Motivation
5 Ways to Count Your Wins So You Can Actually Make Progress
We’re all used to improving by confronting our losses — don’t miss the importance of noting your wins!
Each Friday, I coach a small group of successful entrepreneurs. Although I don’t inquire about their shortcomings, they tend to give me a litany of their mistakes, losses, weaknesses, failures, errors, and omissions. I listen, but I also ask them to count their wins. I’d be the first to say that learning from our mistakes is a way of using feedback to help us grow ourselves or grow our businesses. However, focusing on our mistakes to the extent that we overlook our wins is counterproductive.
Dr. Amitabh Talwar identifies nine different reasons why it’s important to acknowledge our wins. I elicit the “wins” because it helps us to:
- Gain momentum.
- Establish a positive framework.
- Develop an unwavering belief in ourselves.
- Peruse a library of evidence that we can do “it.”
- Recognize milestones on our journey.
- Reflect on processes that have increased successful outcomes.
- Combat burnout and stress.
- Become inspired by a positive feedback loop.
- Crush the fear that we might become complacent.
When I ask these entrepreneurs about their wins, it’s not unusual for someone to say, “Um, no. I didn’t have any wins this week.” I’m quick to say, “I think you mean you didn’t achieve your Big 3 goals this week. But not all wins are related to your Big 3. If you won the Powerball this week, do you think that would count as a win?” Then we all help the person who is having trouble identifying some wins.
At some point, I realized that people have trouble facing a blank page. So, I decided to create a little springboard to help them — and now you and me — to identify wins.
By and large, wins fall into five different categories. Think about what happened in each of these categories and see if you can come up with some of your recent wins.
1. Experiences
Experiences include anything that made an impact on you. These might be everyday experiences that take an unplanned or unexpected positive turn, such as:
- An unexpected prize, e.g., extra days off, winning a raffle, a bingo game, or winning the Powerball. Even getting a gift card for opening a new bank account can count as a win.
- An experience that delights your senses — fragrant flowers, a massage, a delicious meal, a magnificent sunset, your favorite song from yesteryear, or anything else that is pleasing to your senses.
- A somewhat rare or unusual experience, such as taking a helicopter ride over the Hawaiian Islands. (Yes, it’s fabulous!)
But those experiences don’t need to be lifechanging! Here are some of my recent experience-based wins:
- I pulled into my attached garage about 30 seconds before a big cloudburst.
- I saw several hot air balloons drifting over my house.
- A car was just pulling out of a parking spot nearest to the grocery store.
- A customer service rep resolved a sticky billing issue.
- I guessed at something — and was right.
- I bought the last red onion on the store shelf.
- I woke up hearing the birds singing outside.
- I got a compliment on my appearance from a stranger in the grocery store.
Noticing these sometimes-small moments of joy can help you count your wins.
2. Growth
Growth might be financial growth. Perhaps you’ve just made the first sale of your first online product, or you’ve achieved your revenue goal for the quarter.
Growth might be intellectual growth. Did you read a book or listen to a podcast that had a meaningful message for you? Have you struggled with implementing OKRs and figured out how to avoid those mistakes in the future? Did you pick up some tip or strategy you can implement right away? Or maybe something much simpler.
Today, I learned:
- How to massage the affected hand of a person who has had a stroke.
- How to get my iPhone to automatically switch to different wallpaper if I’m using the “focus” mode.
- That chicken base is not the same as chicken broth or chicken stock.
- That hot air balloons can rise over 69,000 feet. (Past the legal limit, but…)
- That high protein hair conditioners aren’t necessarily good for dry but untreated hair.
These may seem insignificant, but these wins might have helped someone to avoid a muscle contracture, alleviated my angst about whether I’m in focus mode or not, saved money by not buying the wrong cooking or haircare product, and gotten a good chuckle out of realizing that hot air balloons can fly higher than the cruising altitude of most commercial aircraft! I’d say those are wins!
Growth might be self-reflection that helps you to become more self-aware, more honest with yourself, or more accountable to yourself, your family, or your colleagues. Acquiring the skill and having the opportunity to gain some new insight about yourself is definitely a win. (And, by the way, I highly recommend journaling as a form of self-reflection!)
