Goal
Achieve inner calm by recognizing and appreciating small accomplishments 🤘
Problem
Struggling to find joy and satisfaction in everyday life:
- Overlooking minor achievements
- Focusing too much on long-term goals and disregarding smaller milestones
- Experiencing stress and burnout from the constant pursuit of perfection
Solution
Celebrating small wins is a technique that encourages acknowledging and rewarding yourself for minor victories.
In a nutshell:
- Set daily or weekly achievable mini-goals 🎯
- Whenever you accomplish a mini-goal, take a moment to acknowledge your achievement.
- Reward yourself with something small, like a treat or a short break.
- Reflect on how completing the mini-goal made you feel.
My Take
To me, celebrating small wins is a fundamental approach to mentally calming down. But I can tell you can be hard. It has taken me years to learn this stuff 😩
As a product manager, my days are often filled with numerous tasks, and it can be tricky to recognize the small wins amidst the chaos. However, consciously trying to step back and reflect on my achievements helps me feel much more satisfied and often surprisingly relaxed. Actually, I’d say that this technique has significantly reduced my stress levels.
While celebrating small wins may not provide instant and obvious relaxation like meditation or deep breathing exercises, it’s a super practical, effective long-term approach for cultivating a more positive mindset.
In addition, it’s important to remember that sometimes, even the tiniest decisions can lead to substantial outcomes. You know, these small victories may not be evident at first glance, but their significance becomes clearer upon reflection. Seeing small wins during a typical workday can take effort and even professional experience.
But here is the thing: to get a pro at relaxing, you really need to be aware of such tiny stuff 🤙
PROS
- Boosts motivation and self-esteem 💪
- Encourages mindfulness and gratitude
- Reduces stress and burnout (absolutely true!)
- Helps to develop a positive mindset
CONS
- May feel artificial or forced initially
- Can be challenging to remember to celebrate small wins
- Some may struggle to find appropriate rewards
INSIGHTS
As I said before, celebrating the small wins can be hard. A few of my learnings:
- Keep a journal: This helped me to track my small wins and write down how they made me feel. For instance, write down moments when you made healthier food choices or finished a workout. At work, you can record times when you successfully navigated a challenging meeting or completed a project ahead of schedule. I definitely reflect on such things.
- Setting reminders on my phone or using an app helped me to remember to celebrate small accomplishments.
- Share your small wins with friends, family, or colleagues for added accountability and encouragement. This made a bigger difference to me. Just to get some feedback. It’s amazing what others suddenly say once you report your achievements (even though you think it’s nothing).
- Rewarding can help to practice this technique (e.g., a walk in the park, a 15-minute break, or a favorite snack). I enjoy taking a quick walk around the block to celebrate a small win at work or treating myself to a cup of coffee and a few minutes of downtime at home.
- Scheduling regular reflection sessions is an interesting activity, to identify and appreciate small wins that might have gone unnoticed.
