With the new year approaching fast, we must understand what we can accomplish in life. Though we live in a world of limited possibilities, many people will choose not to take action due to some form of a limited mind. When people are about to quit or give up, I see that they look at how much more they have left to do rather than how far they have come. Today, I will be helping you break down the concept of Small Victories and how it can help you.

Small Victories

1. What are small victories?
2. How can the concept of small victories help me in my life?
3. Why are small victories important?
4. How to focus on small victories?

What Are Small Victories?

Small victories will be defined as positive within the whole scheme of a moment or situation. In short, a small victory will be something that might seem inconsequential at first, but if you apply the concept of small victories, it will be the start of something amazing. I like to use the example of working out to help people with the concept of small victories because, with any Health and Fitness plan or routine, it is a marathon, not a sprint. The idea of small victories is to focus on the small aspects first and then the bigger picture. That means we will focus on the sprint before concentrating on the marathon for a simple reason. 

We would want to focus on the sprint rather than the marathon because of a backward way of thinking regarding personal development. Many motivational speakers say that life is a journey and not about reaching a specific place at a particular time. The issue with using this as your only guide post is that you can have no action and chalk it up to your part of the journey being idle. 

Yes, it is essential to rest, but many people relax more than enough and should get into the habit of taking more action than less. Of course, some high achievers must be cautious of burnout and overwork, but those same people will likely already have a coach helping them stay on track. For the people who are not taking action, the idea of small victories will be able to help them begin to take more action.

How can Small Victories help?

Small Victories can help in your life by allowing you to take more action. It can be easy to see a task as daunting or impossible if you look at the whole. Training your brain to see tasks and accomplishments in bite-size pieces helps the brain perceive the work as achievable, starting at the lowest level. For example, a small victory might be defined that you woke up and getting out of bed this morning. For many of us, waking up and getting out of bed is an easy task, but for the person suffering from depression, that moment might be daunting for them, so that the victory will depend on your situation.

Depending on your situation will set the guidepost for what is a small victory. I am a high achiever and hold myself to a high standard, so for me, a small victory might be making 100 calls in a day to reach my monthly goal of 3,000. For someone starting a career, especially being self-employed or an entrepreneur, you might not want to make a single call because you are afraid of rejection. This is common in many new business owners because we must build the habit and create comfort. The problem with what many people do is that they create comfort and stay there.

When you focus on small victories, it will be just past your comfort zone. If you feel comfortable making three calls to local businesses to pitch your idea/business, consider bringing that number to five. You want to stretch yourself just enough to show your brain you can do the task. The great part is you do not even have to change your mindset yet for small victories to have power. That means you can make those two additional calls and have an entirely negative mindset that you will not get the sale. The goal is not the sale but to increase your action towards the bigger picture in small incremental steps.

Why are Small Victories important?

Small Victories are vital because they will help you to break down more giant steps to the smallest step the brain can imagine. Just like making a certain amount of sales calls in a day can be broken down to being approachable to drive action, so can the idea of any task or goal. Returning to our fitness example, the big marathon goal will have your dream body, but if you focus on small victories, the important part is to add something to your day, no matter how small.

I often tell any client who works with me on mindset regarding Health and Fitness to add just a minute or a few minutes a day/week to help jump-start the brain. Just as you have to prime a lawn mower with a little bit of fuel before attempting to start it, should we prime our minds before diving head-first into a new task? A great example of a small victory in dealing with fitness might be to start taking a multivitamin. This step might be for someone who eats fast food every night and rarely does positive things for their body.

That small step of taking a multivitamin will help the brain see health as a steadily increasing priority with time. Another great example might be driving to the gym but not getting out of your car. Some people will see this as a waste of gas, but you are building the habit of going to the gym, which will lead to you going to the gym and sitting down, and the final step is working out. The working out section has a different step variable that we must work with but think of it as starting for a minute, then three minutes, then 5 minutes, then 8 minutes, etc. 

What we have inevitably done with this and ourselves is that we created the idea of a small victory in our minds. To win, all you have to do is show up. It is almost akin to a participation trophy, but the difference is you do not get a trophy just because you won in some area of your day. That small victory is tiny, but it doesn’t mean it is meaningless.

How to focus on the Small Victories?

The idea of Small Victories is going to be looking at the first step rather than the entire staircase. We want to look at something other than the marathon, just the first step. We want to look at the quick aspects before the longer ones because quick often denotes too easy, and there is nothing more the brain loves than easy. This process will look at how you can take any step and break it down into the smallest micro step that the brain will see as too easy not to do.

When the brain sees a task as easy and attainable, the brain doesn’t get in its way. Frequently, our brains can be our worst enemy in the sense of progress toward our goals. The brain loves to see the top of the ladder rather than the first step or see the final product rather than the starting process. The good thing about small victories is that you learn to focus on the first step, and we go a step further and make it as easy as possible. 

The focus of small victories is not going to be about breaking down hours into minutes only but rather helping you understand that a victory in your life can be small. We have become overly critical as people and have difficulty seeing what we do as worthwhile and meaningful. The world has told us the standards, and we can meet them or rise beyond them. People will often choose to ignore a standard if it goes past their comfort zone or what the brain perceives as easy and attainable.

If you can train the brain to see the easy or attainable in any situation, then you will begin to focus on the small victories. The result is a steady incline towards a better version of yourself. Many steps to a goal can be broken down differently for the individual. That means that if you need more steps, no problem! The concept of small victories will focus on where your mindset is today, where you want it to be in the future, and give an action plan to get there without the brain trying to stop you.

 

Until then,

Michael Rearden

Founder of Reven Concepts