I knew when Mel Robbins came with her High 5 Habit, that I had being doing something similar for decades. Without even knowing the whole why and how to it.

If you didn’t know, Mel Robbins, a lawyer, speaker, author and tv host, recently came out with her new book The High 5 Habit. In this book she explains the ins and outs on how creating the habit of High 5-ing yourself can change your life. I have to be honest, I haven’t read her book yet. However, I have seen her talk about it and I have seen her High 5 challenge go all over the web. What I did notice though is that I had actually been doing something very similar for decades.

I cannot even remember when it all started, I believe it was when I was playing sports competitively when I was in my early teens. I used to play tennis and volleyball. And I remember that when we as a team playing volleyball, we would always give each other a pep talk when we were facing a set back in the game. And when we scored a point or turned things for the better, we would come together and celebrate that win, however small. We even had our own personal “yell”, a cheer we would shout in unison fueling us up with a boost of motivation and power.

Fast forward to 6 years ago when I started lifting weights more seriously and going to the gym more regularly. I disliked it with a passion at first, I really did. I would show up, do what I needed to do, yet I was not enjoying it. I kept going because I knew why I was doing it and because I had a some accountability. A thing I actively started doing was after each session, I would clap in my hands and say: “Good job Kay, good job”. At first I did it quietly because I felt a little weird doing it. After a while however I started doing it out loud and actually seeing it as a full on celebration that I made it through the session and actually showed up. Soon I began to really enjoy my sessions and the progress I was making.

Through out the years this practice/habit stuck with me. Whenever I did anything other than my regular schedule I would praise myself and tell myself I did a good job. Whether that was waking up early, taking a shower, cleaning up my kitchen before bed, learning something new with rollerskating, making that hard phone call, going to my therapy session….anything really. I now even use it whenever I catch myself emotionally responding in a more healthy way to a certain situation. Where I maybe used to react in a way that was hurting me more than serving me.

So without even knowing the science behind it or its actual workings, I had created this habit for myself that was very powerful whenever I wanted change. Not only is this a great way to enforce new habits and new ways of being. It also shifted my perspective in always looking for the things that go wrong, to what was actually going right in my life and how much good I actually was doing.

My question to you, do you praise yourself enough?