Last week, a client I’d helped with a rent negotiation sent me a WhatsApp message that made me giggle.
Naturally, I asked if I could share it on social media. Because when someone is out in the world bragging about me, I think the occasion deserves a little fanfare.
I have a dear friend who responds whenever I share something wonderful with two words: “Well bragged!” They learned it from Mama Gena, author of Pussy, and have woven it into their everyday life. It doesn’t matter whether I’m celebrating a major accomplishment or something wonderfully ordinary. The response is the same.
“Well bragged!”
I love those words. I love the enthusiasm behind them. And I especially love that my friend never asks me to justify why something deserves celebrating.
We’ve become remarkably skilled at apologizing for our own happiness. We qualify our accomplishments before anyone else gets the chance. We announce good news and immediately explain why it isn’t really that impressive. We look around to see who might be uncomfortable with our happiness, then adjust the volume accordingly. We become experts at making our joy socially acceptable. What a peculiar thing to become good at.
Imagine telling someone you’ve just landed your first $10,000 contract, only to add that you know people who make that much in a day. Or sharing that you’ve finally paid yourself from your business, then immediately explaining that it wasn’t very much.
Who decided your joy needed a comparison before it could be celebrated?
I begin every coaching call the same way. “What can we celebrate together today? Big, small, business, personal. All of it is worthy of celebrating.”
Sometimes the answer is spectacular. A contract signed. A debt paid off. An offer launched. A decision made that changes the trajectory of someone’s business. Sometimes my client says, “I showed up here today.” And sometimes, in my own life, the only thing I can find to celebrate is that my husband didn’t burn down his shop.
Well bragged, all of us.
You deserve to have someone in your corner who celebrates your wins, understands your numbers, and helps you turn your audacious desires into profitable reality.
That’s the work we do together at Prosperity First. Book your Prosperity Breakthrough Call and let’s get to work creating more reasons to celebrate.
There is no celebration too small, too mundane, or too ordinary to deserve our attention. Its size and perceived quality have no bearing on its value. We have enough scorecards in our lives already. Revenue targets. Bank balances. Social media metrics. Productivity reports. We don’t need to turn our happiness into another performance review.
The same principle applies to our sorrows.
For years, I was reluctant to share stories about my childhood or the health struggles I’ve experienced. Too often, someone would respond, “Wow, now I feel selfish for complaining about the bad quarter I just had,” or “I guess that fight with my sister wasn’t such a big deal after all.” I knew they were trying to acknowledge what I’d been through, but I never want my experiences to become the measuring stick that makes someone else’s pain seem unworthy of compassion.
We can drown in an inch of water or an ocean. The person struggling to breathe doesn’t need a lecture about the depth.
Trauma is trauma is trauma. Joy is joy is joy.
Your difficult quarter deserves compassion. So does the fight with your sister and the grief someone else is carrying that you cannot begin to imagine. Your first paying client deserves celebration, as does your million-dollar year or getting through a Tuesday that asked more of you than you thought you had to give. We can hold space for one another’s full humanity without assigning comparative value to what we experience.
Imagine what our relationships could become if we stopped making people feel they had to earn the right to share what was happening in their lives. If someone could tell us about their heartbreak without apologizing for having it, or announce their extraordinary good fortune without worrying that their happiness might make us feel inadequate.
We’re human, and comparisonitis is real. I have clients who make millions more than I do, living lives I can only dream of, and some have accomplished in a fraction of the time what it’s taken me decades to build. I used to low-key resent them and castigate myself for not being “there” yet.
I’d be genuinely delighted by their accomplishments and still wonder why I wasn’t further along. What was taking me so damn long? What did they have that I didn’t? (My bestie pointed out they have me. Just sayin’. 😉)
Eventually, I began noticing a pattern. The more freely I allowed myself to experience joy for and with them, the more joy I found within my own existence. Their success no longer became evidence against my own. I could enjoy what was happening in their lives and remain deeply appreciative of what I’d created in mine.
My circumstances didn’t magically change. I experienced them differently, with more room for pleasure, possibility, and appreciation.
That’s why I ask my clients what we can celebrate before we dive into the numbers, the strategy, the decisions, and the desires that brought us together. I want us to experience what’s already working, to let the good news land, and to recognize the progress we’ve made even when the distance between where we are and where we want to be still feels enormous.
