155. The Science of Celebration and How it Affects Our Business

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made. To help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Ah, it's so great to be with you today. I'm really excited. I'm so excited about this, this topic today. I've just been doing my research and getting it all ready for y', all and it's so fun. I can't wait to share this with you. So today we're going to talk about the case for celebration, like why celebration is so important. If we haven't met before, I want to introduce myself, say hello. So nice to meet you. I'm Melissa Kellogg Lueck and I am the founder and CEO of the Ivanti Business Academy for Women. And I'm really passionate about helping women entrepreneurs to really own the value their business value and embody that and then teaching them how to communicate it out to the world in order to bring in clients and have an impact and create revenue and grow their business. I host these weekly marketing mini masterclasses. I love alliteration, if you can tell. I love sharing with you everything that I have learned in my journey as an entrepreneur. The series that I'm hosting throughout the course of this year is celebrating 20 years of having this business, of running this business, of being a woman entrepreneur, and really going through 20 years of the school of Hard Knocks. I always say, actually running a business is a heck of a lot harder than getting my mba, right? Like, the MBA of Hard Knocks is definitely a lot more challenging than actually going to graduate school, but I've learned a lot more and grown a lot more, so that's fun, too. So that's what we're all about. Last week, I kicked off this series of sharing my 2020 greatest lessons. Because obviously there are millions of lessons that I've learned over the past 20 years, but the most impactful 20 lessons that I have learned over the last 20 years. I shared a major milestone last week and a huge celebration. So if you want to hear all about that, it was very emotional, very difficult for me to share, and precisely because of what we're going to talk about today. But I did it anyway, right? I just allowed the discomfort and I knew the importance of sharing it and celebrating with you. Not only the importance of wanting to be an example of what's possible, because I believe if I can do it, you can do it, anyone can do it. But also I know the importance of celebration and how it really shifts so much in our energy, our business, our marketing, our bottom line and today. And I have felt the the truth of that. But I have over the past week been doing some research and actually looked into the science of celebration and why it is so important and why it actually does, what effects it actually has on our human bodies, but also in our businesses and with our teams and in our marketing. And all of that affects your bottom line. Right. But it was very uncomfortable for me to go live and share the celebration. But one thing I've learned over being, over the last 20 years of being an entrepreneur is that my default tendency, our default tendencies as humans is to be more pessimistic or have those feelings of inadequacy and lack. And they can be protective mechanisms right from our primal survival days. But those are the default feelings. So in order to overcome those, we celebration and can really help us overcome those. And always felt that's true. But doing the research over this past week has really been fun. What I want to talk with you about today and really help you build the scientific case for creating a culture for all of us, creating a culture of celebration in our business and in our marketing and the importance of that. When I dug into the research, what I found was so much more impressive and so much bigger than I imagined. Much of the research done in this area comes from the arenas of positive psychology and organizational psychology. And I won't go into the history of those. But that's really the arenas, the lens that we're looking through, the psychological effects of celebration. I'm going to share with you three of the most compelling psychological and scientific reasons for celebration. So the first one comes from the neuropsychology of momentum. So scientists, psychologists study momentum and how momentum is created. And this talks about. So specifically, one I want to share with you today is the progress principle. It's known as the progress principle. And so the research around momentum and their neuropsychology of momentum suggests that the single greatest motivator for high level performance is the sense of making progress in meaningful work. So if you want to be motivated, it's not about criticizing and tearing yourself down so that hopefully you'll try harder next time. It's about recognizing the progress that you are making. So the research says in order to have the sense for making progress, you have to be consciously looking for it. Right. We know that what we look for or what we set our Mind to look for it will find. That's the progress principle. So this comes out of Harvard. And so this Harvard research analyzed over 12,000 diary entries from knowledge workers and found that small wins, my friends, are the single most powerful driver of, of motivation and inner work life. So the finding that they found in this research is that it's not the big wins or the big launch or the exit that sustains motivation. It is the incremental progress made daily. Isn't that interesting? And so the impact of this on us as business leaders, I'll bottom line it for us and entrepreneurs, is that if we only celebrate the big milestones, which are also, I say, celebrate everything, but if we only celebrate the big ones, then we and our team and our clients spend 99% of our time in a psychological waiting room. I'm using air quotes here. Waiting room. So celebrating micro wins keeps the, the self efficacy or our belief in our ability to succeed high during long periods. Right? And so what that means is you and I both know that entrepreneurship is, is a, is challenging. It's very challenging. And so there may be long periods of time where we between big wins, but