8 Ways to handle success without becoming unbearable

Get too excited and you're showing off. Play it down too much and you risk becoming the person who says, “Oh, this old thing?” about an Oscar.

Somewhere between the two lies the art of being gracious in succes: being genuinely delighted by something you've achieved without requiring everybody within a 10-mile radius to be equally delighted on your behalf.

And it is an art, because success can do funny things to otherwise perfectly lovely people. A little applause can go to the head, good news can become the only news we want to talk about, and an achievement can suddenly turn us into an expert eager to explain to everybody else exactly how they could do it too. Equally, some of us are so frightened of appearing boastful that we barely allow ourselves to acknowledge the very thing we've worked incredibly hard to achieve.

Being gracious means finding the sweet spot: enjoying the moment without making it your new personality, accepting that you did something rather wonderful while remembering that you probably didn't do it entirely alone, and knowing when to share the good news -- and when the person in front of you might not need the extended edition.

So, when things go spectacularly right, here's how to enjoy your success without becoming completely unbearable.

Some of us can turn receiving a compliment into a surprisingly complicated affair. Tell us we were brilliant and we'll immediately point out the bit we messed up; say we look fantastic and we'll credit the lighting; congratulate us on a promotion and we'll explain that we were probably just lucky.

There comes a point when batting away every compliment stops looking like humility and starts requiring the other person to work remarkably hard to persuade us that we deserve the nice thing they've just said. And really, they shouldn't have to. A simple “Thank you, that means a lot” does the job beautifully, without the need to provide a list of everything that went wrong or identify the three people who could have done it better.

Accepting praise doesn't mean we've suddenly developed an enormous ego. Somebody has noticed something good about us and taken the trouble to say so, and allowing their compliment to land is gracious to them, too. After all, if we've worked hard for something and it has gone brilliantly, we're allowed to know that it did. There's quite a difference between recognizing our own achievement and expecting everybody else to spend the rest of the week recognizing it, too.

Please have the party. Open the champagne, order the enormous cake, call the person who has listened to you talk about this goal for the past three years and enjoy the glorious novelty of telling them that it actually happened.

Success deserves celebrating, particularly because life provides quite enough occasions when things don't go according to plan. There is no virtue in immediately rushing past an achievement towards the next target as though happiness must be kept on a strict timetable.

But there is a small difference between celebrating something and launching its publicity campaign. Your nearest and dearest may genuinely want the full story, including what your boss said, what you said, what everybody else said afterwards and the precise moment you realized you'd got it. The woman you last spoke to at a conference in 2019 probably doesn't require quite the same level of detail. Enjoying success doesn't become more legitimate because more people have witnessed it.

Now this one is dangerous -- especially in the world of social media. Lose 10 pounds and within a fortnight you may find yourself explaining carbohydrates to other adults. Get a promotion and suddenly you have Thoughts About Leadership. Your child sleeps through the night twice and the sheer relief and excitement makes it hard not to share with every exhausted parent whose baby appears to come alive in the small hours.

Success has a strange way of sometimes making our own experience feel unexpectedly universal. Of course, if somebody asks how you did it, share away. Your experience may be genuinely useful, and there is something generous about helping somebody else avoid the mistakes you made along the way.

But what worked for us isn't necessarily a formula everybody else has somehow failed to discover. Sometimes we worked hard. Sometimes we made good decisions. Sometimes circumstances fell beautifully into place. Usually, if we're truthful, success contains a mixture of all three.

One of the nicest things about people who love us is their ability to celebrate when something wonderful happens to us, even when life isn't being quite so generous to them. A friend can be genuinely delighted by our promotion while worrying about their own job, or thrilled that we've found love while still nursing a broken heart. Happiness for somebody else and sadness for ourselves can sit surprisingly comfortably alongside each other.

Being gracious means remembering that when we're bursting to share our news. There is no need to hide something wonderful or feel guilty because our moment happens to have arrived before somebody else's, but we can choose how we tell it. The friend struggling to conceive may appreciate hearing about a pregnancy privately rather than discovering it in a crowded room, while the colleague who has just missed out on a promotion probably doesn't need an immediate tour of our lovely new office.

