Description: As the year winds down, ’tis the season of gratitude. Kerri & Esther chat about the importance of celebrating wins and expressing gratitude, Plus, we share a lifesaving kitchen tool and a leader who inspired us by stopping, not starting. 

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TRANSCRIPT

INTRO

Kerri: Hello and welcome to the Flourish and Friends podcast. Welcome back. I’m your host, Kerri, and I’m here with my friend and collaborator, Esther.

Esther: Hey friends, how you doing?

Kerri: Our goal for this podcast is to create a new avenue for our Flourish community to gather around some important conversations that lead to growth and flourishing.

Esther: Yeah, nothing is really off the table because how we lead our lives flows into how we lead at work, and overall, our brand reflects that, especially as creatives.

Kerri: Today we are talking about the power of celebrating wins and gratitudes. But first, let’s kick it off with our fresh picks. 

FRESH PICKS

Kerri: What’s fueling you right now, Esther?

Esther: Right now I have discovered the Banksia flower. It is native to Australia and it is very interesting, like, I can show you.

Kerri: So pretty.

Esther: I have some sitting right here.

Kerri: Oh, that’s gorgeous.

Esther: How would I describe it? 

Kerri: I would say it’s like a text, a lot of different textures. Like you’ve got leaves coming up, kind of wildly around the center

Esther: Yeah, kinda like a bulb of color.

Kerri: bulb of color. Yeah,

Esther: Yeah.

Kerri: kinda wild looking,

Esther: Yeah, the dried especially is a bit wild. But yeah, it’s like, little strands of leaves. Nothing I’d seen before, but they’re at every market. I, I’ve bought my first bunch the other day and it looks just as beautiful dried. So I think, definitely a good money saving trick

Kerri: I’m just connecting in my head that in Kansas City we have, I think a bakery or a restaurant called Banksia, so I’m sure that’s it’s, I know it’s Australian, Oh, it’s because of the flower

Esther: I didn’t realize that. Yeah. Until recently. Yeah. Banksia

What about you, Kerri? What’s giving you life, fueling you? 

Kerri: I have been using my new avocado slicer, I can’t say it without laughing. It just feels, it just feels like such an unn…

Esther: An unnecessary gadget? I mean,

Kerri: It feels very millennial to have an avocado slicer.

Esther: It does.

Kerri: it happened because I literally sliced my finger open twice the summer

Esther: Oh no.

Kerri: I was like, this is a sign. I, I sliced it twice, getting the pit out and I was like, fool me once, you know, fool me twice, time to get avocado slicer haha. So that’s what I did it’s the Oxo avocado slicer because there is a pretty big market of various types of avocado slicers.

Esther: as there are.

Kerri: I had one that I didn’t really love, so I got this one and it’s great.

It’s green. It’s a three in one. Cut into the avocado, you take out the pit and you scoop out the avocado all in one. So yeah

Esther: Wow.

Kerri: It’s bringing me life and more importantly, not slicing my finger open. So I count that as a win.

MAIN CONVERSATION

Kerri: Speaking of wins…haha

Esther: Yes. Moving on to our main topic. We’re gonna touch on celebrating wins and gratitude in the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Kerri: Yes, November and I feel like this is just the season of. Centering on gratitude, which is important to do in every season, but it’s just like a nice little reminder in our calendar year. And resilience is really important for us here at Flourish. I often talk to a lot of creators or brand leaders who feel really burnt out, especially after the past two to three years that we’ve had you know that too.

Esther: Mm-hmm. 

Kerri: And this time to carve out time to celebrate our wins. Celebrating gratitude lean into gratitude is really important. What does making space to celebrate wins look like for you?

Esther: Yeah, that’s a great question. I have started writing lists and I like focusing on the little wins. Because sometimes all the menial tasks can feel really overwhelming and taxing. And so I definitely, would suggest, if there’s something hard on your to-do list, just. Put a reward on the other side, and that can be your celebration of, “I’m so proud, I did this hard thing and now I get to X, Y, Z.”  I think that that’s helped me a lot. And then also, I’m not really good at this, but starting your day with a gratitude list. Even if it’s just one thing that you can fix your thoughts on, like, Oh, I’m so thankful for this. 

And if it’s like, you know, a really hard season or hard week, just reminding yourself of some simple things like, “Oh, I’m so grateful that it’s, the sun’s shining today.” Or, “That I get to have flexibility in my work or get to go on a walk during my lunch.” You know, things like that really help. Celebrating wins on a smaller scale.

