Celebrating Small Wins Quotes

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin. And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin. I love movies about “The Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies. John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat. The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies. But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.

Celebrating small wins gives them something to repattern our life around.

Instead of trying to accomplish it all – and all at once – and flaring out, the Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

The key is to start small, encourage progress, and celebrate small wins. Here

Always celebrate your wins. Big or small.

If we worship only when things are good, do we really believe God is who he is?

Please celebrate your wins. No matter how small it appears, bask in it and applaud yourself.

Celebrating the small wins is a great way to build confidence and start feeling better about yourself.

Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

It is important to pause to celebrate those victories, no matter how small,' she says, 'because that is what gives you courage to fight the really big battles, the ones you have to fight even though there's no chance of winning.' [Kay Drey on stopping 1 of 2 nuclear reactors from being built]

The Devil wants to hurt us, and if he can't take our lives, he will try to take our peace... I had to choose faith over fear... Joy is found in God and his good plans for me. Looking for the joy takes my focus off all the things that make me anxious. But it wasn't easy then, and it still takes work now.

First, we need to remember that, according to Kelly McGonigal in The Upside of Stress, how we perceive stress is actually the largest determinant of how it affects us. In short: If you think life is challenging you to step up and give your best, you’ll use that energy to do your best and feel energized. If, on the other hand, you think life is threatening you and your well-being, that stress will erode your health and you’ll feel enervated. Part I check in… How are YOU perceiving the stressors in your life? As threats or as challenges? Choose wisely. Now for Part II. In addition to reframing your perspective on stress, here’s a somewhat paradoxical way to alleviate any potential chronic stress: increase your levels of acute, short-term stress. Two ways to do that: physical exercise and short-term projects. For a variety of reasons, engaging in an intense little workout is one of the best ways to mitigate any lingering, chronic stress you may be experiencing. And, remember: If you’re NOT exercising, you’re effectively taking a “Stress Pill” every morning. Not a good idea. Deliberately “stress” your body with a quick, acute bout of physical stress (a.k.a. a workout!) and voilà. You made a dent in your chronic stress. Do that habitually and you might just wipe it out. Then we have short-term projects as a means to mitigate chronic stress. Feeling stressed about something at work (or life)? Get busy on a short-term project with a well-defined, doable near-term goal. Create some opportunities for small wins. Celebrate them. Repeat.

CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESS The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. —Oprah Winfrey How do you know if your scrappy effort was successful? There’s positive movement—cause to celebrate. It either moves your intention forward or you come closer to achieving your goal. You will know it worked because you feel the win, big or small. I’m a huge believer in champagne moments (or celebratory beer, ice cream, night on the town, whatever your preference). You have to celebrate! This journey is supposed to be fun. Stop and take the time to recognize and enjoy the big wins, little wins, and everything in between. Research shows there is bonus value to celebrating. In her article “Getting Results Through Others,” Loraine Kasprzak writes, quoting her coauthor Jean Oursler, “When others have worked hard to achieve the desired results, celebrate it! ‘It’s important to celebrate because our brains need a memorable reference point—also called a reward—to make the whole journey worthwhile.’” Celebrating creates a positive benchmark in your brain for future reference. According to an article in the Journal of Staff Development by Richard DuFour: Ritual and ceremony help us experience the unseen webs of significance that tie a community together. There may be grand ceremonies for special occasions, but organizations [and individuals] also need simple rituals that infuse meaning and purpose into daily routine. Without ritual and ceremony, transitions become incomplete, a clutter of comings and goings. Life becomes an endless set of Wednesdays. An endless set of Wednesdays? Yuck. Who needs that? Whether you are an individual, a small team, or a large organization, celebrate your scrappy wins as part of the experience and enjoy the ride.

