There are lots of secrets about success, happiness and fulfillment.

Successful people make huge achievements all the time, so how do they do it? Most of it comes down to the way you view the goals and challenges put in front of you.

Perspective and Mindset

Many people may put the success of others down to luck or a natural talent that allows them to excel at what they want to achieve. Yes, this can be the case, but most of the time it is down to a particular mindset and way of looking at their goals as a whole.

Take Thomas Edison, the American businessman who invented the lightbulb. It took Edison almost 10,000 attempts to create a lightbulb—that’s a huge amount of “failures” before finally finding success. But in response to his repeated failures he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

In other words, he took his failures and turned them into successes because his perspective was focused on achieving rather than failing. It’s quite clear he had a mindset and positive perspective that allowed him to celebrate those small steps and see them as achievements.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s very easy for us to put ourselves down for small mistakes and failures. What about our small wins successes? Well the irony of this is that, although we easily feel negative about failing, we almost never celebrate our successes, and this is where the magic lies.

Celebrate Small Wins

The key to success is realizing that our big goals aren’t going to happen overnight, in the next week or maybe even the next year, but this is okay. We tend to focus on the end goals rather than the small and significant steps we take to get us there.

This is why it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate small wins. The problem with not doing this is we end up diminishing our motivation, and motivation is what keeps us on the right path and gives us the strength to soldier on to the top of the mountain.

A lack of motivation usually arises when we are unsure of how far away from our goals we are. We sometimes blindly believe that the goal is still so far away when it could actually be just around the corner, something we will never know if we give up.

It’s, therefore, important to make sure you celebrate your small goals along the way. Acknowledging small wins sparks the reward circuits of our brains and releases chemicals that give us a feeling of pride and a happiness factor, making us want to go further towards our next achievement.

Appreciation Is Key

Appreciation can sometimes be played down in life, and we often forget to appreciate what we’ve done and what we have. Appreciating our small wins and the small steps we take can be the difference between failing and succeeding.

Lack of appreciation and gratitude can lead us down the slippery slope of not being able to see the importance of our small wins. Celebrating the small stuff is us acknowledging that we are well on our way to achievement. In fact, we are achieving all the time, and it’s a myth that we are only successful once we’ve reached that elusive goal.

Creating Successful Habits

Successful habits equal success. We all know creating and changing habits can be hard as our minds find it difficult to adapt to new routines, but acknowledging and celebrating the small wins are how you help yourself establish the habits you need and to keep you going.

Our brains need positive feedback, so allowing yourself to be rewarded will develop an “addiction to progress” that will cause your brain to want to carry on to the next steps.

Acknowledge the Importance of the Present Moment

So what is the secret to a successful habit? It’s all about understanding the importance of the present moment and taking the time to celebrate small wins as they come. We tend to take the present moment for granted – it seems insignificant, and we believe the little things we do in the moment aren’t changing us.

You must invest in the small things over a long period of time and understand that you only have the moment you are in. It is the combination of moments over time that achieve the big things.

For example, say you want to learn a whole new subject. Reading 10 pages of a book today on this new subject will not significantly raise your knowledge, and maybe not even 10 pages tomorrow and 10 pages the next day. However, it’s the combination of all these moments of reading 10 pages a day that will eventually allow you to fully learn the new subject.

In other words, reading those 10 pages a day may seem insignificant in the moment, but they are all important in the steps towards achieving your goal and learning how to focus.