Celebration Jar

I will be the first to admit, celebrating my accomplishments on any level has never been easy. For quite a long time, it was downright hard and something I completely resisted. My usual response when I accomplished a goal or completed a project was to dive right into the next one; barely giving the ink time to dry when I crossed it off the to do list before starting something else. When someone one would comment on one of my accomplishments, I would instantly deflect that and say something along the lines of “oh, that? It wasn’t really that big of a deal”.

Perhaps as a little girl I was taught not to brag and rather to be humble, I’m not exactly sure, but I do recall my grandmother saying countless times “children are meant to be seen and not heard”. Besides, good girls did what they said they were going to do and kept going – or so I thought that was how it was supposed to be. Until I began consistently working with a coach about 7 or so years ago.

At the beginning of each session I was required to share not one, not two, but THREE celebrations or shoutouts about something I was proud of. And oh my gosh, I’m not going to lie, this was nothing shy of torture for me. I was wired to find what was wrong, work to fix it, and then move on to the next thing that needed my attention. Here was a coach, now making me stop and celebrate – this was not what I thought I needed. I did what she asked of me, but I didn’t see the value in it for myself.

And then, one day after working with her for a while I began to find celebrations to share much easier. So much so that I began to enjoy that part of our time together. Crazy, huh, I was so resistant to it for so long. Soon, I incorporated this into my coaching practice and to this day continue to do this with my private clients.

This year, I had an idea, thanks to a friend and fellow coach, to take the idea of celebrations a step further. To make celebrations more than something I share with my coach, partner, or a friend, there is now an action step involved with it to really ramp up the energetic feeling around achieving a goal or milestone on a project. Corin, my friend, told me that this was a way to help deepen the retraining of my brain to want celebrations. Here is what she suggested: making a list of celebrations then randomly selecting one. The inner crafter in me took that idea and envisioned what I now call a celebration jar.

Make a list of celebrations based on certain price points. Things a little as zero dollars and up to something extraordinary. An example of a few things I put on my list was a drive in the country with the top down on the Jeep (free), a colorful new scarf ($40), and a full day off (priceless). Perhaps like Corin, a trip to the pastry shoppe on the way to the beach or your favorite park for a walk is a celebration. Or a new deck of oracle cards. Whatever you’d like to use as a celebration, the choice is yours – the idea here is to begin formulating ways to celebrate.

Next, create some personal guidelines around these celebrations. For instance, if you sign up a new client or enroll them into one of your programs, you may choose a celebration from a certain category. If you launch a new program and successfully enroll your chosen number of participants into it, you may choose a celebration from another category and so on and so forth.

Now comes my favorite part – using a variety of colored paper, select one color for each category and put one celebration onto a small three by three piece of paper. Continue to do this for each celebration in this category, then select another color for the next category and so on. Once you have put each celebration onto a piece of paper it’s time to grab a jar to put them into. I recommend you choose a clear jar where you can easily see the papers. Decorate the lid, and if you’d like you may even use something to enhance the jar to make it even more special. I recommend glitter of any kind here, but you can choose whatever strikes your fancy.

The last step here is to fold each piece of paper so you cannot see what you have written on them and add them to the jar. It would be helpful to display your Celebration Jar near your workspace so that you’ll be inspired to dip into it often. Next time you complete an item on your to do list, that matches the criteria you set for yourself, select the corresponding celebration color paper from the jar and do the action you’ve previously written.

Remember, celebrations don’t have to be huge, but they can be. They don’t have to be shared, but they can be. We should just find more ways to celebrate all the amazing things we do, often. If the idea of celebrating feels like a foreign concept and you’d like some help bringing this into your business and life, I’d love to help. Let’s schedule a complimentary discovery call and explore the coaching programs I offer that can help you with this and a wide variety of other things.