There are lots of reasons to celebrate and many of us enjoy doing it – a nice meal for a birthday, drinks with friends for a new job, a thoughtful gift for a wedding. But do we do enough celebrating on our success in business and work? Many of us don’t, we move quickly on to the next objective or project without stopping to reflect on what we’ve achieved and learnt.
When things don’t go as planned, we focus on what we can change. We often forget to take time to acknowledge and celebrate what has gone well to get us to this point. When we face a perceived failure it’s important to recognise that there is almost always something that we can celebrate.
Here are 4 good reasons why we should celebrate success (and failure):
1. It’s all about learning!
When we take time to reflect on what’s worked well and why we can be mindful of taking this forward into other actions and goals so we can do more of it. It’s equally as important to reflect on failure.
Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.
J.K Rowling
2. Mindset Management
A mindset of success is key. As well as using techniques like affirmations and visualisation to create a successful mindset, celebrating every success no matter how small will develop your success mindset. When you notice and celebrate your successes you see yourself as someone who is successful, rather than some trying to be successful.
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate
Oprah Winfrey
3. Motivation drives success and success drives motivation
Success motivates us. Be sure to break down your goals into key milestones and actions. Write them down, revisit them regularly. Celebrate the success for each and every one and notice how much this motivates you.
4. The feel good factor
Perhaps the best reason to celebrate our successes is that quite simply it makes us feel good. Dopamine is released into our brain when we achieve something (or anticipate achieving it) and it feels good so we want more of it. We need to be mindful that this also applies to our less healthy pursuits (anticipating a nice glass of wine or cold beer at the end of a long day) so focus on the cause for celebration rather than the reward.
What have you got to celebrate? Take a few moments to reflect on your last 12 months and celebrate your success:
- What have been your biggest achievements in the last 12 months?
- What are you most proud of?
- What did you achieve that surprised you?
- What smaller, less obvious things are you proud of achieving in the last 12 months?
- What steps have you made towards larger goals, that you need to acknowledge for yourself?
- What mistakes did you make that need recognising?
- What did you learn?
- What are you most proud of in how you handled the situation?
- What will you do to celebrate, recognise and acknowledge your achievements?
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