How to feel your achievements (and not your mistakes)

In this post, I introduce a powerful tool to help you assess what you need to feel great about what you’ve achieved, as well take a quick dive into what may be limiting your ability to actually feel those feelings.

The three things you need to feel accomplished

During a recent all-day ‘Brain Intensive’ workshop from the amazing anti-procrastination coach Cristina Roman, she introduced the accomplishment triad. I’ve summed up some key points here.

It starts with the definition of achievement from YourDictionary.com:

”an achievement is something that is accomplished particularly by great effort, courage, or special skills.”

Therefore, to feel accomplished, you need three things:

• Effort — are you putting in the hours?

• Courage – are you putting yourself out there?

• Skill – do you have the expertise to do this effectively?

Be sure to watch Cristina's 9-minute video for an in-depth look at the accomplishment triad.

Three questions to challenge your thinking

For any project or task you are working on at the moment, ask yourself the following:

1. Which area of the accomplishment triangle do I need more of?

2. Which is my comfort area, my go-to part of the triangle which usually helps me with the others?

3. And how can I leverage my strengths and my values to increase follow-through in all areas, and especially where I need it most?

That’s all great, but what if still don’t feel good about what I’ve achieved?

There might be a limit on how good you allow yourself to feel. If you are stuck in a perfectionism-imposter loop, have automatic negative thoughts, or other kinds of limiting beliefs, you may be more accustomed to feeling your mistakes rather than your achievements. There’s a way out of this.

Feel your achievements, not your mistakes

Sometimes you might unconsciously place a limit on how good you allow yourself to feel about the work you’ve done. This is a defensive strategy, to protect yourself from feeling fear. Fear of failure, or fear of success.

This looks like…

• fixating on mistakes you’ve made (even when you’ve received recognition for a job well done)

• making yourself small or not visible, thereby limiting the impact you could make

• not sharing your great work with others

• waiting until it’s too late to matter

• not presenting your best self

• or not showing up at all

When you focus on your mistakes instead of your achievements, you undermine your opportunity to feel good. To feel accomplished.

If you are stuck in loops and negative thought patterns, every peak of the accomplishment triangle feels like an impossible mountain to climb. Here’s why:

• You are wasting all your energy on overthinking, worrying and self-soothing instead of putting it into the effort needed to achieve the goal.

• You are doubting your worthiness, ruminating on what others will think, and engaging in perfectionism instead of mustering the courage to put yourself and your work out there.

• You are not honing the skills needed to do your best work. In fact, you are making it much harder to learn those skills, because your busy brain is focussing on managing your thoughts instead of integrating new knowledge and practicing the craft.

Then of course, you judge yourself for all of this. All of this is time you waste, every single day.

It’s time to break these patterns. It’s time to get out of your own way.

If you could claim back even just 1 hour each day to focus on effort, courage, or skill, where would you invest those 7 weekly hours? Would you use it to finish your projects and give yourself a stress-free weekend? Would you build your confidence, so that you could put yourself and your ideas out there? Or would you skill up, and spend it honing your craft so that you could earn more money and create better opportunities for yourself?

Send me a message and let me know how you would rather spend your hours wasted on overthinking. I’ll reply with tips and insights just for you!