Can you feel the dog days of summer moving in? With the end of the busy school year just around the corner, it’s important to look back on this school year to take stock and celebrate! Think back to the start of the school year and note how far your school jurisdiction has come. What events did your school jurisdiction hold for staff wellness? What days did you celebrate? Who was involved? What partnerships were formed? What events did you attend? It can take some time to take stock, but not stopping to celebrate the past means that we risk losing sight of all the amazing progress we made and we move directly to worrying about what could be improved.
Why is celebration so important?
- Celebration changes our mindset. It helps us focus on the positives. Framing our thinking in a positive way can improve your overall outlook and self-confidence. Downplaying or ignoring successes can erode confidence.
- Celebration keeps us motivated. It helps us continue to achieve our goals. Success motivates and moves us. It also reinforces the progress made towards larger goals. While wellness plans are often broad, break them down into smaller steps and celebrate each one. The magic of celebration will keep the momentum going into the next year.
- Celebration simply feels good! Need I say more?
- Celebration feeds into workplace culture. Instead of solely focusing on day-to-day tasks and big projects, incorporating celebration can boost your team’s mood, morale and spirit. Celebrating milestones as a team enhances feelings of appreciation, engagement and strengthens relationships.
- Celebration builds resilience. Focusing on the good stuff can act like a buffer against challenges. It’s easier to bounce back if we focus on the good in situations and generally have a positive outlook.
Even if you don’t think you achieved what you set out to, celebrate the journey from September until now and take the positives out of each experience your team had.
Milestones to Celebrate
- Celebrate the work from planning the wellness event, to the lessons learned in the process—along with the fact that you had teammates come out to support your initiative! Remember, if the event never happened, there would be no participation.
- What about the messages participants took away? Think of the impact the event may have made to their lives. You may never know this and yet this is often a reason for the meaningful work you do.
- I would also bet you learned lots through the experience. What can you take away that you could integrate into next year’s plans? Celebrate the fact that you have new information to use. How about the indirect successes? Is your team stronger and in a good position to continue your efforts next year?
- Celebrate as a team. Recognizing others’ viewpoints can give more depth to your celebration. A colleague may recognize an achievement that you did not consider.
A wise leader once told me “your perception becomes your reality.” Choose to celebrate the positives and be proud of the progress made during this year. The positive feelings will only serve to move and motivate you for the year to come.
Success in The Sandbox
Check-out Sharing Success Stories in The Sandbox's resources. It’s a template to help you share and celebrate your successes by thinking through each step. You could even use this with your team of wellness champions to open the discussion about your successes.
If you’d like more resources to help you with your celebrations, take a read through this Alberta Health Services resource on sharing success. Workplace wellness takes a lot of dedication and involvement from your entire team. When changes start to take shape—even the smallest of changes—it’s definitely something worth celebrating. Post your successes in this Sandbox forum and celebrate with the greater community of wellness champions throughout the province.
Patricia Tallon
Not only is Patricia (Trisha) an ASEBP workplace wellness liaison and registered dietitian, she can also put pencil to paper and hammer out a terrible doodle of just about anything. It’s up to you to interpret her “impressionistic style” though. But every superhero has their kryptonite. Trisha’s just happens to be the terrifying Cottonius Ballitis—or cotton balls as they’re more commonly known. It’s okay Trisha, we understand. Sort of.
