It is easy to get stuck focusing on the negatives in life (in fact, we all do it – it’s called the negativity bias, and it is real). But here is the good news: It is possible to re-train our brains to be more positive – in turn giving our wellbeing a boost.

One way to do this is by celebrating wins. And guess what: Minor victories can give you just as much lift as major breakthroughs – so celebrate them all! Why? Because big or small, those feelings of victory activate your brain’s reward system giving you a hit of testosterone and dopamine which make you feel happy and strong. And it will give you the motivation to keep going when life and work is a grind.

Another reason to focus on the small wins is because, well, you are going to have a lot more small wins in your life. Those breathtaking moments when you are on top of the world? Those do not happen every day. And in fact, getting to the top of the mountain was the culmination of dozens of small victories over months or years. If your goal is to climb Mt. Everest, you are not going to just show up and start climbing. You would not make it or worse, you could get seriously hurt. What you would do is plan, train, and gather the resources you need to summit the mountain (alive!). And each of those milestones is an accomplishment worth celebrating.

You got in 10,000 steps today, cooked a decent lasagna, or even just leveled-up your remote work situation by putting on some pants… Whatever it is, acknowledge it and give yourself props for making it happen.

The End of Day Review

Taking a breath and acknowledging your wins in the moment is crucial, but memory is short when life is coming at you fast. To stockpile those positive moments to draw on later, set up a ‘Wins’ journal. Start using it tonight to list 3 things that went well today. A few small wins each day is all you need. Each day take a few minutes to record your wins- big and small- so that you have a tangible record for those dry times. We all have periods when life is just not working and there is nothing like remembering past accomplishments to carry you through to the next oasis.

Albert Einstein said, “Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” To create a “compound effect” in your life take even, small action steps every day toward your goals. Invest a few dollars every day and for over a decade you are creating wealth. Read a little, even just a few pages, every day and over a lifetime you will be wise.

Look back every day and measure your progress. Do it every day, every week, every month, every 90 days, every year! Short 10-30 minute “review” sessions will boost your energy and confidence. During the day-to-day challenges, it can be easy to focus on the difficulties.

CELEBRATE YOUR VICTORIES – ALL THE TIME

Recent studies indicate that habits may not be formed solely through repetition. They can be formed through deep emotion. “The feeling of success is what wires in habit, and it keeps people going. But that feeling of success seems to generalize and help people unlock in other areas where they were fearful before, so the fear diminishes, so the hope can emerge.” Writes BJ Fogg in his book, Tiny Habits: The small changes that change everything.

Celebrate even the smallest wins. It could be a full-out, “YEAHHHH!”  with a fist-pump in the air or a little dance. Hug someone close to you. Anything to acknowledge the win and the moment. Doing this creates a positive association with your desired behavior and this impacts your subconscious.

Did you schedule that next appointment? YES!

Did you make the sale? YES!

Did you recruit another Licensee? Shout it out…YES!

Do this immediately after each victory. To create a habit, and to create it fast, cheer for yourself while you are doing the new habit you want, or cheer immediately after completing it.

Celebrating progress is fundamental to the psychology of change. There is nothing more powerful than the way you speak to yourself. By attaching positive, joyful emotion to your wins you will be hardwiring the pathway to success.

In short, if you are not able to focus on and achieve a daily goal, you are not ready for a bigger, scarier goal. Prove to yourself that you can focus on something today – and make it happen. Daily give yourself the experience that you are WINNING. When winning becomes a daily habit, it becomes a long-term reality.

Taking baby steps purposefully primes you for success early and often. With each accomplishment, you become more motivated to achieve the next milestone and then the next one. These little moments and little victories lead to momentous change. And before you know it, you are looking down from heights you previously only dreamed of.

