Celebrate Your Wins

3 Reasons, 3 Ways, 3 Spaces to Celebrate in your Journey

The best way I have discovered to motivate yourself is by celebrating yourself.

So when I came across this lovely jewelry site, I fell in love with motivating me and I thought to encourage you in this journey of becoming better and achieving more in your life.

3 Good reasons to Celebrate

No one else will celebrate you if you don’t celebrate yourself

One of life’s rules for good living is to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. It took me ages to understand that principle as I had always thought that the call is for me to put others before myself. How wrong I was!

Everyone is busy with their own lives and in this noisy world, your important moments are primarily important to you only. They only become important to others because you get to highlight them as being important to you. If they are not important to you, why should they be important to someone else?

You are the only one who knows what went into making that great achievement; the one who paid the price; and did the work. Shouldn’t you be the one to celebrate it’s coming together as a success? If it had fallen apart and there was no success, it would have been you picking up the pieces. So why not celebrate it?

I used to buy a sumptuous meal with my regular paycheck every month. Today, with every invoice that fetches handsomely, I will either buy a ring, or a watch, or a household (including home office) gadget whose presence constantly brings a smile to my face because it reminds me that at one point or another I have had good financial success.

Just remember this: You need to celebrate you because there is no one else who is leading your cheer-leading squad. When you land a big deal, it’s not your friends who will call a party, they will follow your cue of whether or not to celebrate.

Celebrating yourself is free fuel for achieving your next goal

Please allow me to tell you why I love rings. It gives me the fuel for my next fete.

I am a firm believer in leaving the past success behind because I don’t want to be blinded in my efforts, but the rings and watches I wear as I type on my keyboard or make a presentation or take notes in a client meeting serve as a reminder that I have delivered value before and I can do it again!

Doing business is both hard and smart work. You need motivation every day to do what 99% of the people will not do to get the success that 100% of us want. Beyond our will and commitment (which more often than not fails us), having something of value or something that represents the value you bring into your work is a charm for your next success level.

Try this: Take a notebook or open a fresh space in your Evernote and jot down what you think qualifies as a success in your personal or professional life: landing your first job, or your first client, your first positive testimonial from a happy client, the day you cleared your student loan, when you first went grocery shopping without coupons or wondering if the bill will exceed your budget, etc. If you come up with 5 or less, try again and again. However, If you can’t figure it out, go to the person who you consider your BFF or your parent ad ask them, I can assure you, you will see that there is more to you than you think. That should motivate you to achieve greater. If it doesn’t then consider this next point as a reason to celebrate yourself

To set the tone of your life’s narrative

Can you imagine telling your life story as if it were a straight line? No ups, no downs?

How about telling it with nothing but a flavor of challenges, struggles, pain, regret, blood, sweat and tears? Is that a story that you would want to listen to? What value would it add except to reinforce the warped belief that life is one big mountain to be scaled every day without ever stopping to catch the view? That is why you need to spend time celebrating your achieved milestones.

When I was employed, I always made sure that within the first three days of receiving the monthly salary, I would treat myself to a sumptuous lunch at one my favorite places.

As and when you take the time to celebrate yourself and your achievements, no matter how small the act or the achievement, you set psychological and emotional flags that fly proudly when the wind of discouragement blows into your life. On the day you have people around you wondering how you lived through your times, those flags will add flavor to your life. So celebrate your wins and make no apologies for it!

Lack of self-appreciation is a source of depression and low self esteem

3 good ways

Journal your journey

You can do this in many ways which can either be publicly or privately including:

Creating a hall of fame in your office: Mount a wall with pictures that commemorate the great milestones and achievements. Let them tell a story day and night, in your presence or absence. The day you were awarded a huge deal, or the day you gave your first talk at a conference, the day you got on a scale and it read 5 pounds less, the first day your child sat on your big chair and said (s)he wanted to be like you. Don’t let those pictures sit on your Facebook and Instagram accounts only. They are your story and should not be lost in a sea of more than 1billion posts.

Creating a blog (text or video): If you have a website, you can add a blog page that documents your journey. If you have none yet, getting started is easy. You can sign up with Name Cheap for a website hosting with official email addresses. You can also register with WordPress for a plain blog. Build your true story and encourage someone today, tomorrow and even years to come. That might just be the beginning of your autobiography.

Write a Journal: During the lunches, I mentioned earlier, I always used to carry a journal to write my highlights for the month – good or bad, and what I looked forward to in the new month. On days when I was having a really hard time, or I was having a deja vu, I always referenced my journal for encouragement or to confirm that one of my hopes was coming to pass. You don’t need a notebook or a physical journal. You can use any of the apps available including Evernote, Journal, or other apps that can be readily found on google playstore.

Get yourself a souvenir

I have labored on the why of this and now I would like to give you examples of such souvenirs. You can get jewelry, buy a book, take a trip or do a photo grid of your milestone.

The idea is to imprint that success in your life.

Teach someone

Teaching is about enabling someone who is willing to learn how to attain success in the spaces that they are in. I have found this to be the best way of impacting others who may not be directly aligned with my success. It could be your own children, your nieces or nephews, your domestic manager/ nanny, your driver, the newspaper guy, the fast-food vendor, etc. Just take the time to share your knowledge. If along the way you learn that building walls is sometimes more about keeping in than preventing invasion, you can teach your children or members of your team which walls are important to build and which ones should be destroyed.

Trust me, you have something to teach either through a one-liner on Twitter or an Instagram post or just a sticky note on your fridge door.

3 good spaces to celebrate

Yourself

Besides jewelry and souvenirs, one of the other investments I make with every success I have is a book purchase. This is because, after listening to Darren Hardy for about six months, I came to confirm what his mentor Jim Rohn always said is as true today as it was back then – Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become”.

You can only become a better, more successful person if you work at who you are because you will be creating and operating at a higher level than the challenges you are trying to overcome. Read widely, watch interviews and ted talks, listen to podcasts and make time to attend conferences. You’d be surprised at the influence these have on your success as you have defined it.

Other People

Teaching the willing is a good place to start as shared above. The other way is to share your success with others who will most likely never know who you are but will sand to be forever grateful for the moment your life crossed theirs. Doing something good for a stranger in this cold world is a sure winner.

Imagine reading a Facebook post by a single mother who doesn’t how to explain the absence of a father to a rebellious teenager. The first instinct is to dismiss it off saying that she will be advised by others who are better placed to do so. However, you have had first hand experience of this situation and after an internal battle, you choose to DM her about your experience and how it was resolved. She will probably never come back to thank you but the message is delivered.

Your heart will be at rest that you got to help another human being with something that they were struggling with and you will move on. You may never know the impact you had, but you did have an impact.

The environment

While not all of us are environment die-hards, it is important to contribute to it, even if it is by means of a conversation, or learning experience. That is why I vouch for wide travel to national parks, game reserves and conservancies, the museum, art galleries, and even yard sales.

Donate to charities things that are accumulating dust in your garage or attic. There might be things you are hoarding including blankets which could do well in an animal hospice or animal conservancy!

In conclusion, next time you achieve a milestone in your life, no matter how small, celebrate! Your world will do better with some good news!

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE

I love writing about issues that are important to me or what I’m passionate about. In the process, I sometimes take the time to make recommendations for products, services and information sources that I have found useful in my professional and personal life. Some of my content will thus contain affiliate links through which I may earn some revenue if you click through to the sites or make purchases.