The power of naming your greatest accomplishments

“Feel the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you.”
– Unwritten, Natasha Bedingfield

Let’s face it. Even those of us that reflect on the daily, don’t reflect enough. Sure, you might reflect upon the day. What you’re thankful for. What you’re looking forward to. How you’re going to overcome those obstacles set to come your way in the future. But we don’t reflect enough on what makes us who we are. What makes us motivated to continue being who we are in the future.

Even a 2010 Kesha recognized it. Although she stylized it horribly – ‘We R Who We R’. Kesha speaks to letting your freak flag fly and being yourself. Natasha Bedingfield takes that one step further and speaks to the fact that you should actively feel the world around you, as no one else can feel it for you. Identifying who we R stems in large part from our experiences in life. But I don’t just want to know what makes me who I am. I want to know what makes me the best me.

One of the best ways to do that is to reflect upon the experiences that have allowed us to be at our very best. This is where I think it’s incredibly valuable to reflect upon your greatest accomplishments.

A few weeks ago, I had a blast facilitating a confidence workshop for grade 5-6 leaders. Activities included an affirmation scavenger hunt, a group merry-go-round compliment fest that resulted in everyone crying (especially me), and what I’m calling an ‘accomplishment audit.’

As part of that accomplishment ‘audit’ (love alliteration), I had each of them reflect upon their greatest accomplishments. You might expect grade 5-6’s to say superficial things that won’t matter much to them in years time. But these are no ordinary grade 5-6’s. They spoke about genuine moments in their life that they worked toward. Achievements that have only come through dedication over a number of years, and through building several different skills leading up to their goal.

Not only was this beautiful for me to see. It was powerful for them. Recognizing, naming, and listing our own accomplishments is one of the best exercises you can do for recognizing what makes you ‘you’ – and why you’re so spectacular. Why you’re way cooler than you might think. Why you might even already be a superhero.

First, it helps us to always have something in our back-pocket that we can point to anytime we feel like we’re not good enough. If you don’t already, you should hold those accomplishments with a higher level of importance and meaning than anything you might not like. They don’t erase our supposed faults. But they should supersede them. This could be a helpful way to reframe and challenge negative thoughts, serving as reminders of why the opposite from the negative might be true.

For example, I often had a defeatist mindset in 2023 speaking about my constant “bad luck”. But now I just remind myself how lucky I was to get a teaching gig at a university at age 25, and suddenly I realize I can be pretty dang lucky when I work hard to achieve my goals. Our accomplishments can serve as wonderful reminders for why our faults might be fiction.

But it’s also a powerful exercise for the sake of recognizing what we hold near and dear to our hearts. If you write down your greatest accomplishments right now, you might be surprised to find ones that have escaped your brain for years.

You might be surprised to find ones you would not have considered if someone asked you the question in person. These accomplishments are important to recognize, as we can work to bring out more of those moments in our lives.

For example, one of the students said “being part of the bus patrol”. They love the leadership role they get to have in helping organize younger kids onto the bus. How can we create more opportunities now where we can have other leadership roles at the school? Maybe we can ask the teachers what they need help with. Maybe we can check out which clubs or programs at the school need additional support. Now that we know that the leadership roles are what our friend finds valuable, we can work to help her take on more leadership roles in the future.

When speaking to some of my greatest accomplishments, it’s mostly the things I’m currently doing in my life – having set up my life in a way to optimize the intrinsic value I feel with every moment. But it’s also what I accomplished with TMS and the soccer world surrounding my site. How can I now work to bring out similar feelings? Maybe I want to do the same with my work on this site. That’s something I can now chase from the recognition of how strongly I feel about this – naming it as one of my all-time greatest accomplishments.

So if you haven’t done so in a while, I want you to reflect upon your greatest accomplishments in life, and put pen to paper in writing them down. Feel the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you.

In doing so, you might surprise yourself. You might even come away with new learnings about where you want to prioritize your time and where you want to go next.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!