Feeling accomplished is a vital part of feeling good about yourself, your abilities, and being proud of what you do. It’s the essence of why we do things and what we gain from our hard work. As fulfilling and great that feeling of accomplishment is, feeling unaccomplished can be just as enormous, in a negative way.
More often than not, you end your day thinking about all these hours you worked and yet you wrap up your work day with the feeling that things were left unaccomplished. It’s a pretty horrible feeling. And that’s just the effect of one day. If you end work feeling unaccomplished 3 out of 5 days in a week, it’ll weigh heavy on you. It’ll break down your confidence, morale, and motivation. Pretty soon you’ll wrap yourself around that miserable feeling of hopelessness and start belittling and demeaning your abilities. It’s a sad place to be in.
So, how do you end the day feeling accomplished, confident, and brimming with excitement for what’s to come tomorrow? Try these 4 ways to help you get by your day.
1. Celebrate Little Milestones
The unfortunate result of feeling unaccomplished is that you’ll question everything you did today. The more you think about not meeting your goals you’ll feel you wasted your time, ran around in circles, and just didn’t get things done. But you know that’s not true. You did get some things done. It wasn’t as if you sat at your desk twiddling your thumbs, sipping tea, and swatting flies. No, you did get some work in. You were productive, even if it wasn’t up to your standard or potential.
Rather than feeling hopelessly unaccomplished, look back at what you did so. Did you reach 80% of a task? Did you complete 45% of a report? Great! You managed to get this far, right? It wasn’t all at zero. So, grab whatever little victory you can. Though you did not complete these tasks or projects, you made progress and took steps forward. Celebrating little milestones will help boost your morale and confidence. Do this frequently and you’ll soon find yourself reaching 100% completion (most days).
2. It’s Not About Them, It’s About You
Feeling accomplished is a subjective and relative term. It means different things to different people and there’s no one way to measure it or weigh it. Feeling accomplished is so closely tied to our needs, desires, ambitions, and drivers that it becomes a personal feat. It seldom is equal for everyone. One person’s feeling of accomplishment could very easily be someone else’s walk in the park or something they checked off years ago.
Once you understand that your accomplishments aren’t comparable or measurable to anyone else’s, you’ll realize that there’s no reason for you to benchmark your personal success with someone else’s. and with this realization, you’ll stop beating yourself down for not being able to accomplish things. You may not have been able to do what others did, but you did something that no one else could do – you accomplished YOUR goals.
3. Set a Them of the Day
You know how there’s an overarching resolution that we all we come up with for the year? It sets a theme for us to aspire for, drives us in a particular direction, and keeps us improving ourselves. In some ways, it’s our purpose for the year. Resolutions are great. However, they’re often too broad and require the course of the year to complete and reach the point of feeling accomplished.
What happens during the year even as you strive for that resolution? You end up feeling unaccomplished on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. So let’s break it down by setting a theme of the day for yourself. These could be simple, easy to achieve, and even repeated. Things like “make 5 people smile today”, or “suggest two new initiatives this week”. It could also be as simple as a one word “gentle” or “kindness” that can drive you towards feeling accomplished. These are the little “feel-good” themes that can help you get a quick burst of feeling accomplished. Think of it as a caffeine hit from a shot of espresso!
4. Appreciate and Value Yourself
Quite often when we’re feeling unaccomplished we beat ourselves with guilt, feeling inadequate, and sometimes even doubt our capabilities. We dwell too long on what we didn’t do, how we could have done things better, recounting our mistakes, and simply overanalyzing all that’s negative. Honestly, you’ll find yourself pondering on the negatives far [sic] much longer than is healthy for you. And that’s precisely the trap.
Stop here and think about yourself – who you are, why you’re here, what it took for you to reach this far in life, and all the awesome strengths and capabilities you have. Yes, when you’re feeling unaccomplished, it’s time to stop everything and appreciate and value yourself. You are capable, hence, why you have the job or career that you love and enjoy doing. You can do it, hence why you’re still employed and valued as a team member. Now that you’ve pumped yourself up, divert your focus on what you need to do to start feeling accomplished again, and get cracking on them.
“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” – Edward Everett Hale
© Paul Keijzer . All Rights Reserved.