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Have you ever stopped, I mean really stopped to see how far you have come? To celebrate your success? Sometimes businesses do it through a strategic planning process, or as part of your life review questions in coaching, but generally it gets a few seconds of consideration and then you are on to your next thing on your to do list.

This forward focus was hammered home to me this week courtesy of my teenage daughter. She has quite a nice singing voice and has been rehearsing for a Cabaret style show at her school. And when I mean rehearsing, I mean every day during school holidays, two nights a week till 9pm after starting at 7am or 7.30am for choir rehearsals, both first and second break at school for the past fortnight and every weekend for at least 4hours for the past 6 weeks.

Now that is a pretty grueling rehearsal schedule no matter your age – but for a 13 year old that is really extreme. Yet she did it without question. “We want to be the best we can – we aren’t there yet” is what she would say when quizzed.  There were days when she was bone weary, and days when she was crying tired. Days when we swore the antichrist had moved into our house and days when she was on top of the world. But she kept plugging away at it.

Tomorrow is performance day, and after a 10.30pm finish last night and a very husky voice today I kept her home from school to rest.

Rachel has been sitting in the lounge this morning watching DVDs of her pre-school and year 1 concerts (we recently had the videos transferred to DVD thanks to Milk2Sugars). While working in my office I heard hoots of laughter during the DVDS, and then she came in to the office to see me.

“Mum, I can’t believe how awful we were. I mean we really sucked. We couldn’t hold a tune, we overacted and you only got a part if you were obnoxious so the teacher would try to give you something to succeed at. I can’t believe you sat through it, clapped and cheered for us.  I guess that unless I had done that, I wouldn’t be here now”.

Now, I had been telling her this for years, but it hadn’t sunk in. It took a video of her before to show her how far she had come, to show her her own success stories. Some people need visible evidence of their progress to realise the distance they had travelled. I know I had the same experience when I looked back over some university assignments 20 years later – to see how far my thinking and writing style had progressed.

In my reflections on life, pretty much everyone sucks at things to start with, but over time and with enough practice everyone can improve. If you really want something enough, and invest the time into it, then everyone can get a credible result. You may never be a world beater, but you will produce great outcomes. That after all is one of the success secrets – time plus commitment equals success.

The other part of success is your cheer squad. For Rachel’s case all her commitment meant driving to and from school to meet the rehearsals (buses don’t get to the school from our place at those hours). It meant shuffling my appointments to work around her. It meant doing “food runs” to make sure she had something warm to eat on her 14 hour days. No-one succeeds on their own. When you are looking back at how far you have come – spend a few moments remembering all the people who have contributed to getting you where you are now.  This cheer squad is part of the meaning of success – they add love and meaning to your results.

From my side of things, it doesn’t really matter how the Cabaret shows go tomorrow. Rachel has already learnt the biggest lesson of them all – to give it everything you have, to invest time in what you want to do and to celebrate your journey.

What about you – have you really stopped to realise how far you have come? What do you do to help you reflect and celebrate? What are your success secrets?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer