When you work hard to accomplish something do you take the time to celebrate? Celebrating progress and success are an important part of goal setting, growth, and achieving what you set out to do.  It can help with momentum and motivation. To learn how to celebrate your wins we can think of celebrations in two categories: intentional and spontaneous.

2 ways to celebrate your wins

In my experience, planning how to celebrate your wins can be a struggle. For some goals, I have found it easy to find rewards for that served as motivation for me to keep going. Other goals have been very difficult for me to decide on what kind of reward I should get. As I continue to learn how to set better goals, I am also working to understand how to celebrate better.

As I learn from my experiences, and from others that share their celebrations, I gain a better understanding of how to celebrate wins. 

There are two main ways that you can celebrate your wins: 1) intentionally 2) spontaneously.

We have influence on these ways to celebrate. Of course, you could say there is a third way, recognition from others, but in this post I want to focus on the above two ways.

You intentionally do something to celebrate your achievement.

Intentionally doing something to celebrate your achievement means that we need to know what type and level of celebration our achievement warrants.

Two common types of rewards:

1) Social

For a social reward, you may want to consider if the celebration is something you want to share with others. If so, how many others? In what way would you like to involve other people in your celebration? It can be helpful to note that even if it’s a personal issue that you want to honor and give some public light too, how much of what you share and how you share it are up to you.

2) Tangible

A tangible, or purchased reward, can be related or unrelated to your goal.

Maybe you want to purchase something related to the goal that will further encourage progress on that goal or impact that area towards further growth. For example, you buy yourself a nice running jacket after completing your goal to run everyday before work for 30 minutes. Perhaps you started your running habit on the treadmill and now you’re ready to take it to the street. You can wear your reward when you run in the cold.

And unrelated reward would be treating yourself to a type of food you like or buying yourself something that isn’t related to your goal.

Be careful with a purchased reward though, especially when trying to relate it to a goal somehow. It can open you up to a missed celebration if you can’t figure out what that purchased reward should be. More on that below.

The important thing to remember is that rewards don’t have to be huge or tangible.  They could be, especially at the end of a super difficult goal or behavior change. However, small and non-tangible rewards are good also. Pay attention to your body and seek out a clue for how to celebrate spontaneously.

You spontaneously do something to celebrate your achievement.

We can intentionally plan out how we will celebrate a specific goal, but it’s important to remember that celebrations don’t always have to be entirely intentional, or saved for our biggest goal or growth. When feel like you accomplished something, feel the energy of your body. Do a little dance by your desk, do some air punches, give yourself a yay.

There was an interview in the 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever course where one of the interviewees said that he celebrates by doing a few second little dance. It’s simple, but having your body feel the energy created by a little dance is a good reward.

Just the other day, I found myself celebrating a productive blog planning day by ending the day in the fitness center of the hotel. I had checked into a hotel for the weekend to remove distractions. My trip to the fitness center started off as me needing to get up and move since I had been in my room all day thinking and planning. However, the energy that I had from my focused work made that workout feel like a celebration!

Even after the workout was done and I was walking back to my room, I did a few celebratory air punches. It felt great! This is what a spontaneous celebration looks like. I didn’t let the hotel camera in the hallway stop me from celebrating (that in itself is something for me to celebrate)

Figure out how to celebrate your wins

Identifying the “right reward” is something that I have been struggling with since I started setting goals. It’s difficult because I mostly see rewards as something that I need to buy for myself. However, when I’m focused on that tangible reward, it becomes a game of trying to find the perfect reward of each goal. When I’ve played that game, I might think of things that serve as a reward, but then later decide that it isn’t related enough to what I want to celebrate. As a result, I’ve not followed through with celebrations.

I have also set goals and said, “I’ll think of a reward for achieving that goal later” and then never filled in a reward.

Therefore, while I will be working really hard to identify intentional ways to celebrate each of my goals this year, I am also learning to use what comes up in life as rewards.

I hope this helps you as you are trying to figure out how to celebrate your wins. Keep in mind that there are intentional and spontaneous ways to celebrate and that you can have a mixture of social and tangible rewards.

