“Celebrate good times, come on! Let’s celebrate …”

The lyrics seem etched into my brain from the daily playing on the background FM station my mum listened to while I was growing up; now revisited at every wedding I have the pleasure to attend. Kool & The Gang … overplayed, but they have a point.

It seems there’s a lot of celebrations going on right here: this last weekend celebrating our mothers, coming up we’ve got Bermuda Day, then National Heroes Day, not to mention all the excitement of tall ships and, of course, America’s Cup. There’s a buzz in the air.

Every day seems to be a ‘world day of’ something to celebrate (usually with a corresponding Hallmark card).

This week is, in fact, International Coaching Week, celebrating the powerful and positive shifts that coaching is making for individuals and corporate cultures around the world. So, yay, go coaches!

There’s always someone out there to celebrate, but I’m wondering how many of us take the time to celebrate ourselves.

I witness time and again people who plough through their achievements, already onto the next thing before they’ve given themselves time to enjoy the success of the last.

I hear, too often, folks acknowledging their ‘areas for improvement’; constantly measuring themselves by what is left to do rather than what is done.

Success is in the doing, not just the completing.

The focus of my last few articles has been on the idea that just getting out there is the real win. Celebrating our trying is also a great motivational tool. If we wait until we’ve lost 10lbs to celebrate, we might lose interest before we ever get there. If we throw ourselves a little, internal party the first time we say ‘no’ to the brownies, we are training ourselves, with our good celebratory vibes, to do more of that behaviour. Celebrating along the way keeps the process fun and the momentum going.

We can be so very hard on ourselves. I’m all for self-improvement, raising our game, getting ahead, but if we get into the habit of only valuing and appreciating ourselves when we get that promotion, achieve that result, reach a goal, or get acknowledged by a calendar date, then we are spending a lot of time overlooking, even disregarding, our efforts and our value for just being who we are.

Think of the ‘guest soaps’ and the special-occasion china that sits around getting dusty and mouldy. You, too, are worthy of the visitor hand towels!

It may not be Mother’s Day for another 362 days, but every day is your day moms and dads and all children of moms or dads, be it Co-workers Day, Senior Appreciation Week or Towel Day?! (coming up on May 25th). It may not be your birthday or Christmas or Hallowe’en (I’m detecting influences from another early 1980s FM inspiration, thank you, Stevie Wonder), but we are here, alive, together, so it is a day worth celebrating.

So, this week, being Coaches’ Week, go out and give a coach a celebratory pat on the back. But be sure to give yourself one too. Celebrate yourself and all you are. Because every day you get, is your day!

•Julia Pitt is a trained success coach and certified NLP practitioner on the team at Benedict Associates. For further information contact Julia on 705-7488, www.juliapittcoaching.com.