--- title: "Pride in Small Wins: A Pre-Christmas Note from Riyadh" canonical: "https://filipsardi.com/pride-in-small-wins/" pubDate: "2025-12-21T00:00:00+00:00" author: Filip Sardi description: "A pre-Christmas note on routine, small wins, and the kind of pride you don't have to earn through living the highlight reel life." --- --- Mornings in Riyadh have become almost stubbornly consistent for me, and the best part is that there's no more inner epic battles about it. I wake up, feet on the floor, and I'm already moving before my mind has a chance to argue its case. Thirty air squats, thirty push-ups, thirty crunches (increasing by five every week). Then coffee, then journaling, then content writing…every single morning. Somewhere in this morning flow days stopped feeling like unknown chaos and started feeling easy and familiar. ### It's interesting how different life gets when you remove the daily negotiation and replace it with a silent contract you keep. For years my main excuse was always the same, and I said it with enough conviction that it started sounding like a personality trait. Structure restrains my freedom. Structure makes me and my life boring. I told myself I was living the "moments" life, like my resistance to routine meant I was more alive. *(while I was secretly craving stability)* What I'm starting to see now is that I wasn't living the moments. I was collecting them. --- ## 1/ When the big moment fades too fast Now that I think about it, Sesimbra was the last clean example. Spartan weekend in Portugal was a milestone in every practical sense, the kind of thing you can point at and say: "This counts". I finished the Trifecta, crossed the line, did the whole little ritual of achievement, and then the feeling evaporated faster than it should have. Not slowly over weeks, but quickly enough to make me uncomfortable - like I had sprinted toward something and arrived to find that it was already gone. There's one question I have been thinking about a lot lately: > If I just keep collecting big moments, what am I actually building? --- ## 2/ The big moment that is changing everything The irony is that I'm still inside a "big moment" right now. Spending a month and a half in Saudi Arabia is certainly one of those big milestones. Just to get to experience the desert, or a massive city like Riyadh that has its own strange rhythm. The way the city feels massive and never quiet, with its never-ending traffic going in at least four directions each way. But at the same time, this humongous city can become very quiet because there's no music playing in cafes or restaurants, even conversations between people are in a way "muted". Or the call to prayer threading through the day, starting at five in the morning, like a reminder that time is moving even when you're sitting still. **I still catch myself daily noticing how unreal and unexpected it is that this is my life for a season.** And still, what's been changing me the most lately is something totally different. It's the repeated morning reps, the same cup of coffee, the same blank page, the same decision to show up without needing anything "magical" to happen. It's time with my brother too - trying new worldly flavours from local places, playing Diablo 3 in the evenings, and having those slow Sunday coffees where we end up reminiscing about life like we've got nowhere else to be. Which is how I realized the real block wasn't that I needed more "big moments" lined up one after the other. --- ## 3/ The shame of not being proud This week a short reel from Chris Williamson made something click for me. Not in a "new insight" way, more like it gave language to a pattern I've lived with for years: Even though I say I'm not doing it, I still unconsciously keep score in a way that makes the big moments count, and the quiet ones disappear. And shame moves in. When you neglect and stop counting the small daily blessings, you don't become dreamer or "big vision" thinker. You become unable to be proud. Not proud as ego or proud as performance - just proud in the human way. ### The way it's normal to feel when you're trying, when you are showing up and keeping promises that no one applauds. If those wins don't get recognized, shame takes the seat instead of pride. And then it turns into: "nothing I do matters" - because real life is being fully lived by those moments in between. That's the part that's been hitting me lately, because I can see how often I've succeeded in many things in life and refused to let it land. Or how often I've moved the "big goal" so fast that pride never had time to enter the room, let alone enjoy the win for a moment or two. This is why the "Riyadh Reset" routine has been doing something deeper than "keeping me disciplined". It's giving me evidence. Not the kind you post, the kind you feel. Evidence that I follow through and that I'm reliable. That I'm someone I can trust when the day isn't exciting and nobody is watching. --- ## 4/ The spice of life, and what I used to miss A few weeks ago I recorded a short reel about "the spice of life," those tiny moments that make you quietly think, "life is good" - but there was something missing. What I didn't share back then is what I'm slowly learning now. Those moments don't disappear when your life gets structured. **They disappear when you stop noticing, and you stop noticing when you only acknowledge the moments that look impressive.** So, the moments that can count even more are those seemingly "boring" ones that make my every day a win before most of the world even wakes up. --- ## 5/ Micro-wins, and where client momentum actually comes from This is also why I preach so much about micro-wins in client delivery. A lot of programs and services are built around a big outcome, that final victory you promised on your sales page. ### Don't get me wrong - big outcomes matter, but retention often lives "behind the scenes": - In whether the client can feel themselves moving - Whether their effort is being witnessed - Whether progress is being reflected back to them while they're still in the messy middle - Whether you have their back when it's too early for the big transformation and very easy to decide, privately, "I'm not doing this right" If you don't define what "winning" looks like this week, your clients will define it themselves. They'll usually do it with comparison, unrealistic expectations, and whatever highlight reel they saw online five minutes ago. So when I map a client journey, I'm not only thinking about the destination. I'm thinking about **the momentum cues.** What does the client get to celebrate in Activate, in Educate, in Implement, in Celebrate, so progress has somewhere to land and shame doesn't get to write the story for them. And yes, I'm still building AI tools to reduce friction and speed up implementation, because that helps, but even the best tools don't change the underlying requirement. ### If someone moves faster but can't feel progress, they still end up feeling behind, just at a higher speed (and probably more overwhelmed). The real work, the human work, is helping people count what's real. --- ## 6/ Wishing you holidays filled with small moments It's funny how when you stop waiting for a "highlight" to justify feeling good, the ordinary parts get louder: coffee smells stronger, writing feels more honest, and the day stops feeling like something to chase. Here's a photo of my brother Ivan and me wishing you Merry Christmas from Riyadh. Plus a ton of the small moments that don't announce themselves. The ones you only catch if you're not rushing. \-Filip