74. The Trap of All-or-Nothing Thinking
Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “If it’s not perfect, it’s a failure”? I get it. Moms do this all the time, especially when we’re building something new. The truth is, that black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking? It’s keeping you stuck.
All-or-nothing thinking is that sneaky voice that tells you something either worked or it didn't, that you're either succeeding or failing, with no space for anything in between. This filter feels like clarity, but it's actually shutting down your learning and keeping you frozen at the starting line.
Listen in this week to discover how the all-or-nothing mindset trap keeps so many mom entrepreneurs stuck before they even begin, and a simple 3-question framework to turn every experience into valuable data. If you've ever felt like "nothing is working," this episode will completely transform how you view progress in your business.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why our overloaded mom brains cling to success/failure labels and how this actually costs us.
How to use the 3-question evaluation process to retrain your brain.
The power of "both/and" thinking to release perfectionism and create space for problem-solving.
Why declaring anything a failure is premature.
How all-or-nothing thinking shows up before you even start your business and keeps you stuck at the starting line.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
You don't have to decide that something is or was good or bad. You can allow it to be both. This opens up again so much relief because suddenly you don't have to shame yourself for the things that didn't work, because everything has elements that worked and everything has elements that didn't work. And the real gold is taking the time to figure out which is which so you can do less of what didn't work and more of what worked well.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. I just got back from a trip to Italy, and I wish I could say that it was a relaxing, kidless trip, but my partner and I ended up with some virus while we were there, and half the trip we spent in bed recovering. I swear, this season of life is not for the faint of heart. And that virus had nothing to do with our kids because they were thousands of miles away. Wild, right?
But we're recovering and easing back into the work week. Maybe one day we'll go back to the Amalfi Coast and explore it the way we planned. I will say though, the views were amazing even if we weren't able to leave our bed for half the trip.
I'm really excited about today's topic. Today we are diving into a sneaky mindset trap that shows up for so many of us, especially when we're just starting out and building a business. It's the trap of all or nothing thinking. And there are a lot of different ways we think in these black and white terms. We might say things like, if I don't hit my goal, the whole thing is a failure. If I can't dedicate 20 hours a week to my business, then it's not worth starting. Even things like saying nothing is working. These are all-or-nothing phrases. It's all black and white thinking.
If any of those sound familiar, you've been engaging in all or nothing thinking. But don't worry, we are all doing it all the time. And it's really important to be aware and to pause and to recognize how it might be impacting us and our business.
So when we're thinking this way, we are unintentionally filtering the world into simple black and white categories: success or failure, good or bad, working or not working. It feels like clarity, but in reality, it creates pressure. It shuts down learning and really keeps us stuck. And I want to spend today focusing on one of the most common ways that all or nothing thinking shows up, and that's in the dichotomy of success versus failure thinking. Because when we define our business efforts only as one or the other, we rob ourselves of the rich middle ground, the part that holds the most growth, the most creativity, and the most like actual progress, so being able to recognize that progress.
Nothing is either pure success or pure failure. It's always both and everything in between. So let's unpack this together, and by the end of the episode, I promise you're going to walk away with a whole new way of looking at progress, one that frees you from this all-or-nothing thinking and the shame cycle of viewing things that didn't work out exactly as planned as failure, and or things that you may automatically think of as a failure, you're going to start looking at them differently by the end of this episode. This episode will give you permission and a very specific process to see what's actually working so you can keep building momentum.
Let's start with why our brains cling to this black and white thinking that something is either a success or a failure. As moms, our lives are overloaded. We're making hundreds of micro-decisions every single day, from what the kids are eating, to which emails we're going to respond to, to how we're going to squeeze in the next doctor's appointment between meetings. And when it comes to our businesses, our brains want simplicity. They want an easy way to label things. They want to label something as this worked or this didn't. This was a success or this was a failure. It feels cleaner.
But it's not the truth. The truth is that every project, launch, or effort you put in your business is going to be a mix. Some things are going to work, some things are not going to work, all in the same effort, okay, which I'll give a lot of examples in this episode of what that means. Some things will need to be adjusted and you will need to figure those things out. But when we collapse the complexity of any given effort into black and white, we lose the nuances. We tell ourselves I failed or it failed.