The act of celebrating gives you tangible, positive feedback and fulfills the human need for achievement, recognition, and self-esteem. Celebrating combats feelings of unworthiness and the negativity that permeates our culture. It frees us to continue the process, leading us to more accomplishments. Writing down the celebrations crystallizes them, creating a living document, one that we can share and return to when needed. Celebrating shows appreciation and builds mutual respect among the team as well as helps them to bond as a unit.

Developing this habit of celebration becomes affirmation for future progress and stops self-limiting beliefs from taking root. And, finally, celebration allows for the downtime needed to reenergize and renew our batteries while leaving a positive imprint on the subconscious.

Do not wait another moment! Stop what you are doing, carve out time and begin writing down the successes you have had in the last month, the last week, the last day. Do it today and then do not stop celebrating. Get into the habit and suddenly you will find that the journey to achieving your goals is paved with confetti!

Highlight small victories to win support for change

Change management is one of the toughest challenges a leader will face: 39% of employees are resistant to change. Get it right, and the rewards are big. Get it wrong, and you may find yourself the subject of a negative management case study.

John Kotter’s iconic strategy recommends regularly celebrating short term wins to encourage a positive mindset and derail cynicism. Change does not happen overnight, but if employees see no visible benefits, dissatisfaction and fear set in. Appointed in 2012 to turn the ailing Yahoo around, CEO Marissa Mayer is often cited as an example of how not to handle change. Employees reported low morale and disenchantment over the way in which change was handled – on one occasion, being told that there would be no more job losses, only to have more cuts announced just weeks later.

Streamlining is sometimes unavoidable, but for Yahoo, the atmosphere of uncertainty – and lack of a positive change strategy – resulted in more than a third of the company’s workforce leaving for other jobs.

To avoid becoming a victim of corporate brain drain during a period of change, leaders should focus on celebrating the small wins – a new contract, positive customer feedback, or savings being made – so employees can appreciate the real-time benefits of large-scale organizational change. Do not simply rejoice, reward too: whether it is recognizing the employee of the month with a personalized thank-you in the company newsletter or taking the sales team out for a meal following an increase in revenue.

Achieving a healthy workplace culture is essential to running a successful business. According to HR leaders, it is also the number-one challenge in attracting and retaining the best talent. As a business leader, office culture begins with you. Listening with intent, talking with authenticity, and acting with integrity will give your employees a safe place to be creative and take risks. Rewarding excellence and explaining change will bring the team together for the cause. But also, the most motivating thing, studies show, is being able to see progress and success.

Professor Teresa Anabile, in her study of 12,000 blue- and white-collar workers, found that the forward progression, or wins, was the thing that motivated workers to keep going day after day. It did not even matter how big or small the victories were, just that they were happening on a regular basis. Not even material rewards were as motivating as forward progress. Recognizing the wins and how well things are going is vital to your team’s continued success.

These days, we are all in a race to the finish. Every corner of life is teasing us with competition to be the best, or at least not the worst. And the opportunity to compare our failures with others’ success is always beckoning. There must be a better life, right?

We dream of bigger futures, so we set Big Hairy Audacious Goals for our personal lives and our organizations, and work diligently toward their achievement. But, because the due dates for our BHAGs are so far into the future, it is a rare event when we feel the thrill and satisfaction of achieving these long-term goals.

Ernest Hemingway says, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”  Research contained in the book The Progress Principle backs up Hemingway’s quote. It is not just about goal achievement (the destination), it really is about enjoying the journey. The studies show that when people can see that they are making tangible progress every step of the way and experience “small wins” – they become more engaged and productive.

These “small wins” are the incremental steps toward longer term goals. People are much happier and more creative in their roles when they can visibly see continuous progress on their goals in a series of smaller daily and weekly steps.

Many of us take for granted the progress we have made and get discouraged when our final goal seems so far away. By taking time to measure how far we have come, we gain the energy and enthusiasm to continue the journey. And the final product will be better and sweeter having celebrated along the way.

