Celebrating Success

I’ve never been very good at celebrating success. I think I’ve always thought of celebrating success as something you only do when you’ve achieved your ultimate goal and I haven’t reached that destination. There is also that little voice in my head telling me that celebrating prematurely is just tempting fate and that failure will surely be just around the corner. The relentless nature of life in general - trying to be a good husband, father, lawyer, and business owner (and giving sufficient time to all of those) - means that I also don’t set aside any time for myself to celebrate.

Is a crucial component of success never being satisfied with what you have achieved? I hope so. Many years ago, I attended a management training course and one of the tasks was making a ‘personal shield’ which included writing your own epitaph. Mine was ‘He could have achieved more’. Over twenty years later, I would still have that as my epitaph. How can you celebrate what you’ve achieved when you believe you could have achieved more?

Roger Allen, a friend and excellent businessman, always believed in celebrating success. It was important to him to acknowledge the contributions of all of the members of the team in achieving the individual successes in the life of the businesses he ran. Celebrating success didn’t stop him from reaching the goals he had set for himself and I’m sure he would tell me that celebrating the milestones along the road was what made reaching the destination possible. Roger died last year, but before his death he told me he had achieved all the goals he had set himself. Whilst I still miss Roger’s wise counsel, it’s comforting to know that he didn’t have ‘He could have achieved more’ as his epitaph.

Today our offices will be closed so that the whole team can celebrate our success, not just achieving but beating by a wide margin, the targets we set ourselves for the 2024/25 financial year. It was a fantastic achievement by the whole team and a day to celebrate is thoroughly deserved. I hope everyone is able to raise a glass and pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Will I be there celebrating too? Sorry Roger, I’ll still be looking round the corner for the next mountain to climb. I’ve been blessed with more time than was given to you to achieve my goals and I don’t plan on wasting it.