Pause & celebrate.... you deserve it.

When it comes to celebrating milestones, many people simply forget about it in everyday life. They overlook the achievement of reaching the milestone and forget to pause and be grateful about the progress they have made. Either they think that the progress is not significant enough, the success not big enough, the return still not generated, .... no matter what, it’s still too early for them to celebrate. They do not allow themselves and others to take out some time for simple celebratory enjoyment and acknowledgement of effort. And as a consequence they are missing out on joy, fun and the extra energy-kick that you get out of the celebration with team members, friends and family. For example, in our family we celebrate each birthday by adhering to our own "7 Wonders of Birthday Celebrations", enjoying 1) birthday breakfast 2) birthday dinner 3) birthday cake 4) birthday trip 5) birthday presents 6) birthday cards and 7) birthday flowers. It does not mean that we do all these 7 things in 1 day with the same people - that would be overkill ;-) The beauty is in spreading these 7 experiences across 2 weeks around the birthday, celebrating life with family & friends in separate joyful moments. 4 years ago, I celebrated my last day at the office before starting the cancer treatments with a “Happy Hour”, inviting colleagues to drinks & snacks, saying farewell and also thank you for their heart-warming support. 2 years later, we celebrated the "Launch of Vera 2.0" in a similar fashion.

I celebrated my 1st anniversary of being cancer-free with a champagne-challenge to which I invited my global network of colleagues, friends and family. The response was absolutely amazing, and resulted in a BIG! photo collage that cheers me up everyday, reminding me of the immense support that’s out there.

And if you remark that these are big occasions, of course you celebrate those....well, I also like to treat myself to a celebratory cocktail (with or without alcohol, does not matter) at the end of the day, contemplating the evening sun and how grateful I am about the simple trivialities of life. Cheers :-)

#gratitude #love #friends #family #live #anniversary