55. The Power of Small Wins

When you only focus, and when your mind is only trained to focus on the big moments, we lose sight of the little steps, the small wins the small victories, they seem unimportant to us, they become so unimportant that we forget to do them. Hi, I'm Jay, a certified life coach and former educator who believes that rediscovering ourselves takes just a little bit of courage. This show is focused on helping you develop the mindset and the courage to regain your confidence to redefine yourself and to reimagine your life. One episode at a time. Hello, my positivity posse. Welcome to another episode of positivity on fire. Wherever you're listening from today, whatever you're doing where ever you are, thank you so much for being here. Today, Episode 55, we're going to get into a little bit of the power of small wins. Now recently, I have been watching a show called The Good Place I don't know if you know it or not the good place stars Kristen Bell and Ted Danson. And if you're familiar with it, great. But I'm going to give us a little bit of background about it. Long story short, Kristen Bell's character, Eleanor shell strop, she basically finds herself in the afterlife, she's both relieved and a little bit surprised that she's made it to a place called The Good Place. But it takes her not very long to realize that she's she's there by mistake. All right. And so she kind of just kind of floats around from Ted Danson, his character, Miko who is kind of the architect of the place. And as she's starting to, like get to know her neighbors who are kind of they seem to be these perfect neighbors. She realizes perhaps, you know, maybe it's never too late to change. And so with the help of of her new friends in this new neighborhood, she really becomes determined to kind of shed her old way of life and in hopes of perhaps discovering a new way of life. And it's I love the show, it talks a little about her philosophy. And that's not what this show is about today. But that the tenant of the show is, as Michael is trying to work through his role as architect, he sees that things aren't going well. And he keeps rebooting the afterlife for these folks for the character. So basically, they go, they get to a certain point. And then he sends them back to square one. And I started thinking about this a little bit like so of Kristen Bell's character is focused on trying to become a better person, she gets to a certain point, there's a pivot, they get reset, and she has to start all over again. And I thought, gosh, what isn't that a perfect example of what it's like, when we're trying to make a big change in our life, when we're trying to become better at anything, whatever it is better with money, better with how we eat better with our relationships, you name it, right? Whenever we have these large goals, large changes that we want to change in our lives, there's always going to be this moment, we get to a certain point and we get reset, we get bumped back. And so today, I thought, well, let's chat a little bit about the power of small wins. So the power of some small wins is that every single large achievement that anybody in the history of the world has, has achieved. Right? Big achievements, large achievements come from small wins, tiny wins over and over and over and over again. As I started to think about this a little bit, I realized that we get too focused on the big achievement, like the large victory, whatever it may be, because that's what we see. Others do. We see it in social media all the time we see it in our connections, we don't see all the work that goes into it. Right? We don't see the work. We don't see the small wins, all we see is people sharing their big win, for example, right? I know a lot of people, there's a love hate relationship with the game Wordle all we see is like people posting on social, the end results. Okay, but if they got to two or three, we don't know how long it took them in the back end to get there. They may have sheets and sheets of paper trying to figure out what that word is. And then all we see is the end result. And that's true of life, right? In social. We see all these big changes. Oh, I've done this. I've done this. We see these snippets, but we don't know all the work that's gone in. We don't know all the work that's gone into it at all. And I'm not discounting that big wins. They're beautiful. They're gorgeous. They're amazing. People should savor the large victories, the big wins. It's the right thing to do. But when you only focus and win your mind There's only trained to focus on the big moments, we lose sight of the little steps, the small wins the small victories, they seem unimportant to us. Sometimes they become so unimportant, that we forget to do them, we forget to celebrate them, we forget to embrace the small wins, because that's what it takes, right? The small wins. That's what leads to the big breakthroughs. That's what leads to the large victories, these tiny little micro successes have the power. And I'll I'll change that word have, they are the power behind the potential to have incredibly impactful changes in our lives. But we have to let them in and we have to celebrate them. Okay, so here's an example from my own life, maybe this will help you. So as as you all know, life coach, I'm on the journey, I've been doing this. And I went through a program, and I got a certified in being a personal and an executive coach. And the program taught me a lot about how to actually coach people. What it didn't do is teach me how to build a business. Okay. And so I had to go and find another program to really help me figure out how to build a business. And so I find I found another goats program, Daisy Bayman. And she teaches life coaches how to actually market and sell coaching. And that's so just, you know, this is not what this conversation is about. But what it is, is like, if I wanted to make a business and make X amount of money, and my goal might be whatever the end result is, that's the larger achievement. Okay, program says, you get there by doing all these small little wins a client at a time, a client at a time, a client at a time, and that you need to celebrate the client at a time. So whatever it is that you may be working on, so that's the example for me. But whatever you may be working on, is that you celebrate the small wins, right? It's how you show up every single day that it is important. And if you forget to celebrate the small wins, if you forget to take the time to celebrate the good things in your life, if you forget to keep track of it, then you get stuck, you get stuck in this pattern of not knowing how to move forward, you don't realize or understand what the what it is that the work takes to get there. Okay, you get frustrated, you get disappointed, you get lost, and then you become unsure of what the next step is. Listen, life is not a series of big win after big win after big win after big win. Close together. That's just not how life works. And it gives us ton of motivation when it happens. But we always forget about the baby steps in between to get what, what what it took to get us there. And here's another way to look at it. Okay, there are lots of apps out there that want to keep you involved in being there. Okay, so the idea behind that, right are lots of lots of small wins within the app to