Voices for Voices®

Looking Back: Why Celebrating Small Wins Matters on Your Journey (Ep 294)

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 294

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Looking Back: Why Celebrating Small Wins Matters on Your Journey (Ep 294)

Amidst the constant rush of modern life, how often do we truly stop to acknowledge what we've accomplished? In this reflective episode, Justin shares powerful insights about the importance of pausing to celebrate our victories rather than always chasing the next goal.

Have you ever felt like you're swimming in quicksand – taking two steps forward only to fall three steps back? You're not alone. Justin explores that frustrating feeling of constantly pushing forward without seeming to make progress, and why continuing despite that feeling is actually an achievement worth celebrating. Through personal stories about his travels to Italy during his graduate studies and the "mixtapes" of memories he created afterward, he demonstrates how easily we forget our own remarkable journeys.

The conversation delves into our tendency toward "mind swimming" – that overwhelming sensation of frantically moving from task to project, message to email, without ever feeling caught up. Justin vulnerably shares his own mental health journey, revealing how it took him over 30 years to admit he needed help, and the exhausting but necessary process of sharing his 138 different troubling thoughts with therapists before healing could begin.

Perhaps most striking is Justin's perspective on impact versus metrics. "If you have 1,000 downloads but all those viewers are passively watching, then I'm not doing my job," he reflects, contrasting this with the profound value of deeply reaching even a handful of listeners. This philosophy has guided Voices for VoicesⓇ to nearly 300 episodes, with impact measured not by numbers but by meaningful connections.

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by life's constant demands or simply need permission to acknowledge how far you've come, this episode offers a refreshing reminder that sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply stop, reflect, and honor our journey – with all its highs, lows, and everything in between.

Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome to Voices for VoicesⓇ

5:00 Pushing Through Life's Quicksand

9:35 Unconscious Decision Making

16:10 Remembering Our Accomplishments

27:10 Give Yourself Credit

32:52 Sharing Our Pain and Finding Help

36:20 The Value of One Genuine Connection

#SmallWins #CelebrateSuccess #JourneyToSuccess #MindsetMatters #PersonalGrowth #MotivationMonday #GratitudeAttitude #SelfImprovementJourney #LifeMilestones #PositivityChallenge #AchievementUnlocked #ReflectAndGrow #EmbraceTheProcess #DailyMotivationTips #WinningMindset #justiceforsurvivors #justice4survivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #factoverfictionmatters #transparency #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether

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Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Hey everyone, it's Justin with Voices for Voices. Thank you for joining us again on this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. We are over 290 episodes. Really remarkable what the team and what we've been able to do. The team and what we've been able to do it's been quite a flurry of activity getting the content and then being able to get that content out to you, our, our loyal listeners, viewers, co-viewers Some have watched parties, listening parties. We can't thank you enough.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

