I was reading an article, Top 9 Things to Remember When Life is Not Going Your Way, and the point that struck me was this one: Learn to celebrate small wins.

What sterling advice! I don’t usually celebrate small wins but instead wait impatiently for the big ones. I become so fixated on the destination that I don’t enjoy the journey. But recently I had a completely different experience that showed me how to enjoy the journey.

I made a decision to get my book, The Happy Place, then formatted for Kindle, formatted for print. I started in January, finding an hour each evening when I could work on it. I estimated that it could take months to figure out how to embed fonts, set margins, format headings and gutters not to mention getting the ISBN, tax info, cover design, and so much more.

It was complicated but I was too stubborn to pay for the formatting service. I knew there was no rush so I set out to tackle the project on my own. This meant Googling for help, watching numerous video tutorials and visiting a forums and blogs. It involved a lot of trial and error. And for some reason still unknown to me, I celebrated each small win along the way.

For instance, one night I managed to figure out how to set the page numbering. It sounds easy but  the ninety minutes I spent working at it will attest to the fact it is not. The dedication, copyright and table of contents pages need to have Roman numerals and the story pages should start with the Arabic numerals. The challenge was to figure out how to tell the document to do that. When I had figured out how to do this I celebrated. I came away from my evening’s work with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

I don’t know why my approach to this project was different but I noticed that, miraculously,  I was enjoying the journey.

The entire process of formatting the book for print took two and a half months, about half the time I’d estimated it would take. That was a big win comprised of a lot of small  ones.

Bottom line: celebrating each accomplishment, no matter how small, made the journey fun!

Are you someone who enjoys the journey or are you more of an “Are we there yet?!” type of person? Do you celebrate small wins in your life?