Success Bonus - the science and feel good of small goals

Today we have a bonus blog. We’re talking about why success feels good, at least most of the time, and why we might want to consider lowering the stakes and putting more focus on small goals. 

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend listening to our four part series on success in youth sports. We cover both how and why I think we should consider defining success for our athletes. As usual, you can check the blog or show notes for links to many of the sources and studies that we’ll be referencing today. 

Humans are incredibly complex. Several trillion chemical reactions occur in your body everyday. All part of processes that we never have to think about and often have zero awareness of happening: breathing, digestion. sitting upright in a chair without falling over. 

It’s easy to take this all for granted, but if we look at even a simple version of what’s happening right now, as you listen to this podcast, it’s truly incredible.

As you hear me “speak,” your body is capturing the movement of air via your ears and ear canals. These sound waves are then passed through specialized bones and organs which transform those mechanical vibrations into electrical impulses that are transported to your brain, where they are then converted into a recognized pattern, or speech.

This is happening alongside all of the other tasks and systems your body is simultaneously running right now.  

If you actually begin thinking about it, it can be a bit of a mind melter, and that’s just the physical aspect. This doesn’t even begin to go into the psyche, or our relationships and experiences. All the different stuff that makes us, well, us. 

To say that we are complex is an understatement.  

But in paradox, we are also simple. 

If we push a button or do a task that results in pleasure, or we receive a reward, we want to push that button again. 

Physical activity and specifically sports are no different. We play or watch because of how it makes us feel. I doubt anybody would embrace the physical and sometimes emotional suffering we experience in sport without the associated rewards. We participate, as competitors or coaches, or fans, because of those feelings. Because of the emotions. The joy, and camaraderie and sense of belonging. The feeling of escape from everyday life and its stress.

Many of those positive emotions we feel when participating in sports can be attributed to four neurotransmitters that are known as the feel good brain chemicals. The first three, endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin are responsible for pain and stress relief, mood stability, and bonding, among other benefits.

That fourth neurotransmitter, dopamine is a critical component of our mesolimbic pathway and part of our brain’s reward system. It’s responsible for the positive feelings that we experience when finding success or accomplishing a goal. It helps drive learning and goal directed actions by reinforcing behavior that leads to pleasure.

  It has become popular to grossly oversimplify this as dopamine makes us feel good. In reality, it is a singular chemical component that has many jobs in different systems throughout our body. It is also involved with movement, blood pressure, our gut health. It even has several roles in the brain alone. 

Modern research continues to push our understanding of these roles forward, and modern pharmacological studies are leaning towards it playing an essential part in our reward system, but nothing as simple as dopamine equals feel good. If you’re interested in learning more about this, I'd suggest digging into topics like dopaminergic pathways or motivational salience.

One of the interesting things about dopamine, is the trigger for its production. I used to assume it was brought about by those big moments. Being ahead when the final buzzer sounds or even scoring a big goal. However, studies are showing that dopamine is also produced in association with the process of achieving a goal, not just the final result or the big win. 

Our brains actually begin producing dopamine in the anticipation of goal achievement. So it’s not just the end goal, but all of the positive little steps along the way that can result in dopamine hits as well. And on a chemical level, the brain doesn’t distinguish significantly between large and small victories, they both stimulate the reward system. 

We can see this idea of small goal and anticipation rewards in video games. Part of what can make them so addictive is their basic structure. Yes, the overarching goal is to beat the game. But games are also broken down into levels and sometimes sub-levels. Some games even reward you along the way with unlocks and micro achievements, maybe a cool new outfit or piece of gear for your character. It’s all a steady stream of encouragement designed to keep the dopamine flowing, and keep you playing.

I’m sure we all know someone, or maybe even are that someone, who has a love/hate relationship with a game on their mobile phone. In the smallest moment of stillness, we often find ourselves reaching to play without even realizing it. 

This is one of the reasons why I think we might want to consider helping our athletes and teams set multiple smaller goals. Working toward, and succeeding at a personal goal during the event provides more opportunity for achievement. More overt feel-good, that isn’t dependent on getting that W.

For me, this idea of moving away from such a large focus on wins  and setting these smaller benchmarks is reinforced by the results of a 2021 survey from Project Play of the Aspen Institute. It was conducted in the United States, targeting high school students, and included schools of differing size, location, and socioeconomic status.

