Goal-Setting Success: Every Little Bit Counts

Celebrate each success on the way to achieving your goals

When a reporter asked Thomas Edison how it felt to fail 1,000 times before inventing the light bulb, Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." FPG/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

When setting your sights on a goal—perhaps you want to clean out your closet, lose 20 pounds, get out of debt, spend more time with your family, wake up earlier, or be a friendlier person—whatever it is, it helps to remember that every little bit counts.

Keep Going

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed when staring at the large gap between where you are and where you aim to be. You may start off with a jolt of enthusiasm, but if progress is harder to come by or slower than you anticipated, discouragement can set in.

The key at this juncture is to, of course, not give up. As Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” To keep going, to stay motivated, you want to home in on any tiny bit of progress that has been made and celebrate that.

Slowly but Surely

If you want to clean out your closet, for example, you might be able to envision a perfectly decluttered, pristinely organized space in which everything you love is beautifully displayed and easy to access. In reality, however, when you begin to assess your closet’s current condition, you may not know where to start or how on earth you’ll ever have the time and energy to push through and reach your goal. The gap between here and there seems too big.