What does it mean to celebrate your wins?

And why should we do it?

I have recently heard this advise from more than one person. Celebrate your wins! 

Oprah Winfrey stated 'The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is to celebrate.' Easy for her to say, here in the UK we are not brought up to celebrate ourselves. It just simply isn’t British.

We are good at feeling negative about our failures, but rarely allow ourselves to feel good about our successes.

As artists, just putting our work out there can feel like bragging. But it is good to acknowledge to ourselves when we have worked hard and accomplished something good. I am painting now in ways I never thought I could. I have my work in galleries. My customers very kindly give me fantastic reviews - I was recently looking through some of my  reviews and I had forgotten some of the lovely things my customers had said about my work. It is these positive words that can keep us going.

Celebrating ourselves seems like boasting and we are conditioned by our upbringing and our environment to be modest. Or maybe we have set the bar so high that no matter what we have achieved, we never think it is good enough. Or we're scared that if we pause to celebrate, we’ll lose sight of our goal and start to slacken off. We are afraid to stop for a minute - we’ve got to get onto the next thing without taking the time to look at what we have achieved so far.

But celebrating our wins does have to be showing off - no one else even needs to know about it.

So why celebrate out wins? 

Acknowledging and celebrating something we have achieved can give us a confidence boost when we most need it. And it doesn’t have to be a big win - some small achievement can still be very important to us. Never forget it is the small wins that get us nearer to our goals, step by tiny step.

Celebrating those small wins can help us to reflect on what worked and how to build on that. What stood out about how we approached something can teach us a lot about ourselves, what works and what doesn’t. Celebrating the smaller wins boosts our confidence and builds momentum that leads to greater success.

So go ahead - celebrate those wins, no matter how small. Treat yourself to some nice food, a trip, a spa day, you have been working hard, achieving goals and making progress. Who knows, it may lead you to greater things.