if we are able to find progress, find micro wins, small wins every day, that will help sustain us over the entire, in our entire entrepreneurial journey. It will help us to keep growing and keep progressing. So that is, number one, the progress principle, that is the power of celebration. And then number two is the dopamine versus cortisol. I know we're getting scientific today, but I know you can handle it. You're very smart, I believe in you. So you may have heard of these hormones, right? Dopamine is the feel good hormone and cortisol is a stress hormone. So they each sit very high on the hormonal cascade, right? And so what that means is that when you trigger either a dopamine response or a cortisol response, they have a cascading effect throughout your body, throughout your physiology and your biology, right? The science shows that when you ignore winds, your brain stays in a state of high cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And that creates all kinds of issues in our bodies, right? The whole stress response, the, the fight, the flight, the fawn, all of those, and then all of the biological effects of stress. We know, I won't even go into all of that, but if you don't know the biological effects of stress, it's not good. They're not good. Stress is not good for our bodies, right? So ignoring winds creates a state of high cortisol. But by pausing to celebrate, the research shows that you trigger a dopamine release. When you celebrate, you trigger a dopamine release. So this isn't just a feel good moment. Dopamine has many cascading effects throughout our body. But one of the most important for us as entrepreneurs and leaders is that it enhances plasticity and creative problem solving, which are both essential for entrepreneurship, for serving our clients, and also for our marketing. So that's number two. And then number three, we have the broaden and build theory. The research shows that positive emotions such as celebration broaden your individual awareness and encourage novel, varied and exploratory thoughts and, and actions. So a grateful leader sees opportunities where a stressed leader sees threats. So the power of celebration and gratitude, of course, opens your mind up physiologically to seeing opportunities. Now who wants to see more opportunities, right? I do. I would much rather see opportunities, whereas a stressed leader sees threats. And yes, we do need to look at threats. It's not that we are, this is not toxic positivity or sticking our head in the sand. When it comes to bad things happening. We know that life and business is always 50, 50. There's always going to be 50%, great celebration, everything wonderful, and then there's the 50%. That's hard, challenging, bad things are going wrong, right? There's always both of those. But at any moment, we always have the opportunity to choose where we want our focus. Yes, we may have problems that need solving, but where and how are we going to create the mindset to solve those problems? By celebrating, by looking at what's going, by seeing the progress, and by building our belief that we can solve the issues that are happening. Right? So that's how that balance works. So simply put, our internal psychology, which is basically what we're thinking and feeling inside, internally dictates our external communications. So this is how it affects our marketing. So next I want to talk a little bit about how celebration affects our marketing, especially for those of us in service businesses where we are the face of our business. So the thoughts, the feelings, the energy that we're creating inside dictates our external communication. So as much as we like to put on a happy face, to fake it till we make it, the odor of what we're feeling inside, feeling and thinking inside, seeps through to the outside, especially when we are the face of our business. So the way I talk about this often is that it becomes our unintentional marketing message. What we're feeling, thinking inside, especially what we're feeling and thinking when we're marketing how we're feeling and thinking will seep through in our marketing. It comes through even if we don't intend it to. And so the way I like to think about that is I often hear people, I hate social media. I hate being on social media. I don't like anything about it. They just have very strong negative emotions around social media. So then they try to force themselves to be visible or get on social media. It's never going to be an effective marketing tool for you as long as you have all of that hate. Right? It seeps through. And I'm being a little dramatic, but it does seep through. You can tell when you see someone or read something or interact with someone on social media that when they hate it, you can see the discomfort and the dislike and the let me do this really fast so I can get off and get the hell out of here feeling. Right. And it's not attractive. And so that's why I am always encouraging my clients to really have awareness of where you enjoy showing up and meeting people and do those things and be really good at those things and but don't worry about those trends and those things that you hate because all marketing works and all marketing works because of the energy you bring to that marketing channel. Right. Like I absolutely love doing lives. I love putting together the plan of what I'm going to talk about and doing the research. And I'm so excited to get on here and share it with you. And so I hope that energy and that love comes through. So it's the same way with celebrations. If you are so full of gratitude and celebration and positivity and then you sit and then you sit down to market, that's what's going to come through in your marketing. That's I will also tell clients and I challenge you to this as well, have awareness of when you feel the most filled up and energized about the work that you do. Like for me, it's when I'm doing something like this or immediately following a coaching session with a client, I feel very full and very energized. Those moments are really great times to create marketing, to create content because what you're feeling inside is what comes through on