Many of us think in extremes: failure or success, done or not done, committed or uncommitted, lazy or productive. We judge our own task management by these same extremes. And when we fail to meet the standards of our harsh inner critic, we feel like we have failed.
Our involvement in church likely reinforces this way of thinking. We are taught to give our whole selves to Jesus – to be “all-in.” Motivational speakers and compelling preachers use extremes to inspire us toward change. Application points based on “black-and-white” frameworks make life seem simple. But real life is never quite so straightforward. And while it would be nice if every day could be tied up neatly with a bow and every to-do list accomplished exactly how it was envisioned, this is often far from our lived experience.
The Endless Pursuit of “Good Enough”
Because of this, we become our own taskmasters, either driving ourselves in relentless pursuit of being “good enough” or slipping into a spiral of procrastination and burnout because we see that we won’t be. Especially in a culture of endless efficiency and productivity, giving ourselves grace has become increasingly difficult. Some people are high-performing and seem to have their lives in order. But many others are in a seesaw between overworked and overwhelmed. If that’s you, you’re not alone.
Finding a Balanced Life Despite Dysregulation
After observing my tendencies toward all-or-nothing thinking, I have seen similarities in many people around me. It seems that anyone who has ever struggled with nervous system regulation has likely struggled with thinking in extremes. When it’s hard to regulate our own bodies and emotions, it’s also hard to live a balanced life. We often swing from extreme to extreme, rarely finding a happy medium. If you’ve ever struggled with symptoms from depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, chronic pain conditions, sleep disturbances, hormonal imbalances, or any type of trauma – you have experienced dysregulation.
Your natural response to this realization might be telling yourself that thinking in extremes is bad and forcing yourself to stop. But even this is all-or-nothing thinking and is frequently accompanied by a self-condemnation that Jesus never asked of us. Instead, he modeled a life filled with grace, forgiveness, mercy, and rest. So how do we slowly and surely rewire these tendencies and rewrite patterns of moderation and balance into our lives? Here are some simple truths that have helped me:
1. Small Milestones Still Count
Consistency and self-discipline are two things I always lacked. When I was all-in, I could spend hours on a task or stay up all night to pursue a passion. No one could say I was uncommitted, but I also struggled with burnout and overwhelm, swinging from moments of hyper-focus (my ADHD superpower) to moments of feeling like a failure in between. If I wanted to study my Bible or complete a project, I wanted to spend 2-4 hours doing it. If I didn’t have 4 hours to give, I thought I might as well not try. 5 minutes or 30 minutes never felt like enough time to give myself fully to a task. I slowly learned that these were symptoms of my perfectionism, people-pleasing, and all-or-nothing thinking. My spurts of productivity were wonderful, but everything in between was disheartening.
I finally got to a breaking point when I was sick of all-nighters and shame spirals. The Lord graciously called me into a season of “practicing” consistency and self-discipline; at first, I was really bad at it. But because this was essentially a “practice round” that didn’t count, I felt the grace to try and fail and try again. Slowly, this practice made me realize that small milestones still count. Spending 5 minutes with Jesus when I don’t have an hour to give STILL COUNTS. Spending twenty minutes completing half of a task STILL COUNTS. And every minute I spend in pursuit of a goal brings me closer to achieving that goal. With this mindset, I started seeing more consistency in my life and started to see that five minutes at a time still gets the to-do list done, sometimes with far less overwhelm and burnout than before.
2. All Effort is Worthy of Celebration
Two things that always kept me stuck: I felt like rest was a reward for hard work, and I felt like I only deserved to celebrate when I completed a task. These two mindsets are symptoms of the lie that your worth is correlated to your productivity.
The Bible clearly shows us a rhythm of consistent sabbath that is not dependent on our work. Rest is an imperative, not a conditional reward. Of course the Bible also encourages us to be hard workers, not slothful or lazy. But, our rest is not a closely guarded prize awarded only to the most productive workers. In fact, rest is an invitation to trust. It requires us to let go of workaholic tendencies and find our security and provision in our heavenly Father rather than our own self-sufficiency.
Therefore, God is not keeping a record of how many tasks we completed and how fast we completed them. This mindset is closely tied to the Industrial Revolution and our culture’s shift into mass production and mass consumption of goods and services. Jesus’ economy functions differently. His economy is one of feasting and abundance. Work is, therefore, a delight and a privilege. So ALL work and ALL effort are worthy of celebration. Your five minutes folding laundry is something to be proud of, even if you didn’t finish the whole load. Your twenty minutes of prayer that got interrupted before you said amen were twenty minutes that Christ delighted in. If you started your day with good intentions and ended it in defeat, ask the Lord to show you what He’s proud of. He might be proud that you fed yourself three meals today even though you were overwhelmed. He might be proud that you got yourself unstuck from doomscrolling on social media once you realized it was pulling you in. He might be proud that you spent unexpected time with your child or friend, even though you didn’t get a single task checked off your to-do list. You can honor your own effort and give yourself grace by valuing your work and your rest in the way Jesus does.