Kerri: Yeah, I think it’s easy to take things for granted, so stopping to name the things. Name the small things that we’re grateful for can be really because it’s, there’s like an endless list of things we can be grateful for,

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: Remembering to name them or voice them can shift our mindsets, like we talked about in the last episode, kind of about our mindsets for creativity

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: and our mindsets for our day.

You know, how, how we live our day is how we live our life. So being able to enter any new day or any new appointment or whatever it is with that little nugget of gratitude is always a great mindset shift to have.

I feel like carving out space to celebrate wins for me is always important because it’s so easy to get heads down just like go, go. Do, do create things then all of a sudden you look up and it’s like, Wow, the leaves are off the trees, or, Wow, it’s finally spring,

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: Or whatever it is. And so taking time to carve out the space for even some of the bigger ones too, to think back on what have I accomplished? And I like how you talked about writing things down.

It’s gonna be easiest to look back on the things that we’ve written down. Even if we haven’t. Something that I kind of like to do too is looking back at a calendar and just being able to kind of see what’s happened and just be able to pause and ask, Okay, what, what have we done this year? For our brand, like in my professional world, what have we done?

What have we accomplished? What are the things we set out to do that happened? Or what did we shift and adjust? That was actually a huge win and we’re really glad we did this instead. And then of course, the same personally too, you know, one year. If you’re looking it doesn’t have to be a year.

Whatever chunk of time you want it to be, it’s just amazing to see. Wow. That that happened, and that is something that I can count as a win and be really grateful for.

Esther: Yeah, and I think when you are in the planning phase, I think it’s helpful, when you have a goal or a project by setting mile markers along the way where you can stop and reflect, and celebrate how far you’ve come. I think also when you think of professional life, the whole scope.

You can, if you take time to have those mile markers just in your own personal life, you can remind yourself that you can do hard things. I think it’s just a good reminder that, okay, I’m reflecting on this win. And that reminds me that the project I’m currently in, it feels really hard right now, but I know that I can accomplish it, because I have in the past. 

Kerri: I love that. We can do hard things.

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: it’s easy to forget when, especially if you’re in the middle of a valley that you’ve, you have climbed some mountains or you have achieved things that have brought you to where you are and I just believe you’re equipped to do everything and equipped with everything you need to like be able to get through the challenge that you have and/or you can always shift your environment and like listen to your, your mindset and just really have space to reflect and see if there is something that needs to be shifted.

Esther: Yeah, exactly.

Kerri: Also when you look back on wins which is not something I do naturally cuz I’m very much a forward thinking person, like I’m always thinking about possibilities, thinking about the future. But when I do look back on wins, you can start to see patterns or you can start to see different kind of themes too

Esther: Yeah.

Kerri: With what has happened. In a brand, for example, you can see initiatives that went really well that you can then take and build on, rather than always feeling like you need to reinvent the wheel. It’s better to take the idea that worked out really well and adapt it or even do the same thing, and that’s okay. It can be creative in its own way this next time around. So being able to see and recognize those things as wins can help plan and prepare even for the future too in a way.

Esther: Yeah, exactly. I love that.

Kerri: When you’re reflecting on your personal and professional wins, what are things that you like to keep in mind like to think about?

Esther: Yeah. so I’m the opposite, to you. I am past oriented, so I’m always reflecting on good and bad.

Kerri: this is your expert expertise area, Esther. Haha teach me your ways.

Esther: In some ways, yeah I guess. That’s why collaborating with a visionary is always so good but that’s just a side note. I would say, like I was kind of talking about before, packing a bunch of small wins into a big win. for professional wins, you could say, okay It’s a win when I get X amount of clients.

But celebrating each client as they come, I think is also a fair thing to celebrate. Also, thinking of the wins as a bridge and not a rocket. So they’re, they’re actually a plank. Leading you to the other side. And, it’s not just gonna happen instantaneously and one major thing is gonna happen and it’s gonna take you and launch you, but it’s actually those, those dedicated to the small planks, and putting work into building that bridge, right?

I think that, that leads to professional success. You look at some of the greatest, most successful people in your industry, and a lot of the time, that I’ve learned from just listening to podcasts and their interviews, is that they have had failures or other big letdowns, but the way they’re just completely committed to building towards something greater.

Just in the midst of those failures, they can remind themselves of the bigger goal and keep working towards it. And yeah, take it one day at a time, I think is a good perspective to have.

Kerri: The world loves to celebrate. The big win and the overnight success, but I so firmly believe in, you know, different actors. Anyone who’s been called an overnight success, I’m sure would say. Like, it’s, there’s no such thing

Esther: Yeah, exactly.

