Last week, I wrote about how I journaled for 600+ days and elaborated on my personal operating system/journaling structure. One of my readers reached out to me, and touched on their struggle of reflection without direction. This week, I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into a crucial part of that: counting your wins.
There are a few reasons why counting your wins is important:
Every single second of attention you spend on something that validates your direction and progress is a vote for your future self. It reinforces your ideal self-identity through small gains.
The human brain is wired for seeking out threats and negativity as a result of eons of evolution; focusing on positive wins trains you to find good things.
You will forget your wins and what made a certain moment or day special if you do not explicitly highlight or make note of them.
Giving yourself grace, not beating yourself down, and observing progress in yourself positively is an objectively smart thing to do. Cognitive studies show that a positive mood creates better control and response times (versus the opposite).
I remember when I started out journaling, my physical wins were doing reps with resistance bands and calisthenics consistently every day - even if they weren't all-out bruisers of a workout. My mental wins, because I was chronically online and on social media, were unfollowing and muting accounts who didn't align with what I wanted in life (and I wasn't an unfollow/unmute sort of guy). Now, I barely scroll junk feeds.
My spiritual wins were a bit more nuanced (as they might be with everyone) - what is my purpose? For what reason do I exist?
For this ongoing question, I was reminded of when Charles Darwin was sent some flower orchids with an astonishing length - "what creature could even reach its nectar?" He theorized there must have been -some- pollinator that existed out there that could. Five years later, genus Xanthopan was discovered. This made me worry less about having everything figured out up-front, and made me focus more on observing what my inherent nature was - and how it would evolve over time with my thoughts, interests, and capabilities.
I take counting wins seriously, I engraved it on my AirPods
If you've heard of "information diet", it refers to the information you consume (willingly or not) on a daily basis: everything from news articles, to social media, to the self-talk you give yourself and the way your mind spins after reading or seeing something. Tailoring your information diet by stacking your wins (for positivity) and pruning away negativity, therefore, is a solid way to progress in whatever you want in life.
If you self-observe long enough, you can see what your attentions are truly focused on - regardless of what you might actually intend. Your own nature becomes clear. By stacking wins on top of observation, you create a personal reinforcement system that makes progress towards your ideal self not just possible, but inevitable.
Speaking of attention, if you've read this far, I appreciate yours - evidently, you have some kind of investment in your own thought process (or you just like the sound of my voice). Either way, I'd love to hear about your thoughts, your wins, and ways that you think about progress in your daily life. Connect with/reply to me and tell me what you want to hear more of!
Be well,
Michael Kirsanov