Let’s Celebrate!
What do you celebrate in your business? Is it reaching a sales goal or locking in a promotion? Winning an account or delivering a great pitch that your client loved? Is it a certain number of years in business or a new and greater number in your bank account?
People celebrate all kinds of milestones and achievements, but if you?re like most of us you don?t do it often enough. When we achieve any kind of goal most of us don?t even take the time to acknowledge it, much less sit back and rest on our laurels. More often than not, we just keep moving forward, continually resetting the goal posts higher and higher.
And, really, there is nothing wrong with that strategy, for that tendency to constantly push ourselves to reach higher and do better is how we grow. But I?d like to suggest that equally as valuable is the act of pausing for a moment to recognize the small victories. Taking a moment to reflect on where you started and how far you?ve come is a great habit to get into. ?When you adopt this practice of celebration it can help keep you moving forward when the going gets tough, because you?ll be better able to remember your successes, victories and achievements along the way. And, if you?ve had celebrations in the past, why not also in the future?
That is easy enough to understand, but here?s the part that most people don?t realize: you don?t just have to celebrate victories.
What if you also learned to appreciate your failures? How would things change for you if, instead of berating yourself when things don?t go the way you planned, you chose to stop and honor the lessons learned during the experience? What if, instead of getting angry and upset with those who have wronged you, you instead practice showering that person with love, light and even gratitude?
The thing that happens when you do this, is you shift the energy and rid yourself of negative connotations that you may be associating with a so-called failure. Start seeing these failures as valuable lessons and stepping stones and suddenly everything gets a little easier. You may find that you?re less afraid of missteps along the way when you remove the aspect of judgment from them, and that newfound boldness may lead you to victories and green pastures that you?d only dreamed of previously.
So, go ahead and celebrate the good and the bad. Every step along your journey really does move you just that little bit closer to your goal, and that truly is something that?s worth popping the champagne cork for.
Elin Barton is the President of White Knight Productions and the host of the podcast, Ready, Set, Grit. ?Her first book, Ready, Set, Grit: How to Turn Your Daydream Into a Phenomenal Success, will be released in the Fall of 2017.