A is for Accomplishments!

Accomplishment, recognition, and achievement are all ways of boosting self esteem. 

We feel good when we accomplish a goal that we have set for ourselves. Research shows that our mental health improves with accomplishments - as we feel pride, we have a sense of purpose in the world, and we have uncovered or nurtured a personal strength.

The size of the accomplishment is irrelevant; the important part is what it means to us. Accomplishments are relative; they must be relevant to us personally to be able to build our self esteem. We need to take our abilities into account when measuring our accomplishments - measuring everyone in the same way is harmful to some people's mental health, as they feel inadequate compared to others.

Think of it like physical fitness - someone who runs 5 miles every day would think nothing of running for 20 minutes. But for someone who has not exercised in several months, this would be a huge accomplishment!

Similarly, something like getting up and going out the door in the morning may seem like nothing to people with good mental health, but for someone with a mental illness like depression or anxiety, this is a massive accomplishment because that illness is working against them.

Changing our perspective on what accomplishment means is key to recognising the progress that we are making for ourselves.

Accomplishment in life is not about winning or losing, or passing or failing - it is about learning and growing. Every single experience that we have, regardless of the final outcome, teaches us something and helps us to grow as a person.

Many goals that we set for ourselves (or that other people set for us) are toxic to our mental health, because quite often these goals are only concerned with the end result.

This isn't to say that big accomplishments and good end results aren't great, because they definitely are, but there are so many small accomplishments and improvements that happen along the way that build our abilities, skills and strengths, so limiting the measure of our success to the end result undermines the journey that we make during an experience.

When we recognise those smaller accomplishments along the way, and how much those accomplishments help us to grow, this makes things feel more worthwhile and actually help us to succeed more as we strive to keep that chain of small accomplishments going, and this paves the way to bigger accomplishments.

Exercises and activities to try:

Track your accomplishments: Start to list your accomplishments for yourself  - you can do this in a diary, on your calendar or in a notebook. Each day, write down something that you accomplished. It can be anything that feels like you achieved something, whether it is small or big; waking up on time, handing in an assignment, running a marathon!.

Anything that you feel good about from your day, write it down! This helps you to see that you are accomplishing small things every day, and shows you that you are growing as a person. Being able to write down several accomplishments in a day feels great, and this encourages you to keep going and strive to accomplish more!

A gift for the week: This is a great activity to try with your family or friends.  Gather everyone together in a circle and give everyone an envelope to write their name on. Then give everyone 7 pieces of paper. Everyone passes the envelopes around the circle, and for each envelope you get, you put in a positive message for the person who owns the envelope about something they have accomplished, or that they should be proud of.

The ideal number of people for this activity is 8, but it can work with fewer people, you just have to put more than 1 message in each envelope. The aim is for each person to get their own envelope back with 7 positive messages in it, and they can go away and read one note per day. This can highlight accomplishments that we didn't notice ourselves, and also bring us a renewed sense of pride from the accomplishments that are written down!