We wouldn't have been able to do this many episodes and we would have stopped a long time ago, but because of your interest and our quest to help people with that humongous goal that we'd quest to help people, with that humongous goal that we'd like to help 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond, we keep on going. That's hard to do on a lot of days where we would feel like almost like there's a quick fan beneath our, beneath us and feels like we do one thing and then another thing and so we got two positive things and then, all of a sudden, something comes out of the left field and we go back three steps and then we're like, oh, thought we were a little bit more ahead and it turns out that we weren't. However, in the grand scheme of things, we are. We're ahead because we make that conscious decision to continue, whatever that is, that we do, that we like to do, we want to do, and that by itself is hard. It's hard to do just about anything in life. I mean, some things take less skill, time, effort than others, but we have to make a conscious effort or sometimes we have a subconscious that comes into play.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I was having a conversation with somebody and we were just talking about unconscious decision making, of how do we know when that is happening. I brought up the example of eating, let's say eating lunch, and we have whatever type of food we like in front of us and we subconsciously know that we probably should eat. And so you know, for each bite we take, or each sip we take, there isn't really a thought like, okay, I'm taking a sip right now one, two, three or I'm taking a bite one, two, three and I'm going to chew seven times and then swallow, which I did hear that that's the average somewhere a while back, that the average chews of food is around seven before we swallow the food. That was interesting to hear that and bring that into the conversation. But we just want to share and talk about how some things we just inherently subconsciously do, and that's even when things are hard, hard when it feels like we're not getting anywhere, feels like we're sinking in, that that quicksand, and so then we start to question what we're doing.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Am I doing the right thing, am I going in the right direction, or what do I need to do? And I guess I would move forward in this way of of. You know, let's give ourselves some credit, let's give ourselves some time to whether it's a big task or project that we do or a small one. Let's just take the time and accept that we did do something and we did something that was really helpful, it was good, and this doesn't have to do with winning the lottery and having all this money or going on this trip on a private jet. It's not all things like that. Sometimes it's the small ones of just grounding ourselves, of being present in the moment, and I struggle with this. It we have so many things that we feel in our mind that we need to do. I need to get this project done and after to get that project done, we do this project once I do that, and then we have all these things and that's like our. Our mind is just full of ideas and full of things speaking for myself, of things to do. Some of them are fun, some of them aren't, aren't so fun, but they're both needed. To come to that conclusion, I guess, of a project or a thing that takes both kinds, and by just adding a little bit of like, wow, I didn't realize I did this, or I didn't realize I did this a year ago, because we're so quick to move on to the next project or the next interview or the next house next, whatever that next thing is how next, whatever that next thing is so quick to move on that we lose track of, in some ways, of what we've done and how we got here.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And I can think back many years ago when I finished my grad school I think it was then there might have been one after my undergrad that I did as well. What I did was bring in something we've heard of a mixtape. Right, you bring in your favorite songs or somebody else's favorite songs and you put it together. You know, back in my day it started out with the cassette tape and then it moved over to the CD and now it's, you know, the Apple music and the Amazon, and now it's the Apple Music and the Amazon Music and those types of things, and so we would put those together like, hey, this is a mixtape on this particular artist or this particular genre or this particular event. Like if we were having a party, we would be like, oh, we're going to put a party CD or a party list together, and then that's going to be what's going to be playing during the party. So we pick out different songs, we put it together, and so where I'm going with this is at those times. I think I did one at the end of undergrad and the one after my grad school, but what ended up happening was on my.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

At my grad school, I had the opportunity to go and travel to Italy. I didn't get to do the full semester, but it was a two-week trip to Italy. We traveled to all kinds of businesses. We traveled to a business that works on helicopters, that had a contract for the Marine Ones, for our president, the United States, that they were working on, and so we were able to like there's a lot of security, uh, obviously obvious reasons, uh, but we were able to like you know, take the platform and step in and go in a non-finished helicopter and you kind of have that shell. And so we were able to do some cool things. We went to some wineries, some wineries that were local or domestic is what we would call it where they only sold their wine into stores in Italy. And then there were larger wineries that sold worldwide. And so what we would do is, prior to the trip, we would have different projects and papers to do ahead of time While we were there, every day, we had to do like a journal, so we would write you know what we did, where we went, what we learned, because we, just about every single day we were over overseas, we, we want this some form of business, uh, and, and so that's where one of the projects was is we did journals for each day.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Those got graded and then, when we traveled back home, we compiled that into a final paper and then we did a final presentation in front of the whole school, the whole university. And so I look at those journals here's what I did today, here's what I did yesterday and if I look back on those now, I'd be like, oh, wow, I didn't remember going to the Pirelli tire plant or the Vespa plant, the motor scooters that are very attractive looking and a lot of people ride them overseas and even here in the United States and other parts of the world. But if I don't look back on that, then I kind of it almost slipped my mind Like, oh, what company did I have? And oh, I didn't remember doing that. I went to the Prada plant and watched Prada designer products being made right there in in their uh, in their factory and those were like fun and cool things to do. I was like, oh, wow, this is sweet. I'm over here in Italy and I'm at this plant and I'm watching somebody make a pair of Prada shoes or a purse, and so there's some of those things where it's like, yeah, that's so fun, that's so neat to be able to do that. So I encourage anybody, not even just to travel, because it gets expensive. But if you do some things that are what somebody might think a little bit out of the ordinary or like why are you doing that? If you want to do it and it's interesting to you, give it a shot. And so I bring myself back into these mixtapes.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So when we got back from Italy and grad school I had went to Italy for the same international business class in undergrad. The same thing. As far as you're over there, you're on a bus, you're all over the place all hours of the day and it's to learn about business. And it's to learn about business, it's to learn about business companies and other parts of the world where we live. And then we compare contrast and that's kind of how the big idea of learning. So after grad school we had a ton of different pictures. We did some for undergrad, but we had just because of a couple years later you know technology, wise photos, we have more, more photos at the end. And so one of one of our classmates afterwards said hey, hey, send me your photos, I'll put them together, I'll make a video. And I didn't quite know exactly what that meant, other than there was going to be photos from all of us that were going to be shown. You know places and where we went and having fun and just hanging out.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

