In my blog post, Learning to paddle board: A gentle reminder of life lessons on success, yesterday, I forgot a crucial element of success. Frankly, it’s a little embarrassing that I left out the final step, but I did. I suppose my only excuse is that after my 8-month hiatus, I’ve gotten a little rusty at this whole blogging thing.

Without further ado, the final element of success is . . .

9. Celebrate your success! I don’t mean just the big success when you’ve achieved a big goal; I mean that you’ve got to celebrate all of the small successes along the way. There’s no need to throw a party each time you reach a new level of success, but it’s vital to give yourself an internal high five or pat on the back.

As I was learning to paddle board, each time I got a little better, I gave myself a silent “yes!” in my head. The first time I got out past the second buoy on my own, I hollered back to Dave, “hey! did you see what I did?”

When I mastered the art of turning around after paddling to the second buoy and making it back to shore without falling down, a woman on the beach who had been watching me clapped and I let myself revel in it for a moment before I headed back out to do it again. I had fallen countless times and this was a huge accomplishment. Letting myself feel great about it and knowing that others recognized my success helped reinforce that my success wasn’t just a fluke.

After that first loop, I’ll admit that I fell down a few times before I was able to complete a second loop to the second buoy and back. What kept me going? The feeling of the success I felt after my first loop. When I finally completed a second loop successfully, I knew I was unstoppable. I then went on to paddle out past the third buoy, around a motor boat, back to the shore, out and around a sailboat, and back without falling.

And you better believe I celebrated after that.

Do you enjoy reading Little Merry Sunshine? Of course you do.

All the cool kids sign up for the email to alert them of new posts and follow LMS on social media: 

Follow @Jessica_Gardner//

https://widget.bloglovin.com/widget/scripts/bl.js  

Enter your email address in the box below and clicking the “create subscription” button. This is a two-step process, so look for the confirmation email and click on the link. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.