Celebrating Small Victories

Posted by Melanie Axman in Career & Personal Development | 2 comments

Small victories are the less touted wins and achievements that are crucial to our overarching accomplishments. Often unheralded building blocks to our success, small victories are easily forgotten and rarely acknowledged, but incredibly important to celebrate. Sometimes we are so focused on the big picture or the feats of other people, we forget to notice these daily battles against obstacles that may seem inconsequential.

Understanding and celebrating minor wins is an important part of our career growth and development. These humble breakthroughs are the foundations to major victories, allowing us to continuously build upwards to reach our larger goals. Here are 2 things to remember about small victories:

They motivate: It’s easy to rejoice the pay raises, promotions and deals closing.  However, crucial components of each of these are the more humble snippets of excellence that built our confidence for bigger challenges. These less-glamorous milestones kept pushing us forward through the grunt work, the mundane, and the long, cold days of frustration, failure and career defeat.

When we recognize our small victories, we are choosing to focus on the immediate path ahead and celebrate every step forward, instead of glancing at the horizon and fretting at the distance we have yet to cover. The mini-challenges we tackle and win, improve us by minuscule, but crucially important degrees. It’s the smaller victories: great conversations, happy customers, and successful connections with colleagues that slowly get us to these larger goals.

They reflect your unique journey: Our small victories are threatened by comparisons: to the success, wealth and achievements of others. We can’t compare the middle of our journey to someone else’s end. When we see the accomplishments of new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, it can be easy to become discouraged or scoff at our less-than-sensational triumphs.

The definition of ‘success’ in the eyes of our society also seems to lessen the sweetness of our small victories, as what was previously considered phenomenal, has now become routine. Average citizens are pushing their bodies to the extreme regularly, the Internet is churning out younger millionaires at an astounding rate, and the bar of greatness is being raised regularly.

When we look at the success of others, we imagine geniuses with an easy journey straight to the top. What we have to remember is that each of these incredible success stories are filled with defeats, failure, and small, but critical victories. Despite the fact that nothing we produce is fully original, our journeys and perspectives certainly are. We have our own rewards to reap, and our distinctive successes (no how small) deserve our recognition as well.

For me to focus on my own small victories, I have to concentrate on the present, rather than the future. My small victories come in a variety of packages: perhaps it’s a few more people visiting my blog, or a celebrity quietly buying one of my husband’s stands.

For you, maybe your mini-victory comes in the form of finally updating your resume, or filing that pile of papers on your desk. Perhaps you cleaned out your inbox, or took the stairs instead of the escalator. A small victory could even mean choosing self-preservation, taking things a little slower, or being a bit nicer to yourself. Whatever your small victory, acknowledge and celebrate that you have accomplished it.  Doing so, ensures you are already successful.