How many of you celebrate your small victories? And I mean truly celebrate them by taking a conscious moment to acknowledge them, the work that has led to them, and the further progress that may be made because of them.
I used to brush small steps aside and wait until the BIG THING was finished, whatever that may have been. When I trained for a half marathon (a good few years ago) I didn’t celebrate the first time I ran over 10km because I was training for double that; I still had so much to accomplish, I still had to get so much better.
When the big thing happened it often felt… flat. It felt silly to celebrate my half marathon when other people had run further or faster or overcome greater adversity to complete it. I’ll just draw a line under it and move on to the next challenge.
In coaching, we try to break big goals down into smaller ones so that there is a unique goal identified at the end of every session. Whilst the big goal is still looming in the distance, the emphasis is completely on what you as the client is going to do as the next step. That’s all we focus on. As part of my training, one of the questions that we were encouraged to ask is “what are you going to do to celebrate your achievement?” even if we’re talking about a tiny step in our master plan of reaching our overall goal.
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent van Gogh
I have loved adopting this mindset in my own life and will always encourage it with clients. This is on my mind as today I completed a mini-milestone on one of my goal journeys and immediately wanted to celebrate. Nothing big, nothing ostentatious, but just a moment set aside to acknowledge one specific step on a much larger journey. I know when I get to my destination that the sense of achievement will be all the greater because I’ve made myself so much aware of how many individual small steps it took to get there.
So celebrate your small wins, your tiny steps forward and tackling those annoying niggling things that slow down your progress. Acknowledge them, enjoy them, celebrate them.
KRB Coaching 