When and what to celebrate

Our fallacies in achievement recognition and gratitude are amazing - some ideas to help

Happy thanksgiving Sunday.

A huge welcome to new subscribers Rich, Karim, Bernie, Ed and Ellie. I don’t even know half of you so I’m most honoured.

A similar theme to last week with a different angle, addressing burnout and motivation.

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Learning to stop and smell the roses is not built into our DNA.

We are not evolved to be content doing nothing. We inherit our genes from those who were restless enough to stay alert and alive. Yet we fundamentally frustrate ourselves by constantly seeking the next thing. We expect it to bring us happiness and forget what we have.

Our ability to recognise what we can be grateful for is limited.

Before this turns into a post about how amazing your life is don't worry. Your life is as probably crap as you decide it is and I'm not here to talk about that.

I want to talk about:

1. Entrepreneurship and achievement

2. How we perceive achievement from what we think others think about us. (despite the fact they are both more impressed by your achievements than you realise and also don’t care very much either way)

1. Celebrating wins as an entrepreneur

A founder is always a few years in the future with what they want to achieve:

• The founder just starting out looks to the founder on an accelerator as living the dream.

• The founder on an accelerator is permanently panicked about what to focus on and how to raise their Pre-seed.

• The founder who raised her Pre-seed is stressing about traction and how to reach her Seed round.

• The founder who raised her Seed is stressed about who to hire and how to scale so she can raise her Series A etc..

When a company achieves users/sales targets, it makes new targets. A company seeks endless growth for growths sake. It's an infinite treadmill.

It is very unfulfilling for a founder. Ironically this reduces their ability to be resilient and keep going if they don't celebrate the successes with their team and recognise their achievements.

Why it’s hard to celebrate

It's easy to recommend regular celebrations, even if it is nothing more than

"Hey that failed but we learned and haven't died - we're winners".

Most people seasoned entrepreneurs recommend that you do this. They will also admit they aren't doing it very well. (It seems like people that are good at this don't become entrepreneurs because they're already too busy being chuffed...)

A startup has so many issues that there are other fires to put out and things to fix. There isn't time stop and notice the good things.

It falls into the important and not urgent box along with things like my love life, writing habits and dental flossing.

How to make it urgent

To reframe this I have tried to think of the lack of celebrations as an alarming issue that is going to kill the motivation of myself and my team. It is actually a burning fire to put out. It is up there with the other crazy important things I fret over.

If I don't give reasons to the team to feel bloody great about working here they aren't going to want to work here. This sits with things like setting an inspiring mission and being able to pay people. Fundamental things a CEO needs to do.

Now when you think of it this way you can probably come up with some things to celebrate with regularity and so you bloody well should.

Example
It’s easy to get down when you show up to a meeting if it doesn’t go to plan. Being deflated makes you less likely to bring energy to future meetings. You may even stop bothering with some of them.
If you can recognise and celebrate the fact that you simply showed up. You are more likely to feel positive about yourself instead of negative.

Let’s avoid this

2.Our perception of achievement is all wrong

Our actions our driven by our mindsets. So we can't celebrate things we don't think are worth celebrating. We are social creatures, thus we heavily judge ourselves through the eyes of others.

Our comparative approach

We rank our achievements based on what we think others think. Yet we have a faulty belief of what others think. Actually people are often more impressed by what we do than we give ourselves credit for.

We are so caught up in our own minds we can't correctly think of things from the point of view of others. We have higher expectations of ourselves and see our mistakes and imperfections more clearly than our successes.

We also compare ourselves upwards because we learn from those who are further ahead than us. The first time runner learns from an experienced runner. The first time founder learns from someone with years more experience than them. So we are always behind those we look up to despite making internal improvements within ourselves which is the important metric.

My own stupid example
I recently ran my first Ultra-marathon:

• I literally ran out the front door carrying 6 kilos of food and water and proceeded to carry on running for another 64.5km around the local countryside

• It took me 7 hours and 7 minutes

• I climbed over 1500 metres in elevation and burned over 5000 calories

• At the top of a mountain (large hill) as the sunset over the clouds at 45km I reached a new runners high I’d never felt. I listened to one of the most beautiful songs ever. I experienced a level of pure in the moment joy that might occur with the aid of really brilliant drugs (pure guess of course)

Afterwards I wasn't that bothered about it. I hadn’t told anyone I was going to do it or raise money for charity or anything.

Why wasn’t I bothered?

My goal this year is to run an insane ultra-marathon of 105km through the mountains of Poland. This is a bigger and scarier goal.

So the amazing achievement on the way there didn't really register for me. I thought of it more as a practice run.

Before I fell asleep from exhaustion that evening I was making notes on the issues I had with my feet and shoes, difficulties with food and that I REALLY need to remember to take wet wipes with me for urgent toilet situations.

In my mind the Poland ultramarathon is the thing to achieve where I can call myself a success. I'm also comparing myself upwards to friends that have run 100 miles.

The facts I forgot

However, most humans haven't ever run further than a marathon. Let alone done it by themselves on a cold gloomy day in November without anyone cheering them on to keep them going. In fact, my mum was very much advocating that I stop early.

There was no reason for me to keep going after 54km when I passed their house. Yet I popped in for a banana then back out for another 10km loop in the night with my head torch (+ newly acquired wet wipes). I did this because I'm driven by curiosity and desire for achievement.

It took me a few days to realise that actually this is already a pretty big achievement. Something that 99.9999% of people will never ever do.

So I should put my feet up and have a beer and toast myself. Because most other people would look at that and be impressed, so why on earth don't I join them?

Look for your wins

I hope that analogy helped show my point about the fact that we don't naturally see our achievements. I wasn’t trying to humble brag, but show that it’s super easy to forget ourselves when we get caught up in a goal.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman

We miss achievements hidden right in front of us. We are blind to our own successes even when it's huge.

So I'd urge you to start recognising the wins along the way in your personal and professional life. Because you're doing more great things than you realise.

Final thought

Logically and perhaps most importantly.

There is no point waiting for your funeral to celebrate the great things you did, you'll be dead.

Celebrate yourself whilst you're alive! 🍻