Kerri: It is those planks, like you were saying. I love that visual of the bridge.

We love to celebrate the narrative of the rocket, but sometimes, as we’ve seen in many different industries, the people who are rockets or the businesses or brands who are rockets are taking off. then they just, they can’t sustain that momentum..

Esther: Yeah.

Kerri: And then they flounder and a lot of people and ideas get hurt along the way too.

So it is a more sustainable mindset even to have. That picture, like you were saying of the planks, what am I doing day in and day out? What are those? What are those small steps that I’ve taken that I can celebrate?

And yeah, I just love that. I love that mindset. I think too, defining it. Everyone’s wins look different. So almost even defining like, what do I want to count as a win? And that can change in a different season. It can change day to day, but even identifying and outlining, Okay, what’s a win. Today a win might be just getting all the things on my to-do list checked off, or maybe it’s getting half of the things on my to-do list checked off.

You know, the ability to define what a win means for you in this season. And I always love to say like showing up is a win. Just showing up. Just being is a win. And you don’t always have to do, do, do in order to have What the world loves to see as this glamorous win.

Esther: Right. And those don’t happen every day. Those glamorous wins don’t happen every day.

Kerri: They don’t. And they’re beautiful. They’re, they are beautiful mile markers and I think they

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: And I think there is, you know, I don’t love the whole idea of awards. Or recognition opportunities always. But I also try to think of them as like, oh, these are, this is an opportunity to celebrate the journey that this person has been on and to hear their story. And like they’re gonna continue evolving even after this.

Esther: it’s true.

Kerri: Have this moment of recognition too. And yeah, we can define our win and think on, you know, how did this win impact life? So if we’re looking back at a personal win, Not only defining what it was and naming it, but then asking the question like, how did that win make me feel? Or what, what is it that I love about that win?

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: And so that kind of, you start to ask those questions where you can kind of get to the core of what do I wanna be doing more of? Or what do I want more of in my life based on the wins that I’ve named? Same thing for a brand or a business or an organization, what are those wins that were really fun or that really had an incredible impact that you can build on. And what did that do? Like, it was great that we got, you know, 10,000 views on a video, but did that video, what was the impact of that video?

Esther: Right.

Kerri: Did it lead to greater engagement or did you have new introduction to a new organization that you wouldn’t have if they hadn’t seen it or been involved or collaborated on it?

There’s so many different branches off of one win that you can kind of dive into and look.

Esther: Yeah.

Kerri: And, see, okay, well how can I take these elements and build them into whatever my next goal is.

Esther: Yeah. And thinking of it also in the aspect of it might have changed you, it might have changed your goals and changed your projection. And so reflecting on okay, how has this impacted us and our future goals? I think is so important too.

Kerri: I wanna circle back on the rewarding because I feel like a reward is always great, and we know that humans are motivated often by some sort of reward. Whatever that means you, you know, for whatever the project is or whatever the task is. How do you think of rewarding in terms of your wins or goals that you have?

Esther: I think, like I was talking about before, just adding a reward to the tail end of a hard task is really important. Honestly, I do this every day. I, I tack on like even something like lunch. I don’t know if this is a good thing, but lunch can be used as a reward to entice me to get some work done.

I think those breaks and then also just, a reward of the daily things, just going somewhere else to work since I have that flexibility.

But for larger things, I think of when I released my photobook, Cody and I went out and celebrated with a nice dinner before, celebrating the finished work and not celebrating the success of the book, if that makes sense. Not waiting. I heard this on a podcast once of like, the eve of your book launch, you should celebrate.

So that it’s more of you celebrating the hard work that you put in and less attached to how people receive it and the outcome of the launch. So I think yeah, choosing those, really strategic moments cuz not I don’t think having your success tied to results is always beneficial. I think in some cases it makes sense for those mile markers, but I think also equally as important is celebrating the finished work. but yeah. What do you think is a good way of rewarding yourself?

Kerri: Oh, I love this to celebrate the finished thing. Finishing is a huge thing. Finishing is a huge win. And anyone can start but finishing, even if it’s not perfect..

Esther: Yeah.

Kerri: Finishing is huge. I feel like a reward myself is just remembering to reward myself because I can just keep barreling on towards the future. towards seeing the gap kind of seeing, oh, this is what it could be, then keep going. So a reward for me is really a pause that looks like time off. since I have the flexibility of owning my own business to schedule that in. Even though it’s hard to take time off, doing that is really important for me. I love good food like you and just time. 

Time to relax, honestly, like just mental relaxation, whether that’s through physical relaxation as well, like self care time or just being able to be in nature or just zone out.

