a win is a win, Celebrate accordingly

Naturally, you are going to set goals for yourself.

And I hope you accomplish them. But let me ask you, upon accomplishing one of your goals, why immediately turn to assessing the quality of the accomplishment?

On my last run, I had a big goal for myself: I wanted to run my longest run ever.

Somewhere around the two thirds mark, I started to worry about my pace. Was the pace fast enough? Is my total time going to be too slow? I hadn’t finished the run. And when eventually I would, it would be the furthest I have ever run in my entire life.

That is a massive accomplishment for me. A goal was set. I prepared for it. I worked towards it.

So why on earth does it matter what the pace was? Who cares the total time?

That was not the goal. The goal was to do the thing.

Would it not be better to simply bask in the joy and sense of accomplishment, rather than immediately begin to critique the quality of the thing?

Yes, yes it is better.

Be proud of yourself for accomplishing the goal that you set for yourself.

Maybe your goal is pace. Maybe your goal is total time. If so, sure, analyze those details.

But I find it deeply valuable to restrict yourself to consideration of the goal that you set for yourself, not the quality of the accomplishment, when the goal simply was the accomplishment.

I wanted to run my farthest distance. I did. Who cares if it was pretty, or fast, or perfect? I certainly don’t.