Celebrate Milestones, Successes & Accomplishments

In yesterday's post, we talked about the strategy of using your past accomplishments to motivate you in the present. There are other ways to help keep yourself on track and pushing toward your goals, as well. Sometimes we get so focused on making a big transformation or reaching our destination that we forget to notice the changes we're making along the way. Noting our successes, as we've discussed already, can help to motivate us. Taking it further and actually celebrating those things can provide us with a bunch of other benefits that touch upon various aspects of our lives. Let's discover the reasons why you should celebrate milestones, successes, and accomplishments on your path toward reaching your goals.  

Improve Your Outlook 

Celebrations are fun! By attaching a party or some kind of fun activity to your latest goal milestone, you're teaching yourself to view the pursuit in a positive way. Too frequently, we see our goals as a struggle or something we have to do if we want to be successful. This mindset makes it more difficult to progress. Developing a success mindset can result when you make a few tweaks to your viewpoint and focus on the positives. Celebrating small achievements is one way to do this. When you take even a little step closer to your goal, embrace that success through some sort of enjoyable recognition. Reward yourself with a trip to the movies when you get an A on your exam. Anything that acknowledges your success in a pleasant way will do.  

Feel Good 

Celebrations of any kind tend to make us feel good. When we're happy, the production of neurochemicals such as dopamine in our brains is stimulated. Dopamine is known as a "feel-good chemical', in fact. As these chemicals are produced, our brains want more of them and their production leads us to seek opportunities to obtain that stimulation. This creates a positive cycle in which we will actually want to continue celebrating the kind of progress that has led us to feel so wonderful.  

Increase Your Confidence 

Celebrating your achievements is a way of patting yourself on the back for a job well done. This is especially true when you include others in your activities. You build yourself up through these celebrations and reinforce the idea that you have the ability to complete your goal. Confidence is a strong motivator.  

Share the Happiness 

Not only are celebrations fun, they're also happy-inducing. We talked about the feel-good chemicals released through celebrating your milestones. Sharing these celebratory activities is a great way to spread happiness around. It's also very inspirational. Those closest to you will want to share in your success because they're proud of you and want good things for you. In addition, your success might just spark the desire in your friends to reach for their own dreams. It's contagious, really. So enjoy the celebration! 

These are merely a few ways you can benefit from celebrating your milestones, successes, and accomplishments on the way to reaching your goals. Each one of these little celebrations you have will probably introduce you to yet another good thing to come from them. Enjoy the process and just have fun.