When we tell ourselves this isn't working or this didn't work, again, we stop, we retreat, we decide that it's a terrible business idea because we haven't created any revenue yet. But we need to stay away from labeling anything in those absolute terms. Instead of asking ourselves, was this a success or failure, we need to ask, what worked here, what didn't work here, and what do I want to try differently next time?
This is how you get better. This is how you grow into a confident entrepreneur. I remember when I signed up for my first mastermind with my coach, it was a group of us, and she always does a fun revenue challenge. My first revenue challenge, I fell way short of the goal. I was embarrassed. I felt so incompetent and unworthy. I wanted to just erase that challenge altogether from my brain. I wanted to pretend it didn't happen. I was embarrassed to talk about it. I never even told my partner about it. I wanted to avoid it at all costs. I didn't want to evaluate it and think about all of the little successes within it.
Then later on in the mastermind, we did another revenue challenge, and my immediate feeling was dread. I didn't want to go through the process and fall short of my goal again. I was not excited about it. Again, like I said, I was dreading it. So I met with a peer in the program who had gone through the mastermind a number of times and had done a lot of revenue challenges. And when I told her I wish I could just erase the first one because it was a complete failure, she really challenged me.
She helped me to recognize all the ways that going through it the first time was a success. All the mini moments that were successes. The fact that it was a success that it better prepared me for the second round. I was wiser because I now knew what to expect. She talked me through how now that I've already experienced the highs and lows, I can go into it with more realistic expectations of what the effort will require.
At that point, then I already knew a little more about what worked and what didn't work. So I could decide what to do differently. And she was so right about all of these things. These are all things that I didn't allow myself to even look at because I was so embarrassed about my performance that I just wanted to pretend it didn't happen. And thankfully, she was there to support me in being able to really look at it and evaluate. Yes, maybe I didn't hit my goals. Maybe it feels like a failure. But there were also plenty of little successes along the way.
The process of the challenge led to some really important changes in how I provide value to my clients and audiences. There was so much value, so many mini successes, so many people that had new and improved impact that wouldn't have been accomplished if I hadn't gone through the process of the challenge. It would have been hard for me to see that without this peer coach's help and without her challenging me and helping me to find all the successes. I am sure I could fill an entire page for all of the many successes and failures within that one challenge. And that's where so much learning and growth can come from. It's what makes each subsequent action more successful because we aren't settling to declare that something is a failure or a success. We're finding all the ways it's both.
There is certainly a hidden cost of all or nothing thinking, and this is why I feel so passionate about it. What I see with my clients all the time, and with myself, of course, is that we launch a program, we set a goal, and if we don't hit that expected number, we call the whole thing a failure. We write it off as a failure. But I want to take a moment to think about what that actually costs.
Let's say you wanted 20 people to sign up for a webinar and you got 5. If you label it as a failure, you will feel a certain way about that failure. You'll feel a certain way about your capability, right? You might feel embarrassed, you might shut down, and probably avoid even looking at the details, kind of like I did with the revenue challenge with my coach. You want to move on as quickly as possible and not relive any of the details because you're too upset.
You miss the fact that 5 real people showed up. They trusted you enough to attend or buy or whatever the event was. That is proof of concept. That's the beginning of something. When you practice all or nothing thinking, you discount the actual progress you've made because you've decided that something is a failure and you move on before giving it its proper look.
You might dismiss the evidence of 5 people wanting to hear what you have to say. You might dismiss the evidence that those people want what you're creating. If you're too wrapped up in the arbitrary goal that you've set for yourself, you may miss that really important piece of success. And maybe most damaging of all, you stop yourself from continuing. You stop yourself from feeling energized, and you stop yourself from having momentum. Because if it's all or nothing and you failed, what's the point of trying again? If it's all or nothing and nothing's working, you've hit a dead end.
But if you're willing to look at the middle ground, you can see in that example, you did attract a few people. Maybe not as many as you wanted, but you did attract people, real people. Your marketing did resonate with someone. You now have data about what parts connected and what parts didn't. Maybe you know from the sales page where people fell off or where you lost people. And that's not failure. That is truly little mini successes within an effort. And that's really the foundation.
