It’s so important to celebrate our wins as a teacher business owner. Let’s talk about WHY this is the perfect time to add a celebration ritual into the mix.
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Read the transcript:
[00:00:00] Janice: Welcome back to Your Win-Win Teacher Business. In episode 40, we’ll talk about why it’s so important to celebrate our wins as a teacher business owner.
[00:00:36] Celebration can be so easy to skip over in the name of getting more done and not having enough time. But when we bake celebration routines into our business efficiently, they can really help us get more done and achieve our goals faster. Celebration is motivating. There’s a reason that we use sticker charts with small children.
[00:01:02] There’s a reason that we leverage countdowns. There’s a reason we have award ceremonies. Celebration is something that works. I think as we become adults, we skip over celebration and I don’t think that’s a good idea. We leverage celebration in our classrooms as teachers and we leverage celebration as parents with our children.
[00:01:27] But do you leverage the power of celebration in your business? Motivation for those hard and sticky tasks on your desk as a business owner, can’t come from the dopamine of the dashboard alone. You know that I believe in setting goals that are not directly tied to revenue. I’m highly motivated by goals that I can control. I’ll always bet on myself, and I know that I will show up and get the job done.
[00:01:55] But having a celebration as a finish line does help. If you don’t normally celebrate inside your business, it might be a good day to get curious about what that could look like and just give it a try one time and see how it feels. There are going to be fun tasks in your business that are so exciting to dive into.
[00:02:17] But there are also days where that dopamine wears off and we’re 75% through something and we don’t wanna get it to the finish line, and it no longer feels new and shiny and exciting. There will also be days where we hit a roadblock, get tangled up in tech, hit a challenge, and a celebration checkpoint can really help us dig a little bit deeper
[00:02:40] and shift our mood towards that task.
[00:02:44] I’m a big fan of posting goals visually, and I think celebration checkpoints can be part of that. If I know that my main task that I’m working on currently on Mondays and Fridays is X and I know that it’s finite and when I finish all 12 steps of it, there will be a celebration that’s very specific that’s decided on in advance waiting for me,
[00:03:09] that’s going to change the energy that I bring to my desk on Mondays and Fridays to do that hard, sticky task. And celebration doesn’t have to be something that costs a ton of money. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna book yourself an international vacation or buy yourself something new at a luxury price tag.
[00:03:28] It can sometimes come in the form of time. It might be giving yourself permission to visit the gym one extra day that week to just walk on the treadmill with a favorite book that you wanted to listen to and not do a strict workout routine and just take that extra little bit of time for yourself. It could be permission to take the coffee you made at home, but go sit and enjoy it at a favorite park on a bench alone with your thoughts or a favorite book instead of
[00:03:59] at your desk and in your normal, usual location. It could be permission to choose a new recipe and bake it and just go all in in the kitchen and take that dedicated time for something you love doing and taking back some time away from your desk because you just met a goal
[00:04:18] and you’re gonna refresh and fill your cup in some way before you head back into the next hard sticky task.
[00:04:24] You know what feels motivating to you, but choosing in advance and putting that on your visual goal tracker so that you can see my current focus is getting this to the finish line, and when I get there, this is how I’m going to celebrate? That can feel really exciting and really shift the energy you bring to work when you sit down at your desk.
[00:04:46] So motivation is one reason it’s important to celebrate in our business. Another reason to consider adding a celebration routine into your business is the ability to see progress. And so on my to-do list on my Asana calendar, I will write down what I’m working on in the day, but I’ll also have a task sometimes for that celebration, and I’ll let that celebration move with me from day to day and drag across,
[00:05:14] and then when I finally get to that checkpoint. I get to check off the celebration task and it also holds some space for me on my calendar. I can see I’m getting towards the finish line and I can see that I really wanna take an hour to bake bread or an hour to go on a drive solo and I can start to hold space for that in my calendar and realize, no, I have a celebration coming up.
