3 Steps to Celebrate Your Wins

CareerGoal-SettingLeadership

Dec 19

Written By Emilie Aries

Episode 433 | Author: Emilie Aries

When did you last reflect on how far you’ve come?

Ring in the new year with a celebration
of you.

Say so long to 2023 with a celebration

If you had a year anything like mine, you probably don’t feel like 2023 deserves much recognition. But guess who does deserve to be celebrated? You!

Those tough transitions—the ones where we question our skills, our passions, our ability to slog through the muck—are exactly when it’s most vital to look back and toast to ourselves. Because we made it through something really hard, and that’s worth celebrating.

In addition to all the intensive end-of-year performance reviews, future planning, and personal goal setting that’s probably on your calendar in the next week or so, slot in some time to tackle these three steps to celebrate your personal and professional wins.

#1 Recognize the progress you’ve made

We always make progress. Sure, sometimes it feels like it’s been one step forward and two steps back, but even if you’re in the midst of a tough time at work, you’ve made progress somewhere.

It doesn’t have to be in your career, by the way. Personal progress is just as worthy of celebration as the business kind. Remember: Steven Kramer and Teresa Amabile, the authors of The Progress Principle, stress that progress - the very sensation of forward momentum in our lives - is an innate human need.

#2 Consider the challenges you’ve overcome

Over the course of your year there were probably some challenges along the way—aren’t there always? It can be tempting to ignore those, to suppress the memories of the scratchy parts that precede the (sometimes deceptively) smooth result, but in those challenges lay even more wins worth celebrating!

Personally, I’m darn proud of the way I held my integrity aloft while navigating some really difficult business lows this year. I get into this in a big way in this episode; consider it my real-world reminder that you have permission to loudly give yourself credit for how you handled the hard parts.

#3 Write it all down

Now you’re ready to get yourself a brag book.

That’s right. You need a book—or a Google doc, or a stack of recipe cards—where you record all the awesome stuff you accomplished.

You’ll get the biggest benefit from your brag book if you make sure all your recorded successes tell the whole story. The CAR Method (which I get into in episode 217) can help with this. CAR stands for Challenge, Action, Result, a specialized beginning, middle, and end. What issue kicked off the need for action, which action did you take, and how did it all turn out? Make sure you really flesh out the role you played in those last two!

Alright, I’m turning this over to you! What wins do you have to celebrate this year—those places where you moved the needle and the leadership qualities that brought you through the challenges.

Share your wins with our Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in our group on LinkedIn! This is me reminding you that bragging about your accomplishments—something we women are often discouraged from doing—is a radically uplifting practice that can make a very real difference as you gear yourself up to head into 2024!

LET YOUR WINS HELP YOU LEVEL UP IN 2024!