3. It’s Healthy to Be Imperfect
Perfectionism is a cruel friend. We may deceive ourselves into believing we simply want to do good work and finish well, but this desire quickly becomes an idol when our imperfection brings out feelings of failure, devastation, or defeat. Perfection is a strange concept to think about in light of our faith because our gospel narrative often emphasizes God’s requirement for perfection, humanity’s lack of perfection, and Christ’s perfect sacrifice on our behalf. So, subconsciously, we sometimes still assume God expects perfection of us and are eager to say, “challenge accepted” to our own detriment.
Perfectionists might get an eye twitch when this framework is challenged. If perfection isn’t the goal, what is? What, then, counts as “good enough”? We are simply asking the wrong questions. As a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, I can honestly say my life was healthiest when I learned to thrive in my own imperfection.
If your worth is wrapped up in your productivity, then it would be natural to feel discouraged when you complete flawed work. But our worth is not in what we do but in whose we are. When we rewire our brains to adjust to this new framework, we realize our level of belovedness does not change or shift based on our accomplishment. What we do for people, for God, or even for ourselves is only an outpouring of the love we have already received. What would happen if you woke up each morning not asking, “what do I need to accomplish today?” but instead simply stating, “I am beloved. Christ delights in me. How can I enjoy Him today?”
Think of a child bringing home a Mother’s Day card from Preschool. That mother doesn’t care if the child used the proper colors in their drawing or wrote their letters perfectly. Instead, the mother delights in the work and creativity of her child fully no matter what it looks like. In fact, her child’s misspelling of words or sloppy letters might even bring more delight because it shows effort and growth that the child extended out of love. The Father feels the same about you. He delights in your imperfect efforts and celebrates your growth because you are His.
4. Doing Less Enables You to Give God More
I was always really good at hour-long quiet times with the Lord, but really bad at ten-minute ones. I felt like I was giving God less if I didn’t give Him huge chunks of my day set aside for prayer and worship. This segmentation of my day was not sustainable. Some days I had hours to give, and other days, I didn’t and felt shame about it. I was separating sacred moments from mundane moments and placing them on a hierarchy based on which moments seemed more meaningful or worthy. This all shifted when I began to regard every moment as sacred.
If you’ve ever read the prayer book Every Moment Holy, you might see why. This book is filled with prayers for some of the most mundane moments of our lives. It has prayers to pray while making coffee, while changing diapers, or even after finishing a good book. This mindset regards every moment as worthy to commune with the Lord.
As I began dwelling with God in the mundane moments of my life, it became less imperative to set aside large chunks of time. Of course, I still wanted to spend devoted time in prayer and Bible study, but I didn’t feel like these were the only moments I encountered Him. I didn’t start each quiet time with an introductory “hello,” because I had likely already been communicating with Him throughout my day.
I always come back to the thought that there must be a form of spirituality that is accessible to young mothers who don’t have long, uninterrupted chunks of time to give or elderly folks who don’t have the capacity to go out and work for 8 hours. If the version of spirituality that your church taught you is only accessible to one type of person or one season of life, then it’s not your only option. When you learn to “practice the presence of God,” as Brother Lawrence wrote about, you are able to give God more of your day because rather than limiting your time with Jesus to an hour in the morning, you are giving Him every moment of every day.
Letting Go of All-Or-Nothing Thinking
People who struggle with all-or-nothing thinking often think they must accomplish a task or engage in an activity in a certain way, or else it doesn’t count. The quickest way to overcome this is to start telling yourself that every imperfect, interrupted, insufficient moment counts. There is something to celebrate, delight in, and be proud of in every moment. The easiest way to rewrite the neuropathways that quickly jump to self-condemnation when you get distracted or are unproductive is to dwell on delight. Delight brings us dopamine, and when we are happy, we want to repeat what just happened. If you are used to beating yourself up when you fail to complete a task, what might happen if you start celebrating the effort you extended despite how much progress you made? It just might help you feel more satisfied, more healthy, more balanced, and over time might even help you accomplish tasks more consistently. When we get stuck in all-or-nothing thinking, we are robbing ourselves of the satisfaction of working hard, resting well, and experiencing the delight of the Father in every moment, not just the ones that lead to burnout. Need permission? Use this week as a “practice round” — it doesn’t really count, so there’s an abundance of grace to try, fall down, and get back up to try again!