[00:05:38] I don’t wanna overpack my calendar. I wanna start to save space for that the closer I get to the finish line. That can be another way to keep the celebration visual, but my Asana calendar also tells the story of the past. And so when I do check off that celebration, it will hold that date on my calendar as history of a day that I stopped to smell the roses, a day that I stopped to celebrate my win inside my business,
[00:06:05] a day that I accomplished a major checkpoint that I had set out for myself. And it also helps us have some clarity on how long something took. So when I go to set goals next year, I can see that this year goal number one was say to write 12 blog posts, and I can look and see whether that got checked off as a celebration in February,
[00:06:29] if it got checked off in July, or if it got checked off in September. It gives me some clarity on how long that goal took, so I know how long it took me to write 12 blog posts, and that’ll help me set better goals in the next calendar year.
[00:06:46] When I took the goal of writing 12 blog posts in a calendar year, and I broke it up into 12 different tasks on my calendar, I got to see what times of year it was easier for me to get a blog post done. And what times of year blogging was really hard for me to get done. And I had clarity on how long different types of blog posts took because I had that historical data on my calendar.
[00:07:09] I’ve also been able to look back at historical data to see what types of celebrations motivate me and what types of celebrations don’t. I actually used to have a celebration jar. It was a mason jar on my desk that had a lid, and every time I got tempted by something in a social media ad, um, kind of like an Amazon wishlist, I would just write it down,
[00:07:27] I would fold it up and I would throw it in the jar. And when I got to my checkpoint, I would let myself shake the celebration jar and pull something out. So in that season of my business, I was hoping that the unknown of it and the randomness was going to be part of the exciting ritual.
[00:07:45] But what I found when I dumped out the jar, it had a lot of variety in there, and sometimes I pulled something out that I was really excited about and sometimes I pulled something out and I noticed a shift in my energy that I actually wasn’t very motivated by that at all. And so I’ve shifted that experience over time to choose the celebration in advance and post it right next to my goal,
[00:08:07] and for me, that works better. But by practicing, celebrating, that’s how I learned What types of celebrations were motivating to me when the going got tough, and what types of celebrations just felt like one more thing to add to an already overpacked to-do list. So your celebration ritual is very personal, but you develop it by practicing celebration and
[00:08:30] in order to start practicing celebration, you first have to decide that celebrating is worthwhile.
[00:08:36] A celebration ritual can also serve as accountability. You might choose to make a celebration ritual that you tell a friend. You can say, we are going to buy tickets to a comedy show together as soon as I get to this checkpoint in my business. Would you like to go to a comedy show with me? Yes. Great.
[00:08:58] Feel free to bug me every week, every month, whatever it is, and ask for progress on this goal. It’s really important to me, but it’s been really hard. I would love a little bit of accountability. And now you have somebody kind of roped into the celebration too, tapping on your shoulder, and you’re gonna wanna give them a good report next week or next month whenever they check in.
[00:09:18] You’re going to want to be proud of the progress you’ve made, and sometimes that nagging voice in the back of your mind can be really helpful. So don’t hesitate to leverage the power of accountability. I would also encourage you to celebrate your checkpoints in a somewhat public way.
[00:09:37] Celebration rituals can actually help us with networking. When you get in the habit of celebrating a task that you’ve accomplished, a project that you’ve brought to the finish line with others, it’s a reminder to them what you even do every day, what this mystery job is that you have at home, how you help people,
[00:09:57] the types of superpowers and skills that you have, and it brings you top of mind for people. They love to celebrate with you and they love to play matchmaker. Oh, I know someone else who does that. Oh, you should meet my friend so-and-so. They do similar work. You guys might like to have a coffee chat.
[00:10:16] So if you’ve never celebrated your wins out loud and a little bit publicly, maybe get curious about that and celebrate it at your next checkpoint.
[00:10:25] I think we all need more experience sharing about what we do and practicing our elevator pitch so that there’s awareness over who we are, what superpowers we have for the world, and how we help make the world a better place.
[00:10:39] Another reason celebration is really important is because it can help us avoid burnout. I have days where I have super human levels of productivity,
[00:10:48] but sometimes I fall into a trap where I expect to achieve that super human level of productivity every single day. And I’m not a robot, i’m not a machine, I’m a human. And so in reality, my energy and my motivation, my focus ebbs and flows, and I have some days that are really, really productive.
