3 Categories of Accomplishments That You’re Probably Overlooking

Do you ever find that you get caught up in the rush of life that you fail to fully process what transpired during a day or a week?

If so, you’re not alone. Life can move so fast that we fail to stop and celebrate our wins.

Thanks to negativity bias, we tend to remember the negative moments most clearly: the big misses, the setbacks.

We are less likely to remember the wins and the accomplishments. This is unfortunate because celebrating our wins helps us generate positive momentum.

I’ve noticed in myself and my clients how easy it is to dismiss those or take them for granted.

Sometimes progress doesn’t look like what we expect it to look like. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s easy to overlook your wins.

Here are three types of wins you’re probably missing out on celebrating.

(1) “Baby Steps”

Sometimes we might dismiss our accomplishments by derisively calling something a “baby step.”

It’s easy to take our progress for granted. If you tend to do this, remember a few things:

• That baby step might have required heavy emotional labor. Sometimes a small outward step is a result of doing some big inner work.
• The big wins are comprised of little wins. Without the baby steps you won’t get to the bigger steps.
• When babies start to walk, we make a big fuss over even their smallest steps. Baby steps are a big deal.

(2) Things You Didn’t Do

Often we can get in our own way by taking on responsibility to do things that we don’t really need to do. Not everything on your “to-do list” needs to get done. When you refrain from doing something you know you don’t need to do, that’s a win.

Or, maybe the thing you didn’t do relates to your inner work. Perhaps you didn’t lose your temper when you go angry. Or you didn’t interrupt someone when they were speaking.

The more we can bring awareness to these moments and celebrate them, the easier it is to catch ourselves the next time.

(3) Things You Stopped Doing

This category is slightly different from the one above. Here we’re talking about breaking habits or letting go of things you do consistently that no longer serve you.

Don’t underestimate the difficulty of breaking habits. It’s far more complex than creating habits, because you must first be aware of the habit before you can stop doing it.

The other sub-category here is things you do consciously that are no longer serving you. Maybe it’s a standing weekly meeting that you stopped attending, or a practice that is no longer serving its original intention. Or maybe it’s a project that wasn’t going anywhere that you decided to quit.

Other I’ll admit: I’m slow to let go of things that no longer serve me. Quitting something can feel like failing.

Not every project is meant to continue forever. When we can let go of something that is no longer serving us, it’s a win.