How To Celebrate
Small Wins To Achieve Big Goals
We all want to be successful in our goals and it’s these goals
that put meaning into our lives – give us something to strive for and help
better ourselves. But have you ever tried to reach a big goal with giving
up as the end? Have you started working towards your goal but over time felt
that it’s just too high a mountain to climb – how are you ever going to reach
the top? Have you ever experienced the feeling that you’ve spent so long trying
to achieve your goal but felt you’ve got nowhere with it?
If this is you then you’re not alone. As humans, we are built to
naturally see the problems and easily punish ourselves for bad behaviour. Poor
performances are quickly condemned in our minds and guilt can rise to the
surface. Our mindsets can bring us down when we feel we’ve failed and this
usually results in giving up on dreams and goals.
So what is the secret to achieving these goals? Successful
people make huge achievements all the time so how do they do it? What makes
them so different?
Perspective and
Mindset
Many people may put the success of others down to luck or a
natural talent that allows them to excel at what they want to achieve. Yes,
this can be the case but most of the time it is down to a particular mindset
and way of looking at their goals as a whole.
Take Thomas Edison, the American businessman who invented the
lightbulb. It took Edison almost 10,000 attempts to create a lightbulb – that’s
a huge amount of ‘failures’ before finally finding success. But in response to
his repeated failures he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways
that won’t work.”
In other words, he took his failures and turned them into
successes because his perspective was focused on achieving rather than failing.
It’s quite clear he had a mindset and positive perspective that allowed
him to celebrate those small steps and see them as achievements.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s very easy for us to put ourselves
down for small mistakes and failures. What about our small successes? Well the
irony of this is that although we easily feel negative about failing, we almost
never celebrate our successes either and this is where the magic lies.
Celebrate Small
Wins
The key to success is realising that our big goals aren’t going
to happen overnight, in the next week or maybe even the next year but this is
okay. We tend to focus on the end goals rather than the small and significant
steps we take to get us to that goal.
This is why it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate small
wins. The problem with not doing this is we end up diminishing our motivation
and motivation is what keeps us on the right path and gives us the strength to
soldier on to the top of the mountain.
Demotivation usually comes because we are unsure of how far we
are to our goals. We sometimes blindly believe that the goal is still so far
away when it could actually be just around the corner – something we will never
know if we give up.
It’s therefore important to make sure you celebrate your small
goals along the way. Acknowledging these sparks the reward circuitry of our
brains and releases chemicals that gives us the feeling of pride, giving us the
feel-good and happiness factor and makes us want to go further towards our
next achievement.
Appreciation is Key
Appreciation can sometimes be played down in life and we tend to
forget to appreciate what we’ve done and what we have. Appreciating our small
wins and the small steps we take can be the difference between failing and
succeeding. Lack of appreciation and gratefulness can lead us down the slippery
slope of not being able to see the importance of our small successes.
Celebrating the small stuff is us acknowledging that we are well on our way to
achievement – in fact we are achieving all the time and it’s a myth that we are
only successful once we’ve reached that elusive goal.
Creating Successful
Habits
Successful habits equal success. We all know creating and
changing habits can be hard as our minds find it difficult to adapt to new
routines but acknowledging and celebrating the small wins are how you help
yourself establish the habits you need and to keep you going. Our brains need
reinforcement so allowing yourself to be rewarded will develop an ‘addiction to
progress’ that will cause your brain to want to carry on to
the next steps.
Acknowledge the
Importance of the Present Moment
So what is the secret to a successful habit? It’s all about
understanding the importance of the present moment. We tend to take the present
moment for granted – it seems insignificant and we believe the little things we
do in the moment aren’t changing us.
You must invest in the small things over a long period of time
and understand that you only have the moment you are in and although these
moments seem insignificant when determining whether you succeed or fail at
something, it is the combination of moments over time that achieve the big
things.
For example, say you want to learn a whole new subject. Reading
10 pages of a book today on this new subject will not significantly raise your
knowledge and maybe not even 10 pages tomorrow and 10 pages the next
day. However, it’s the combination of all these moments of reading 10
pages a day that will eventually allow you to fully learn the new subject. In
other words, reading those 10 pages a day may seem insignificant in the moment
but they are all important in the steps towards achieving your goal.
5 Tips On Achieving
Success
With all this in mind, it is the small steps we take that need
to be acknowledged and appreciated for what they are. Motivation is a huge
factor of whether or not we succeed and being able to reward ourselves and
celebrate small wins is the key.
1. Break down large
goals into smaller goals – You don’t want to focus on the bigger
picture as tempting as that can be. Make sure you create small, achievable
goals that will allow you to see your progress more clearly.
2. Reward yourself
with achieving small goals – Think about what you enjoy the
most and do this each time you complete a step. This cold be anything from
treating yourself to your favourite coffee, chocolate or even a trip somewhere.
Having something to look forward to trains the brain into creating motivation.
3. Don’t put pressure
on yourself – Putting a deadline on your goals can lead to potential feelings
of failure. Be relaxed with your time limits and this will increase your
happiness and motivation.
4. Track your
progress – Writing down or tracking your progress will remind you of how
far you’ve come in achieving your goal. Sometimes we can give up because we are
unaware of how close we are to success and forget how much we’ve done. Write
down all the small wins – seeing them written down can even be a reward in
itself!
5. Change your
perspective – Sometimes when we focus too much on the end goal, it can seem
too far away to get to. Try thinking of it, not as climbing a huge mountain,
but descending one with perhaps a few nice restaurants (rewards) to stop off at
and relax on the way down – this way you can visualise getting there a lot
easier!
Jenny Marchal
https://www.lifehack.org/396379/how-celebrate-small-wins-achieve-big-goals
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