Oprah Winfrey perhaps says it best: “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” The same can be said of our work as well. It is important to celebrate success because the more we celebrate the more there is to celebrate. There is a very logical reason for that. When you celebrate, you get a major boost of confidence and positive energy, which converts to positive action, and that in turn leads to more success.

The biggest message that a celebration sends out is that it puts people on the centre stage. It empowers people to realize their own limitless potential. And how does it do that? When you celebrate, you acknowledge the team’s efforts and ensure that each individual feels pride in what they do and how it all adds up.

This makes them give it their best shot every time. Everyone likes to be in the winning team, and when you celebrate, every individual feels that they made it happen, in whatever big or small way possible. When people realize that, it empowers them because it makes them believe in themselves and the infiniteness of their potential. Celebration is also a great way to spark creativity. Businesses today are always looking to answer one question: what is the next big idea?

Breaking routine, a celebration is a great way to take a breather, refresh, and recharge. All this ignites new thinking and new ideas. Recognizing success also helps us identify success enablers. We find out what works, and use that to create focus energies and make a bigger success with the next big idea. Many people make a virtue of dismissing their successes. When they do that, even though they may appear modest, they don’t realize that they are overlooking the contribution of others in making that success happen. The truth is nobody wins alone.

There is always a team that makes it happen, even when there is one person who is the face of the win. Shared joy makes for a closer team and therefore better teamwork. It builds on mutual trust and shared confidence. It is important to recognize that and call it out through celebrations. We live in turbulent times, and good news is hard to come by. So even if the achievement is small, we must use it to instil positivity. Of course, the celebration must match the achievement, but by recognizing small wins we acknowledge that the team is headed in the right direction.

It motivates people to better the achievement and make it a bigger win the next time around. Also, when we celebrate small wins, it helps us make a bigger win that much more achievable, because we are able to break it down in smaller, winnable chunks. We recognize that the celebration is a journey, and you take pit stops to rejuvenate and refocus on the big idea. It’s like a sports tournament.

You think one match at a time and celebrate the win, and that makes it that much easier to believe that you will win the tournament. It’s how we won the ICC World Cup after 28 years. The fact is, a celebration is a way to say ‘together, we did it; together, we can’. So every once in a while, let’s put down our pens and put on our party hats to celebrate our unlimited potential!