Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Celebrate Small Wins

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

This week’s mantra is: "I Celebrate Small Wins." Progress isn’t always loud or dramatic, sometimes it looks like quiet steps, steady effort, or simply showing up. This episode explores how to recognize the value in small moments of growth, acknowledge what’s working, and build momentum through encouragement instead of pressure. Celebrating small wins is not about lowering the bar. It’s about honoring the process and reminding yourself that every step forward matters. This mantra will help you stay motivated, present, and proud of how far you’ve already come.Mantra is an OpenMind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Mantra! Instagram: @mantraopenmind | @OpenMindStudios TikTok: @OpenMind Facebook: @0penmindstudios X: @OpenMindStudios YouTube: @OpenMind_Studios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind. Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I celebrate small wins. I'm your host, Gemma Spag, and every Monday I give you a simple but powerful phrase to consider bring into your life, a philosophy to guide you in the weekend. head, maybe even beyond. In each episode, I love to unpack what our mantra really means, how it has shown up in my own life, and how you can bring it into yours with journal prompts,

tips, and psychological strategies to help you take this mantra and put it into action. At Open Mind, we really value your support, so please make sure to share your thoughts on social media, and remember to rate, review, and follow mantra to help others discover the show. For more content for your monthly bonus episodes, early access, and ad-free listening, join our Open Mind Plus community on Apple Podcasts. Each month, I also love to respond to your questions and comments in our bonus episodes, so make sure to leave a comment on this episode, or you can send me a DM on Instagram at Mantra OpenMind to be included.

Stick around. We'll be right back after this short pause. If you love candlelight, soft blankets, and slow evenings, this is for you. I'm Catherine Nikolai, host of Nothing Much Happens, where I tell soothing stories that help millions of people relax, feel good, and drift to sleep. On Wednesday, November 19th, at 6 p.m. Pacific and 9 p.m. Eastern, join me for a one-night-only live virtual event with calming bedtime stories, healing live music, and guided journaling to help you unwind and rest, so grab your pajamas, pour some tea, and come spend a cozy night in the village. Tickets at pave.live. Live. That's pave.l.L.I.E.

Okay, let's get right into it. It is time for this week's mantra. I celebrate small wins. Okay, this is why I think this mantra is important, because I talk about this a lot in my personal life. can't shut up about it if you know me. You know that I'm constantly asking people for their small wins. It probably sounds a little bit annoying. But I think as a collective, as a society, we have begun to place less and less importance on those really small moments of bravery, on small moments of creativity, healing, success. And we only seem to have space to celebrate the big things, the things that may only happen once every few years, sometimes even never for some people. When we talk about wins today, where does your mind immediately go to? What do you

think about? For most people, and I certainly fall into this trap, it is the stuff that you buy people flowers for, or champagne. It is getting engaged, buying a house, getting promoted, having a baby, maybe going viral, maybe hitting six figures, that's like a new kind of benchmark for a lot of people. These are the achievements that get recognized publicly. They're the ones that fit really neatly into Instagram posts or LinkedIn announcements or more importantly into our traditional concept of what makes a successful life. A big win is something visible, it's undeniable, it's socially validated and it signals not just that you know you're doing well, but that others can see it too because it confirms a bit of a lifelong blueprint we have for ourselves

around how we should keep progressing, what we should be working towards, what success should look like. The big wins are like the rib cage of the blueprint that society has given us for life. And the thing is, is that those things totally deserve celebrating. They absolutely do. I love it when my friends get engaged. I think it's like the best time ever. I think it's amazing when my friends get promoted and I'm there to celebrate those things 100%. But it is not the only thing that makes life important. And I think that it's kind of stifling if these are the only things that we appreciate because fewer and fewer people are able to find themselves in these big wins and in this definition of a successful life. So where does that leave them? We'll talk

about more of that later, but I want to talk more about why we psychologically feel drawn to big wins. I think they really feed out craving for external validation. Now let me say this. External validation is not a bad thing. It is not a bad word. It is not a bad form of validation. In fact, it can be a really important contributor to our self-worth, but it cannot be the only source. Feeling proud, praise, celebrated, that's a great part about being alive and getting to celebrate your wins with those you love. But the danger is that we come to believe that only these grand, outward-facing markers of success count. Whilst everyday progress, the habits, the resilience, the quiet personal victories that sometimes take a lot more from us, they can get dismissed,

even by ourselves as insignificant. Over time, I think this wires our brain to look past a lot of daily wins that actually build momentum in the favor of big wins and save a lot of our personal sense of pride for the rare monumental moments. There's also a cultural element at play here, as there always is. Modern society places a premium on milestones because they are measurable and they are comparable.