One of my clients was recently hosting her first webinar in an effort to grow her audience and share her knowledge and all that good stuff. And during and after the webinar, she talked about it like it was a failure because only 6 people registered and 2 people showed up. And she really wanted more people to be there. I think she really expected more people to be there. But there were so many mini successes within that event. Successes in the way she talked about what she does. The way she connected with people. She learned what went into the process of putting on the event. She figured out how to post it on different websites and different avenues to promote it. Within that, she understood so many things about promoting it, right? What worked and what didn't work within those different channels. There were tons of things on her list of things she would do differently next time, but without that first go, she'd never have a list of improvements.
And without being able to look at the event as both a success and a failure, she wouldn't be able to explore the things that she would want to do again, right? The things that worked, the promotion channels that worked, and maybe the things that she can leave behind next time, maybe the websites or the places that were kind of wasted energy.
The really cool thing about that event, too, is that someone who registered but wasn't able to make it actually ended up becoming a client a few months later. That's the other thing about success and failure, right? Sometimes it's unclear in the moment how an effort is going to benefit us. Sometimes we don't know for days, weeks, or even years, the true value that our actions have for us and our business.
So declaring anything a failure is premature because there's still time for it to reveal itself as a success down the line. I also want to offer that there's relief in there being a both/and way of looking at it. Okay, so another way to escape this all-or-nothing thinking trap is to embrace the idea of both/and, which basically means that your launch or your effort can feel disappointing and still be a win. You can miss your revenue goal and have had a successful year. You can want more clients and be proud of the ones you have right now.
When you practice this and leave space for both/and, you really release yourself from the trap of perfectionism. Okay, you don't have to decide that something is or was good or bad. You can allow it to be both. This opens up again so much relief because suddenly you don't have to shame yourself for the things that didn't work, because everything has elements that worked and everything has elements that didn't work. And the real gold is taking the time to figure out which is which so you can do less of what didn't work and more of what worked well.
When you take away the shame that comes with something not feeling successful, you create space for creativity and for problem-solving and for figuring out how to create an awesome, sustainable business that you love.
Another place where all-or-nothing thinking shows up and really presents itself as a huge obstacle is before you've even started your business. So many moms I talked to hesitate at the starting line because they think to themselves, what if this is a total failure? What if I leave my job and it doesn't work? What if I invest all this time and energy and then realize I wasn't cut out for it?
And also on the flip side, some of us swing to the other extreme. I know it's not as common, but I have had situations and experiences when people think that they are going to start the business and everything will be perfect. They imagine immediate freedom and clients and flexibility and money, and they don't think about kind of the reality of starting a business and some of the obstacles and difficulties. And it's all the same all-or-nothing trap, right? Believing it will either be a success or a failure. It's not going to be one or the other. Your business will be a mix of both every single step of the way. You'll have clients who love you and a consult that doesn't close. You'll have posts that flop and you'll have an email that hits perfectly. You'll have days where you feel unstoppable and days where you wonder if you've made a mistake.
It's never one or the other. It's always both and all the things. And when you open yourself up to that reality that the business will be messy and mixed and full of highs and lows, you give yourself permission to start. Okay, because you're no longer waiting for certainty that it will work. You're choosing to be in the game knowing that working and not working are going to coexist along the way.
Uncertainty is such a huge obstacle, and I did a whole episode on that topic. So check out Episode 67, how to start your business without certainty, if that topic really resonates with you and you feel like you can't even get out of the starting line because you're so worried about whether or not it will work out.
Let's talk about shifting away from the all-or-nothing thinking and what you can do, like how you can put all of this into practice so that you can catch yourself and really move away from the trap. What I recommend always is a simple process that I've talked about before on this podcast, which is evaluating the nuances of every effort and action you're taking. After every effort, whether it's a sales call, a social media post, or a full launch, ask yourself 3 questions: What worked? And remember to celebrate what worked and don't skip it, because knowing what worked allows you to see things as a success even if the big picture feels like a failure. So that's number one. That's the first question. What worked? Second question, what didn't work? Ask yourself that without judgment. These are just facts. What didn't work? That helps us get so much closer to figuring out what does work. And what will I do differently next time? That's it. That's the practice.