That’s always been, I think, important to me and is a reward in a way. But yeah, we’ll work for food too. I love it.

Esther: Yeah, always.

Kerri: We’d love to encourage listeners to maybe carve out a two hour appointment, no one’s gonna carve out this time for you. So set an appointment on your calendar for two hours. Sit down, find your favorite spot in your home or at a coffee shop and bring your favorite pens. Bring your favorite journal, bring your calendar, whatever it is that will spark the remembrance of your wins and give yourself time and space.

To write them down and to celebrate them in the way that’s most meaningful to you and maybe have an accounta-buddy that like you both do it and then can come back together and share, these were the things that came up for my personal life and these are the things that came up in my professional life too. Because I think having the ability to share out can be really helpful, cuz it just helps you to summarize everything or see the themes that are happening.

Esther: Mm-hmm.

Kerri: Then too, There’s just a power in handwriting. A thank you to realizing our wins can’t happen without community and without the people around us. And so who can we call out and thank whether it’s. Again, personal, professional, or your network, wins don’t happen in isolation. 

So kind of a flourish, encouraging challenge that we all have is can we write those handwritten thank yous? There’s just a power in handwriting a thank you to realizing our wins can’t happen without community and without the people around us. And so who can we call out and thank whether it’s different people you’ve collaborated with or people that have inspired you. Even sometimes people don’t even know that they’re a part of your win. So being able to reach out and express that gratitude is a beautiful thing to do, especially in this season of, of gratitude this month. So join in on the challenge. We’d love to see your handwritten notes. You don’t have to show us.

Esther: Yeah.

Kerri: But we’d just love you to join us in. Maybe writing one would be a win, but we’ll challenge ourselves, we’ll do a stretch goal of three and we can all yeah, just really soak in the gratitude in the season.

Esther: I love that.

BOOKMARKS

Esther: All right. Moving on to our bookmark segment. Kerri, what have you been watching, listening to, reading that has really impacted you?

Kerri: Well, this news will be a little bit old by the time this episode airs, but I wanna link to Trevor Noah’s video of him announcing that he was leaving the Daily Show. I thought it was such a well. First of all, I really like Trevor Noah, and I think he’s really smart and witty and he’s done such an amazing job.

If you think about the role he stepped into on that show, And the expectations that he had on his shoulders and just what he’s been able to do with it in his own creative way over these past few years have been really cool to see. And then for him being able to explain in this video that he. Through the pandemic, is just ready for something new. 

I just always admire when people like, it’s so awesome to celebrate the starting but I love celebrating the stopping too cuz it’s so powerful to see someone embrace and say, I’m, I’m done and this is a good thing and this is right for me. And I think, him kind of narrating this moment in his life for his audience and for you know, a wider audience too.

It was really powerful and I think we need to see more of that in leaders too, celebrating the ending. And yeah, just I love, I love him having the self-awareness to make the decision, then also communicate it in such a graceful way.

Esther: Yeah I just watched the Jimmy Fallon, I think it was Jimmy Fallon interview with him and he mentioned, I haven’t watched this yet, but I will. But he mentioned how he wanted to end on a good note, and not burn out. So I think that it is actually very wise and seeing your end. And to do it in a very great and graceful way, I think is awesome.

I think for me, the episode of On Being, where she interviews Parker Palmer, it’s episode 591. It, he talks about just his journey through depression and also in the faith space. He is a Christian. I think he’s a Quaker maybe, but he is a writer that I really admire and his just description of nature and the soul I think is just very beautiful. 

and especially as we are in transition seasons. I’m in spring, you’re in fall. I think it’s just a good reminder of just the journey that we’re on and how, yeah, how delicate, people are at this time. Even, I think that depression is normally heightened in the winter months, and I think he just really describes in a beautiful way how you can be there for someone who is suffering from that in just a simple way.

yeah, I thought it was really encouraging.

Kerri: I’m so excited to listen. I love both of those people, so I’m excited for that convo. And talk about deep thinker, Parker Palmer. Yeah, he’s very deep. He is a well.

OUTRO

Kerri: Thank you for joining us today. Be sure to check out flourish creative.co/podcast to see the show notes from our episode.

Esther: Yeah, we’d love to hear from you. Like we said, even our thank you challenge or anything else. You can send us a note to hello@flourishcreative.co or tag us on Instagram @FlourishCreativeCo. Feel free to leave the review wherever you are listening and help new friends discover our podcast community

Kerri: Thanks again again for joining and until next time, live well and flourish.