Because joy is only felt in the present moment.
When we’re sitting in regret over what we didn’t do, or living entirely in anticipation of what we want to accomplish next, we can miss the joy already available to us. You can remember something wonderful and feel joy now. You can anticipate a future experience and feel joy now. The feeling itself always brings you into the present.
If you're ready for that kind of work -- the kind that holds both the numbers and the human being behind them -- the Prosperity Breakthrough Call is where we start.
And here’s where one of my favorite Shanehisms comes in: Money Loves Joy.
I know how that sounds. Stay with me.
I believe money is energy. It’s a tool, an amplifier, a resource that moves through our lives and expands what we’re able to experience and create. And joy is an incredibly attractive energy.
Joy shared is joy amplified.
Think about how you feel around someone who is genuinely delighted with their life. Someone who can celebrate your good fortune without turning it into a competition. Someone who is curious, engaged, and excited about what’s possible. How much more freely do ideas flow in their presence? How much more comfortable do you feel sharing your desires, your opportunities, your successes?
That’s the energy I want moving through my relationships, my business, and my relationship with money. I’ve noticed that the more fully I allow myself to experience joy, the more readily I recognize opportunities to connect, create, receive, and grow.
How often do we race right past those opportunities? We land the client and immediately start worrying about delivery. We reach the revenue goal and begin calculating the next one. We create something extraordinary and barely give ourselves time to enjoy it before asking what else needs to be done.
There will always be another goal, another desire, another possibility calling us forward. I happen to love that about being alive. I also want to enjoy the life I’m creating while I’m creating it.
I want you to have the money, the capacity, the relationships, and the freedom to live a fully realized existence. I want you to have resources that support your desires, sustain your life, and allow you to contribute to the people and causes you care about. And I want you to experience the pleasure of being alive along the way.
When we experience pleasure in what our resources make possible, money becomes something we can engage with through curiosity, appreciation, and desire. We remember why we wanted those resources in the first place.
Of course, there will be days when joy feels distant. Days when you’re angry, grieving, exhausted, or frightened. You can trust that something better is possible while being scared about how you’re going to get through what’s happening. Your fear doesn’t cancel your faith. And your faith doesn’t obligate you to pretend you’re not afraid. You don’t owe the universe a cheerful disposition to deserve a beautiful life. You don’t have to manufacture a celebration to prove you’re doing prosperity correctly.
And when something wonderful happens, however modest it may appear to someone else, I hope you’ll let yourself feel it. Let yourself giggle. Be extravagantly pleased that you finally made the phone call, planted the garden, paid the bill, took the nap, asked for the raise, or found a moment of peace in a difficult week.
Tell someone who will be delighted for you. And if you’re still looking for someone who will celebrate with you, my DMs are open. Bring me your joy. I’ll celebrate with you in real time.
And can we just pause for a second and acknowledge that November 3rd, 2026 gave us many extraordinary reasons to celebrate. Historic election victories. Barriers broken. People stepping into positions of power that generations before them could scarcely imagine occupying. And behind every one of those victories are people who organized, volunteered, donated, knocked on doors, and kept believing that something different was possible.
Brag worthy, indeed! Because when someone breaks through a barrier that has stood for generations, the victory belongs to everyone who helped make it possible, and everyone whose imagination just got a little bigger because of it.
And when someone trusts you with their good news, I hope you’ll make a glorious fuss over them. Dance your ass off. Laugh with them. Raise your glass. Let their excitement become yours for a moment, and watch what happens when two people decide something wonderful deserves to be enjoyed.
We have so much life left to celebrate, including the beautiful, ridiculous, ordinary things happening right now.
So tell me, what can we celebrate together today?
I’m ready to hear you brag.
You’ve got a life to enjoy, desires to fulfill, and a whole lot more to celebrate. Let’s make sure your business is generating the profits and resources to support all of it.
Book your Prosperity Breakthrough Call and let’s get to work making your financial reality as extraordinary as your vision.
P.S. Profit is Protest, and so is allowing yourself to enjoy the life you’re working so beautifully to create. Whether you share your celebration in the comments or privately in my DMs, I promise I won’t ask whether it’s impressive enough.
Well bragged!
TranScript Theatre picked up a play I'm working on for their ScriptLab December live stream! https://calendar.app.google/r2D75ydEQStuQokK6