Self-Care: Celebrate your wins
Now more than ever, it's important to establish good habits for self-care - but what does this mean, and what is self-care really? It’s very individual and can mean different things to different folk, but I think of it as those small, regular routines and practices which keep us feeling nourished, nurtured and content. One such practice that I want to focus on here is taking time to ensure you celebrate your wins.
Remembering to celebrate your victories too often gets overlooked. Either we tend to dash on to the next challenge without pausing to acknowledge our achievements, or they become overshadowed by our perceived flaws and imperfections and are soon forgotten. This, along with the human bias for focusing on what we don’t do so well, can taint our view of life and leave us feeling jaded.
Why you should celebrate your wins
So why is it important to celebrate our wins? There are many good reasons why you should, but here are my top 3:
It improves confidence and self esteem - marking those joyful moments just makes you feel good about yourself and life in general!
It promotes resilience and reinforces our ability to cope - when celebrating our wins we remind ourselves how capable we are, especially if we have ‘triumphed’ despite difficult challenges. Celebrating our victories, large or small, can provide us with meaning for our struggles.
It increases positivity for us and those around us - makes us feel more positive now and also for futures endeavours. This may inspire and further motivate ourselves and those around us, helping us gather momentum as one win spurs us on to achieve another.
Get celebrating!
Make sure you pay attention - it’s easy to overlook our accomplishments. Be sure to take pride in every win, be it big and grand or small and humble. How you celebrate these is entirely up to you - If you like to journal then that is a great place to start, particularly if you feel bashful. Take the time to write an entry of what you have achieved, how you feel about this, and what might be the positives for you moving forwards.
However I would urge you to also share your wins with others rather than keep it all to yourself. You may feel uncomfortable ‘blowing your own trumpet’ but do give yourself permission to express your success - we are often quick enough to tell friends of our losses, so why not our gains? Share the feel good factor with your friends and family as we all love to hear some good news, don’t we?
And if you still can’t bear to ‘toot your own whistle’, then focus on expressing your appreciation for the things, luck, support you had from others that made this win possible. Do that even if you aren’t so shy - it will amplify the positive vibe for you and also those on the receiving end of your gratitude.
Keep celebrating them - particularly the bigger wins, instead of forgetting once the moment has passed. They should not be treated like fireworks that sparkle and fizz for just a moment, before disappearing forever into the dark. Add them to your vault of family stories, and give them an airing every once in a while. It’s important to remind ourselves of how far we have come, and also appreciate all and everyone that helped us accomplish our goals. This helps shore against any lapses of confidence we may have along the way, and keeps us focussed on the positives instead of our perceived faults or inadequacies.
Practising what I preach
So I’m taking a leaf out of my own book here - this month I’m re-celebrating the creation of Elements: 24 hand Knits Inspired by Nature an the outdoors. This is the book I co-created with Alison Crowther Smith and independently published 5 years ago this month! I couldn’t let the 5th anniversary of the book slip by unnoticed, and invite you to join me in a brief trip down memory lane.
Elements: 24 hand knit designs inspired by nature and the indoors
I remember the initial excitement when we first conceived of the idea for the book like it was yesterday, and just how much work was involved - It’s one thing to design and write patterns, but quite another to independently produce and publish a book. From design inspiration, to writing the patterns, getting the samples knitted, sorting the photo shoots, learning how to register for a library catalogue number etc etc I could go on! Needless to say there is a heck of a lot more to independently publishing a real life paper book than you might imagine, and there were certainly times when we felt we’d bitten off rather more than we could chew.
Our baby was born
We published our book as planned in October 2015, after quite an intensive spell, particularly as the deadlines loomed. Elements was a labour of love and bringing our ideas to fruition was hugely challenging, but looking back 5 years later I am still hugely proud of this achievement -with the help and support from others we overcame the challenges and successfully realised our creative vision.
The book includes 24 hand knit designs, including accessories, garments and home-wares. I hope you’ll agree it’s still a striking collection, and that the designs remain just as appealing 5 years on. Here are just 9 of the designs below. To take a stroll through all the designs click here and let me know what you think.
Celebrate YOUR wins
I urge you to take a moment now to consider your achievements. Remember to celebrate your victories and take pride in every win, be it big and grand or small and humble. And don’t forget to keep re-celebrating the bigger wins, instead of forgetting straight after the moment has passed.