[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 433. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today's episode is one of our very final episodes for 2023.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
I personally am, I'm so ready to turn the page on this year, but today's episode is a much needed palate cleanser, if you will, in that I want to talk through specifically how to celebrate your wins, which is an important thing to do any time of the year, but specifically after a really hard year. So many people I talked to just last night, I was at a happy hour, and I was talking to someone who has also had a really transformative, but painfully hard year. And he told me how he already has his vision board for 2024 all set up and how he's planning to reclaim next year. Like, everyone I'm running into new friends, old friends. People are really in the trenches this year. So maybe that's not your story. But if it is, I'm right there with you, first of all. And second of all, it's more important when you're struggling to celebrate your wins than it is any other time.
So while this is a good thing to do, if you've had a great year, it's a good act of self care. And as I've called it in a past episode, it's a great act of career care to take stock of your wins and chronicle those wins. I have an episode 395 called, You Deserve Self Care for Your Career. This is totally an act of self care for your career. And as we come to the end of 2023, let's take these next three steps together to really go through a process of celebrating our wins that makes it not only impactful for our own internal story, our mental narrative around what the hell we've just gone through, but also in a way that can help you communicate your progress in your review process, in your next negotiation, or just in the next year ahead, whatever comes your way. So, I, for one, have had a really challenging year, and this is the process that's really helped me not only get my head on straight about it, but also pat myself on the back and like, give myself some credit to keep going. So I hope you'll join me in doing that, because it's something we all deserve. So here are the three steps that have really helped.
One, ask yourself what progress you have made. Like, fundamentally, how have you moved things forward? It might not feel like it was constant, linear forward progress, but even in a hard year, there's often two steps forward, one step back, or perhaps one step forward, three steps back. But take stock of the progress you've made. The reason this is so important is because of something in the research known as the progress principle. If you've been around the block here at Bossed Up for a while, you know I love Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer's research on the Progress Principle. And essentially what they say is there is no better impact on motivation, particularly in the workplace, for engagement and motivation, than the feeling of making meaningful progress on purposeful work. So, let's say your job or your career has been really not an area where you feel like you've made progress this year. Maybe you're just holding on for dear life. Maybe you're like millions of Americans who've watched layoffs impact either themselves or their peers. Maybe you are just stumbling to find your footing. That's okay. Like, we don't need to find progress at work every year. Where else in your life can you point to progress?
When I was really struggling in my early 20s, feeling like I was doing well on paper, but mentally disengaged in the work I was doing in DC, I was becoming stronger than I'd ever been before in the physical arena. So, I was back in the beach volleyball scene, playing my college sport for the first time in years, feeling really strong. As one of my friends put it, like, you walk out of this beach court with swagger. And I'm like, hell yeah, I have swagger here nowhere else in my life at the moment. But I felt really good about the progress I'd made on my volleyball. You know, look broadly at arenas in your life where you've made progress.
I'm most proud, honestly, that Brad and I, Brad the dad and I have made it through another renovation this year. I feel like I haven't really talked about that here on the podcast, which is strange, but I've talked about it on Instagram quite a lot this year because, while it felt like my business was under construction, my body and health has been under construction a lot this year. My literal home has been under construction. And I guess this is a very first world problem because this is what I get for marrying an architect. But we bought this house that we're in eight days after our son Max was born. Not something I recommend. Kind of an insane thing to do. We saw the potential it had. It's right on a park in Denver. It's a really beautiful location and had great potential as a home. And we have spent the last two years renovating it, particularly this year, we renovated the whole kitchen. Now, I married someone who happens to build custom kitchens for a living. So when I say this was a DIY job, I mean this was a DIY job. Like Brad single handedly demoed our kitchen, managed the electrical and the plumbing. He did the work himself. We did hire some plumbing professionals to come in to do a really hard job that had to do with like, removing a hundred year old pipe. But I'm talking like custom cabinets made and designed by Brad, installed, waited till the day before thanksgiving when our wonderful countertop manufacturers, who we did bring in an outside professional for that, they installed our countertops the day before Thanksgiving, and then I hosted thanksgiving the next day, which is, again, not something I recommend. Kind of a crazy move. But let me tell you, we went five, six weeks, I think it must have been five weeks with no kitchen sink, no dishwasher, no countertops. Like there's an order to the operations of a kitchen renovation. And it was hard. And thank you, Mr. Trader Joe, for your microwavable delights because we basically ate microwavable meals from Trader Joe's freezer section for five weeks there. And it was hard. So, I'm proud of the progress we made physically in our home this year because we are ending the year with so much more peace and tranquility and literal beauty in our space. So, that is such a visceral, undeniable piece of progress that I see in my home every single day and it has made me feel so content and so proud. Not that I did that much to help make it happen, although I have been solo parenting with Max on the weekends for most of this year while Brad busted his butt in the kitchen. You know, I'm proud that jointly we've made progress as a family and as a partnership, Brad and I, in building out our home, in a way that's going to make the rest of our lives so much easier. Do not devalue your kitchen sink. It is more essential to your day to day life than you might think.