the outside. So that's how celebration really can affect your marketing. The other point about in our marketing is that there really is a palpable difference, a difference we can feel between need based marketing, which is I need to get a client, I need to close business, I need to find which is very lack focused or get focused Right. There's difference between that and value based marketing. Value based marketing, which is what I teach, is very give focused. And when you have to approach marketing and showing up from an energy of giving, that automatically assumes that you have something to give. And if you have something to give, you are abundant, right? Just that minor shift from trying to get something from someone to thinking about how can I give and serve, that automatically switches you into an energy of service, of abundance. And so that's a little marketing hack that I often use. Also, if you are publicly practicing gratitude and celebration, if you're publicly, publicly celebrating your clients, that acts as high level, high vibration, social proof, right? It signals to the market that your business is a winning business, a winning group that others want to be a part of, and that the energy of celebration is a very attractive energy. And so celebrations can also provide a great behind the scenes content, right? It humanizes you, your business and creates that emotional bridge between you and your audience and your future clients. And then if you are a leader, we're all leaders. If you're a leader, you are a leader. But from a leadership standpoint, especially leadership of a team, if you have a team leadership of your clients, your focus on gratitude becomes a primary defense against quiet quitting and turnover. And yes, you may or may not have a team, so it's great for building up your team, but this also relates to your clients as well. Clients can quiet quit, right? But when you are creating a culture of celebration, you reduce the risk of that quiet quitting. How's that for science? That's your science for the day. Now what we're going to wrap up with is I want to help you right here and now. We're going to create your celebration practice. So I'm going to give you the four primary components to building your celebration practice. And I'm going to share with you how I celebrate and help you to walk away today from this marketing mini masterclass with your own celebration practice. These are all science backed and we're going to talk a little bit about that. The first. Okay, so here is the argument, the scientific argument for having a celebration practice. UCL research done by UCLA shows that practicing gratitude for 15 minutes a day, five days a week for at least six weeks actually results in a measurable change to your brain. So you can rewire your brain in six weeks by practicing the four things that I'm going to share with you. So over the six weeks, it increases celebration will increase the gray matter density in your prefrontal cortex, which is your decision Making your highest part of your brain. And it decreases reactivity in the amygdala, which is the fear center of your brain. So for an entrepreneur, this means you can help rewire your brain and move it from reactive mode, which is that cortisol mode, to strategic mode. And that's where we want to be as CEOs, as entrepreneurs, operating from our strategic prefrontal cortex. Right. Okay, so here are the four science backed ways to create your celebration practice. And as you may or may not know, I'm a huge hockey fan and a hockey player. Play adult league ice hockey, women's adult league ice hockey. And in the hockey world, we call this your cellie. Right. So this is your cellie practice to rewire your brain. So number one is decide. I'm going to think of a better acronym for this. I didn't think of a great acronym. But these are just four things. So the four parts are decide, act, visual and savor. Okay, so number one is decide. I want you to decide intentionally when you will celebrate so you can create this as a habit. So after I do this or this happens, then I will celebrate and then have a celebration practice. So for example, you might say after I close my laptop for the day, I will write down three small things that went well for me right before bed, right before I go to bed, before actually I do this as I'm laying in bed, before I read my book, I write down three celebrations from my day. Three wins every single day. I guess I can't say every single day I'm not a hundred percent because no one is. I'm not 100 perfect at it. But most days, a majority of days, I will note three wins before I go to sleep. And so create that. And you can create those celebrations all through the day. So that's number one is you gotta just decide this is what I'm gonna do and when I'm gonna do it. And so writing for me, writing my three wins each day really helps me to create those micro celebrations to practice that progress principle. Right? Always seeing and acknowledging and giving gratitude, being grateful for the wins, no matter how big or small they are. And then number two is act number one, decide number two, act. So this is the success momentum technique by BJ Fogg. So immediately after. And I love this one. So this I really the somatic part, the experiential part of celebration. So yes, we can celebrate in our mind writing down our three wins or whatever, but then you need to also have an action. So immediately after completing a difficult task or whatever you've decided as your celebrations, you know, something great happens or you make a cold call or whatever. I want you to perform a celebration. Perform. In hockey we call it your cellie, right? And you've seen this in professional sports where someone scores a goal or scores a touchdown, they always have a dance or a movement or something. And that is scientifically proven to cement that celebration, that feeling of celebration into your body. It releases that dopamine, right? And that goes to every cell in your body and you create celebration throughout your body. It creates that immediate dopamine spike and tells your brain this behavior is worth repeating. So maybe it's making