Why, he asked, do all of our policing efforts have to be so reactive, so negative, and so after the fact? What if, instead of just focusing on catching criminals—and serving up ever harsher punishments—after they committed the crime, the police devoted significant resources and effort to eliminating criminal behavior before it happens? To quote Tony Blair, what if they could be tough on crime but also tough on the causes of crime?3 Out of these questions came the novel idea for Positive Tickets, a program whereby police, instead of focusing on catching young people perpetrating crimes, would focus on catching youth doing something good—something as simple as throwing litter away in a bin rather than on the ground, wearing a helmet while riding their bike, skateboarding in the designated area, or getting to school on time—and would give them a ticket for positive behavior. The ticket, of course, wouldn’t carry a fine like a parking ticket but instead would be redeemable for some kind of small reward, like free entry to the movies or to an event at a local youth center—wholesome activities that also had the bonus of keeping the young people off the streets and out of trouble. So how well did Richmond’s unconventional effort to reimagine policing work? Amazingly well, as it turned out. It took some time, but they invested in the approach as a long-term strategy, and after a decade the Positive Tickets system had reduced recidivism from 60 percent to 8 percent. You might not think of a police department as a place where you would expect to see Essentialism at work, but in fact Ward’s system of Positive Tickets is a lesson in the practice of effortless execution. The way of the Nonessentialist is to go big on everything: to try to do it all, have it all, fit it all in. The Nonessentialist operates under the false logic that the more he strives, the more he will achieve, but the reality is, the more we reach for the stars, the harder it is to get ourselves off the ground. The way of the Essentialist is different. Instead of trying to accomplish it all—and all at once—and flaring out, the Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

We have traded our intimacy for social media, our romantic bonds for dating matches on apps, our societal truth for the propaganda of corporate interests, our spiritual questioning for dogmatism, our intellectual curiosity for standardized tests and grading, our inner voices for the opinions of celebrities and hustler gurus and politicians, our mindfulness for algorithmic distractions and outrage, our inborn need to belong to communities for ideological bubbles, our trust in scientific evidence for the attractive lies of false leaders, our solitude for public exhibitionism. We have ignored the hunter-gatherer wisdom of our past, obedient now to the myth of progress. But we must remember who we are and where we came from. We are animals born into mystery, looking up at the stars. Uncertain in ourselves, not knowing where we are heading. We exist with the same bodies, the same brains, as Homo sapiens from thousands of years past, roaming on the plains, hunting in forests and by the sea, foraging together in small bands. Except now, our technology is exponentially increasing at a scale that we cannot predict. We are overwhelmed with information; lost in a matrix that we do not understand. Our civilizational “progress” is built on the bones of the indigenous and the poor and the powerless. Our “progress” comes at the expense of our land, and oceans, and air. We are reaching beyond what we can globally sustain. Former empires have perished from their unrestrained greed for more resources. They were limited in past ages by geography and capacity, collapsing in regions, and not over the entire planet. What will be the cost of our progress? We have grown arrogant in our comfort, hardened away from our compassion, believing that our reality is the only reality. Yet even at our most uncertain, there are still those saints who are unknown and nameless, who help even when they do not need to help. They often are not rich, don’t have their profiles written up in magazines, and will never win any prestigious awards. They may have shared their last bit of food while already surviving on so little. They may have cherished the disheartened, shown warmth to the neglected, tended to the diseased and dying, spoken kindly to the hopeless. They do not tremble in silence while the wheels of prejudice crush over their land. Withering what was once fertile into pale death and smoke. They tend to what they love, to what they serve. They help, even when they could fall back into ignorance, even when they could prosper through easy greed, even when they could compromise their values, conforming into groupthink for the illusion of security. They help.

Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating: celebrate every win, no matter how small (example: “Breaking news: we sent 50 jars of peanut butter to the food pantry this week, and there are only 30 of us in worship! God is good!”). Preach using real-life examples of good discipleship and radical welcome amongst the people in your church, to build up their God-esteem and make them feel confident about their faith community and its potential.

Don't let your worship be hindered by your life or what has happened, because your worship is not about you. You're not worshipping because you're worthy; you're worshipping because God's worthy.

