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Celebrating our wins are not just good for our productivity, motivation, and mental health, but it helps to create more wins in our lives. This blog is going to tie in how acknowledging our accomplishments of any size can create more consistent success by using a bit of science, positive mindset behaviors, and taking action. 

It can be easy to get discouraged and face burnout from a variety of negative factors. Especially for us content creators. These can stem from a lack of growth in our metrics such as not gaining new followers, or not meeting our watch time requirements on youtube. Or maybe it’s from not being able to fit everything that’s on our to-do list into our already busy schedules. It can be frustrating when we don’t see the outcome that we were hoping for despite the amount of work that we put in, or feel as if we simply aren’t doing enough to get there. 

Focusing on the negatives can affect your motivation and leave you with that “Why even try?” mentality that can hinder us from continuing our pursuit of our dreams, and it sucks. Trust me. I’ve been there. I was the regional champion of the Negative Nancy’s at one point in my life, constantly obsessing over the negative until I decided that I wanted to be more positive in general.

Sometimes we are so focused on hitting our goals that we fail to give ourselves a much needed pat on the back for even showing up to chase our dreams for the work that we’ve done along the way. Acknowledging what we’ve accomplished instead of feeling as if it’s not enough is great for creating and maintaining momentum towards finishing our goals, but it can also help to prevent burnt out. 

Being Positive has its benefits

Let’s start with the health benefits of acknowledging and celebrating our accomplishments from a scientific standpoint first. My educational background in the Science of Well-Being from Yale University has taught me a few things about what contributes to our happiness within our bodies. One of the key contributors starts with our Hypothalamus. Let me cook. 

Achieving our goals(or even whittling down that to-do list) releases a “happy chemical” into our bodies. This neurotransmitter is simply a hormone that’s made in our brains that has a number of functions. For the purpose of this blog, think of it as our own internal “rewards system.” 

So, what does Dopamine do? It gives us a feeling of pleasure, joy, happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment when we do something that we need, want, or set out to do. It’s also why we feel on top of the world when we win at playing video games. However, I digress.

Dopamine as a natural antidepressant 

Adequate levels of Dopamine also help us to combat symptoms of depression. We may feel tired, unmotivated, unhappy, irritable, and experience poor concentration when it’s low. All of these can affect our content creation and streaming if we let it. We may also experience memory loss, mood swings, a low sex drive, and trouble sleeping—more stuff that can affect our content output.

Acknowledging our wins—or even focusing on the steps taken along the way—has a positive effect on our mood. It can be tough for some of us to give ourselves credit for how much we’ve gotten done. Especially when we aren’t used to hearing anyone tell us “Hey, you are doing a good job.”

Give yourself some credit, even if it’s just some small accomplishment towards a bigger goal such as cranking out some new youtube shorts for your channel, or learning how to be better at something that you’ve struggled with. Reframing your thoughts from “I haven’t done enough” to “I showed up for myself” can put you in a better mood and give you a much-needed boost to keep pushing. This is because recognizing our accomplishments and giving ourselves a well-deserved pat on the back boosts our dopamine levels. I personally feel like a boss after I win in Fall Guys. 

Practice Makes Progress

It can be hard to stay positive, but the brain is a muscle. It can be trained like an athlete can exercise to become stronger, handle more, and achieve more. The more effort that we put into being more positive, the more positive we become overtime. Same difference. Our mindset becomes more positive when we acknowledge our successes. Our confidence and self-esteem improves, and we ultimately become more self-assured.

All of this increases our motivation to reach our goals, and boosts our drive to make them happen. You will begin to trust in yourself more because if you can accomplish that one thing, then you know that you can get through anything set before you.

It motivates you to keep going in a more organic way because celebrating our wins makes us feel good about ourselves. It affirms those efforts with a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. It inspires you to keep going. 

The Universe is always at work

We’re always manifesting, whether we realize it or not. The energy we put out is always returned to us, be it good or bad. Even if it’s not immediate, what we think about, say, feel, and direct our attention towards over an extended time can manifest itself into our lives—whether you want it or not.

The returned energy can appear in the form of events, people, circumstances, and outcomes that match the vibration we put out. Think of it like when a person we’ve thought about, but haven’t seen in a while, just mysteriously pops up out of the blue.

The issue is that the energy we put out doesn’t always align with the actions we take. You can work your behind off on something, but thinking, speaking, and feeling negatively about the outcome can cancel out the success you want. Telling yourself and others that it won’t work out is what I call Manifestational Self-Sabotage. You can’t create two outcomes from one situation. Pick a side.

