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How celebrating your wins drives creative growth

Don't worry so much about being "humble."

Author

Chris Valdheims
July 08, 2023

I’ve always had difficulty celebrating my wins.

I was worried about bragging.

Or about not being “humble.”

Or some other made-up limitation that I must have picked up from society at large.

But lately, I’ve learned that celebrating wins is essential to the creative process.

That’s because making something new can be an extremely long and hard slog, and if you don’t stop every now and then appreciate the journey, you’ll quit.

I posted a cool emoji-based thing on Twitter the other day that illustrates the issue:

Visual representation of what it’s like to make something. Those Xs are a killer.

See all those ❌s?

They become a drag if you don’t counteract them.

They will make you quit, which is really sad if you quit at the last ❌ before you reach the ✅.

So you counteract the drag by celebrating even small wins along the way.

It can be little things like showing up to write for 5 minutes.

Or it can be huge things like getting a publishing deal.

But the small wins are the ones that are easy to overlook despite them being the bricks on which your house is built.

And the small ones give you an opportunity to celebrate what you’re doing consistently.

Mehrnaz Bassiri calls this “weighing ants.” It means acknowledging the little steps along the way, like learning a new word in a foreign language.

You can celebrate wins any way that works for you.

I talk about how I do it in the podcast, so hopefully, it gives you some guidance.

I also talk about how to use habit trackers as part of this process, and the tool I prefer is called Streaks.

That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoy it.

PS - I would love to get some ratings and reviews on the podcast platforms if you can. It really helps the podcast to spread. So if you think my actions would help more people, I would love that support. No pressure, though. đź–¤

PPS - THANK YOU to everyone listening and sharing your thoughts with me. That’s the gold, and it keeps me going and inspires me to improve and offer more constantly.