HIGH FIVE! Let’s celebrate
This article explores six reasons why it is sometimes so hard to celebrate ourselves – and six steps towards how we can learn to do it more often.
It’s a Friday night and I am at a blues concert. The funky music is flowing through me. It’s outstanding. The band are enjoying themselves and their improvisation is fantastic. What I already know I will never forget about this night – apart from the band’s stage presence – is how they celebrate each other for their individual contributions. At the end of the concert, I have tears in my eyes as the lead singer introduces us to his band members one by one. He describes each of them, spotlighting their special talents, and makes us laugh and clap as hard as we can while they each step up for their final solo.
I love this pure feeling of joy and celebration. Somehow, applauding and cheering other people on is a natural thing, especially if they are standing on a stage or podium. But why does it need to be a special occasion to call for a celebration? And why don’t I celebrate myself more for my own daily achievements?
The simple answer is that being proud of – and content with – myself is not that easy. There are obstacles. And it seems I am not the only one facing them. I am intrigued by how hard we can be on ourselves: blaming, doubting, and judging ourselves, often silently suffering from imposter syndrome. At the same time, we so often give our all to the people around us, to learning new skills, to pushing projects forward, to striving for what we care about… all without noticing our achievements and growth in the process.
Here are some mindset obstacles I’ve noticed within both myself and others. Which ones do you recognise in yourself?
1. It only counts if…
… it is perfect.
… it is done.
… it receives external validation, like a certificate.
… it reaches over, let’s say, 100 people.
We are conditioned to value the outcome or final destination over the process or way that leads to our personal mountain tops. This means that we tie celebrating ourselves to an outcome – forgetting to appreciate every little step we took along the way, all of the thought processes and learnings that went into us reaching our goal. Plus, we lose out on nurturing an attitude of perseverance to keep our spirit up as we work towards what we want. That doesn’t sound like a fair deal to me!
2. Living in a mindset of lack
Telling ourselves things like: “I’ll never be enough” or “at my age, I should have already achieved XYZ” or “everyone else has figured it out and is further ahead than me”.
There is this classic trick the mind likes to play on us: just when we have finished something meaningful and are finally standing on the summit of our personal mountain, it wanders restlessly towards the next thing, a future destination, out of reach all over again. After so much hard work, blood, sweat and tears, we don’t allow ourselves to pause and enjoy the view – celebrating that we made it, against the odds, and conquered challenges that once looked big to us. Instead, we look over at the next mountain top that we haven’t reached yet and compare ourselves with others who have.
This is a vicious circle of idealising others and devaluing ourselves through self-criticism. When we do this, celebrating ourselves is tied to (1) the future expectations we have of ourselves and (2) how we feel we measure up against others. But if we let our mind trick us into believing these two stories, we can never win. We can always find something we could have done better, and we will always lose in comparison to our idealised selves.
With that sense of lack within ourselves, we keep running and running in the hamster wheel of self-made expectations – burning ourselves out and never truly feeling satisfied. How unfair of our minds to turn our motivation for something we care about into a frustrating game, driven and addicted to adrenaline.
3. Success is only really success if it was hard to get
Society can make us believe that if we reach our desired outcomes easily, then getting there doesn’t really count as success. Someone once told me about how, in his case, he finds it easy and natural to interact with others and sell his products. So, in his mind, any outcome connected to this superpower isn’t something to celebrate since it doesn’t count to him as much as something that was hard or challenging. It was this mindset that made him work his ass off and take on jobs outside of his best skill set, always trying to prove himself without honouring his true talents. The ‘it doesn’t count if it wasn’t hard’ mindset can distract us from our strengths and risk depriving others of the chance to contribute theirs.
4. Attributing success to luck
You know that immediate reaction to compliments or positive feedback: brushing them away rather than soaking them in? You just kind of shake off the praise and justify yourself – “yes, kind of you to say that… but it was not really my idea to start this project…” – or you search for any other explanation of why the success is definitely not linked to your efforts. Instead of opening ourselves up to the appreciation we’re being shown, we shrink ourselves down and attribute our success to lucky circumstances.