When you build this into your business rhythm, you retrain your brain to look at results as information and data instead of evidence of failure. You give yourself permission to learn. You will find that in any given effort, there's a wealth of things that worked. There's lots of things that didn't work, and there's always room for doing things differently the next time to get better and better every single action.
So I want you to also be on the lookout for all-or-nothing thinking. When you are in the extremes or you are thinking black and white or if you are giving something a label without digging a little deeper and exploring the nuances, just catch yourself with that. Now you know that it exists, you know to look for it. I want you to really take your time to notice this type of thinking.
We just talked about one sort of flavor of all-or-nothing thinking, but there are so many. Today we talked about the all-or-nothing thinking around labeling something as a success or a failure and how that can hold us back in our business. But perfectionism is also a form of all or nothing, right? It has to be perfect before I launch my website or I have to have a perfect plan before I take action. I have to have all of my services figured out before I tell people about the business. Those are all sneaky forms of perfectionism that creep into all-or-nothing thinking. But there's also a whole bunch of other ways that we do this, and so definitely take time to notice where your brain is thinking in black and white terms or all-or-nothing terms.
We looked at why our brains actually cling to the success and failure labels. So don't judge yourself. It is your brain being your brain. Nothing has gone wrong. We just have to learn to work with our brain, not against it. We also talked about the hidden cost of dismissing an effort as a failure. When we say something's a failure, we want to avoid it and we don't want to dig in. We're embarrassed and we just want to go hide under a rock. And under rocks is not where we figure out how to make things work. So have the courage to look at something that feels like a failure. Take a closer look and really do not dismiss it and move on. Explore it and really figure out the nuances.
We also talked about the power of embracing both/and. And I think that's a wonderful thing to do not just in your business, but also in life. I think another term that rings a bell is like the silver lining. It's like something can be really unfortunate and terrible and it can also be something that you learn from or something that's happening for you.
I know just this past trip that I mentioned at the beginning, my husband and I were in bed, sick, in Italy for half the trip. And one of the things that was like a both/and aha moment was like, it was awful being sick in a beautiful, amazing place on our vacation without the kids. And it was actually really nice to be sick and not have to be a parent. Like, I would never wish that on anyone on their vacation in a time in a beautiful place that you can't explore. But there was this certain freedom and beauty of being in that position, that really unfortunate position, but also being so grateful that I didn't have to watch and take care of my kids when I felt terrible because, as we all know, normally we do have to be a parent 24/7 even when we feel like really terrible.
So embracing the both/and, finding the both/and, finding how something is 2 things at once and being comfortable with that. We also talked about that simple 3 question process that you can use to retrain your brain. Okay, what worked? What didn't? What will you do differently next time? 3 beautiful questions that you can apply to everything in life, not just business.
Here's the bottom line. There's no such thing as pure failure when you're taking action toward your dreams. Okay, there's only information, growth, and the possible next step with more data. So the next time your brain tells you that didn't work or that was an awful failure or that was embarrassing, I want you to pause and ask what worked, what didn't, what's next? Okay, you'll be amazed at how much lighter you feel just by exploring those nuances and how much faster you start moving forward. Figuring out what you will do differently next time gives you momentum and energy to then be excited to try it again and do something differently, to see what works within those hypotheses.
So keep building momentum, get out of your own way, stay away from all-or-nothing thinking, or at least notice when you're doing it, so that you can explore ways to really step into a momentous mindset and keep taking action.
Thank you for being here and for listening. Remember, this podcast is here to give you strategies and shifts that you can use to help you transition your career, maybe from a traditional role that is comfortable to you to creating a business that you love, one that inspires you, one that puts your special sauce in the world. And that's not always easy, but it's easier to do one step at a time. And that's what we do on this podcast. We make sure that you have ideas and actions and small ways that you can build this thing one step at a time.
So keep tuning in because every week, every Wednesday morning, we'll be breaking down mindset shifts and actions that will get you there. And if this episode hit home for you, check out some of my other episodes. There are tons on the topic of failure, on the topic of uncertainty, on the topic of success. It's woven into so many of the episodes. If you loved this episode, you're going to love so many more of them. And I would love for you to share it with anyone else, especially a mom in your life who has been maybe toying or joking about starting a business. I always say that jokes come from a truth, a hidden truth or a deep-seated truth. So if you have anyone in your life who has been talking about or joking about starting a business, send them this podcast. Let's spread this message that there is no failure, only feedback and growth.
