No, I am not talking about relationships and break ups! After all, this is a blog about money, but when thinking about it don’t those two subjects go hand in hand? I digress…What I am referring to is when you actually accomplish your goal, do you just move right onto the next one without celebrating or reflecting on all the lessons that you learned (because there are at least a few) while you were on your journey? For those who do this, it could be because of:7

• Excitement to move onto the next thing, as you have become extremely motivated with the pursuit of your goals
• You could be an adrenaline junkie, you don’t know how to slow down and smell the roses because you have been operating that way for such a long time
• You have never seen experienced or seen accomplished goals being celebrated when you were growing up, instead, you were pushed to move onto the next thing

Why it’s Necessary to Look at Your Lessons Learned

This is the part where you ask yourself if you could do this all over again what would you do differently? The answer to this doesn’t have to be focused on the things that did not go right; it can also focus on the many things that went well for you. Some of the things that you may have observed will allow you to apply those benefits to accomplishing your future goals.

It is beneficial to take the time to reflect if the goals that you have remaining are actually worth pursuing, or if they need to be upgraded to new and bigger goals, based on what you accomplished with the goal that you recently completed. By performing this exercise you get to see how much you have actually grown through the experience, and how much your view of yourself will be changed.

Looking at the opportunities for how you can do things differently allows you to save time, money and your sanity while moving along. It allows you to apply the wisdom that you have gained to make things a little easier going forward. Being aware of the wisdom you have gained, will put you in a position to share it with others who need to hear your lessons so they can achieve their goals with fewer obstacles. That is one of the best reasons for taking the time to reflect on your lessons learned.

Making Adjustments to Plans

Once you have reflected on your lessons learned, you will most likely need to adjust budgets, plans and have necessary conversations with key relationships in your life. If for example you had a goal to pay off all of your credit card debt in 3 years, but you were able to do it in 18 months, that would put you in the position of having extra time and cash available to allocate to another goal. In this instance, you would need to adjust your budget to allocate the funds that you were using to pay down your debt, to let’s say funding your child’s post-secondary education.

You will also need to revisit all of your immediate, short-term and long-term goals to see where further adjustments to timelines and milestones since you were able to complete a goal (using the example above) in a shorter timeframe. The same will apply if you took longer to accomplish your goal.

Let the Celebration Begin

The reason why I say to you to stop and celebrate your wins is that I remember a point in my not so long ago life that I would accomplish my goal and move right onto the next one. In my case, a lot of that came from being in being in survival mode and being so focused on getting to my “perceived” level of success. It was also brought on from not necessarily seeing big wins being celebrated around me growing up as well.

There came a point where I remember my son coming home with a note from his teacher saying how well he did in school, and he was so excited to show it to me. I looked at the note and I said that I was proud of him for doing a good job, but I could see he wanted more from me because he tried so hard and I didn’t give him the reaction that he wanted. It gripped my conscious, and I quickly course corrected and immediately said that we were going to go out that night and celebrate at whatever restaurant he wanted…it was his favorite East Side Mario’s! The joy of watching him light up when I said that to him, made me realize how important it is to celebrate things and not just blow past them with minimal acknowledgment.

Taking the time to stop celebrate your major accomplishments allows you to connect with yourself and to feel proud of yourself for the work that you did to get to your desired outcome. You feel your sense of pride and see how determined and focused you were towards pursuing what you wanted. Not only that, it continues to ignite the fire within and presents you with the picture of yourself that shows you who you really are.

Now that you have learned what the importance of reflecting and celebrating your completed goals, what are you going to start doing to honor your accomplishments?