The Synergy Game - A Journey From Death to Life
Chapter 9 - Small Wins, Big Celebrations: Embracing Every Step of Progress
This is my book The Synergy Game. I am serialising it here a chapter a week. Each chapter will be available for everyone to read because, after all, that’s why I’ve written it, to help others, to share what has helped me to rebuild my life. I will be adding extra insights, sharing my poetry and adding audio to a section below for paying members.
Chapter 9 - Small Wins, Big Celebrations: Embracing Every Step of Progress
“Treat every small victory like you just won the Superbowl.” - Lewis Howes
I learned this from my mother when I was a child. Being brought up in a religion that didn't allow much celebrating, no birthdays or holidays, meant that celebrating something was a big deal.
So, my mother used to look for little things to celebrate. When we were doing our preaching work if we met someone nice and they listened or took our magazines, she would take me for a coffee and a cake, or we'd buy a chocolate bar.
It is a practice that I carried on throughout my life, a lot of the time just in my head, but it's a practice I've done more of lately.
When you are on a healing journey it's important to see progress. So often it can seem as if we are making progress, and then the next day or hour or minute, we feel like we are back where we started. So, celebrating wins means that we have concrete proof that we are progressing.
There's no timeline or speed counter either, everyone's journey is different and some aspects of our journey may take longer than we anticipated too. We can be impatient to get to the other side, to be healed, but that is something that can’t be rushed. It has its own pace.
Plus, it’s a journey not a destination.
But the moment we notice that we are somewhere we wanted to be, that we have reached a new level, we need to stop and acknowledge it.
The level can be a huge leap, or it can be a small step, either way, it's progress.
The celebrating doesn't even need to be anything more than patting ourselves on the back and thanking ourselves for caring enough to do this. But we must stop and take it in, the fact that we are a little or a lot further on our journey.
I've had so many wins this past year and, in the years previous since I started my healing journey.
It seems like such a simple thing, but for me, a huge win was waking up in the morning happy and looking forward to the day, instead of dreading it.
Wins can be learning to set boundaries and then noticing yourself implementing them.
It can be putting yourself first and learning to say no.
A lot of my wins were milestones. When you go through a breakup or a loss for the first year there are so many firsts. Apart from obvious dates like anniversaries, birthdays and holidays, there are also a lot of other firsts. The first time you go for a walk on the route you both used to take. The first time you do anything by yourself that you both used to do together. These are big things, don't minimise them.
One of my happy places is the forest at the back of my house. It used to be a place we would walk together. The first time I went by myself, I didn't see many of the trees and it's a miracle I didn't fall into the river as I was crying so much, desperately hoping I wouldn't bump into any locals who already think me a bit strange being an English woman in a little French village, and now walking through the forest sobbing.
But, that was the only time I was like that, the first time. Oh, I've cried in that forest so many times, but that was the only time I did it because it was a first, the next time was still sad but not as bad. And slowly it became my sanctuary, my happy place, the place I could go to feel refreshed and energised if I was having a bad day.
I celebrate my wins when it strikes me as a win. So, when I notice that I've accomplished something, I congratulate myself. Sometimes it's a YES! And I look in the mirror and tell myself I'm awesome, sometimes it's a cake from the patisserie and sometimes it's curling up on the sofa with a bag of crisps and a whiskey and my latest book because I'm particularly proud of how far I've come.
Some wins are big, and some are small.
Some of my big wins were surviving our wedding anniversary, doing the five-hour drive up to my sisters for the first time, taking the car to the garage and it passing it's controle technique (MOT), finding an artisan to fit new windows for my house before winter and paying for it all myself, and hitting that one year mark as a completely different person than I was. Someone who I liked and admired, someone I was proud of and someone who was rebuilding their life and loved it.
Someone who could now contemplate the future without fear.
Some of my small wins were filling the car up with fuel and realising that I was doing it all myself and learning how to check tyre pressure and oil levels, hosting friends for the first time on my own, getting a huge wood delivery for winter and stacking it all myself and being ok with locking up the house at night and going up to bed on my own.
I made a vow to myself in the days after I found out about my husband’s betrayal that I would come through this with dignity, bravery and courage.
In fact, I was so determined that I wrote those words on three separate post-it notes and stuck them on my fridge. I also had a mug made with the same words so I could remember it each day as I drank my tea. I wanted to be able to look back and not regret my actions in any way.
Of course, I wanted to rip his head off and chop off other bodily parts and it was a long time before I was in a place where I wasn't happy when I heard about his misfortunes since I left.
However, I promised myself that I would act with dignity, so I kept all those thoughts to myself and the pillows I screamed into, and sometimes venting to my sister. I was determined to keep my dignity.
The bravery and courage came in to help me rebuild my life when I had no idea what that life would look like.
To imagine life on my own was impossible, so I just followed my sister's advice and took it one hour at a time until I got to a place where I was able to think more than a day ahead at a time.
When I hit the year mark, I realised that was a huge win. The fact that I could look back and say that those words that were my mantra, became how I was. I had kept my dignity, and I was brave and had courage.
Acknowledging this was me celebrating, being ok with telling myself I was a winner, I was proud of myself and who I had become.
Which probably led me to my biggest win and that was being happy to be single. I realised one day that I was blissfully happy, content and at peace.
There was no man in my life, I wasn't talking to anyone or going on dates. I wanted this time for me. For the first time in my life, I felt like this. At fifty-four!
I didn't miss anything, I didn't need anything. I was completely self-sufficient, and it felt so good to feel this level of contentment.
Once I felt that, it was as if my healing took a huge jump. I started to be able to let go of things on a whole new level. Not just events of the past year but the hurt of my mother and brother's rejections, my childhood abuse, the loss of my community when I left the religion. It all just drifted away even further.
And then I started to celebrate each day because each day was feeling like a party. I was waking up happy, I was living my purpose, I had a beautiful life with my family and my friends in a beautiful place and most important of all, I was at peace. That deep inner peace and contentment that I had finally reached, that was worth celebrating.
The fact that I had learned to love myself was worth celebrating. That I had learned to set boundaries, that I had taken the time to get to know myself, to learn what I want and don't want, to learn what my biggest goals and dreams are. These were definitely worth celebrating!
I think that celebrating our wins is a way of being grateful too. We are showing gratitude for ourselves and the work we've done to get to where we are.
We are being grateful for the precious life we have, even if it looks vastly different from the one we originally envisioned.
I read a quote a long time ago and it said that god's gift to us is our lives, our gift to god is what we do with it.
And celebrating our wins is celebrating the wonder of our lives, and the more we celebrate, the more we win, and the more we win, the more we celebrate. It never stops!
Previous Chapter - Circle of Strength: The Unseen Bonds of Friendship
Next Chapter - From Pen to Flames: Writing and Burning for Emotional Liberation
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Loving the infinite winning loop!