When you get up in the morning, how do you like to wake up? Is it exercise, coffee, reading, breakfast, or something else entirely?
Share why if you wish.
Category: Motivation
Do You Celebrate Small Wins?
Keeping motivated when working on something long and complicated can be a real challenge. In order to do so, do you celebrate small wins?
In theory, celebrating small wins seems like an easy and effective way to do this. Celebrating makes you feel good, and a bunch of smaller victories will eventually turn in to a large one.
However, in practice there are many obstacles standing in the way of marking progress in this fashion.
First of all, it can feel very unnatural. Our society encourages us to make a big deal only when something is finished. But celebrating something partway done may feel premature. “Don’t count your chickens until they hatch,” as the saying goes.
Similarly, if you make the wins too small, celebrating can feel downright silly. To use a trivial example, if you are reading a thousand page book, finishing page one doesn’t seem like anything noteworthy. However, you can’t finish page one thousand without finishing page one first. Sometimes, even the smallest of accomplishments can be worth commemorating.
Another problem with our societal expectations comes from celebrating at all. Some of us are taught from an early age to be humble. If that is the case for you, denoting your own accomplishments can feel like boasting or bragging, which may be frowned upon.
Can you get past these issues? How might you go about structuring a project so that there are obvious points to mark your progress, and yes, even to celebrate? Do you make a point to think about your own victories, or to play cheerleader for other people to point out the progress they are making?
Related questions: How do you define success? What keeps you motivated? How do other people motivate you? How can you turn a loss into a win?
When Is Confrontation Preferable?
Confrontation can be awkward for some. In some cases, however, it just might be the preferable course of action. But which cases?
Some people are just naturally non-confrontational. Perhaps it is how they were raised, or maybe it’s just a personality trait. Whatever the reason, there is some subset of the populace that doesn’t feel comfortable confronting others. Even if they deserve it.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are aggressive people for whom confrontation is not an issue. As a default, they might challenge just about anyone they meet, for the slightest — or even no — reason.
Chances are, you lie somewhere between these two extremes. And yet, the issue of deciding when to challenge and when to defer is one that each one of us — no matter where we fall on the confrontation spectrum — faces regularly.
So how can we decide? Which circumstances are right for getting in someone’s face, even if it is uncomfortable to do so? When is it better to back down? And how might you overcome your natural inclination when you decide you should, whether it be to be more or less confrontational than is natural?
Related questions: Avoidance or confrontation? How do you stand up to a bully? How can we build confidence? What gives a person value?
How Do You Make Something A Habit?
The more we understand how a habit works, the more likely it is that we will be able to make — or break — habits in our everyday lives.
Everyone is familiar with habits of some kind.
Perhaps you have a bad habit you would like to break. Or you aspire to create one that you hope will improve your life. Alternately, you may already have a routine that you follow every day.
But how do these habits originate?
Most of us are likely familiar with the desire for improvement. For instance, suppose you get a gym membership in January, as part of a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and get in better shape.
Many people in this scenario have every intention to work out regularly, perhaps even several times a week. There is no guarantee, however, that the desire will turn into an actual habit. Wanting to go to the gym and actually going are two different things.
So how does something go from an aspiration to an actual, consistent routine?
Sometimes willpower is sufficient. If you just want something badly enough, you can power your way through to making it happen. However, willpower is not consistent from person to person. For the same person, it can even vary from situation to situation or from day to day.
When willpower is not enough, what can we do to turn our hopes into concrete actions? What steps can we take in order to create a habit?
Related questions: What unusual habit do you have? What is one thing you feel the need to do every day? Are routines boring? How do you stick to your resolutions? How do you reward yourself?
What Brought You The Most Enjoyment This Year?
As the year comes to a close, it is common to look back at the high points. What brought you the most enjoyment this year?
This last year (like any year) had some difficult moments. Ongoing wars, complete with atrocities, were hard to watch, yet equally difficult to look away from. The presidential election seemed to drag on forever. Natural disasters happened with alarming regularity. And so on.
When so many negative things happen, it can be tempting to focus solely on them. It was a bad year, you might say, because so many bad things happened.
However, that approach is short-sighted. While it is true that many bad things occurred, it is also true that many good things happened as well. Over the course of an entire year, it has to be the case that many things, good and bad, are bound to happen.
And remembering the good things is important! Even if — and maybe especially if — more bad things than good happen, it is necessary to remind yourself that there is good in the world.
Next year will be filled with both good and bad things, too. It very well may be the case that there will be more bad than good then, as well. In order to withstand an onslaught of bad news, a positive outlook, filled with hope, is essential. An excellent way to get a positive outlook is to think back on all the good things that happened.
With that in mind, what are your personal high points? What were our collective high points? What brought you the most enjoyment this year?
Related questions: Are you worried about the coming year? What news from the last year made you optimistic? Why don’t you know what makes you happy? Optimistic or pessimistic?