the self-highfive

The highfive is a greeting that is greatly under utilized and I think it’s due for a comeback. Rather than starting meetings or introductions with a handshake, wouldn’t it be more fun to highfive? No death grips to deal with, no limp hand syndrome, or excessively moist palms.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because of a conversation I had last night about a little thing I do called “the self-highfive.” Now I’m not talking about literally highfiving yourself because that would just be clapping, and there’s nothing particularly cool about that.

The self-highfive is more of a mental highfive, rather than an actual action. I like to flash back to myself when I was 16 years old and think about just that little sliver of my life. I try to imagine an exact moment, on a specific day and what I was probably wearing, what I was probably doing, how I was probably feeling. By then I was working almost everyday in the very prestigious job of Sales Floor Associate at Target. My little sister was just a baby then. My step-father was drifting in and out of sobriety. My mother was battling depression and would be in bed for weeks. My older sister was long gone. I was in an elite, private all girls high school where my hand-me-down clothes and multi-colored ’86 Pontiac Sunbird didn’t quite fit in.

When I look at that sliver of my life, I think it would have been more appropriate for that person to end up as a drug addict in some abandoned building somewhere. Day after day I only ever had one thought… just wait until I turn 18. I would think it over and over and over. It became a mantra for me.

So the self-highfive is really more of a divestiture of self. It’s the present me going back to the 16 year old me and saying, “I got us out of there girl! Highfive!”

It’s my reality check on those days when I’m frustrated by things that are so small in comparison to what the 16 year old me was dealing with. It’s also my own private internal celebration for what I have and what I’ve done. The self-highfive should be more widely embraced. Everyone needs to just take a moment, step back, and congratulate themselves.