I am a big believer in celebrating success & progress even if goals are not met.

I may or may not be correct on this but I do think it is important.

In our lives & in our work, we are supposed to set big audacious goals which stretch us & are hard to achieve. Many times, for a variety of reasons, we fail to reach those goals in the time that we planned. So what.

As long as we didn’t fail our team, our customers, our partners, our families & our friends then the fact that we didn’t achieve everything that we had hoped isn’t really that big of deal.

Often significant progress is still seen as a total failure. Sometimes it is a failure. & sometimes it is not.  Mitigating factors contributing to failure such as changes in circumstances, resources or personnel are overlooked. Hallmarks of success such as learning a lot & adapting & overcoming new, different & additional challenges are overlooked.

I am of the opinion that the most important thing in life is relationships. Part of relationships & life is learning & celebrating together. Work & success & progress & learning & adapting & overcoming hurdles are all things to be celebrated.

If we fail to achieve our goal then we shouldn’t celebrate hitting our goal, obviously. We can & should celebrate our work & progress & our learning.

Focusing on failure & not hitting our goal can become demoralizing & kill momentum. By all means we should understand why we failed & learn from that, however we should not allow missing our goal to prevent us from celebrating what we can.

Life is too short & too wonderful to not celebrate as much as we can.

That is why I am grateful for & celebrate Ball Project’s amazing partners who week after week help children by helping children play.