Celebrating the Successes

If you're a mom or dad, you can probably guess what this chart is for. That's right. We're trying to potty train my son. He's not really into it, but sometimes the thought of putting another sticker on the chart to earn a new toy car helps. Obviously.
What this chart doesn't show is how many times he didn't make it to the potty in time. And that's as it should be. If we marked those, they would far outweigh the times he did, and that would be discouraging.
I got rejected a month or so ago from a contest I had entered to try and get my story published by a bigger company. There were just a few things they didn't feel fit their model. So, I can either dwell on the rejection, or I can celebrate the fact that two other times, my manuscript was accepted and published. If I let that one rejection (I've had others in the past, but we don't need to talk about them right now) hold me back from moving forward, I'll never have another story published. Instead, I can remember that my stories did fit with these other companies, and celebrate those successes and keep trying to get more out there.
It's all in where you focus. Do you sometimes let how many times you've failed at something hold you back? Or do you keep your mind on the times it went right? Especially in writing and potty training, we've got to keep focusing on the successes!