My reflections this month have coalesced on work I’ve been doing with my personal coach. Part of our focus has been how my all-or-nothing mentality hinders progress. In some areas of my life, my binary definition of success and failure does not allow for a middle ground - every endeavor is either a flawless victory or a complete disaster. This elevates the stakes for even minor tasks and intensifies feelings of uncertainty. 

This heightened uncertainty is a heavy psychological burden, leading to hesitation before starting. It is easy to trace how this cascade of thought and emotion quickly devolves into a self-fulfilling negative feedback loop.

1. High-Stakes Thinking (All-or-Nothing Mentality)

2. Heightened Uncertainty (Increased Anxiety)

3. Hesitation and Stalling (Burden of Inaction)

4. Actual Failure to Start or Complete (The "Failure" defined by the loop)

5. Reinforcement (The loop confirms the need for perfection, restarting the cycle).

To break free from this exhausting cycle, I’m working on redefining success and failure, which allows me to take imperfect action. This is one way of practicing selective excellence. This transformative practice is simple but revolutionary: instead of pouring all my limited time, energy, and mental resources into every single activity, I am pausing to critically assess where my "best effort" is genuinely required and where "good enough" is not only acceptable, but strategic to keep things moving.

Executive functioning is an umbrella term for the cognitive processes happening in our prefrontal cortex which allow us to plan, focus, emotionally regulate, and organize. Ultimately, executive functioning modulates how we solve problems and achieve goals. Optimizing executive functioning should be a no-brainer (pun intended!). 

And yet - most of us routinely neglect to fully support these critical functions. This month, I have written three in-depth articles exploring the different arenas where we often keep our executive functioning on an unnecessarily difficult course - “Hard Mode”. My all-or-nothing mentality is an example of a mindset block of executive function. Our physical environment and physiologic state can also impede executive functioning. We force ourselves into playing life on “Hard Mode” when there are many ways to change our setting to normal (or even easy!) mode. 

“Hard Mode” is a choice. We often stay on a difficult course because it feels familiar. My articles this month explain the impact and give some strategies for exiting these high-friction settings. This month’s tool is a quiz, which allows you to see which of the three is creating the most trouble in your life right now, so you can hone your focus for some quick wins.

Link: Are You Playing Life on "Hard Mode"?