PLEASE DON'T FORGET THIS 💛

About a year ago my nephew learnt to put things in the bin.

Every time he did it, my whole family would lose their literal minds, cheering and clapping like he'd f*cking...solved the hard problem of consciousness. (He's working on it, I'm sure). So he started putting more things in the bin, demonstrating when he did it, entering the room holding tissue paper raised above his head triumphantly. Legend.

We celebrated the shit out of that. I have VIDEOS of it. I DOCUMENTED someone learning to put things in the bin.

Because we know, intuitively, that celebrating an action, reinforces that behaviour.

Somewhere along the way though, we stop.

We forget.

We stop high five-ing ourselves for throwing our rubbish away. We stop giving ourselves a metaphorical pat on the back when we complete that tedious task we hate doing. We kind of stop celebrating ourselves...at all.

The big stuff, we can do that. We'll spend a bit more than we usually would on a takeaway after a particularly heavy week, but my friends, you are doing stuff, difficult stuff, hard stuff, new stuff, boring stuff, complex stuff, challenging stuff, basically all the time.

If we want to repeat a behaviour, we have to celebrate it.

Not in a big way and not only the big things.

Little moments of "wahoo good job!" after small tasks.
Listening to your favourite song after that tricky meeting.
Muttering "yesssss" to yourself when you feel brave enough to share that idea.

Without that, life feels monotonous, work feels relentless, there's no joy.

So a reminder for you today my friends to celebrate. As many moments, as often as can, because what else is there?