The Launching Point for Every Great Achievement

Love what you do. Live for what you do. Pour your heart, soul and all you’ve got into it. But for goodness sake, celebrate yourself when it’s merited and deserved. These two steps are the foundation for every great achievement. You must love the process of what you’re doing. It’s this secret of motivation that leads to big steps forward.

As a two-time author and keynote speaker, I know that just having goals isn’t enough. Goals must be backed by habits, which are fueled by passion, motivation and an insatiable desire to get your hands dirty in the process. My book, Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader, was an exercise in motivation for delivering a product I wanted to share with the world.

The journey defined my experience and enabled me to keep going.

Many leaders are so immersed on their journey toward greatness that they’re losing the small battles along the way. Day-by-day and inch-by-inch, they’re losing encouragement and hope. The road to success for most people is a long one. Forget what our media and instant-gratification society try shovel-feeding you — you won’t become a star overnight.

Even the leaders that we admire so much — superstars like Elon Musk, Sara Blakely, Indra Nooyi or Sundar Pichai— all of these successful executives needed to take the long, winding road to success. And all of them needed to celebrate every win along the way.

Which is why it’s so important to find something that you love OR to at least fall in love with the process of what you’re doing. This love and motivation will serve as the brick and mortar foundation for empowering your mind, body and soul to create great things everyday, and also to find consistency and repetition.

Pride and Joy

Find something that you love so much, it will sustain you even when you can barely muster the strength to pull yourself out of bed and slink down on the couch to watch Netflix. But by all means, celebrate what you’ve accomplished. Don’t get self-conscious. Don’t get into the whole false-humility thing. Celebrate yourself when you’ve done something great.

Because you should always be proud of your biggest and boldest accomplishments. You should always celebrate your achievements.

The words above are as much for my coaching clients and readers as they are for me. I have to tie emotion in a positive way to the process of everything I do. If I don’t I fail. If I do, then I achieve life-changing success. We all need this reminder for a variety of reasons:

• We need to know the purpose behind what we’re doing
• We need to remind ourselves of how much we love what we do
• That love needs to come out in our work for maximum impact

So many people tell me that they’re unwilling to celebrate because they’re so focused on the process. Well, before long, if that’s the case, you may go a whole lifetime without taking a bow and sharing a good laugh and smile at all the wonderful things that you’ve done!

It took me a long time in my life to realize how important celebrating wins are, but after writing two books, I know how special it is. Even when my first book was published, I had to overcome the fear of self-promotion and putting myself out there. It’s not something that comes natural to me, and it’s the part of “success” that I like the least.

But it’s essential. If you can’t sell yourself, no one else will do it for you. If you’re unwilling to celebrate your biggest accomplishments, how will you know what the finish line really looks like? Every great venture has both a starting line and a finish line. To begin, you need to be committed. To finish, you need to be consistent.

When you finish, you should celebrate all the hard work, dedication, sweat, tears and energy you’ve spent on achieving your big dream. This is born from love, passion, motivation and totally immersing yourself in the process of something that is bigger than yourself.

Remember:

• Ask yourself what motivates you most about what you’re doing
• Take time to stop and “smell the roses” to remind yourself how important it is to love what you do
• Celebrate the wins you have and share this success with others
• Then, celebrate their wins. They’ll thank you for it and return the favor when you need it most

Learn more about my work with leaders: https://www.chrisdconnors.com/coaching