Celebrate the milestones. If you only celebrate the finish line, you’ll be miserable for most of the race.

Big goals take years, and a finish line is one day inside all those years. If that is the only day you allow yourself to feel good, you have designed a very long stretch of feeling behind. Marking progress is not going soft, it is what makes a long effort survivable.

Decide now what counts as a milestone and what you will do when you reach one. Keep it small and real, like a meal with somebody who knows what it took. Then get back to it the next day.