I Have Something to Tell You...

You’re amazing!

Really you are. I just thought I should tell you.

If I asked you to list all of your faults, shortcomings and mistakes. You wouldn’t miss a beat, you’d start rattling them off immediately. If I asked you to write them down, you could fill pages.

Yet, if I asked you to list all of your strengths and successes, you’d pause for a second. Then when you finally did begin to speak, you wouldn’t be speaking for long. You wouldn’t start scribbling furiously like you did when I asked you to write out your successes either and your list would be a lot shorter.

We live rather intimately with our shortcomings. Like a security blanket, they are always close by. We replay our mistakes and missteps in our heads over and over again. We relive our biggest failures in bold bright colors.

We own our losses and disown our wins. We blame our successes on luck. We allow other people to take more credit than they deserve. We downplay our efforts and hard work. One of the things I do frequently as a coach is remind people of their successes. I point out what has gone right and what they have done correctly. And even still people are reluctant to accept the praise and the acknowledgement.

When I point out all the hard work and effort it took for them to succeed, when I show them the talent and the tenacity they’ve displayed, they literally have to take a moment to take it all in. It’s truly an aha moment.

In your life, you have graduated high school, maybe college. You put in the time and the hard work. You have managed a successful marriage or had the courage to leave a bad one. You've raised great kids. You've been promoted. You've received raises. You have great friends. You have learned to stand up for yourself. You have taken the time to find out what matters most to you. I could go on and on. And, if you stop to think about it, so can you.

On the ladder of success, there is always another rung to climb, and we are always climbing. As soon as we’ve made one step up, we immediately begin to tackle the next. It’s a good idea to stop climbing occasionally and take a look back down to see just how many rungs you’ve climbed, you are probably a lot higher up than you think.

Savor your successes for a moment … then continue the climb.