I learned something valuable from Brendon Burchard recently: the concept of integrating success.
What does that mean, and what difference does it make?
To integrate success means to pause long enough to let our progress sink in. It may be a big deal – an extravagant vacation to celebrate 25 years of marriage or throwing a big party to commemorate graduating from college. Generally speaking, we usually range from pretty good to excellent when it comes to acknowledging the big successes. That’s fantastic.
But what about the smaller ones?
Stopping to appreciate finishing a semester, a class, or even a particularly challenging assignment for a class is important, too. It's an integral part of avoiding burnout.
It’s far too easy to be so focused on the Big Goal or the Next Thing that we neglect to stop and recognize our progress. But why does that matter? I’ll share some stories to answer that.
Last year was a pretty big one for every member of my family. My husband completed an extremely challenging educational goal. I reached a milestone in building my business. Our oldest son and his wife became business owners. Our second son and his wife had their first daughter and bought their first investment property. Our third son and his wife completed another semester of college while working, starting a small business, and raising a very active toddler, and our daughter graduated from college and started a new job. With all of that, you’d think we’d be celebrating like crazy fools.
The truth is, though, that all these things happened in separate households and were spread throughout the year making it easy to miss their collective impact. It would have been simple to, in essence, give each person a simple nod and a “good job” and keep moving right along.
It was only due to learning about integrating success that I had the presence of mind to stop and consider what successes my family had recently enjoyed. When I did that it hit me, “Wow! We’ve had a big year!” After that realization, I planned a family awards ceremony complete with certificates of achievement and all (because I’m a dork like that). My attitude changed from, “We’re all progressing and doing well,” to, “Yay, us! We killed it this year!”
Next story.
One day when my oldest boys were almost teenagers, and the younger two were kindergarten and toddler aged I was looking through a photo album of when our family was younger. Pictures of the (younger) older boys holding their baby bunnies, playing in the backyard with the neighborhood kids, the time Dad went redneck for a day and turned the bed of his old pickup truck into a swimming pool complete with a beach umbrella, of all three boys in their matching panda bear Halloween costumes before their sister was born, playing with the dog and the hose in the front yard, these images and so many more brought happy memories flooding in.
Here’s the tragic thing, though. Before letting all those memories sink in that day, what I remembered most about those years was how much work they had been. My mind recognized that we’d done fun things and had enjoyable times, but I’d neglected stop long enough to let my heart savor and deeply integrate those moments.
In this case, my perspective on those years of my life changed from “work” to “joy.”
The biggest deal in both of these stories is the change in the level of pleasure I received from my experiences when I stopped to let things distill on my soul. I believe the practice of integrating success can make the difference between burning out and maintaining motivation, between surviving and thriving, between living (maybe even fairly happily) and living in profound contentment and joy. It fills us with gratitude and positive energy and creates momentum for continued progress and growth. It doesn’t have to be a momentous act of acknowledgment, a simple moment to take things in can do. But take it all the way in.
One of my next projects is painting the interior of my house. Honestly, I’m not super excited to do it. I know people who love to paint; I’m not them. You can bet your boots I’ll be pausing briefly to let my accomplishment sink in when I finish that job! And really, in the eternal scheme of things, how big a deal is it to paint a house? But for me, it will be a small success worth acknowledging.
What was your most recent success, large or small? How about pausing for a minute to recognize it and immerse yourself in that feeling of fulfillment, to say to yourself I (or we) did it? You’ll be glad you did.