The Power of Celebration

What is your relationship to fun, play, and celebration?

I was never much on celebration. My old man taught me that you don’t celebrate until you are on the summit. I also learned that celebrating was bragging and bad, especially if you didn’t win. So, I would just keep my personal victories to myself.

We humans are like this sometimes. We don’t celebrate unless we’ve won the big game or new salary. Vince Lombardy has a famous quote which is the credo of sports teams everywhere—“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Unless we see “winning” as something we do everyday, this attitude can perpetuate us being hard on ourselves and prolongs recognition about what is truly lovable and great in us right now.

Another classic example is my own birthday. For years I would poo poo my  birthday and not tell anyone. Then when my birthday would come and go without anyone noticing, I would feel resentful and unseen or unmet. The last couple of years I have been practicing celebrating openly and allowing the love to come pouring in from others. In fact, I just sent an evite out for my birthday celebration party.

Why celebrate?

Just like stuffing our sadness or anger, when we stuff our joy and love, we shut down that energy in our system and our bandwidth for feeling life experiences remains narrow. As my friend Justice Marshall reminded me, when we celebrate, we invite more of that energy into our lives. His words ring so true for me.

Not only that, but when we celebrate and share it with someone, we allow ourselves to be seen for who we are. We are also practicing self-love and self-respect. Sometimes we want others to notice or see how great we are because we are not willing to celebrate ourselves. Then we resent them for not reading into us. But it is our job to share our wins with others.

What to do?

So, I invite you to celebrate where you are right now in your life. Celebration is one of the core pillars of being a revolutionary man. We must learn to celebrate….a lot!

Celebration is not done to make yourself feel better or meant to distract yourself from your pain. It is simply to balance the scales of what is true. While it’s true that there might be pain in your life, there is also pleasure. There is always something little to celebrate. Most of us tend to focus on “lack” or what’s wrong with our lives as opposed to what is going well, what is working and where the love is.

Here are 6 simple ways to celebrate:

• First, notice your relationship to celebration.  Is it hard for you? Easy?
• Create a top-ten list of things you can genuinely celebrate right now (my list is below, add yours)
• One at a time, create a ritual to celebrate each. What are you celebrating about each? Why?
• Find another person or people and celebrate with them
• Make a commitment to start celebrating when things go well
• Purposely celebrate along the way. Don’t wait until your are on the summit.

Also, consider making a strong commitment to make this a regular part of your life. Here’s commitment 10 of the ten commitments of manhood.

Commitment 10 – Gratitude

I commit to having fun, celebrating what is already “right” in my life and being grateful for what I have. I also will practice an attitude of gratitude for every challenge in my life and seek to embrace its wisdom.

My top ten list:

Eleven (couldn’t help it) things I’m celebrating right now:

1. My relationship with myself
2. My relationship with my wife
3. My new 5 month old son
4. My Dad
5. My work
6. My sense of power, privilege and freedom I experience living where I do
7. My 108-day training and it’s mid-way point and the 9 men involved
8. My friends–you all know who you are
9. Nature & wilderness nearby
10. The fact that I wrote this post
11. New doors opening with HUGE possibilities

What about YOU? Share your list below.

Remember celebrating builds the celebratory energy around you. Watch this video all the way through as an example of what happens to others when one person celebrates:

Share your top ten list below!