This edition of KZN Business Sense acknowledges the many men and women who have succeeded in their various endeavours, both individually and collectively, in a range of business enterprises around the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

We all set goals for ourselves and our business endeavours, and we work hard to achieve these goals. The end of 2019 is fast approaching and we're all tempted to start setting goals for 2020. However, it's equally necessary to stop planning, to reflect on our current progress and celebrate the successes that have been achieved in both our business and personal lives.

Recognising and celebrating our successes- with gratitude - is a powerful motivator for both individuals and teams because it reinforces the purpose of all the time and effort expended and shows awareness of these efforts. This recognition, in turn, boosts self-esteem and motivates ourselves and our teams to take the next steps towards achieving new goals.

In addition, celebration is a key part of reflection and is critical to business leaders, and in fact applies to anyone who wants to be a better leader in any area of their life. The true value of celebration is in learning. To learn, we must reflect on what we have accomplished and why we have achieved successes. We must also reflect on things that may have led to failure, as well as evaluate our incomplete goals and objectives. We need to ask questions of the past year like: what is the most important lesson learnt, what is the best thing that happened, what challenges were overcome, what could be done differently or what got in the way of success?

Significantly, creating and sharing the stories of how we have overcome obstacles or challenges on our paths to success, inspires others to strive harder as well. Through sharing our stories in an authentic way, we connect with others and give them permission to acknowledge their own vulnerabilities and strengths. Stories also show other people that we all have things in common to overcome in our business and in our personal journeys. If we are able to continue striving in a positive way to accomplish our goals, our stories can motivate others.

For some of us celebrating each of our successes to date may also just give us that much-needed motivation to make it through the last weeks of 2019 and encourage us to aim even higher next year.