How to Celebrate

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also because it makes the trip to success more fun, more palatable. I mean, success is not easy. Running a business is not easy. If the people are out there telling you that this is the easy route to anything, they are liars. And so this is hard enough without also being mean to ourselves about it. So easing the process, letting it be more fun because we celebrate more often is simply a more effective way to get to success. Right? We can do it the miserable way. It's possible. It sucks. And who wants to do that? The other thing is that I think more celebration comes from you knowing more about what's going well for you. You celebrate more and when you know more about what's going well for you, you are less likely to get burned out. You are less likely to be overwhelmed and overcome with frustration and everything actually is easier. You get more ease in your business and sort of almost a parallel amount to the amount you celebrate. Like that's a proportional relationship. More celebration equals more eats. The other thing that I think is great about celebration is it helps us to capture what's going well. So when we celebrate because we took a second and we're going to talk about this in a minute, when we talk about how to start, when we celebrate, because we take time to know why we're celebrating, when we take time to capture what's working and what's going well and what we're proud of, and we celebrate that. We get to focus on what's working and what we're learning in a business as we're growing, as we're changing, as we're evolving. And when we focus on what's working, we take the focus off of what's not working. When we focus on what's working, we get to come at business from a much more proactive place rather than reactive. So if you find yourself in a place in your life, in your business where you feel like you are firefighting all the time, where you feel like all you do is respond to disaster rather than get ahead of it, it is entirely possible that the thing that you're missing in here is celebration and looking for success. Because that is part of how we get ahead of the game. When we can teach ourselves that more is working than we realize by actually gathering the evidence of what's working on a regular basis, we're less panicked, we're less reactive. We're more likely to be like, you know what? That doesn't need to happen right now. I can just wait and do this other thing I was planning to do next. And that's a whole different vibe than running around, putting out all the fires, stomping on the flames all the time, and it's way more productive, right? Okay. So I actually could list you like an entire page worth of reasons why to celebrate. But really the crux of this is how you start. So for me, this is a really hard thing. I have struggled, I still struggle. And I am someone who, as a coach for other people, leads every single conversation with a client, with, okay, what's working? Talk to me about what's going on right now, constantly. Any of my clients will tell you. Sometimes they even bring lists because they know it's going to happen. And I still struggle to do this for myself. It is hard for me because I want it to be perfect. I want it to go on the timeline. I want it to I don't want to be patient, and I would like it all to be fixed right now perfectly. Thank you very much. So I have had to be really intentional about practicing celebration in the way that has been the most effective for me. And I found this to be true with many clients who struggle with this. Like I do is to start a practice where, on a regular basis, you use a prompt in your journal, or you just make a list on paper and a postit note or whatever. And there are things like, I think I have four or five right here. What are my wins right now? Like, literally, and then just like, quick and dirty list of what's working right now? What am I proud of today or from this week or from this month? I tend to what am I proud of right now? And then once a week, I do what am I proud of from this past week? What's working? Sometimes that's the simplest question. It's two words what's working? And our default answer is either I don't know or nothing. And neither of those are ever true. I don't know is never true. It's just you haven't given yourself the space to be allowed to answer yet, and nothing is never true, because, honestly, there is always more work than you realize. I can dig it out of clients in a hot second, and they're always like, oh, man, I forgot about that. That happened, too. And what cracks me up is, like, as we go through calls, as I do it with my coaching group, as I do in one on one calls, it'll be like, here's my wins for this week. They'll come with their list, and then halfway through the call, they'll be like, oh, I missed one. Here's another win. And they just become part and parcel of what you think about and talk about. So putting in some sort of practice where you're regularly asking yourself, what are my wins? What am I proud of? What's working? And then the last one I have is, what am I waiting to celebrate that I could be celebrating right now? This is one of my favorites lately because I find that