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In this 10-minute Monday, we’re diving into one of the most overlooked keys to staying motivated—celebrating your wins. It’s not just about big milestones; even small victories can build momentum, keep you consistent, and make this journey way more fun. I’ll break down how positive reinforcement taps into your brain’s dopamine system and why rewarding yourself makes all the difference. If you’re ready to make mindful drinking easier and actually enjoyable, this episode is packed with simple, actionable tips to help you stay on track.
Want to drink less with no pressure to quit? Go to https://ctbk.co/4doo5dq for a free 15-day trial.
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ABOUT SUNNYSIDE: Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol moderation app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.
Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.
Creators & Guests
What is Journey to the Sunnyside?
"Journey to the Sunnyside" is your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol, whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting. While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, covering everything from mindful drinking and moderation to sober curiosity and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert advice, and practical strategies, we’re here to help you find what works best for your journey.
Mike Hardenbrook is a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol.
This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the leading platform for mindful drinking. Want to take the next step in your journey? Head over to sunnyside.co for a free 15-day trial.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in our podcast episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We're determined to bring diverse views of health and wellness to our audience. If you are concerned with your drinking, please seek the advice of a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical professionals and the content shouldn't be viewed as medical advice. In addition, we never endorse drinking in any amount.
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and, of course, inspire your own mindful drinking journey. This podcast is brought to you by Sunny Side, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free 15 day trial. I'm your host, Mike Hardenbrook, published author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert.
Mike:Welcome to another one of these 10 minute Mondays, and I'm excited to get going because this is a topic that I think is really important but is often overlooked, and that is celebrating our wins and positivity. And before we get started, I wanna flip the coin and go into the polarizing opposite. And the reason is is that I don't think enough emphasis is given to celebrating the wins, and I know I didn't as well. And so the reason I wanna talk about this is that think about in your past, maybe you set a commitment and you messed up. The next day, did you ruminate on that?
Mike:Did you potentially focus in the entire day? Did you maybe even start giving yourself negative self talk around this? And then let's flip it back over. On the days that you did win, did it last as long as that negative bias that we have towards the mistakes that we make? And I know from my experience, and I probably know from talking to others to guess, that you probably did give more of a bias towards the negative outcomes as you did to celebrating the positive ones.
Mike:And I think part of this is due to we think that small wins aren't really worth celebrating, but they really are. And there's a lot of science behind this as far as our mindful drinking journey, habit change, and just making this entire journey fun altogether, which I think we all wanna have fun. Right? Why not? So let's focus in on why this is important.
Mike:And the first one I wanna talk about is that the positive reinforcement, there's a direct correlation to dopamine. So responsible for feelings of pleasure, motivation, satisfaction. And when we do positive things and celebrate them, we reinforce this habit loop, and we associate that positive thing with the brain wanting to repeat it. So it's looking for things that are associated to pleasure or to relieve pain. And let's just say, for example and I wanna show you how small little changes can be celebrated that can give us this little hit of dopamine.
Mike:So, for example, if you went to a party, let's say you just said, I'm gonna set a limit for 3 drinks. And in between those 3 drinks, I'm gonna moderate with an NA option, whether it be NA beer, mocktail, soda water, whatever. And most of us, if we do that, hey, you know, that was cool. I only had my 3 drinks. But why don't you focus in on the win that you also, stuck to your plan as far as alternating your drinks?
Mike:And you could hold that drink and you could say, you know what? I feel really good about myself that I made this plan, that I stuck to it. Man, this is a win. And you know what? This drink tastes really good.
Mike:And you're gonna get that hit. And when your brain is looking for something pleasurable, it's not always gonna focus in on the alcohol. It's gonna remember the win that you had there if you celebrate it. And so I'm just giving you, like, the micro level win that you could celebrate that probably most of us would never give pause or thought to. And so the next one I wanna talk about is why wins are important is that it builds momentum.
Mike:It keeps us really motivated to keep going when we have wins, when we pat ourselves on the back, or even celebrate with others. And so by focusing on positivity, we give ourselves the wind at our back instead of pushing against it with the negative self talk. And because the negative self talk actually makes things more difficult. And when you tell yourself you can do it, I've done it before, look how far I've come, you got the wind at your back. Another thing to talk about is that it builds consistency.
Mike:So we have motivation and consistency. So the more consistent and positive reinforcement, the dopamine, the feedback loop, the more repeat behaviors that we have, the more times we celebrate it and reinforce the successes, the stronger that those habits become. And so positivity and celebrating wins is all about the feedback loop and building consistency. And then the final piece of this is about an emotional connection to forming this new habit. So if we're just constantly saying it's gonna be hard, I'm not strong enough, I've messed up every single weekend, we're actually creating a negative association to this action, this outcome that we want.
