Celebrating your successes can improve your mental health, boost your self-esteem, and enhance your motivation.
As our brains naturally remember negative things more than positive things – known as negativity bias – the positive aspects responsible for building self-esteem must be purposefully focussed on, to improve your mental health.
Although remembering the positives and celebrating your successes can be difficult, especially when Tall Poppy Syndrome is rife in Australia, doing so is a great way to enhance your wellbeing.
Here are 5 ways celebrating your successes can improve your mental health:
1. Make a Gratitude Journal for your Achievements
Sit in your favourite comfortable spot, grab a pen and notebook, and think about your achievements. Let the pen flow and list everything you’ve achieved that you’re proud of, and journal why you’re grateful for it and what it has done (or could do) for you.
By doing this, you are celebrating your successes through journal reflection, so you can visualise your achievements. Putting things in writing can sometimes put things into a new perspective. You don’t have to publicly celebrate or share your reflections to feel the positive effects. In fact, celebrating on your own, and reflecting on how far you have come can help you gradually build self-esteem and happiness. The best thing is, these positive emotions can be a fantastic motivator, driving you toward your next goal, and more outstanding achievements – each of which you will start to enjoy celebrating.
2. Note down the challenges you’ve overcome
When you have accomplished a goal, no matter how small it may be, take a moment to think about where you started. How did you achieve the success you’re revelling in now?
Consider the journey you encountered to gain that success. What challenges did you face?
It’s unlikely you got to where you are today without some kind of challenge or barrier that you needed to overcome, and this is an important lesson. We must learn to celebrate both our successes and our failures, as often success is only achieved after failing numerous times.
By thinking of the negatives (that led to your ultimate success) as positives, you can fight negativity bias. Writing this down in a journal will also help you visualise the amount of work you put in, and remind you that nothing worth having comes easy.
Store the notes in a safe place and when you are feeling down, read these notes to remember how far you’ve come.
3. Celebrate with your colleagues
Feeling supported in your working environment is crucial, and this is especially true post-pandemic, as businesses compete for staff amidst nationwide labour shortages.
This makes employee wellbeing and mental health a major focus of HR and People and Culture departments businesses in the next twelve months.
Why not approach your HR team and chat to them about celebrating successes within your team? By promoting the successes of your colleagues, it can encourage a more positive environment, boosting team morale.
Celebrating success at work encourages team building and allows for genuine bonding. In turn, this can create friendships and positive workplace relationships. These types of celebrations spread positivity and create social connections, which have a significant impact on mental health.
Celebrating success with colleagues creates communities, and promotes gratitude, inclusion and collaboration. Use your wins to your advantage and be proud of them!
4. Ignore Tall Poppy Syndrome
Celebrating your success and achievements, whether big or small, long term or short term, can improve your wellbeing and thus your mental health.
However, when society throws you criticism and hate because of these successes, celebrating your wins may feel difficult. This societal attitude is called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’, and can result in successful people not believing their achievements are worthy of celebrating or recognising.
Tall Poppy Syndrome occurs when people feel the need to “cut down the tall poppy”, that is, someone standing above their competitors. There is a view that if winners celebrate their successes, they’ll become egotistical, so peers can react to this with criticism. As such, many hesitate before patting themselves on the back for their achievements in public, due to fear of being taunted about it.
It’s crucial that we ignore Tall Poppy Syndrome, and do not let others limit the opportunities that celebrating your successes can bring.
5. Apply for an Award
If you’re looking for the ultimate way to celebrate your successes, why not enter an award? Business and industry awards open doors. They help to honour your achievements, and are a fast track to gaining credibility, investment, contracts and customers.
Further, recognising hard work can boost team morale, which increases employee satisfaction as your team feels genuinely respected and valued. When your business wins an award, it gives your team a chance to celebrate all the hard work they’ve put in, and feel like an important part of the business. These positive feelings often result in higher engagement and team motivation, which creates that social connection which is so vital for mental wellbeing.
There are hundreds of awards within each state, across the country and around the world which Australian businesses can enter.
See which business and industry awards interest you, and then reach out so we can help you start celebrating your successes.
