How to Celebrate Reaching Your Goals
Champagne and confetti - two things I closely associate with both resolutions and celebration.
Maybe because of these ties and maybe for other reasons, I closely associate resolutions and celebration, too.
But I know that not many people do.
Many people feel defeated and dejected when they think about their resolutions (and other big goals), whether they have kept them or not.
When a goal isn’t reached, it is often a cause of self-flagellation and negative self-talk. On the other hand, when a goal is reached, many people smile to themselves (if that), shrug, and move on.
We can do better than that.
In a recent blog post, I shared about why celebration is such an important part of reaching our goals, so I won’t go into that too much here. But even if we understand that it is important that we do celebrate our successes, that doesn’t mean that we actually know what to do.
I have been asked countless times lately how to celebrate reaching our goals. So I wanted to share different ways that we can celebrate ourselves and our accomplishments.
The first step to celebration is actually acknowledging our success. I know this may seem like a small, insignificant thing, but it is actually very important.
Our brain looks for the things that we tell it to look for. When we put it to work searching out problems, issues, and things to fix, it often skips over the things that are going right, the wins, and successes. That is totally okay and normal because our brain is just acting according to its common operating procedures. And the good news is, we can use the same programming to give it instructions to start looking for wins, too.
Once we have recognized our success, we can start the celebration. There are different levels, of course, to celebrate different achievements.
Heading out for a run today (especially if it is raining) is something worth celebrating. But you will probably (and hopefully) celebrate that differently than you would celebrate completing a marathon.
Not everything is a champagne moment. Sometimes an achievement just calls for a handful of confetti. The level of achievement and the celebration you feel is appropriate is completely up to you.
Luckily for us, celebration doesn’t stop with sparkles or bubbles. It can look like just telling yourself “good job,” patting yourself on the back (literally or metaphorically), putting on your favorite song and dancing around, or literally anything else you want to do.
For me, it often just looks like sitting still, smiling to myself, putting my hand over my heart, and saying “I’m proud of you,” or some combination of those things. You can do this for any and everything - when you get up without hitting snooze, when you get home from the gym, when you go to bed on time, when you make a healthy food choice, when you finish a book, get a promotion, write a book, or anything in between.
If the idea of celebrating your successes feels awkward or uncomfortable, that’s okay. But I would encourage you to give it a closer look because it probably means this is an area that you could work on. Chances are, you can find some way to celebrate that resonates with you and that you can keep in your back pocket (maybe along with some confetti).
If you really struggle to come up with something that feels natural, think back to the last time you achieved something and felt really proud. Consider what you did or said to yourself at that time, and see if you can use it again!
The good news is that celebration is a fun area to work on and also reaps important rewards.
While smiling to yourself about your success (or whatever personal celebration methods you decide work for you) can be used for everything (and I do recommend that you utilize it for all successes big and small), we don’t want to stop there.
Some achievements, like a promotion at work or writing a book, are things that we want to celebrate in other, grander ways. Step aside confetti, and make way for the champagne.
When celebrating these larger successes, making a plan for celebration is important. Booking a trip, making a reservation, adding that thing that we want to our online cart - these actions are a reminder to ourselves that you take our success seriously. And they also help to establish our belief that we will get there.
Planning for celebration makes it much more likely we will follow through, and less likely we’ll shrug off our success - especially if there is a reservation involved. And of course, having the celebration to look forward to adds excitement and momentum.
This also ensures that when we follow through and celebrate, we are continuing to build self-trust (because we said we would celebrate and we are), which will serve us well as we begin to work towards whatever we are going to achieve next! By integrating celebration into our life we are building the foundation of self-trust and paving the way for more and more success.
To ensure that we continue to honor your self-trust and reap positive results, it is important to ensure that however we celebrate, it is in line with our goals. For example, if we are celebrating reaching a certain weight-loss goal, getting a cake is probably not the best way to celebrate that success. And if we have reached a certain savings goal, taking some of that money to spend on a reward is probably not the best way to celebrate either.
On the other hand, we may want to spend money on some new running shoes after we finish that 5K because that will strengthen our commitment to running, can serve as a celebration, and our feet with probably thank us.
Your celebration doesn’t have to correlate with your achievement, however. It can look like a walk in the park, going for a picnic, taking a trip, or popping a bottle of champagne. Regardless of how you choose to celebrate, the fact that you do is what is most important.
And if you need someone to pop the cork with you and celebrate everything you’ve accomplished, just let me know. I’ll grab a glass.
Until next time,