Too often in life, we achieve a major goal and then let it slip by us as if nothing happened. Just last week, this happened to me, and I’m sure we have all experienced something similar.

The metaphor I often use to describe life is that it’s like climbing Mount Everest. There are some flat parts, steep parts, very dangerous parts, blizzards, sunshine, and strength needed to conquer the world’s biggest mountain. Your success is very similar to this metaphor of climbing Mount Everest.

The epic speech that wowed everyone

This topic is very relevant to me right now because I just completed my very first Toastmasters speech that was not impromptu. I’d purposely chosen the morning session starting at 7:30am because I thought that it would be a typical day when most didn’t attend.

Unfortunately for me, I was wrong. There were record numbers, and all of the seasoned, professional, well-known speakers were in attendance. There was no hiding or pretending that this speech was a practice run for the real thing, which is what I had convinced myself of beforehand.

Before I had to get up, I suddenly felt a wave of nerves come over me, and I had no idea why.

My palms felt sweaty; my legs began to shake to the point where I wasn’t sure if I could even stand up. The story I was about to share in my speech was a compressed version of my life. I made the decision early on to be as bold and as vulnerable as I could be.

After all, if I didn’t nail this, then I knew that there was a strong chance I might give up and not try again. About sixty seconds into the speech I reached the part where I had to act out an intense action. At this point, all the nerves went away and everything I rehearsed came naturally.

The focus of the speech was to deliver value and inspire people to believe that anything is possible.

While delivering the speech I had a few times where I lost my place but mostly, I was in a state of flow, and it just poured out of me. I looked people in the eye and let the passion for my craft be known to everyone listening.

It’s important when you are going through a big moment in your life not to hold back, and forget about the consequences.

At the end, I didn’t think I did that well and gave myself a pass mark. The feedback from the audience and the evaluators was far better than I could have expected. They told me that I was speaking at a very advanced level, and they could clearly visualise everything I was saying.

The only real improvement was that they wanted to hear more, and they wanted more detail. The one word that was used consistently to describe the speech was “inspiring.” I’m no expert, and I wing most things, so I was very happy with the result.

There’s one thing I’ve left out though; I didn’t celebrate the success. Not even for one single moment.

Why you should celebrate your success

The purpose of me sharing this story all about overcoming fear and doing a speech in front of strangers is to show you an example of success that went unnoticed. It’s so easy when we conquer our fear or achieve a goal to forget about the significance of the event.

Public speaking is one of the highest ranked fears people face and it’s avoided like the plague. Yet, I had conquered what most could never do and achieved the equivalent of an A+. I should have been very proud and spent some time to reflect.

Instead, I went straight to the next goal on my list and gave the conquering of this fear no attention. If you think about your success’s, you’ll probably find times when you have done something similar.

It’s not okay to block out your success and not spend time celebrating the achievement of a goal. Celebrating success gives you a permanent anchor to look back on the next time you face a challenge that makes you fearful. An anchor in your mind can only be formed if you take the time to celebrate and look back on what you’ve just accomplished.

I’d even go a step further and say that you should keep a list on your mobile phone of all of your big successes. This gives you the opportunity, in case you forget, to get back into the state you felt when you achieved a certain goal.

For this concept to work, you need to, first of all, create that state, and that can be done by celebrating your success and linking positive feelings to what you’ve achieved. We forget to celebrate success because we somehow think that we need to go back and keep on achieving.

“Achievement without fulfillment will make you feel lost and empty inside”

Plenty of people have achieved what many of us could only dream of yet they still commit suicide because they haven’t taken out any of the positivity that could have been extracted from their success’s.

You’re not a robot; you’re a human being full of emotions and skills to give the world. Act like it and don’t forget when you’ve smashed your goal and achieved a result that was far surpassed anything you could have expected.

After the celebration of your success, I then recommend you practice gratitude and link it to your success. What this does is further engrain your achievement deep inside your body so that you can’t forget it easily.

What do you do after the celebration?

The story could end here, and you could just celebrate your success, extract all the benefit to be used in your life, and then move on. There’s one last step though that we have forgotten. Once you achieve your goal, you then need to share the lessons and the journey with others.

If only you benefit, then that’s a start. If everyone can benefit and people in other countries can be inspired by what you do, then that’s the level we need to all play at. Remember what I always say; it’s not about you, it’s about what you have to give and what you can do to add value to people’s lives.

Don’t tell me you don’t have any value to give because you do.

“The value you have to offer lies in the roots of your success’s” – Tim Denning

It’s for this reason that I put together this post so that more people can be inspired to go and do their first speech and share their message to inspire others. Imagine a world where we all shared our success to inspire others. Our problems would be greatly reduced, and we would live on a completely different planet to the one we occupy now.

It all starts with you. You can be the catalyst for change, and you can create a movement. Celebrate your success and then extract the value and give it to anyone who can benefit from it. That is all.

How do you celebrate your success? Let me know on my website timdenning.net or my Facebook.