Celebrate? Right Now? Pardon?
I’ve had the concept of “celebrating” swirling around in my head for the last few weeks. It was an intuitive decision and since I made it, I’ve been trying catch up with my intuition about it. ("She" tends to be a bit more audacious than the regular "me". :-)) I’ve been asking myself, why was it so important to celebrate, in this very difficult year, of all years?
I knew it was partly about challenging myself to celebrate, as much as anyone else. One of the things that’s become abundantly clear to me lately is that celebrations are incredibly important, and I haven’t valued them as much as I’d wish.
And I think they’re even more important right now, even when we might feel we lack the energy or inspiration to Make Room for them.
(I know celebrating may not come naturally to you. It didn’t to me either, especially when it came to my successes – I’d be more focused on all the things I hadn’t done or learned. But it’s a skill that we can develop. I can tell you, the ROI is pretty excellent: lots more joy, for starters…)
Here are some reasons to celebrate… Celebrating is so energizing!
It’s the Winter Solstice next week, the return of the light and people have been celebrating this for centuries if not millennia.
We’re coming to the end of a very hard year. At the very least we can celebrate that we’re still here.
But there’s more to celebrate, of that I’m certain, now that I’ve done all this reflecting about it.
It’s more than likely that you had to dig deep, get creative and/or courageous more often this year than at any other time in your life, right? That’s growth and it’s worth celebrating! (Actually essential to celebrate if you want to grow more and faster.)
And even in dark times there are shiny, bright moments of joy. It’s so important to notice them. It’s a valuable shift in perspective that helps us be more resilient. Again, this may not come naturally to you, but it’s a practice you can learn if you want to.
Celebrating our successes, of any size, helps us get in a more empowered relationship with our challenges. I like to think of it like replenishment: I get filled up by the celebration and then I have more to give as I face my challenges. I wonder how you like to think of it… I’d also love to celebrate with you the fact that this month is the three-year anniversary of the Circles. That’s 33 Circles since December 2017! (One a month, with August off each year.) Thank you to Casandra who, when signing up to join us next week, reminded me of this fact. Here's yet another example of “we cannot become ourselves by ourselves”. I needed Casandra to remind me. (Photo is from that first December 2017 Circle.)
I have lots more to say about Celebrating, but I’ll stop there for now.
Will you grant yourself permission to celebrate? (Write yourself a permission slip like Brené Brown does, if need be!)
Make Room For YOU to:
Reflect in an empowered way on the year, celebrating what’s gone well even in (especially in!) the midst of such daunting challenges.
Release what’s no longer serving you.
Commit to showing up in 2021 in ways that are aligned with the best of who you are and who you’re meant to become!
It’s never too late to Make Room For You!
Warmly, Milisa
PS: BJ Fogg, author of the game-changing book Tiny Habits, actually created a new word based on his research to name the feeling we get when we celebrate: “Shine”. What better word could there be to tie into a celebration of the return of the light?