Love is this insane cycle of one person breaking to make somebody else whole. Eventually your time comes to give away a really valuable, meaningful piece of yourself. If you surrender yourself to love, there are always going to be times when you're the one being made whole and also times when you're the one breaking. And that's the win. Breaking and being made whole in the name of love is always a win.

I've noticed that when I tell my story, the shame I feel is gone; others, too, feel less ashamed. When you can't share it, the Enemy shames, telling you that you're the only one and something is wrong with you. But when you tell people, it's freeing. It's been so freeing for me to share my struggles and lead others to find help.

I have to trust that when I walk through any battle, it's for a greater purpose. And the other side is going to be so great that God chose to allow me to walk through it. God is good. Our stories are good. And if they ain't good yet, then we still can't give up, because our stories ain't over. And that is a win. Maybe you struggle with fearful thoughts. I'm here to tell you there can be victory. You don't have to live in fear. You don't have to let those fears control you. Find someone you can turn to for help. Root out those negative thoughts before they go deep. There can be joy on the other side of your fears. I know, because I've experienced it.

The gospel has never been about how bad we are. Maybe that's something you grew up learning from church or church people, or, maybe, like me, that's just how you perceived things. The gospel is always about how good God is. Always, always, always. So we shouldn't refrain from asking and seeking and knocking, because he loves us--each of us. And we can trust that what he gives us will be bread, even when it doesn't seem like it at the time. I'm not trying to say we don't need to change our lives. I think every one of us needs to change our lives. But I don't think very many of us can just will ourselves to change... We all have to rely on the goodness of God. He is good. He provides in amazing ways.

I have seen God move in my life in a million different ways, and I've read in Scripture another million ways he has moved and worked, and not one time have I ever seen him change anything for the worse. Never. He always changes things for the better. Always.

My wife Anna and I have tried to apply these ideas to our system of parenting. At one point, we had become concerned with how much screen time had crept into our family. Between television, computers, tablets, and smart phones it had become just too easy for the children to waste time on nonessential entertainment. But our attempts to get them to change these habits, as you can imagine, were met with friction. The children would complain whenever we turned the TV off or tried to limit their “screen time.” And we as the parents had to consciously police the situation, which took us away from doing things that were essential. So we introduced a token system.9 The children were given ten tokens at the beginning of the week. These could each be traded in for either thirty minutes of screen time or fifty cents at the end of the week, adding up to $5 or five hours of screen time a week. If a child read a book for thirty minutes, he or she would earn an additional token, which could also be traded in for screen time or for money. The results were incredible: overnight, screen time went down 90 percent, reading went up by the same amount, and the overall effort we had to put into policing the system went way, way down. In other words, nonessential activity dramatically decreased and essential activity dramatically increased. Once a small amount of initial effort was invested to set up the system, it worked without friction. We can all create systems like this both at home and at work. The key is to start small, encourage progress, and celebrate small wins. Here are a few techniques.

Confident people deposit positive thoughts in their mind each day. They celebrate their small wins and treat themselves with compassion and respect. Naturally, they expect good things to happen. On the other hand, people with low self-esteem bombard their mind with disempowering thoughts. They discard their accomplishments as ‘no big deal’ and fail to recognize their strengths and the positive intent behind their actions. No wonder they feel unworthy. (For more information read section, ‘Not being good enough.’)

We all win differently. No matter how small or big the win is, you won. Celebrate!

Confident people deposit positive thoughts in their mind each day. They celebrate their small wins and treat themselves with compassion and respect. Naturally, they expect good things to happen.

Small wins lead to big victories! Let's celebrate each milestone on our journey to success.

At any given point, your journey through ADHD may be invalidated by people who deny that ADHD is legitimate, or feel like it is overdiagnosed, or feel like medications give an unfair advantage. My wish for them is that they one day realize what a massive accomplishment it is to manage such an impressively busy brain. My wish for you is that you learn to celebrate your small wins. See how far you have come. Soak and revel in achieving what other people had deemed impossible for you.