And make sure you subscribe so that you are reminded every Wednesday that you have a little coach in your pocket. I know you can't see me, but I'm about 5'2". So I am a little coach, little and mighty. So every Wednesday, if you subscribe, you will get a reminder that you can keep going and that there are tips and tricks and actions that you can be taking, especially on the days and weeks where you just don't feel like it. We all need that accountability. We all need that little push sometimes. So subscribe and make sure that you take advantage of having a free resource in your pocket at all times.
All right, mom friends, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. I just got back from a trip to Italy, and I wish I could say that it was a relaxing, kidless trip, but my partner and I ended up with some virus while we were there, and half the trip we spent in bed recovering. I swear, this season of life is not for the faint of heart. And that virus had nothing to do with our kids because they were thousands of miles away. Wild, right?
But we're recovering and easing back into the work week. Maybe one day we'll go back to the Amalfi Coast and explore it the way we planned. I will say though, the views were amazing even if we weren't able to leave our bed for half the trip.
I'm really excited about today's topic. Today we are diving into a sneaky mindset trap that shows up for so many of us, especially when we're just starting out and building a business. It's the trap of all or nothing thinking. And there are a lot of different ways we think in these black and white terms. We might say things like, if I don't hit my goal, the whole thing is a failure. If I can't dedicate 20 hours a week to my business, then it's not worth starting. Even things like saying nothing is working. These are all-or-nothing phrases. It's all black and white thinking.
If any of those sound familiar, you've been engaging in all or nothing thinking. But don't worry, we are all doing it all the time. And it's really important to be aware and to pause and to recognize how it might be impacting us and our business.
So when we're thinking this way, we are unintentionally filtering the world into simple black and white categories: success or failure, good or bad, working or not working. It feels like clarity, but in reality, it creates pressure. It shuts down learning and really keeps us stuck. And I want to spend today focusing on one of the most common ways that all or nothing thinking shows up, and that's in the dichotomy of success versus failure thinking. Because when we define our business efforts only as one or the other, we rob ourselves of the rich middle ground, the part that holds the most growth, the most creativity, and the most like actual progress, so being able to recognize that progress.
Nothing is either pure success or pure failure. It's always both and everything in between. So let's unpack this together, and by the end of the episode, I promise you're going to walk away with a whole new way of looking at progress, one that frees you from this all-or-nothing thinking and the shame cycle of viewing things that didn't work out exactly as planned as failure, and or things that you may automatically think of as a failure, you're going to start looking at them differently by the end of this episode. This episode will give you permission and a very specific process to see what's actually working so you can keep building momentum.
Let's start with why our brains cling to this black and white thinking that something is either a success or a failure. As moms, our lives are overloaded. We're making hundreds of micro-decisions every single day, from what the kids are eating, to which emails we're going to respond to, to how we're going to squeeze in the next doctor's appointment between meetings. And when it comes to our businesses, our brains want simplicity. They want an easy way to label things. They want to label something as this worked or this didn't. This was a success or this was a failure. It feels cleaner.
But it's not the truth. The truth is that every project, launch, or effort you put in your business is going to be a mix. Some things are going to work, some things are not going to work, all in the same effort, okay, which I'll give a lot of examples in this episode of what that means. Some things will need to be adjusted and you will need to figure those things out. But when we collapse the complexity of any given effort into black and white, we lose the nuances. We tell ourselves I failed or it failed.
When we tell ourselves this isn't working or this didn't work, again, we stop, we retreat, we decide that it's a terrible business idea because we haven't created any revenue yet. But we need to stay away from labeling anything in those absolute terms. Instead of asking ourselves, was this a success or failure, we need to ask, what worked here, what didn't work here, and what do I want to try differently next time?
This is how you get better. This is how you grow into a confident entrepreneur. I remember when I signed up for my first mastermind with my coach, it was a group of us, and she always does a fun revenue challenge. My first revenue challenge, I fell way short of the goal. I was embarrassed. I felt so incompetent and unworthy. I wanted to just erase that challenge altogether from my brain. I wanted to pretend it didn't happen. I was embarrassed to talk about it. I never even told my partner about it. I wanted to avoid it at all costs. I didn't want to evaluate it and think about all of the little successes within it.
