Why High Achievers Lose Momentum, And How To Sustain It
Why Celebrating Progress Is a Resilience Practice, Not a Distraction From Performance
Think of the last big win in your career. A closed deal, a shipped product, a promotion, a fundraise, a hire you'd been chasing for months. Now think about how long you actually let yourself sit with it before your brain moved on to the next thing.
If you're like most high achievers I know, the answer is not long enough.
We often rush past our wins, checking the box and diving into the next task. It feels productive. It feels like discipline. But it's quietly one of the reasons so many accomplished people report feeling flat, even burned out, in the middle of what should be their best chapters.
So why do we do it?
There are cultural, biological, and psychological factors at play. Many of us have grown up in achievement-oriented environments where productivity is rewarded and humility is prized. There’s always more to do, more to accomplish. As a result, we work hard to achieve a goal, and as soon as we do, we move the goalpost.
Biologically, our brains are wired to adapt quickly to success. The concept of the hedonic treadmill describes how we return to a baseline level of happiness shortly after achieving something meaningful1. We may feel a rush when we hit a goal, but that feeling fades faster than we’d expect, especially if we don’t consciously take time to savor it. I think of this tendency as a kind of “achievement amnesia”: we accomplish something meaningful, but because our attention immediately shifts to the next milestone, the win never fully becomes part of how we see ourselves or our progress. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leading researcher on happiness, notes that high performers often struggle to feel satisfaction, not because they haven’t done enough, but because they don’t allow themselves to feel it.
When we pause to celebrate, we do more than just mark the moment. We solidify it emotionally and neurologically. Savoring the positive experience spikes our dopamine and enhances our long-term memory of the achievement, deepening our sense of joy, lowering levels of depression, strengthening our resilience, and increasing the likelihood that we’ll pursue similar goals in the future.2,3
Celebration builds momentum. When we recognize progress, we believe in our ability to keep going.
Why Celebrating Progress Helps Sustain Momentum
Celebrating progress creates a deliberate pause between achievement and the next demand. It gives us a chance to recognize that effort produced something meaningful, reinforce a sense of progress, and carry evidence of our own capability into the next challenge. Celebration doesn’t have to mean a party; it means allowing an accomplishment to register before immediately moving the goalpost.
For leaders, this has implications beyond the personal. A study on workplace recognition found that a simple thank-you from a manager made employees feel more competent and more willing to help again. Companies like Google and Salesforce have institutionalized weekly team rituals around highlighting wins as a cultural practice. The message they're sending is that the work mattered, and by extension, so did the people who did it. That's how you keep a team going through a long stretch.
Celebrating with intention doesn't require a party. It can be a Friday afternoon walk where you actually name what went well that week. A team lunch after a launch. A note to yourself, filed somewhere you'll find later, about what this moment meant. What matters is that you stop long enough for the achievement to become real to you. Not filed away, not diminished, not immediately traded in for the next target.
It’s about pausing long enough to say: This happened. This mattered. And I’m proud of it.
So a few questions to sit with.
What was the last win, big or small, in your work or your personal life?
Did you actually let yourself savor it or did you skip past it?
And if you're leading others, when was the last time you paused to name what your team accomplished, out loud, in a way they could feel?
There will always be a next thing. The question is whether you're going to arrive at it depleted, or with the momentum that comes from celebrating what you've already done.
How to Make Progress Register
Name what happened by articulating the accomplishment
Name what made it possible, converting the milestone into evidence of capability
Share the credit by identifying who contributed and how
Mark the moment
Then decide what comes next
Note: Adapted and expanded from an article originally published on Forbes on July 15, 2026. This version includes steps for marking progress and celebrating wins.
1. Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society,” in Adaptation-Level Theory, ed. M. H. Appley (Academic Press, 1971): 287–305.
2. Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It (Avery, December 31, 2013).
3. Fred B. Bryand and Joseph Veroff, Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience (Psychology Press, 2007).
-------------
ABOUT PARUL SOMANI
Parul Somani is a decision strategist, keynote speaker, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of The Path of Least Regret. A graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, she combines behavioral science, strategic decision-making, and lived experience to help leaders navigate uncertainty and make values-aligned choices with greater clarity and confidence. Her work has been featured by Forbes, NPR, Inc., Oprah Daily, and Psychology Today.
Follow Parul on LinkedIn and Instagram, and receive a free decision-making guide when you join her mailing list at parulsomani.com/freeguide.