Yes, they fit neatly in. into this narrative of progress that we've been taught to chase, graduation, success, achievement, marriage, upgrading, houses. And sometimes those moments serve as a shorthand for worthiness. The evidence that we're not falling behind. And in this way, I think big wins aren't just achievements and worthwhile achievements. They also kind of act as a kind of social currency. The consequence is that life begins to feel like a constant state of not yet. When you're only holding out for those monumental winds, everything in between can sometimes feel like filler.

You know, you're living in the waiting room. Psychologists have a name for this. They describe this as the arrival fallacy. The belief that happiness will arrive when you reach that next big milestone. when you get the promotion, when everything finally falls into place, when the big wind comes. But because milestones like that are so spaced apart, you spend a lot more time in the small moments in between, feeling behind, convincing yourself you haven't really achieved anything yet because you're not actually celebrating all the stuff you are achieving day by day.

This also has the effect of actually chipping away at our motivation. Our brains, and we talk about our brains, I feel like in every episode because they really are where a lot of our behaviors stem from, our brains are designed to thrive on consistent reinforcement. Those small bursts of dopamine that come from completing something meaningful, maybe even minor, are really, really crucial. So when you skip over those smaller winds, you actually starve yourself of that reinforcement. And the journey towards those bigger things starts to feel a lot heavier, a lot less sustainable. You may even give up sooner than you would have if you'd just celebrate it along the way. It's like trying to run a marathon whilst refusing to drink water until you cross the finish line. Or refusing to acknowledge how many miles you've already run.

At the same time, I think focusing on big wins also distorts our sense of time. You know, again, they don't happen every day, sometimes not even for years, which means, again, there's those huge stretches of time that just feel maybe meaningless if we're only counting success as big wins. when we condition ourselves to celebrate only the major peaks, I think the plateaus in between start to feel like empty space, even though they are where the most growth actually happens. The big win is just an accumulation of all the other small, less visible moments stitched together. Perhaps, and this is another explanation, the obsession with big wins really reflects maybe a cultural hunger for significance. We live in a world where visibility often feels

synonymous with value. So naturally, the winds that can be broadcasted and appalled rise to the top. But if we never redefine what a win looks like, if we never give weight to the smaller, quiet a progress we make each day, we actually risk missing out on a lot of the very experiences that give our lives depth and also a sense of continuity and a sense of importance as well. So what are some of the examples of some of the small wins that we should be better at celebrating? I saw this video the other day from this woman and she had this like amazing friendship group. She had these like this group of ladies who were like in their 40s, 50s, 60s. A lot of them didn't have kids. A lot of them were never married. And every month she threw basically

a small wins party where she would put up this big sheet of parchment paper and then ask everybody to kind of like add something from the past month that they wanted to celebrate. And here are some of the examples. I also added some of my own but these were some of the examples that were on the list for that month. Having a tough conversation with someone that they'd been avoiding. Standing up for yourself when someone overcharged you at a cafe. Putting an extra bit of money in your savings. Taking yourself to the gym three days that week.

Going out for dinner by myself instead of staying home and just watching a movie like I always do. Speaking up in a meeting. Cooking at home even when it would have been easier to order out. not replying to my emails at night, reaching out to a friend first, signing the lease for a new apartment, submitting a big assignment that you've been working hard on. I think that's around like 10 or 11, and there are quite literally millions of others. A small win is really any action or choice that shifts the trajectory of your day, even slightly towards something more intentional.

It isn't about grand achievements, but about micro adjustments that over time actually create the spine and the backbone of the big wins. And it's the kind of progress that's easy to dismiss because it doesn't really announce itself. They don't also need an audience to matter. Their value lies in the way that they rewire how you see yourself. Each one of those things on that list reinforces this identity that you are someone who follows through, who adapts, or who chooses differently than before. And in this way, small winds aren't the filler between milestones. They are literally the architecture of what makes them possible.

What makes these worth acknowledging? Well, firstly, maybe nothing. We can just acknowledge them without them needing to have any grand, big sense of worth. Just because you want to, just because you feel proud of yourself, no one makes the rules about this stuff. Whatever makes you happy, whatever you genuinely feel excited for yourself for having achieved, that's all that matters. On a more behavioural neurological level, if you do want an explanation as to why it's worth acknowledging these small things, again, we can connect it back to reinforcement learning. Each time you notice and mentally reward a small step, your brain releases dopamine, which strengthens the likelihood that you'll repeat that behavior, which strengthens the likelihood

that it becomes part of how you see yourself. This isn't just about feeling good in the moment. It is quite literally building new neural pathways that make resilience, consistency, growth and success easier over time. It also just continues to give you confidence. Confidence, you can't do anything without feeling like you actually have it in you to do it and feeling like you can believe in yourself and having a bit of pride and having that internal validation.

