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The "All or Nothing" Paradox - Teresa Romain
 You're in Network Marketing to be abundant, right? If you haven't read last month's article on abundance, make sure you do that today! You need to understand that abundance isn't out there, one day, some day. It's today. If today you are in scarcity, I can guarantee scarcity will continue. If, however, you are being congruent with abundance today, that abundance will continue to expand.
Even as we take new actions to support abundance, new "scarcity patterns" will show up (we're usually blind to them) and sabotage our actions. The pattern I'm about to alert you to is one of the most dangerous and sabotages both your Network Marketing business and other areas of your life. I call it the "All or Nothing" paradox. It often sounds like this:
- "I don't have enough time to do my full workout, so I might as well wait until tomorrow..."
- "My office is a mess! As soon as I have a day off, I will have to clean and re-organize everything..."
- "I want to call this person, but it's been so long I know it will be a long conversation. Better wait until I have more time..."
- "I have at least ten follow-up calls to make today. I just don't have time so I guess they will have to wait until tomorrow..."
In each of these all-too-familiar examples, there is the thought that it all has to be done. Since that doesn't seem possible, action is delayed and nothing gets done. All or Nothing thinking is another version of Not Enough -- anything less than all is "not enough," so we do nothing. If we ever get around to doing it all, we do nothing else and fall behind in other areas of life. We create a chain reaction of excess and collapse, of scarcity.
How can you break out of this paradox? With a little word that might never occur to you in the midst of All or Nothing thinking. That word is something. The way to break out of the scarcity spiral of All or Nothing is to do something. In the examples above, it may be true that you don't have time to do your full workout -- so do one exercise, run ten minutes instead of 30. The same is true for your business -- make one call today, talk to one prospect today.
As you use this Something principle each time All or Nothing/Not Enough thinking starts to paralyze you, you will notice that the sense of accomplishment you get from completing something will release energy that can then be directed productively to do other things. Be careful, however! Choose the something you will do that day and, if you feel energized to do more when it's done, choose another something. A common mistake is, having accomplished something, to feel so energized that you decide "now I might as well do all the rest." With that very thought and pattern, you have once again trapped yourself in the web of the All or Nothing paradox, and anything less than "all the rest" will become "not enough." Inevitably, this will lead us back into scarcity and, quite often, doing nothing.
Each day this month, commit to do something to support your business. Then accomplish another something and so on. Done this way, you can stop at any time and feel the pride, energy, and satisfaction of accomplishment which, in turn, leads to abundance. You will also be getting something done -- which always beats nothing!
For information about Teresa Romain and the services of her company Access Abundance!TM International, see the Learning Opportunities page.
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Reprinted with permission from Upline, The Abundance Column - February 2000, 888-UPLINE-1, http://www.upline.com
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