Celebrate Your Wins Daily.

A few months ago, it occurred to me that we experience small wins every day. We also experience missteps, mistakes and gaffes (or what we perceive to be) every day. We either quickly recover from those, or we obsess over them. It’s our choice.

Here’s some insight: The brain intended to focus on the negative. It’s called “negativity bias”, thought to be an adaptive evolutionary function to keep us alert and safe from predators.

Examples of negativity bias include

1. Our brains respond more intensely to negative stimuli.

2. People pay more attention to and are more interested in negative news in the media than positive news. (Doomscrolling.)

3. We obsess over negative events.

That’s a succinct explanation.

And we ADHDers LOOOOVE to obsess over the negative, don’t we? We get stuck in a negative thought loop, telling ourselves the same stories over and over, listening to our inner critics. Believing the BS narrative when in fact, it’s likely wrong, and our story can change.

I’ve been journaling my wins in the evening since. Not every day – some nights I drop into bed – but many.

Here’s my call to action

Let’s obsess over the victories instead of the failures. Don’t give your inner critic as much of a voice as it wants. Tame that tantrum-throwing toddler. Allow your kind voice – your warrior voice – to speak up and be heard.

Who’s with me?

Tonight, I’ll count posting this as a win.

Originally published on June 8, 2021. Imported to this website May 2024. Please forgive any wonky formatting.