How celebration leads to success!
In a previous blog post I wrote about 5 tips to help you reach your goals. One of those tips was to celebrate your progress. In this blog post I want to take a deeper dive on how celebration leads to success.
Celebrating your successes is such an important part of reaching your goals. Not only does it make you feel good, but it also helps to activate certain areas of the brain that motivate you to continue working towards your goals.
Recent research has shown that when we experience success, the brain releases a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in the reward system of the brain, and it helps to motivate us to repeat behaviors that lead to pleasurable experiences. When we celebrate our successes, our brain receives a shot of dopamine, which makes us feel good and trains our brain to want more of the same.
Another area of the brain that is activated when we celebrate our successes is the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for decision making, planning, and self-control. When we celebrate our successes, we are reinforcing the behaviors and actions that led to that success, which helps to make it more likely that we will continue to engage in those behaviors in the future.
Now that we understand the science behind it, how does this look in a practical way?
Celebrate along the way
Let’s say you have a big goal that you set for yourself, and it will take multiple steps for you to reach that goal. It is important to celebrate each step along the way. Don’t wait for when you accomplish that big goal to finally celebrate. Make celebrations a natural part of the process.
Maybe you are someone that does not naturally celebrate (that would be me)! As highly motivated entrepreneurs we often start thinking about the next thing that we need to check off of our to do list and we don’t take the time to celebrate along the way.
The reason it is important to celebrate along the way is so that our brain wants more of what we are doing, which essentially makes it easier to reach our goals!
Ideas for celebrations
Here is a list of some ideas to help you get your creative juices flowing when thinking about ideas of what you can do to celebrate.
- Drink a cup of tea or coffee
- Read a good book
- Go on a walk
- Dance
- Listen to your favorite music
- Take a bath
- Take a nap
- Indulge in some chocolate
- Watch a movie
- Listen to your favorite podcast
These are just a few ideas to get you started. You see, it doesn’t have to be something elaborate. It can just be simple things, but still very effective in getting your brain to work for you!
Decide in advance!
One of the most powerful things we can do is to decide in advance.
Decide in advance how you will celebrate when you take an action step. Example: I have decided in advance that once I get this blog post finished, I will get up, stretch and turn on some worship music. Already I can feel my brain pushing me over the finish line!
Our brains are incredibly powerful, and we CAN get our brains to work for us in a way that gets us to our end results faster!
Celebration leads to success by making you feel good, and it also helps to activate certain areas of the brain that motivate you to continue working towards your goals. So, next time you take an action step towards your goal, take a moment to celebrate your success and give your brain the boost it needs to keep pushing forward!
Do you take time to celebrate? If so, what are some of your favorite ways to celebrate? Dop a comment below and let me know.
