I know I‘d go starving if I only had celebration for breakfast and I‘d certainly miss my green smoothies, however celebration should be part of our daily rituals.
Don‘t get too excited though! Different people have different perceptions of celebration. In this case it doesn‘t mean that you need a bottle of red wine and a few good friends (although that does sound pretty good!). Let me explain…
My dear friend and head-facilitator at Basic Bananas, Susanne King talks a lot about how celebrating your achievements in business is so important and gets you into the right state to attract even more of the good stuff. I‘ve noticed this ‘phenomenon‘ with myself and many of our clients. It‘s quite interesting to see how people who adopt a practice of daily celebrations into their lives seem to not only become more and more successful, but also more content overall.
So how can you celebrate?
At the start of our Clever Bunch programs, we always set inspirational and motivational goals and then ask our brilliant business owners how they will celebrate their achievements. Their ideas range from going out for dinner with their partners, to buying a fancy car to donating to charity. Now that‘s awesome for acknowledging bigger achievements but those celebrations might not be sustainable to do every day (and might ruin you in the long run). To ‘celebrate‘ every day and be consistent, it needs to be easy to do or we just won‘t do it (I mean, we are all busy and the point here is not to make our days fuller, but slot celebration into our daily routines).
So a daily celebration could include to write down your achievements of the day and do a star jump (or eat a piece of delicious chocolate!).
Can I be a bit fluffy for one minute? This is how I include celebration and gratitude into my life. It‘s so easy: At night after reading a book, I turn out the lights and before falling asleep I think about all the awesome things in the day I‘ve achieved or am grateful for. It could be anything like I‘m grateful for the delicious dinner Christo cooked (ok, that one doesn‘t really happen very much) or I‘m grateful for the conversation I had with a friend or I‘m grateful for the work we did with brilliant entrepreneurs or I‘m grateful for the dolphins that said hi in the surf. Most times I only get to two or three things and I‘m asleep. I just keep making a mental list until I‘m asleep. It‘s such an easy practice.
To be honest some people have told me I‘m doing it ‘all wrong‘ and I need to write these things down into a celebration or gratitude journal. The thing is that I believe whatever works for you or as my friend Andre Chaperon says ‘whatever blows your hair back‘ is perfect. If you like writing a list, do that, if you like thinking about them in your mind, do that, if you like acting them out, do that (might be a bit extreme). The easier it is for you, the more likely you will be doing it every single day and see the results in your business and life.
I might switch it up one day and use a journal, for now, I like my method.
If you have a team of rockstars in your business, I suggest you also include celebrations into your weekly rituals. At Basic Bananas we have a Friday lunch team meeting where we share all the awesome achievements from the past week including client love notes, client success stories and any other exciting achievements, big and small. It‘s one of my favourite times at the Plantation!
Try and include celebrations into your business and life as much as possible and please do tell me how you go with it! Are you already implementing celebration practices? What do they look like? I always love hearing and adopting new ideas!
Yours in celebration,
Franziska Iseli-Hall