In this episode, we dive into the power of celebrating small wins, focusing on motivation, recognition, positive messaging, and team building. By sharing personal experiences, we explore how acknowledging victories can drive individual and collective success in various aspects of life.
In this episode, we dive into the power of celebrating small wins, focusing on motivation, recognition, positive messaging, and team building. By sharing personal experiences, we explore how acknowledging victories can drive individual and collective success in various aspects of life.
Welcome to Adulting Decrypted. We are your hosts. I'm Gene, and I'm starting my first year of college. I'm Ashton. I'm a music performer, composer, and educator. I'm Gene, a high school senior. I'm Roscoe, the dad. Those are my three sons, and this is Adulting Decrypted, where we discuss ways to become adults and the things we need to know to be successful in life.
Dad:All right. Welcome everybody. Guess what? Congratulations to you, the listener and to us at adulting decrypted. Why? Because we hit 11, 000 downloads. Way to go team. It's been a little bit of work and sometimes it doesn't feel like it's worth the effort. And other times it just seems like a lot of fun. thing I thought would be fun to do for seven, episode 10. We're a little over halfway through this season. I thought it would be good to celebrate our successes. So as a group. We've done something fun we went and played top golf you know, we won't say who the winner is necessarily keep that a secret amongst ourselves I did the best, which is probably pretty normal. He's still better. It's
Ashton:okay.
Dad:Anyways, we're just really excited. And so really it's important to celebrate the small successes as well as big successes. And there's four main reasons. For this one is motivation. Next is recognition. Sends out positive messages and it's good for the team. So let's talk about motivation. Do we celebrate our small successes every day as adults and when we have a small win? anybody celebrate those little wins? And use it as motivation?
Gene:If so, how?
Ashton:I try to, when it comes to writing music, a lot of times, especially when you're looking at the blank page, there's nothing there and it's frustrating because you'll have an idea of what you want to hear and what you want to convey. But like the reality of it will be far from real. And then after many efforts and attempts, you finally get something you're like, Oh, sweet. That's cool. And you kind of celebrate it for a second and then you keep going. And it's kind of like motivation because if that didn't happen, Then it wouldn't be fun to do it. And so that little breakthrough makes it fun,
Dad:you know, Ashton I love that you you talk about that I think of these wins and we talked about it earlier this season how Sometimes the longevity of a win is so hard it takes forever So I'm glad that you talked about celebrating in that little moment go. Yes. I did it. I just scored a goal. I Wrote a note whatever that is and then you go. Okay. Now, let's put it away and move on, I love that thought process. Thank you Anybody else Recognize your wins to help you get motivated feel like I
Gene:tend to forget because the small wins for me For just being a college student would be like, Oh yeah, I did this assignment, but I don't feel like it's much of a, yeah, good job. I did it. It's more like, sweet. Boom. Check it off. I did that one. I can move on to the next one. But I don't know if I ever try to mentally focus that into motivation.
Dad:That's fair. Motivation is an interesting thing. You know, the joke is motivation isn't sustainable, right? And so you need to get a dose of motivation every so often. It's just like a shower. It's not permanent. So that's the advantage of using it as motivation.
Ashton:Wait a minute.
Dad:cause a shower wears off Just like motivation wears off.
Ashton:No one told me.
Dad:Which one? Motivation or shower? Well, now you know the rest of the story as the story goes. so try and use these little wins, as motivation. interesting. I was listening to something the other day and it talked about how a lot of times we get really frustrated. Something doesn't go our way. So you get a bad break. And then they asked is this something you're going to remember in five years? If that failure is going to be something you remember in five years, trying to let it ruin more than five minutes. if it's something that you're going to remember in 10 years, that's fine. be mad for the day, be frustrated for the day, be, irritated for a minute. It's okay to take a day and go, Oh, this is just socks. And then say, okay, let's move forward. And I like that. I mean, that doesn't have to do necessarily with motivation, except maybe that thought will help you keep it in perspective next time something goes wrong. The next one is recognition. 80 percent of employees are highly recognized, feel proud of their work. So it's, recognizing these wins. And so that way you can feel proud. You can feel proud about what you accomplished, what you pushed forward. And really the whole goal in the recognition It allows you to take pride in your work. Do you guys, I'm asking the question, are you guys proud that we hit 11, 000 downloads?
Ashton:Yeah, I think so. that's a lot of thousands.
Gene:Yeah, I mean, it's super cool. It's nice.
