The Power of Milestones: Celebrating Life’s Markedly Important Events and Our Never-Ending Evolving Stories

In my workplace, we are nearing the end of the fiscal year. Each of us is required to write one or more self-assessments and, for those of us who manage, we assess others.  There are many reasons to think of milestones that I, and those on my team at work, have experienced.

In my personal life,  milestones have been reached for me and those around me in the past and coming year:

• One mentee finished her undergrad studies and moved to Baltimore.
• Another mentee finished law school, passed the bar exam, and was sworn into the Maryland bar.
• Next year one son graduates from college and another graduates from high school.
• My youngest son won the “Unsung Hero” award for his hockey club.
• My wife and I are celebrating 25 years of marriage this month.
• I had the opportunity to give a TEDx talk and passed 10,000 miles run in the past five years.

These accomplishments inspired me to think about what “milestones” really mean.  Why do I enjoy recognizing and celebrating them?   As someone who enjoys poetry and word play, I constructed an acrostic—or a phrase related to milestones in which the set of the first letters of the words spells “milestones”:

Markedly Important Life Events Shared Throughout Our Neverendingly Evolving Story

Maybe “neverendingly” is not a real word, but it gets the point across.

Here’s my thinking.  Milestones are markedly important events in my life, the lives of those around me, or the “life” of my workplace. In my opinion, milestones are more special when they are shared.  When I share events with those around me, the events are part of a never-endingly evolving story that I experience with those around me.

How do the stories in my life evolve? The people in the story evolve—some come in, others drop out, and I’m lucky enough to have a few who remain forever.  The roles of the people who stay in the story from year to year evolve.  The circumstances around me, around other important people in my life, and around my workplace evolve.

The beauty of the phrase is that I can apply it across all parts of my life.  It is not specifically about romance, but I can talk about “our neverendingly evolving story” in terms of how my wife and I have grown together and as parents.  It is not specifically about parenting, but my sons and I clearly have evolving stories as they grow toward adulthood.  It is not specifically about work, but the sense of “our story” in the workplace is tangible as I am lucky to work in an environment in which many people are actively engaged in the workplace and hoping to be part of a success story. It is not specifically about friendship, but each of my friendships evolves in interesting ways over time as the topics that get discussed broaden and the willingness to be vulnerable deepens.

Despite how I can wrap milestones throughout my life into the phrase, it is missing one word—celebrate, but there is no letter “C” in milestones.  For my own milestones, I celebrate through sharing.  For others’ milestones, there are a myriad of ways to celebrate.  Each celebration is like an extra punctuation mark or a closing of a chapter in the story that makes the story more interesting.

So, I’d encourage everyone to ask yourself, “What do milestones mean to me?”  Not everyone will answer by writing an acrostic.  But think about whether there is a unifying theme about milestones across the many aspects of your life and take time to celebrate them when they come.  You and your family, friends, and colleagues will have a much richer never-endingly evolving story to tell.  For me, that brings joy.

Kevin Frick is the Vice Dean for Education at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.  He has been an avid runner for the past 11 years – participating in 9 marathons (including Boston in 2013) and one 55 mile ultra marathon in South Africa.  He has spoken about mentoring to the Carey Women in Business student association and for TEDx JHU DC.  You can follow his personal blog where many of his poems appear as well as his professional blog.