Celebrating Our Small Successes

I am a big fan of celebrations.  We do a good job in our culture of celebrating the big things weddings, graduations, and births.  Many of us do a good job of celebrating other people's success a new job, a promotion, or a new house.  In my opinion, we don't do a good job of celebrating our own little successes.  It might sound silly, but we don't celebrate the days when we don't feel like getting out of bed and not only do we rise from the warm comfy covers we also manage to make breakfast for the kids and put a smile on our face while doing it.  We don't celebrate the days when we really kick butt in a staff meeting and come up with an ingenious idea. Or the days when we are really present for a friend and know just the right thing to say in their time of need. Or even making the phone call you are totally dreading and finally getting the nerve to just do it.  Nope, we let these things just float right on by with minimal acknowledgment.  I bet we can easily share what we haven't done right this week.  We can whip out the hammer on demand, or without even knowing it.  But the little celebrations the small victories we totally miss.  So today and over the weekend I want us to start paying attention to our little victories and then as an inspiration please share them in the comments section.  I will start with my victory:

For my regular readers, you know I have been learning how to swim.  It hasn't been easy, but I have added swimming to my weekly workout and even taking lessons.  As with most things I am amazed at how something can look so easy and have such a depth and complexity to it.  Among other things, I have been working on my endurance.  My swim instructor gave me a work out to do a few months ago the one thing I hadn't been able to do on said work out was to do 3x150's.  For those of you who don't know swimming, that means swimming 150 meters (6 lengths of the pool) resting and then repeating two more times.   It's hard for me and it is something I haven't been able to do both physically and mentally.  Lately it has been mostly mental just telling myself I can't do it and then freaking out half way through.  So this week after a little encouragement from my swim instructor I decided to try it again.  And I DID IT!!  I TOTALLY KICKED BUTT!  I did it and I wasn't tired, I wasn't exhausted, I didn't psych myself out I just swam 6 lengths, 3 laps 3 times!!  And when I finished I celebrated!!!  I breathlessly shared it with my swim instructor who also celebrated with me. And then I shared it with everyone I knew (most who didn't really get it but were excited for me anyway).

The point is these days we so rarely have things to celebrate we get bogged down in chores, work, and life that we miss the chance to celebrate our wins.  I admit I felt a little silly sharing such a small thing (or what I thought might be small to other people) and then I reminded myself I hard I have worked for this, how much I wanted it, so yes swimming 3 laps 3 times might be pithy in comparison to winning the noble prize of changing someone's life.  But for me it was a victory and one that I wanted to celebrate.  Because the more we celebrate the little victories the more energy and enthusiasm we will have to tackle the big ones!!

What have been your little (or big) victories of the past few weeks?!?  Please share below so we can all celebrate and see how magical these success can be!