Why celebrating wins is crucial to success and why it's so hard to do

Celebrating our wins is a practice that is scientifically proven to accelerate success - so how do you do it and why don't we do it more?

When you celebrate dopamine is released into your brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in learning and motivation. It is released during pleasant experiences, which helps us learn about the consequences of our actions. When we experience something that feels good, a release of dopamine tells the brain that it’s worth doing again.

So celebrating the wins is a really effective habit to start to practice if you want to motivate yourself toward a goal.

So why is it so hard to get into?

One reason clients find it hard at the start, is because celebrating our wins feels unfamiliar. We don't tend to generally automatically do it, and if we do we are quiet about it. Culturally - and this is particularly true in women - we are not encouraged to celebrate our wins, why? For being seen to be too big headed? So the act of 'bigging ourselves up' feels strange, unfamiliar AND wrong - because it is going against cultural norms that we have been led to be truths.

If you are a women reading this and you can start to feel a reaction - you should! It's a grossly unfair gender bias and one that is 'hidden' - along with so many other hidden assumptions about how we ought to behave in the office environment. But I digress.

In order to get over this hurdle two things need to happen. First a mindset shift that it is "okay to celebrate my wins". If that feels uncomfortable, then it will help to break the resistance by repetition, and vocalise this, or write it down several times a day. This will create new neural pathways in the brain and re-train your brain to understand this new instruction.

The second thing that needs to happen is to practice celebrating the wins. This might feel unusual to start with, as it is unfamiliar, but with practice comes familiarity and reward. Again we are re-wiring the brain, giving it a dopamine boost and as we practice and repeat the celebrations we satisfy the reward centre, training the brain that 'this is good' and encouraging more wins.

How we can use dopamine to motivate us

When we celebrate the wins, and the dopamine is released our brain is learning that the behaviour is good. This in turn motivates us to repeat the action to get more reward.

If you want to reap the full impact, however it's important to really go for it - physical is key! So jump up and down and shout hurray to really get that dopamine boost.

Celebrating is a practice - repeated actions create new neural pathways and dopamine rewards us. So repeat repeat repeat.

Neuroscience is a fantastic way to understand our behaviours and motivations. In coaching it allows the client deeper insights in to how they can change habits or develop new ones, understand their actions and better align to their values and goals.

Come and talk to me about how a neuroscience approach can strengthen your progress.