Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey English learners.
This is Connor and you're listening to episode 229 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're ready to practice your English listening comprehension with another episode.
And in today's episode, I want to talk about the dangers of having an all-or-nothing mentality.
What am I talking about here?
An all-or-nothing mentality is the mentality, the way of thinking in which you say I'm gonna do it if I can do all of it or, if not, I'm not gonna do any of it.
I'll explain a little bit more later on.
But I got this idea from my coach.
I'm going through a specific injury rehab program with a coach.
And he talks a lot about this about not having an all or nothing mentality and why we don't want to think like that and how that can work, stop us from making progress with our physical rehab or, of course, in other areas of our life.
So I'm gonna talk about that in today's episode and, before we start, remember to check out my advanced podcast episodes if you haven't done so already, and Many of you need to progress and move on to content where the person speaks at normal speed.
In those episodes, I speak fast.
So check those out.
That link is down below.
And check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast to listen to my conversations that I have on with other English teachers from all around the US.
It's great practice for your listening because you hear two people talking and not just one.
And I provide the transcript for you with the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.
And this is a great way to choose your first online English teacher.
I know many of you need to start speaking English.
You need to practice, but you're nervous.
You don't know who to talk to.
Well, you can listen to my U.S.
Conversations podcast at, and get to know all these different teachers and see who you like, who you can understand well, and you can take a class with them online.
So, check that out.
That link is down below.
Alright, let's talk about having an all-or-nothing mentality and how this can sometimes hurt you.
So first, let me just talk about the rehab example that I gave in the introduction.
I'm going through rehab for a specific injury and it's difficult to always have good sessions.
Rehab sessions.
It's hard to always feel like I'm making progress.
Always do all of the exercises perfectly, with no pain.
This simply doesn't happen all the time.
However, just because I can't always do everything in the right way, with the right amount of weight and always feel like I'm making progress, just because I can't always do that doesn't mean that I should just stop the program, right?
If I stop the program, then I'm definitely not gonna make progress.
I'm definitely gonna fail.
And for this type of program.
Many people have the issue of not being able to do the exercises as frequently as they might want to.
And maybe they miss a day.
And because they miss a day, they just decide to quit because they can't keep up with the rhythm of the program.
And my coach talks a lot about this how, if you're feeling like it's too much for you, the workouts are too frequent it's no problem to just scale back, meaning do less.
It's no problem to just say, instead of six days a week, I can only do four days a week, because some is better than nothing.
Right.
If you think about it, it's really obvious.
But mentally, it can be hard for people to accept this.
They have this all or nothing mentality in which they think that if they can't do the whole thing all of it, they might as well just do nothing.
And that's not good.
It's much better to do some than to do nothing.
So in the case of rehab workouts, it's best to just reduce the frequency instead of deciding to quit because you can't maintain the rhythm.
So this type of mentality, the all or nothing mentality, is super common in fitness in general and in nutrition and other areas that are related or unrelated.
I think of nutrition and how common this is, because when we try to follow a certain diet, a certain way of eating, when we want to change our nutrition habits and we want to eat better, we create these rules for ourselves, right.
We decide what is okay to eat, what is not okay to eat, how much of each thing we can eat when we can eat.
Maybe we count our calories, we keep track of our nutrients, our protein, our carbs, our fat.
We might limit our sugar intake.
Intake just refers to Taking something in, consuming it.
So we create all of these rules for ourselves, but it's of course very easy to break these rules accidentally or on purpose.
I'm sure many of you have had this experience where you have created a plan for yourself, your nutrition.
You set certain rules and you stick to them forever, couple days, and then maybe the following week you break the rules because you went to some gathering or party where there was a lot of unhealthy food and you couldn't resist and you wanted to Have a good time and enjoy yourself.
And you ate poorly that day.
When you eat poorly or do something poorly, it just means that you don't do that thing well.
So maybe you eat poorly that day.
And then because you broke the rules, you feel like you've failed.
And so you just quit.
You just stop following your nutrition plan.
This is super common.
I've done this before multiple times, I think.
Other people I know have had issues with this.
It's so common to have an all or nothing mentality when it comes to eating well.
If we can't eat perfectly, we just decide that it's too hard and We give in to our cravings, meaning we surrender to them.
We allow them to control us.
We give in to our cravings, our desires, and just start eating whatever.
And we fail in that case.
That is not a good way to approach nutrition, right?
If you can't follow the rules 100% of the time, you have a couple options.
Number one, you can simply lower the standard, change the standard.
So, instead of being super ambitious with all of your nutrition goals, you can realize that it's not so easy to maintain this, and so you lower the standard a little bit.
That doesn't mean that you can't strive to do even better than your standard.
When you strive to do something, that means that you commit yourself to doing it.
You dedicate your focus and energy towards it.
You can still strive to do better, but you allow yourself to have a lower minimum standard so that you can still feel like you're accomplishing your goals, even if they're less ambitious.
It doesn't matter.
You're still accomplishing your nutrition goals, so it's good to change the standard.
