Recognising your own achievements

Although we can often be quick to recognise and give value to other people’s achievements, it can feel much more difficult to do this for ourselves. For example, if you give yourself a list of six things to do in a day and you get through five, would you be satisfied with the five, or would you give yourself a hard time for not completing the remaining one? 

I am willing to bet that for many, the focus will be on what hasn’t been done, rather than what has. Yet that to-do list never really disappears, does it? There is always more to do each day. If the end of the road can never be reached, then why do we worry so much about not reaching it, rather than turning around sometimes to see how far along the road we have come?

In this article, I want to discuss the importance of recognising our achievements and celebrating ourselves for who and what we are, rather than berating ourselves for who and what we are not. I also want to acknowledge that in writing this, I am aware of my own challenge in celebrating myself. There is something that just doesn’t feel very British or Irish about it… minimising achievements and even self-deprecation feels a much more familiarly trodden path.

Self-deprecation as a way of minimising our achievements can be very common. Trying to avoid being seen as arrogant can lead to self-sabotage, putting ourselves down in case we are accused of getting “too big for our boots”. As well as being aware of this at times in my own life, I have also had clients share their own experiences of this struggle with me, often feeling they need to hold back how they really feel to protect themselves from the negative judgement that might follow.

How can we show confidence and pride in what we have done and who we are, without being thought of as arrogant? For me, these are very different things. Confidence comes from an internal place – it is what we believe within ourselves. Arrogance is more concerned with the external – it comes from a place of how we want others to view us (and often this is not how we really feel about ourselves at all). Arrogance is a way of filling a hole of insecurity within us with external validation. It is inauthentic. Confidence feels like the opposite of this, allowing us to be our authentic selves. If we can learn to connect more to our true sense of self, then not only will we find this authenticity, but it will shine out of us for others to also see.

When we consider how to recognise and value our achievements, finding a way to redefine some of our perceived failures can also be important. An exercise I have worked on with several clients is to ask them to reflect on their past and see if they can find examples of an occasion where they believed they had failed. This could be anything, with some examples including a work project or the end of a relationship. I then asked the client to consider if each of these ‘failures’ resulted in a negative outcome for their life or if the experience led them to a positive outcome.

Each client I have tried this exercise with was able to redefine a past failure and see it as a stepping stone to future success. Seeing a failure as part of a bigger picture helps to remove the power that this isolated moment may hold, minimising its significance and impact.

Dwelling on perceived failure and building up its significance can keep us in a box of our own creation and limit us in pursuing new ambitions and goals. The fear of failure can feel more powerful than the hope of success. But how many of the most successful people in the world got to where they are without several ‘failures’ along the way? By allowing ourselves to risk failure, we also allow ourselves the possibility to learn and build toward future success.

One of the ways I believe we can move past the failures that may be holding us back is by letting go of self-blame and embracing self-compassion. As a therapist, sometimes one of the most helpful things I can do for a client is to get out of their way. There are times we also need to get out of our own way by being kind to ourselves and understanding of our challenges and imperfections.

The next time you have a list of six things to do and you get through five, or four, or less, I wonder if you can find a way to turn down that voice inside that wants to criticise and find the failure and turn up the voice that can recognise the effort and the success. Within that voice is pride, value and self-worth. Not arrogance, but confidence and authenticity.