Why don’t we celebrate more?

Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

If you’re a parent, you probably remember celebrating all of the small and huge milestones your kids hit – they ate their first solid food; they rolled over; they graduated from kindergarten, middle school, high school, and college; they got first place at the science far; they mastered their first piano recital, and the list could go on.

We look for reasons to celebrate. 

We focus on building self-esteem in our kids because we know they will live in a world of hard knocks that may not celebrate all of their wins.

We celebrate because it’s fun.

We celebrate because it makes everyone smile.

We celebrate so that we can keep doing the hard work.

As adults, we seem to stop celebrating as much, particularly when it comes to work.  There seems to be a common mindset that work is something to be serious about.  I get it; the work people do is important, and we need to take it seriously.

Just because we’re talking about work, that serious thing, doesn’t mean we don’t get to celebrate it.

We celebrate promotions and new jobs but tend to gloss over the smaller wins – acing a presentation, signing a new client, breaking through writer’s block, etc.

This was today’s topic in a group coaching program where I participate – how do we celebrate our wins; why are we not celebrating our wins; why are we not making a big deal about them as we would do for our kids?

For me, I know it’s because I tend to write them off just as things that happen. I may take a moment of self-congratulations and then move on because the destination goals are a long way off…lots more work to do. 

What if we decided that part of making our work experience fun and engaging was celebrating our wins more often and stopping ourselves from minimizing them?

What if we created our own version of celebrating – a happy dance, a reward, a gold star – that gave us a visual recognition of our progress?

What if we started celebrating all the steps in the journey vs. waiting for the destination?

I think we would be happier.  I think it would make doing the hard work easier because some celebrations are embedded.

I’m going to give it a try.  If you see or hear me minimizing a win, remind me I’m supposed to be celebrating.