Celebrate a Milestone

Remember to praise and reward yourself after completing a tiny task.

How often do you remember to tell yourself how great you are after completing or achieving something?

How about rewarding yourself for reaching a small but important milestone?

You might snigger at me. A reward for a small milestone? A reward without completing a task? That sounds like the self-congratulatory hooray of a loser.

But no. When we celebrate even tiny wins, we are not being losers. We are being respectful of our abilities and remembering that every project is a lengthy journey.

I always forget about celebrating tiny milestones even though I know how good self-reward is for our well-being. We won’t get very far in life by berating ourselves or waiting to throw ourselves over the finish line before telling ourselves: “Good work, old chap”. But that’s exactly what we do most of the time. We almost never acknowledge small wins. And we rarely miss an opportunity for a quick self-criticism.

How about we flip it and choose self-reward instead of self-criticism?

Instead of saying to ourselves: “Oh, you’ve only one day in, there are 20 more to go before you finish X.” We say: “Yay! One day is done! Good Job. Only 20 to go.”