So Well Deserved

The Hotpot | December 2025 | By Lisanne

16.12

Few phrases feel as genuine when someone shares good news.

“Congratulations” works when someone flips a coin and wins or hits a lucky strike at a poker game. A random stroke of fortune. It’s polite, common, and often reflexive. It works for luck. But “well-deserved” carries a little more weight.

It honors the effort, the time, the risk someone took to get there. It acknowledges the invisible hours no one saw you put in.

It feels more personal, and a bit more intimate—because you’re not celebrating the outcome, you’re celebrating the person that created it.

What’s fascinating is that we have some say in the prizes we pursue. Some rewards are governed by chance. Others are reached through deliberate effort.

Not everything can be “well-deserved”. But chasing the kind of outcomes that earn a “well deserved” tend to feel more meaningful than spinning the wheel again and again, hoping for luck to land in our favor.

Thank you for reading! The journal prompt of today:

Which goals are you chasing for approval, and which ones feel genuinely earned?

Let me know in the comments.

Curious to see more reflections like this? Click through to see the rest of the series on success. I’d love to hear what resonates with you.