Don’t visualize “winning” as standing at a finish line with a trophy. It’s not the last step of a race and it’s not the last penny of some financial goal of yours. That is bad mental framing because they are singular events that don’t happen often. I think you should think about “winning” using a metric that you can hit more often.

The simplest one is “did you give up today?” If you don’t give up, then you win. If you decided to take one step forward, if today got you closer to your goals, even if just by a smidge, then it was a win. It’s important to be able to see wins often and consistently, because if you set your targets too aggressively and demoralize yourself then you’ll never get where you want to go.

Looking in the mirror every day and comparing yourself to someone with a six pack is kind of demoralizing. Thinking every day how many thousands of dollars you are from being debt free can feel hopeless. I much prefer to have a small target I can hit every single day, so I can win every day if I apply myself. You can pick other targets, like getting one 15 minute workout every day, writing one page, staying under your calorie goal, whatever makes sense for you. But if you don’t right-size your mental picture of winning then you’ll probably feel like a failure most of the time.

You can’t compare every single day to a finish line which will only happen once. You can’t decide every day before that it is a loss even though you got closer to the finish line. Not only is it counterproductive, it’s incorrect. You can choose to build your self respect and self image every day by keeping small promises to yourself, or you can attack yourself that you’re “not there yet” even though you’re doing the best you can. 

Habit trackers can reinforce this too. I use a simple Google Sheets spreadsheet with columns for each of my habits and add a new row at the bottom for each day. I almost never look at how close I am to my actual goal – there’s too many unknowns for us to track that accurately. I do pay attention to “did I win today?” That just means completing the habits that support my goal. If I have all the checkmarks for my habits on a given day, then that was a win. I can feel good about that. And if I start missing several days in a row, then that’s a sign I’m not getting closer to my goal. Not a reason to hate oneself, but that’s a better metric of if you’re winning or not. Consistent small steps in the right direction is the goal. You can feel like each day is a win, you just need to recalibrate your mental picture of what winning looks like.

I say this because I want you to stop glamorizing the finish line. Stop feeling like a finished book is so far away. Today is one page of that book, and you can handle one page.

Further Reading: If this post resonated with you then I highly recommend Self Compassion by Kristin Neff, PhD. She is a researcher that has done a lot of work on how people treat their own emotions, including being self critical about mistakes and comforting over setbacks. I’ve found that none of my goals moved forward while I was tearing myself down over unrealistic targets, and this book taught me how to play on my own team. I’ve gone a lot farther since reading that book, maybe it can help you too.