No matter what your life looks like right now, I want you to take a minute to celebrate yourself. Celebrating is just finding reasons to be grateful. Celebrating does not happen naturally. Your brain's job is to look for problems and protect you from danger. Your brain seeks out the negative unless you direct it to do otherwise.
This is not a bad thing, it just means that celebrating takes focused effort. It will feel uncomfortable at first. Have you ever noticed that when we celebrate we like to do it with food, media, shopping, or some other indulgence? This is called buffering. It's what our brain does when it's trying to avoid emotions that stray from the status quo, whether good or bad. It's strange, but if we aren't used to feeling an emotion, we will often turn to a comfort food, sensation, or false high to dampen or cover up that unfamiliar feeling.
The feeling of gratitude or accomplishment that comes from taking time to appreciate and celebrate is its own reward. And if you do it often enough, your brain will calm down as the positive emotion becomes familiar and comfortable.
The great news is, you can celebrate everything. I want to encourage you to celebrate yourself especially when you fail! Failure means you tried something new and hard and were willing to experience discomfort in order to learn and grow. Falling short comes from setting goals that stretch you. And you can't grow without doing that.
This is an investment worth making that doesn't cost a dime. What you invest in, multiplies. What you focus on, you create more of. So if you focus on the problems, you create more problems. As you focus on what you are learning, you'll gain wisdom and perspective. And the experiences you relish, will replicate because of your investing focus in them.
I'm so grateful to be making a feature film right now. I'm grateful for how the film is turning out and for the learning I gain when things don't turn out. I'm really proud of myself for working hard to follow my dreams and see them come to fruition. I also find joy in celebrating my team and all the contributions they've made to this project. We've learned more in the past few weeks than we thought was possible in such a short period of time. I hope you find lots of reasons to celebrate yourself and your life this week too!
