something in you to celebrate.
Question for you:
When was the last time you celebrated yourself?⠀
Amidst the chores, daily life administration, the heartbreaks, breakdowns, lost jobs, new jobs...
amidst the cooked meals, ordered-in meals, meals skipped when you're too busy to eat, meals skipped when you're too lonely to eat...
amidst the overwhelm and the despair, the setbacks and surprises, the lack of routine, the tired structure, the chaos of the world, the chaos of your mind...
What in all that, in between all that, outside all that, despite all that, can you celebrate about yourself?
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In my coaching work, I make it a point to ask clients what they want to celebrate about their lives, work, or learning at the start of our sessions. I give them space to develop their skill of celebrating (yes, skill!) so they get better and more comfortable at it with practice.⠀
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I help them work through their resistance and fear of self-celebrating, so that when they go out in the world, they are not unconsciously playing up the bullsh*t rules we’ve been taught that keep us small and hiding.⠀
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Because:
Owning your strengths and celebrating what you’re proud of doesn’t make you boastful or arrogant or obnoxious or dangerous.
It makes you more in integrity with yourself.
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It helps you find and do your best work in the world. It empowers you. It helps you lead your life and career in the very unique way you were born to lead it.⠀
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We know this, inherently, because we know how easy it is to celebrate and acknowledge others in our life. But when it comes to receiving our own self-celebration, we put up armour.
Why?
We’re too close to ourselves. We’re the only ones who can hear, think, and feel the complexity of our own inner selves, and there will always be a data point we can find to contradict one part of ourselves with another part. This isn’t a problem -- it’s just human. But there is little to celebrate wherever there is judgment.
We may not have yet developed a deep sense of self-trust, or live in a perpetual state of unreasonably high standards. We put more attention on "waiting for the other shoe to drop,” or on whether we’ll be “found out,” than we put on the parts of our experience that give us joy. There is little to celebrate wherever there is fear.
Maybe, at some point in our lives, we saw, heard, or felt how celebration came at a cost. Maybe what we celebrate can be taken away, dismissed, ridiculed. There is little to celebrate when it feels safer to withhold; when our joy feels like a threat.
Or maybe, because we saw no examples of self-celebration at all.
If any of this resonates with you, you're not alone. I look at self-celebration as a skill, something you practice regardless of day or circumstance... because the other option?
The brain's default unconscious bias to negativity.
No thanks. We got more possibility in us than that.⠀
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Lately, my clients have been celebrating and acknowledging themselves for:⠀
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🎉 Putting into motion the business ideas that have been percolating for months
🎉 Noticing their inner critic chatter and learning to quiet the noise
🎉 Embracing rest and restoration after working on the edge of burnout⠀
🎉 Creating boundaries and taking self-responsibility over their demanding workloads and priorities
🎉 Believing in their identity as an artist, unarguably⠀⠀
🎉 Trusting their natural rhythms for project and creative cycles and letting go of forced expectations
I think that learning to self-celebrate isn’t only so that we get comfortable sharing our strengths or accomplishments for an interview, networking call, new team, creative project, business idea, about page, etc.
More than that, it’s part of our healing.⠀
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So, do you a favour: Drop the armour.
Be in honour instead.⠀
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What's one thing you can celebrate (aka acknowledge) about yourself today? Take a moment and reply to share it. I'd love to hear. ⭐️
Rooting for you, no matter.
-Gloria