Let's Celebrate! It's Good for Your Brain!

Hello, and Welcome to Episode 1 of the Teaching Little Brains Podcast!

Today I am celebrating the launch of my podcast - And I'm so excited you're here. Thank you for joining me!

Did you know that celebrating is actually good or your brain? Your brain LOVES reward!  It’s wired for it.  And celebration is an exceptional form of reward.  When you do something, and celebrate it, that fires off feel-good chemicals (dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin), and endorphins, like fireworks!  It lowers damaging levels of cortisol, and calms your amygdala.  This burst of reward information, signals to your brain, to do more of whatever it is that caused the reward. If these words sound foreign to you, worry not.  We will be exploring all kinds of enchanting neuro vocabulary and concepts in this, and future episodes. 

Dopamine gets fired when there is a reward sensation - you check something off your to-do list, and/or have positive conversations with others during celebration time. It accompanies a feeling of accomplishment and positivity. The benefit of dopamine is that it communicates with various areas of our prefrontal cortex (that’s our conscious, thinking brain, the part that makes us human - the part that allows us to choose our words and actions, think about our thinking).  So, when dopamine is released, it allows us to pay attention to important tasks, ignore distracting information, and access our working memory during problem-solving tasks.

The second chemical released during celebration is Oxytocin - also known as the “bonding hormone”, “cuddle hormone” or “love drug”.  It gives us a sense of closeness, intimacy, well-being and safety.

Serotonin helps change your mindset.  Amongst other things, it increases motivation and innovation, helps people become more focused and determined to change, and can reduce stress. 

And here’s the beautiful thing about this:  When we celebrate something, the brain does not know the difference between you celebrating for yourself, or for someone else.  It only experiences the positive chemical reaction, and links it to what you think caused it. For you, as the teacher, it could be helping a student. And, for the student, it could be using the strategies she’s learned to solve tricky words. Now both your brains want more of that, so you will be more likely to help students, and your student will be more likely to apply her reading strategies to try to solve new words with increased resilience, confidence and risk-taking.

In other words, celebrating with someone else, like say….someone who is launching their first ever podcast episode has brain benefits for you as well as them!  How AWESOME is that!?!?

So….what are you celebrating today?