When the video was on the DVD finished, we all met one evening and we watched it. And so what the video was? It was, it was everybody's photos, not everybody. Like, let's say, I sent 10, not all. 10 of my photos were in the video. You know, some things are going to be similar across the board. There's a group shot at a particular place, organization or at a particular museum. Then those usually would be selected, which makes sense because we're a class. So, yes, we're individuals but we're together as classmates.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And he put it to music and so it was 10 minutes or eight minutes, and so it was. I don't know if it was 10 minutes or eight minutes, but it was different songs back to back to back to back to back for that whole time. And then there were photos and if there was like a short, like five second video, you know a couple of those I think were added in there and I was like, oh, this is cool, like this is a keepsake, as I say that I don't know where it's at, I'm sure someday, I think right around when that was ending. I wanted to put together something very similar but on accomplishments that I had At that time. I just finished grad school, I had the grad school diploma, I had the undergrad diploma, I had different trips from a, you know some of the Italy, uh, international business. Pictures were friends and the like, and I reminisce on this show at this time and I look back and I also don't know where that one's at either. So I need to do a little bit better keeping those together.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

But what ended up happening over the years is because our minds just we've got so many things that we're thinking and we're going, and we're thinking and we're going, and and then we look up and they're like, wow, like a year has gone by, or six months, or anybody that's ever had a child at the time when they're born, it seems like the days are so long because you're constantly feeding, changing rocking, you're changing a diaper, you're constantly feeding, changing rocking, you know, you're changing a diaper, you're constantly looking out. It's like, well, I got to look out for somebody other than myself. And so when we do that sometimes and this has nothing to do with having a child, but I'm just saying that as I sit here today, our daughter is much older and it's like, oh my gosh, where did that time go? But again, at the time, in that moment, it seemed like that moment was taken for a very long time, and now it's like, oh my gosh, this is.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

You know, time doesn't stop, and I've been a person at times where, you know, we look forward to things. We look forward to a trip going to a ball game, family gathering, whatever. We look so much forward that we don't ground ourselves and just stop and look around, see the sights, the scenes, laugh at a joke, whatever that is. And so these mixtapes, or this mixed video I guess we'll call it that I had put together on my own after the one for our grad school international business trip to Italy there's a lot of things where not to have to be reminded every single day, but I think there's too much time goes by where we don't look back and we don't go. Oh yeah, I did that, I was there, I had an opportunity of a lifetime, and in a way, we kind of forget.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

