I’ve just returned from a great week away and I had the joy of meeting my first grandchild who was born just last week! Quite a week. To be honest the thought of getting back to work after a good time away can be hard. It requires you to refocus on your dream as you get back into what needs doing.
When pursuing a new business or idea, it’s tempting to feel it’s all too hard. I think some of that has to do with the way we look at success. When you set out you have a vision, a goal, in mind and understandably we are pushing to realise that dream, goal or vision. In doing that I think you could be setting yourself up to fail. We have to learn to celebrate the small wins along the way as they provide the energy to realise your dream.
“The reason why people give up so fast is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go, instead of how far they have come.” Nicky Gumbel
Celebrate how far you have come
You may have heard the phrase that every journey begins with the first step. If you are going to achieve anything you must get moving. Movement has energy. Your movement will be focused on a particular direction with a particular destination in mind. However, it is crucial for all sorts of reasons to break the journey down into smaller goals so that as you reach them you can, firstly evaluate where you are on the journey, and secondly celebrate how far you have come.
You may know that I have been working on a book, I See You, which is due to be published in the next few weeks. My ultimate goal for this book is for readers to implement the practical advice in it. It has taken over a year to get to this point of being ready to publish. In order to publish I needed a plan and my coach gave me a great piece of advice about celebrating the wins along the way. The first big win for me was actually to finish writing the book. It wasn’t published yet, but it was a significant milestone, which I did celebrate with a nice meal out with my wife.
To reach your goal you need to maintain your energy, focus and passion. Often you are so focused on the finish line you forget to celebrate the milestones along the way. Think about it this way, if your goal is to climb Mount Everest it requires a plan of how to get there. In order to reach the summit, there are a series of steps to get there. On the route up are a series of camps starting with base camp and then on up to the summit. Celebrating reaching each point is energy giving so you have the fuel to reach the top. They are measures of progress. You may be disappointed in the length of time it is taking to get to where you think you should be. But take a breath and look at how far you have come.
What are your milestones?
If you do nothing else as a result of reading this blog let me encourage you to think about the milestones you have already reached. Like me you may have started a new venture, like my writing a book, whatever it is it can be easy to become discouraged at our perceived lack of progress. Today take a moment to reflect on how far you have come and write down what you have achieved. Take time to celebrate these small wins and use them as fuel to keep you going towards your summit.
“We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.” Brené Brown
The way you celebrate and recognise these wins will depend on your personality. To explore how you can best do that why not book a discovery call with me to find out more. Until next time.
Stay safe.
Photo by Sylvain Mauroux on Unsplash
