All-or-nothing thinking

All-or-nothing thinking is seeing the world only at two extremes, without shades of gray. When a person accomplishes ninety percent of a task and misses the remaining part, they erase their success entirely and judge it as "a complete failure." This pattern prevents seeing intermediate states and partial successes. Real life, however, is almost always somewhere between the extremes. The coach helps the client step out of the "either perfect or nothing" frame and see the real degrees in between.