Are there goals or achievements for this year that you haven’t yet celebrated?

Now is the time to celebrate. Even the small wins that might be the steps we are taking to get to that big goal.

Behavior Challenge: Think of a goal or achievement that hasn’t been celebrated yet (or needs another celebration). Do something to celebrate it right now. Even if that means doing a head bob dance while the person next to you wonders what’s so spectacular.

Thanksgiving and Christmas without our loved ones can be difficult. I’ve gathered grief resources for the holidays. In this post I highlight 3 strategies to deal with grief. I also look at why it’s important to grieve and how we can meet people in their space of mourning. 

3 Strategies to Deal with Grief

I chose these 3 strategies because they emphasize the importance of being where you are, remembering your loved ones, and reaching out to others. They are also a few of the ways that I have seen my friends handle grief.

These strategies are from an article by Amy Morin, a psychotherapist turned author. She lists nine strategies and of those nine, I want to highlight three.

3 Strategies to Deal with Grief:

1. Allow Yourself to Feel a Range of Emotions

The range of emotions that Amy mentions are joy, guilt, and sadness. Amy encourages feeling whatever emotion you are experiencing without telling yourself you should be feeling differently. This might mean letting yourself enjoy something that makes you happy without feeling like you should be feeling sad instead. However, it can go the other way as well. If you aren’t up for the cheery event, it’s okay to feel sad. It is important to be gentle with yourself.

2. Find a Way to Honor Your Memories

Amy lists commemoration as a strategy because it reminds us that our loved ones are still with us. We might write a short remembrance of them or light a candle. Or maybe there is an object that they made or that was passed onto you that you can set close to you. However we honor their memories, we do it so that it can bring us comfort amidst the grief. When we honor the memory of our loved ones we are remembering how things were in the past, but also bringing the memory into our present.

3. Do Something Kind for Others

According to Amy Morin, doing something kind for others might remind you that despite your grief you still have things to give. If you journal, these might be things that you can write about later. Losing someone might make it difficult for you to embrace the love, joy, and peace of Christmas that I suggest as a journal prompt. However, if you seek out ways to be kind to others, you might add things into your day that help you embrace that love, joy, and peace of Christmas. It could also be that the love, joy, and peace that you write about are focused on memories of you and your loved one during the holidays. It might even be about how in your day you were able to embrace all the emotions that you had-the happy ones and the sad ones.

There are other ways to deal with grief, but the above three ways seem especially important to remember. They don’t ignore the emotions that you are feeling and they don’t rush you to move on. If you want more strategies for handling grief during the holidays, read Amy Morin’s full article here.

More grief resources for the holidays, and in general, include understanding why we need to grieve and knowing what we might be able to say to someone that is grieving.

Why it’s Important to Grieve

Amy Morin’s article begins by stating that the process of healing is to experience the pain of grief. It’s not in avoiding our feelings that we move on. We move on through healing and we heal by experiencing the pain.

I turned to my faith for more words of wisdom on the importance of grieving.

Here’s what Abbot Tryphon says about grief and losing a loved one:

“We need to mourn…We need to embrace the grief, and honor the bereavement process. Grief is confirmation that our loved one was a person of value, a beloved son or daughter, a cherished brother or sister, a treasured friend. Grief is how we honor a well-lived life, for the death is grief-worthy. In grieving, we do their memory justice, and follow in the example of Jesus, who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus.”-Abbot Tryphon

This is strategy 1 and 2 that I mentioned above. Letting yourself grieve and feel both the sadness and happiness (or whatever emotions you feel) is the beginning of the healing process. It’s in the midst of that, and even through that, that we honor our loved ones.

I encourage you to read the rest of Abott Tryohon’s article on mourning our loved ones and embracing grief. He writes about how death doesn’t separate us from our loved ones.

Meeting People in Their Grief

People have a variety of ways to deal with grief. For someone that is observing, it might be difficult to know what to say. We might be a little fearful or uncertain of what to do if we are witnessing a way that someone expresses grief that we are not familiar with.

