How often do you celebrate your accomplishments? Take time today to recognize yourself as an overall awesome mom and person with this self-care practice.
In our constant go, go, go culture, it’s necessary to take a break to celebrate small wins even if they’re things you ordinarily wouldn’t celebrate. End of diaper days? Reason to celebrate. Half birthday? Cause for celebration. No temper tantrums for a day? Celebrate. No temper tantrums for a week? Celebrate some more.
And by celebration, I mean anything you can do to recognize a job well done—either by you or someone else. It could be taking a moment to thank yourself when you walk by a mirror, playing a song that gets you and your kids to dance, scheduling a massage or buying a new book. (Check out my award-winning books 108 Yoga and Self-Care Practices for Busy Mamas and How to Stay Calm in Chaos: An Everyday Self-Care Guide.) I base my celebrations around self-care—a dinner date with my husband, a quiet night reading, a journal entry to acknowledge the achievement.
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It’s easy to bulldoze your way through more achievements without recognizing the sheer awesomeness of your efforts. If you worked through a project seamlessly well ahead of the deadline or you managed to take the kids to the grocery store without any major meltdowns, these are accomplishments, my friends, and thus something to celebrate.
What and how often are you celebrating these days? Reflect with this practice.
Practice It: Recognize Yourself
Write a list of every major accomplishment from your entire life. What are you most proud of? Circle those things. Then pick a person to share your list with. Read it out loud.
Ask them to write a list, too, and share it with you.
Go celebrate each other. Cook a healthy meal together, try a farm-to-table restaurant or attend a yoga class. Take a yoga class with me.
When you string all of the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years together, your time on this earth is not just a strand of beads but a beautiful necklace of life. Your life is cause for celebration. Celebrate out loud.