It's probably good to allow yourself some freedom and be forgiving and realize that you're not going to follow this rule, this program, your diet 100.
We're human.
We sometimes don't do the things we're supposed to do.
So it's good to allow for some deviation from the plan, meaning you can do something else and not follow the path 100.
Okay, if you allow for some freedom This will help you not feel like you're failing, so you just quit, right?
I've had to really work on this myself in terms of nutrition.
I need to not just completely abandon my goals just because I have one bad day.
I need to allow myself the freedom to have a bad day once in a while and just continue the plan the next day.
So many people think that if they can't do it all whether that be in the area of nutrition, exercise or whatever if they fail one day or can't keep up or whatever, then they just quit and abandon their project, their plan.
And this is bad.
This is what we want to avoid.
This all or nothing mentality when it comes to many things.
So one issue... that is linked to this mentality is that it creates a lot of anxiety.
It makes you feel uneasy uncomfortable, because you think that if you don't do things perfectly, that means that you fail.
That means that you have completely lost or you're incapable of doing that thing.
You have this idea that it needs to be perfect or else.
And that creates anxiety, when you always feel like you need to do things perfectly or else it's your only option.
This doesn't allow you to relax and take things easy, and you constantly have this pressure of needing to Do things perfectly or else you're a failure.
And this is related to perfectionism, of course.
And I think I've talked about this in the past.
When you are a perfectionist, you have this mindset that if it's not 100%, It's terrible, right?
And that's a very extreme mentality.
It's simply not reality.
Just because something is not 100% perfect doesn't mean it's terrible.
Something can be really good or good or ugly okay without being terrible okay.
So of course, it's not a problem to aim for perfection in many areas.
It's great to be ambitious and try your best, But if that is your standard and if you don't achieve that, you fail.
Well, you're going to have a tough time doing many things because, let me break it to you, you're not perfect.
When we say let me break it to you or I have to break it to him, we're saying that we have to give you some bad news.
So I hate to break it to you, but you're not perfect.
And so, if this is your standard and you feel like you're a failure if you can't do things perfectly, you're going to feel like a failure all the time because you're not perfect.
You're not going to be able to do everything 100%, 100% perfectly.
This is an unrealistic expectation and you're setting yourself up for being unhappy, feeling bad about yourself and being overly critical of yourself.
This can really affect your self-esteem.
It can make you feel like you're not good, you're not able to do things.
So that's not what we want, right?
I think it's important for you to examine yourself and see If you have this all or nothing mindset.
You can ask yourself the question if something is not perfect, 100 do you feel like if you can't do something perfectly, you might as well not do it.
If that's something you feel, then you have this mindset.
And if you have this all or nothing mindset, you're probably hurting yourself.
You're hurting your progress in different areas.
You're holding yourself back and you're probably making yourself anxious. unhappy, unconfident, etc.
And as always, I want to relate this topic to language learning.
For many people, when they're learning English or another language, They have this all or nothing mentality, especially when it comes to dedicating time to studying.
A lot of people think, I can't study for a long time every day.
I can't do an hour and a half of study.
So I just don't have the time.
Why bother studying?
They say I don't have the time to study because in their mind they're thinking that they need two hours or an hour and a half.
And if they don't have this, then that means they don't have time to learn English or whatever language.
And that's not true because if you have 30 minutes, that is time to learn English, right?
If you have 20 minutes, 20 minutes is time.
So it's not true to say that you don't have time to learn English just because you don't have two hours a day.
A little every day, a little study every day is beneficial and it's much better than doing nothing.
It's much better than saying, I don't have time so I can't study English or whatever language.
If you study a little bit, even 20 minutes or whatever, Studying for 20 minutes a day can actually help you improve, whereas doing nothing will actually make you worse.
Because if you don't use a language and you spend time no time with that language, it gets rusty.
It doesn't just stay the same.
So think of that difference.
If all you have is 20 minutes, then you can still make a little bit of progress or at the very least maintain your level perhaps, versus if you spend no time learning that language, it will get worse.
That's a big difference, right?
A little bit of progress or maintaining the language is very different from actually getting worse in that language.
And that's probably not how...
People think about it when they have an all or nothing mentality, but that is the case.
So if you feel like you don't have a lot of time to learn English well, you probably have a little time and it's better to do some practice rather than nothing.
So I think you get the theme of this episode.
I hope that this was helpful for you, interesting for you and I know it was good practice for your listening.
And I want to challenge many of you to use my advanced episodes.
If you feel like these normal episodes have gotten pretty easy for you, it's time to challenge yourself.
Move on and use those advanced episodes so you can start practicing understanding real english spoken fast.
So the link to sign up is down below and check out my us conversations podcast.
If you want to start speaking and you need a teacher, use that resource.
Listen to those episodes, get to know the different teachers and take a class with one of them.
I know many listeners have already done that and they've classes with these different teachers and have benefited from them, so you can do that as well and, of course, you can practice understanding more than one person when they're talking.
This podcast is great for that.
So the link for my U.S.
Conversations podcast is also down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
