The dangers of celebrating success

I have a confession to make: pretty much every time I complete a project or achieve a goal or do something that feels big, I am tempted to celebrate. I have always loved the idea of celebrating success and am always eager to let myself in on the celebration-action.
 
My celebration-temptations have often been something I can buy - a book, a new dress, a massage - and my thinking would go something like: “Every time I read/wear/relive this, I’ll remember how hard I worked to earn it!”
 
But the flaw in this way of celebrating would hit me not too soon after the book hit my doorstep/the dress arrived/the massage was over. It's not that I didn't like the book/dress/massage. And it's not that I didn't enjoy reading/wearing/experiencing it. It’s just that owning or having it never felt like as much of a celebration as those few seconds of buying it.
 
My point here isn’t about buyer’s remorse. It’s about the false emotional weight we give to things, and our own self-serving ideas of what we do – or don’t – “deserve.”
 
I know this is a tricky balance. We don’t want to be misers, and we shouldn’t be cheap with ourselves. But there is a slippery slope we start sliding down when we begin to link achieving and getting. When we start to expect prizes with milestones. When we fill our baskets every time we fill our quotas. (When we start to walk dangerously close to the edge of becoming entitled little you-know-whats, basically…)
 
Now, I’ve always been pretty good about money. I don’t spend extravagantly (unless it’s on good quality produce or coffee… what I ingest literally becomes a part of my body, so I think it’s worth the extra investment) and I am always vaguely aware of my future old-age so don’t want to be debt-laden or dependent. (It all adds up, and we can start from wherever we are and need to protect what we already have.)
 
BUT, there is also a sleeping consumerist in me that I have to keep on a leash because I love pretty things and good design in all its forms. And I have to keep myself from using my success as an excuse to unleash that beast.
 
Because it’s never about the thing, is it? It’s about what the thing symbolizes. (Even Olympic medals aren’t prized for the thing, the medal. The gold in a gold medal is only worth $500-$600 which isn't exactly what athletes spend their lives training for. It’s what the medal symbolizes - ie being the best on that day - that they care about). And because things are used as symbols, we get to choose what they symbolize. We get to choose what things mean to us.
 
This is not a light responsibility.

So what do we do? Well, what we started to do over here at Patel-Brown HQ is keep it simple. We treat ourselves most of the time by not being hyper-consumers, but by truly enjoying the little things: takeaway from Nandos, a cheeky mid-week visit to the cinema, drinking Tesco pineapple juice in our best wine glasses – clink! – on the swing seats on our balcony.
 
Because it’s never about the thing. It’s about the emotion and the memory, and being adult enough to know that what we buy doesn’t in any way reflect our worth or ability or success so much as it can showcase our insecurities and need for external validation.
 
This is a bit of a tough-love message because I see so many people squander their wealth in celebration of it (and I am still tempted every now and then to do so too!). But that’s not very adult of us, now is it?
 
So on this late-February morning, let’s start recognizing things for what they are. Let’s try to take joy in the “small” things (because in the end, the small things are often the "big" things really…)

And let's remember that the goal isn't really the goal anyway. So instead of celebrating the result, maybe we celebrate the process, celebrate ourselves for sticking with the process, and let that be enough.
 
Let who we are becoming on our way to achievement and success – without any bells or gifts or parades or stuff – be enough.