Celebrate EVERY success
How often do you celebrate success? I’m sure we all lead lives that revolve around putting in effort to achieve results, in some form or another. Usually people have a party when they get a promotion or for their birthday or some other occasion.
Why do we celebrate? Because we like to feel good about ourselves? What makes it a worthy occasion? How do you decide whether something is worth celebrating or not?
I am of the opinion that all successes should be celebrated. I don’t mean you have to throw a party each time you do something positive, I just mean it should be acknowledged. The reason being is that we, as humans, respond to positive stimuli, just as we do with negative stimuli.
If something makes us feel good we tend to favour doing that type of activity. For example, if you celebrate getting 75% of your monthly sales target, then you will feel good about achieving those results. Maybe you go out for dinner with some friends to celebrate this occasion. Even though you were aiming for 100%, you still managed 75% which is great. So next month, you remember that 75% resulted a positive outcome. You also realise that 100% would be even more positive, so perhaps you put in extra effort to try to attain that goal.
On the other hand, if you only reaching 75% makes you feel dis-empowered, then it’s not going to do much for your “mojo” and you could potentially find yourself making up excuses why you couldn’t reach your target and placing blame on other elements in your life. This starts you off on the wrong foot for the coming month, so it could potentially be a downward spiral from there.
So I guess what I am saying is, celebrate these “everyday” successes, not with lavish parties, but by doing something that makes you feel empowered. It could be something as simple as going to see a movie with a friend or partner. Maybe it’s going out for lunch tomorrow? Whatever you do, just make sure you do it.
The more positive outcomes you associate with a given task, the more pleasurable you will find the “work” which in turn usually increases your results 
What happened today that you could celebrate? Maybe somerthing last week? Think of how you could celebrate that right now and make a plan to do just that! Until next time….
Tags: celebrate, empowering, success
January 7th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[…] I mentioned here, always remember to celebrate your successes! Your brain responds to positive re-enforcement and […]
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.