How to Savor the Win
I had a win this week. I finished the second draft of my book. It was a bit of a surreal moment, and I almost missed it because I know there's still a long road ahead of me before I have the book in my hands. There will be several months of working with the publisher and editors, and so it didn't even feel like I could celebrate yet because I wasn't finished. Then, my sister-in-law Sarah reminded me to celebrate every step along the way, and she's right. What's ironic is that I literally talk about that in my book - about how important it is to break up your goals into smaller steps, not just because it's easier to hit, but so that you have milestones to celebrate along the way. It's those milestones that keep you going. In my head I know all that to be true, but when it's your life it's easier to miss.
Often things we try to accomplish happen over such a long stretch of time, that we don't even notice the moments worth celebrating when we're in them. They pass by just like everything else, but according to a New York Times article on Flourishing, we should be stopping to savor these moments - no matter how small. When we do this, it helps us recognize the good things around us so we don't get stuck languishing over the bad. A method suggested for this is called "mindful photography" which a group of college students participated in and the 2012 study showed they gained "overall improvements in mood and a significantly greater sense of appreciation for college life." The activity had them taking 5 pictures of their everyday life, twice a week, for two weeks. When they reflected on the photos it helped them focus on the good things in their life.
When I was having trouble celebrating my win because it didn't feel big enough, I took a minute to reflect. I looked through my digital notes to see when this all started. I checked the Info section of the Word Document where my Draft is to discover that I had started it on September 13, 2020. I looked back to my OneNote, that had a collection of notes before I started the Word document. The section that contained my first draft was started on February 12, 2020. Then finally, looking back to a blog I had years ago, there was a post written on October 1, 2018 that was the first of many posts from 2018 and 2019 that made it into the book.
In short, I stopped to reflect and in that reflection I learned that this journey has been going since October 1, 2018. That's three years and 7 months. The Word Document also tells me that I spent 6909 minutes working on it. That's 115 hours of work. Just reading that brings tears to my eyes because it is an accomplishment and it is worth savoring. It's all too easy to keep pushing through life without stopping to appreciate what you've done along the way. So today, take a few minutes to appreciate where you are. Is there something you should be savoring but you've been going too fast to recognize it? Slow down, look around, and take it all in.
