‘Monday Motivation’ I’m sure you’ve heard/read/seen it somewhere, probably in your email in-box.
A lot of us folks that like to help others archive their goals in whatever arena in life like to throw out a shot of motivation on a Monday. I appreciate it and I’m sure you do to.
But what I realized is that most people are pretty motivated and fired up to tackle their dreams on a Monday. It’s MONDAY! The perfect day to begin all new endeavors. All those Monday motivations are basically preaching to the quire.
It’s come Wednesday or Thursday that things can begin to go south and your old habits and patterns want to creep back in. So I want to give you some mid-week motivation.
We all love quotes and expressions and one of my favorites is this:
“All Or Nothing Get’s You Nothing”
Here are some examples of “All or Nothing” thinking:
You eat good all day, drink lots of water and then 3:30pm rolls around and someone yells Starbucks run or a vendor brings in a box of goodies and we give in. Then we say “Man, I blew it. I shouldn’t have had that. I was doing so good too…….well since I already ruined my day, I’ll go ahead and have another (insert item). And I was kind of thinking of having pizza tonight. Might as well since I blew the day already.”
Since your entire day wasn’t perfect, you just toss the whole thing. You may do that with a single day and some do it with an entire week. Those are “All or Nothing” decisions.
The same goes for exercise; if you can’t get a workout in until Wednesday or Thursday you think; “why bother, I already missed most of the week. I’ll just start next week.” All or Nothing.
Or if your energy is not at its peak, instead of going ahead and doing a workout on a level 6 out of 10, you may skip your workout altogether if you can’t perform at an 8 or 9. Again- All or Nothing.
Do you know what all those decisions get you? Nothing.
Instead of making tiny improvements, taking small steps forward and steadily progressing, you get nothing. Your diet doesn’t get any healthier; you don’t lose any weight at all, no inches. You don’t get stronger, you don’t develop better stamina. Your clothes don’t fit any better. You don’t start to develop better habits that you can later strengthen and reinforce. Because you couldn’t do “all” of your plan to the T, you did nothing and that’s what you get: Nothing.
Success comes from tiny steps of action, not one big leap. You will achieve more by stringing a bunch of slightly imperfect days together vs scratching them and waiting to have nothing but perfect days.
We can all manage a short string of perfect days but no one can have only perfect days for their entire life. You need to embrace the concept of moving forward step by step. It’s a process.
All or Nothing Gets You Nothing.