I feel like sometimes, well all the time, I get stuck in this mentality which I have heard called the "all or nothing" mentality. I feel like I have to do something perfectly, such as a diet, and as soon as I mess up there's no point anymore. I know I have struggled a lot with this in my life and has probably led to the demise of several diets or get healthier schemes.
However, it has also had impacts on my spiritual life and my school life. I can see it in my grades when I get stressed out about not getting 100%, or when I plan to read my scriptures every day and miss once. I know this is something I seriously need to change because honestly all or nothing really cannot be that healthy.
In a BYU devotional, I found recently given in 2009 by Jeffry H. Larson he discusses this topic pretty directly. In this devotional entitled, "What Do You Expect?: A Key to Personal Happiness." (click here to read it) I finally figured out that I am not crazy and this is a real thing. He states:
"If something is not done just right, perfectly, we consider ourselves failures. It is directly related to all-or-nothing thinking: Either I am a success or a failure. Either I'm perfect or imperfect. And I cannot stand not to be perfect! Average is not for me!"I see myself a lot in that. I have a 92% right now in one of my classes because I misunderstood an assignment and got an 80% on it. I'm stressed about it, a lot.
I tried this really elaborate way to read scriptures every day, lots of highlighting. I missed a day and now although I read on a daily basis I don't feel satisfied because I gave up on this elaborate way.
I don't deal with failure very well. It's hard. My definition of failure may be very different from yours, however, to me it is still failure. Eating sugar on a no sugar diet to me is failure, skipping a day of scripture study is failure, forgetting to pray is failure. See a pattern?
I'm trying to learn every day, and change and just be better. However, I think I struggle with the fact that getting better and improving is a process. It's not something you can just do overnight and wake up with that habit removed or added to your life. Jeffry Larson continues on by saying:
". . . Process is more important than outcome. . . . 'Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.'"I think a lot of this probably stems from my anxiety which I know a lot of stems from my perfectionist tendencies. Sorry to use this reference, but I really need to learn how to let go. To just let life happen and enjoy it instead of working five hours on an assignment to get 100% instead of going out and living. This is hard to type but Homework isn't everything. I'm going to have to write that somewhere because for basically my entire life Homework has been everything. Getting good grades, trying to do something perfectly right the first time has been a large portion of my life.
Honestly. I'm tired. However, I think what it all comes down to is this quote (once again from Larson's devotional, emphasis added).
"In reality, the secret to happiness is to set modest, realistic goals and then acomplish them. Climbing mountains is important, but each of us has our own mountain to climb. And we decide what a successful climb is."There is really one way to climb a mountain, you climb to get to the top. Some people climb slowly, other's quickly, and others have to stop every five minutes and take a twenty-minute break. However, the point is that you climbed the mountain. It did not matter how you got there, all that matters is you got to the top.
This is something I have really tried to add to my life because people graduate from college every year. Some with bad grades and some with good grades, but what matters is that they graduated. Some meet their weight loss goals quickly and others slowly, however, what matters is that they met their goal.
Writing this has certainly helped me realize a lot of things that I need to change about myself and my toxix perfectionist mentality. Do you have any thoughts about this? Feel free to comment down below.