5. Fearing standing out
We have a fear of standing out because, in our minds, we risk forfeiting social acceptance. As humans, we have a deep need for belonging and for the acceptance of our peers. So, when it comes to celebrating ourselves and sharing our successes, we fear that others might think of us as arrogant or envy us, distancing themselves from our lives as a result. The mindset obstacle we are facing here is that we feel we have to make a choice between having friends and feeling included or enjoying our successes along the way and celebrating our strengths. But, really, this is a false choice.
6. Teachers’ or parents’ voices in our heads
Did you ever have a teacher in school who never gave students the top grade just because they did not believe in using the full scale? It’s easy to become that teacher in your own life. Our brains often prefer to focus on criticisms, rather than on our successes and the strategies that helped us to achieve them. With that mindset we block ourselves from seeing what we are already good at, and miss out on opportunities to channel that into further success.
One of the teachers I had at school was very wise and she understood the concept of positive reinforcement. I only got to know her in 11th grade, but her approach has shifted my way of learning and walking through life even today. (Frau Geppert, you are gold – thank you so much.) Instead of just using a red pen for marking my mistakes, she also underlined the good stuff in green, showing me what to keep doing and building on. She left comments in the margins telling me: “keep going”, “that’s awesome”, “yes, great!” It was through her positive feedback that I was able to learn some English. Putting emphasis on what works and is going well is so powerful because it lets us see our potential – the strategies we used in the past and can adapt and use to tackle the next task.
Why is it important to overcome our mindset obstacles – and celebrate?
When we have a positive way of looking at our own successes and achievements, we integrate our experiences into our lives, and create a cycle of confidence. Over time, through that integration, we learn to trust ourselves more in the future. We go ahead to climb the next mountain with the knowledge that we have already conquered other mountains, big or small, and even if we hadn’t known where to start initially, with some time and perseverance, we made it! So, we trust our future self to set out on the next adventure carrying all the lessons we’ve learned in our backpacks, moving more gracefully into the next challenge.
So, I’d like to offer some food for thought about how you can celebrate yourself more, and shift your mindset from a cycle of lack to a cycle of (self-)confidence:
1. Decide:
It all starts with a decision to celebrate yourself more: are you ready? Yes?
2. Define:
Cool, then let’s break down what success means for you. Success, like any other word, can be defined by you. You have the freedom to choose what you value and honour. So, the important question is: what does success mean to you? Which goals do you celebrate, and when?
3. Check your mindset:
The feeling of celebration and of being content is connected to our own internal measurement of success, our expectations towards ourselves, our self-score cards. Let’s reflect:
Are you a person who only celebrates professional successes? Or do you celebrate being a good friend or neighbour, or you developing in yourself as a person?
Are you a person who only celebrates big milestones? Or do you see and appreciate your smaller steps on the way?
Are you a person who has a hard time accepting compliments? Or do you truly see the efforts you make?
Are you a person who needs the validation of others in order to value your own achievements? Or do you set your own goals and feel proud of what you did with the means available to you and the circumstances you were in?
If you’ve answered yes to any of the first questions you might want to reconsider and adapt your perceptions of yourself and the inner measurements you hold yourself to.
4. Set your goals:
Which of your goals can you break down into smaller steps, so that you can celebrate your journey at more points along the way to your destination?
Which goals could you become aware of that honour what you already do (e.g. doing daily chores, being with or being in touch with people you care about, sleeping and resting)?
Which goals could you create that would shift your mindset of what success means? For example, if you decide that to you success means having a healthy lifestyle, then taking time for self-care, enjoying a good concert once in a while, eating healthily, sleeping enough, etc. become your new definition(s) of success.
5. Create a habit of celebrating:
While we are busy reaching our goals and giving our best, we need some little moments during the week of dedicated time with ourselves. Pause and breathe. Be still. Feel: I am here and I have made it to where I am now. From this place of rest and appreciation, you can think about or write down some of the small achievements that have been part of your day. Which tiny (or big) steps have you taken today that are bringing you closer to where you want to be? Pat yourself on the back.
6. Celebrate: how do you want to celebrate yourself? What will you do for you?
With these 6 steps in mind, let’s CELEBRATE! You deserve this celebration for working on yourself, for learning and adapting, for being open to new things, for being alive in this crazy world and giving it your energy!
PS: if you still have a hard time acknowledging your effort and progress, then get yourself some peer support. Send a message to some of your friends and ask them what they celebrate you for. Write their answers on a piece of paper and hang it on your wall, so you can see it every day.