that follow up call or whatever it is after you do it, you need to celebrate. So ways that I do that, I love music, right? So I have different songs, I have a whole playlist actually that I call my theme songs. And those are all songs that get me jazzed up. They're all songs I can dance to. Have a celebration dance. Dance it out from the old Grey's Anatomy days, right? Dance it out. So that is a really important thing. Or have that fist pump or whatever it is. You need to have some physical movement that triggers that dopamine release that tells your brain this behavior is worth repeating. So that's number two. Act number three is have a visual. So your brain is highly visual. It loves to see evidence, right? So if you can create a way to see the win, then that also cements it into your memory. For example, I have a file full of, of thank you cards or positive reviews, things that people have written to me and about my work in gratitude. And I celebrate those. And so I have that. And so I can take that out and look at those things. But you can also have like a wind jar where every time you have a win, you write it on a piece of paper and fold it up and put it in the jar and put that jar somewhere close by where you can see it, right? Or have it on a post it note and you post it somewhere and you can see that. Or maybe you have a Slack channel that is all about testimonials or thank yous or gratitudes that you share with your team and they share around. So you create that dedicated space, that dedicated place where you can see the win. It's a visual. It's got to be visual. Sometimes what I'll do when I'm working towards a big goal is I'll create a visual for the goal. Like one of those thermometers where you color it in as you See the revenue or whatever you're tracking as far as the win. And so I found that to be really successful, that's number three, and then number four is saver. So positive psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson found that the duration of the feeling of celebration matters. Okay? So when you experience a win, don't just check it off. You've got to savor it for 60 seconds. So that's a really great time to have your happy dance, have your celly dance, whatever, that somatic action you've got to savor and sit in the celebration for 60 seconds. I don't know if you're like me, but I'm like, all right, we gotta win. Let's go. And I'm off to the next thing. But I want you to just really practice savoring it for 60 seconds and discuss it with someone. Share it with someone. Share it with me. I would love to celebrate with you and visualize the impact that it has and write it down. Okay, so when we do this, when we celebrate for 60 seconds, it extends that neural firing of the reward circuit and that dopamine release, right? Making the psychological and the neurological change. The rewiring in your brain, it makes it more permanent. Okay? So when you sit in that celebration for at least 60 seconds, your brain is rewiring at that time. So how cool is that? I think that's so cool. Okay, so as we wrap up, I'm going to to summarize again. So in six weeks, you can rewire your brain, right, so that it is spending more, there's more focus, more gray matter in your prefrontal cortex, which is where your highest and best decision making and thinking comes from. And you can decrease the reactivity of the amygdala so you don't go into that fight or flight or that fear center as quickly. The way that we do that is four things. Number one, we decide when you we're going to celebrate and what we're going to do. And then number two is to act. So you're going to have an action that celebrates also, because that will release the dopamine. Number three, you want something visual. You want to have a visual representation of your win, of something you can look at and give your brain that. That reinforcement, right, of celebration. And then number four is to savor. You're going to celebrate for 60 seconds, and that will really, during that time is when your brain is rewiring, right? So that is the power of celebration. And I want to just thank you for celebrating with me last week. And Allowing me to celebrate with you. And I also celebrate you today. And I celebrate that you are here, that you are learning and growing. And I challenge you now to take these four actions and implement them immediately into your day. You can begin tonight. Before you lay your head down on that pillow, I want you to note three things. Three wins for your day. And if you're so inclined, do a little happy dance, do a little fist pump, do a little high five with yourself. Right? Because those help rewire your brain. All right, my friends, I hope this encourages you to celebrate your progress. I believe in you. You're doing a great job and I know that you can achieve whatever you want. And if I can be of service in helping you do that, I do that in a couple of different ways. I have a 90 day marketing accelerator that launches four times a and I also am a private one on one coach. So if I can serve you and help you with your marketing and your business one on one, you can schedule a call with me. The links to that are on my website or you can just reach out to me DM me on social and we'll set something up. And I would love to help you really own the value that you have and then offer it out to the world in the form of your business and communicate all of that out so that the dream clients that you want come to you and you create the impact and the income that you desire. All right, so that's what I have for you today. I wish you a fabulous rest of your week. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Hey, if you like this podcast, I want to invite you to become part of my community by saying signing up for my Friday, Selly. The link is in the show notes. Each Friday I'm going to deliver to your inbox my weekly celebration as well as my thoughts on the latest in business and marketing. I want to keep you in the know about my upcoming events, free trainings, book clubs, all the fun things, even some free gifts. And of course, I'm going to let you know about these new podcast episodes. I'll see you there.