Heeeey!

How are you doing? 

No, really! How are you doing? 

I am in a great place after catching up on sleep and being more consistent with my running. Can’t even begin to tell you how intense my first official I-wanna-be-serious-about-running-again run was two weeks ago because I was quite hard on myself and just wanted to finish.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been running for many years. It is just that since lockdown, running became a drag and was not as fun as it was before. That’s why I did a recommitment. I wanted to get back to how happy it used to make me feel and the joy it brought me.  

I have a tendency of focusing on my end goal instead of the journey, and in most cases, I end up resenting the latter. 

Not cool because it led me to be a Negative Nancy at times while working through my goals. I am grateful that my ancestors encouraged me to focus on getting back on track instead of how sh*t I felt while running. 

I want to do things joyfully and that means taking the time to celebrate myself intentionally and consistently. 

So, a few days ago I went out for tea and a slice of cake to celebrate the following:

1. Publishing the latest episode of my podcast, “I am Clapping For You” which is about celebrating Africans. You can listen to it here.

2. Deciding to stop running away from my podcast. My perfectionism and visibility issues had me in stage fright mode!

3. Delivering a stellar FY 2023/24 strategy at my 9-to-5.

4. Catching up on sleep because rest is important.

5. My consistency and progress with learning how to play the piano.

6. Achieving a consistent pace while running. Now I am working towards having it below 6’.

This celebration date was one of the opportunities I gave myself last week to pause, reflect, track my progress and bask in my joy. As I said, sometimes I get caught up in achieving things. I mean, I am a woman on-the-go and focus on getting things done. And I love having a to-do list. I am a typical overachiever. In fact, my turning point was a few years ago when my ancestors encouraged me to get a life!

I’d say that celebrating myself intentionally and consistently has also helped me shut up the critical voice in my head more. Ah, that voice had me feeling like I was not enough, and I started to resent some of the things I loved. It also had me thinking I could only celebrate myself after achieving something.

The more people I speak to, the more I realise that too many of us are not celebrating our milestones and it is such a surprising, awful trend. Not celebrating yourself keeps you stuck. It also stifles your potential, makes you more stressed and breeds more cynicism. What a crazy way to live!

This is part of why I created my 7-Day Challenge To Celebrate Yourself.

I want us all to do better and be at our best by allowing our ancestors to guide us in celebrating ourselves intentionally and consistently.

So, what are you celebrating and how are you celebrating? 

If you’d like to book a shamanic/ sangoma reading to discover how you can partner with your ancestors to discover how to celebrate yourself intentionally and consistently, click here. 

Wishing you a lovely week!

Gogo Pabi