Dad:The next thing is it sends out a positive message. It sends a positive message out to our team. It reinforces positive behavior. It builds trust and creates a culture of achievement. Where have you seen this play into your life?
Gene:Having celebrating your successes.
Ashton:where have we seen celebrating success be a benefit?
Dad:Where have you seen success building positive messaging and Driving to a culture of his achievement or the desire to get more achievement well,
Ashton:a lot of it's easy to see and easily transferable in the realm of teaching because a student will get frustrated when they're not able to accomplish a task And that frustration lasts until there's a breakthrough and then once there's a breakthrough It helps push for the next thing that leads to frustration and then a breakthrough. But those, little peaks of breakthroughs are just something that makes you want to keep going. but the thing is, the better you get at something, the further apart those breakthroughs get. So like an analogy, a teacher used to tell me, it was like an, imagine you're walking through a desert and then there's an Oasis that you get to, and it's a nice Oasis. There's like a little bit of water, and a little bit of shade, there's like a bush, and then you're like, You know, there's probably something better out there, so you push, in the desert, and you have to wander for a little bit longer, but then there's another oasis, With a little bit more water, and a little bit more shade, and then you're like, Huh, well if this one was better, there's probably a better one. And then you go, same thing. You push a lot further, but this oasis, there's a lot more water. There's a couple of palm trees. There's a couple of coconuts and it like gets better. So I feel like celebrating the victories doesn't happen without the frustration, but if you can correlate the frustration to understanding and recognizing the victories, it can create a culture of wanting to push through more of that frustration.
Dad:I love it, Ashton, because it's not just talking about the motivation of the moment. But it's the positive message that you send strives to get more achievement. You're like, guys, that was awesome. We did amazing. Now what's next? What else is out there?
Gideon:I think something interesting on that is it brought me back to part of David Gargan's book and it's the cookie jar, principle and the whole thing is every positive thing that you do or every little thing that you celebrate. Like, If it's just for like a daily example, Oh, I made my bed this morning. That's a cookie in the cookie jar. So later when you're feeling discouraged, you can look back and see all the different things that you did, slowly adding on to that stuff. And of course it can translate to bigger things as well, like David Goggins example is during his 100 he would turn back to his cookie jar, which was like, you got into the Navy SEAL program, you lost, what was it like? pounds in a couple months or something, just crazy numbers. And so it's just turning back onto those victories, whether how big or how small they are, just as motivation throughout your day.
Ashton:Forget about the analogy. I like that one. The good one.
Dad:Yeah. and really if we're sending out positive messages and it's a struggle sometimes. Because when we get up in the morning we can think of all the bad things or all the hard things or all the things That we felt like we felt that well, I forgot to make my bed. Oh, I didn't brush my teeth this morning I didn't shower Whatever it is, right? You can think of all those negative things, but man, if you could just grab onto one of those positive feelings and reinforce that behavior, yeah, but I got up this morning, And some people that's a real struggle. And other people they're going, well, of course I got up in the morning and I brushed my teeth and I did my hair and I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, And they're going, that's, there's no positive message in that. But for you, if you find the positive message in that, as we did as a team, it reinvigorates us. It keeps us going. It keeps us driving. I won't lie to the listener. I started wondering if this was worth doing when you're seeing a very few downloads and very little engagement to all of a sudden get 330 downloads in a week, you know, knowing that people are out there listening to you and having people on Reddit say, Oh, that was great advice. I really enjoyed this out of your episode. It keeps you going. And the more we can give ourselves those positive messages, the better we have a chance of being successful. The last thing that celebrating the success does for us as a crew. As we celebrate our wins is we're team building celebrating successes promotes team building and helps members of an organization build friendships and positive work relationships. So the more good news we share, I don't know how many times I ping. Ashton hey, do I have the audio file yet?
Ashton:What's twice?
Dad:Yeah, and then I ping gene. Hey, where's my artwork? If I was better at saying guys, guess what? We got 35 downloads just today versus Ashton. Where's this file Gideon? What's our next episode? Where's our artwork? Do you see the difference in that vibe and as a team if you see your successes? You're more likely to build upon those successes Football is one of the most interesting games for me to watch as far as momentum goes It's one of those games that you can feel the momentum shift in a stadium if you've ever watched a live football game. I remember sitting at the Rose Bowl, and I think we talked about this recently, but sitting at the Rose Bowl, I could feel the shift when the team knew they were going to win. When the Utes finally turned it on and LSU realized they were going to lose, It was L. S. Not the Rose Bowl. U. C. L. A. You're talking
Ashton:about Pac 12. Yeah. With U. S. C. Sorry, yeah. There you go. I was like, wait a minute. We were the team that lost at the Rose Bowl both times. I felt that momentum shift for sure. Hurt less the second time around. I was used to it by that point. There you go.