I'm like, oh, but once I do the next step, then I can celebrate. So if you are guilty of next stepping yourself as you promptly move the goal post down the field, I can celebrate when I get to first base. Oh, by the way, now I have to get to second base. Oh, by the way, now I have to get to third base. Like, it's just a moving target. And you can tell I've been in a lot of baseball games lately, because I think normally that would be a football analogy, but it's not. My son is in all the baseball right now. So what are you waiting to celebrate? Wait until you just get a little bit further that you could be celebrating right now because you're making progress in all progress counts. Here's the thing. We tend to be like, oh, but that was a little bit of progress. Nobody cares what the score was. They don't care how much you won by. They care that you won, right? So you don't need to judge your project. Progress is big or small. It's just progress. Progress is progress, friends. So start with asking yourself, even if you give yourself two minutes today, to sit down and be like, all right, what's working today? Write the list, walk away, be done fine. Start with that practice. Once you're doing that, or even if you can do it right now, it's fine. Then the second step to learning to celebrate more effectively is all in your mind, okay? So the first thing is doing is an action. The second thing is a mindset. And the mindset shift here is to decide that you are worth celebrating right now. Truly, like, it is safe for me to celebrate. That sentence I have written down so many times. If I had a dollar for everyone, I'd live in Bali, probably on an island, and I'd be just laying on the beach relaxing. You are worth celebrating right now just as you are. It is that mindset shift. The other thing you can think is that you are valuable, that you don't have to be finished to be proud. And if you're not sure that, you can think, that if you're like, I don't know if I'm worth celebrating. I don't know if I believe that the thing to put at the front of it is it's possible. It's possible that I am worth celebrating. It's possible that I am valuable. I just had a client, you know, have a thinking shift. She has a really hard time with the idea of herself as an expert, but so she was having a hard time with the thought, like, I am an expert and I am valuable. So what we shifted her to is, I am someone who has expertise that helps people. And then she was like, oh, well, of course I'm not. Well, if the thought doesn't feel like it fits you, let's try something else. But it's possible. I don't have to have a project complete to be proud of what I've done so far. You know, that's true. Sometimes you get halfway through and you're like, this is the bomb, and I'm not even done yet. You can be proud at every step along the way. And I say this as someone who spent all last weekend at little kid baseball games. My son is eight. They just played in the Mid Atlantic Regional championship. It has been a lot of baseball for a little kid. He's headed to the world Series in a couple of weeks. By the time this episode comes out, he'll be like, just a week out of playing in the eight year old World Series, which is madness. But what I noticed over the weekend that I was sitting watching baseball is how much we celebrate at a game like that. We celebrate great pitches. We celebrate great hits. We celebrate good plays in the outfield. We celebrate misses. We celebrate mistakes. We pick kids up after they have a hard time. It's like, no, no, pick up your friend. Celebrate him for showing up. We celebrate them when they lose, when they win, everything in between. And somehow that's not okay for us in business, but it's okay for our kids. So what if you celebrated everything you do the way you would celebrate it for your kids? It would be different, I bet. So ask yourself what you have that's worth celebrating. You decide that it is worth celebrating. You are worth celebrating. And then you pick some kind of celebration. This is the place where people are like, oh, I don't know what to do. Listen, I don't know what to do either. I had to make myself a list. So you can sit down and make yourself a list of the choices. I find it a lot easier to make these decisions when I have choices. I need a menu, so here's some of mine that you can borrow. One of them that I try to practice on the regular, that was homework from a coach at some point was to set a timer on my watch for two minutes and to literally sit at my desk, close my eyes, and let myself feel proud. Two minutes. Letting yourself sit and feel proud of letting yourself sit and feel proud feels like an eternity. I'm going to tell you right now, it is hard for me to do that, but it is so hard that I know it's worth it. I'm getting a lot better at it. I can almost do three minutes now without combing out of my skin, which is pretty good. But sit and let yourself feel proud. Think about what you've accomplished and feel proud. Just let yourself sit there. Takes two minutes. Okay? Another is I give myself guilt free time, little tiny pockets of time. Like today, I took my smoothie at lunch and went and sat on the patio for ten minutes. That was my celebration. I celebrated