Why do you need to celebrating your small wins?

For a really long time the biggest struggle of my life was not able to take action to create things I wanted to. I focused extensively on preparation, knowledge and gaining experience but I never took an action.

All the dreams, goals, ideas came to nothing. I always felt I was not ready. Does this happen with you as well?

Starting is the toughest part. I realized that the most important thing I can do is to take action and start.

I created a system where it was easy for me to take action. Once I started, the path started looking much more clear.

Creating a habit journal that tracked my habits brought the biggest change in my attitude. I built a habit of tracking my habits.

Tracking habits help you in three ways:

1. Positive dopamine. When you record your daily wins, you train your mind to crave it more. Winning feels great for you and your brain.

2. You know how far have you come. You are aware of your journey.

3. You understand every big result is just bunch small actions over a consistent period of time.

Celebrating your wins gets you excited on your journey, which motivates you in the times of need.

I started with the basic habits I wanted to implement in my life and added them into a habit journal on Notion.

I added more habits as it became more easier for me to have these habits in life.

These habits continued with my 9-5 remote job, traveling full-time with a partner. I made time for these habits. No matter what. It became part of my life like brushing my teeth.

The tracking kept my mind up every day that I cannot finish the day without finishing my habits. This was crucial for lazy days. We all have lazy days.

Over time, I understood if I could do these habits first thing in the morning, my day looked much better. I started a 60 minute morning routine. I finished most of my regular habits in this time frame, first thing in the morning. Now I wasn't procrastinating.

Now was the time to level up. I started adding habits now depending on the skills I wanted to learn.

I wanted to get better at writing, speaking articulately and storytelling. So I added these three habits in my daily habit tracker to build them as a habit.

The first thing I open on my laptop in the morning is this daily journal with tracker. Now my day is already setup for doing things that will help me in building my desired life.

We all have desires, but the reason we fail to achieve our goals is because we lack action.

All the knowledge you have been consuming, experience you have been adding, plans you are making is of no use if you don’t have the courage to take action.

Action leads to results. Clear actions leads to desired results.

Habits help us change the trajectory of our life, 1% at a time. Both in positive and negative way.

Good habits better your life.

Bad habits make your life worse.

The best thing is that you have the choice to choose which habits do you want to build.

And to build sustainable long term habits, we need to celebrate our small wins. You don’t have to go out and party. We use the wins to tell our brain that we are on the right track. This is how we trick our brain to do what we want and with ease.

Action item:

The simplest action item you can take track your habits on your journal. Try this for a week and see the difference in your life.

I used my journal for a long time as well till I felt I need a better system to track it. So I built this Notion template for myself. If you use Notion, you can use this free daily journal template and habit tracker.

Here’s the link to this free template and habit tracker.