Winning a Step at a Time
Excerpts from Win the Day: How to win your battles with stress, anxiety & depression
In previous sections of Win the Day: How to win your battles with stress, anxiety & depression, we focused on your relationship with yourself, the importance of emotional intelligence in managing your life, and how to more effectively take control of your environment. Now it’s time to shed the past and move forward.
In life, we are forever growing or decaying. There is no middle ground. The direction you take in life is up to you. As long as you are reaching for something more, you are growing. Moving forward and making progress is painful. To achieve a life you are proud of, you’ll need goals and aspirations. In these excerpts from my book, you will learn techniques for creating and measuring your goals. You will also discover methods for clearing the barriers that lead to a false sense of defeatism in your mind. As you clear groundbreaking milestones, don’t forget to celebrate a job well done before moving on to the next challenge.
Fear is a strong emotion. It can freeze you in your tracks or have you retreating. FEAR can also be False Evidence Appearing Real. In this scenario, we imagine that our actions will bring misery. That is reason enough not to try. When you understand what your fear is telling you. Then you will have a better understanding of how to move forward, leaving it behind.
Instead of looking for the answers in our sordid past, we will be much better off by setting goals and seeking milestones that indicate we are going in the right direction. Whether you want to get that dream job or find Mr. or Ms.Right, setting goals will help you get there.
Most goals are long-term, and as such, we may lose motivation or feel that we are not making progress fast enough. By measuring your output and evaluating your progress, you will have a bird’s-eye view of your plans and a clearer understanding of what you need to do next.
As you clear milestones, you may feel that what you accomplished was not of much value. I disagree. Celebrating your victories is important. You’ve made accomplishments, learned new things, and done something that seemed like a distant dream just a short time ago. Celebrate your victories. Doing so will keep you motivated.
I was constantly reminded while building my book that life is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be good days and bad ones. But all in all, you will move forward. This next story will help you through those days when you feel defeated.
Finally, as you move towards those big goals, it is a good idea to delay your celebrations and large rewards until the job is done. As my book nears its public listing on Amazon, I am faced with many tiny tasks that are holding it up. Many of my friends are congratulating me, but I remind them that it’s not done yet. We can be tempted to celebrate our wins too early, like the hare in the famous Aesop story. That will result in eventual defeat. Or we can wait until the goal is unequivocally achieved before celebrating. Ensuring every i is dotted, and every t is crossed. You’re almost there, don’t dial it in now.
Achieving goals is not so different from project management. When they are personal, however, you won’t have a team to rely on. That can be satisfying when you win, but it is also lonely as you trudge through the process. Keep focused, make progress one step at a time and celebrate achieving the major milestones. Then, you will Win the Day!
It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty. ―Dalai Lama
Here are the previous sections of Win the Day.