that. I did all the things on my list this morning, and I was like, I'm going to go sit on the patio for ten minutes. Go. Me. I have a coach I used to work with that she told every time you had something good happen, you had a dance party. And she would insist that we record them on video and share them with the group. So that was a whole other level of separation. But you can have little mini dance parties. They take three minutes. How long is the song? Dance your little heart out for a whole song. It feels weird. And here's the thing. You are going to pick a way to celebrate and you are going to feel awkward as heck. And that is okay. We all feel awkward when we're starting something. I feel like a weirdo when I do this all the time. It doesn't mean it's wrong. You can give yourself a list of treats. Sometimes my treat is just in the sun. Sometimes I get a celebration cookie. I made that a thing in my house. I have a special kind of cookie that I make myself that none of my family likes but meat. And I keep them stockpiled in the cupboard. And when something really good happens, I get a celebration cookie. I also have been known to eat a celebration ice cream sandwich in the middle of the day, which feels really wrong to me, but always worth it. You can tell a friend. So often we don't tell other people our successes. We tell them our trials, we tell them our drama. But when we have success, we don't talk about it. So one of the ways I have practiced celebrating is I will tell my husband, I will tell my best friend, I will tell one of my colleagues and be like, look what happened, and let them be proud of me as much as I am proud of me. Also, one of the other things that I do to celebrate, and this is bigger things, but sometimes not, is I have a secret little Amazon list. So when I find something on Amazon, then I'm like, oh, I like that and it's like $10 and I don't want to spend it right now. Or it's $100. I mean, I have like $2 things in there and I have $200 things in there. I dump it on my secret Amazon list. And when I have something to celebrate, I go buy myself something on my secret Amazon list. Then I have been known to make a chart and put stickers on it. Like I'm down with stickers as a celebration. So I was a teacher. It is what it is. Teachers and stickers go well together, friends. So that's part of my list. I have lots of little ways to celebrate. I have been cultivating my list for me for a long time. Your job here is to make a list. You can steal all of mine. You can steal any of them. You can make completely different choices. You can decide it's not related to food. It's always related to time. You can decide, I don't know, you can decide whatever you want. But your job is to choose what it feels like to celebrate what would feel celebratory to you. And as I have a friend who says, sometimes the best celebrations are just you. I hang out with the dogs sometimes celebrate. Other times I celebrate with friends. You don't always need to include people, right? It can be quiet. It doesn't have to be loud or boisterous. It can be really quiet. Sometimes the best, most effective celebrations are really quiet. But make a list. Okay? So your job, more celebration, but actually starting by asking yourself what you have that's worth celebrating, because you do have those things. Collect the evidence, then decide that you are worth celebrating, that what you're doing is worth celebrating. And then pick a way to celebrate. That's it. That's how you do this. All right? And listen, if this is really hard, I hear you. If you are unsure, if you want this and it is difficult for you to sort of conceive and practice, as I told you at the start of this, this is part of what I do with clients every single week. We always talk about the wins. We always leverage them into good. My clients are the proof that leveraging good creates ease, because most of them make more money now than all of them. Actually, now that I'm looking at the list, than they ever have. And they work less. I work less. I am up a month over average in the last six months. Over this time last year, I'm up quite a bit, and I'm working far less. So it comes from practicing celebration, practicing this ingredient of success and using it to my advantage to create leads. This is a part of what we learn in coaching. If you are ready for coaching, it is here for you. You do not have to be afraid. It is safe. It is safe to get what you need, what you do. If you want to start or if you want to just talk about it, it's okay to just want to talk about it. That's fine. I don't bite. Send a message. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can send me an email. It's Sara@torpeycoaching.com. You can go to my website, which is torpeycoaching.com, or you can come into my free Facebook group. It's called Teachers in Business. You should be in there anyways if you're not. And you should join in the fun in there. You may not want to pay for coaching yet, but it is totally okay. If you want to be in my free world, you are welcome no matter what. Okay? So happy celebrating. If you want to tell me about yourself, celebrations, I want to know. So send them along and we will all celebrate together. I'll see you soon