Growth might be beating a bad habit. An entrepreneur in my small group has recently snuffed out a bad habit: playing games on her phone multiple times a day. Not something we’d usually classify as addictive, but it was negatively impacting her productivity. Hence, giving up a habit enabled her to grow in productivity.
Growth might be installing a good habit or having a “streak” of continuing that good habit for a specific number of days. Growth doesn’t need be big to be significant: look at how much you can benefit from getting just 1% better each day.
Noticing the growth you’ve made and encouraging more is one of the benefits you reap when you count your wins.
3. Milestones
Life event milestones might include having a birthday or an anniversary. They might also be reaching the age of majority, getting engaged, or having a baby.
An individual milestone might be something like losing two pounds, running a 5K marathon, getting accepted at a college, getting your mortgage application approved, or successfully signing up for Medicare.
Milestones aren’t necessarily the same as reaching a destination (your goal). Like mile markers along the highway, these are just signposts that we’re making progress towards the destination. Such milestones could be related to your personal life, your projects, or your overall business plan.
Here are some of my milestones from this week:
- I drafted a post for next week’s blog.
- I drafted a white paper for a medical device company.
- I outlined the components of a course I want to offer.
- I noted progress on my business’s 2nd quarter objectives and key results.
- I packed the car for an upcoming trip.
- I arranged pickup for clutter to be donated from an elderly relative’s house.
- I scheduled my 6-month dental cleaning.
As you can see, I didn’t reach my destination in any of those examples, but seeing those signposts helps me to gain momentum and become inspired to keep plugging along.
4. Breakthroughs
Breakthroughs are often what you’ll think of first when you count your wins. What’s a breakthrough? Merriam-Webster definitions include:
- a sudden advance especially in knowledge or technique or a medical breakthrough,
- a person’s first notable success, and
- an act or instance of moving through or beyond an obstacle.
So, what might have recently happened that you’d consider a breakthrough? They don’t need to be earth-shattering. How about these:
- You discovered the answer to a problem you’ve been wrestling with.
- You had an “aha!” moment for something you’d like to do or pursue.
- A client you’ve been courting for months finally signed a big contract.
- You found a lost possession you started hunting for years ago.
- You solved a crossword puzzle faster than you’ve ever done before.
5. Relationships
As John Donne observed, no man is an island. We all are interconnected to one another. As a labor/delivery nurse who has seen hundreds of births, I can confirm that all humans are born weak and vulnerable, and almost immediately reach out for connection to another human. I’ve also seen that many older adults have the gift of being surrounded by their loved ones in their last moments before death. I urge you not to ignore that interconnectedness when you count your wins.
It’s easy to assume that we’ll always have the people in our lives there for us tomorrow. But as I said in a recent post, people in our lives can be here today and gone tomorrow. Here are some of my recent wins:
- Having dinner with my now-deceased college friend’s husband and sister.
- Having a quiet chat with my sister, sitting next to the Erie Canal for a few hours on a beautiful evening watching the boats, ducks, etc., go by.
- Waking up and seeing that my husband had the coffee maker all set to go. (Even though he’s not a coffee drinker!)
- Receiving a text from a friend within about one minute of when I started thinking about her.
- Receiving a card from a university student I taught more than 30 years ago.
- Having lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.
- Making a surprise find: a love letter from my husband from about 35 years ago.
- Finding a photo I’d never seen before of my mother as a teenager.
- Finding my father’s class ring in my elderly relative’s house.
It’s easy to get so focused with your professional life that you think of your personal life as just an “extra,” but these relationship wins are absolutely worth celebrating when you count your wins. What are some recent wins with the people you know or love?
Other Wins
Counting your wins is not so much about magnitude, the expectation, or the type of the wins. It’s more about what gave you joy. You might have “wins” that don’t fall into any of these categories, but I hope this is enough to get you started thinking about where your “wins” are — especially the ones that might not feel obvious if you’re not used to thinking of them this way!
In the Gap and the Gain, Sullivan and Hardy tell us to stay focused on the gains; otherwise, we get stuck in the gaps. So try to jot down 3 of your big wins every night in a journal. You might be surprised to see how much better you sleep.
What wins have you had recently? Share your wins, no matter how big or small, in the comments below!
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