Many people tend to be a bit too hard on themselves when it comes to their progress, seemingly for no valid reason. They like to hold themselves to such high standards for no reason other than to try to push themselves harder, but in reality, it might be detracting from their overall experience.
If you’re not able to be happy when you make progress, you’re going to have a hard time motivating yourself to keep on going, leading to you burn out or give up altogether before you achieve your goals.
Getting excited is a fantastic motivator in so many ways. It can cheer you up, make you want to do more, and keep you going by putting you in a good mood. You’ll often do your best work when you’re happy, and lesser quality work when you’re neutral or upset.
For this reason, you need to be excited when you make progress towards success, even if you might typically think it’s not a big deal. For whatever reason, people don’t like to get excited about small things.
They think it might make them look like amateurs to be so worked up over such a small milestone, but who cares? The only person you need to compare yourself to is you. People who don’t like celebrating small victories are the same ones who have been sitting in a stagnant place for a long time.
Anyone who’s successful in a field would understand the excitement that comes with doing something small, but good. For example, if your dream was to become a novelist one day, you might feel really happy and proud of yourself if you were to get a page or two done that you were happy with.
For some people, they might look at that and think it’s meaningless, because some authors can write pages upon pages per day. However, just being able to appreciate little bits of progress like that can make all the difference in the long run.
Think about the difference between being excited about small progress and just daydreaming. On one hand, you’re making tangible, real steps toward a goal that you want to achieve in order to become successful.
On the other hand, you’re just sitting around not making any progress aside from being hopeful. Be happy that you’re able to put your money where your mouth is and actually accomplish something, no matter how significant or insignificant it might be.