Change Your Outlook, Acknowledge Your Success

Have you ever had a day when it seems like the stars are perfectly aligned for you? I had one of those days this past Friday and it was absolutely brilliant. Everything managed to fall into place and a number of people offered some much needed support to make the day successful. It did get me thinking however. My initial reaction was “what a stroke of luck, thank goodness things happened that way.” But upon reflection I realized that there really was no luck involved in the day. Friends stepped up to help out because I had done the same for them many times before. I was offered a project for my business because I had established a track record and proven my worth. My reaction of “wow, what luck” diminished the work and my own capabilities that had led to a great day.

How many of us do this on a regular basis? Diminish ourselves and our work and brush it off as luck? As it turns out, a whole bunch of us do. There have been numerous articles written about Impostor Phenomenon and a study from 2011 asserts that “…it is estimated that 70% of people will experience at least one episode of this Impostor Phenomenon in their lives.” The person dealing with Impostor Phenomenon can be summarized as an individual who attributes the success in their life to external factors and internalizes the failures within their life; they experience some degree of fear at being discovered as an intellectual fraud. They may tend to discount their success if its not a match to the ideal standard that they’ve envisioned for themselves. As well they may discount the success that comes with hard work, placing greater value on innate skills or conversely they may just attribute success to luck.

Some have asserted that there is a correlation between the Impostor Syndrome and success, as it drives a cycle of ambition. Anxiety over failure leads to hard work and preparation, leading to success, leading to positive feedback which is then discounted, leading to the next task that will prove capability and debunk fraudulent feelings and so on.

However, a cycle of ambition based on fraudulent feelings doesn’t feel like an ideal long-term approach to managing a career or life. So how does one manage the fine balance of accepting one’s role in the successes in life without tripping too far over the other side of the line to self-serving bias? (This is the tendency to externalize blame for failures, internalize success and have difficulty separating success from serendipity). In thinking through this I’ve come up with a list to shift my own mindset and thought I'd share:

1. Acknowledge Success – accept that you’ve had some part in your own success and that hard work counts just as much as innate skills.
2. Reinforce and Reward – create a reminder for yourself of your positive accomplishment; journal, tweet, text, buy a celebratory token, whatever works for you but the point is recognizing it in yourself.
3. Be Proud but Humble – for me, part of the unwillingness to acknowledge is not wanting to be seen as boastful but I think there is a balance between openly showboating and feeling an internal sense of pride in accomplishments. Find that balance and try to stay on the side of humble.
4. Learn from Failure – the point of this post is about owning both your successes and failures, so ensure that in your process of acknowledging, you identify what can be learned from the failures along the way.

Pride is a powerful motivational force. Back in 2003, Jon Katzenbach wrote in his book, “Why Pride Matters More Than Money”, about how “a powerful closed loop of energy links pride to workforce performance and business success.” While his book was about the motivational force of pride on an organization to create greater corporate success, the concept still holds on an individual level as well. That is, one can imagine a virtuous circle on a personal level; achieve a positive result, acknowledge your own role in the achievement, sense of personal pride increases, confidence and willingness to take on new challenges also increases, move onto the next challenge and so on.

My thinking on this was reinforced while watching a video of a commencement address given by Naval Admiral William H. McRaven to the 2014 graduating class at University of Texas. In the speech, the distinguished and much decorated former Navy SEAL shared his life lessons for success and his very first lesson was “Make Your Bed.” His reasoning behind this being life lesson number one? “You will have accomplished the first task of the day, it will give you a small sense of pride and encourage you to take on bigger tasks…” His point reinforces this post and describes a closed loop of task completion, internalizing success, taking pride in the accomplishments (no matter how small), and moving on to the next challenge.

So pat yourself on the back for the things you’ve done, acknowledge misses, keep moving forward and create the next cycle of success.

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Leah Parkhill-Reilly is a results-oriented human resources consultant and freelance writer. She is an adept communicator, coach and partner. For more information go to www.parkhillreilly.com or get in touch with her via Twitter @consultantleah or email [email protected] 

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