Friday, September 21, 2012

The Importance of Celebrating Small Victories

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This week I achieved a small but important victory, self-publishing a short ebook on Kindle for the first time.  I knew that I would figure out the process sooner or later, but when I actually did it was a Eureka moment.  I instantly felt flooded with happiness, so much so that my second thought was that a celebration was in order.
While my idea of what a real celebration looks like (these days, anyway) isn’t too over the top, it seemed important to me to savor the victory.  Too often I think we are so obsessed with getting somewhere--accomplishing something and then moving even further down the road, that we don’t take time to simply BE and enjoy (and share) the happy moments.
With world chaos rampant and our current economy in shambles, it’s easy to get depressed and discouraged.  Embracing the positive moments, in its own small way, is good therapy for our distressed souls.  Not that my publishing moment was more important that what’s going on elsewhere (good or bad); but I think we feel so small in the face of global disorder that we don’t truly celebrate much anymore.


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And what is life, if not a series of small but important moments to celebrate?  If we really believe in the idea of the journey versus the destination, mile markers are pretty huge stuff.  And conversely, when we can’t figure something out or don’t reach a designated goal, we sure can be hard on ourselves.  So why suck the joy out of happy moments by thinking that we need to (quickly) move on?
Have you properly celebrated a recent victory of your own?  If not, there’s still time.  Feel free to share your latest accomplishment in the comments.  I’d love to hear from you.

Marianne M. Smith
Writer At The Ranch
Making You Look Brilliant One Word At A Time

http://writerattheranch.com
wordsmith@writerattheranch.com

4 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Marianne!! I need a Kindle or other such book reader thingy so I can read your book! You go girl!!

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    1. Thanks, Jeannine! You are always so supportive! There's a free app that lets you read Kindle books on most devices, including PC's:
      http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771
      Hope this helps :)

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  2. That's great! I agree that you need to celebrate victories. We certainly find a lot to be morose about. Publishing a book is one of the great "American dreams". Whether it's long or short, good or bad, you took it from start to finish and that's hard to do. I know.

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    1. Thanks, Russell! The power to self-publish online is an amazing thing!! I hope to publish some bigger projects soon.
      Sure hope you are on the mend!

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