I just wanted to give you a sneak peek into something that I have been working on for the past few months.
Celebrating small wins.
In my journey to become a better everything the one consistent thing that I have learned. You need to be able to pat yourself on the back when you’ve accomplished something.
But I’ve never actually taking it into consideration and applied this in my own life. Why? I was always moving too fast to even think about stopping.
So what’s changed?
I recently have had the light bulb moment. I needed to start celebrating every small win. That way when the shit hit the fan and life got tough, I couldn’t lie to myself that everything was a failure.
I have really big dreams. I want to accomplish so much before I turn 30. Everything for me has been push, push, and push.
But regardless that my husband and I both got out of IT. That we bought a house on our own at 19. Or that we have been together since 2005. I don’t stop and say wow, look at what I’ve done.
It’s like this manic chant in the back of my head. I need to do more. I need to protect my family. I need a bigger nest egg for an emergency. I need to become 100% debt free by 35. I need to build a perfect residual income before we have kids. I need, I need, and I need.
I always set such huge goals. That when I come close to accomplishing them, I just up the ante. Nothing is never enough.
That’s where celebrating small wins comes in.
We need to make rewards a part of our daily life.
Just published that blog post. Fantastic! Instead of beating yourself up that you don’t have 15 more scheduled out and ready to go. Just sit back and enjoy that fact that you have one blog post done. It’s in the bank. You got something out of your head and out for the world to see.
By consistently celebrating small wins we create really good habits in the long run.
After a few months it becomes easy to regularly produce that blog post. This lets you get your message out to more people. This eventually increases your business and revenue.
You have also created the muscles necessary to be consistent at something for a long time. So when you set that bigger goal, your lizard brain can’t freak out as bad. It knows that you have the ability to follow through on long term projects.
This is one of the reasons why I love running big distances. It’s not about the cardio. It’s not about the fact that I’m exercising or trying to stay fit. It’s about the fact that when I start training for runs again I am proving to my lizard brain I can do something.
I will be tired and sweaty. But once I cross that finish line I feel like I’m on top of the world. This makes me want to sign up for more races. And then I got to the point where a 10k is “easy” now that I’ve been running them for 10 years. I know it takes training but I also know that I have done it before and I can do it again. That once big goal becomes a much more manageable task.
When you celebrate small wins, tackling bigger goals become a lot easier. Regardless of how long they take.
The next big goal I am working on is paying off me and my husband student loans. They cost us more then we paid for our house. And in my head, it feels like that we will be paying them into our 60’s. I hate them. They terrify me. They make me regret a big part of my life, because school didn’t teach me anything of value.
But instead of just freaking out about paying them. I’m applying the same principles to this life changing task as I am to other goals. Celebrating small wins. Every extra payment I send in equals a happy dance with my puppy. Each month we shave off the loans is a toasted with a great glass of wine or crown and coke. Once I pay off the first loan, well, I’m probably going to do something big. Like go out to a fancy restaurant with ben and eat some really good chocolate cake.
It will be my way of taking what was once a huge terrifying mountain and turning it into a manageable task.
And I can then move on to giving the same attention to our retirement accounts. Big mountain = manageable task.
