Celebrate your achievements!

This post is part of a 14 ways to help rebuild self-confidence series.  We are working our way through the letters of SELF CONFIDENCE with this week’s focus being on the second C in Confidence.  Previously covered are Self Compassion & Self Care; 10 Ways to Enjoy your Life; Learning, Love & Laughter; Finding your passion & your happy place; Clear your schedule of activities that don’t serve you; Open-Minded – The way to go and the way to grow!; Neutralise Your Inner Critic & Self-Doubter; Face Your Fears, Imagine, Visualize and Believe, Define your goals, Embrace Gratitude, and Network with others.

Have you ever noticed how we always seem to be STRIVING.  Striving to achieve.  Striving to reach a goal.  Striving to do better.  Striving to impress.  Striving to feel better about ourselves.  Striving to lose weight.  Striving to get fitter.  Striving to eat healthy.  Striving for success.  Striving to keep up with competitors.  Striving to be noticed.  The list goes on!  It can be exhausting!!  Not only that but during all this striving, we forget to notice our achievements let alone celebrate them!  We can tend to focus way too much on what we have not yet achieved or what we perceive as our shortcomings or failures.  This can create a skewed perspective of ourselves and that negative inner critic that we all have can get a bit big for its boots!

We need to celebrate our achievements!  Why?  Here’s some reasons why:

• It will help to keep you motivated and energized
• It will increase positive emotions such as self-respect, a gratifying sense of achievement, happiness, and self-confidence
• It will give that inner critic a good kick to the curb and help us gain a more balanced perspective of ourselves
• It’s a great way to see how far you’ve come and to help plan for the future

How should we celebrate our achievements?

How we celebrate our achievements is up to the individual. It may also depend on the type and size of achievement.  Here’s some ideas:

• Dinner out with friends or family
• A weekend away
• A pampering treat – manicure, pedicure, facial, massage etc.
• Buy yourself a treat
• Just take a moment and speak some kind words to yourself, praise yourself, congratulate yourself!
• You could even do as the image above suggests – go for a walk on the beach (or somewhere else out in beautiful nature), or take a picnic rug and some champagne, alone or with friends – enjoy nature, enjoy a sunset, jump for joy, breathe and soak it all in!
• Create an achievement journal if journaling is your thing.  I read about this – you note each success, no matter how small and give yourself gold stars. As you continue to grow and accomplish more and more goals, you’ll be able to periodically look back through your journal to reflect on all that you’ve learned and accomplished.

So take a pause from your constant striving now and then and rather than dwelling on what you haven’t yet achieved, why not recognize the value of all that you have accomplished, and then reward yourself with one of the suggestions above, or one of your own ideas. In the end, it’s not the size of the celebration that counts, what’s important is acknowledging that you are growing, doing your best, and creating your best life.

Are you an avid striver?  You might like to also visit this post I wrote about the Mindfulness Attitude of Non-Striving.  When was the last time you celebrated your achievements?

Ciao for now,

Linking up with Kylie Purtell for #IBOT