Celebrating success is a silent challenge many senior executives face. Real progress—and lasting resilience—requires recognizing what’s going well. Yet, business and leadership literature has long emphasized learning from failure: how to recover, adapt and grow after setbacks. Less has been written about what it takes to acknowledge and build on success, particularly among senior executives navigating today's high-pressure and often unforgiving business environment.
In conversations with leaders across industries and in my coaching work, I hae seen that self-celebration is not only rare—it's genuinely uncomfortable. Many leaders admit that slowing down to acknowledge their accomplishments feels unnatural, even embarrassing.
This discomfort comes at a cost. When leaders constantly push forward without stopping to mark their progress, they risk more than burnout. They deprive themselves of a buffer against stress (self‑affirmation), a source of ongoing motivation (self‑reward), and the mood lift that fuels creativity and good judgment (the progress principle). Over time, this can compound into lower resilience, waning drive and poorer decision quality—undercutting the very effectiveness they're chasing.
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