How To Experience Success Every Day
Tracking your accomplishments can rewire your brain and rewrite your story.
I spent the first forty years of my life sabotaging my goals and my mood. I chastised myself any time I procrastinated or failed to make sufficient progress toward my goals. Instead of experiencing a healthy disappointment, I exaggerated my “failures” into indictments of my character and my ability to succeed in the future.
I convinced myself that I was flawed because I was not living up to some arbitrary ideal of what must and must not be so about my self and my life.
I insisted that I must make significant progress toward reaching my goals each and every day. I demanded of myself that I must not experience resistance or give in to distractions or procrastination. Instead of motivating me, my rigid thinking depressed my mood and suppressed my actions toward improving my life.
Fortunately, over time, I learned that my failures do not mean that I am a failure. We can all modify our behaviors, and we are not forever stuck with who we are and how we currently behave.
Steven Pressfield let me know that my feelings of resistance and desire to procrastinate are part of the human experience, not a character flaw. Pressfield masterfully captures the experience of resistance in his book The War of Art:
We are wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.”
The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
Additionally, Darren Hardy’s book The Compound Effect taught me that I was placing unrealistic expectations on what I should accomplish each day.
In his book, Darren Hardy explains:
“The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. What’s most interesting about this process to me is that, even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don’t feel significant.”
Taking small steps each day toward my goals did not mean I was failing. Reaching a milestone or goal is like reaching the peak of a mountain top — a lot of work and effort is required to reach the summit.
You cannot leap from mountain top to mountain top, nor do you always make significant progress toward your goal every day. Most of our lives are spent in the climb, not on the summit. If we want to live a happy and fulfilled life, we must learn to love the climb.
I was ignoring the climb and only focusing on the mountain top. Once I began to appreciate my daily efforts between each of my significant victories, I experienced myself in a whole new way. I became happier and more motivated.
But years of negative thinking had strengthened the neural pathways between those negative thoughts, and they did not immediately disappear. Negativity still invades my thinking whenever my subconscious mind feels that I am not progressing as quickly as I should. I can’t stop or control those irrational thoughts, but I have created a tool that allows me to identify and dispute them.
Just over a year ago, I began capturing my activities in my “Daily Success” journal, where I declare my victories from each day. My Success Journal is a record of my daily climb toward the next summit in my life. This record has proven invaluable in disputing those automatic negative thoughts that previously depressed my mood and suppressed my actions.
What’s worked for me
There is not a one-size-fits-all method of keeping a success journal. The most important thing is that you adopt a practice that works for your lifestyle, one you will consistently use. With that caveat, the following is what has worked for me.
I use an electronic journal. There are probably a billion in existence for whichever platform you prefer, so you should be able to find one that is a good fit for you. I personally use Day One on Mac, iOS, and Apple Watch.
I’ve used Day One since 2012, and it’s a pleasure to use. The program allows you to capture your life effortlessly and beautifully, using text, photos, videos, and voice memos. It’s one of the few apps that I do not mind paying a subscription for, although they also offer a free version if subscribing to software is not your thing.
Tracking your daily successes is incredibly simple. Track the things that energize you for tomorrow’s ascent and that show you the climb is worth the effort. This is your journal, so you get to decide what is a victory.
Do not diminish what you did because you believe you could or should have done more. If the mere act of getting out of bed was an accomplishment, that action gets counted as a victory!
No activity is too small to track, and sometimes seeing how much you take care of during the day can be enlightening. It’s easy to be so busy that the day feels like a blur, and you forget most of your accomplishments. Reviewing your day and capturing your activities can give you a sense of accomplishment and explain your exhaustion.
I especially like to note the activities that I did not want to do but that I took care of anyway. When I make a phone call to take care of a bill or a problem, it goes down on my list of daily successes. If I really don’t feel like writing, but I write anyway, I capture that too.
Giving in to the resistance that Pressfield describes is not inevitable. Tracking my victories over resistance provides a counter-narrative to the notion that I cave to my desires to procrastinate or try to avoid the climb. You can beat resistance, and establishing a track record of doing so will build your self-confidence.
Listing out my completed unpleasant tasks creates proof that I can tackle and survive things I do not enjoy. Being successful requires that we keep our commitments, even when we don’t feel like it. My Daily Success Journal provides validation that I can take action independent of my feelings or desires.
I also capture my interactions or conversations with family and friends. I spent far too many years of my life focused on building better circumstances instead of living my life in the present moment. Capturing these moments allows me to appreciate the amazing life I have, both in the process of listing them, as well as when I review them later.
I also look for opportunities to capture my day with photos of my successes. If there is a beautiful sunrise or sunset, I take a picture. If I make a delicious meal, I take a snapshot. Capturing the little moments in life through photos has been one of the more meaningful outcomes of my journaling journey.
Every time I look back through my Daily Success Journal timeline, I see photos and descriptions of events that I had forgotten but that I am glad to remember. I could easily believe my negative thoughts about my failure to make progress if I did not have my journal. My entries are proof that I am doing my best and growing each day.
Some additional benefits of success journaling
I’ve noticed a few other benefits of keeping a success journal over the past year. It has helped me reframe my context for the climb from one mountain top to the next. I now expect and see successes and victories where I once only saw tasks and obligations.
The daily habit has also inserted accountability and focus into my day that was previously not there. Knowing that I will list my accomplishments at the end of the day can propel me into action when I may have otherwise opted out. My focus on small achievements heightens my awareness of them during my climb toward the next summit.
I feel more accomplished at the end of each day after listing out my successes. I’m more at peace with the climb and less likely to give up on taking those small, smart steps that Darren Hardy describes. Reviewing my past daily accomplishments reminds me that life happens while we toil and sweat to achieve our goals, not just when we reach them.
It’s about your journey
I begin each day with gratitude journaling, where I list at least three things that I am grateful for that morning. Even when life is not going the way we would like it to, there is always something to be thankful for. Expressing gratitude allows me to focus on what I do have instead of on what I lack.
Tracking your daily successes in the evening makes the perfect book-end exercise to expressing gratitude in the morning. We create either value or discontent in our lives through the things we tell ourselves, and most people discount their accomplishments while amplifying their failures. Success Journaling provides the counter-narrative to such demoralizing thinking.
One final note is to refrain from comparing your performance to what others are doing. Just as there are always things for which we can express gratitude, there are always positive actions we can take each day. Pausing to acknowledge those actions will improve the way you view yourself and your climb to the next major victory in your life.
