With my amazing crew
Celebrate your wins
I want to ask you a question. When you achieve a big goal, when you overcome a big hurdle, when you are disciplined and hardworking and do well Do you celebrate your wins.
Do you keep a track and really integrate the successes into your psyche.
There are many reasons why you should and it’s not about pumping up your ego or arrogance but rather to rebuild your confidence, give you strength for future or current battles and to remind yourself of your badass moments so you can repeat them.
It's also important that you don’t dismiss or brush off the amazing feedback or compliments that you get. Instead hold onto it and revisit them, record them and use them to re motivate you when times are tough or you are feeling low.
It will help you be more powerful, influential and stronger moving forward and we all need to show up the best we can in this world.
It's not just about ourselves either, when we are feeling confident, when we feel strong and powerful we can then be good role models for others, we are more likely to spread sunshine in the world when we feel good and not down and then there is the fact of course that we need to love ourselves before we can love and help anyone else.
When we are down on ourselves, we tend to remember only the negative things in our past or our current lives. We see everything through a dark lens that distorts our picture of reality and our actions and efforts moving forward will be weak, because deep down we don't believe we can do it.
If on the other hand we are thinking about our wins, the times we did well, the successes we achieved, the obstacles we overcame, then we will be stronger in our resolve, in our belief that we can take on huge challenges, that we have what it takes.
A friend once said to me at the end of the La Ultra a 222km race at extreme altitude in the Himalayas that took me 55 hours and 5 minutes to run and was one of the toughest things I had ever done in my life something that really struck home.
He had just been praising me and my amazing accomplishment telling me how fabulous it was and how proud I should be. This was just an hour or so after finishing the event.
I turned to him and said, oh but I wasn't first, so in so was faster and anyway there are longer, harder races and I basically just diminished all that I had fought to achieve which represented a year and half of dedication to training overcoming major injury problems and concussion and a heap of obstacles to achieve this long held dream. I had given every ounce of my soul and being to this amazing undertaking and yet here I was making small of it. Immediately I was pointing out where I fell short and what I could have done better.
He literally grabbed me by the shoulders and said "For f$#K sake, can't you just for one moment feel the success, celebrate this amazing achievement before you go looking straight for the next higher mountain to climb. Can't you just integrate this win into your mind first....
This really hit me and I realised he was right. I was always straight onto the next mission never allowing myself to bathe even for a moment in the glory of what I have achieved, scared that my ego could get out of control and very aware that others were still better than me that I wasn't number one. I was such a harsh critic on myself and yes being disciplined and harsh had got me this far hadn't it but at what cost.
By never celebrating the wins I never allowed myself to become stronger from the experience, more confident from the win, it didn't allow me to integrate the experience. I have, as many of us do, an extremely strong critic who lives in my brain and tells me constantly, I am not good enough, I am not strong enough, bright enough, good looking enough, talented enough etc.
This demeaning critic wants me to be better, he or she wants me to show up the best I can but taking this approach actually destroyed my confidence, my self belief and I have come to recognise this critic for what it is.
I know this voice in my head means well, wants me, like an overbearing parent, to perform to the best of my abilities but it achieves the exact opposite by robbing me of my confidence and strength and putting even more pressure on me to perform when I am already giving everything I have.
So next time you have a win in life, pat yourself on the back, enjoy the moment, integrate it into your story, into my subconcious and let it change who you are and how you take on challenges moving forward.
You are not being egotistical, you are not being arrogant or puffed up, you are just making yourself stronger for future battles and challenges.
Lifting your horizon so you can achieve even more in the future. Be like the friendly teacher who gave you a gold star in your homework book when you did well at schoo and let that empower you. Don't give in to the bossy critic parent/authority figure who constantly puts you down no matter how well you do. Understand the roles of both but don't fall victim to the "I am not enough" camp.
Celebrate today your achievements then go kick some more ass