When was the last time you were celebrated?

We celebrate marriages, births, and major transition points at school. Some cultures celebrate the transition to adulthood (bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras, for example). Some cultures celebrate someone’s life when they die.

But what about the rest of the transitions in our lives?

Did you celebrate the promotion you fought so hard for or the business that you took the risk to start? Did you celebrate when you dialed in your schedule well enough to exercise every day? Or how about celebrating the first load of laundry your teen does by themselves? Or the first month successfully managing a budget?

It often seems that people go from one thing to the next without much thought to the success they just accomplished.

Does it matter? I think so.

I worked for YEARS to be able to leave my job as a software developer and run my martial arts studio full time. On my last Friday at work, my team took me to lunch and wished me good luck. I think they may have been celebrating for me, but all I felt was the sadness of the goodbye. That Monday I went to work at my studio as if I’d always been doing it. I didn’t stop to acknowledge my accomplishment. I was too scared about whether I was doing the right thing to give myself the props for how much I had done to get to that point.

When I sold the studio last year, everyone talked about taking time off and celebrating. Again, I was caught up in the excitement and fear of “what comes next?” I took the advice about being patient as I figured it out, but I did not allow myself to celebrate this win. I never took the time to embody the fact that I had created, run, and sold a business. I didn’t let it sink in that I had done something good.

When I was a kid I celebrated all of my good grades… until someone said to me, “what’s the big deal? You always get an A.” I received the message that it wasn’t okay to celebrate unless it was out of the ordinary. So even as I would strive to meet my own personal standard of success, I would just chalk up the wins to “that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Anything else is failure.” (Yes, I was hard on myself.) It became a habit to succeed and move on without much thought.

Running the studio, we built in times and rituals to celebrate wins. From high fives and “ta-das” to belt promotion parties and demonstrations, we taught our students to celebrate their success. We did what we could to honor and acknowledge everyone’s hard work with more than just “congratulations! Here’s new stuff to learn” or “that’s correct. Now let’s fix the next thing.”

I knew it was important to teach kids to notice their accomplishments, but I still found it tough to do the same for myself.

I have some theories about why adults don’t celebrate our wins often enough:

We don’t recognize them as wins.

Sometimes we miss the win because we don’t have a frame of reference. If you’ve never worried about having enough money to make payroll, pay your rent, or feed your kids you may not appreciate that having that money in the bank is a success.

Sometimes we miss it because nobody else acknowledges it. If you show up for work, do a good job, and get no recognition other than your paycheck you may not realize that it matters to anyone that you’re doing a good job.

We are afraid to let up.

In our 21st-century grind culture, it’s always about more, better, faster, next. Some people are afraid to acknowledge an accomplishment because they worry it will lead to complacency. Sometimes they are just on to the next thing before they even realize they did something.

We think it’s a zero-sum game.

If life is a competition, then every time we win someone else must have lost. We don’t want anyone to feel bad, so we don’t acknowledge what we’re proud of. We are taught not to brag about our wins so the other team doesn’t feel bad, and we generalize this into our lives. When we reach a goal we shrug it off, downplay it, or change the topic.

Here’s why we need to shift this thinking:

You are a role model.

Whether you realize it or not, someone is looking at your success as a signpost that they can do it, too. If you never stop to celebrate, not only are you cheating yourself out of the joy of your success, but you’re teaching those other people to do the same.

If someone only ever hears you talk about what needs to be corrected and never sees you satisfied with your progress, they will learn to be perfectionists instead of learning to strive for excellence.

You deserve to feel good.

That bears repeating…

You deserve to feel good.

You worked hard to achieve your goals. You made choices and sacrificed. You overcame obstacles (some of which nobody will ever know about). Even if it felt like an “easy win” you had a vision, set a goal, planned, and executed in a way to reach that goal.

That is noteworthy.

If you haven’t reached your goal, but you are still working on it – you deserve to feel good because you are still in the game.

If we don’t feel good about what we’re doing, What. Is. The. Point?

Life is more than a list of accomplishments.

Without the joy and celebration of what we have done, we diminish the results to a simple list. Winning a world championship was not about the trophy and medals. It was not about the title. It was about the feeling of accomplishment every day when I finished my training in the months before. It was the feeling of excitement as I got each step closer on the day of the competition. More than anything else, it’s about the memories of the people I spent time with on that trip, and how it felt to celebrate with them.

I don’t ever want that day to become a bullet point on a list of accolades. Taking the time to celebrate - to allow people to share my joy and be a part of the experience – cemented the experience for me. It helped make it a part of who I am, rather than a blip on my radar.

As May draws to a close, many of us are blessed to be celebrating graduations. Whether it’s a graduation from high school, grad school, or even preschool – soak in the joy and the celebration. Make sure that the person you are celebrating lets it sink in. (even if that’s you) Take mental pictures. Allow time for the joy of the accomplishment before rushing off to whatever is next.

Slow down and feel. Savor it.

And the next time you hit a goal, take the time to reconnect to this feeling of joy, gratitude, wonder, and accomplishment. Savor that one, too.

All wins are worth it.