The Importance of Celebrating
Struggling to Stay Motivated? You Need to Celebrate
The simple solution to keep your motivation levels up
As kids pretty much everything we did got celebrated and applauded. Gold stars were handed out like confetti. As we get older, it tends to be only the big milestones that we celebrate — birthdays, engagements, marriages, new jobs etc.
When we start a project and begin working towards a big goal we have the enthusiasm of the hare, in its race against the tortoise. We leap out of the starting blocks, but as time passes our motivation can wane and like the hare, we can get bored, and stop for a snack and take a nap.
As days and weeks go by, our progress can slow if we allow that initial drive and motivation to fade. Despite our best intentions, we might even give up on the goal altogether, much like a New Year’s resolution come February.
How to keep our drive and motivation
To be more like the tortoise we need drive, discipline and focus to keep us moving forward, which can be easier said than done.
Two things will help:
1. Break your project into milestones and small tasks
2. Celebrate and reward the process.
The benefits of this are:
We reduce the overwhelm
We can track our progress
We get addicted to the process
Our journey to the goal is more rewarding and fulfilling
We are more likely to reach our goals
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Dopamine
We can’t talk about motivation and pursuing goals without bringing dopamine into the conversation.
Dopamine is a key element when it comes to motivation. This neuromodulator drives us to seek things, it increases energy and our ability to focus. All the things we need when we are going after big goals.
Dopamine works across neural circuits in the brain. The role dopamine plays in motivation is that it is released in anticipation of the reward. In doing so, it encourages us to act.
What we can do is learn to attach dopamine release to the process, not just the end goal. We create bursts of dopamine sparked by rewarding experiences.
What is critical is not making the effort all about the reward.
In his podcast, Dr Huberman explains that we need to take care of how and when we reward ourselves.
He shared a study that took place to understand the impact of rewards. They took a group of children who enjoyed drawing and were happy to do it without being asked or rewarded for it. During the experiment, one group was offered a ‘Good Player’ award if they did some drawing. After a couple of weeks, the reward was no longer given. The result was they stopped drawing, even though previously they had done it without an incentive. The drawing had become about the reward, not the enjoyment of the activity.
So how do we celebrate?
We need to celebrate and ensure that we reward the grind and make the dopamine hits about that.
We need to celebrate the process.
This isn’t about throwing a party every time we get something done. More often the celebration is internal — a self-acknowledgement and being your own cheerleader. Internally generated reward systems exist in your mind and will fire those bursts of dopamine.
Here are six ways to celebrate and get dopamine firing.
1. Small tasks and to-do lists. Who doesn’t love ticking things off a to-do list? If I do something that’s not on my to-do list, I’ll add it and give it a tick. Break things into small tasks and tick them off as you go. As you do, you get that dopamine hit. This will help build and maintain momentum.
2. Celebrate the work. I plan all my gym workouts in a notebook (old school) and record the weights lifted. When I hit a PB on a lift I record it with a smiley face. Sad? Maybe, but it makes me feel good.
You could follow Mel Robbins’ (author of the High 5 Habit) approach and high-five yourself in the mirror when you do a task. Try it — I felt weird the first time — but now love it. Note your progress in a journal, or keep a list of all the actions done in a spreadsheet and give yourself an internal ‘go me’ in recognition.
3. Find the good. There will be tasks that are less enjoyable. Journal and find the good and focus on that. I’m not a huge fan of doing laps in the pool. But when I go there, I focus on how the feeling of the water, the sensation as I pull through the water, the rhythm I get into and the feeling of weightlessness. I give myself a ‘yay for me’ for being there and doing it.
If you’re on a new fitness regime, but you find the runs hard, focus on the positives, like being outside, listening to music, and congratulating yourself for sticking to your plan.
The amount of dopamine you experience when doing the task will go up. Tell yourself the effort is the good part, that this is a choice.
4. Pause and reflect. When you reach the end of the day or week, hit the milestones, or you’ve done a difficult task — take a moment. Pause and acknowledge how far you’ve come and what you’ve achieved. Organising my Nile expedition was huge, there was so much to do and at times it felt like I wasn’t getting closer to the start line. Then I’d look at all the things I had done and achieved and found it hugely rewarding and it never failed to motivate me.
5. Reward yourself. It’s not that rewards are a total no-go. When you’ve hit a big milestone, go get a massage, have an ice cream or celebratory meal. Have a weekend off — that’ll also help stop the burnout. If you’re really putting off a task, promise yourself a reward to entice yourself. Just don’t overuse the carrot approach.
6. Do the happy dance. The photo above was taken when we got to the end of the rafting section in Uganda. It would have been easy to just get off the river, pack the gear up and go. But instead, I got us to do a photo where we’re doing the jump. It was a simple action together to celebrate and acknowledge what we’d done. And it made us laugh.
You might hug it out, jump for joy, whoop and holler or simply raise your arms in the air and take a photo, like the image at the top taken at the starting point of my cycle across Australia with my great friend Tara.
This short video is a mashup of a few celebrations during my expeditions (language warning — I do swear). None of these were at the end, but at key milestones along the way.
“Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.”
Nelson Mandela
Learn to turn the effort into the reward and celebrate the progress. These celebrations will fuel you and are an endless internal source of motivation, drive and focus that will help achieve the biggest of goals.
Go celebrate to succeed!