Tell me if these scenarios sound familiar. You’ve planned for a morning run but you hit snooze one too many times. When you realize you no longer have time for your full 3 mile run, you stay in bed and put it off again. Another day passes without exercise and you feel like giving up altogether.

You ambitiously bought a fridge full of fresh veggies and ingredients for beautiful healthy meals, but the week gets away from you and takeout happened one too many times. You are filled with guilt as you throw out the now slimy vegetables you never made time to prepare. You think to yourself, “why do I even bother?”

How about this one? You’ve been eating so well all day. You’ve finished your dinner, settle down in front of the TV and before you know it, the cookies in your pantry are calling your name. After having one or two, you feel defeated having blown all your good efforts that day and end up finishing off the whole box. 

What do these situations have in common? To me, they all share the same story of good intentions getting derailed. This is the all or nothing mindset showing up, where anything less than the perfect “Plan A” won’t do. All or nothing with exercise. All or nothing nutrition. All or nothing meal planning. The list goes on. While our lives feel so far from perfect in these moments, it is actually perfectionism that lands us here. Our overwhelming expectations of being perfect prevent us from making progress or accepting an imperfect Plan B.

This black or white, do or don’t mindset that if we can’t do the full one-hour workout or if we “cheat” on our diets even a little, then we’ve blown it isn’t serving us. Missing one workout or eating a couple cookies isn’t what keeps us from our goals. These small missteps are what real life looks like and make us human. The problem lies in being unable to move forward from them. So how do we break free from the all or nothing mindset? Remember that doing something is always better than doing nothing. 

One small step towards your goal is better than none. Baby steps are still steps, no matter how imperfect they are. Sticking with small, sustainable changes provides a greater chance of succeeding than huge steps that can only be done when all the circumstances are perfect. We may struggle, but we are not failures. Our lives are difficult, but also beautiful and worth showing up for. 

What might happen in the space between all or nothing? Between perfection and giving up? What would it look like if we embraced the gray area and found our way somewhere in the middle? Change your mindset and give yourself permission to be less than perfect. Maybe you weren’t able to make a full home cooked meal, but the salad you made to eat alongside your pizza delivery is a big win! You may have missed the fitness class you had planned, but taking that 30 minute walk when you got home felt great! If you don’t have a full 30 minutes to walk, you go for 15. Ten minutes in the morning plus 15 minutes in the evening is far better than nothing. I call these “exercise snacks” and fit them in even on my most hectic days. Celebrate the small successes, the resourceful ways you did something good, even if it wasn’t what you had originally planned. 

Now, I want to come clean and share something with you. I continue to struggle with the all or nothing mindset in a different area of my life. Since I was a girl, I’ve always loved art. To paint, to draw, to create; I love all of it. I remember even feeling a sense of pride in some of my work over the years, until I looked over at the easel next to mine and thought that theirs was so much better. “Comparison is the thief of joy” as Theodore Roosevelt so aptly said. Every once in a while, I’ll take an art class or painting workshop and make some steps forward, but for the most part my fear and perfectionism has kept me stuck and prevented me from becoming the kind of artist I someday hope to be. 

All this is to say, I know it’s hard to give yourself permission to be less than perfect, and I feel your struggles. If I were to follow my own advice, I would keep my paints set up in the spare bedroom and put brush to canvas at least once a week. I would draw for ten minutes a day. I could even call those 10-minute sketch sessions “art snacks” and over time, I would begin to see progress.

Let’s not allow perfection to be the enemy of good. Let’s make a commitment to each other to start taking those small, imperfect steps to move us forward. When the all or nothing mindset begins to show up, let’s remember that doing something is always better than doing nothing.

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