Stoic Wellbeing - Make It Stick: A Simple Way to Savor Your Wins

Episode Date: July 13, 2025

What if the real key to growth isn’t pushing harder, but celebrating more?In this episode, I’m sharing why savoring your wins matters – how it rewires your brain, reinforces your identity, and helps you live in alignment with your values.If you’ve been rushing from one goal to the next, this is your invitation to pause, reflect, and really honor the actions you’re taking.***I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel, a communication and mindset coach. My work is about helping people like you share your voice, strengthen your relationships, and have more fun.As an American expat living in the U.K., I value curiosity, courage, and joy. A few things I love: wandering European streets in search of the best vegetarian meal, practicing Italian, and helping my clients design lives that feel rich and meaningful.If you're ready to have conversations that open doors – in your career, your relationships, and your life – let’s talk.***Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

We are halfway through the year. July is a natural check-in point, a time when people take stock of their goals, what they've achieved so far, where they've fallen off, how they plan to get back on track. And I love this kind of reflection. It's important to pause and ask where you are and where you want to go. I also believe in something just as important, slowing down to savor the winds you've already had. This came up in a conversation. with a client recently. She casually mentioned leading a meeting where the CEO dropped in at the last minute. Hang on, I said, there was a time when an executive popping into one of your meetings would have sent you into a total death spiral, and it sounds like it didn't happen this time. And she laughed and said, oh yeah, it wasn't the best presentation I've ever given, but it was fine, and I didn't have a panic attack. So we slow down to celebrate that. This is a practice I do with all my clients. Sometimes they don't realize how far they've come

because their growth has become their new normal. And other times they're in such a rush to tackle the next big thing that they move past the progress they've made. But according to research, feeling like you're making progress is what keeps you going. The authors of the progress principle found that even small winds can boost our confidence and motivation. We can't wait for massive breakthroughs to celebrate. We need to honor the small shifts too. That's how you build sustainable change. Still,

a lot of us downplay these moments. I'll have clients who say, okay, I know this isn't a big deal for most people. Step. If it matters to you, it is a big deal. If you stretch yourself, this is worth honoring. One of my favorite writers and researchers, Rick Hanson, he's also senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. He puts it this way. The brain is like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good. So the negative stuff sticks and the positive stuff just slides right out of our brains. And unless we take time to really feel that win, whether it's going to the gym three days in a row, or speaking up in a meeting, our brains just tend to forget that stuff. Again, because of the human brain's negativity bias, negative moments stick around,

and the positive ones just slide right out of our heads, unless we train ourselves to notice and absorb the good. This is why I have clients savor their wins to pause and reflect on this evidence of who they are becoming. B.J. Fogg, founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, says celebrating our tiny wins is fundamental to solidifying new habits. This is, quote, something you do to create positive emotions, such as saying, I did a good job. You celebrate immediately after doing the new tiny behavior. And quote, and this is from his book Tiny Habits. You may have heard the phrase slow down to speed up. Slowing down to notice your growth helps reinforce the habits, the mindset, the identity that will help you achieve those goals that you set back in January.

And more importantly, you're celebrating being the kind of person who does what you say you'll do. This is about who you are, celebrating your internal progress. You become what you give your attention to. So if you only focus on what went wrong, you are going to stay mired in that. So zoom out and train your brain to see life more clearly. When you do this, you'll find moments where things went right, where you showed up in the way that you wanted to. Here is what Epic Titus has to say about this. If you don't want to be bad-tempered, then don't feed the habit, throw nothing before it on which it can feed and grow.

keep calm and to count the days in which you haven't lost your temper. So be mindful and say, I used to lose my temper every day. And after that, every other day. Then every third day. Then every fourth. That's from Discourses 218, Robin Hard Translation. Change isn't immediate. It happens through consistent intentional repetition. And noticing your wins, however small is part of that. It's how you shift from wanting to be a certain kind of person, to becoming them. And this applies to life outside of work, too. Yesterday, I was sitting on the beach, varying my nephew's toes in the sand. I felt the grains in my hands. I heard the ocean. I smelled the sea air. And I looked at my nephew's face and felt this huge wave of gratitude. And I realized this is also something to celebrate. I made the decision to extend

my trip by three weeks so I could spend more time with him because spending time with family is important to me. It's something that I value. So I chose this and I'm glad I did. So I'm letting it in, the sound, the smell, the sun, the feeling of being where I want to be with the people I love and living in alignment with my value. So I'm savoring that too. If you want to try this for yourself, here are a few questions you can ask. What's something I did this year that scared me, but I did it anyway? What's a win, big or small, that I'm proud of? When did I show up in a way I wasn't able to before? Who did I make time for? When did I act on what matters to me? And if this feels hard, if nothing is coming to mind, start small. Think of a moment when you didn't spiral, when you spoke up,

when you kept a promise to yourself, that is progress. Take one small action today and when you do, let yourself feel that sense of accomplishment. Progress over perfection, this is who you're becoming, this is how character is built. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicotel.com slash blank no more.