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Every year shines a different kind of light on our accomplishments. One year, your personal achievements could include getting a promotion, buying a new car or expanding your social circle; the next, it could simply be finishing that book you’ve had to restart for the fifth time because the plot slipped from your memory. Maybe this year you’ll start a vegetable garden, learn sign language or step into nature once a week. Perhaps your wins can even manifest in saying thank you more often or drinking enough water every day. Sometimes when we find ourselves focused on just the sizeable or more tangible accomplishments we have set we tend to forget the small wins that can establish a foundation for our happiness. So what does it mean to invite more personal growth into our lives by celebrating small wins? And exactly how do they set the tone for our year?
Create a Foundation with Small, Manageable Wins
Small wins are much more than decorations within a list of accomplishments. Instead, the smallest of wins can act like a pillar that upholds the structure of our inner work life. According to The Progress Principle by Amabile and Kramer, our inner work life can be defined as the perceptions, emotions and motivations that we experience as we react to and make sense of the events of our workday. Within a single workday, we tend to have goals that are sometimes vast or even unrealistic. This is why small wins fit perfectly into larger goals or strategies.
Small wins are understandable, doable and generally non-threatening, according to a journal published by the American College Personnel Association. There lies a great advantage in breaking down enormous problems and approaching them as more manageable pieces of a whole. This advantage is heightened when it is applied to our daily lives. The Progress Principle states that using a smaller scale generally lessens paralyzed emotionality and overwhelmed cognitive resources. In this way, conceiving small, targeted wins lay the necessary foundation that set many other small wins in motion. They also create better conditions and mindsets for increased productivity.
Let’s try to visualize how this foundation can make additional wins seem more approachable or visible. Think of small wins as integral building blocks. Consider doing the same activity once a day, such as writing a page a day for a book you want to finish by the end of the year. A page a week even. Each page itself is a small win. By the end of the month, you would have secured a big win by merely devoting yourself to the smallest of wins. This is because at times, the small culminates into something much more integral than we initially allow ourselves to anticipate.
Magnify Small Accomplishments Daily
What would happen if you congratulated yourself at least three times a day? How about three times a week? By acknowledging the littlest bits of growth achieved, you present yourself the chance to feel more accomplished and motivated. The same goes for small setbacks. Negative events can have a more powerful impact than positive ones, according to a journal published in the Harvard Business Review. Where we focus our magnifying glass will essentially make a problem, a solution or reward that much bigger.
“That’s a common finding in psychology — that negative events and negative things tend to get peoples’ attention more and tend to have a stronger impact on peoples’ feelings,” Amabile explained in an interview with Harvard Working Knowledge’s Carmen Nobel.
Fortunately, minor victories seem to be just as effective as major breakthroughs, Amabile added. This is why it is important to consistently magnify small wins on a daily basis to uphold and combat the weight of these small setbacks and reinforce growth. Furthermore, there is no need to find a profound depth within the magnified task. So long as the timing of those small wins aid in your inner work-life foundation.
Redefine Your Definition of Growth
We sometimes pass over spurts of growth and healing because they seem less significant than the ultimate image we have of what personal growth should look like. This year, try redefining your definition of growth by expanding its categories, themes, and imagery. Why limit yourself to growth that is strictly tangible or achieved by the person next to you?
Personally, expanding and recalculating my measure of growth has allowed me to become more aware of even the littlest of changes, improvements, shifts and internal developments within my own life. Once we are able to incorporate these new thought processes, we open up more room for ourselves to fill. Every year can prove to have different priorities, focus points, and themes. So remember, if you experience more internal growth one year versus more physical and tangible results in another, it is still important to note the significance of each.
Boost Inner Work Life, Creativity, and Productivity
According to research reported in the Harvard Business Review, these minor milestones or small wins can have a potent effect on creativity and productivity.
And as we learn throughout life, even thorns have their purpose. It has been argued by organizational behavior researchers Jing Zhou and Jennifer M. George that negative moods signal that a problem must be solved. Hence, brief periods of negative emotions can also enhance creativity, according to The Progress Principle.
So how will you define personal growth for yourself this year?
It can be as simple as changing the way you approach and appreciate life, people and the world around you. The kind of personal growth that truly serves us is one that isn’t pitted up against the isolated expectations from the year before. This year, let’s try to appreciate the small things just as much as we allow ourselves to sweat over them.
References
Amabile, T. M., & Kramer, S. J. (2011). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Harvard Business Press.
Nobel, C. (2011). How Small Wins Unleash Creativity. Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge. Retrieved from https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-small-wins-unleash-creativity.
Rhatigan, J. J., & Schuh, J. H. (2003). Small Wins. American College Personnel Association, 8(1).
