Why “All-or-Nothing” Mindset is killing your consistency
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Subtitle: The “All-or-Nothing” myth
Series: Busting myths
Recently, I saw a facebook post in a workout group. The person had been to the gym for a couple of hours but somehow she couldn’t complete any of her sets. She complained about how bad her form was and her lack of energy and enthusiasm. According to her, she felt like a complete failure because all the exercises she managed to do didn’t count, since the sets were incomplete. Have you experienced this before?
This right here is called the “All-or-Nothing” mentality. And it is one of the primary reasons for inconsistency.
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Most people hold the view that consistency means maintaining full performance regardless of conditions. Missing a day of workout, reducing intensity, having a cheat day, scaling down, etc. is treated as failure or loss of discipline. Does missing a day of workout really cancel out your entire progress? Here is the thing. Consistency is not about maintaining constant maximal output. You are consistent only when you are able to preserve execution despite fluctuating capacity. And that is what we tend to ignore. You can only achieve to the extent of your capacity, yet our capacity changes daily. You might have the energy to run 5miles in 10minutes on day 1 but it would take 2hours for the same distance on the second day or you may not have enough energy to complete it. Why does this happen? Capacity is the amount of usable bandwidth you have at any given moment to plan, initiate, and sustain behavior, while managing everything else happening internally and externally. It includes cognitive load, emotional load, physical energy, time availability, and environmental demands. So why would you have a fixed output for something that isn't stagnant?
This is the main problem with the All-or-Nothing mindset. It assumes that capacity is constant, hence, demand must always be equal to capacity. This may be true for most days because we tend to design our plans based on our regular state. However, on some days, demand will exceed capacity, like what the lady on facebook experienced. You will struggle to go to the gym or even have a hard time completing an easy workout. But that isn’t failure, it is your body giving you a signal about its current status.
You may ask "What if I push through regardless of how I feel?” While I am not excusing personal responsibility, most often than not, pushing through puts you in a capacity deficit. Your body will force you to settle this deficit through burnout, stress, injury or worse, mental breakdown. That is why we must learn to redefine success on our health journey. It is okay to adjust the intensity of your plan based on your CURRENT capacity, not the previous day. When you do this, you avoid the guilt, frustration and shame you feel for not meeting your desired target. The goal is to maintain momentum, not a fixed output. So if your energy allowed for a 5mile run yesterday and a 10minutes walk around the house today, you were still successful on both days because you gave it your all. To me, that is what consistency looks like. If you will remember anything from this article, let it be this; Doing less isn’t failure if it keeps the behavior alive.
Now, this leads to the question “How do you learn to adjust based on your capacity? We will address that in our next article.
“I can’t wait for the next release”
If you’ve ever felt like you’re the problem, this will help you see what’s actually happening. I ‘d love to send you the full breakdown of the Framework: Understanding the Knowledge to Action Gap