The importance of celebrating milestones or goals!

Do you celebrate your milestones? If not why not? Recently I've experienced a couple of milestones in my life. This month I turned 50 and also I've reached 30,000 Linkedin followers on my personal account. So how did I celebrate....well I went to have a week in a 5 star resort in Zanzibar, East Africa.....mainly to allow myself to decompress and celebrate my life so far.

This was my view every morning at 6am from my balcony, but why is celebrating your achievements so important? Well it not only feels good but it has numerous psychological benefits. Celebrating milestones provides structure and rewarding yourself for your successes, even small ones, gives you something to look forward to.

A milestone celebration helps people transition into new phases of life. For example, weddings are celebrated because they join two individuals into a married couple. Celebrating the end of a degree program is also important because it helps students transition into a new phase of their life, regardless of whether that means pursuing advanced roles, such as managerial positions, or shifting fields entirely.

Celebrating school, work, and personal milestones not only helps people acknowledge their successes, it also provides opportunities to strengthen bonds with family, friends, and coworkers. Positive memories of past accomplishments can help motivate people to pursue future goals.

We all set goals in our life, we also hold others and ourselves to account and when we succeed what do we do? I've seen so few people celebrate their successes and I often ask myself why? Were the goals or milestones so unimportant or easy that you didn't feel that need to celebrate?

I was a judge at this years Northern Design Awards and handing out awards to the winners made me feel so happy, I can't imagine what the winners felt. I don't know how each of the winners will celebrate when the dust settles but we are all very different. Will the boss take you out for a drink, give you and your team a pay rise or is just knowing that you were part of a winning team be the right celebration....how will the boss celebrate?

Jody Michael from Forbes suggests;

"Lead from positivity.

Executives should stay attuned to their team’s everyday activities and progress. Here are some ways to shift your interactions with your colleagues to help them recognize and celebrate small wins.

1. Break milestones down into manageable goals. Instead of always focusing on the big picture, break a project down into smaller achievable goals so that there are points to celebrate along the way. You don’t want to be the team that finally reaches their six-month goal only to disregard recognition because you’re already focused on the next goal.

2. Track your progress. Recording all of the small wins will illustrate just how far your team has come.

3. Give credit where it’s due. Send props to your team as achievements happen.

4. Have a way to celebrate wins as a team. Whether it’s recognition at a quarterly meeting or a spotlight in a weekly email, show your employees you appreciate their successes.

5. Stop downplaying achievements. If someone congratulates you, say thank you. And if someone on your team has something to celebrate, make a big deal out of it"

See full article https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/09/20/why-we-need-to-celebrate-minor-milestones/?sh=2175ad375ae8

On another matter we've just recorded our 5th GAA Podcast of Season 3. We are asking the question....what is it really like to practice architecture in your country? So far we have covered Tanzania, UAE, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bermuda and if you listen to the podcasts you really can begin to see similarities but also where the differences lie. The interviews are all from Chartered Architects, many who are practice owners who deal with the issues day to day.

This growing collection of international conversations is ground breaking, who else is asking architects around the world the tough questions on what is it really like to practice architecture where you are located? We hope it serves to educate institutions and professional bodies around the world as it really is a unique piece of research. Please contact the www.globalarchitectalliance.com if you would like to get involved.

As you may also know the GAA offers mentoring and consultancy services anywhere in the world. Recently we have picked up new clients in Australia and India. I thought I'd share some recent feedback from Nikita who is a copywriter for Architects.

Another client is an architect from India (who we are working with on a 1-to-1 basis) has retained us long term and the trend is that the GAA is gaining clients intentionally even though we are headquartered in the UK.

Finally, I've recently met one of the biggest architects on Social Media. In fact he is the No.1 Architect on Tik Tok with 9.4m likes! Russell Henderson or "Architect Russell" spent a few hours on Gabi Beach on Zanzibar getting to know each other and we really hit it off! Russell is one of a kind, works 6 days a week as an architect and creates videos almost on a daily basis. I can see he loves life and won't return often to his place of birth, England (as he loves Africa far too much), he sees that architecture can make a difference and I admire how much he loves buildings and creating architecture to raise the standard, in fact he is responsible for the first LEED building in Zambia.

Russell and I celebrated with some alcoholic drinks by the beach and for me it will always be a wonderful memory and I hope that Russell and I remain friends long term.

For more information on the Global Architect Alliance and our international consultancy services please visit www.globalarchitectalliance.com.