Step two of this process when it comes to celebrating your wins, looking for just your progress is only half the story. So in addition to taking stock of all the progress you've made, ask yourself this, what challenges have I overcome? How did I handle them? And what about how I handled them have made me proud? [sigh] This is a big one, y'all, because we often don't give ourselves credit for how we respond to the sh** that just comes our way, quite frankly, because every year has its ups and downs and we like to ignore the downs. And I think a lot of us suppress the memories of the hard times, and that's not giving ourselves enough credit. So as we celebrate our wins of 2023, I want to not only point to the progress we've made, the progress in the home, the progress in the kitchen that I just mentioned, I want to be really real about the challenges I've faced. This has been the most challenging and uncertain year of business I have ever had in ten years. And despite having to reduce our staff, which was really, really challenging, and despite having to restructure many of our service offerings at Bossed Up, regain responsibilities on my plate around marketing and sales and managing things much more directly, as opposed to managing other people and processes, I am most proud about my integrity being intact at the end of this year. And I did work through this on air with Chris Castillo back in September on that really groundbreaking episode. If you haven't caught it yet, I'll stop referencing it constantly. But it's about how, uh, the biggest struggles of high achievers and in it, she kind of coached me in real time to think about what kind of leader was I in those darkest moments. When I was taking on more business debt than ever? The first half of this year, sales were just not where they have been historically, literally every year for ten years. In some ways, I learned some things that I would do differently next time. But the fact that I still lived up to my own integrity when it came to giving healthy severance packages to the folks that I had to let go, despite not having any cash in the bank, going into debt to treat others with kindness was like the best kind of debt that I've ever taken on honestly. And I think my integrity has also been intact in that I'm a big believer in doing what I say I'm going to do. So despite having half the team we started the year with, we have not missed a podcast this whole year. Like, every week, we've produced a podcast that makes no money. To be clear. Right? Like, this is a labor of love, and I feel strongly about showing up for this community, and we have. I have this year, and that makes me really proud. And during that time, I've also lived up to my promise to myself this year. That was part of our marketing plan that we set a year ago, which was, I want to really get out there when it comes to Colorado.
So I want to be more of a presence in the Colorado community. I've joined the governor's fellowship program, the Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Denver program, both of which I highly recommend. You know, I've become much more active. We've hosted more events as Bossed Up here in Denver this year. I have so many new friends in my professional network here. I won an award! I won one of the top 25 women in business in Denver, or rather in Colorado, according to the Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce. That was a huge thing, a very visible gala with 700 people there. So it's like the things that I wanted to get done this year. Despite not having the bandwidth, despite not having the people that I usually have, despite not having the income coming in that I usually have. I mean, I cut my salary in half this year to get by. That was not easy. I am proud of how I've shown up for my clients, for my podcast pals like you, and for my team, my small but mighty team that remains here at Bossed Up.
And so, looking back, I want to give myself credit for having integrity, which to me, really means doing what you say you're going to do, despite it being really hard to follow through. And I'm really someone who, I'm sure you can relate to this. I hate letting people down, which has been my downfall in so many ways. But I feel like I've done a good job of, despite having some real obstacles in my path this year, not letting people down. And, oh, my gosh. As I have been doing the end of year accounting, as I've been doing some forecasting for the year ahead, I've been texting Brad, like, midday during the work week. Like, oh, my God, I cannot believe how strong I'm ending the year because we have bounced back in a big way, baby. And I'm so excited and energized for that next year. But I'm also like, I've been working with a financial advisor who I have free access to thanks to the Colorado Enterprise Fund that has given me a loan back in 2021. They're a great community based like, business support, ecosystem, really. Anyway, I've been working with this woman, Kristen, who's a total rock star and a business navigator, as they call them. But really, she's like a virtual CFO, and she, and I like, I was in absolute panic mode when I first started working with her. I was like, look at this P&L. This profit and loss statement. Things are bad. No one's giving me any more money. Like, I am out. I'm at the end of my tether. No bank will lend to me right now because my business looks on paper like it is failing.
