When You Set Out To Achieve A Goal, Are You The ‘All-Or-Nothing’ Type?

There’s a better way.

“It is better to make many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”

Proverb, via MoveMe Quotes

When it comes to following through with new goals or resolutions, don’t be an all-or-nothing; be an all-or-something.

When you follow an all-or-nothing strategy you’re either all-the-way-in or all-the-way-out.

Either everything you planned is unfolding perfectly and is being executed flawlessly, or it’s not and you place blame, come up with excuses, and quit.

The all-or-something strategy has a less extreme alternative to being all-the-way-in and allows you to at least be some-of-the-way-in.

Either everything you planned is unfolding surprisingly well or something came up/ held you up/ threw you off/ slowed you down — and you did something that contributed to forward progress anyway.

An all-or-nothing mindset is a commitment to perfection. An all-or-something mindset is a commitment to imperfect progress.

The benefit, of course, with choosing imperfect progress is that it fits our imperfect nature and our imperfect world.

It would be great if our plans always unfolded exactly how we hoped they would. Life, however, rarely complies.

As it turns out, life tends to have other plans for our plans.

Or, maybe better put, life is going to continue rambunctiously happening how it does, in spite of our puny plans, and we have to decide what we’re going to do about it.

Because one thing is for sure, we can’t control the rambunctiousness of life. What we can control, however, is the flexibility of our approach and our response to any given moment of rambunctiousness.

Like water trying to reach its way from the top of the mountain to the bottom, we have to be ready to change our approach when we flow into obstacles. We have to bend with the river banks; meander around rocks; and adjust our speed to the nature of given situations.

But, we mustn’t stop.

We need to keep our mind’s eye focused on our goal(s) and continue flowing down the mountain—however we may—in spite of the chaos and challenge of what presents itself on our way.

For once water stops flowing, it becomes increasingly hard to get it started again. This is why we must do everything in our power to stay within the banks of the river—stopping would mean death to all of our momentum.

And this is where the real power in the all-or-something mindset lies: it keeps our momentum alive.

Even if we crash into a boulder—we need to steadily work our way around.

Even if we get disrupted by prancing feet—we need to continue to creep along the bottom of the river bed.

Even if we slam into the river’s wall—we can’t stop or blame or excuse or quit.

We need to continue forward on our path and ready ourselves again for what’s next.

This is how your journey forward towards accomplishing a goal or resolution is always going to look: Messy; chaotic; non-linear—imperfect.

Which is also exactly how your progress in accomplishing those goals and resolutions is going to look: messy; chaotic; non-liner—imperfect.

So, rather than committing to a picture-perfect plan and pressuring yourself to follow each aspect flawlessly—resolve simply to stay within the walls of the plan and to keep flowing forward.

Be the type of person who always shows up and never gives up because they always change it up when something comes up.

Learn to find ways to take at least one step forward on days when most others would quit.

Resolve to cover a massive amount of ground, not with massive leaps, but by accumulating a massive number of small steps.

Make the decision to align your strategy with your nature and commit to going ALL-IN on your goals in an all-or-something kind of way.