In this episode, Anna delves into the often-neglected practice of celebrating our achievements. She encourages listeners to take a moment to embrace and reward themselves for their hard work and successes, whether in their professional or personal lives. Through insightful reflection and practical advice, Anna highlights the importance of gratitude, self-reward, and setting meaningful goals across all aspects of our lives.
00:00 Gratitude helps us achieve and stay grounded.
04:04 Practising gratitude boosts happiness and well-being. Celebrate success and share achievements for joy.
07:15 Achieve balanced, holistic success in all areas.
*Resources mentioned during the episode*
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring – If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. www.onestepoutside.com/coaching
Celebrating wins
What happens when you’ve achieved what you want to achieve? You’ve reached that summit of success, you’ve worked hard towards that promotion, that goal stage of your business, maybe a personal achievement. What happens? Well, if you’re anything like me, like most of us, we just look around, we go and then we set that new goal and we keep pushing on. But maybe that’s not quite what we should be doing, or rather than should be doing. Maybe there’s a better way to actually enjoy, reap the rewards of that incredible work that we’ve put in in order to get to where we want to be. It’s not to say we should rest on our laurels, but there is this opportunity, this moment, for embracing that success, for experiencing that fulfilment, for expressing gratitude and above all, for celebrating and rewarding ourselves, for all that hard work that we’ve put in. And so if you’re at that moment, congratulations. Let me.
Not that you’d need me to do so, but let me congratulate you on getting that promotion, making that big decision, finishing that course degree, speaking on stage, launching a book, whatever that big achievement is for you. And a big achievement can be anything that feels big and significant to you. And that was really meaningful. This is huge. So it’s really, really important to recognise that and to embrace those moments, of which there are many, of achievement. Because, let’s face it, we’re all more than happy. Or happy is not quite the right word, but we’re very willing to wallow in pity and despair when it doesn’t go as we want it to. So let’s by all means go the other direction and make sure that we’re also celebrating and savouring those moments of success, whether it’s in our career or in our personal journey.
So it’s really important to pause in all that busy work, to acknowledge that hard work, to really celebrate, recognise the resilience and courage that it’s taken. And we talked about that last week and the dedication, the commitment that has led you to this point. So, of course, it’s a cliche, but true success is not just a moment, it’s not just a destination, it is a journey, it’s a series of meaningful milestones. So there is no end until we’re dead, if we’re going to call that an end, whatever you believe. And so, really, it is a journey of continuous moments. We always think, and certainly when I was at school, it was right, it’s the GCSE, the exams we do in the UK, when I was 15. And then, oh, it’s the next thing, it’s the IB, then it’s getting into university, it’s getting the job, it’s getting that promotion, it’s inspiring and it’s rewarding to work towards those goals. But we often don’t take the time to celebrate, to look around us and enjoy, to reap what we’ve sowed.
As the saying goes, we just rush into the next thing. So gratitude is a really interesting piece because there’s this tension, I think, between setting those huge goals and wanting to be somewhere else, but also the importance of being gratitude, having gratitude, expressing gratitude, being grateful for where we are today, for the goals we have achieved, looking back from where we were before. If I ever find my journals and strategies and things from previous years, my goodness, I’ve come so far, but that’s something we rarely pause to take stock of. So gratitude is really, really important. And of course, there are gratitude journals and so on, and it can be hugely powerful just to take a moment at the end of the day to express gratitude. In fact, the beginning of the day. I’m grateful that I’m healthy, that my family is healthy, that we live in a safe country. There can be some really sort of profound but also simple, basic things that we’re grateful for, but just grounds us in remembering, reminding ourselves perhaps, of the privilege we have, of what we already do have, grounding us in that, as well as allowing for the possibility to get to a new place.
