Do you let yourself celebrate?

Do you let yourself celebrate?

Lately, I’ve been looking at how much good is truly present in my life — and the guilt I feel even about saying that.

On a phone call with one of my best friends the other day, she ranted for a while and released some of her bad mood, and then asked me, “Okay, what’s going on with you?”

“My life is too good and it’s hard to let it all in and it’s fucking with my head.”

“Oh FUCK OFF,” she yelled, and we both laughed.

I mean, it’s a pretty ridiculous problem right? Life is too good? I mean seriously. What the fuck, Jen.

And yet… it’s real.

When it comes to continually improving your life, one of the things that most often causes contractions, self-sabotage, slowing down, and holding back is the feeling that it is just too good, and the fact that we as a society don’t really know how to process our good feelings and celebrate when things are going well.

Think about it.

We all feel pretty good with celebrating the biggest most societally approved milestones in life.

Getting married, having a baby, buying a house, graduating from school? Let’s throw a party and celebrate!

But do you readily reach out to your friends to share when you’ve had a really good day?

Do you share when you’ve received a raise at work, or when you overcame a big obstacle, or when your partner does something nice for you, or when you finally broke a pattern that’s been causing you pain and problems?

Most of the time, we don’t share our small wins, or when we do, we do so in a way that minimizes them.

You might share about the amazing vacation you had, but only say a few words, and then quickly turn the focus back onto the friend who asked about it.

Or you might share about your new raise or a big contract you just signed, and then start talking about how hard you’ve been working and how challenging things are for you at work.

But how often do you truly let yourself step into unapologetic celebrating, and share it with others?

If you’re looking to improve your life and consistently move forward toward your dreams, the answer needs to be OFTEN.

Celebration is one of the most important tools we can use to digest all of the good, which we all need to do in order to let more of it in.

And yet, for most of us, celebrating is hard — me, included — and for me at least, it has only gotten harder the better things have gotten in my life.

Aren’t people going to get sick of this at some point?

Aren’t they going to get irritated with me?

What if they all start to hate me, talk shit about me, and leave?

For so long, the question in my life was, “How good can you let it get?”

But these days, the question is more, “How much good can you let other people see?”

And the answer to that has been, “Not enough.”

Not enough to truly be seen in and celebrate all the good in my life.

Not enough to truly digest everything that is happening and all the growth and progress and amazingness that is showing up because of it.

Not enough to truly feel safe letting even more good in.

When we don’t digest the good, we carry it around with us, and in a weird way we often start to feel kind of guilty, maybe even shameful, about how good things are in our lives…

The good can become just another thing that feels like too much, that activates our trauma responses and causes us to go into overworking (flight), or watching too much Netflix (freeze), or feeling super competitive and like nothing you do is enough (fight), or keeping everything quiet and saying it’s not really all that good (fawn), or any number of other ways that we might express ourselves when we start to feel activated and unsafe inside our own realities.

And then, guess what happens? We slow down the progress, or sabotage it.

We stop all the good, because it’s already too much, right? It already feels unsafe. How can we possible receive more?

And suddenly, all the good just feels HARD.

Hard to receive.
Hard to hold.
Hard to take in.
Hard to be seen in.
Hard to alchemize and digest.

And that basically describes where I’ve been at in my life, probably for months now.

As with anything else, the first step is always awareness, and the second is acceptance. Telling my first was another step toward acceptance, toward really embracing that letting in all the good was really, really hard for me right now.

Step three in the process: Action.

Truly celebrating, being seen in how good it is, even bragging about it.

I’m one week into that process now, and I can say, I do already feel better. I already feel like I can let in more good.

That’s the power of celebrating… and the potential pitfalls of keeping it all in.

I hope this week, you celebrate — something, anything — and create more space for good.