We talked about how big wins are external validation. External validation cannot be your only source of identity or self-worth. You actually owe it to yourself and require self-celebration if you want to achieve anything. Those small wins, they are yours. They are yours to claim. They give you energy. They give you something to carry forward with. Okay, we've explained a little bit about why small wins are so important,

When we come back, I want to talk about how I'm learning to celebrate the small wins, why I struggle with it, how it's showing up in my own life. So stick around. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back. Now that we have looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, I celebrate the small wins. It's time to get personal with you guys and share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase. Personally, I think one of the biggest reasons why I dismiss my small wins is because I have this bad habit of continuing to raise the bar and expect more from myself.

I'm finding this actually with my running a lot at the moment. I don't know if you guys heard, I'm a runner now. I feel like I talk about it a lot. But at this current point in time, as I am recording this, I'm training for a half marathon. At the start of the year, I couldn't barely run three kilometers. last weekend I ran 18. And then I did this run the other day and it just went terribly. It went terribly. It was a bad run. My pace was awful. I felt tired. I wasn't enjoying it. I couldn't run as far as I wanted to. And I was like, well, that's just proof, isn't it? That's just proof that I shouldn't be

doing this. That's just proof that I really haven't come that far that, you know, I should just give up. It felt like all my progress had gone out the window. That's a sign. That's the sign I needed that this isn't right for me. And I was kind of complaining about it and I was kind of down in the dump. So I was talking to my friend who is actually a professional runner, which is crazy. And she kind of really got me to pull my head in. And she was like, thank gosh for her. She was like, why can't you just acknowledge all the other wins you've had before this? Like, what is stopping you from appreciating all the other good runs? How come this is the only run that you can focus on? I think it's because we also put a huge spotlight on failure, a huge spotlight on the lax.

of progress. As much as we love celebrating a big win, do you know what we like focusing on even more? A loss. A failure. Outrage. A misstep. Someone's downfall. And that trickles down to us. For me, in those moments when something doesn't display the progress I want it to or doesn't come outright, it's like all the stuff that came before it disappears. Maybe because they never actually got their time in the sun. Maybe because I never actually allowed myself to integrate, or appreciate how good I felt in those moments and the fact that there has been so much other small success is on the way. I think I've always been like this. I hate to say it, but I know it. From like when I was in high school, I placed all my worth in academics

and like one small criticism from a teacher or a B was like the end of it for me. You know, when I was at university, a similar pattern emerged. Or when I do anything, you know, the small wins, they feel inconsequential, when they are truly the whole point. That is what I'm trying to learn. I look at people who are really happy and who have a deep sense of self-worth and pride and more importantly, resilience. What do they all have in common? They take setbacks as necessary and they get excited by the tiniest of micro wins and that is infectious. So how can we be more like them? How can we celebrate the small wins? Even when we think it might reduce our motivation or that we don't deserve it. Because I don't deserve it, that mindset is rooted in

lot of stuff that has no business in dictating our lives anymore and we cannot keep letting it win. One of the most powerful ways to celebrate your small wins is just to practice active recognition. Too often, like I was describing with that running example, we rush past progress without pausing to register it. And that recognition, that is what transforms an action into a win. A daily habit that you could adopt could simply just be writing down one thing you did well and that you were proud of doing each evening no matter how small. Talking with yourself about how you do want to get 1% better each day and how each of those increments is as important as the big final goal. We want to create almost a record of proof that you can return to when

setbacks happen that interrupt the brain's instinct to only focus on failure. Over time, this practice trains your attention towards what is working. That is the foundation of resilience. Another habit is just to share your micro wins with others in an intentional non-performative way. That might look like telling a friend, you know, I finally had that tough conversation, or texting your boyfriend or your mom or your friend, like, oh my God, I did that morning run, even though I didn't want to. When you voice these wins instead of like hiding them, you allow them to be witnessed and you also invite people around you to celebrate you in their own way.

Psychologists have a name for this. It's called capitalization. When we share positive events, it amplifies their effect, strengthening bonds, boosting well-being, boosting morale amongst everyone. A subtle but important skill is also, again, reframing what counts is deserving. I think many of us hesitate to celebrate because we feel like the wind wasn't big enough, or we think that it might make us complacent or egotistical to do so. Maybe we think about how it could appear to others.

That's a big concern. In Australia, we have this thing called Tall Poppy Syndrome. It's not actually a medical disorder. It's basically just this idea that the tallest flower, the tallest puppy is always going to be the one who is cut down first. So basically, the person who elevates themselves, talks about themselves, who other people think of as impressive, that's the first person people are going to target to take down. And it means that we, especially as a culture, and I know it's a lot of other places in the world, you best believe none of us are bragging or talking about our small winds as much as we should be. In reality,

it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Life is short and more importantly, life is yours and it will do you more good than bad to be in your own corner rather than letting your actions be dictated by someone else. Celebrating small wins as well, it doesn't reduce motivation. It fuels it. It fuels repetition. It fuels positive reinforcement.

