Celebration is key for our well-being

So why the heck is it so hard to do it?

We are living in times of war, pain, horror, and grief, and thinking about celebrating can feel inappropriate.

However, if we’re on this platform or our inboxes, it means we are privileged enough to have food, a roof, and no bombs over our heads. We have our basic needs met and even more. So, I believe we can acknowledge this privilege and use it to honor our lives and contribute to the greater good.

To do that, we need to care for ourselves and our well-being so we can regenerate our confidence and energy, enjoy our time on earth, and join forces to transform the world.

Celebration is a tool that can support us in doing it.

However, no matter the time and context, celebrating ourselves and our wins is hard. I see it in my clients and myself.

There’s always some variation of “Uhm, I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.” coming when I ask, “So, how do you want to celebrate yourself/your progress?” in my sessions.

Why is it so tough to acknowledge our accomplishments and ourselves?

I don’t have a definitive answer, but I have some ideas. And please feel free to add to them in the comments or by replying to this email!

1. Accomplishments tend always to feel too small or irrelevant. This usually happens when we set success measures that are not true to us but mimic someone else’s measures.

2. We look forward to the next step or goal and feel we don’t have time to dwell in the present. This usually stems from a passionate, enthusiastic nature combined with the concept of never-ending production cycles of capitalism we were born and raised into.

3. We don’t feel we’ve done enough or we are enough. This tends to come from an entanglement of our lived experience—which may have led to impaired self-worth and self-esteem and/or brought trauma—with the influence of the context we grew up in—again, a capitalistic society where the push to do more and produce more is constant.

The main behavior stemming from these three causes, not celebrating ourselves and our accomplishments, is detrimental to our well-being and reinforces the negative cycle.

Celebrating is key because it helps you

• Ground in the present moment,

• Savor your accomplishments and acknowledge the steps and the process that made them possible,

• See the things from the perspective of the steps and the time and energy it takes to create something,

• Acknowledge yourself for having been willing to try and take those steps, and this positively impacts your self-worth.

That’s why I bring it up so often in my coaching sessions.

Now, one thing I noticed is that we tend not to know what to do to celebrate.

This probably happens because we’ve been so separated from the concepts of pleasure, fun, and play that we don’t know what we’d love to do just for fun anymore.

So, how can you make celebration a practice in this scenario?

If you’re open to trying it, I have a little exercise for you.

1. Think about those moments in your life that felt fun and playful and were full of pleasure and enjoyment. What were you doing? Where were you? Who were you with?

2. Create a “database” of those activities and add to it every time you find a new one that is pleasurable.

3. The next time you want to celebrate and don’t know how pick one activity from the database and make it your celebration.

If you try it, let me know how it goes!

With care,
Giada

How are you going to celebrate?

Sometimes, it can be hard to remember what activities give us pleasure. If you have some favorite ones, share them in the comments to help the community get inspired and started.

🗂️ Open Tabs

Stuff I kept thinking about or still open in my browser

• The movie Fancy Dance by Erica Trembley with an amazing Lily Gladstone. Two things stuck with me: the anger for the appalling systemic injustice against Indigenous people, especially women, and, at the same time, a sense of jealousy for their deep connection with nature—something I always longed for, thought I had been “cut away” from it, and work hard to restore.

Work with me!

Hello! I’m Giada (Jah-da, more or less), an Impact Coach who blends coaching and neuroscience to empower change agents to turn their impactful vision into action and contribute to collective well-being while feeling good and not burning out in the process. Sounds interesting? Let’s have a chat!