Why You Only Count the Big Wins

What you give your attention to is what you move toward.

Watch a parent with a 4-year-old and you’ll see celebration done right.

Tied your shoes? Party. Tried a new food? High five. First word, first cartwheel, first sleepover, first ride without training wheels. We cheer all of it, because some part of us knows a growing person needs to be shown their wins.

And the bigger stuff gets the full treatment. Graduations from kindergarten all the way through high school. Turning 13, 16, 18. Making the dean’s list. Winning the big game. (My son’s high school varsity soccer team once beat the defending CIF champions on penalty kicks. We celebrated that one for a while.)

Then, somewhere around the last graduation, the celebrating stops.

As adults we keep a short list of sanctioned occasions: birthdays, holidays, the promotion, the new house. Everything else, the hundreds of small wins that make up an actual life, goes unmarked.

I think we decided along the way that celebrating little things is for kids.

And into the space where celebration used to live, something else moved in.

The brain comes wired with a negativity bias. Left to itself, it files your wins in a drawer and hangs your failures on the wall. It replays the miss, the flub, the moment you fell short, and presents each one as evidence in an ongoing case about your worth.

I’ll give you one of mine.

At Officer Candidate School, the proving ground where the Marine Corps decides whether you’re fit to lead, I was asked to give an impromptu speech on Louis Armstrong. A gift of a topic. I knew a lot about the man.

I froze. Could barely get a word out. Just stood there in front of everyone, soaked in embarrassment, shame, and fear, feeling something crack that hadn’t cracked before. Failing publicly was brand-new territory for me.

That was decades ago. I’ve relived it more times than I can count. And every replay files itself under the same heading: proof that whatever else I’ve done, I don’t really measure up.

That’s the trade I made without seeing it happen, and I’d bet you made it too. As kids, our attention pointed at joy, wonder, curiosity, the thrill of getting good at something. As adults, we swung the beacon around and aimed it at everything wrong with us.

Which is strange, because we already know better. Ask yourself: did you respond better to encouragement and acknowledgment, or to being put down, laughed at, judged, and criticized? You know the answer. It’s the same answer for the people you lead, and for your kids.

So here’s the invitation. Start noticing a different category of win. The small, internal ones that never make a resume:

Catching yourself mid-judgment and finding some understanding instead.

Forgiving someone. Or yourself.

Finding a little peace inside an irritation that usually owns you.

Showing up early and prepared after years of running late.

Reaching out to a family member after a long grudge.

Choosing love in a moment that fear usually runs.

Each one of those is a mini-miracle. Each one is a spot where the mind unclenched, a small repair in the way you see.

And here’s the principle underneath it all: the things we give our attention to, we go toward. Aim your attention at your shortcomings and you’ll manufacture more of them. Aim it at these small wins and you start moving toward the person you actually want to be.

So when you catch one, celebrate it. Do the inner happy dance. Throw yourself an internal ticker-tape parade. Dance to a favorite song, get the ice cream, give yourself the gold star you’d hand a kid without a second thought.

Keep it private if you like. This one’s just for you.

And know that you deserve it. You always have. Especially for the littlest things.

With love, Andy

---