The Power of Daily Wins
Celebrating daily wins is one of my favorite rituals for mental health and maintaining motivation.
Years ago, I would only celebrate a win if I had a personal best in lifting or in javelin. The thing is, those accomplishments are only possible from consistent actions adding up.
When you work on a long term project but fail to aknowledge your daily choices and actions as valid wins
it harms your mental state, resilience, and sense of self.
Humans live in 24 hour cycles, and only so much can be accomplished within a day. When you sleep, you integrate each day’s events and update your sense of self.
Depriving youself of a pat on the back hurts your motivation - and the likelihood of you achieving your goal. It creates a subconsicous message that you’re not doing enough. If you feel this daily, this leads to identifying as a person who is who works hard but doesn’t accomplish anything of signifcant worth.
Aknowleding daily wins allows you to identify as a person who makes consistent progress.
It’s exciting and motivating to notice your actions adding up: instead of feeling like you’re grinding through a plateau, you feel like you’re navigating an adventure and problem solving as you go!
Tips on how to sensitize yourself to daily wins:
Choose maximum 3 priorites / goals to focus on, in different areas. More than that becomes too much to focus on. I move between enhancing my vocation, health, social, personal growth, education, and spiritual connection.
Choose 1 daily win per priority, and write it down in the morning. Make it easy to accomplish so that it can create momentum for other potential wins. (example: write X-important email vs. clear inbox)
Check off and write down additional wins at the end of the day or before bed. Include “good luck” where things just went your way!
Use a month grid calendar so that you can see you wins adding up! On the days where you don’t win as much as you’d like, this visual is a relief because you see that it’s just a blip in your consistent progression
