With Christmas and New Year just around the corner, for those of us who are fortunate enough, this means that it’s time to celebrate! While good food and good company are always cause for celebration, this festive season we thought that we would shed some light on how we can celebrate ourselves. That is, celebrating our own small wins, successes and achievements and how that can positively contribute to our overall levels of motivation and wellbeing.
Here are some helpful tips on how you can reflect on and recognise your own small wins:
Create an achievements diary/log
Recording your progress and reflecting on your small wins has been shown to help you to appreciate your achievements, which in turn increases your sense of confidence and motivation. You might like to record your progress daily, weekly or monthly. Recording could be in the form of mediums like writing in a diary, using an app on your phone or recording a video log. This is a personal process and one which is designed to enable you to revisit, reflect and appreciate all of your small wins resulting in a happier and more motivated you.
Reward yourself
Reward yourself for meeting goals or milestones. This can help to motivate and encourage you to work hard towards your goals while also reinforcing that you have achieved something of personal significance. Rewarding yourself also plays an important role in forming positive habits as it allows you to feel a sense of self control or command.
Just like your goals and milestones, rewards could be as big or small as you like. Again, this is a personal process so your idea of a reward may be different to that of others.
Communicate your small wins
Being able to communicate your small wins to someone that is close to you and who cares about you is a great way to share your achievements while helping you to further build your confidence and levels of motivation. Your achievements may even motivate the other person to reach their own goals also.
These are just three ways in which you can celebrate yourself. By taking the time to reflect on and appreciate your small wins (personal, professional or otherwise), you are setting yourself up for future success in achieving your goals, both large and small. So, this festive season, take some time to reflect on the little things (and the big!) that you have achieved that are important to you. Celebrate yourself. You deserve it.