How often do you pat yourself on the back?
Research shows how uncomfortable this makes us but it's a valuable process for leadership
We are constantly seeking outward validation and when we get it, it never lands or lasts as long as we thought it would. We have a hard time taking up space and receiving the outward praise because we don’t believe it to be true from within.
I’ve been studying and researching human behavior around celebration for over a decade and it started with my own practice. It was like pulling teeth and nails to acknowledge anything that I was proud of in my life, including training and completing marathons and ultramarathons all while opening restaurants. I would say “yeah it’s normal” and then find the next BIG journey to embark on.
Every new year, I used to sign myself for a new challenge which eventually ended up taking up most of the space in my life to train for. The reality was I overworked myself (both professionally and athletically) and after completing the almost impossible challenge, I’d never feel successful. In fact, I mostly felt defeated because it’s not possible to feel rested when you’re leading restaurants and training for ultramarathons. The life I was choosing to live was running over 20 miles on my one day off with NO REST DAYS. Why did I do this to myself? Why did I sign myself up for a self inflicted bootcamp that continuously put me back on the hamster wheel?
The answer was simple but I was in denial about it. I just wanted to be seen and recognized.
The reality was exactly what I was hoping for. I was seen, praised and celebrated by others. But I wasn’t seeing the same things from within. All I could see was I wasn’t doing enough to deserve and receive that celebration - this enabled me to keep searching for the next insane challenge that most humans would not put themselves up against, so I could hopefully hear the cheering from others.
The reality hit me hard one day and from then on, I took my blinders off and committed to a new practice of self recognition and observed how it impacted me. This practice changed me, it pushed me to be more kind and compassionate with myself. And as a result, with anyone in my life. It taught me how to be a more honest and receptive leader. Now I have the opportunity to teach my clients and students the impact of self recognition.
I recently did a quick study on how leaders feel about self recognition. The statistics weren’t surprising but they are certainly helpful for others to understand how difficult of a practice this is for people, especially adults that recognize themselves as a woman.
74% of the participants celebrated themselves up to 7 times a week. There were no participants that were able to confirm if they celebrated more than 10 times a week. This is wild. This shows that it’s difficult to recognize really small moments throughout the day.
42.9% of the participants admitted it feels weird to give themselves recognition. And the remainder was split evenly between “I feel proud” and “I’m still getting used to it”.
More than 50% of the participants said they only celebrate BIG milestones but only when they feel like they deserve a gold star. That’s a lot of pressure and more likely than not, some really high standard on what that big milestone is. We have to work harder to get praise - aka that gold star.
But what if we are simply tired? We are setting ourselves up for failure because we won’t always be able to achieve the big milestone because life happens.
Self recognition practices don’t have to take up a lot of time and once you integrate them into your daily routines, you won’t even notice you’re doing it but you will feel the impact it has on you.
Here are 3 different practices that you can implement daily:
Create a calendar invite in your phone to notify you at the same time every day - this notification can be an affirmation “thank you for showing up”, a question “what do you need in this moment? OR what are you proud of right now?”
Write out a gratitude note to yourself weekly and get specific on what you are celebrating or proud of recently.
Text a friend and share with them why you are proud of yourself.
Pick one or multiple and see what feels best to your system. We are all different and exercising a muscle that we may have never used can be very uncomfortable. Start slow, with lighter weights but stay committed to the practice. Once it starts feeling more natural to you, you can incorporate this into your pre-shift or team meeting agendas and share this practice with your teams
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