Make Space for Enjoyment & Celebration

image courtesy of Jill Wellington via pixabay.com

This ties into my Intent for the Week, over on the Ink in My Coffee site. This week’s intention is enjoyment.

The next few weeks are very busy: a flurry of Topic Workbooks re-releasing, and a new one releasing the week after I teach my class. LEGERDEMAIN starts running this week, episodes releasing twice a week for the foreseeable future. I need to finish building the companion website, and start directing traffic to it, and posting fun stuff regularly, to keep it current, grow the audience, and keep the audience engaged. I have a workshop to teach at an online writing conference. I have an almanac article due. Lammas, a big holiday in my personal calendar, is coming up.

If all goes to plan, I get to spend time with a close friend in person this week.

I want to enjoy it all.

I don’t want it to be about crossing items off a list and worrying about the next thing on the list. I want to enjoy everything as it’s happening.

Too often, we don’t allow enjoyment of. . .anything. We’ve been trained to accomplish and then move on. We’re not trained to celebrate until outside sources validate us.

We’re only supposed to celebrate a book release if the publisher throws a party. With the stress of a book coming out, we shouldn’t have to throw our own parties, but there’s no reason we can’t or that we shouldn’t. We should be happy. We should allow ourselves to be happy, and to enjoy our achievements, without always looking to the next thing without acknowledging and celebrating THIS thing.

It’s one of the many social constructs that need changing, and we can start the change by being the change.

Something wonderful happen? Celebrate it?

And when those lemons try to derail your happiness because they don’t take risks/can’t be happy/can’t stand to see anyone else happy, just laugh and shrug it off. Feel sorry for them, because no matter how much they do, they will never be happy, because they haven’t learned how, need that exterior validation, and it will never be enough, even if/when they get it.

Experience pleasure. Allow joy. Give yourself the space for enjoyment. Pause and feel gratitude. Acknowledge accomplishments.

Do this for your own achievements, for anything that makes you proud. It can be cleaning out a closet or baking a cake or writing a book or throwing a pot on the wheel for the first time or the four hundredth time.

Re-train yourself to celebrate your accomplishments.

Celebrate the accomplishments of those around you who are happy or relieved or excited by doing something that matters.

Making space for enjoyment and celebration, for ourselves, and others, is a step toward a more joyful community.

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