WOW! What a CRAZY, exciting, challenging, amazing week!!

Less than 12 hours after my amazing Socialites team and I won Best Social Media Agency of the Year at the Australian Social Media Marketing Awards - New Zealand's only finalist - I was dealing with a highly sophisticated spambot doing its best to unravel a new campaign, all of which fell on a week of getting just 3-hours sleep per night due to two very sick daughters with two different illnesses in a house in the middle of extensive renovations.

So this weekend, now the jack-hammers have stopped and I finally had time to collect my thoughts, I realised what a fitting end it was to a crazy, exciting, challenging, amazing week.

Like I say... a crazy, exciting, challenging, amazing week!

From it all, some poignancy emerged; it reminded me of what my incredible and inspirational and much-loved grandmother, who passed away last year at the age of 101 (pictured below), used to tell me, that: "This too shall pass."

My grandmother's sound philosophy holds what I think to be the secret to success in life: that both the highs and the lows will come and go, and both are OK. Both are to be acknowledged and accepted, and both are parts of life to be embraced, without either determining who we are.

But before I share more about what I think of this, I do want to acknowledge my extraordinary team. There's a few of them below ... we really need to get more team shots!

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Winners: Best Social Media Agency of the Year!

As the only Kiwi finalist we were hugely honoured and totally blown away when we won as:

"...the agency that has distinguished itself in social media that serves as a example for the entire social media industry".

We are most proud to win because what we think makes us special and unique is what our clients and the judges think makes us special and unique. This win is testament to all the incredibly talented and hard-working people who make up the Socialites team now and right back from when we began as one of New Zealand's first exclusively social media agencies in 2010.

I feel so blessed at the amazing opportunities that our clients throw our way, and my team's passion, brilliance and drive to find world-first solutions for them.

But what is MOST important is the words of my grandmother...

Despite how hugely exciting this win is and what an enormous and amazing achievement it is for us, I keep coming back to the words of my grandmother, that "this too shall pass".

The enormity of this week reminded me that our happiness should never be determined by either the highs or the lows, that the secret sauce is in weathering it all: to enjoy and celebrate the wins and travel through the lows as best we can. Life keeps going and we do too, and sometimes it just has to be a question of attitude (even if it means we have to dig deep).

Neither the good things or bad things in life define us, it's in how we deal with it within ourselves and others that does.

Kids are good at this....

Kiwi 'Tall Poppy', healthy responses to life, and what our kids can teach us

All these musings made me reflect that our kids have such an authentic way of dealing with what we as adults struggle to deal with. The key seems to be that they don't take either the highs or the lows personally.

My girls are ready for anything. They celebrate the wins and express the lows. They are not afraid to be happy or sad. They are comfortable being both. They appreciate everything for what it is. And they live life with zest and passion every day.

But it seems that in New Zealand we come up against Tall Poppy in how we allow ourselves and each other to express emotion. We don't give each other permission to be passionate about the good or the bad. We don't give each other space to just be in those moments.

And I also think we also don't do a good enough job of yelling from the roof tops how proud we are of each another's success (even the media seems to relish the crashes and burns of successful people).

It's as if there is an invisible shield stopping us from shouting out about our achievements. That's it's not OK to "make a fuss" about the good or the bad, or even to show that we're struggling with the lows. And I think it's causing us as a culture enormous harm.

I love how the Spanish and Italians seem to deal with life so passionately. And how the British have such a huge sense of humour in how they approach life. Yet it seems we Kiwis are lagging behind in both passion and humour.

We can't seem to express the blues or shout out about ourselves when the pendulum swings the other way. We need to talk about this.

I think as a country we need to get really, really comfortable with both, just like kids are, and know that no matter what is happening in our life right in this very moment, that this too shall pass.

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Our motto (and wifi password) at Socialites is #celebratethewins and this week, no matter what life throws at us, we're going to do just that!

Wendy Thompson, CEO & Founder, Socialites