Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success Podcast, episode seventy-two. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

Celebrating wins is an important aspect of forming new habits, getting more done, and increasing job satisfaction in the workplace. Celebrating those little successes provides positive reinforcement, which can help us feel more motivated and confident in our abilities. When we feel acknowledged and recognized for our accomplishments, we are more likely to continue making progress and pushing ourselves to achieve our goals. 

In this episode, we’re encouraging you to celebrate your wins as a way to build momentum and create a sense of progress. Each small win can build upon the last, and that momentum then helps us stay motivated and focused on achieving that next thing on our list. Those small wins can go a long way to improve how we feel about work and our overall well-being. 

It’s important to feel acknowledged and recognized for your accomplishments, even if it’s just you and no one else. This is likely to lead to feeling a sense of fulfillment and pride in your work, which in turn can lead to you being more engaged on the job. According to B.J. Fogg, in the book Tiny Habits, celebrating wins has also been proven as the best way to create new habits and reinforce behavior change. 

Not surprisingly, you can’t punish your way into changing your behavior. Believe me, I’ve tried. Typically, when we see the positive outcomes of our actions, we are more likely to continue practicing these new habits and integrating them into our daily routine. It certainly works better for me than beating myself up about all the things I didn’t get to. 

Celebrating wins is also essential for building self-confidence, which can help to increase our level of productivity and efficiency. It’s a win-win all around. Sometimes it can be challenging to stay motivated, so we need some positive reinforcement in order to keep going. 

Seeing progress helps to build career confidence by providing that much needed evidence of our skills and abilities, even when they aren’t necessarily recognized or rewarded by others. Of course, we’d like others to provide that validation, but don’t hold your breath because that may not happen. 

Celebrating our own wins provides that sense of validation and self-worth, and sometimes that’s just what we need to feel more confident in who we are and what we can do. When we start to see the positive outcomes of our efforts, we are more likely to feel proud of what we’ve done, stay motivated, and continue pushing through those challenges instead of throwing in the towel and thinking this just isn’t for us. Focusing on our successes and celebrating our accomplishments gives us more of a sense of fulfillment, which can help reduce our stress in the workplace and improve our level of happiness, which then spills over into our personal life as well. 

What’s your favorite way to celebrate your wins? What works best for you may depend on your personal preferences and motivational factors. You might want to consider trying out one of these four easy ways to celebrate your wins: 

1. Acknowledge your progress, where you set specific goals that are exciting for you and then acknowledge and praise yourself for a job well done. This can be as simple as saying, ‘Great job!’, or ‘I did it!’. It’s important to say this out loud to yourself because saying it in your head just isn’t the same. 
2. Tangible rewards, where you treat yourself to something you enjoy. This can be fun to plan in advance, making that assumption that you will be successful and allowing that anticipation of your treat to fuel your progress. 
3. Share your success, where you celebrate with others who have supported you on your journey, building a sense of community around your accomplishment, perhaps on social media, if that’s your thing. 
4. Reflect on your growth, where you track your progress and take the time to also reflect on how far you’ve come and what it has made possible for you in your career and your life. 

It’s important to experiment with different ways of celebrating your wins and find what works best for you. I have to admit, it might feel very awkward and uncomfortable at first, but once you get in the habit of doing it, it can feel pretty great. Additionally, it may be helpful to combine multiple strategies to really reinforce those new habits you’re creating. 

Remember, celebrating your wins is an important part of maintaining your motivation and developing productive habits, especially when you face the barriers we commonly face in trying to advance our careers. Find a way that works for you and make it a regular part of your routine. You may be surprised at what an impact it can have. 

When you celebrate your successes, you feel more confident by taking on new challenges and this can help you be more productive and successful in your work. It can also promote a positive mindset by focusing on what has gone well, rather than what has gone wrong. This can help you develop a more optimistic outlook and keep that cynicism at bay, which in turn can help you believe that you can achieve more in your career. 

Celebrating your wins can also strengthen relationships with your colleagues. When you share your successes, you are building a sense of camaraderie and teamwork because we can achieve more together. 

Taking the time to recognize what went well is closely related to success and it can help you overcome setbacks and obstacles. I’m sure I’m not alone in simply focusing on the negative aspects of any situation. Acknowledging what we’ve accomplished can help us reframe our thinking and focus on what we’ve achieved, rather than what we haven’t. This can help us approach setbacks in a more positive mindset and find new ways to overcome those hurdles in our way and become more resilient and better equipped to handle difficult people and challenging situations.

By celebrating your successes, you can stay motivated, maintain a positive mindset, and continue to work towards your goals, even in the face of adversity. But as with most things, even when we know it’s good for us, it is still difficult to get ourselves to do it. There are five common roadblocks that can prevent us from celebrating our wins, including: 

1. Negative self-talk
2. Imposter syndrome
3. Fear of being perceived as arrogant
4. Lack of awareness
5. Comparison to others

Let’s dig a little deeper into each of those roadblocks. 