It's still in the back of our mind somewhere, but because, again, so many things going on, so many things, so many projects, uh, so many paths that uh, just not only get draining just thinking about them and I think not just for me, but I think for a lot of us it's okay to like take a step back or roll back, you know. However, however, we're able to sit or even stand. That's not the big thing. The big thing is just to stop and and not to have the patterns on my back, trying to think of the right word, but it's not coming to mind but where we Wow. It takes a lot for me to be speechless.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So when we can stop and look back and go wow, that was interesting, that was incredible, that was remarkable, whatever the words we want to use, but for me, just with degrees, undergrad and grad school if anybody would ask me during high school, the last thing I wanted to see was another book, another test, another quiz, another presentation, another reading several chapters and summarizing them and answering the questions and writing the essays, and on and on and on. And yet, many years later, I went to school again twice, and so it just really shows that at at different times, we do different things, but as long as they're, you know, up to us and we're the ones making the decision like, oh well, maybe I'll go to undergrad, and then, oh, maybe I'll go to undergrad and then, oh, maybe I'll go to grad school, my employer might pay some of the cost, and so that was something I looked into and that was one of many reasons that I didn't have to worry about having to pay back so much, because, as we know, education and training and all that. The costs just add up and up, and up and up and it seems that there's no end in sight, just a constant increase. And so it's okay to stop. Think, listen, watch, touch, feel, whatever, whatever we're able to do. And and remember, we've all gone through a lot.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

A good friend, mark McAdams from Life War United, he's Make America Manly Again, make America Masculine Again. Father of Elston Barry got to take it down law. Husband of Miss Anna, and he puts it so, so succinctly of we've all been, we've all been through a lot of shit. Sorry for the, we've all been through a lot of shit. Sorry for the choice of word, but we have. We've been through a lot of shit, a lot of things Good, bad, anything in between.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And so it's all right to just slow down when we get those times where I had a thought, you know, like swimming in our phone, where, like, our mind is just swimming from app to app, to app, to email, to message, and our mind is just swimming from task to project and task to project, project to task, task, the project and task, the project, project, the task. It's just constantly a battle. Am I ever going to get ahead? Am I ever going to get through. Whatever this is, it feels like things are never ending. The bad things, or that's not the right word I was looking for.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

There's just so much that we all go through on a day-to-day basis and no matter what anybody says. Self-help books and speakers and this they got the, and I do. I have a book called the House of you Five Workforce Preparation Tips for a Successful Career, but it's not really preachy where it's preaching like you have to do these and if you don't do all of these, then you can't have this particular outcome or a high percentage of a particular outcome, and so there's no real self-help coaching that anybody outside of ourselves is going to know more than we are, and I know this from many years of therapy and talking at therapy and having Voices for Voices be a key part of my life and having the show meaning not just a key part of my life, and having the show meaning not just a key part of my life. It's a key part of a lot of people's lives and we thank you all for making our show what it is, what it continues to be and, in terms of us, for not only just advocacy but just looking for good things, things we can talk to as human beings. Human beings may be taken advantage of or abused or whatever. We do want to talk about that, because that is harder as it is. It's a part of life and we don't wish it on anybody. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, because I have a feeling there's quite a few people. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, because I have a feeling there are quite a few people who feel like nobody's listening to them. Nobody wants to hear them.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

