On Sunday, I turn 57.
Well, that turned up really fast!
I’ve been thinking about what that number means for a few months now, turning it over in my mind.
How close I am to 60, where the time went, what I want for myself, what I haven’t done, what my retirement account doesn’t look like. Fifty-seven isn’t a landmark birthday; it’s not one of the big 0’s. There’s no big party planned, no obvious reason to make a fuss. Which is exactly why I’ve decided to make one anyway.
Here’s what I’ve noticed, in myself and in nearly every woman I coach who sits somewhere between Director and C-Suite: we are brilliant at moving on.
The launch that nearly cost you your soul, the target you didn’t just hit, you obliterated it, and no one else came even close. The boardroom that finally listens and commits ample resources to support your strategy. So many amazing achievements and small wins too, and yet, within the hour of achieving, we’ve already moved three tasks on without a bat of an eyelid.
The win? Well, that barely gets noticed. Maybe, if you’re feeling fly, you can send a quick message to a colleague or loved one to let them know, but then it’s gone.
Filed.
Forgotten.
Onto the next thing.
I used to think that it was humility. Not being boastful, not bragging or not showing off.
I don’t think that anymore.
What I know now is that skipping the celebration is a conditioning I picked up along the way that then became my habit, my default, and, for sure, it cost more than I realised.
When you don’t stop to notice, name, and celebrate a win, you lose out on so many things:
- You don’t get the chance to work out what actually made it happen – was it the prep, the relationship you built six months earlier, the boundary you finally held, the risk you took that could easily have gone the other way?
- You don’t get to notice the attributes you used – resilience, intelligence, relationship building, ingenuity, tenacity, etc.
- You don’t get to notice the skills you gained – how to do something you didn’t know how to do, empathy, integrity, leadership, financial planning, etc.
- You miss out on the learning about yourself, others and whatever it was you were working on.
- You rob yourself of knowing, knowing what you are capable of, knowing that you know how, knowing that you achieved the thing.
If you don’t stop to ask, to review, to relish, then you don’t get to know the answers, and if you don’t know the answers, you can’t repeat it on purpose next time. You end up relying on luck when you could be building a powerful method.
You know what else? Not knowing is a feeder for imposter syndrome. You don’t have concrete evidence, and so every time you start something new, you feel like you are starting from zero. You don’t feel powerful; you feel like a fraud.
So many of the women leaders I work with can recite every mistake from the last quarter in granular detail, but ask them to name three things they did well and watch the pause. They struggle because that silence is a genuine gap in their record; they don’t know what they’ve done well, because nobody ever taught them to keep a record.
Or they do know what they did, but they don’t celebrate it. They shrug it off as business as usual, they don’t think it’s that big a deal, whilst telling me that no one else in the organisation has been able to achieve it. So, they have a loose list in their heads, but neither records it nor rates it.
This month, my birthday month, I am gifting an opportunity for women in leadership to do something different.
It’s going to get you to look at your last 6 months differently.
Here’s what I am going to do and what I want you to do.
I’m going back through the last six months and writing down in detail what actually went well, not just the headline. Not “the webinar went well”, but what I did in the days leading up to it, that made it go well. Not “the client renewed” but the exact moment in that relationship where I worked with them and delivered value.
I call it your personal and professional capital. It’s the process of evidence gathering.
Become a detective, get forensic and discover/explore your wins. When you’re heading into something that asks a lot of you, and next week I am walking into something, real proof of your own capability changes how you show up. It’s the difference between hoping you’ll cope and knowing you already have, repeatedly, under all sorts of conditions.
Which is exactly why the timing of this birthday offer has started to feel less like a coincidence and more like a divine intervention. You see, I was supposed to start what I’m about to share on the 6th July, but I chose myself because I really needed a break, and I went on holiday. I then decided I wasn’t going to do this, but something told me it’s a must, and now the timing is perfect!
The day after I turn 57, the WIN Challenge opens: five days built entirely around momentum, self-discovery and self-celebration. It’s the kind of booster you get from clarity rather than another to-do list. It gives you power!
This weekend I will be doing the same thing I’m asking you to do for the rest of July: stop, take a moment and look properly at what you’ve built, your wins, your impact and use it as fuel rather than filing it away to be forgotten.
Now, to be clear, you don’t need a birthday to do this work. You need ten minutes and a willingness to take your own achievements as seriously as you’d take someone else’s if they told you about them over coffee.
Try it this week.
Write down 5 things from the last six months that went well because of something you did, not something that just happened to you.
Be specific.
Get clear on the skills, learning and impact that you gained.
Then notice what you feel reading it back.
Allow yourself to feel proud, feel excited, feel satisfied and feel blown away. Feel all of the feelings.
Those feelings are the point.
They deepen the steady, earned, evidence-based confidence of someone who has the receipts.
On my birthday, the 19th July, I’ll be celebrating with a frolic in Regents Park – because joy requires play, screaming, self-indulgence, laughter and great company.
I invite you to come join me on the WIN challenge from the day after, 20th July to 24th July, absolutely free here. We will be at Noon on Zoom each day. Block it out in your calendar and give yourself the space to review, reset and celebrate!
Celebrating yourself is powerful!
I’ll leave you with this: what’s one win from this year you haven’t allowed yourself to enjoy yet?
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