In Brief: Essential Insights for Post-Military Transition
27 Mar 2023 · 4 min
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In this InBrief podcast episode, host Jordana Megonigal, CEO of the Recon Network, discusses the importance of recognizing and celebrating small wins during the post‑military transition and any long‑term learning or growth journey. She introduces the S‑curve model of skill acquisition, explaining how progress starts slowly, accelerates, then plateaus. Jordana highlights how the early slow phase can lead to discouragement and a head‑down work mentality that blinds people to their incremental successes. She explains the psychological benefits of celebrating wins—dopamine release, increased motivation, boosted self‑esteem, and the development of a habit of noticing progress—which together help break the negative feedback loop. The episode concludes with a concrete challenge for listeners: actively notice and celebrate any win, no matter how small, even simply staying on track, to sustain momentum on their personal growth curves.
Chapters
This is InBrief. Let's get to it. Hey there. Good morning or afternoon or evening, and welcome back to the InBrief podcast. Each week we take a few minutes to dive into a topic that hopefully makes the post-military transition for you a little bit easier. And at the very least, gives you a new perspective to take into a new week. I'm Jordana. I'm the CEO of the Recon Network, and this week we are talking about celebrating your wins. If you look at any process that leads somewhere, whether that's the process of reaching a new goal or learning a new skill, the path of growth is typically shaped in an S-curve. If you're not familiar with what that means, just imagine an X and Y axis with a journey point that starts starts at the intersection between the two. As you move forward on the horizontal x-axis over time, your growth increases up the y-axis until the point where you've mastered the skill. The thing is, it's not a straight line, meaning you don't typically learn or develop at a speed in proportion to the progression of time that passes. Instead, you experience a period of slow progress at the beginning, Followed by a period of faster learning and progress, which then slows again once you gain mastery at the end. Now because of this, there's a few things that naturally happen in the beginning low and slow phase. First, it's easy to get really discouraged and want to give up because you're not making progress at the rate that you feel you should be. Secondly, it's pretty easy to get in a head-down mentality where we get so focused on the work in front of us that we forget to breathe or take time for ourselves. And in that time, we forget often to celebrate the small wins that we have along the way. The problem is that this creates a really cyclical issue for us. First, we get head down and focused on our work, and the results of that naturally is that we end up with some small wins and progress along the way. But when we don't stop to recognize and celebrate those wins and we stay in work focus constantly, it makes that climb of progress seem even harder and longer than it really is. And at that point, it's easier to get discouraged at your lack of progress and easier to ignore the small wins that you have, which then makes it easier to quit. So with this formula, can you see why so many people quit on their big plans and dreams? It's not because they're not making progress. It's just that they're not acknowledging the progress that they have made. One of the most important things to remember whenever you are facing down the barrel of a long path forward, wherever you're headed, is that it's important to celebrate your wins, no matter how small they are, all along the way. There's a few reasons for this. First, honoring your successes stimulates dopamine release in the brain, A feel-good chemical that plays a key role in the brain's reward system. Dopamine is involved in several important functions such as pleasure, mood, movement, but maybe more importantly, motivation. The other reason you want to celebrate your wins is that it helps you acknowledge and appreciate your achievements and milestones, which can boost your self-esteem, motivation, and confidence and give you a little boost for the next stage of the curve. But maybe the biggest reason to start celebrating your wins is that once you start paying attention and looking for them along the way, you get in the habit of finding them. And once you start realizing how many wins are actually coming your way, a lot of the fear and disillusionment that comes with the early, slow stages of progress can dissipate. So your challenge this week is simple. Start paying attention to your wins. No matter what path you're on, there's certainly a lot worthy of celebration. And even if there isn't, celebrate anyway. Sometimes the fact that you're staying on track regardless of the progress that you see is reason to party enough.
