3 Reasons Why You Should Celebrate Your Friends' Wins.
Our next installment in Thoughtfulness Thursday deals with celebrating your friends' wins. In any well functioning group of friends, there should be a genuine want for everyone to succeed. In this way, iron sharpens iron. When you are able to be genuinely happy for your friends and their success, the universe will bring that very same success to you. Remember, the universe brings you more of everything that you appreciate now. It doesn't matter if it's something that you have directly or indirectly. You should view every friend's win as a win of your own. After all, if you're being a good friend, your influence and presence makes it possible for them to be the kind of people necessary to draw success. If this were not true, you would likely not be friends, or you would celebrate few wins due to an abundance of negativity.
Pictured above is myself with my friend Nolan and his awesome girlfriend Katie. I got a chance to meet her for the first time a couple of weeks ago when they came down to visit for the weekend. We ended up going to the Atlanta Brunch Festival that day and it was a great time. I got a chance to actually talk to Katie and learn more about the person that she is. I learned the intimate details that made me understand what Nolan saw in her. I've seen or heard of a couple of Nolan's relationships first hand and it was refreshing to see someone that he was completely enamored with. It was even better to understand why she was so important to him on a fundamental level. Of course you can't learn everything about someone in one day, but you can definitely feel their energy and the kind of person they are. I felt a very genuine energy coming from her free of motive or malice.
I texted Nolan after that weekend and told him that I was genuinely happy for him in this relationship. I did this for two reasons: to let him know that he had my support throughout this relationship and to appreciate that win for myself. It took Nolan a long time to find someone that he could relax into a functional relationship with. Seeing him be obviously enamored with this woman was an amazing feeling. If you're a true friend to someone, you want the best for them because you see yourself in them. Wanting the best for them also means that you want the best for yourself. Celebrating these wins, no matter how large or small, is paramount to great friendships. It's also key to having these wins in your own life directly.
Celebrating the wins of your friends does three key things that I think are important to discuss.
1. Minimizes self-absorption: When you can genuinely be happy with another person's success in any area, it means that you are truly tuned in to the needs of other people. Minimizing this self-absorption is key to having healthy, functional relationships. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
2. Strengthens bonds: You've chosen your friends because you think they add some kind of value to your life. When you celebrate their wins, it strengthens the bonds between you and makes them want to do better things to continue to share those successes with you. It also ensures that you create a network of people that you can truly lean on when times get tough.
3. Encourages constant improvement: The first win is just fuel for the next win. In order to get to the next win, you must constantly improve. Celebrating these wins makes us want to do more in order to achieve more. This adds significant value to your friends and yourself that basically ensures that everyone close to you will be able to enhance the lives of others in some way.
Today you should seek out your friends and discuss recent wins with them. Be genuinely happy for them and feel that warmth radiate through your being. Let it inspire you to recreate the same wins for yourself so that you all can spread that vibration to the world around you.