I stink, you stink, and here's why…

I stink, you stink and here’s why.
Sometimes I get to the end of the day or week and think, what did I do? My mind searches for some meaningful action and all I can think of is the many times I refreshed my email inbox or the times I popped over to Facebook and Instagram to see who was loving me.
I think, well, I stink. This week stunk.
Happen to you, too?
It turns out this ignorance of what we did is completely common. In her book The Progress Principle, Teresa Amabile shares how her research revealed that people who kept consistent track of what they did at work were happier and more satisfied with their work. People tracked their thoughts and feelings on a daily basis, and Amabile discovered that seeing and acknowledging these small wins contributed to a greater sense of satisfaction.
Sounds good, right? You probably already know that having a relationship with your inner self through writing gives you a greater sense of satisfaction and control in your life.

But what if you don’t pay attention to your daily and weekly small wins? You can go around feeling like you kinda suck. Any negative thing that happens to us – a harsh word from a boss or colleague, a negative review (or no review) or your work, a nasty altercation in traffic – these negative things carry more weight than positive instances.
This is known as the ‘negativity bias’. Negative things weigh more for us than positive episodes. We can get 20 stellar reviews and one negative review of something we produced, and we can only focus on the one negative review.
So what? Why does this matter for us in our attempts to write or create things that matter to us?
If we don’t celebrate and savor the good things, if we don’t take time out of busy-ness to notice our wins both big and small, we don’t gain the boons from our efforts. When we simply rush to the next thing, we lose out on the power of our efforts.
Even though I know this, I was guilty of missing out on the impact of my efforts this year. A couple of instances:
I presented at the major conference for illustrators this year, ICON9. This was a massive win for me as an artist and speaker. But once it was over, I only could focus on the fact that I wasn’t as humorous as I wanted to be. By the next week, I had moved on to the next project.
It was only a month later that I recalled the event and realized, holy crap! That was a big deal. I scheduled a webinar to share what I had learned from the process. I am still gleaning insights into what that meant for me and for my art career.
Late last year, I concocted the idea to spend a solid amount of time away from home in my own self-designed artist residency. I planned and saved to be able to focus the bulk of my efforts on my art.
It was great and I had a blast. But afterward, I had other things to focus on (aforementioned speaking gig). The juicy insights and rewards from my residency weren’t very potent in my mind. I even forgot that I had spent two months in Paris making art.
But I woke up to my forgetfulness one day and decided, again, to host a webinar. It was in the sharing of my experience that I was able to sit down and reflect on what I had done and what I could glean.
By pausing to reflect on both of these situations, I was able to see myself at a distance and to recognize what it took to pull off those things. Seeing the qualities and skills I put into play gave me fuel for other projects.
If we never pause to reflect, we can forget our wins and feel that we aren’t making any real progress. Without reflection, we operate at a loss, and our days can feel less satisfying. We never arrive where we want to be if we don’t pause to notice – omg, I am already there.

Amabile recommends an ongoing process of reflection to glean the glory from our small daily wins. I love that, and I also advocate doing an annual review. You don’t have to be a small business owner to draft your own annual report, celebrating your wins, assessing your failures and gleaning the goodness from it all so you can make an even better year next time.
So…next time you think, “I suck, I didn’t get anything done this week/month/year” please stop to assess what’s actually true. I bet you don’t suck at all.
How has a reflection process helped you be a more successful creative?
Join us next week for my no-cost webinar: Empower Your Year with an Annual Review, Tuesday, October 25th. Reserve your seat here.