Let’s brag about – your achievements

You may not believe it but we all achieve a lot in life. Small and not-so-small victories are a part of our daily routine but we rarely stop to reflect on them and almost never to celebrate them.

If we are individuals whose vision is to influence and transform young people lives, and yet we don’t stop to celebrate our own achievements, how do we expect young people to learn to cherish their own accomplishments? How do we expect them to feel confident enough to sell their skills and achievements to potential employers?

We have been raised to think that bragging about ourselves is not appropriate, but I truly believe that there are certain occasions such as the end of the academic year where celebrating our achievements is absolutely necessary for our personal and professional development.

Here are 5 reasons WHY we should celebrate achievements:

• To feel good about ourselves so that our self-esteem and confidence can increase
• So we can actually note them down in order to update our CV, present them to employers, persuade a boss to give us a pay raise, pitch to investors, or sell better to customers
• To realise what skills we have gained so that we can check whether our growth and development is going in the right direction
• To realise our recipe for success and to simply repeat over and over again these effective steps that enable us to consistently achieve
• To inspire and motivate others. At the end of the day we are a community and thrive because of others

If after reading the above list, you feel that you would like to spend a little bit of time to celebrate your own achievements, remember that the first step is to identify them!  Here is a list of inspirational suggestions to get your mind going.

Look back in time &:

• Make a list of things that were potentially challenging for you but that you would not take out of your year
• Think of “yourself- a year ago” and “yourself- today” and write a list of the things that have changed as a result of your actions
• Make list of all moments when you felt proud. What did you do?
• Make a list of advice you would give to others in relation to your successes
• Note down all the things that went just right

Great! Now you can have a glass of champagne or cup of coco to celebrate and put the list in a draw, never look at it again and then trash it when emptying the draw for spring cleaning….

NO! To make the list of real value, evaluate each achievement with these questions:

• How did you achieve it?
• Was there anything special about your actions?
• Can you identify any patterns that you could repeat in similar settings?

IMPORTANT! To actually write something down and then reflect on it, you need to remember that success comes in many forms and sizes. Life is just not that simple that we can start doing something and achieve the envisioned end-result straight away. Therefore, it is important to celebrate even the small steps that we take in the right direction.

If you are working with young people on developing Employability Skills, I would love to hear what successes and achievements that you have had. Please leave a comment below and tell us the best achievement of the last year. Who knows – you may provide some much needed inspiration to others!

Written by K Mitura