consistency – The Healing Modalities

Drop that thinking.

One of the biggest obstacles to self-care isn’t time, energy, or motivation—it’s all-or-nothing thinking.

All-or-nothing thinking traps us in extremes:
🔹 If I can’t work out for an hour, why bother at all?
🔹 If I don’t stick to my diet perfectly, I might as well quit.
🔹 If I don’t have 30 minutes to meditate, it’s not worth it.

This mindset keeps us stuck. It convinces us that if we can’t do everything, we might as well do nothing.

But what if we did something—no matter how small?

Take Sara. She planned to work out for an hour, but had to stay late at work. Instead of squeezing in a shorter workout, she skipped the gym entirely. That one missed session threw off her momentum, and she didn’t go back for over a week.

Or Kevin, who believes meditation only counts if he does it for 30 minutes. So when he only has 10 minutes, he skips it altogether. Days go by without practicing at all.

Or Charlie, who is either 100% on her diet or completely off. After eating two unexpected cookies, she tells herself she’s failed—so she ditches her plan for two weeks.

These patterns don’t get us closer to our goals. They hold us back.

What if we dropped the all-or-nothing thinking?

What if Sara saw that a 20-minute workout was still valuable?
What if Kevin realized 10 minutes of meditation is better than none?
What if Charlie reminded herself, “Two cookies don’t erase all my progress”?

The truth is, progress isn’t about perfection—it’s about consistency.

Showing up for yourself—even for 5 minutes—matters.
✅ 10 pushups and 10 squats, twice a day.
✅ A 5-minute walk in the morning and another in the evening.
✅ 5 minutes on the bike in the morning and 5 minutes of stretching at night.

It may not seem like much at first, but these small moments build trust in yourself. They build momentum. And before you know it, you might feel inspired to find more time—because you’re already in motion.

And if one day, all you have is 2 minutes? Do something. Keep showing up.

Let’s stop making self-care an all-or-nothing game. Let’s make it realistic, sustainable, and part of our lives exactly as they are right now.

Your Turn:

Where in your life might you be engaging in all-or-nothing thinking?
Do your self-care goals fit your real schedule and energy levels?
How can you adjust your approach so you actually follow through?

💡 Dig Deeper: What changes might you need to make in your life to better support your self-care practices? (Hint: making those changes IS self-care.)

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Drop it.

One of the things that can get in the way of our self-care practices is all-or-nothing thinking.

All-or-nothing thinking is an unhelpful thinking pattern that we may be engaging in. We can recognize when we’re doing this when we’re thinking in extremes: we’re either a success or a failure. Our performance was perfect or terrible. If we’re not one hundred percent, then we’re a zero. If we can’t exercise for an hour, then we won’t do it at all.

That last example creates a majority of the reasons why most people don’t engage in self-care practices. Some people might have an unrealistic idea – an ideal – of what self-care looks like for them.

And when they can’t meet that ideal, they don’t do ANYTHING.

For example, because Sara thinks she has to exercise for an hour 4 times a week, when she has to stay 20 minutes later at work than expected one afternoon, she decides that she can’t exercise for a full hour before going home to make dinner, so she doesn’t go to the gym at all that day. And because she didn’t go to the gym that day, her gym momentum takes a hit and she doesn’t go again for a week and a half.

If Sara dropped her all-or-nothing thinking, she could’ve gone to the gym and exercised for 30 minutes – even 20 minutes would have been beneficial.

Or because Kevin thinks he has to meditate for 30 minutes every time he sits down to practice, when he finds himself with only 10 minutes one day, he skips his practice entirely. And his meditation practice momentum takes a hit and he finds himself skipping practice for several days because he “doesn’t have time.”

If Kevin dropped his all-or-nothing thinking, he’d recognize that meditating for 10 minutes can still be beneficial.

Or because Charlie thinks she has to stick to her diet 100% or it won’t work, when she finds herself eating two more cookies than she planned on Tuesday, she quits her whole diet for the next two weeks. Quitting won’t get us to our goal faster.

If Charlie dropped her all-or-nothing thinking, she could instead think, “OK, I ate two extra cookies today, but I can still stick with my plan for dinner. And tomorrow, I can stick with my meal plan too. I don’t have to give up just because I went off part of my plan today.”

It’s great to set ambitious goals for ourselves. But not at the expense of us meeting those goals. It’s about having realistic plans for the time we DO have, with the decisions we CAN make, and with the CAPACITY we have.

With any practice, consistency and commitment are important. Showing up is key. Even for 5 minutes.

So when we want to have a movement goal of exercising every day and we only have 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening to do something, we DO something during those 5 minutes.

It could be 10 pushups and 10 squats, twice a day.

It could be a 5 minute walk twice a day.

It could be 5 minutes on a bike/treadmill in the morning and 5 minutes stretching at night.

But we DO it when the time comes. We show up for ourselves when the time comes.

Showing up for ourselves consistently builds trust in ourselves to do what we say we’ll do. Even if it’s only for 5 minutes at a time.

And what we may find is that those 5 minutes build strength, energy, and motivation to extend our movement time. We might find ourselves wanting to make more time to build on what we started and do 10 minutes at a time. Or find a 30-minute time chunk each day. We won’t know what’s possible for us until we try.

And still, maybe it happens that one day, we don’t even have 5 minutes and we only have 2 minutes. We can still do SOMEthing during those 2 minutes to move our body around intentionally.

So we can drop the all-or-nothing thinking. We can start having more realistic ideas of what our self-care plan looks like. And then we show up for those plans. We show up for ourselves.

Your turn: Where in your life might you be engaging in all-or-nothing thinking? Do you find yourself wondering why you’re not engaging in the self-care practices you KNOW you can do? Are your self-care plans realistic or unrealistic to fit into your life right now? How can you create self-care practices that FIT into your life exactly the way it is right now?

Dig Deeper: In what ways might you need to make changes in your life to help support your self-care practices? (Hint: making those changes IS part of self-care.)

Subscribe if you want to receive this content directly in your inbox.

Tag: consistency

Self-Care: All or Nothing?

What if we dropped the all-or-nothing thinking?

Your Turn:

All-or-nothing thinking