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Work and Life

Take A “Victory Tour”

When my daughters were in high school, April was my favorite month of the year. 

Why?

Because that’s when all of the student honors banquets and awards ceremonies were held. There was one for nearly every subject and activity. My wife and I called this string of events the “victory tour”.

The victory tour was awesome! Who doesn’t love being told how great their kids are, and watching them receive compliments from respected teachers and coaches?

Those Aprils were exciting, and now that I’m a parental empty-nester, I look back on them each spring as a reminder of how important and fun it is to recognize great work.

Of course, real life is worlds different than high school and we can’t expect to get an award for every good thing we do. But we should always be able to spare a minute to congratulate ourselves on our successes and achievements.

I tend not to do that very much. I’ll give myself a quick “high five” over something, and then start picking apart the rest of my work, analyzing what went wrong and how I can do better.  I’m generally ok with it though because that’s how you improve. My wife thinks I focus too much on the negative, but I don’t see it that way.

But I will admit that I don’t take enough time to really celebrate the good stuff. 

Though I should.

And so should you.

It may not be as fun as watching your kids or someone you love get celebrated, but it does feel pretty good, even if the praise is self-generated.

So spare yourself a minute and look back over the past month or two. What did you do right? Allow yourself to accept and feel good about those successes. 

This month, I’m patting myself on the back for:

  • doing educational, music performances at about 30 local elementary schools.
  • completing a half marathon 
  • finishing audio production on my upcoming album (a quasi-jazz record).
  • lost a little bit of weight (and I mean a little bit).

Now, before I move on to what’s next or what I could have done better, I’m going to do what NBC’s Parks and Rec staff calls “treat yo self”.  

I’ll start with a hot chicken sandwich.  It’s not as nice as a high school award banquet, but it’ll do.

Be sure to follow and subscribe to Wise & Shine for more stories and great posts from our team of writers. You can also follow Todd at his personal blog, Five O’Clock Shadow. For Todd’s musical activities, visit www.toddfulginiti.com

20 thoughts on “Take A “Victory Tour””

  5. I agree with Victoria, some of what you class as small achievements don’t look small to me … 30 educational visits to schools is a lot … one a day effectively. That’s a lot of hard work, emotional energy and commitment. Plus I take my hat off to you, working with school kids. 💐

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  9. You are so right – we don’t celebrate the good stuff nearly enough. I love your list – whew, you definitely deserve a banquet, Todd! That’s awesome about the half marathon! Congratulations!!

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