Celebrate Your Winning
Recently I was at practice for my master's ultimate frisbee team and I was thinking about this question of celebrating wins and it occurred to me how perfectly sports can encapsulate the idea of celebrating small wins. So in ultimate frisbee, you play 7 people to a side and pass the disc among your teammates to move the disc up the field and hopefully catch it in the opposing team's endzone. You can't move while you have the disc and you've only got 10 seconds to throw the disc.
Most games are played to 15 and so when one team reaches that score we expect to see them celebrate the victory... but what we also expect is to see them celebrate all those small wins along the way. Both teams will absolutely have at least a small celebration for each point scored - a cheer, a little endzone dance, or maybe just congratulations from your teammates. And we'll also be cheering on our team for a good grab or throw - and on the other side the defense will also cheer on when it gets a block or forces a turnover of some kind.
Throughout the game, your team is bringing up the energy and celebrating all the things that bring them closer to winning. This is a culture I've participated in since High School and yet... it's something that is still really hard for me to embrace in my everyday life.
Part of it comes from the fact that in sports I have my team around me to help boost me up - while I originally started with the idea of trying to be modest and brush off compliments on my play, I have since realized that it is better to just accept the praise and say thank you. But again, this is an area that I have difficulty in my real life. I don't want to accept the praise when I do something well because well I know I could have probably done better.
I think this is an important piece to acknowledge because one thing I've discovered is that playing frisbee is one of the times that I'm at my happiest - and I think part of that comes from the fact that it is a place where I can be myself and I can acknowledge my achievements (even if they aren't that big).
When we take pride in the things we do and celebrate our accomplishments is can boost our self-confidence. But not only that, it will actively encourage us to seek out that same success again. This can be hugely important with ADHD because we do have so many times when things are difficult for us... but then we get that success and we don't want to celebrate it because we think it should have been easier for us.
But... man, that's some BS. We absolutely should celebrate those things that are hard for us even if they "shouldn't" be. We need to stop comparing ourselves to neurotypicals to define our success - we are who we are and it's what we do that matters, not what some imaginary "best" version of ourselves that we try and hold our standards up to does... I mean that imaginary person didn't actually do anything - they're imaginary. So don't limit your definition to success by what could have happened, what did happen? What can you celebrate?
And here's where I'm going to predict some people saying, "well I don't have anything to celebrate?" How about the fact that you're listening to this podcast in an attempt to better yourself? That's pretty awesome. Or maybe you took a shower today, or ate a healthy meal, or went on a walk, or replied to a text message in a timely fashion. I know these are small things, but again remember, when we celebrate those successes we're programming our brains to seek out doing those things again.
And this is really our first step in our journey of celebrating our wins - we've got to acknowledge that there are things that are worth celebrating. It might feel fake at first... yay, I ate a salad. But as we practice more and keep looking at those things that we want to keep winning at we're going to find it easier and easier to do.
We don't only have to celebrate when we've won the game, we get to celebrate when we make a good catch - or even when we make a good cut, but don't get the disc, because we're still doing the right thing.
One of the things that have always held me at bay from really celebrating success is that I just didn't know how. It feels a little weird saying that, but that's absolutely what's held me in check for so long. I knew that celebrating success was important, but how do I even get myself to do it.
First, let's talk a little about the difference between celebration and rewards.
Rewards are about doing something and getting a prize. It's the basis for extrinsic motivation, the motivation that we get not because we enjoy it or because we find it satisfying, but because we expect to get something or avoid a punishment. It's the what behind what we're doing.
But we also have intrinsic motivation, which is the motivation we get from behaviors that are their own reward. When intrinsically motivated, you do an activity because you find it interesting and inherently satisfying. My kids don't play with blocks because I give them a quarter every time they play with them, they play with the blocks because it's fun.
In fact, if I did give them a quarter (or any other kind of reward) every time they played with blocks, studies have shown that their intrinsic motivation would diminish. That is, rewarding something that is already intrinsically rewarding can back fire and reduce our level of motivation.
This does not mean that we shouldn't have any rewards - there are some tasks that I'm never really going to feel all that intrinsically motivated to complete. What this does mean though is that we have to be cautious about what we're choosing to reward for - we can turn things that are normally play for us into work.
It's also important for us to keep in mind that with ADHD our levels of motivation are going to vary day-to-day and that sometimes it's going to be a lot harder for us to summon that intrinsic motivation. This can mean that if we only rely on intrinsic motivation that we are going to fall flat sometimes.
One of the issues with ADHD is that we have trouble activating on tasks that we're not interested in - extrinsic rewards can help mitigate some of that by creating an incentive for us to be interested.
The point being that we want to make sure that we're only focusing on using external rewards when we're not already interested in doing something - they're just a way to help us bridge that gap in motivation when we need it.
With this in mind, we can start thinking about how we can work on celebrating our wins throughout the day and when we can also use rewards to help facilitate some of those wins.