keep you on for longer. Okay, so it builds a habit now, whether you believe, you know, whether you like apps, you you like what they do or not do if you use them, whatever it may be like, I'm not here to talk about that particular thing. But what it brings up is that a lot of us know Jerry Seinfeld, right. So the way that he went about writing material was that he would have a calendar, up in his in his house, it was like the entire year, one page. And on any day that he created content, good, bad, otherwise, as long as he was creative, he drew an X through the day. Okay, so that he could see it. And after a while, when you see kind of a chain building up of meeting a small goal every single day, and you see it on a calendar on a piece of paper, you see the red X, you see chain after chain, your red X right after red X after red x, it builds something in your head that makes you realize that you are having these small wins, good or bad. Right? progress is progress. We try and we fail. But every single day we try something new. Okay? And it's no different in building towards any goal. It's the small wins that matter. We need to focus on them. We need to see them. Recently, I was sharing with some folks on one of my social media lives, about keeping track of our happiness. person said to me, I really am not a happy person. I can't find the positives in my life. And I shared with them I said listen, every single day it could be the Worst crappiest day of your life, you can find something that made you smile, something tiny, doesn't have to be big. Again, we're talking about the small wins. And if you use a hat or a mason jar, I'm pretty sure I've talked about this on the show before. If you take those small wins, take that one piece of happiness you found in that given day, and put it in a jar, and then did it the next day, and the next day, and then use a calendar to track. So we're going to use these two tools, you've got the calendar, just like Jerry Seinfeld was with with creating his content, he could see it and he could visualize it, you can see the red X, you're doing the same thing, you've got a calendar, one page, you've got a red X, every single day that you put a note into the jar of something that made you happy that day, something that brought you joy, something that was positive, even on your worst, crappiest days, you see the chango, you see that the pieces of paper, the scrap paper, the post it notes, whatever it may be in your jar, get bigger and bigger and bigger. And then on your birthday, you dump out all the pieces of paper, and you read through them. You read through the bits, the tiny small pieces of happiness that came out on any given day, the small pieces of joy, the small pieces of positivity that you found in your life that day. That is the best frickin birthday gift you could ever give yourself. And it's not about a big achievement. It's not about doing something large, it's not a huge victory. In the moment, it's all tiny, small wins, that on your birthday become this huge gift, a huge victory for you. Think about the power of that. The power of being able to see the end results of a years worth of work, of sticking to a task of taking the time to find something small in every single day that culminates in probably the best birthday present you'll have ever been given, let alone by yourself. So I'm not saying don't set your sights high. Don't Don't be afraid to set large goals. But also know that when you set large goals, it's the small wins that matter. You got to stop overlooking the small wins. And you have to celebrate them celebrate every single small victory, every single small win, because the combination of those will change your life. And they'll turn into large victories and big victories, and I get it, I get it, when you start to do something. It's hard for us to keep going. It's hard to keep going when we don't see a sense of progress. If we don't see better relationships happening if we don't see us losing weight, because that's what we want to do. If we don't see us getting out of debt or saving money. We were looking for the big picture. And it's hard to keep going I get that 100% Right, you lose the will to act, when you cannot sense any forward progress. But going back to the example of the happiness jar, like when you encourage yourself to point out the small victories, the micro progress in yourself, the motivation is restored. It is it just happens. That's how our brain works. Your confidence starts to surge. And ultimately, you have the likelihood of achieving more success. And I know it sounds simple. I know that it sounds easy. And all it takes is seeing something every single day on a piece of paper, tracking your progress a little at a time. And really working towards large goals by just breaking them down, breaking them down and making them into tiny, tiny, tiny micro tasks. So my advice to you today, my friends is small wins matter. They matter more than big achievements. Small wins happen every single day. We just need to keep an eye out for them. We need to stop overlooking them. We need to start noticing them and you need to start celebrating the tiny baby steps. Because that is what propels you forward. It was what pushes you forward. It's what makes a difference is what helps you gain confidence. Making change in your life is all about being a confident person. And confidence is not something that you either have or you don't Have, it's something that you build. It's a learned behavior based upon paying attention to those small victories, the small wins the micro gains, because ultimately, that's what leads to the end result of making change in your life. Oh, and before I let you go, my friends, Don't pressure yourself. Don't put deadlines on your large goals, your large victories, be flexible. Allow yourself some patience and grace. Doing so will lead to more happiness and more motivation, because you're focused on the small daily gains and wins. So don't beat yourself up. If you're not making the progress that you think you should be making in any given time. Don't do that to yourself. Make a promise to yourself right now. Make a promise to me. Let me hold you accountable. Let me help you say to yourself, I am going to cherish the small victories in my life every single day. And then report back and let me know. How has that made big change in your life over time? I want to know, drop me a line. Jason at positivity on fire.com. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to know what your progress is. And as we wrap up this show, thank you, my friends for being here. Your gift of time does mean the world to me. Keep doing the work. And until next time, be well be happy be you and may your quest for positivity. Begin today. A positivity posse. If you're ready to coach yourself, I invite you to download my free workbook. Seven Steps to regain, redefine and reimagine your life. Head over to www dot Jason ramsden.com backslash my dash links and click on the download link at the top of the page. It's that simple. And hey, if you're interested in working with me as your own personal life coach, visit Jason ramsden.com and click Get Started in the upper right hand corner of the screen. I hope to talk to you soon. Until then have an amazing day. Positivity on fire is a production of impact one media LLC. All rights reserved.