Overcoming Challenges
All-or-Nothing Thinking
When anything less than perfect feels like failure
It's either perfect or worthless. Success or failure. Amazing or terrible. There's no middle ground in your mind—and the middle is where most of life actually happens.
The Binary Trap
All-or-nothing thinking is perfectionism's favorite tool. If only perfection counts as success, then anything less is failure—even if it's actually quite good.
- Small mistakes feel catastrophic
- Partial progress doesn't feel like progress
- You abandon projects that aren't going perfectly
- "Good enough" feels like settling
"Progress over perfection. Something over nothing. Grey over black and white."
Finding the Middle
Life exists in gradients. Success comes in degrees. A B+ effort completed beats an A+ effort abandoned.
Practice: Notice when you're thinking in extremes. Ask: "What's the 70% version of this?"