In my own journey, I’ve realized that it’s not the words that matter. Show up. Offer hugs. Do something to lighten the load of everything else that needs to get done.

If you want a best and worst list, I’ve got one of those for you too.

If someone you know is grieving here is a helpful article on the best and worst things to say to someone in grief:

10 Best and Worst Things To Say to Someone in Grief:

Grief Resources for the Holidays

I hope this article was helpful in offering ways to deal with grief. I also hope it helped show how important the grief process is and how we can be there for people that are grieving.

For more tips on dealing with grief during the holidays read grief.com’s article Grief and the Holidays. There are tips for other holidays besides Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Remember Your Loved Ones

I encourage you, if you are missing someone you love, to remember them with gratitude.

Think of the loved one(s) that you no longer with you this holiday season. List 3 things that you would want to tell them that you think they would be proud of about you. Or, list 3 things that you remember about them, that even though they are gone it brings you joy to remember.

I find that writing things down is especially helpful when I want to process or remember something. If you are open to journaling about it, write it down.

Behavior Challenge: Be kind to others. This gives us something to reflect about at the end of the day, or helps us engage with the world around us even while we are grieving. It does more than that though. It also helps us become better people.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving and Christmas we are surrounded by the actions of thanking, giving, and receiving. All of these actions provide a starting point for journaling. Writing down what you did today is only the beginning. Here are 5 holiday journal prompts for adults that want to dig deeper into their journaling or start journaling today.

Journaling: Why

I journal because journaling helps me reflect and reflection helps me better know myself. When I am confident in myself I am more able to choose appropriate and relevant goals.

If you need more convincing on the benefits of journaling check out this Psychology Today article, Journaling Clears Out the Bad, Builds Up the Good. Also, read my 3 Tips to Jump Start Your Personal Reflection Habit.

Journaling: How

Growing up I was really into free style journaling. There are various ways to journal. Some like to free style it and others like a set template. I’ve journaled both ways. Others may prefer to vary their writing prompts based on the time of year or circumstances.

When I journaled free style, I wrote pages and pages. It helped me process my thoughts and feelings. However, it took a lot of time. Over time my journaling decreased until one day I found that I had stopped it entirely.

It took a while to realize that my not journaling was more than a loss of some memories that I didn’t write down. It was a loss of an opportunity to process, understand, and learn from my life and experiences.

However, I realized that I had some resistance to getting back into journaling. I didn’t want to spend as much unfocused time on my journaling as I did in the past. To overcome this and get back into the journaling habit I started small and used a template. I am back into journaling and try to do it every day.

What I did to reboot my journaling habit

I began using the 5 Minute Journal. It has 3 writing prompts for the morning and 2 for the evening. This got me back into my daily journaling habit. After almost 2 years using the 5 Minute Journal I began to want to expand on my day and to write a bit more. Yet, I still wanted the focus of a template.

As a result, for the last quarter of 2018, I have been using Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Journal. Michael’s journal has 8 questions. The journal asks questions that help to record and process the past, present, and future.

Due to my rebooted journaling habit, I wanted to share some writing prompts I have come up with that are specific to this time of year. I am adding them into my evening journaling template for the holidays and I invite you to consider these or to create your own.

5 Holiday Journal Prompts

Journal prompts for Thanksgiving:

 1) What am I thankful for…

at work?

in my education or hobbies?

at home or in relationships?

2) What can I do to continue to focus on gratitude and thankfulness after Thanksgiving is over?

3) How will this focus on gratitude impact my spirit of gift giving and receiving, time with my family, or those that I encounter in my day? Is there another area it will impact?

Journal Prompts for the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas:

4) What did I do today that embraced the love, joy, and peace of Christmas?

This could be attending a church service, making a donation to a charity, or giving a gift to a friend or coworker. Maybe it’s decorating, spending time with friends at a holiday party, or baking goodies to share. Knitting a hat for someone or going to a holiday concert or event are also possible ways to embrace the love, joy, and peace of Christmas. Whatever you do, record it along with who else was involved. That will help you stay connected to the memory and to the people you shared it with.