That ever-present inner critic, filling our heads with negative self-talk is a common barrier to celebrating our wins. When we achieve something, we tend to downplay it or dismiss it as luck or not a big deal. We all have a tendency to focus on what we didn’t do well or what we could have done better, rather than celebrating what we did accomplish. 

Imposter syndrome is that feeling of inadequacy or self-doubt that affects many of us, even when we have achieved considerable success. We might feel like we don’t deserve those accolades or that we are frauds who are about to be found out at any moment. This can make it difficult to celebrate our wins since it can feel like we didn’t really earn them, especially when we are thinking that we don’t deserve them. 

Some people may be hesitant to celebrate their wins because they fear it will come across as arrogant or boastful. As women, we’ve been raised to show humility and taught not to brag because that’s not socially acceptable. Therefore, we worry what others will think or how we will be perceived or judged if we talk about our accomplishments. 

Then there’s those of us who don’t even realize that we have achieved a win or we may not recognize the significance of what we’ve accomplished. This can make it difficult to celebrate wins since we may not even be aware that there is something to celebrate.

This is common when we spend a lot of our time comparing ourselves to others. It might feel like our accomplishments are not as significant or impressive as those of the people around us. This can make it difficult to achieve our wins since we think they pale in comparison to what others have achieved. 

To overcome these roadblocks, it’s important to practice self-compassion. This means recognizing and celebrating your own accomplishments, rather than comparing yourself to others and coming up short. It also means acknowledging and challenging negative self-talk and reframing setbacks as learning opportunities, rather than failures. Instead of downplaying your accomplishments or focusing only on what can be improved, practice positive self-talk. No matter what we do, there’s always room for improvement. 

Setting realistic goals can help you become more aware of your wins and celebrate them more easily. Break larger goals into smaller, more manageable milestones that seem less daunting, and take the time to celebrate each one as you achieve it. Don’t tell yourself that you have to wait to celebrate until you’ve reached that larger goal. Recognize your strengths and the effort you put in to achieve your win. 

Remind yourself that you deserve to celebrate your success, even if no one else feels the same way. If you struggle with imposter syndrome, try to challenge those negative thoughts. Ask yourself if your thoughts are based in reality or if they’re simply your default as a result of self-doubt. Ask yourself if it’s really true. Then ask yourself if the opposite might also have some truth in it. Recognize that everyone experiences self-doubt at times and that your accomplishments are valid and worth celebrating.

Be selective with whom you share your wins to overcome your fear of being perceived as arrogant. Start by sharing your accomplishments only with supportive colleagues, friends or family members who have always been encouraging and truly want you to succeed. 

Cultivating a sense of gratitude can help you overcome the negative effects of comparison. Instead of focusing on what others have achieved, focus on what you are grateful for in your own life. This can help you appreciate your accomplishments and celebrate your wins with greater enthusiasm. 

By implementing these tips, you can overcome the common roadblocks to celebrating your wins and cultivate a more positive mindset. This can help you achieve greater success in your personal and professional life and build the confidence and resilience needed to overcome future challenges. By focusing on your wins, and celebrating them in a meaningful way, you can achieve even greater success in the future. 

Remember, creating a habit of celebrating your wins can help boost your self-confidence, and many of us could use a little more of that in our careers. Studies have shown that celebrating small wins can activate the reward center in the brain leading to the release of dopamine, which can help reinforce positive behavior and motivate us to continue making progress toward our goals, and most importantly, believe that what we want to achieve is possible for us. 

It is also important to note that celebrating your wins doesn’t have to be a big or elaborate event. Even taking a moment to acknowledge and appreciate a small accomplishment can help build momentum and make progress feel more achievable. Overall, creating a habit of celebrating your wins can have a significant impact on your mindset, motivation, and productivity, making it an important practice to incorporate into your daily life. 

One of the most important things you can do when creating a habit of celebrating your wins is to acknowledge and celebrate even the smallest accomplishments. These small victories can help you recognize the incremental progress you have made, which can be a powerful motivator to keep going. Slow and steady gets it done. Consistency is key. Remember that celebrating those small victories is an important part of building new habits and achieving your goals. 

By focusing on the positive and recognizing your progress along the way, you can identify areas where you may need to adjust your approach or seek out additional support to help you make it happen. Take the time to ask yourself what went well today, and give yourself time to formulate that answer. Because when we give ourselves enough time to reflect, we’re bound to find that something good has come of it. 

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Celebrating Your Wins at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode seventy-two.

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com.

If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out The Confidence Collective. It’s my monthly coaching program where we dig a little deeper into what’s holding you back in your career, and we find the workarounds. We help you overcome the barriers and create the career you want. Join me over at cindyesliger.com/join. I’d love to have you join me in The Confidence Collective. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thanks for listening.