There Is No Such Thing As A Small Win
Greatness Is Built On Them
What is great success if not small wins multiplied?
With this in mind, going forward, cherish the so called small successes; they are the building blocks of greater achievement. Take my writing online for example. I could easily say 13 followers isn’t all that much, but it’s 13 more than I had a month ago, and thus is closer to my goal. When you think of it that way, there isn’t really such a thing as a small success.
Think of the entrepreneur who frame’s his first dollar, why does he do this? Well, because it was the first link in a chain which led to the ultimate breakthrough, and as such, everything that followed rests upon it. In some respects, I think that makes it the most powerful link in the chain that ends in supreme achievement.
I suppose I am restating the old age adage: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In this spirit, I wish to rally against those that categorise wins into big and small. In reality, success is the culmination of a million “small wins”, and so you shouldn’t play them down when they occur.
Moreover, the sooner you abandon a desire for shortcuts and impatience regarding success, the better. In addition, when you live from win to win, and focus on impact over numbers, the quality will be reflected in your work. Recently, I stepped back and realised that every like, clap, highlight or message was someone who took time out of their day and their problems to acknowledge my work; to have that happen 1000 times would be amazing, but to have it happen once is worthy of celebration all the same. Indeed, I celebrate every single bit of positive feedback as a milestone, and am far better for it.
Moreover, I should probably confess that I haven’t always held this mindset, far from it. Once upon a time I was an arch cynic when watching others start blogs or websites as they didn’t seem to “take off” so to speak. With the power of retrospect, I see that this was utterly foolish on my part. Firstly, there is nothing so cowardly as to not do something for fear it’ll fail, but secondly, and more on topic, because believing a platform will explode into popularity instantaneously was absurd in the extreme. Does it happen? maybe for one in a million projects, but the large majority of success stories are made up of a protracted period of hard-work, incremental success and persistence.
What I am trying to say is this: Every follower gained is a success, every person touched is a success, and every action that brings you a step closer to your end goal is a success. None of these things can be accurately labelled small.