And I can laugh about it now because despite being in an absolute panic, we were able to come up with a strategy, come up with a plan, tighten the belt in a big way, um, without sacrificing the livelihood of my remaining amazing employee. Right? But, like, coming through for people, doing what I needed to do to win more business and serve more people and right this ship. And she and I have been exchanging emails, like, weekly lately because I'm like, look at what we've done. Look at how I turned this ship around. I am in awe, and I'm grateful to each and every one of you who have either signed up for our programs or told people about our programs or connected me to your HR teams and said, we're not doing enough here at this large engineering firm or this construction company I work for, for women. We need to do more to retain and develop women leaders. Call Bossed Up. Like, every single one of you who've shared, who've tweeted, who've Instagrammed, who've just forwarded an email or just opened my emails and clicked on those links, you have helped me turn this around. So I am thankful for you. And also, I am f**ing proud of myself. So I hope claiming that doesn't make me annoying, that's what society tells us, is that women literally bragging on ourselves is bad. So I'm trying to resist that. But also, name it as I do. I want you to have permission to do the same. So I'm trying to model that in real time.
Okay, so, just to recap, the first step is to actually look at the measurable progress you've made. If it's not at work, that's okay. Look elsewhere in your life for progress of any kind. Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer would say the Progress Principle is an innate human need. So acknowledge it. The second step, look deeply at the challenges that have come your way this year. Don't ignore them. Don't stick your head in the sand. Ask yourself, how did I rise to the occasion? How did I respond to those challenges? Sure, there's probably things you would do differently, too, and that you've learned this year. But what about how you handled the challenges that came your way, have made you proud? Give yourself credit.
And then finally, step three is to chronicle these. Write them down. I've podcasted before about creating a brag book in episode oh, my God. A million years ago, pre pandemic times, episode 127. Jess Aries authored this. Uh, my sister in law, who's a total bada** and a Bossed Up trainer team member. She talked about how a brag book can help you land your next job or your promotion. So do your due diligence on this. Don't just reflect, write it down. Take this stuff seriously, and be specific when chronicling your achievements of the year, the progress you've made, or the challenges you've overcome. I highly recommend ensuring that you're telling the full story. And I talk a lot about this with my job seekers in the Hired Program, because 95% of people who send me their resumes, it says, here's what I did, new bullet point. Here's what I did, new bullet point. I managed this, I led that, I spearheaded this, I analyzed that, I wrote this, and that's just a piece of the full story. The acronym I like to refer to is the CAR method, which I've also podcasted about in episode 217. So you can go listen to that one for more on this. But the CAR method stands for Challenge, Action, and Result. Make sure you're telling the full story by explaining what was the challenge you faced? What was the action you took? And that challenge might be a collective challenge, like in the face of a reorg or a restructure or a layoff that everyone in my company was navigating. Here's the action that I individually took. So that's when you bring it home to you. Like, what did you do in the face of that challenge? Whether it was a personal challenge or a collective challenge. And then finally, don't forget to tell us how it all went. Like, how do I know you handled it successfully? Tell me the result that you got now. It's always great if you have quantitative results, like percentage improved, costs reduced, whatever it might be. If you've got those numbers or metrics, find them, do your digging to get them, and include them as you chronicle your wins. But it doesn't require quantitative results. You can also acknowledge the qualitative aspect. I built stronger relationships as a result. I facilitated cross departmental collaboration as a result, right? Or as a result of my actions, I spearheaded a new project that our client deemed, quote, a unprecedented level of success. And you can literally use someone else's praise and good words about your work as your result. So, make sure that, as you take a moment this year to write things down, reflect on the year. Develop a system for doing this regularly. Maybe your brag book is a Google Doc that you refer to once a quarter. Maybe it's a spreadsheet that you track in once a month. Or maybe it's an, uh, email folder where you just keep kind client praise, you know, throughout the year. You drop them into that folder, whatever it is. I would recommend that at this time of year, look ahead to the end of Q1 in 2024, end of March, end of Q2, end of Q3, end of Q4, and add a little reminder to your calendar right now that says, fill out my brag book for the quarter. That way, this time next year, you don't have to do a whole year recap. You can refer back to the reflection exercises you've already done every single quarter or every single month. Because the beauty of the brag book is that it's a living document that if you keep updated, is going to be there when you really need it. So when that opportunity for a raise, a promotion, a negotiation, a new job, an award comes up, you've got everything chronicled in one place already.
Now, as I wrap up today's episode, I want to give some shout outs because there are some incredible women in our community who have been in our programs before, particularly our Level Up program for leaders on the rise, which is enrolling now for January. Start space is limited, but talk to me if you want to really invest in your leadership and management skills next year. But I wanted to give a major shout out to some women who have bucked the trend this year. The trend being it's been a downturn, it's been a challenging year for so many people. But here are some highlights from our community. When I asked people in our Facebook group, the Courage Community, and in our LinkedIn group, and when I've been having conversations with women in our programs, here are some women who have seriously had some major wins this year who are worth celebrating right alongside yourself.
