Stopping to Celebrate

Well, I'm in a celebratory mood. Probably because it is my birthday this week. But since I'm feeling this way, I want to share with you about the topic of celebration. It is a very important one and one at which we preform very poorly.

"Poorly???" you say...

Yes, we in the innovation business are good at many things. We are good at vision - almost on a daily basis we have a new idea that will change the world. We are good at work ethic - we put in far more hours than we should to see our vision come to reality. We are good at creativity - we see things that everyone else sees in the same old way through a whole set of new eyes.

But when it comes to celebrating we stink. We usually hit the milestone and then look right on past it to the next one. But that is a destination mentality instead of a journey mentality. I hope you know what I mean. We innovators tend to focus on the destination at the expense of the journey. We miss so many of the precious moments of learning, growth and, yes, celebration.

So in light of this fact, I would like to share with you five ways that you can celebrate on the way to seeing your next innovative idea come to fruition.

1. Launch your project right. Bring your prayer partners and ministry partners together for dinner or just a desert and challenge them to be praying and to seek God for how to proceed.
2. Pick a random milestone that you meet and bring bagels and coffee for your whole team.
3. When you get a breakthrough in your innovation, send out an email, facebook status or tweet telling your sphere of influence about what happened. Remember to ask for prayer as you move forward.
4. Make a list of all the amazing examples of God's faithfulness in your project and share it with those who are involved.
5. Finally, when the project is done, get all the people that helped you see it through together, thank God for His goodness and PARTY!