Art of Life/Donna Parker
The Power of Celebration
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
I have a lot to celebrate this year. I am celebrating a greatly improved health issue. I enjoying and celebrating the fact that the COVID restrictions have eased considerably. I also got a bike and started bike riding; not only is it good exercise, but it also tones your body. As I write this, I am still basking in the afterglow of our family Thanksgiving celebration. Two years had passed since we were last all together and I had not realized how much I missed all of us (from a baby to seniors), being together again.
Celebration is critical for humans: it forges bonds of connection, creates lasting memories, reinforces our values, beliefs, traditions, and honors those we share these moments with, which often includes sharing critical resources and establishing reciprocity and so on.
However, as human beings, we are not exactly wired to celebrate. We tend to focus more on what goes wrong in our lives — the struggles, the fears, the challenges ahead. This may make sense, from a survival perspective: it is smarter for our brains to pay attention to negative information in order to keep ourselves safe than to focus on nice things that have nothing to do with our survival. It also means, however, that we can end up stuck in a cycle of constant unnecessary stress.
There are numerous reasons as to why you should celebrate, but it really comes down to the fact that we absolutely need it for our psychology. Our brains actually change when we take a moment and celebrate. It can help build resilience, offer new ideas and insights, and frankly — it makes life worth living!
One of the ways to nudge our nervous systems out of the stress habit is through the act of celebration. Celebrating successes causes the release of dopamine that makes you experience pleasure and helps lock in the habit. There are so many ways to celebrate. We can throw a party, sure, but the essence of the practice simply means acknowledging and honoring a win. It might look like: telling a friend, toasting with family, making a special meal, or simply closing our eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, and rejoicing in the fact that we made it to Friday. When we take the time out to celebrate mindfully, we are essentially telling our nervous systems to pay attention to our successes, our strengths, our capacities, and our resilience. We are clarifying the positive qualities inside ourselves that help keep propelling us forward in our lives.
The act of celebration is also a strong signal to our nervous systems that we are safe; we do not generally tend to celebrate when we feel unsafe, or when we have been through something tough or we have just been stressed out for a long time. We are essentially in the habit of fear. We can tell ourselves we are safe all day, but our bodies simply do not believe us.
What our bodies can believe, however, is music and dancing, the pop of a champagne cork, a long hug with someone we care about, even that simple deep breath. These conscious rituals help to teach our bodies that life is, actually, good right now. Life is not always that way, of course, so better to enjoy it while we can.
Life is tough, and many of us fear even noticing how far we have come because if we let ourselves acknowledge it, it might be taken away. Or we refuse to slow down enough to appreciate our success because we do not want to become complacent. In my experience, however, acknowledging the best in people tends to help their best come out. When we are secure in our skills and resilience, we tend to find those things more easily when we are under stress. We can push farther and take more risks when we can look back at how far we’ve come and the skills we already have cultivated in our lives. Moving through life from a strength perspective can help us go way farther in our lives than when we are acting through fear.
So in 2023, I am celebrating the big things and the small things. I am slowing down enough to let myself savor what I already have. I know that things can change quickly and the sweet moments of my life will pass in the blink of an eye. However, I plan to pause and celebrate the sweetness, at least I know I tasted it while it lasted.