The Art of Celebrating Wins

Last week, I hit a monumental milestone that I’d set six months ago for my coaching business. I was both surprised and disappointed to find that I didn’t feel capable of celebrating this achievement. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever worked for months or years towards a big event or milestone, then felt a bit hollow or empty after achieving it?

There are many things that I am able to celebrate. First, I am an absolute birthday queen. For my big 40, we took a dream three-week trip to South Africa full of celebratory moments. In my house, we have birthday crowns, cakes & candles, presents, special meals, and much more. Secondly, I obnoxiously claim victory after a competitive game of Yahtzee. And lastly, throughout the year, we have regular rituals. We celebrate solstices, starting & ending the school year, and our own version of holidays. I even have rituals to celebrate the end of a day with all the things I’m grateful for, and the end of the work week with a Friday night bake. These things are all light, fun, perhaps even frivolous.

In contrast, a professional win feels different. Harder, more serious, and less playful. I am pretty good about dealing with setbacks and losses. I’ve developed an innate grit and resilience around bad news. It’s familiar and I know that part of continuous growth is turning losses into learning. Yet why is celebration of a professional accomplishment so hard?

I think back to my past professional wins— getting job offers for the dream job, getting a Greatly Exceeds as a coveted performance rating at Facebook, getting promoted, and being nominated to join an intimate women’s leadership training program. The only one I truly celebrated was the last one. I remember feeling the surprise and inner glow of getting nominated. To this day, I still don’t know who nominated me. It felt like a beginning, and opening, and indeed it was the start of my path towards leadership coaching. In contrast, the other professional wins felt more like a milestone or a notch while climbing the perceived ladder of success.

I could hear, and can still hear the limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging voices within my head:

“Don’t start celebrating, this is only one small step step. You can’t afford to slow down. You can’t take your foot off the gas pedal. Quick, quick quick… move on to the next milestone.”

I tend to be restless. To move on to the next goal, the next shiny object, the next dream as fast as possible. Part of the art of celebration for me is to slow down. Slow down to really focus on the present. Slow down to focus on the accomplishment that I’ve created. Next, I acknowledge my saboteurs. Then finally, I get in touch with my Why, per the wisdom of Simon Sinek. Why am I doing this professional work, and how does it fit it with the vision & purpose for my life?

Part 1: Slow Down and Savor

When I slow down, breathe, and connect with what’s really here inside me, I can focus on the accomplishment. I can start to name the emotions I’m feeling. As reference, because it can be difficult to name our emotions, I’ve included 2 charts of positive and difficult emotions at the bottom of this article. The bubbling cauldron of my emotions includes:

Pride. I set a goal and I reached it earlier than expected. I reached it faster than any of the benchmark data points I’d gathered.
Relief. Phew, I actually did it.
Appreciation. Thank you to the people I’ve learned from and my community who has been with me for each step of this journey.
Confidence / Optimism. Yeah… the things I’ve been doing are actually working. This is going well.
Inquisitive. I’m curious… what new projects and experiments can I try to continue this momentum.
Impatience. This one is very familiar to me and I’ve written about impatience, my nemesis. I want to do more, be more, move faster. But to what end?
Fear. Is this sustainable? Can I continue to do this?

This accounting and naming of my emotions is a first step. It helps me to realize that as with many humans, I tend to let my negative emotions— impatience and fear— drive me. They create the saboteur voice that doesn’t let me slow down to celebrate. And I’m also pleasantly surprised to get in touch with so many facets of my positive emotions.

Research from both positive psychology and neuroscience suggests that a coaching focus on positive emotions activates & reinforces the portions of the brain that focus on creativity, flexibility, and openness.

Part 2: Acknowledge the Saboteur Voice

We are all human and we have our self-sabotaging voices. These voices have helped us to be successful in the past whether in adolescence or in achieving early professional success.

My saboteur loudly proclaims: “If you slow down to celebrate, you will lose your edge. You gotta keep going. You gotta work longer & harder.”

It’s a voice that has served me well in the past. It’s the voice that got me through graduating as Valedictorian, gaining a BS from Stanford, and through working 60–80 hour weeks in design firms to best service our clients. One anecdote I often share is that when my company asked me to come back from maternity leave after 6 weeks to lead a London-based project, I heroically agreed and brought my baby along with me. I now look back on this career dedication with a mixture of horror and wry regret.

It helps me to acknowledge that my saboteur has helped me achieve success in the past, and that I don’t need this voice right now. This voice can turn ugly and move into a familiar space of self-flagellation and martyr/masochism. This voice exists, and I can choose not to listen to it. Instead, I can connect to a wiser, leadership voice that’s grounded in celebrating my values.

Part 3: Connect with Purpose

Finally and perhaps most powerfully, celebrating wins becomes amplified when they are connected to purpose. Success as an entrepreneur and a leadership coach for me comes from service and connection. The connection creates a resonance with:

The individual clients that I support on their paths of transformation
The communities I coach, and the support we give each other in achieving shared goals
The community of coaches & like-minded people who share this lifelong learning journey with me

I have never been as energized or in such a deep sense of flow when I can follow this resonance.

Bottom-Line

As high performers, we can easily downplay and skip over the wins we have in our lives. We continually strive to grow and learn and move on to the next challenge. Instead, focus on the art of celebrating wins by Slowing Down to Savor them, Acknowledging the Saboteurs, and Connecting with Purpose.

Thanks to Andrea Cerutti for your brilliant coaching on this topic.