THRIVE IN 2023 AND BEYOND: 5 Benefits Of Celebrating Your Victories No Matter How Small
Do you celebrate your small victories? If not, you may be missing powerful opportunities to build confidence and motivation. There's a science to motivation, and celebration plays a critical role.
We are not naturally wired to celebrate often, but neurology and psychology experts agree that celebrating large and small victories can wire us for compounding success.
Retrain Your Ancient Brain
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., talks about our brains' negativity bias in his book, "Hardwiring Happiness." In our dangerous evolutionary environment, the stakes were very high, and ignoring negative feedback was a matter of life and death.
Our modern environment has lowered the stakes drastically, but our brains are still wired to hyper-focus on negative input. It takes consistent and focused effort to overcome this hardwired habit of negative fixation, but there is a deep well of motivation waiting for us if we can. Celebration is one strategy for moving our attention toward the positive.
Unlock the Chemistry of Motivation
If you're serious about accomplishing your ambitions, you can recruit your biochemistry to work for you instead of against you. World-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman says we release dopamine when we subjectively think we're heading in the right direction.
Celebrations, even small ones, trigger the release of dopamine and associate the win with accomplishment, strengthening and creating new pathways that lead us to crave more victories. This dopamine release enhances the neuroplasticity process, making habits easier to form.
The motivation will decay, though, like progress at the gym, unless we nourish these new associations with consistent effort.
Get Yourself Unstuck
No journey is complete without obstacles, distractions, and motivational dry spells. Most of our lives do not follow a straight line to success. It's a winding road, and losing motivation is just a part of the game. But how do we get the ball rolling again when motivation runs low?
Drs. Benjamin and Sarah Cheyette, authors of "ADHD and the Focused Mind," say that we can break a cycle of failure by celebrating small wins that build momentum and self-esteem, enabling us to take on more challenging goals.
If you're completely stuck, imagine your tiniest victories building momentum like a snowball building mass as it rolls down a mountain.
You Can't Hold Your Breath Forever
Even if you somehow manage to avoid all obstacles, the journey to your loftiest aspirations is like a long trek through the desert. It's easy to fall into the mindset that you'll celebrate when you 'get there.'
Any intimidating task can be broken down into smaller tasks, so there's no reason to hold your breath until the end to celebrate. We need something to keep us going between the big victories, so celebrate the small ones to keep the dopamine flowing on your journey to success.
Forget the External. Go Within
It's not all about getting stuff done and the external rewards that come with that. Success alters our self-esteem, and this confidence, felt within, is a reward in itself.
According to Doctors Benjamin and Sarah Cheyette, external rewards come and go, but the feelings you get from those victories build a strong and lasting foundation of confidence. For example, the athletic victories you made in grade school may seem inconsequential now, but the confidence built is still a part of who you are today, especially if you celebrated those wins.
Now that you know some of the psychology and biochemistry of celebration, I invite you to take a victory lap. You just learned something new that could empower you to reach your most ambitious goals.
The next time you're stuck or looking for an edge, take a moment to celebrate the small things. Your biology is keeping score.
References
Dr. Rick Hanson
https://www.shawnellis.com/rick-hanson-interview-hardwiring-happiness/
Dr. Andrew Huberman
https://getmadefor.com/blogs/perspective/celebrate-authentic-wins
Drs. Benjamin and Sarah Cheyette
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/1-2-3-adhd/202111/why-its-important-celebrate-small-successes
Joe Mitchell, Esquire is a High Performance Coach and EFT (Tapping) Practitioner, who has logged over 35 years of in depth study of personal and spiritual development. In his studies , he has done hundreds of self-development courses, spiritual retreats and health-related workshops. Coach Joe is a certified yoga teacher, meditation teacher, NLP Practitioner and a graduate of three coaching academies. Two years after he graduated from Harvard Law School, he became a monk for five years. In 2016, after over 20 years as a solo criminal and personal injury attorney, he decided to turn his heart’s passion into a career as a Success Coach, Motivational Speaker and Trainer. For information on Coach Joe’s programs, high performance videos and apply for a Free High Performance Session click the following link: http://www.activateyourgreatness.com/free-session.