[00:11:08] And I have other days that my brain just quits a lot earlier in the day, and my workday ends up being much shorter. And often after a few of those tougher days show up where I realize that my stamina isn’t what it used to be, I can look on my calendar and realize it’s probably been a while since I’ve given myself a break.
[00:11:30] It’s probably been a while since I’ve celebrated a win. It’s probably been a while since I’ve shaken things up and really felt a win. It’s probably been a while since I’ve stopped and smelled the roses. And so sometimes pausing to take a little bit of reflection and look at what we’ve accomplished and create some space and check and make sure, is this goal, is this task the one I still feel like I should be working on?
[00:11:56] Do I still intrinsically feel this is the right next step? Sometimes slowing down can help us speed up because it can revalidate why this task is on our desk when it feels hard and it can help reset that hustling that we’ve fallen into where we’re just grinding out the next thing to check a box and get as much done as possible.
[00:12:18] There will always be more to do. But we’re not really helping if we burn ourselves into the ground, just trying to do more, more, more as fast as possible. And so, as you feel the burnout creeping in, this could be a reason why. It could be that you haven’t patted yourself on the back in a really long time, that the last time you got to a checkpoint and you finished something, you just plowed right on into the next thing without taking a breath and without celebrating.
[00:12:45] And without stepping away to recharge your batteries, before you jumped in for the next task.
[00:12:50] And so if you feel yourself kind of closer to the edge of burnout than you’d like to be, it might be a sign that baking in a celebration routine could help even out your energy levels and help your stamina overall.
[00:13:03] And then the final point is just that I found space to be very powerful in my business. I have to have times to be a visionary and dream. I have to have space for professional development and seeing what else is out there in the world. It always gives me new ideas and new opportunities and creates clarity on what I want to be a part of and what I don’t.
[00:13:24] And so when we force ourselves to stop the hustle and shake up our schedule and switch things up and step away from the office and get a new environment, when we force ourselves to stop, we’re really creating space for clarity to arrive.
[00:13:40] If you trend a little more extroverted, you might find yourself celebrating in community with others, sharing with others, networking, leaning into accountability, having a group experience, and that practice of reaching out to someone and saying, Hey, this is specifically what I just finished in my business and this is why I am so pumped about it, and this is why it’s so impactful for the world.
[00:14:02] That brings such clarity on why this task was on your desk and what goal you’re working on right now big picture. If you’re someone who leans more introverted, you might find yourself choosing celebrations that look more like quiet time and space. it’s amazing when we actually just sit in our car and drink our coffee when it’s hot or take some time to sip a favorite beverage on a park bench
[00:14:28] where it’s just quiet and we don’t have any responsibilities and no one’s interrupting us, it’s amazing in that moment what types of ideas and inspiration and reflections can come on our heart and they guide us towards the next step, and then we get to evaluate before we step into the next step.
[00:14:47] Does it align with what I’m really excited about? Am I excited about the next task on my desk, or did I just get a new perspective that makes me wanna change up my game plan, or my schedule, or my plan of attack in some way?
[00:15:01] So I hope this episode just helps you think about celebration in a new way and helps you evaluate if you ever celebrate inside your business, when the last time was you celebrated. Celebrations don’t have to just be for official TPT milestones or because a tech tool sent you a badge that you made one of their milestones.
[00:15:20] You can celebrate whatever checkpoint feels right on your heart, but you should have some sort of celebration ritual in place, and it shouldn’t just be happening in December, at the end of the year. It should be happening on a regular, ongoing basis because you have big goals and you’ve broken them up into small steps.
[00:15:37] And every one of those small steps that you took in the right direction towards the big goal deserves to be celebrated.
[00:15:44] So as we wrap up this episode, I encourage you to think about one thing that you’re currently working on and what specific celebration ritual could feel amazing when you finally get to that checkpoint. Can you put that celebration in a visual place so that you have the feeling of constantly working towards a physical finish line?
[00:16:05] And then just be curious about this ritual and see how it shifts your energy when you sit down to work for the day.
[00:16:11] This is a time of year where the TPT search bar might be a little slow and you might feel a little bit out of your normal rhythms and routines, and I think that’s a great time to try out a new celebration routine and just try it on for size and be curious about how it shifts your energy.
Here is a playlist of other episodes I think you will enjoy about goal setting and tracking.