So, how do we begin to see the process AND measure the progress? By pausing periodically throughout the day, week, and month to celebrate success. At the end of each day simply identify five things that you accomplished and explain why each one is important. Build celebration and recognition into your daily rhythm. Dave Crenshaw says to take 15 seconds to savor your success. You need to fall in love, not with what you are trying to accomplish, but with the process of accomplishing it. The process, not always the outcome, is what helps you define success. After winning, most champions do not talk about what they accomplished, but what they have learned from the process and how that has helped them grow as a person.

Celebrate yourself and your accomplishments by acknowledging the many steps along the way. This exercise is designed to increase your self-confidence and improve your performance in all areas of life. Celebrating your victories is the gas or the oxygen that propels you on this journey. Putting the pen to paper connects these ‘wins’ directly to the brain.

The connection is so powerful that it can improve the functioning of your frontal lobe, the executive decision-making area of your brain. A positive change in your body chemistry occurs when you focus on your successes. Celebrating success is proactive rather than reactive-an action step to live your life intentionally and on purpose. This exercise will increase happiness and decrease stress in your life. These small successes then motivate you to take on bigger and bigger challenges.

It takes an average of 66 days for a new habit to become automatic, so do not be discouraged if you forget or miss a chance to party. Just remind yourself that it is progress not perfection!

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. (Oprah Winfrey)”

A word of caution: Remember to only evaluate your reality with a mirror not social media. Look at your life through the lens of what you have rather than what you do not have. And focus on what is working in the moment and savor that. Then look at how to move forward to the next milestone.

It is equally important to celebrate success in a company, large or small. Celebrating both company and individual victories does not just create a positive “vibe.”  It also helps workers see themselves as part of a winning team and themselves as effective. This mindset fosters a more “Can Do” attitude and daring response to challenges than if employees see themselves as “Basic” and part of a hapless, stressed team.

Furthermore, when wading through a steady stream of negative news, it is easy to see oneself as a victim of circumstance. By consciously calling attention to accomplishments and successes, you offset the doom and gloom with genuine positivity. And not a fake Pollyanna positivity – You will have evidence to fall back on in the form of notes to yourself or notes of acknowledgement you have sent and received to and from coworkers and clients.

By sharing stories of employees doing remarkable things, you also strengthen the belief that you are a team of winners who can accomplish important things. Because emotions affect perception, shifting the ambient emotional state of your workforce to a more upbeat, hopeful one, means employees are more apt to look at challenges as something they can overcome, rather than insurmountable obstacles.

One quick and easy strategy to capture the progress wins is to start every meeting with a Celebrate Success moment. At the beginning of the meeting, go around and give everyone 30 to 60 seconds to say what area of progress they are proudest, happiest, or most excited about in any part of their life.

Most people come into a meeting not “present.” They are focused on the last conversation they had, the last email they read, or the traffic that almost made them late. Or they may be joining remotely and not physically present at all. By starting with the Celebrate Success tool, you will get everyone mentally in the room.

Whatever issues we need to deal with, they are always better handled from a positive and confident frame of mind. Creativity thrives in a safe, positive atmosphere, not a fearful, negative one. It is not that you are overlooking challenges; in fact, you are coming at them with the right attitude.

Then finish meetings by asking, “What value did you get out of this meeting?” By always bookending your meetings this way, you are training people to look for value in every experience. The focus is always on what is working rather than what is not. The more often you do it, the more automatic it becomes.

If employees’ daily experience is one of frustration and failure, they bring that mindset and emotional state to everything they do – including their response to major changes you ask them to make. At the most fundamental, biological level, repeated failure creates the biochemistry of helplessness and hopelessness in the name of the stress chemical cortisol. In contrast, repeatedly making progress towards goals and feeling a sense of proficiency triggers the biochemicals of happiness and satisfaction including the “motivation and reward” chemical dopamine.

Feeling happy will definitely improve morale and performance, in our next post, we will be talking about how this will be beneficial to you and the rest of your company.