Boost your success through celebration 

Life can be very busy. There is a lot happening in our smaller and in the wider world on a daily basis. There are many weapons of mass distraction. It takes a lot of time and energy to juggle it all, maintain what you have and fulfil your responsibilities as a parent, partner, family member, friend, manager, colleague and to the community and world in which you live.     

As people, we often have bigger goals for ourselves and our life that take many months or even years or decades to achieve. Success is not a destination. It involves daily effort, hard work, grit and perseverance over time. The bigger milestones of your success – launching the book, buying or building the new house, winning business awards, getting the contract or promotion have many mini-milestones along the way. 

Interestingly, the celebration of the smaller milestones makes the achievement of the bigger ones easier and more likely! 

We are now just over one-third of the way through 2019. If you have been working towards goals for the year or the next few years, you have probably hit or are close to achieving some key markers on your journey to success, however, you see it.   

A celebration of a smaller milestone may simply be a personal acknowledgment to yourself of what you have achieved in the last months or year in a particular area of your life. Or it could involve sharing your mini milestone with a friend, peer or family member or a celebratory lunch or party.   

While it may seem like a small thing to make a big thing about, science shows in various studies that such smaller acknowledgments go a long way to giving yourself more to celebrate in the future. Celebrating the smaller steps keeps your mind and inner child well motivated on a daily basis. Celebrating victories whether big or small also feels good and reinforces the type of mindset and behavior you want to have when you face a new opportunity or life challenge  Burnout is also more likely when you don’t celebrate.  

Here are five ways in which celebrating your successes benefits you:

  1. Celebration boosts your physiology and mindset
    Celebration releases feel-good endorphins inside your body. These feelings reinforce your success and make future success more likely. When you don’t acknowledge an achievement, you are training your brain to note that what you are doing is not very important which reduces motivation and ultimately results over time.  
  2. Celebration reinforces learning of what works well and why. This prepares you to be more inspired and replicate actions, goals, and success. 
  3. Celebrating the type of success you want to achieve also reinforces the mindset you want to develop to create more of what you want to achieve.  
  4. It also strengthens motivation which boosts momentum. When we acknowledge the small steps and wins, this further reinforces positive changes and steps and leads to more of them.  
  5. It feels good. Dopamine is released when we anticipate an achievement or when we actually make it happen. This makes life more enjoyable both for ourselves and the people around us.  

Celebration, both big and small, has the potential to enhance all areas of your life that you want to grow and flourish. It is used in work by recognising the achievements of employees and teams.  It is used in business through awards. It is also used in sports, the arts, hobbies and countless other life pursuits. We also have life milestones of marriage, children, communions etc. But we don’t always use it in our personal world.  

 When we celebrate a milestone, we are reminded to give thanks for the rest of our everyday moment.
John Stahl-Wart

Over the next few weeks, look at yourself and your life. Plan small celebrations and acknowledgment of your achievements and see how that helps you create even more of them.