First is Angie. Angie came into Level Up because she had gone from managing a team in her very large organization, I'll leave it at that, to saying, oh, my god, this team is so impossible to manage, is so antagonistic, is so literally subversive, and, and rejecting my attempts at leadership here that I'm not even doing this. I am giving myself a demotion. And she negotiated with her employer to literally, like, take away her leadership title and take herself down to the team member level because managing that team was such a nightmare, through the last six months. Through Level Up, we sort of walked through the trauma that she had navigated, um, of managing and leading a team that was so antagonistic. And she's not only regained her confidence when it comes to her ability to lead and manage, but she just landed a new job in a different division in this very large organization, where she not only got a promotion back up to the managerial level, but she got a double step up. So it's as though she had never given herself that demotion and gotten a promotion on top of that. So she made a double leap into a brand new job that she's just starting now at the very end of the year. Angie, congratulations. That is so major and way to overcome the trauma you faced and give leadership another shot, because you have so much to offer.
Similarly, I want to acknowledge someone we'll call S. Okay. S was also in our Level Up leadership accelerator this year, and she's someone I've worked with for years because S was in our Hired job search program years ago, and we actually worked together to land the job she's been in for the past two years. And then she came back and said, okay, I think I'm ready for level up, because not only am I performing at a high level in my role that I've had for the last two years, but I'm being groomed for leadership. And this year, she landed that leadership promotion into management and has been exercising not only her excellent skills in her craft, but a lot of leadership diplomacy, because while she was being promoted into management, her organization unionized, and they've run into some cash flow challenges. So, in the midst of all of this, her success came with a organization wide challenge, that resulted in layoffs, that have resulted in some serious workforce relations and labor relations challenges, that have really challenged her values and her authority and her leadership within the organization. She's handled these complex issues with grace, with candor, with vulnerability, and with authenticity in just such an impressive way that I don't even think she's aware of. And so I want to give S a big shout out for how she's leveled up in her career while also staying true to her values and who she is and understanding and relating to the folks she's now managing and the workforce at large that she's navigating a lot of challenges with.
I also want to give one more shout out to Christine. Christine took Level Up. Maybe it was the first half of this year, or maybe it was last year, and this year, we piloted quietly a ah, really cool new program called Level Up Leaders Circle, which was a continuing coaching option that we rolled out three months at a time for Level Up alums who wanted to keep working together not only with me, one on one, but with their peers who've also been through the Level Up accelerator, because, oh, my God, you get to hear from so many other women managers who are navigating the same challenges, or at least very similar challenges. Now, Christine has been holding her breath for like 95% of this year. She and I have been both having a white knuckle ride because her organization got bought out. There was a massive acquisition and merger announced. She knew that come September she was going to find out where her team was going to land and almost everyone around her got laid off. So there she was, completely isolated and alone, but grateful that she still had her job. Not that she felt like it was very secure at that point, but grateful that she was still there. But her job changed so significantly. She went, like me, from leading a team to doing all the work that her team was doing. And so she was totally burnt out, freaked out. She had been in this same workplace for a long time and had not thought about looking elsewhere for a job until September, when things really hit the fan. And I just got this email from her literally on December 1 that I have to share with you. “I have some exciting news to share”, she wrote. “I've accepted an offer for a new job. I'm leaving insert company name as of the 13th and will start a new role with enter company name as a senior associate vice president of sports analytics consulting with one of the major sports leagues. I can't thank you both and my cohort for all the support through the last few months of craziness here.” Christine, I am so freaking proud of you. And Christine was writing to me and Irene, our programs manager, because we have been on such a wild ride with her.
I'm just so impressed and so proud. And look, there are so many stories like this in our community this year that I have one final challenge for you. I not only want you to celebrate your successes, I want you to celebrate them out loud with our community. So head to the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook right now. You'll see a link in today's show notes or head to the LinkedIn group and you'll find a post that I made asking you what your wins of 2023 are. Share with me there. Be specific. Don't just talk about the progress you've made. Talk about how you've overcome the challenges, too. Erin in the courage community wrote “I'm still alive”, which was her big achievement because she's been navigating a lot of health challenges. So look whether they're personal, professional, related to your health and wellness, which are, you know, the most foundational things that we take for granted all the time. I want to celebrate you. Let's celebrate ourselves together and remember how freaking radical that is, as women, to literally just talk out loud about ourselves in a positive way.
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
So you're being radically feminist when you celebrate your success. Let's do that together and let's continue to lift as, um, we climb, um, into 2024 and beyond. Thanks for listening, and thanks for being such an incredible member of the Bossed Up community.
[OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]