Celebrate the hell out of your small wins

Each Monday we take our favorite day of the week as an opportunity to whip up a tasty dish of weekly motivation. Order up!

On Saturday afternoon, Dave and I were driving in his car to pick up a friend who had just been in a car accident (he was fine) before we met up with Bo. As Dave stopped to pump gas, I took out my phone. As we were pulling out of the gas station, I was still on my phone because those sons of bitches are addicting and I’m still working on trying to be more present.

I stopped at a Facebook post and let out a yell of excitement that I haven’t let out in a long time. “BROOOOOO!!!” (Exact quote.)

One of our earliest subscribers and biggest supporters had announced that she was starting a blog and Instagram account about her love for fitness and baking, Quads and Cookies.

I was hyped. I dropped F-bombs. I grabbed Dave and shook him while he was driving. I celebrated the hell out of that small win.

And this was a small win, for sure. I have no idea how long she has been planning to do this and no idea how much of an impact reading The Hum had on her decision to start her website but, in that moment, I didn’t care one bit. This was part of the reason we started The Hum — to inspire more people to take on life outside the 9 to 5. We saw this actually happen in real time.

Reflecting on that moment, I realize that I normally suck at celebrating the small wins. And I think a lot of us do.

I have always been jealous of professional athletes for more than the obvious reasons. I have been jealous because of the passion they exhibit every day of their lives doing a job they love.

Just look at this.

And this.

And this.

And these celebrations are not only saved for championship moments. These reactions come after routine plays, too. A cornerback breaks up a pass and you would think he won the lottery. A point guard hits a three-pointer and you would think his wife just told him she was pregnant.

I want all of us to celebrate small wins in life like pro athletes do in theirs. Finish a project at work on-time and on-budget? Jump up on your desk and scream, “This is my house!” over and over again. Send a really well-crafted email? Fist pump like you just sank a birdie on the 18th green at The Masters. Finally make that key sale? Chest bump your co-founder so hard they almost fall over.

Yes, this is over the top. I understand sports are carried out with more raw emotion than our normal day-to-day routines. But do they have to be?

My point is that professional athletes are really good at celebrating the small wins. The rest of us are really good at celebrating the big wins. And we really suck at celebrating the small ones.

We live in an uber-connected world, which has the often negative impact of making it all too easy for us to live our lives comparing them to everyone else’s, keeping some sort of mental score that doesn’t really exist. Have a really good first date? There is one of your friends getting engaged. Start a company? You can read 12,000 stories covering the next Silicon Valley unicorn.

Having such easy access to everyone’s big wins makes it really easy to start thinking they happen all the time and that, if we haven’t had any for a while, we are doing something wrong.

I want to invite you to celebrate the hell out of your small wins because we just don’t know how many big ones we are going to get. A lot of times our small wins that may seem trivial to others are actually critically important to us. If we don’t make an effort to celebrate them, we are no longer enjoying the journey. No longer loving the process.

Some things to try.

If you are a journaler (highly recommended) start including two things you are proud of yourself for accomplishing at the end of each day with each entry.

As Tim Ferriss suggests, make a “jar of awesome” full of small wins that you can go back and visit later on when you’re having a rough day.

Write down everything you accomplished in the last month and challenge yourself to think smaller and smaller until you reach 50 wins.

Most importantly, take the time to enjoy the hell out of your small wins. It will make you that much better at celebrating the big wins. And it will help you enjoy the journey and fall in love with the process instead of always focusing on the destination and barely stopping to take notice when you get there. We should strive to be as passionate about the path as we are about the results.

We have no idea if The Hum is going to be successful. If we will reach 100,000 subscribers or even 10,000. If we will be profitable.

But, no matter what happens, we will always have that moment in the car of me annoying the hell out of Dave — of treating a small win like the biggest win in the world.

Celebrate the hell out of your small wins.