Another traditional New Year has passed and you must be brimming with new hopes and resolutions in line with our traditional thoughts. We all have one common goal that is to look for greater success in everything we do.
Success is the ultimate goal in every activity we embark on a daily basis; be it job related or otherwise. When success is achieved; doesn’t that motivate you further to do better? Ask yourself. In any activity the success gets measured by yourself first and then by the others. So what is important is to make you happy with your performance first.
Work for yourself to meet your own optimistic goals placed above the goals given to you by the employer. Celebrating your success is not the same thing as rewarding yourself. A reward suggests that you reached the end of a process. You have met your goal and earned your prize. Celebrating is about appreciating the process. Though that distinction is subtle, understanding the difference — and then doing both — allows you to take advantage of two different types of motivation.
The first and the most important thing you need to do to celebrate your progress is to acknowledge it. If you are not acknowledging that you have poured in the effort and you are not feeling good with your hard work, nothing you do will ever make you feel happy. Acknowledging your progress requires a switch in your thinking.
You need to change your mindset so that you will feel good with all the action you have taken. Little successes progress and graduate to be big ones over time. Most people have a habit of waiting for big successes to feel good about or to celebrate. When they don’t come your way you get frustrated and you even give up achieving little successes.
Then the consistent failure occurs and you make yourself a person without success and then the downward performance trend takes precedence. Sometimes people don’t realise that they’ve achieved a certain measure of success.
Often success is not celebrated correctly, and you just keep working without actually giving yourself time to pat yourself on the back. Most people have no idea how important it is to congratulate themselves, and celebrate each step they succeed to their ultimate goal. Of course you also need to take the time to thank others for their contribution and help whenever that happens.
Big wins
Others will only recognise your big wins that have value to them or to your organisation. And you know that they are rare given the level of toughness or competition relative to performance expectations. The time gap between big successes is always longer but you know well that people need regular or frequent motivation to keep performing well.
On the contrary, celebration of little successes has its own benefits for those who aspire to be successful in every activity they lay their hands on. Psychologically, you feel that you are a winner and you can continue to do well. This then becomes conviction and you start to believe in your inner power and competence. The feeling of success is something you shouldn’t let go of as it stimulates and persuades you to keep on succeeding. This helps you tap into the maximum capacity you possess. Do you now see the cyclical effect of celebrating little successes?
Simple pleasures
Learn from what you see around you and what you subconsciously do. How have you motivated your child as a parent, uncle or an aunt? Pause for a moment and close your eyes, do you now see the images of what you do and how you motivated a baby or a toddler to shape the behaviour?
All humans have a basic need for frequent simple pleasures to enjoy life and it’s you who can look for and get these simple pleasures to further motivate you. Celebration helps ‘recharge your batteries’ for a longer and more successful journey with the sense of satisfaction you get.
The workday events that ignite their emotions, fuel their motivation, and trigger their perceptions are fundamentally the same. When we think about progress, we often imagine how good it feels to achieve a long-term goal or experience a major breakthrough.
These big wins are great — but they are relatively rare. The good news is that even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously. Celebration is all about being happy or feeling good about what you have achieved and it’s not about partying which we are well known for, as a nation.
Instead, thinking about success, sharing the success story with someone who is close to you, writing it somewhere, taking a chocolate home for your spouse or kids and going to a place of worship are means of celebration to motivate you to achieve frequent success. You learn to enjoy it; it will naturally motivate you to do better in life.
At the end of the day, we all need to feel as though we have achieved something – big or small.
This sense of achievement is what drives us forward, and helps us to continue to plan and negotiate our goals. Without celebrating the small wins, we would fail to recognise how much we have grown. And growth is something that should always be celebrated.