What are My Wins?

How often are you appreciating what is already going well?

During my sessions before we dive into the skills we want to build, I always think it’s important to slow down for a minute and practice self-appreciation and self-praise. This fosters self-confidence, motivation, and it’s fun.

At the beginning of our meetings, my students are used to me asking things like:

What’s going well?

What are your wins?

What is your inner champion proud of?

What’s a good thing?

Sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of life we might have a day where we don’t get that positive feedback from others- a parent, teacher, or friend. It’s really important to learn to provide positive feedback for ourselves around our learning; in other words, self appreciation.

Learning is a process and we can become over focused on the end goal, which we do want to get to. At the same time, we can also make the whole process feel better by appreciating each step of the way.

Sometimes students can’t think of anything. Sometimes it takes a minute or they’ve had a rotten day, but together we can usually find some ray of sunshine that is uplifting even if it’s something small.

This works for all ages, and it’s helpful for parents to model their own process of this too.

Here are some responses I’ve gotten of everyday wins:

My cat is here.

Tomorrow we have no school.

I did well on my spelling test.

I got an email off.

I asked my teacher a question.

What do I say back?

In return, I reinforce their win with something like:

That is awesome! That’s great! Way to go. High Five! Nice!

In addition to taking a minute at the beginning of the session, at the conclusion of our sessions, we also take a moment to reflect and acknowledge what went well; what skills are getting stronger because of the student’s practice, learning and hard work.

Today I did a great job learning….

Learning is a process.