As I stated earlier in the episode, we start off by acknowledging those wins we have throughout the day - and it doesn't have to be a lot, we can simply tell ourselves that, "hey, yeah, that was great." And as I've mentioned on the podcast before, these kinds of things are even more beneficial when we say them out loud. Yeah, it might feel strange at first, but verbalizing our thoughts creates a deeper picture in our minds. It forces us to slow down and process what we want to say.
Of course, we can also go the route of writing things down. Keeping a journal of your wins throughout the day can be a great way to keep yourself motivated - it also helps with the fact that we tend to forget things as we go, especially the good things. We're biologically primed to focus on the negative as a survival mechanism, so creating reminders of the good is vital.
Another way to go about this is to create a jar of awesome - every time you have something good, great, awesome happen, write it down on a slip of paper and drop it in the jar. Keep the jar someplace you can see it — because we all know that out of sight is out of mind — and on those days your feeling low, check the jar, get reminded of all those awesome things you did over the last couple of months.
But again, remember it doesn't have to only be the big things that we're celebrating, but that's not what we're looking for here. We're looking for all of those everyday wins that are moving us in the right direction.
Another great way that we can continue to celebrate is by sharing our accomplishments with others — and I want to be specific here and say that we want to do this as directly as possible. While would be easier to just share something on social media, that doesn't tend to have the motivational bump we're looking for... we get caught up in the number of likes and how many people commented. Sure, it can be great for some things, but to really celebrate your win you want to have more of a direct connection. What we want to be is specific in who we're reaching out to so text a friend, or maybe drop it in on a text chain. This can be especially great with an accountability group who knows what you're struggling with.
Because I will acknowledge here that not everyone is going to appreciate when we're celebrating something that's hard for us. While I could text my best friend that I finally put away my laundry, I'm fairly sure I'd get back a message that said "cool?" But if I shared that same message with my accountability group or with some of my other ADHD friends they'd get why that was a bigger deal for me.
But that's just the start of celebrating a win.
As with my frisbee team, we can have a cheer after we have a small win. Give yourself permission to get excited that you had a win. Put on a song that will pump up your energy and give you a little dopamine boost. Take a dance break after you've answered a few emails. Let yourself have a little fun completing your tasks.
We can also think about a few of those extrinsic rewards for those tasks we aren't going to be motivated by intrinsically. Maybe you need to get a sticker chart for brushing your teeth - but be sure to get some cool stickers that you actually like - I mean just glancing at Amazon, I see a set of... holy cow, 3200 stickers for $10. Part of your reward could just be looking through the stickers for the one you want.
One great suggestion I got from Brendan Mahan of ADHD Essentials, is when he answers emails he uses a little Pitch Tally Counter like you'd see someone using to count people going into a store or at a sporting event. Every time he answers an email, he clicks the tally. It's not a lot, but it lets him see the bigger picture of what he's doing and he can see his results over time instead of just isolating the win of each answered email.
Which again is the point here, we're just looking at ways to acknowledge that "hey, I did the thing!" because all too often we forget that part of acknowledging that we did anything and only focus on the things that we didn't do.
I also want to jump back on what I was saying about frisbee from earlier. While celebrating when you do well is one thing another area that is just as important is not getting down on yourself when you don't play well.
At my last practice I had 4... maybe 5 drops throughout the practice that stood out to me. They were during gameplay and were essentially unforced errors. Times when the disc either hit me in the hands or was close enough that I should be able to catch it and just didn't.
This would absolutely be something that could get me down - especially after years of play, 5 drops feels like a pretty big number for a single practice. I mean two of them were in the endzone so that's bad enough on its own.
But my team didn't let me get down - when those drops happened what I heard was, "that's okay, go get it back."
And that's an important message for all of us, we're going to drop the ball (or disc) sometimes throughout our day, and getting down on ourselves isn't going to help the situation. Did it suck? Yeah, sure, but holding onto that negative emotion is only going to affect my future performance in a negative way. This is going to be true on the field, and it's going to be true in the office and it's going to be true in my house.
I mean take this podcast for example - I'm currently writing this section at a time when I'd like to have it recorded by. I absolutely dropped the ball on getting this part done early - and that's probably more from keeping my expectations too high than performance, but nonetheless, I'm still not on track this week where I'd like to be. But I don't have to focus on that perceived failure. I can get up, dust myself off, and get after finishing this up now so that I can still have this episode posted on Monday.
I'd love to be able to always just get everything done how I initially planned it out, but that's unrealistic, I can't plan for everything. Instead, I can accept that things won't always go to plan and that that's okay. That my drop in the endzone is just an opportunity for me to make a great defensive play.
This Episode’s Top Tips
Celebrating our wins is a way to boost our confidence and it will actively encourage us to seek out that same success again.
We can differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by thinking of intrinsic as what to do because it's interesting and inherently satisfying. Extrinsic motivation comes from rewards or from avoiding punishment. Both can be important parts of how we celebrate our success.
Start celebrating your wins by acknowledging when they happen and then letting yourself do something fun to celebrate that success.
Don't get down on yourself when the wins aren't coming - we're not always going to have smooth sailing, but only focusing on what didn't happen tends to make us overlook all the good things that did happen.
