I want to talk about something that I personally struggle with, and that I know a lot of you out there struggle with as well: celebrating our wins.

There are probably a million reasons why we don’t take the time to do it: maybe we’re really freaking busy, and it doesn’t even cross our minds to pause and reflect and celebrate.

Or maybe we don’t think whatever that milestone is really something that matters yet. Or maybe we’re too busy remembering and focusing on this mistake, or that mishap, to take any time to celebrate the good that occurred too.

I get it. Personally, I’ve always been “good” at things and a lot of my successes in other parts of my life, like school for example, just felt sort of like a given and not something to necessarily celebrate because I never felt like I worked particularly hard for it — things like getting good grades or whatever. And things that maybe I did have to work hard at I wasn’t like the top performer or achiever, I didn’t celebrate that either because I didn’t like win or get first place or get recognized.

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Maybe you feel like that too? And it’s totally normal if you do like it’s not in most people’s regular practices to sit and congratulate themselves. If it’s too easy then I shouldn’t be celebrating it because I didn’t really do anything, but if it’s hard and I don’t succeed perfectly, well then I shouldn’t be celebrating it either, right? Because I didn’t do amazingly or win.

It’s a weird paradox but either way, it ends up with not enough emphasis on what you did do and not enough celebration around who you are, what you’ve done, and how you’ve shown up. 

My challenge to you to is to take more time to celebrate yourself, your wins - big or small, and just be in that place of hell yeah I did that about anything and everything you do. Show up with confidence and gratitude and a celebratory attitude and watch how much more shows up for you to celebrate.

When I do get in a good routine of celebration I notice a few things: first of all, I get more confident overall.

So we all know someone who’s a bad example of this: they’re so over confident with everything they do, and what they are doing seems so mediocre to you and everyone else and you’re like, wait… why are they celebrating themselves so hard right now?!?!

And in knowing that person, we’ve probably built up a bit of a story that if we showed up really confident, really proud like that - that we would BE that person.

Well, first things first: I am of the strong belief that if you can recognize that person, you can’t be that person. It’s just not a possibility for you. In the same way that I believe if you can recognize skeezy sales tactics, you can’t be a skeezy salesperson.

There’s enough self-awareness that will prevent you from ever being a cocky know-it-all type of human. However, right now,  you’re steering so far the opposite direction, you’re overcorrecting SO HARD, that you’re not even letting yourself feel good about the things you SHOULD feel good about.

Because you should feel good about the things you’ve done and accomplished. You should celebrate that first client, or the first time you see a PayPal payment pop up on your phone, or the first time someone finds you on Pinterest, or whatever cool thing is happening for you right now in your life and in your business.

And you should linger and live in that feel good-ness, because that helps cultivate enough confidence to keep going, keep pushing, keep trying, keep putting yourself out there and keep growing your business.

I strongly believe that confidence is the key to so many things in life and in business. But we’re taught time and time again to compare ourselves to others, or that we’re not good enough, or creative enough, or smart enough. That we’re too old and it’s too late, or we’re too young and no one will listen. By taking the time and creating a practice of celebration we can help combat those voices and those fears and say hey, no, I did this thing today, or this week, or this month, and that’s really freaking cool and I’m proud of myself. And because I did that, I know I can do this other thing too. So watch me.

Along with the confidence, I’ve noticed that a practice of celebration also renews my commitment to what I am doing overall. So, for example, let’s say I want to do a 30-day fitness challenge - which I am currently doing. I could say on day 1 or day 2 or somewhere early on - well it’s just getting started. I’m only 2 days in and I’m already ready to quit. It’s only been 2 days, WOW, what a failure. And that negative attitude and negative thoughts will inevitably bring me to a point where I choose not to continue the challenge. What if instead I could move that to a celebration and say to myself - oh HECK ya here I am again - day 2, freaking crushing it. Day 2 of the rest of my life! Day 2 of being a freaking FIT PERSON here we gooooo gonna do this dang thing.

What if I celebrated that progress instead of criticizing it? That would help me to feel more committed, more inspired, and more likely to keep on keepin’ on, right? The thing that happens in the long term is that we get sort of addicted to the feeling of celebration, which I think is the good kind of addiction, right? Like in the same way you get a runners high or a release of endorphins after Orange Theory or F45.

You can allow your brain to start to see and find opportunities to feel good, to celebrate, because you’ve taught it that there is always something good worth recognizing, right?

Now that may sound super sappy and yes I’ve been guilty of totally being that silver linings kind of girl, but there’s a really cool feeling if you keep up with this celebration practice that’ll inevitably happen: you’ll face a situation that previously would’ve really thrown you for a loop. Maybe it’s a flat tire, or a bad date, or you burnt dinner, or that mean relative said something rude about your business. And you’ll feel the old emotional reaction, right? Like you’ll recognize in the back of your mind: oh I should be upset. Or oh, this would’ve made me cry in the past. Or, oh, that’s frustrating…

But that’ll be it. You’ll have built up this arsenal of good, of celebration, or joy in who you are and what you’ve done and strength in the knowledge of what you can do, and that moment will sort of roll right off. It’ll be slightly discouraging or annoying or upsetting, but you’ll be in a whole new place to look at it and think, huh, this moment doesn’t have to define me.

Remember how I did this and this and this yesterday or last week or last month? That is who I am. That is who I want to be. That is who I celebrate. Not this stupid thing. This doesn’t matter. I’m choosing not to let this matter.

I get how maybe you’re hearing this and you’re like, wow we just did a big jump from like celebrating wins to changing our whole selves - but being someone who celebrates themselves IS being someone who isn’t affected by the day to day bullshit. They’re too busy living all their wins, and preparing for the next ones, right?

How can we make this a bit more practical? First of all — start creating the habit. This can totally be a baby steps type deal. When I started my business it was just a matter of keeping a happiness folder where nice comments, nice tweets, nice emails, etc. all got screen-grabbed and saved so I could review and celebrate them regularly, especially in moments of feeling like unworthy.

It’s developed into a daily gratitude practice, where I spend time reflecting on various things I am grateful for and one of the categories is celebrating wins. They can be business-related, personal life related, health-related, whatever. I make sure to spend a little time every day reminding myself that I am AWESOME because I did this thing, or am doing that thing, or accomplished this other thing.

What I’d like to see or hear about you doing is developing your own way of celebration. It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic or huge, but something that you do say THIS is for that thing I did.

An example would be that Will and I will be going out for a drink or something anyway, but if something noteworthy has happened we’ll say ‘oh let’s get this beer to celebrate XYZ.’ like we did that when we finished moving all of our belongings to our new place. Were we going to go out and get a beer anyway? Yeah. But we made sure to say that hey this beer is a celebration of getting that thing done. Good job team! Yay us! 

I want to wrap this up by saying again — this applies to you. This is FOR YOU to hear. If you’re reading this it’s because in some way you were meant to read it, and this isn’t one of those ‘I’ll do it later.’ or ‘I’ll do it when I make 5k’ or ‘I’ll do it when I get booked out’ type things. These are the steps you do to GET 5k. To GET booked out. To GET whatever it is you want. You gotta start where you are right now and feel good about what’s around you, what you’ve done, and start feeling like the powerful amazing person you are. Not then. But now. So this does apply to you. This is something you should start to bring into your life and your business. Celebrate what you’ve done, celebrate what you are doing, and be ready to celebrate more and more because good things are coming to you.