Dad:It was like with the Pac playoff last year when we were there and you could feel the change happening in Las Vegas. When you knew that USC. was going to lose. They started playing like they had lost the game. Had shifted and started feeling like they were going to win because they celebrated a sack on a quarterback. I mean, that was really the momentum that shifted that game. And it was only one silly little moment, In the whole scheme of that game. It was so small, but for USC. it was so big.
Ashton:Dave versus Gordon, USC. But I think that also is maybe a good adage to thinking of the saying of, don't put all your eggs in one basket because for USC you can tell that they put all their faith in their quarterback. That's all that anyone around them, the media, their coaches, their press release, that's all anyone ever talked about. So when finally there was a chink in that arm, you're like, wait a minute, he's not untouchable? you felt that momentum shift. And I think, we as fans, too, cause like, you buy into the narrative of like, Oh my gosh, that quarterback's insane, he's the best. And when you realize, it doesn't matter, your team's still stopping him, you're like, Yeah, let's go! Like, in Utah, we've always, like, there's the culture of always believing in your defense, but it's also We can trust our offense to do certain things. It's like if one thing breaks down, this best season forms a great example of, you know, like, Hey, you know, we don't really have an offense, but our defense will sure give us a chance because they're just, that good. And so for yourself like they're, they're, when I think of my teaching which I have a lot of, just getting a lot of experience with right now, if I'm like, Oh yeah, I feel like I'm really good at teaching X principle, but then all of a sudden I have a bad lesson like that momentum can shift and I can be like, Oh, I can't teach. And then the rest of the day is kind of a struggle because I'm thinking about Oh, this was a strength, but now it feels like a weakness. So it's kind of like the antithesis of the point where it's like you want to celebrate the victories, but at the same time, like celebrate the fact that we're not one dimensional, there's a lot more going on to us than. The one thing we're good at because we don't just have one thing.
Dad:Yeah, I like it You know as adulting decrypted crew, you're absolutely right if we only thought about adulting it would be Not nearly as dynamic as it is when we'd celebrate all the victories in our life well that too but even
Ashton:as us as adult and encrypted like we each as individuals have our strengths and if we have times where that strength falters, like, there's been a couple, if you're an active listener, you might've caught me a couple of times, but like editing mistakes where especially a while back, there was a couple of them where things lapped over each other. And it was kind of weird, like that sort of thing. it could be very distracting, but then you could also go. Hey, we fixed it. We noticed it it's fixed. And now the permanent record doesn't show it. You can celebrate that victory instead.
Dad:I like that. It's so multifaceted and Hey, we're in their arena. We're trying It doesn't have to be perfect.
Gene:And going back to the point of, team building when you said that, it reminded me of as a youth group, we went out to a military base and we did all these military. Team building exercises where it's like, Hey, you have these objects. You have to go over this top of this minefield. There's like a plank of wood that keeps it like above the ground over here. And so you have to build something And if you build it in such a way, and one person gets through, you're like, okay, yes. And so that makes you more motivated to keep trying, keep doing. And then even once you finish that big project, Gives you more motivation that when you do hit a wall. In that next one that is more difficult. You're okay. How are we going to get everyone over this with this little supplies? well, we've been able to do this before. I know that this person, this is one of their strengths. And so you're able to not only celebrate your own successes, but other people's as well. Like, Oh yeah, I remember that I did this well, and then you did this well. Sometimes we don't realize our own strengths and things that we do well, sometimes we just do it often. And we're super used to doing it, so when we do it well, you're like, oh yeah, that's what was supposed to happen. But then when someone else brings it out, you're like, Oh, you know what? Yeah. I did a good job doing that. I love it. Hey, listener, what we could use from you is keep shouting out your successes. We've got a few and we really appreciate those shout outs. Yeah.
Gideon:you can find us to tell us about those on any of the social media platforms that we have Facebook, Instagram, anywhere. Reddit is awesome. We have a subreddit. You can talk, especially our email. It's always open. Our website has all of those. So. I'd love to hear your stories and then we can share them here too. So
Gene:anything's awesome. Thank you.
Ashton:Not anything Everything anything and everything all of the time. I wasn't saying everything is awesome
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