Celebrating Small Wins

Remember when you were a kid and received a reward for even the smallest achievements? Used the potty? Gold Star! Emptied the dishwasher? Here’s your allowance! The stickers your 3rd-grade teacher bestowed upon your A assignments were especially thrilling. They really hit differently, didn’t they?

Then middle school rolls around, and your 6th-grade teacher runs out of stickers by October and never replaces them. By high school, we were lucky to get a smiley face, and that green-inked “vague thesis” seemed to reverse years of training us to achieve success for a token reward.

One day, you wake up and realize that tokens of achievement have dwindled to a motivational quote picture hanging on your office wall and maybe a Costco-sized cake for your birthday from the head of HR.

What happened?! Where did the rewards go? The slow shift from tangible rewards to natural consequences is so gradual we don’t even notice it's happening. Luckily, Pavlov (1927) was right: you can teach an old dog new tricks. The use of rewards to modify behavior is proven to be effective.

In fact, I often used these methods in my classroom, even with 18-year-olds.
One particularly effective example involved a token reward for a student who was consistently tardy. She racked up tardies in double digits each quarter, but I noticed that she arrived on time for exams.

The next time we had a test, I was prepared. I had searched high and low for a suitable reward for an 18-year-old student. Ultimately, I decided to go with what always works between teachers and students—stickers! I even found some that matched her style.

When she came in on time, I casually approached her with a sticker that complemented her outfit and said, “Thank you for being on time for exams. I know mornings are not your favorite.” She was thrilled! She proudly displayed her badge of honor to the entire class, despite their protests about always being on time without getting anything. The next class, she was on time again, so I gave her another (outfit coordinating) sticker.

I kept up with the stickers for about two weeks, and she was punctual for EVERY class. Since our school followed a 90-minute block schedule with A-Days and B-Days, I had data to compare. She hadn’t changed her tardiness in her other first-period class, so I took some stickers to that teacher’s classroom and collected additional data. Ultimately, her tardiness decreased, and she stopped having detention every month.

I began to “forget” to give her stickers occasionally and eventually stopped altogether. This is what behaviorists call “extinction,” a fancy, scientific term indicating that the desired behavior became ingrained, and she no longer needed the token reward of the sticker (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2020).You can’t do this without data, though! Remember, psychology is a soft science.

Let’s say you want to reduce the frequency of food deliveries that clutter your doorstep to the point where you’ve started ordering an extra cookie or milkshake for your favorite driver (also an example of a token reward system, by the way). Review your delivery app and count how many times you ordered last month.

After repeating “there’s no way” several times—and possibly checking the previous month as well—settle on a reasonable number for your deliveries. That will become your goal: to reduce the number of orders using your favorite driver to ______ times a month.

Break that number down into smaller, manageable bites (get it? “bites” as in food delivery? My bad…I digest, I mean digress).Okay, seriously, back on topic.

Use that data to set weekly goals. For instance, this week you might aim to reduce your total by 10%. Then, next week, target a reduction of 20%. The best part about being an adult is that you can create your own plan. If you prefer a slower pace, that's perfectly fine!

Maybe you’re having a difficult week because it was WAY too cold to go to the grocery store and are currently enjoying a hot chocolate from your favorite driver. That’s okay; you can always try again next week. And ensure that your goal and reward is HEALTHY FOR YOU!

If you’ve struggled with a negative relationship with food, please don’t focus on that. This is not about regaining control over something because you feel powerless in other areas of your life. That’s when you may want to seek out a professional to help you along your journey. The key here is forward progress.

With progress, comes reward. I realize that the reduced costs of not ordering in as often serve as a natural consequence for this lifestyle change, but that alone may not motivate you enough to achieve extinction with this behavior you want to modify. It’s essential to genuinely want the goal; if you don’t, you’ll be wasting your time.

So how do we reward ourselves? That is the tricky part. If you have people who can hold you accountable and give you some stickers, by all means, recruit them for the cause! Maybe you move those dollars you would have spent on food delivery into a new vacation savings account.

That is a great plan, but what about the milestone markers? Humans tend to need immediate, tangible rewards that require the use of several of the senses. Take a quick minute to think about what will work for you as an immediate reward at the end of each week when you successfully avoid your usual Tuesday delivery of tacos at the reduced percentage you planned.

Part of this “setting goals instead of resolutions” is that you track your goals and the accompanying data on your way to the ultimate reward with fidelity. This word is a favorite in education which means you can’t just have your work bestie order for you and then send them the cash. Inventive, but just because it wasn’t YOUR driver doesn’t mean it doesn’t count. Keeping track honestly is part of the deal towards getting yourself to your milestone reward and that vacation you are planning.

In my opinion, the reward is the least difficult thing about this. Think about what you liked when you were a kid. The reward itself needs to be something that is worth working for, but it should not be something that you experience guilt over having or doing. What we are looking for is a small way to acknowledge an achievement.

For me, it’s a really great bottle of champagne. Ok, maybe not the GREAT bottle for the milestones, but still something a little bit pricier than I would normally spend. Maybe it’s time spent on that video game you played instead of doing your homework in 7th grade and bonus….your mom won’t be yelling at you to turn off the game and take out the trash. 

Whatever your goals are for 2025, we are here for the journey and waiting to reward you with a fabulous sticker. 

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References 

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied behavior analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson.Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex (G. V. Anrep, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1902)