By Susan Ford Collins
Highly Successful People (HSPs) make time each day to tell themselves what they’re accomplishing. They’ve developed the first and most essential Success Skill: Instead of waiting for other people to acknowledge them, they make time each day to acknowledge themselves. They set aside a few minutes usually on their way home or sitting up in bed to notice the successes they had that day so they can build and rebuild their Self-Confidence, their joy and enthusiasm. Their zest for life!
BIG successes are composed of millions of tiny successes.
In fact, many of our successes are usually overlooked. But actually, eating a good breakfast, stopping to buy gas, or remembering to return a phone call can make the difference between dozing off in an important meeting, coming in conspicuously and embarrassingly late, or missing out on a time-sensitive opportunity and moving ahead.
HSP don’t expect to reach their goals in one giant leap. They realize they'll reach their goals by taking millions of tiny actions, and making millions of tiny corrections. Acknowledging their daily successes and their teams’, at home and at work, is something HSP do consistently.
Once the "we need for your leader to tell us what to do when" phase of learning is over, we need to take responsibility for building, and rebuilding the Self-Confidence we need to be productive and competitive, to be self-confident enough to become creative and innovative. To change our world, and others' worlds. To play our vital part in history.
But along the way we probably developed habits that are now holding us back ! Why?
1- Most of us didn’t see people around us… parents, teachers and other adults we knew… setting making time to acknowledge themselves for the tiny steps they were taking. In fact, we probably didn’t even know what their goals and dreams were because they rarely shared them with us!
2- Many of the successes we created for ourselves, “our successes”, may have been seen by parents and teachers as" failures"… failures to obediently use their rules and methods. Failures to live “the dreams they had in mind for us."
"Our successes" may have been forbidden or punished. Or allowed only after we did so many things their way that we stopped wanting to do them. To earn the freedom and rewards that we needed, we learned to do what they wanted us to do, according to their standards. And they gave us stars and allowances, threw parties and “bonused” us. But our successes were delayed or unfulfilled
We spent our early years depending on others to tell us when we were succeeding and failing. So Other-Confidence became a habit… an unconscious lifelong approach most of us don’t even know we have! But one that means we rarely feel happy and satisfied. Bottom line, it’s the reason we rarely feel The Joy of Success… our success, our way.
HSPs make time to have self-to-self, truth-telling conversations… I said I would and I did. I said I would and I didn’t. I said I would and I still want to, or I don't want to anymore. Deletion Successes are important too. On good days Success Filing builds are self-confidence. On bad days... when negative feedback or unexpected setbacks may shatter our dreams into a million pieces...instead of getting stuck there, they rebuild their self-confidence themselves.
Regularly building and rebuilding their Self-Confidence (and others’… “you did great, that was a success!) empowers them to feel they can do the impossible (which they know simply means “not done yet but might be done tomorrow.”) Then, re-confident and re-inspired, instead of avoiding taking action, they move themselves and others ahead into the dream, into the realized and enjoyed!
Build your Self-Confidence now… start Success Filing.
Starting today, set aside a few minutes to “file” your successes. How? Spend a few minutes mentally rewinding to the beginning of your day. I sat up in bed and planned my day, I went for a run. I helped my kids learn their spelling words. I stopped to get the dry cleaning. I had an idea for a new approach that I shared in a meeting. What happened today step by step?
You can record your successes on paper, in a computer file or on your cell phone. Good times to Success File are in the car to work and home, at dinner time, and right before you go to sleep. Stop to rethink and reexperience your day and “pat yourself on the back” for completing actions that moved you in directions you want to go… phone calls, emails, or when you accidentally bumped into someone in the hall, you seized the opportunity to ask a question you had. Or you put two and two together and, instead of four, you got something brand new and realized what you could do with it others had missed.
Highly Successful People redefine Success for themselves. For them, Success has three essential parts… Completion, Deletion, and Creation.
When you’re Success Filing, be sure to include not just actions you completed but also actions you decided to delete... old limits and impossibilities, unworkable relationships and methods. As you are filing past successes, you can also file future successes… ones you want to create and experience. Ones that will inspire you and inspire others. And give you all joy!
(c) Susan Ford Collins. For permission to use this article, email susanfordcollins@msn.com.
* For more on Self-Confidence, read Skill 1 in The Joy of Success and Our Children Are Watching.
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