Axe Throwing and the Happiness of Success

 

This week, the MentaliTea and Coffee team celebrated the holidays with a team dinner and group activity. For those who don’t know, in addition to my work with Care ProvidersOklahoma, I co-own a coffee shop in Bethany, OK with my wife Lisa and daughter Avery. Dipping our toes into small business has been fun and we find the opportunity to interact and hang out with our Gen Z team members refreshing, fun, and, when we take time to listen and observe, educational.

For our group activity, Avery scheduled a night of axe throwing at OKC’s Bad Axe Throwing venue. This was Lisa’s and my second time throwing but for the rest of the team, it was their first go at it. We had an absolute blast, and I can’t speak highly enough of the activity for social gatherings.

As we wound our way through our 90-minute session which included team competitions and an introduction to trick-throwing, I got the most excited when I saw a couple of members of the team successfully stick their axe in the target area for the first time after several errant throws. The mechanics of axe throwing are a bit wonky for amateurs like us and requires discipline to maintain the correct arm posture, release point, step, and velocity. It’s not easy, and we were greeted with the regular clanking of axes caroming of the walls and target and the occasional voiced frustration of the thrower.

But when the axe embedded for the first time for those struggling with the discipline, the absolute excitement generated by those first successful throws were priceless to observe. It was fun to celebrate those successes with our team members. Reflecting on those reactions, I wonder if we neglect to celebrate some of those initial successes that we observe with co-workers and volunteers when they branch out and try something new and uncomfortable in the workspace or volunteer field. If you’re like me, you become guilty of holding an assumption that even the smallest tasks are routine and should be addressed without fanfare. In many cases they truly are routine, but the truth is accepting new roles and responsibilities can be fraught with uncertainty and anxiety for many people.

A night of axe throwing ended up being more than a fun evening. It re-oriented me to the importance of celebrating accomplishments, from the most basic to the most complex. Our team members truly felt joy and success by sticking an axe into a throwing target. Our work, both paid and volunteer, carries so much more weight than a night of social recreation. We should take such joy, and be equally intentional, to celebrating accomplishments in our workplaces and volunteer fields too.