Celebrate the small wins.
I want you to be honest with yourself for a minute. Close your eyes and take a deep breath before you answer this question. Have you acknowledged the progress you’ve made so far in your writing journey and have you celebrated the small wins? Or is the only thing that you have been laser-focused on, is the end goal of getting a publishing deal and can only see how far away you are from it and how impossible and daunting it all feels?
If this answer is no to the first question and yes to the second, you are not alone. Before I delve into why we find it hard to celebrate the small wins, I wanted to define what a small win is. Put simply a small win is an accomplishment of any step or goal that moves you closer to your end objective.
Reasons we might struggle to celebrate the small wins;
You think its irrelevant because you haven’t seen any tangible results from it. You feel you are no closer to reaching your ultimate goal
You feel silly for celebrating something so ‘minor’
You don’t think your efforts are good enough
You don’t realise its a win
Why you should celebrate the small wins
If any of the above is true, that is ok but from now I would love for you to start recognising how important progress is. Dr. Teresa Amabile, a renowned researcher on motivation and creativity, emphasises the importance of celebrating small wins in our work. She states, ‘small wins often lead to big accomplishments. We build motivation and momentum by focusing on small, achievable goals.’
By focusing on the small wins, we will end up feeling more confident, more empowered and more determined because we know we are moving forward. Standing still is stagnation but moving forward is the propellor to achieving your goals, no matter how long it might take.
Now look back at your own writing journey and think about the wins that you might have diminished as not important but which are instead to be celebrated whether it produced a tangible result or not, because it made you feel good;
Where you struggled with writers block for weeks on a particular element of your story and finally unlocked something which only enhanced your storytelling and made your story sing
When you first shared your work with a friend or peer for feedback. It might have been nerve-wracking at the time but afterwards did it feel like you’d faced some sort of fear?
When you were scared of putting yourself out there and marketing yourself but again faced your fear and posted that first blog or video on social media
When you created and launched your author website
When you entered into a writing competition
When you poured your love, sweat and tears into finishing your manuscript and took the first step of sending it out to literary agents
Even if you only received constructive feedback on what didn’t work, even if you didn’t get one like or follower on your first video, or didn’t make the long-list of a competition and even if you got ten rejection letters from literary agents, does that take away how amazing your achievement was, for you to even take that first step? No it doesn’t, so instead honour it and feel gratitude for how far you have come.
In the words of the great Bene Brown, ‘its worse to spend your life on the outside looking in, wondering what if, then it is to try and dare greatly and risk the chance of failure. Dare greatly; get in the arena and try.’
Don’t pin everything to the end result that hasn’t happened yet. Instead pin your motivation, your pride, your habits, your progress to the small wins and celebrate those. That’s the only way you’ll know and appreciate how far you’ve come.
I’ve really enjoyed writing this post because it has made me think about my own small wins and how even a year ago those seemed impossible. I would love to know what your small wins are and how it made you feel to accomplish those, so please do leave a comment, I’d love to chat.
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