Recognising your achievements and building confidence

With the ever-increasing sense of needing to achieve, and have this externally validated, we have unwittingly created a drive to achieve the unachievable.

From the star chart, at a very early age - in my opinion, this has a lot to answer for in teaching people how to seek external validation. To the pen passport at school, you can't use a pen until you have passed a certain level of success in your handwriting. Our children, for decades, have been conditioned to constantly improve as a measure of success.

The trouble with this is that life just doesn't happen this way. Life isn't a constant smooth trajectory of improvement - it is more like a bumpy squiggle of ups and downs, sometimes we are winning, sometimes stagnant and sometimes going downhill. This can create an unrealistic expectation of life and create compare and despair to the unrealistic expectations of life, achievement and success.

Teaching children, who then become adults, that it is 'normal' to constantly improve is simply setting them up for unrealistic expectations of self and life; fear of failure when they realise they can't constantly improve.

Without an exit strategy, this can be a difficult loop to escape. 

Actionable habits to escape this cycle

An easy to implement escape strategy is to do the following, daily, so that it becomes a healthy habit and thus breaking the cycle and the sense of being trapped.

• Each morning, write 3-5 things that you are looking forward to that day - no matter how small - having a shower counts, getting out of the house does too!
• Each evening, write 3-5 things that you did with a sense of confidence and/or calmness, or times when you felt relaxed - no matter how small or apparently insignificant, in fact, the small stuff matters more than the big stuff.
• Each day, write 3-5 things that you are proud of yourself for, the small stuff counts here too.

To begin with, this may seem difficult, this is very common. Stick with it as it gets easier with practice, like any skill - remember how hard you had to work to learn times-tables, ride a bike, tie your shoe-laces, drive a car?

As adults, we often perceive that we 'should' be able to learn things quickly or know how to keep ourselves on track for life. But this isn't necessarily the case.

Make sure you read what you have written often, perhaps you could reflect on it weekly. Once you have established the habit, you can add to this, if it is beneficial for you to do so.

And for those who want to take it to the next level of a more compassionate way of continually becoming the best version of you:

• Each week write down three of the weeks' wins and three ways you will improve next week.

Remember that compassion is the key and to make sure that you look at all areas of your life that are important to you.

Our minds will do whatever we do most often, better, quicker and more efficiently. Training your mind to see the positive in everything you achieve will help counter the negative beliefs that have been previously exercised too much.