Something I have learned to do with my coaching clients is to start each session identifying their wins from the past week. It’s incredibly uncomfortable at first, and it feels really hard for many. “If I had wins to celebrate, I wouldn’t be here!” might be a common thought for them.
It was/is hard for me too. And that’s normal for humans.
From an evolutionary perspective, there was never any value from reflecting on wins. If you are trying to survive, you need to conserve energy, avoid pain, and seek pleasure (food and reproduction). The seeking pleasure part, the dopamine hit from finding a bush full of ripe berries or sex to produce offspring, is an immediate reward, but doesn’t require repeated reflection. Feeling proud for finding the berry bush last week doesn’t help us to ward off hunger now (though it may prompt us to search for another bush, which is seeking more dopamine).
We didn’t need to feel pride in our accomplishments to continue doing activities that were hard.
But modern-day life is different in many ways. Yes, we still need food to survive, and some people need to reproduce for the survival of our species. But does your brain think, at its most basic level, that you need to lose weight, or get that paper published? Nope. It’s fine having enough body fat to survive famine, and enough money to keep the lights on, no habit change required.
Brains don’t like change. And so they like to show us potential dangers (ooh, you might be embarrassed if you try something new and it doesn’t work), and reward us with dopamine for eating high-calorie foods.
And yet you, want something more.
To feel better physically or emotionally.
To learn a new language.
To get that promotion.
And that’s where celebrating wins comes in. When we can identify something that we’ve done that had a good result, that we enjoyed, that we are grateful for, we get some more dopamine. And we’re already wired to get more dopamine, so if we create some new ways to get it, we’ll repeat those behaviors. So, the 2 times you made it to the gym this week? Great job! That’s twice more than last week! And you took 10 minutes to each lunch everyday this week instead of working straight through! Let’s celebrate it! We create dopamine in the moment of celebration, and we create new pathways that reward us for behaviors that move us along our desired trajectory.
Bigs wins and small wins.
It’s a practice. But it moves the needle in reaching our goals. It creates a more positive, enticing, rewarding experience that moves towards the goal with kindness, celebration and fun, rather than white-knuckling it.
It’s not how most of us were taught to move through the world. But when you do this on a regular basis, you’ll create a more sustainable path for long-term growth. And that is worth celebrating.
