , I totally flopped my entire performance!”

“ I binged on an entire pizza this weekend my full month of diet is ruined!”

“ I missed my gym workout for the second time this week….I am such a loser!”

Does this self talk sound familiar??

Do you see a problem in the way we are thinking in the above circumstances?

The answer is yes, very much!

We have all been there , engaging in fallacious , irrational ways of thinking which eventually affect our feelings and behaviours greatly.

The kind of thinking which involves thinking in Black & Whites, Extremes is called ALL or NOTHING thinking.

To explain it in the most simple way-

You are either,

All good or all bad,

All successful or a complete loser,

If you haven’t done it all then you haven’t done anything at all !!

This kind of thinking can be very damaging to our self esteem and lower our motivations towards future actions .

Now, lets restructure the above faulty assumptions,

“ I couldn’t answer that one question in the interview , but I sure did answer the rest of the questions pretty well, i think I did good !”

“ I did binge on an entire pizza this weekend but I also kept up with an entire month of good dedication to my diet, it wasn’t easy but I still did it !!”

“ Missing the gym the second time does not impact my success a great deal, I have been punctual majority of the times, and come on life happens, its not always possible to stick to the plan. Majority is what counts”

Now does that sound and feel better??

Remember, anything short of 100 % is NOT 0% .

So, don’t be stuck on the crossroad of ALL or NOTHING.

Remember, its not all Black or White.

Life has a lot of shades of grey …..let’s begin to appreciate them too !!