5) How did I help someone in need? How did someone help me?

This can be more than a donation to a charity or a person on the street. It could be looking for ways that you help someone in your work day or at home. Don’t overlook the small ways that you help people throughout the day. Likewise, look for ways that others helped you throughout the day.

Why Holiday Journaling?

Thanksgiving is a time to remember our history and treat others with respect and kindness. It’s also a great time to focus on all that we have and reflect on it in writing.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a time of preparation. We ready the house for visitors. Parties are planned and attended. We buy and wrap presents to give (and hopefully mail them on time).  Maybe you are also in a time of spiritual preparation. This is a great time to process and focus our thoughts with journaling.

I’m excited to add these prompts to my journaling from now till Christmas. I hope you will try one or all of the holiday writing prompts with me.

For more on gratitude, read Develop a Grateful Mind.

What holiday journaling prompts to you like to use?

Behavior Challenge: Pick at least 1 of the 5 holiday journal prompts and start writing.

Do we know how to handle fear? Do we really understand what our fears are telling us? Can we use our fears to promote growth and courage? These are topics that Kate Swoboda, author of The Courage Habit, writes and speaks about.  

Courage Habits versus Fear-Based Habits

The Courage Habit, as outlined by Kate, includes 4 researched behaviors, which I will outline below. I came across this information as she spoke about it on a podcast interview by Jenny Blake of the Pivot Podcast. The researched behaviors were found to increase confidence and bring about positive changes in behaviors.

If we know what these courage habit behaviors are we can stop ourselves while in the midst of fear-based behaviors. We can break free from acting out of habits that place fear at the center of our attention and instead engage in habits that build courage.

Ways that we handle fear that puts fear at the center of our attention

Kate Swoboda identifies 3 common ways we handle fear:

• Ignore/avoid
• Please it/placate it
• Attack it

The problem that Kate identifies is that we aren’t actually handling our fears and getting to the root of the problem when we handle fear in any of these ways.

I’ve run across these methods for handling fear in my own journey. I’ve given into my fear. I’ve tried to ignore my fear. I’ve found that some people in the personal development world suggest I attack my fears.

Yet Kate is right. When we handle our fears in these ways, we aren’t getting to the root of the problem.

All of the above methods for handling fear place fear at the center of our attention. We’re acting in response to our fear, not using our fear to promote growth or courage.

Kate Swoboda suggests that we instead embrace the courage habit.

What is the courage habit?

4 behaviors that make up the courage habit:

• Accessing the body
• Listening without attachment
• Reframing limiting stories
• Reaching out to create community

In the podcast explanation of these behaviors, Kate explained that accessing the body looks like noticing what your fear feels like and where you feel that fear. Listening without attachment and reframing limiting stories work together. Give your fear a voice, listen to it, but don’t hold on to the story that it’s telling you.

Reframing limiting stories might sound familiar as I wrote about reframing limiting beliefs here. It’s the same idea applied to working through your fears.

Here’s what really struck me about Kate’s call for reaching out to create community as a behavior that develops courage. She said that if we hideaway and don’t show ourselves -as we are- to others, that we can stop trusting ourselves in the process. It can become more difficult to bring others into our lives. That is a powerful way to look at the importance for cultivating relationships with those around us.

How to handle fear by developing a courage habit

After listening to the Kate Swoboda interview with Jenny Blake, I am interested in reading Kate’s book The Courage Habit and learning more.

Have you read the Courage Habit?

Which courage habit behavior comes easiest to you?

Which behavior is the most difficult?

Behavior Challenge: Learning about our fears.

Notice in what situations you feel fear. Write down the types of situations or circumstances where you feel fear.

This might typically be the time where you give yourself a hard time for being afraid of this or that, but think of it as research. If you know what situations or circumstances trigger your fear, you prepare yourself for the next time you are faced with that fear.

If you want to hear more from Kate Swoboda, listen to the podcast here: Cultivate a Courage Habit with Kate Swoboda.

Other posts on podcasts: How do you know you made the right decision?