Manila, 4 May 2023 — Before or after a result, what is the best time to celebrate?

Story

It happened this month. As a group of leaders was working with me, the question came up about how they could build reflection and celebration habits into their leadership development work. I welcomed their inquiry. In my view, it cut to the heart of what makes leaders of all kinds live their lives somewhat differently from other people. Moreover, I learned that the recent development of positive psychology research has provided many additional perspectives on how reflection and celebration can be carried out in life and work. 

Since the beginning of time, leaders of all kinds have had the opportunity to build reflection into their daily and weekly practices. Many have done so, giving us powerful examples to learn from through their actions and writings. Lately, however, with the acceleration of economic activity in the 20th and 21st centuries, reflection practices have often suffered from general busyness and a shortening of attention spans. Meanwhile, the practice of celebration has been affected too, with most of the attention now being given to activities that follow the achievement of a result.   

It wasn’t always like that, and positive psychology research over the past two decades has helped to renew public interest in some of the reflection and celebration practices that have flourished for millennia before the industrial and subsequent revolutions took hold of societies and shaped the workplaces we know today. Furthermore, biology and neuroscience have added many invaluable insights into how such practices can usefully be integrated into our daily and weekly workflows. Let’s take a closer look at what is available to us now. 

Challenge

When it comes to reflection, what I have seen among the leaders working with me is that increasing the frequency of reflection will bring better results in performance, well-being, and resilience. From setting time aside on a monthly and bi-weekly basis, most have already moved to a once or twice-weekly reflection practice, often supplemented by daily micro-reflections. The latter often take the form of reflecting on three daily wins, or three good things as the practice is referred to in positive psychology. 

For the twice-weekly reflections, more leaders have discovered the benefit of timing these at the end and beginning of the workweek, with the latter coinciding with planning for the next week. That spacing allows our minds to process Friday’s end-of-workweek reflections and generate new insights while we enjoy several nights of regenerative sleep on the weekend. By the time Monday morning arrives, there’s a good chance that we can optimally use the results of the reflection in our planning for the new week.

What about celebration? While we can continue the practice of organizing a celebratory lunch, dinner, or outing after achieving a significant result in our projects, new insights have created more opportunities, almost like a coin has two sides. The other side of the coin, so to speak, sees leaders showing up with a strong internal motivation to make celebrating a part of how they live and work every day. They don’t wait to celebrate until the next major milestone has been achieved. Rather, they find many opportunities to integrate celebration into their mindset and daily and weekly work practices. 

Question

You may have heard that happiness is either an outcome—making us dependent on something external to us happening first—or a decision that we choose to make for ourselves in how we show up for life every day. Empowered by positive psychology, more people and more leaders today are choosing the latter path. The same applies to celebrating, which can become an input to how we show up in life and work every day and week, rather than an activity to be anticipated only after a result has been achieved. There are many practices available in positive psychology that can support us in advancing on the path of celebrating much more frequently.

My question for you this week is to take a good look at your own practices and let me know: how do you reflect and celebrate? 

If you’d like to discover how to level up in your reflection and celebration practices, book a free strategy call to tell me what you want to change and achieve. Our Leader in Transition program empowers you to design and execute practices that will work for you.