Passion and Progress: How to Fuel Your Business Growth

Building a business, especially a small business, rests on the pillars of vision, action, and passion. Each of these elements is essential, not just in the start-up phase but in the day to day running of your business if you want to generate growth. 

Your passion most likely is why you started down the path you are on.  But are you continuing to feed your passion to keep it alive?

The Power of Celebrating Wins

Taking time to acknowledge wins—daily, weekly, quarterly, and annually—keeps the fire of passion alive, even when you might not be seeing the big results yet or have not yet achieved your ultimate goals. Many people use a gratitude journal or daily appreciation to make themselves feel better. Instead, I like to take the time to acknowledge my WINS. This approach not only boosts morale but also provides a clear inventory of what has been achieved and where you stand right now.

When I give myself the space to acknowledge and celebrate my wins, I find it a powerful way of shifting how I feel—often more so than simply practicing gratitude or appreciation alone, although these are great tools as well.

Wins: Big and Small

We can celebrate wins in any and all areas of our personal and professional lives. A win might be in the area of love, self-care, or spirituality. If you meditated for a couple of minutes, learned something new, or played a game, those could all be counted as wins for you. We can celebrate wins in the areas of family, friendship, community, money, or our physical environment. Maybe you tidied up your desk; that’s a win.

Wins can also be financial, a great idea, or developing a new habit or routine. Wins can be experiences we have, opportunities, or even things we didn’t do.

The Daily Momentum Practice

I created what I like to call the Daily Momentum practice to help myself and other business owners develop the habit of celebrating wins every day. This practice is not just about feeling good—it's about maintaining motivation and tracking progress, no matter how small the steps may seem.

In the Daily Momentum process, you will create a habit of writing down three wins every day. This habit fosters a consistent sense of accomplishment and progress, no matter how small the steps might seem. The biggest pitfall with this little tool, however, is that we may very well think too big. A win is not that we got to the top of a mountain; a win is that we took the first step or the next step.

Celebrate Every Step

So, if we are going to climb Mount Everest, then we get to celebrate the win that we booked our flight. We get to celebrate the win that we packed our backpacks, and we get to celebrate the win that we went to the gym to train for 60 minutes. We can also celebrate the win that we ordered the food that we’re going to use for the trip—you know, all that freeze-dried yumminess.

So often we think that we can’t celebrate a small step toward a big project or goal as a win. But we don’t have big wins nearly as often, so if we only give ourselves permission to celebrate big wins, we don’t experience a feeling of accomplishment every day. And we need that to create momentum.

Building Momentum with Micro-Steps

Wins are all of these little micro-steps we take that get us to the big things that make us great. Without the small steps, we would never arrive. When you start to acknowledge the little wins, it may feel ridiculous at first. That’s when you know you’re probably doing it right.

Any day you are struggling to come up with three wins, then you’re thinking too big. We all have at least three wins every day. And that is a very conservative estimate. When you feel stumped by this question, challenge yourself to keep thinking of smaller victories and accomplishments to celebrate until you have three.

Emotional Boost from Wins

When we do begin to acknowledge wins, we start to shift how we feel. Wins are like emotional foreplay and raise our EQ. When we realize what we have accomplished and we celebrate it, we naturally start to move up the Emotional Thermometer and into our Zone of Greatness.

We can stop and recognize wins anytime we need a little bit of an emotional boost. Maybe simply writing down three wins will be just what you need to move you from a place of overwhelm into a place of hopefulness.

Celebrate Wins Anytime

What are your wins from this morning?
What are your wins from your workday?
What are your wins this evening?

Take a moment to reflect and celebrate. This practice will not only keep you motivated but also remind you of the progress you are making every single day.