Sometimes, it pays to stop and smell the roses. It might run counter to what you see in movies, but there are certainly reasons to stop and celebrate achievements in life. Stopping to look at how far we’ve come isn’t gluttonous self-glorifying. It’s an important step in our own self-development to be able to reflect on who we were and what we’ve become.
In this article, we’ll look at 5 awesome benefits you stand to gain by recognizing the good achievements in life.
1. Acknowledge Milestones
As the saying goes, “The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.” Big goals and huge accomplishments take time, and the only way to work through them is to break the process up into chunks. Acknowledging your achievements in life is a great way to promote transitions on your journey. We might think the key to achieving goals in life is to put our head down and grind it out, but pausing along the way is important, too.
By taking a step back to see how far you’ve come, you can take an honest assessment of your progress. Knowing where you are and what you still need to work on can help you be better in the future, which could help you get where you’re going faster.
If you find yourself struggling to stick with it, chunking your goals down like this could help. Identify what your long-term outcome is, then divide it up into actions or pockets of time that give you milestones along the way. Instead of focusing on the big picture, dial into what’s controllable now and tackle that.
2. Generate More Intrinsic Motivation
The journey to your greatest achievements in life is a long road. There are no shortcuts to anything truly worth accomplishing. In the end, it will be worth it, but the path there can feel lonely at times. Recognizing or coming up with examples of achievements in life is a good way to reduce that loneliness. You’ll feel more motivated and inspired by taking a moment to pause and celebrate how far you’ve come.
Did you know there are two forms of motivation?
Intrinsic motivation is a drive to do something that doesn’t have any obvious external “payoffs.” You’re driven to do it simply because you love or believe in it. While external drivers can be useful, having a clear sense of why you’re doing a thing helps you commit long-term.
Acknowledge your achievements to keep that candle burning inside of you. Or consider a small memento that’s meaningful to you, like a challenge coin, that can keep you going. A challenge coin is a coin that bears on organization’s logo or emblem and is carried by the organization’s members. Traditonally, they are proof of memembership in a group and help enhance morale. They are also means of building camaraderie.
3. Increased Productivity
Stopping to smell the roses might not “feel” productive. If you’re action-oriented and chasing success, stopping at all can be frustrating. But pausing for a minute can help you take several steps forward all at once. When we consider our greatest achievements in life and think about them, we’re able to dissect them. We can see what led us there or who we had to become to accomplish our goals. And that type of critical thinking then becomes useful in our other pursuits, too.
There is a rhythm to life that all of us succumb to. While we’re programmed to see life as one never-ending white-knuckled journey, it’s rarely that way.
In truth, life is more of a balance. It ebbs and it flows. Instead of trying to “force” life to become something it’s not—this is impossible, by the way—we can embrace these slower moments to regain strength and clarity about where we’ll go next.
4. Better Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the experience of your inner world put into words. When you’re able to conceptualize what’s going on around and inside you, good things happen. There’s less chaos to deal with and you’re better able to understand what drives you or excites you about life. It’s interesting to note that 95 percent of people believe they possess this inner trait. But studies show only around 10 to 15 percent of people can accurately assess their own inner world.
The truth is, many successful people lean on self-awareness. They avoid trends and fads in favor of what they know about themselves. Instead of relying on new-age tactics or shortcuts, they drive from a deeper place that allows them to see things others can’t.
Whether to give yourself an advantage, or just make the process more enjoyable, celebrating your achievements can give you this gift. It’s worth at least considering.
5. Feeling of Self-Worth
In some ways, you can look at personal achievements in a loop. We go out, slay the dragon (so to speak), then we come back and take stock of where we’re at.
Are we injured? Did we succeed? Could we have done better? These are all questions we ask ourselves along the way.
One trick that’s useful in terms of how to achieve great success in your life is to lean into this loop. At the end of a successful journey, come up with a few positive things you gained from the experience. Then, almost like a ritual, allow those things to meld into your identity or feelings of self-worth and carry them into your next task.
Celebrating Achievements in Life
There are so many reasons it’s important to celebrate achievements in life. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve accomplished your dream and just want to take stock of what you’ve done, or you have more ground you’d like to cover. Pausing to reflect can benefit you all the same.
Acknowledging your accomplishments can help generate motivation, drive you to shorter-outcomes that lead to the big prize, and increase inner traits like self-worth and self-awareness.
For more lifestyle tips on achievement and success, check out the rest of our blog.
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