celebrating success

After over a year of more important things than blogging, I have discovered a desire to explain my blog title.

I feel that any success in life should be celebrated.
All too often, we focus on needing to do big fantastic things with our lives. We teach children that they can do anything, be anything, by using examples of people who have had great success, that have changed the course of history. Abraham Lincoln started in a log cabin in Illinois. Martin Luther King gathered a nation to fight for equality. Steve Jobs made millions out of his brilliance making products people think they need. We focus so much on these big successes that not being a well known, brilliant, rich, powerful person becomes a failure.
It's just not true.
I am a success.
I succeed as a parent. I succeed as a woman. I succeed as an adult overcoming her fears.
My small successes may seem trite and insignificant compared to the work of Mother Theresa or Ghandi. I may not be saving thousands of lives or souls. I had no more time or energy than to get myself and my daughters dressed this morning, but I did that! I got us dressed and fed and fought through the trials that every day presents me with (more on that tomorrow).
My lovely child shouts "I did it!" every time she does anything herself. She constantly asks, "Mommy, I try it?" and leaps at the opportunity to experience something new. She isn't disappointed with herself for not being a YouTube sensation, or child prodigy. She is happy in her everyday accomplishments.

So, rather than grading our success on a spectrum, comparing it to that of others, making it a competition, and making ourselves feel obsolete, we ought to be shouting from the rooftops, "I did a good thing!".  

Celebrate yourself and the marvelous things you can do every day!
There are no "small" successes!