I think also to practice this reframing when you do find yourself shutting your own internal inner cheerleader down, to just ask yourself, you know, if my best friend did this, if my youngest sister, if my partner had this small win, how would I celebrate them? Almost always, you would celebrate them with love and praise and positivity, and you would be able to acknowledge how major that moment was for them. Turn that attention, back to you. Have that same focus on your own wins. Okay, when we come back, we're going to take these insights, we're going to talk about how we can turn them

action, so stick around. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. As a reminder, this week's mantra is I celebrate small wins. This quote we have today, our deep thought of the day comes from Naeem Calloway, and I love this quote. Sometimes the

smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tiptoe, if you must, but don't forget to take a step. This quote, I love it. I think it's a reminder that transformation rarely happens all at once. We often think that the biggest shifts in our life will come from the most dramatic gestures, quitting a job, moving a city, ending a relationship, these big life-changing things. But in reality, the most life-changing moments usually begin as something almost imperceptible. The smallest step, sending one application, reaching out to one person, setting one boundary can alter the course of your future in ways that you cannot imagine. The magnitude of the change isn't in the size of the step, but in the direction that it sets you on.

The second half of that quote, tiptoe if you must, I think captures the truth that progress doesn't require leaps and bounds or confidence or speed or perfection. It actually only requires willingness. Even if you feel shaky, even if you feel hesitant or uncertain, movement still matters and it will get you there a lot faster. than not doing anything, even if it's the tiniest of steps. A tiptoe might not look impressive, maybe not from the outside, but it breaks the paralysis of standing still, and that is why it matters. That fragile step is often the most courageous because it is taken in the presence of fear, not the absence of it. And over time, as we know, as we have talked about repeatedly, those little hesitant steps accumulate, those small winds accumulate. They are the foundation

of resilience, momentum, and lasting change. Okay, each week you guys know I share our deep thought of the day, I share my thoughts about the mantra, and then I also introduce a few journal prompts so you can kind of take this to the next level and explore this in a deeper way, how it's coming up for you. So let me talk you through some of the journal prompts we have for this episode. First, what is a small win from your past that you never fully acknowledged? why did it go unnoticed and how might celebrating it now actually feel? Next, what is one small victory you experienced today or this week

and how could you recognize it in a positive way that could shift your energy or your mindset? And finally, what small milestone would you like to honor in the next year and how will acknowledging them help you stay on track? now that we have made space to reflect let's just give your mind a moment to rest in just a second you will hear a music track i encourage you to just take this opportunity to just sit with whatever is coming up for you process this week's reflections in whatever way feels right no fear no pressure no expectations let your mind kind of be at ease if this is something you don't necessarily connect with that's also okay, just skip ahead about 30 seconds. But as you settle in, keep this week's mantra

in mind, I celebrate small wins. As the music plays, let this mantra shape your thoughts and take the time just to connect with whatever it's bringing up for you. All right. All right. As we wrap up this week's episode, I want to share a few final thoughts about this mantra. I celebrate small wins. I want to finish by just making a commitment to you guys that I will also attempt to do this better. I know that this is something that I don't always get right and there are probably so many things that I've achieved and succeeded in this year that

are so micro and tiny that they didn't get the spotlight they deserved. And because of that, us as a collective, we end up feeling more behind when actually we have so much to feel proud of. feeling proud of yourself does not make you a narcissist, it does not make you egotistical, it actually makes you honest, it makes you an honest person who was willing to say hey actually no, this was really cool

and this was really big for me and I'm going to acknowledge it because humility isn't getting me anywhere I may as well try this new thing every step you've taken every small victory you've had whether you've noticed it or not it has shaped you into the person you are today. They deserve

their time in the sun so take a moment to honor those wins no matter how small they are proof that you are growing they are proof of your courage they are proof that you are on an amazing path thank you for joining mantra an exclusive open mind original powered by pave studios at open mind we really value your support so please share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate review and follow mantra to help others discover the show for ad-free listening and early access to the show make sure to join Open Mind Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'll share another mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Gemma Spag. See you next week.

Mantra is hosted by me, Gemma Spag, and is an Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the incredible mantra team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warren Kerr, Sarah Camp, Jen Passavoy, and Paul Liebeskin. Thank you for listening. Villagers, I'm hosting a Nothing Much Happens live virtual event on Wednesday, November 19th. I'll share three handpicked bedtime stories, including one you've never heard on the podcast, along with live music and guided journaling to help you unwind and rest. Get your tickets now at pave.ive.live so you don't miss out. That's pave.a.livee.