I am currently on a diet. Not because I want to be super skinny, but because during some unrelated health issues, healthy eating took a backseat and I need to rebuild my previous good habits.
As everyone knows, the key to a successful diet is to not expect miracles overnight and to celebrate the smaller milestones on the way to the ultimate goal.
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So while I still have a long way to go, I made sure that I celebrated today when the scale told me I’d lost 10 pounds so far.
I celebrated by using my “cheat day” to buy some of the gourmet donuts everyone in town has been raving about. (Rightly, it turns out. Yum!)
Of course, I only made that choice because I know that I can bounce back to dieting pretty easily.
For some people, even a cheat day makes it too easy to break out of the good habits, and that’s okay. Instead of a food reward, you could buy yourself something you want, like a piece of clothing from a store that you love, but isn’t as frugal as you prefer.
The point is that if you only allow yourself to celebrate the final, biggest wins, then you may never try for greatness.
Depending on your final goal, 10 pounds may be a minor milestone, but if you don’t let yourself celebrate those small wins, then you’re never going to make it through the drudgery required to meet your goal weight months or even years from now.
And that applies to every goal you may have.
Want to become a musician? Then you’re going to be practicing a lot of scales and you may as well reward yourself when you master a certain melody, because it’ll be a long time before you can play a symphony.
Be proud of yourself, even for those small, silly accomplishments, because even baby steps move you forward.