Right, but there are lots of studies now that show the psychological, emotional benefits of gratitude. Increased happiness, improved relationships, stronger sense of well being. So having that daily gratitude practise, however formalised or informal, just thinking about it or having the journaling mindfulness process can be really, really powerful. And then in all my programmes, I’ve always told everybody, all my clients, hey, we’ve got to celebrate success, and I’m happy to do that for other people. It turns out we find it really hard to do it for ourselves, which is silly, but there you go, that’s the reality of the human existence. So please take the moment. And it could be something as little as throwing out silly ideas here, taking yourself out to the cinema in the middle of the day, having a bath, booking a spa treatment, indulging in some passion project you wouldn’t usually do, or because rewards and achievements and success is so much better when shared, by all means, plan a celebration with your loved ones. I’ve never done, despite encouragement from friends and peers and so on, a proper sort of book launch to celebrate my books.
I’d love to do that next time. It always feels a bit self indulgent, but why not? When you’ve achieved something incredible that’s meaningful to you, find other people who want to celebrate you and allow them to do that. Celebrate with them. Self reward, though, I think is really important because we don’t want to just rely on external recognition. If I publish a book and that’s meaningful to me, it almost doesn’t matter. And I say almost doesn’t really matter. If I get all those five star reviews and it’s best seller status and so on, for me, I have achieved something that was important to me. And even without all those external accolades, that’s something worth celebrating.
Now, of course, if you also get those other things, you can celebrate that too. And by all means enjoy the incredible things that people throw at you that they say how amazing you are and by all means take that on board. Don’t just ignore that. But what I’m saying is that’s not necessary. You have sort of an intrinsic celebration, self reward that’s certainly as important, if not more important, right? So try to get creative with how you can celebrate your successes, big and small, personally, privately and publicly. A while ago I ended up in the top podcast list on a couple of different categories and I sent out a little email. It felt a bit self indulgent and promotional to my list and I had some people who, some people I knew well, some people who I’ve never spoken to before who congratulated me and they were so heartfelt and it felt so great to have these people in my community who said, really well deserved. I love your podcast.
I listen all the time, I binge and so on. That’s really fantastic to hear. And then of course I will come back to this idea of looking to that next horizon. Because if you are anything like most of us high achievers, there will be something else to work towards. Especially since hopefully we’re not going to die anytime soon, knock on wood. There will be plenty of time to have future achievements. So by all means set those new horizons. Look ahead to those new goals and aspirations.
It might be that you look to different area of your life. Maybe you’ve just created some incredible fulfilment within the career and business space. Then why don’t you look to the area of health and well being? Maybe another area that’s more neglected, your family, your relationship with your partner and so on, right? So you can really set meaningful, aligned goals across that holistic definition of success and not only in the business, but of course, you can keep building on that success professionally as well. At the same time, I’d encourage you to think more broadly, more comprehensively, because that, I think, is when you get a more rich, fulfilling. Again, I hesitate to use the word, but holistic, all encompassing feeling of real, true, grounded success rather than just piling on in one particular area. It can get quite lopsided, as you may know, if you’ve followed me for a while. I don’t love the idea of work life balance. I prefer integration.
But it certainly isn’t very balanced if you’re only setting all those goals in one specific area. So if you have now achieved the pinnacle of success in one area, why don’t you shift your attention to another area, let that plate sort of spin maintain its own momentum for a while, and then you can dedicate yourself to another area for a while. And then, of course, the continued personal development, mindfulness, anchoring yourself in your core values and purpose so that you don’t get too sort of, you don’t fly too free on the high of success. You forget sort of what was important to you in the first place. So keep exploring. What does success, what does this look like for you? Fulfilment. Meaning, how does that evolve over time? Okay, so it’s a bit of a funny episode in terms of celebrating success. There’s no really strategies for setting other goals or what to do next and so on.
But I hope and I know that all of you have achieved something at some point. And I imagine if you’re like most people I work with and myself, you haven’t taken the moment, nor to you, to properly celebrate and reward yourself. So please do so now. Hereby I give you the permission that you do not need, but nonetheless, there you have it. To go off and reward yourself, celebrate that achievement, and indulge in the success and meaning that comes from it. Here’s to you. Congratulations. See you next week.
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1:1 Coaching & Mentoring
If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring
For experienced founders and independents who want a trusted thinking partner – not a programme or a group, but direct, personalised work at the level you’re actually operating at. Anna works with a very small number of clients at any one time.