One of the survey questions asked students why they engaged in sports. Even though athletes were allowed to indicate multiple answers, only 53% of respondents chose “winning games” as a reason they played. It was ranked sixth, behind “competing or testing myself” at number five. The number one response, chosen by 81% of teens, “having fun.” Even among those that indicated “winning” as a reason for playing, it still finished below “compete” as the primary motivation to play.

It’s quite possible that the adults in the room, coaches and parents alike have been missing the mark by focusing too much on wins. For the kids, it appears that other goals matter more.

It feels like common sense to say that success, whether big or small, feels good. But what happens when success doesn’t feel great. I don’t mean that it feels bad, but have you ever accomplished something, and just felt… relief?

Maybe instead of celebrating, your inner voice was saying,"Well, I didn’t mess it up." or "What I did was just good enough." 

While some adults may have these feelings, the occurrence of this mindset seems to be increasing with the younger generation. Studies are showing that teens today are feeling more stressed, with higher expectations, and more pressure to excel.

Growing up today is different, and I don’t mean this in a grumpy “kids these days” way. We may not understand it, but the reality is that many of our students are living in high pressure environments: tests, grades, social groupings. Things that can all tend to be very binary.

Win/lose. 

In/out.

Or worse yet, perfection/failure. 

For too many kids there is no perceivable spectrum of success. This means that every opportunity isn't a chance for achievement, but rather for an opportunity for failure. The expectation of perfection is looming, and 99% won’t be good enough, it must be 100%. 

If this is the framework I’ve been conditioned with, then even when I do succeed, when I get that 100%, I may not get that dopamine hit or feel a sense of achievement, I may just feel relieved that it’s over. That inner voice, those thoughts of “I didn’t mess it up.” “Now time to focus on the next task that I better not fail.”

I also wonder if this contributes to our kids' overall fear of failure, but that’s a conversation for another time.

This also isn’t just about academics, or teens' social lives. It can be found in athletics as well.

For most of us, our primary exposure to sports is through the lens of professional or highly competitive events, where we often measure success in wins and losses. Because of this, when coaches or players don’t have a stated goal, it is often inferred that the sole goal must be to win. For some kids, it may even trigger those “opportunity for failure” feelings. But, when we break the game down into smaller goals, we give more opportunities for achievement or progressing forward. Success isn’t just tied to one thing and we can not only begin working past that fear of failure, but show kids that sometimes failure equals growth.

Thankfully, as an athlete I never felt that pressure for perfection. But, as a fan, I know I’ve experienced the feeling of relief instead of joy, and maybe you have too. In 2006, the baseball team I grew up loving, the St. Louis Cardinals, made it all the way to the World Series. I was pretty excited, but also a bit stressed. In 2004 they made it to the finals as well, but had been steamrolled by the Red Sox, losing in four straight games. 2006 was different though, the team seemed stronger, but to me, it definitely had a feeling of we can do this, we should do this, so don’t screw it up. Even after we got win number three and it started looking like it might just happen, the pressure and expectation built. I distinctly remember sitting on my couch as they clinched the championship by winning game five, a little joy, but mostly just relief. And I didn’t even have anything personally at stake. I can only imagine how some of our kids must feel living with this every day.

Over this series I’ve talked at length about how I measure success, and some of the tools that I use with my teams to reinforce that idea. They’ve been working for me, but they aren’t the only answer, or way of doing things. 

While it would be nice, often defining or achieving success isn’t as simple as a+b=c 

It’s nuanced, and can sometimes feel elusive or overwhelming as a coach. There are expectations from ourselves, parents, and maybe even our programs. Each team, and situation is different. I think the only constant is that we try to build culture. Make our teams a place that kids want to be, and remind them that their value as people is not tied to a win/loss record. 

So maybe success is pausing to remember why we do it. 

All of the why’s for engaging in sports. 

The satisfaction of working hard. 

The sense of belonging. 

Of being part of something bigger than ourselves. 

The joy, and the heartbreak.

“Do it for the dopamine” feels too simplistic. 

So maybe, “do it for the feels. All the feels.”

All links accessed in February 2026