Celebrate the Small Wins

It is the end of year and a lot of us might be wondering what have we achieved this year. It might not seem like much because so many things had been cancelled or did not go according to plan because of covid. I certainly have found myself wondering this in the past few weeks then I remember the power of celebrating small wins and snapped myself out of this negative self-talk!

Many of us don't like celebrating the small wins or any wins at all because we feel like we don't deserve the celebration yet or that we are afraid of feeling complacent. We know that we need to concentrate on what is not yet done so that we can keep going. This is indeed how a lot of us motivate ourselves by telling ourselves that “we are not good enough yet”.

I know that being self-critical definitely gets results but only to a certain extent and my questions to you is more that, do you want to continue motivating yourself this way? Imagine if you were the parent or a teacher of this child, is this how you want to motivate the child?

Sciences show that being self-critical is equivalent to telling our brain that we need to be better to survive. We put ourselves under a tonne of stress to get rid of the threat of not being good enough. Putting ourselves constantly under the fight/flight mode is detrimental to our long-term wellbeing.

On the other hand, celebrating the small wins reinforces the positive loop of reward and motivation. Each time we celebrate a win or progress, our brain gets a dose of dopamine. Dopamine is the neurochemical released whenever we have achieved something. It is that feel-good emotion you get when you have found a piece of the puzzle. That excitement, that joy, as small and as simple as that. So by celebrating your small wins, you are re-wiring your brain, you are telling your brain that this activity is enjoyable, let's do more of it and therefore you keep going.

So what have been your small wins lately? They might seem small to start with but have huge ongoing effects.

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