Sometimes it is simply a question of noticing the person in front of us before launching into every glorious detail. They may want to hear the whole story, in which case we can happily provide it, but good news doesn't suffer from being delivered with a little sensitivity. If anything, being able to remain aware of somebody else's feelings while we're fizzing with our own happiness is one of the loveliest forms of grace.

Success tends to photograph one person rather well. There we are holding the diploma, standing beside the finished project, celebrating the promotion or clutching whatever object proves that something has gone splendidly right, while just beyond the frame is often an impressive supporting cast.

Perhaps a spouse listened to the same presentation so many times that they could now deliver it themselves. A parent stepped in with the children when deadlines became ridiculous, a colleague quietly picked up the slack, or a friend read an application for the 14th time and somehow still found something encouraging to say. Then there are the people who couldn't practically change anything but kept believing in us during the periods when our own confidence had apparently taken an extended holiday.

Remembering them doesn't make an achievement any less ours. We still did the work, took the risk, survived the difficult bits and earned the right to enjoy the result. It simply acknowledges that most success has fingerprints on it other than our own.

And while public thank-yous can be lovely, gratitude doesn't need an audience either. A private message, a bunch of flowers or simply telling somebody “I know how much you did to help me get here” can mean far more than tagging them beneath a celebratory post. The applause may belong to us for a moment, but graciousness remembers who was clapping long before everybody else joined in.

Of course, sharing good news is one of life's pleasures, and social media has made it wonderfully easy for people scattered across the world to celebrate with us. A graduation photograph can reach a grandparent hundreds of miles away, old friends can discover that the dream job finally happened, and within minutes an entire extended family can know that somebody has passed the exam everyone has been praying about.

The difficulty is that once we start sharing, it can be surprisingly hard to know where to stop. The photograph of the award is one thing; the screenshots of all the messages congratulating us on receiving it are another. A compliment that once would have left us glowing for the rest of the afternoon can now be photographed and redistributed so that everybody else can admire the fact that somebody admired us.

With social media woven so thoroughly into everyday life, keeping something to ourselves can almost feel unnatural. But there is something lovely about occasionally allowing praise to have an audience of one. The beautiful email can stay in our inbox, and in our hearts.

This isn't an argument for becoming mysteriously silent whenever something good happens. Share the photograph, tell people the news and enjoy the chorus of congratulations. Just remember that some of the nicest parts of success can belong only to us and the people closest to us, and keeping them there can make them feel more precious rather than less important.

There is another curious effect of having something wonderful happen: for a little while, our own news can become extremely interesting to us. This is entirely understandable, particularly when we've waited years for it, but the rest of the world has inconveniently continued having things happen too.

A friend may have received good news that doesn't come with a title or trophy. A child finally mastered something they've struggled with for months, a colleague produced a piece of work they're quietly proud of, or somebody simply got through a difficult week with more courage than anyone realizes. Success comes in different sizes, and one of the nicest ways to wear our own is to keep noticing everybody else's.

That can be especially important when our achievement is the most visible one in a family or group of friends. Asking about somebody else's news doesn't dim our moment, and celebrating their victories doesn't require us to climb down from ours. There is certainly room around the table for more than one bottle of champagne.

Finally, success can change many things. It might bring greater responsibility, new opportunities or recognition from people whose opinions matter to us, but it doesn't make us more valuable than we were the day before.

This is worth remembering not only because it keeps our feet on the ground when things are going brilliantly, but because success rarely travels in a straight line. The person being congratulated today may be dealing with rejection tomorrow, and neither experience gets to decide who they are.

For Christians, there is particular reassurance in knowing that human worth isn't something that has to be continually earned. The Catechism teaches that human dignity is rooted in being created in the image and likeness of God. It doesn't increase with applause or disappear when somebody else gets the prize. Seen that way, success can be enjoyed for what it is, without being asked to prove something about the person experiencing it.

Gratitude helps keep that perspective intact. Recognizing hard work can sit comfortably alongside thanking God for the opportunities that made it possible and remembering the people who helped along the way.

So when life goes spectacularly right, celebrate it wholeheartedly. Be proud, enjoy the congratulations and share the happiness with the people you love, while remembering that the person underneath all that success is exactly as valuable as they were before it arrived. And, ideally, just as nice to have dinner with -- perhaps over a glass (or two) of champagne!