Celebrating success

When was the last time you gave yourself a metaphorical high five? When you had a proper think about what you did well, achieved or managed to accomplish through your hard work?

Interesting, isn't it, that most of us (well, speaking personally!) quite often focus on things that we could have done better, maybe didn't go to plan, or where we let a ball drop and something failed. It's not a bad thing to think about these things, after all, failure at something is often a lesson in how not to do it next time... in an ideal world anyway.

I wonder why it's less easy to think about what went well, or even just went OK? Maybe our busy brains just gloss over these things and land on the negative stuff because they are more memorable. I mean no one celebrates loading the dishwasher without breaking anything but everyone would remember dropping their favourite mug and being disappointed they were rushing.

So I've got a challenge for you - write yourself a list of five things that you have been good at today, yesterday, a few days before. It can be something you've 'done', or something you have 'been'. So you might want to write down "I was a really good friend today because...", or "I wanted to give up on that task, but I didn't and I'm proud of myself", or "I absolutely nailed my English essay and am really proud of my B grade", or "I was so frustated with my daughter/sibling/mum but I didn't lose my temper even though I wanted to".

Write your successes down and give yourself permission for the pat on the back. I bet once you got going you found loads of things you've done well. Let them cheer you up and give you confidence in your abilities.

I'm off to write my list now - the first one is going to be "Even though it was late I eventually wrote my Phase blog and I'm pleased with it".

Have a great day everyone!

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