Then later on in the mastermind, we did another revenue challenge, and my immediate feeling was dread. I didn't want to go through the process and fall short of my goal again. I was not excited about it. Again, like I said, I was dreading it. So I met with a peer in the program who had gone through the mastermind a number of times and had done a lot of revenue challenges. And when I told her I wish I could just erase the first one because it was a complete failure, she really challenged me.
She helped me to recognize all the ways that going through it the first time was a success. All the mini moments that were successes. The fact that it was a success that it better prepared me for the second round. I was wiser because I now knew what to expect. She talked me through how now that I've already experienced the highs and lows, I can go into it with more realistic expectations of what the effort will require.
At that point, then I already knew a little more about what worked and what didn't work. So I could decide what to do differently. And she was so right about all of these things. These are all things that I didn't allow myself to even look at because I was so embarrassed about my performance that I just wanted to pretend it didn't happen. And thankfully, she was there to support me in being able to really look at it and evaluate. Yes, maybe I didn't hit my goals. Maybe it feels like a failure. But there were also plenty of little successes along the way.
The process of the challenge led to some really important changes in how I provide value to my clients and audiences. There was so much value, so many mini successes, so many people that had new and improved impact that wouldn't have been accomplished if I hadn't gone through the process of the challenge. It would have been hard for me to see that without this peer coach's help and without her challenging me and helping me to find all the successes. I am sure I could fill an entire page for all of the many successes and failures within that one challenge. And that's where so much learning and growth can come from. It's what makes each subsequent action more successful because we aren't settling to declare that something is a failure or a success. We're finding all the ways it's both.
There is certainly a hidden cost of all or nothing thinking, and this is why I feel so passionate about it. What I see with my clients all the time, and with myself, of course, is that we launch a program, we set a goal, and if we don't hit that expected number, we call the whole thing a failure. We write it off as a failure. But I want to take a moment to think about what that actually costs.
Let's say you wanted 20 people to sign up for a webinar and you got 5. If you label it as a failure, you will feel a certain way about that failure. You'll feel a certain way about your capability, right? You might feel embarrassed, you might shut down, and probably avoid even looking at the details, kind of like I did with the revenue challenge with my coach. You want to move on as quickly as possible and not relive any of the details because you're too upset.
You miss the fact that 5 real people showed up. They trusted you enough to attend or buy or whatever the event was. That is proof of concept. That's the beginning of something. When you practice all or nothing thinking, you discount the actual progress you've made because you've decided that something is a failure and you move on before giving it its proper look.
You might dismiss the evidence of 5 people wanting to hear what you have to say. You might dismiss the evidence that those people want what you're creating. If you're too wrapped up in the arbitrary goal that you've set for yourself, you may miss that really important piece of success. And maybe most damaging of all, you stop yourself from continuing. You stop yourself from feeling energized, and you stop yourself from having momentum. Because if it's all or nothing and you failed, what's the point of trying again? If it's all or nothing and nothing's working, you've hit a dead end.
But if you're willing to look at the middle ground, you can see in that example, you did attract a few people. Maybe not as many as you wanted, but you did attract people, real people. Your marketing did resonate with someone. You now have data about what parts connected and what parts didn't. Maybe you know from the sales page where people fell off or where you lost people. And that's not failure. That is truly little mini successes within an effort. And that's really the foundation.
One of my clients was recently hosting her first webinar in an effort to grow her audience and share her knowledge and all that good stuff. And during and after the webinar, she talked about it like it was a failure because only 6 people registered and 2 people showed up. And she really wanted more people to be there. I think she really expected more people to be there. But there were so many mini successes within that event. Successes in the way she talked about what she does. The way she connected with people. She learned what went into the process of putting on the event. She figured out how to post it on different websites and different avenues to promote it. Within that, she understood so many things about promoting it, right? What worked and what didn't work within those different channels. There were tons of things on her list of things she would do differently next time, but without that first go, she'd never have a list of improvements.