When I first started therapy, when I first hit rock bottom in 2017, it was exhausting to tell psychiatrists, counselors, all the things that were just on my mind, and I had a list of 138 different things and I was able to write that in like no time. But I had to share those, what was in my mind, what was causing me to be a part of, what was making me feel, the way I was feeling before I could move forward. And so, by us Voices for Voices, being able to be not only a voice for ourselves but for others is so critical, because I know how exhausting it is and that's even if you're talking to somebody that has the compassion and truly is there to help. But then there's other people where it's like, oh my gosh, I got to relive this all over again and there might not be an understanding. Then I'm going to feel like I, you know, we spent so much mental capacity sharing and it takes a whole long time, at least for me, over 30 years before I was ready. Over 30 years before I was ready, I was ready to share and admit that I needed help and got it. Now, once I did it, it was like this huge weight lifted off and that weight's still there from time to time. Sometimes it's heavier, sometimes it's lighter.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So for us to be a light, to be an avenue, to be a medium, a platform where anybody can tune in at any time, with us having so many episodes and so many topics and so many areas, and we have phenomenal guests. We have in-studio episodes, we have out-of-studio episodes, we have episodes on location. We've done a lot better at covering some current events as they happen and it's important that we do that and spend just as much time and energy doing that like we do the in-studio episodes, because, again, we want to help people. I don't want to just help people once a week. I want to help or at least share and hopefully help more times a week than just once with an in-studio episode, and we love our in-studio episode. We're so grateful and humbled to be able to be having the opportunity to do that, and it's just that.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And we also value our episodes just like this, where we can come to you in a short period of time and don't have to wait a month or a couple weeks for this episode to drop, but just talk, maybe a laugh, maybe you cry, maybe a nod, maybe you shake your head, but just joining us and being part of this movement, which is so incredible. It almost seems like not every day, but often at least, as of late I'm starting to, and we're starting to get really good feedback of who's watching. Who's watching, who's listening, and I'll say this to anybody that has a show or anything If you show up for a presentation and you only sold one ticket, but the person that bought that one ticket is so interested in what you had to say and what you're doing, I'd much rather have that than to have 200 individuals, who could care less, that are on their phones the whole time. You're speaking and talking and sharing or watching a video or whatever that is. And so anybody has a show. If you have one follower, one subscriber, it's alright, it's the value, it's all right, it's the value, it's the quality of the people that are tuning in.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Let's say we have 1,000 downloads overall total listening, viewing, and if all those a thousand are just kind of passively watching and listening, then I'm not doing my job. I'm not doing my job. But if I had 10, 10 listeners, 10 viewers, and those 10 are like wow. We don't always agree with what Justin says, what his guests say, the viewpoints, but he's just being transparent and talking about life and trying to be a light as much as possible. And so I'll end on this we don't have millions of followers, we don't have millions of subscribers, we don't have. Our show isn't monetized.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

But with the feedback that I'm getting of individuals that have tuned in at least the one episode or one part of one episode, we're reaching parts and areas I never thought would be possible, especially because we don't have those huge numbers. But what we must have is something that's interesting, something that's interesting, something that people can relate to. So I don't care if we never have millions of followers, millions of subscribers, because if there's at least one person that's able to step back from that ledge, is able to feel empowered to do something they've always wanted to do, to not take no for an answer If it's a project that they're very passionate on. If you want to write a book, write a book. Talk to somebody who has. We all know there's lots of information out there. No reason why you can't.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I've been told the two pamphlets the one on my mental health journey and then the career-focused one that I'm all over the place and that's probably the case, but I still accomplish something. I set my site out to. I need a New York time bestsellers or Amazon bestsellers? No, will there ever be? Probably not, and I'm okay with that. I just know that we're helping people and that's the name of the game for Voices for Voices for me, and we want to thank you for all the times you've tuned in, you've watched, you've listened, you've tuned in, you've watched, you've listened. We're very shortly going to be rounding 300 total episodes.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

I thought my goal was that we would reach 300 total episodes by the end of calendar year 2025. And it looks like maybe middle of August or maybe sooner, we're going to hit that 300 number and that's just mind-boggling to me, but all I can say is it's a lot of work, it's a lot of hard work, some of it's fun of work. It's a lot of hard work, some of it's fun, some of it's not fun. But that's life. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's mediocre. But thank you for tuning in to Voices for Voices. We're glad, we're happy, we humbled, we're grateful for you. If you're able to, if you can give us a big thumbs up like share, follow, subscribe. We greatly appreciate that. And until next time, I am your host. Founder of Voices for Voices Hayes. Let's celebrate our voices and please be a voice for you or somebody in need. We'll see you on the next episode.

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