Frustrated by Your Progress? Write a Wins List Every Day.
I journal every morning and every night. I’ve gone into morning pages before and about my evening routine that includes praying, meditation, mantras, and journaling. In my nightly journaling practice, I’ve added in a Wins List to help me celebrate myself and my hard work.
I started doing this because I was getting down on myself about the slow-moving progress of my goals. Am I doing enough to move the needle forward in any of my goals?
It’s difficult to gauge your progress on huge goals since getting to big goals takes many steps. To dispel the anxiety I am not working hard enough, I started writing out my wins.
I’m in an MBA program right now. It’s only my third week. If I look at all the classes I need to take and pass, I can get anxious. But if I focus on the class I am in right now and celebrate my little wins as the semester goes on, I start to feel much better about my overall progress towards graduation.
Whenever I turn in a paper, I count that as a win. Whenever I finish reading a chapter, it’s a win. At one assignment and one test at a time, I’m moving the needle forward by a tiny bit. The needle moves one millimeter at a time; if I don’t stop to take note of it, I might not celebrate it. Celebrating is crucial to keep my positivity up while I am climbing to reach lofty goals.
My Wins List includes wins that may not have anything to do with any of my goals. These wins remind me of how wonderful my current life is. Will my life be better one day when I’ve finished grad school or when the memoir I’m writing is published? Yes! But my life right now in this moment is also spectacular. Yours is, too. But you have to stop and look for all the ways it is.
For example, I love the beach. Whenever my daughter and I go to the beach, that night I write “beach” as a win. Back in the days of when I was an ICU RN, I worked 5 to 6 12 hour shifts a week. I never had the time or energy to go the beach. On the surface, going to the beach looks small and inconsequential, but when I look deeper, going to the beach is a win to celebrate. It means my life has improved from working overtime in the hospital so much and then being too tired to enjoy living so close to the beach.
To keep un upbeat attitude about my goals and life in general, celebrating wins big and small keeps me motivated. I’ve got quite a few classes to take before I finish the MBA program and twelve more chapters to write of my memoir. If I waited to celebrate until the very end, I might lose confidence and get stressed out about how much work it will all take.
Keep in mind: your lists of wins are personal to what is going on in your life. For example, when my daughter was sick in the ICU, if I had written out wins back then, I would have written “brushed my teeth” as a win whenever I did brush my teeth, which was not consistently. If you are at a place in your life, where you are overwhelmed, this is where writing wins can really help. Any little thing that you do can be a win: brushing teeth, drinking water, getting out of bed, talking to a friend, or going outside.
Wins are not always big award ceremonies with confetti and trophies, they can be tiny moments of peace where you celebrate yourself.
