Holiday cheer isn’t exactly plentiful this year, as layoffs skyrocket across the country and prices of everyday items rise. Our political leaders also continue to out-cruel themselves by name-calling other people, cutting health care coverage for millions of Americans and continuing to detain people off the street.
It’s a hard time for a lot of people, and no single act will right all of the wrongs ― but there are ways to bring some good back to the holiday season, and a trend on TikTok is trying to do just that.
In the viral trend, small groups of friends celebrate their biggest accomplishment (or accomplishments) by announcing their win to their group of friends. They do this by writing it on a piece of paper taped to a popsicle stick and then sticking the popsicle stick into a baked good, as you would with a candle in a birthday cake.
The group cheers and claps for everyone as each person states their accomplishment, no matter what it is. The wins in the videos range from buying a house to opening a high-yield savings account to getting a kitten; there is no accomplishment too big or too small to celebrate.
Mental health professionals told HuffPost that this activity is more than just a fun TikTok trend; it has real-world benefits for our mental health and social connections. Here’s how (and how to try it for yourself):
Our brains have a negativity bias, and this trend helps counteract that.
According to Tim Bono, a lecturer in psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, “in psychology, there’s something called a positive-negative asymmetry effect where we know that negative emotions, negative events, weigh on us more often and more heavily than positive things.”
“And so sometimes, when we’re looking back on any period of time and we think, ‘How was the last year? How was the last semester?’ Our mind naturally gravitates toward the difficult things and the challenging things and the things we didn’t like,” he added.
This TikTok trend is, instead, a way to direct our attention to the good and is a “form of gratitude,” Bono said.
“Gratitude has been celebrated by psychologists as one of the simplest yet most robust ways to increase our sense of happiness because it’s not about having more things or getting more things or accomplishing more things, it’s simply about redirecting our attention to the good things that are already there,” he said.
With minds that gravitate to the negative, gratitude can help refocus that energy on the good.
“One of the things we know about human psychology and our minds is that it’s almost as if we categorize things into little mental file cabinets and once you open up the file cabinet of all the negative things, you see all the other negative things,” Bono explained.
An act like this gets folks to open up the “positive file cabinet” and see the good things.
The activity also emphasizes what is important to your loved ones.
Just like you never know what someone is going through, you also never know what someone is celebrating in their life or what’s a big deal to them, said Emma Mahony, a therapist who works with patients in Pennsylvania and the UK.
“I think a lot of times … especially when it comes to women or even just people at certain age ranges, within society, they think that measures of success look a certain way,” Mahony said. This goes for ideas like “have a baby at 30” or “buy a house by 32” or “retire by 65” or “have a specific job at 50.”
Even if your friend did something that seems like the obvious big accomplishment of the year, like buying a house or getting married, that may not be the thing they want to celebrate that year, Mahony noted. Maybe they are more proud of signing up for a French class or setting new boundaries with their family.
“It’s a good way to celebrate people, because everyone’s wins look different, but also I think it creates a good conversation of understanding that just because [you value something], doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something that someone else values the same way,” she said.
It’s a way to get to know your friends better and be there to cheer them on when they make more accomplishments in this realm.
It encourages social connection in a disconnected world.
“When I think about this activity, it’s a form of social connection and that’s what we need more than anything else right now,” Bono said.
A loneliness epidemic was declared in the United States a few years ago and rates of loneliness are only rising, he added. “I think that this is an opportunity to authentically engage with other people and to be reminded of the social support that we have.”
This activity isn’t driven by the accomplishment, but is instead embedded into a social gathering.
“We know that social connection is arguably the single strongest predictor of happiness and well-being in our lives — and so I do think that the intention behind it matters. If you’re only doing this for the purpose of you bragging to your friends … that could be toxic positivity,” Bono said.
More, if you do this to ignore all the very real struggles in the world, that is also toxic positivity. But if you’re trying this out authentically and to connect with your friends, it can be uplifting and valuable.
Here’s how to try this feel-good trend yourself.
It may feel foreign to try this trend, and that’s understandable. First, adults struggle to celebrate things, especially if they aren’t stereotypically “monumental,” Mahony said. Think about it: How often have you heard an adult say something like “birthdays don’t matter anymore.”
Beyond that, some people feel their achievements don’t stack up, which just isn’t true.
“People are sometimes reluctant to share things on their own, because I think a lot of times, especially if we’re scrolling through social media, or we see what’s going on with our neighbors … so often we’ll see what they did, and then we’ll feel like whatever we did wasn’t enough,” said Bono.
As the too-true saying goes, “comparison is the thief of joy.”
“That comparison drowns out whatever accomplishment we feel like we have,” Bono said. “But this is giving everybody almost an assignment and saying, ’no, you’re going to think of something and we’re going to get behind you and show you that you are enough [and] what you did is worthy of celebration.”
“Nothing is too small or too big to celebrate, and everyone’s wins look different,” Mahony said. Maybe your win this year is, frankly, getting through it. Or,maybe it’s that you made a loved one feel special. “It can be very, very simple,” Mahony noted. “There’s always something that you can celebrate.”
To try this out, Bono recommended scheduling a time to gather with a small group of loved ones.
“If the people who are there are on TikTok … you could send them the clip, but even if they’re not, you could just explain the concept and say, ‘this is an activity that we’re going to do at the end of the night, I’m going to pass around little cards, and I want everybody to just to write down something that was good from this past year, and we’re going to cheer everybody on,’” said Bono.
By giving folks a heads up, you give them a chance to think about their accomplishment of the year so they don’t feel put on the spot, he added.
“Everyone claps really loud no matter what anyone says,” Mahony said.
It’s important to celebrate all of your loved ones’ wins, even if it’s something that doesn’t feel like a big deal to you, Mahony added.
While these moments are often recorded for a TikTok video, you don’t have to do that. You also don’t have to try this out as a holiday party activity.
While it can be a nice activity to try as the year comes to a close, there is also no wrong time to show extra gratitude and connect with your friends on a deeper level.