When we express feelings of joy, positivity, success, motivation, accomplishment—all those good feels—that’s when we send out the energy that can attract more of it to us. The act of acknowledging our wins, or even just the progress made, can manifest more success in our lives. Celebrating gives us more to celebrate.”

How do I celebrate myself? 

There are ways that you can celebrate your wins as a streamer and content creator that not only expresses your accomplishments, but can include your community in the fanfare, and help to build it. 

Post your progress or what it is that you’ve accomplished recently to your social media platforms. Not only is it a good way to update your supporters, but actively posting with relevant keywords of your niche can help to boost your online presence, and assist the algorithm with who to push your posts to.

People are curious, also. They often will want to know why you are shouting yourself out for the work you’ve been putting in, and will go lurk to see what you are talking about. You never know where your next supporter may come from. The act of just posting about reaching your milestones such as reaching Twitch Affiliate, or getting to 1000 subs on your youtube channel can put you in front of new eyes that didn’t know you existed before. 

There’s a hater born every minute 

For those who struggle with low esteem, it can be tough to give yourself the credit that you deserve for the positive steps taken to accomplish something. It can look like bragging to those onlookers with low self-esteem. My recommendation: flex on them anyway. If you experience some random troll in your comments that is being negative, then ignore or block them. Don’t let anyone steal your thunder for chasing your dreams.

This also applies to the haters in your real life that have nothing good to say about you going after what you are passionate about behind the screen. Limit your interaction with them about it. It’s your life and goals. Go crush them! I’m rooting for you!

Here’s a couple ideas to still express appreciation for how much you’ve pulled off if you aren’t yet ready to go make a short for tiktok about reaching 1k subs on youtube yet: 

Journal: Write down all of the details about your accomplishment. Even if it’s small, write it down if it matters to you. Start out with “I am grateful, thankful, and appreciative…” and include what it is. One day I will write about how expressing gratitude can manifest more things to be grateful for if I get enough of a response from my readers about it. Moving on.

Write about how it made you feel, and only speak about yourself in a positive manner. Read over your words, and feel good about it all. If possible, speak them out into the air after you write them, and read them. It’ll give it that much more power. Remember that the energy we put out has the ability to come back to us like a boomerang, giving us more to be appreciative of.

Tell a trusted friend, relative, or a pet: Not all of us have a support system. You’d be surprised at how many times I’ve texted my Uncle Martin in the middle of the night before Jesus is up passing out blessings. I appreciate him for reading my blogs, by the way. Hi, Unc! If you have someone you can trust, then hit them up about it. I’m sure they’ll be proud! If not, then tag me at joycutitout online. I will clap!

Treat Yourself:  It’s perfectly fine to reward yourself for the work you’ve done to accomplish your goals. You deserve it, and don’t feel bad about allowing yourself to have things. Not all of us can go cash out on a new Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon as a prize for reaching our accomplishments. If cash is tight, treat yourself to something small or free! I love free stuff!

Reward yourself with:

• More time playing your favorite game, watching a movie, or reading a book. Spend time enjoying your favorite things.
• A dedicated self-care moment: take a longer than usual hot shower or bath and reflect on how much of a boss move that was. Water can be very cleansing, and help you to focus on what’s next.
• Indulge in a favorite treat. That special coffee that you enjoy, some dairy-free ice cream if you don’t do dairy products, or some of your favorite dark chocolate like one of my favorite readers here enjoys. Hi, Shovaughn! Catch him on twitch, and tell him that I sent you!

It doesn’t have to be grand. It just needs to be a conscious acknowledgement of the effort that you put in. The goal is to create a positive feedback loop that says “I did something good, and I deserve this.”
I’m going out in the rain at 9:30am to get a brownie, and take a long shower that is as hot as I can stand it. I will shower until the water gets cold as my reward for finishing the blog for you to read. 

Feel free to leave a comment below, and tell me about what you are proud of pulling off in my comments! I want to cheer you on in your endeavors. You are worthy of the support and cheerleading as you go after that thing, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

You can also catch me on twitch! Let me know that you read the blog, and tell me about your latest win! twitch.tv/furycutitout is the place to be. There’s also a subscription box below to type your email in. It’ll update you on when there’s new posts to my blog incase you don’t follow me on social media for some reason. 

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