Small wins lead to a big mindset shift - from 'I can't' to 'I can'. Celebrate them all.

Look around—there are things in your life today that you dreamed about a month or even years ago. Take a moment to spot them & throw yourself a mini party for those wins, big & small. You’re living the dream—literally! Whether it's finally scoring that fancy coffee machine or crushing it at work, celebrate every victory. Those tiny triumphs stack up, turning your life into a highlight reel of awesome. So, give yourself a high-five and maybe even a happy dance—you’ve totally earned it!

Remember to celebrate your wins...no matter how small!

You have to celebrate the small wins as well.

Waiting for things to happen is like daydreaming. To break out of that cycle, you must be willing to take the first small step.

Success is achieved by the deliberate consistent discipline of taking small steps daily rather than one large step occasionally.

To become successful you have to dream big. Small dreams don’t have the magic to stir up passion and greatness within you.

Small wins and major victories are important because they encourage and inspire you to keep your faith and stay the course even when everything around you seems to be falling apart.

Harvard professor Teresa Amabile concurs. After examining 12,000 daily diary entries by several hundred workers, she found that the single largest motivator was making progress in meaningful work.16 Wins needn’t be large to be meaningful. When you enter a new role, set up small “high-probability” targets and celebrate when you hit them.

If you are stressed Set small goals Hour after hour Day after day Celebrate the small wins As if there were no tomorrow

what I don’t recommend is convincing yourself that it’s necessary to master a skill in the next month. This will only lead to frustration and burnout when you don’t see instant results. Instead, it’s better to focus on daily effort and celebrate those small wins as you work your way through the process. You

If you are serious about achieving your desired goals, be willing to let go of the small pleasures found in the moment that may sabotage your chances of experiencing true pleasure when the sacrifice is paid.

Happiness is all about celebrating small wins

If they don’t celebrate with you in your small wins, then they certainly don’t deserve the benefits of your BIG wins.

But that’s the nice thing about lawyers: as long as you’re paying them, they’re usually good with whatever terms go along with it. Compartmentalization is their job. It’s how they represent people who are guilty, how they file long motions they know are unlikely to be successful, how they can patiently keep secrets that they’d otherwise love to be able to share. Harder was nearly twenty years into his legal career when he was first approached. Though he often worked on celebrity cases they tended to be for routine matters, not exciting criminal proceedings or blockbuster cases, and when you’re retained to enforce rights of privacy and publicity on behalf of your clients, it tends to follow that they don’t want you grandstanding in the media on their behalf, building a profile as you work for them. His last appearance in the New York Times had been in 2001, about a case for a client who had been let go from an ad firm almost immediately after she left her new job to join it. Harder won two months’ back pay. It’s not exactly the kind of victory that marked the career of lawyers like Marty Singer, whom Harder had once worked for, and whom the Times had called the “Guard Dog to the Stars.” A lawyer who had publicly fought cases over celebrity sex tapes, who tangled with Gawker once on behalf of Rebecca Gayheart and the actor Eric Dane when their tape had run on Gawker and managed to eke out a small settlement, without an admission of guilt. So why not hire Singer? Because Peter Thiel and Mr. A didn’t want someone who was content to settle, or another lawyer who knew the standard Hollywood saber-rattling routine. They wanted someone who would win. Now, in mid-2012, they appear to have that man.

The pattern of many connections within one tight community, punctuated by occasional ties to distant communities, describes a vast range of systems. Neurons in the brain mostly connect within one cluster, but occasionally their axons extend far outside, to an entirely different cluster. Proteins in a cell mostly interact within one functional group, but occasionally they connect with receptors far removed. Sites on the internet mostly connect within one tight group (celebrity news sites link to other celebrity news sites; biology sites link to other biology sites), but occasionally a site will connect far outside its cluster (TMZ will link to a study on neuroscience). The Kevin Bacon game had shown that there are surprisingly few steps between any two nodes (actors) in these kinds of networks. So Watts and Strogatz called a system with mostly local connections but occasional distant ties a “small-world network.