Mike:Whereas if we flip the script on the positive side, even if there are negative aspects in there, if we put positive emotions attached to this new habit that we're trying to instill within our lives, then we're gonna be setting ourselves up for more success. Okay. So I talked a little bit about why it's really important to celebrate wins. Now let's come up with some creative ways that you can do that along this journey. So celebrating wins can be looked at in a couple different categories.
Mike:So we have short term. So we have basically the daily wins, and those are the ones that are most often overlooked. But we also have incremental ones. So maybe it's a time based thing every 30, 60, 90 days. You wanna evaluate and celebrate the wins.
Mike:And then we have milestones. So maybe you wanted to reach a certain level within your drinking. Maybe you wanted to as a result of changing your habits with alcohol, you will run a marathon, lose weight, or whatever, and you wanna get to those milestones. And so we can think in those terms. But on the daily, there are ways that you can really celebrate that.
Mike:And it really comes down to one of the foundations of Sunnyside, and that comes down to setting a baseline and then tracking moving forward. And so whether you're using Sunnyside or not, it's really important to have some sort of record of where you started, why you started, how you're feeling, and then each day moving forward and celebrating the wins along that journey. And so for me, I have always been a little bit of a journaler once I dedicated myself to change around alcohol. This wasn't a lifelong thing. I was not a journaler.
Mike:And by the way, when I say journal, I am not sitting there writing page after page after page. Yesterday, I did this, and this is how I'm feeling. And no, it's actually pretty simple these days. It's about 10 to 15 minutes around gratitude. I celebrate wins.
Mike:I acknowledge challenges. I talk about goals. I go back to sort of my dreams, and then I move on with my day, and it really sets me up. But a big part of that is celebrating the wins that I have, whether it's related to alcohol, career, family. All those things can be incorporated in what I'm talking about here.
Mike:The next thing that you can do is really this is the funnest one, is that if you have a friend that's aware of what you're doing or is joining you along this journey, celebrate with them. You could celebrate by just telling them and them reinforcing it. Or you could say, hey, this has been an entire week that has been difficult, but I made it through it and I wanna celebrate. And you guys can choose a dinner. You guys can choose a hike.
Mike:You guys can do something together to mark this as a win no matter how difficult or even if you slipped up. Because if you slipped up, but you had one loss, let's say loss, and 5 different wins in different occasions, That is a time to celebrate. And so make sure to celebrate with friends. That really is an easy and fun one to do. Another one that I like to do is around rewarding myself.
Mike:So the amount of money that I would spend on drinks or going out, why don't I treat myself to something? And some of the things you could do just really depends on what you love. You could go get a massage and be like, this is a free massage. I used to buy myself, you know, a couple new t shirts a week that I liked. I'm a t shirt guy.
Mike:And I'd be like, these are essentially free because the amount of money that I'd be spending on alcohol, I can just, like, put whatever in my closet and it's free money. So think about some things that you can do. And even one step further is I kinda did this money jar where I would put a set amount of cash that I would spend, in a given week on alcohol, and I would just, like, withdraw it from the bank and put it in the jar, and I'd let it sit there for a week. And if I didn't have anything or I moderated to the amount that I wanted, then I would just pull that cash out of that jar and go spend it however I wanted to. So, you know, you can get really creative on how you want to celebrate your wins.
Mike:And then you could even do something like a celebratory walk where it's a 30 minute walk and you can just walk and think and focus on all the distance that you have put from where you started into where you are and how great it's been in your life. So you can get totally creative with this, but the important part that I want you to walk away from is to realize that not celebrating wins is detrimental to your success. So don't overlook it. Give yourself that treat. I hope you enjoyed this, and have a great week.
Mike:Thanks for listening. And I am a true believer that engaging with our listeners is the best way for us to have an incredible show. So if you have some feedback, if you have a guest that you think that would be amazing, or maybe you have your own story that you'd like to share, please email me at mike at sunnyside.co. I'd love to hear from you. Talk soon.
Mike:This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform, having helped 100 of 1000 people cut out more than 13,000,000 drinks since 2020. And in fact, an independent study showed that Sunnyside reduced alcohol consumption by an average of 30% in 90 days. And as one of our members shared, Sunnyside helps me stay mindful of my drinking habits. It's not super restrictive. So if I'm craving a glass of wine with dinner, I just track it and I move on with my week.
Mike:If you could benefit from drinking a bit less and being more mindful of when and how much you drink, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free 15 day trial. You'll get access to everything that we offer, including tracking and planning tools, coaching from our experts, a vibrant community of people just like you, and the motivation and advice to stay on track with your health goals, all with no pressure to quit. That's sunnyside.co.