Why success follows celebrating

I looked at my running log this morning and noticed that I passed the 2,000 mile mark on Saturday morning from when I started my run a mile each day experiment on 1st January 2010.

I hadn't even clocked that I was about to approach 2,000 miles but now that I've noticed, I'm damn well going to celebrate.

My next day-type milestone should arrive on 18th July when I hit 900 days, and the really big one I'm currently aiming for is 26th September, when if all things go to plan (do they ever?) I hope to hit my 1,000th consecutive day.

So is it important to celebrate minor milestones along the way?

Absolutely categorically yes, yes and yes again.

Not only because celebrating is such fun, but it also reminds us of the progress we've made so far. We may not have hit our real goal yet, the one we really want, but we have reached another mile (or kilometre) mark on the route.

Too many people ignore the small wins - the first time they've run/walked a mile, the first time they've run a mile continuously, the first time they've done something that they've never done before.

But life doesn't work as one continuous improvement after another. We all have days when in spite of everything that we're doing right, we seem to have taken a major step backwards. But that's how life works.

Without those ups and downs life would actually be boring and too predictable. It would be like life with no sleep, no weekends and no holidays. We all need to have time to recover, to recharge and to rebuild.

It's just that sometimes those times occur when we're trying to push ourselves steadily forward.

When we don't bother celebrating our small wins, our mini milestones along the way, it's easy to become disillusioned along the way and even give up.

For those runners in the Tunbridge Wells Race for Life yesterday who I was encouraging when they were about to go up the steepest hill of the race, I told them that the good news was that firstly this was the last up hill of the race and secondly they only had one more kilometre to go. They had reached a milestone and should celebrate, and what was great was that many of them then did.

This is why I believe that celebrating along the way is an integral and important part of achieving success and not something that you only do once you have achieved it.

So I'm off to celebrate my latest milestone now with a delicious cappuccino.

What will you celebrate today?