And without being able to look at the event as both a success and a failure, she wouldn't be able to explore the things that she would want to do again, right? The things that worked, the promotion channels that worked, and maybe the things that she can leave behind next time, maybe the websites or the places that were kind of wasted energy.
The really cool thing about that event, too, is that someone who registered but wasn't able to make it actually ended up becoming a client a few months later. That's the other thing about success and failure, right? Sometimes it's unclear in the moment how an effort is going to benefit us. Sometimes we don't know for days, weeks, or even years, the true value that our actions have for us and our business.
So declaring anything a failure is premature because there's still time for it to reveal itself as a success down the line. I also want to offer that there's relief in there being a both/and way of looking at it. Okay, so another way to escape this all-or-nothing thinking trap is to embrace the idea of both/and, which basically means that your launch or your effort can feel disappointing and still be a win. You can miss your revenue goal and have had a successful year. You can want more clients and be proud of the ones you have right now.
When you practice this and leave space for both/and, you really release yourself from the trap of perfectionism. Okay, you don't have to decide that something is or was good or bad. You can allow it to be both. This opens up again so much relief because suddenly you don't have to shame yourself for the things that didn't work, because everything has elements that worked and everything has elements that didn't work. And the real gold is taking the time to figure out which is which so you can do less of what didn't work and more of what worked well.
When you take away the shame that comes with something not feeling successful, you create space for creativity and for problem-solving and for figuring out how to create an awesome, sustainable business that you love.
Another place where all-or-nothing thinking shows up and really presents itself as a huge obstacle is before you've even started your business. So many moms I talked to hesitate at the starting line because they think to themselves, what if this is a total failure? What if I leave my job and it doesn't work? What if I invest all this time and energy and then realize I wasn't cut out for it?
And also on the flip side, some of us swing to the other extreme. I know it's not as common, but I have had situations and experiences when people think that they are going to start the business and everything will be perfect. They imagine immediate freedom and clients and flexibility and money, and they don't think about kind of the reality of starting a business and some of the obstacles and difficulties. And it's all the same all-or-nothing trap, right? Believing it will either be a success or a failure. It's not going to be one or the other. Your business will be a mix of both every single step of the way. You'll have clients who love you and a consult that doesn't close. You'll have posts that flop and you'll have an email that hits perfectly. You'll have days where you feel unstoppable and days where you wonder if you've made a mistake.
It's never one or the other. It's always both and all the things. And when you open yourself up to that reality that the business will be messy and mixed and full of highs and lows, you give yourself permission to start. Okay, because you're no longer waiting for certainty that it will work. You're choosing to be in the game knowing that working and not working are going to coexist along the way.
Uncertainty is such a huge obstacle, and I did a whole episode on that topic. So check out Episode 67, how to start your business without certainty, if that topic really resonates with you and you feel like you can't even get out of the starting line because you're so worried about whether or not it will work out.
Let's talk about shifting away from the all-or-nothing thinking and what you can do, like how you can put all of this into practice so that you can catch yourself and really move away from the trap. What I recommend always is a simple process that I've talked about before on this podcast, which is evaluating the nuances of every effort and action you're taking. After every effort, whether it's a sales call, a social media post, or a full launch, ask yourself 3 questions: What worked? And remember to celebrate what worked and don't skip it, because knowing what worked allows you to see things as a success even if the big picture feels like a failure. So that's number one. That's the first question. What worked? Second question, what didn't work? Ask yourself that without judgment. These are just facts. What didn't work? That helps us get so much closer to figuring out what does work. And what will I do differently next time? That's it. That's the practice.
When you build this into your business rhythm, you retrain your brain to look at results as information and data instead of evidence of failure. You give yourself permission to learn. You will find that in any given effort, there's a wealth of things that worked. There's lots of things that didn't work, and there's always room for doing things differently the next time to get better and better every single action.
So I want you to also be on the lookout for all-or-nothing thinking. When you are in the extremes or you are thinking black and white or if you are giving something a label without digging a little deeper and exploring the nuances, just catch yourself with that. Now you know that it exists, you know to look for it. I want you to really take your time to notice this type of thinking.
