Success And You: Learn To Celebrate The Small Stuff

I always used to think that the only way to achieve my goals was to  get from Point A to Point B in one gigan­tic leap.  If I didn’t make it, I pro­nounced myself a fail­ure and gave up.  “Well, that didn’t work,” I’d tell myself.  “Not going to try that again.  Guess it wasn’t meant to be.” Sound famil­iar?

All too many of us go after our goals with a sim­i­lar mind-set.  We make a con­certed effort and really give it every­thing we’ve got.  But if we don’t get the end result we thought we wanted, we’re dis­ap­pointed and give up on our­selves and our dreams.  It was a rev­e­la­tion to me the day I dis­cov­ered that the road to suc­cess is paved with many small vic­to­ries.  Sel­dom do peo­ple reach their goals in a sin­gle step.

For exam­ple, sup­pose you want to lose weight as part of your goals for 2010.   How long have you wanted to lose this weight?  You might be look­ing at the same 10–20 extra pounds you’ve been car­ry­ing around for awhile now, right?  Let’s assume you’ve tried diet­ing and you’ve start­ing an exer­cise pro­gram, but per­haps the weight still hasn’t come off.  If after a week of diet and exer­cise you didn’t see any results, maybe you got dis­cour­aged and went back to your old habits.

Let’s face it.  You didn’t gain that weight over night and you’re prob­a­bly not going to lose it over night either, so start by being real­is­tic about what you’re declar­ing and set your­self up to win. Rather than doing a mas­sive restruc­tur­ing of your diet, why not start small, by elim­i­nat­ing a sin­gle source of calo­ries like, sugar or wheat or dairy?  How about if tomor­row, you elim­i­nate all refined sugar from your diet, just for the day? Any­body can give up any­thing if it’s just for a day.  Tell your mind, that’s it, it’s just for this one day.

At the end of tomor­row, declare vic­tory, cel­e­brate your­self and re-commit to a no refined sugar day the fol­low­ing day.  Keep doing that day by day for a week and you’re on your way to win­ning the war on sugar in your diet.  Once you’re com­fort­able with this level, take on wheat next or dairy or what­ever source of calo­rie you want to elim­i­nate.  Take small, incre­men­tal steps and each day, cel­e­brate the fact that you fol­lowed through.

Instead of set­ting your­self up for even­tual fail­ure and dis­ap­point­ment in the exer­cise depart­ment by declar­ing unre­al­is­tic goals, start small.  Take a 15–20 minute walk today.  When that’s com­pleted, declare vic­tory and do it again tomor­row.  At the end of a week, add 5 min­utes to your daily walk.  Take it one day at a time. Con­tinue to cel­e­brate every­day you fol­low through. If you fall off the horse, get back on the next day and start again.  Cel­e­brate the fact that you got back on. Thirty min­utes of walk­ing every day is suf­fi­cient.  When you’ve estab­lished this rou­tine, intro­duce some weight train­ing by wear­ing 1 lb. weights on your wrists. Weight train­ing is impor­tant, but you needn’t start out by train­ing for the Olympics.  Easy does it until you’re ready to grad­u­ate to heav­ier weights.

The road to suc­cess is paved with many small vic­to­ries.  It’s easy to over look the small things, like get­ting your­self out and in motion.  But it’s impor­tant that you rec­og­nize and acknowl­edge your efforts at the micro level.  The mind feeds on the pos­i­tive rein­force­ment you give your­self and wants to repeat what­ever brought it the praise.  Find some­thing to cel­e­brate every sin­gle day, no mat­ter how small.  Keep a “Vic­tory Jour­nal”, where you record your daily vic­to­ries.  Write down what you accom­plished and how you feel about it.

You have what it takes to be suc­cess­ful and cre­ate what you want.  Some­times it takes extra effort to dig deep enough to find your inner resources to meet the chal­lenges life presents on the path to success.

I’d love to hear how you’re doing so please feel free to leave a com­ment below or email me at judith[at]judithrich.com.  Please let me know how I can sup­port you achiev­ing your goals.

Happy cre­at­ing and bless­ings on the path,

Judith

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