We just talked about one sort of flavor of all-or-nothing thinking, but there are so many. Today we talked about the all-or-nothing thinking around labeling something as a success or a failure and how that can hold us back in our business. But perfectionism is also a form of all or nothing, right? It has to be perfect before I launch my website or I have to have a perfect plan before I take action. I have to have all of my services figured out before I tell people about the business. Those are all sneaky forms of perfectionism that creep into all-or-nothing thinking. But there's also a whole bunch of other ways that we do this, and so definitely take time to notice where your brain is thinking in black and white terms or all-or-nothing terms.
We looked at why our brains actually cling to the success and failure labels. So don't judge yourself. It is your brain being your brain. Nothing has gone wrong. We just have to learn to work with our brain, not against it. We also talked about the hidden cost of dismissing an effort as a failure. When we say something's a failure, we want to avoid it and we don't want to dig in. We're embarrassed and we just want to go hide under a rock. And under rocks is not where we figure out how to make things work. So have the courage to look at something that feels like a failure. Take a closer look and really do not dismiss it and move on. Explore it and really figure out the nuances.
We also talked about the power of embracing both/and. And I think that's a wonderful thing to do not just in your business, but also in life. I think another term that rings a bell is like the silver lining. It's like something can be really unfortunate and terrible and it can also be something that you learn from or something that's happening for you.
I know just this past trip that I mentioned at the beginning, my husband and I were in bed, sick, in Italy for half the trip. And one of the things that was like a both/and aha moment was like, it was awful being sick in a beautiful, amazing place on our vacation without the kids. And it was actually really nice to be sick and not have to be a parent. Like, I would never wish that on anyone on their vacation in a time in a beautiful place that you can't explore. But there was this certain freedom and beauty of being in that position, that really unfortunate position, but also being so grateful that I didn't have to watch and take care of my kids when I felt terrible because, as we all know, normally we do have to be a parent 24/7 even when we feel like really terrible.
So embracing the both/and, finding the both/and, finding how something is 2 things at once and being comfortable with that. We also talked about that simple 3 question process that you can use to retrain your brain. Okay, what worked? What didn't? What will you do differently next time? 3 beautiful questions that you can apply to everything in life, not just business.
Here's the bottom line. There's no such thing as pure failure when you're taking action toward your dreams. Okay, there's only information, growth, and the possible next step with more data. So the next time your brain tells you that didn't work or that was an awful failure or that was embarrassing, I want you to pause and ask what worked, what didn't, what's next? Okay, you'll be amazed at how much lighter you feel just by exploring those nuances and how much faster you start moving forward. Figuring out what you will do differently next time gives you momentum and energy to then be excited to try it again and do something differently, to see what works within those hypotheses.
So keep building momentum, get out of your own way, stay away from all-or-nothing thinking, or at least notice when you're doing it, so that you can explore ways to really step into a momentous mindset and keep taking action.
Thank you for being here and for listening. Remember, this podcast is here to give you strategies and shifts that you can use to help you transition your career, maybe from a traditional role that is comfortable to you to creating a business that you love, one that inspires you, one that puts your special sauce in the world. And that's not always easy, but it's easier to do one step at a time. And that's what we do on this podcast. We make sure that you have ideas and actions and small ways that you can build this thing one step at a time.
So keep tuning in because every week, every Wednesday morning, we'll be breaking down mindset shifts and actions that will get you there. And if this episode hit home for you, check out some of my other episodes. There are tons on the topic of failure, on the topic of uncertainty, on the topic of success. It's woven into so many of the episodes. If you loved this episode, you're going to love so many more of them. And I would love for you to share it with anyone else, especially a mom in your life who has been maybe toying or joking about starting a business. I always say that jokes come from a truth, a hidden truth or a deep-seated truth. So if you have anyone in your life who has been talking about or joking about starting a business, send them this podcast. Let's spread this message that there is no failure, only feedback and growth.
And make sure you subscribe so that you are reminded every Wednesday that you have a little coach in your pocket. I know you can't see me, but I'm about 5'2". So I am a little coach, little and mighty. So every Wednesday, if you subscribe, you will get a reminder that you can keep going and that there are tips and tricks and actions that you can be taking, especially on the days and weeks where you just don't feel like it. We all need that accountability. We all need that little push sometimes. So subscribe and make sure that you take advantage of having a free resource in your pocket at all times.
All right, mom friends, I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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