Keep a personal achievements diary for a week and you’ll be surprised what you’ll discover about your strengths.
Self-belief is a Young Professional skill that’s a powerful mix of motivation, resilience, and a positive attitude. It will get you far in life… but it’s like a muscle you have to train!
In a job interview, cover letter or CV you are expected to talk about your achievements. That may not come naturally and it can feel like bragging, but you can train yourself to not only be able to tell others about your achievements but even spot them when they happen. Sometimes you could do something awesome and you’re so used to downplaying yourself that you don’t even realise how great it is until someone else tells you.
So this week’s Young Professional challenge is all about learning to spot your own everyday successes and see how they’d make an employer glad to have you on their team. Ready? Let’s get started.
Young Professional Challenge: keep a diary of personal achievements for a week
What you will need:
- Somewhere to track your achievements. It has to be something you can carry around all the time, like a notepad or phone app to make notes with.
- A positive attitude – whatever happens, you will achieve something every day, however small it may seem!
- The motivation to start your list when you read this challenge.
- The resilience to stick out the challenge for a week, adding to your list of achievements every day.
How to do it:
First up, find something you can keep and carry to write on. Now write your first achievement of this week’s challenge – started your list. That’s a personal success, and you’re off to a strong start!
Next, write down at least one achievement or personal success every day. It can be just a quick note on your list, but do it straight away so you don’t forget.
At the end of the week, look at your achievements. Think about which life/work skills you’d file them under. Your choices are: self-belief, teamwork, communication, problem solving, and self-management. Sometimes they’ll fall under more than one skill and that’s okay.
Question: What counts as an achievement?
Answer: Everything you made happen that brought some good into your life!
Some examples:
- Making a list and putting your first achievement on it (“Today I started a diary of personal achievements for the week – self-belief skill”)
- Catching the bus on time (self-management / timekeeping skill – you made sure you weren’t late)
- Getting a grade you were happy with on school/college work (self-management / organisation skill, or perhaps problem solving / research skill)
- Comforting a friend in need (communication skill)
- Going to the gym (self-belief / motivation skill)
- Sending off another job application when you got a job rejection (self-belief / resilience skill – because you’re staying mentally tough in the job search)
- Updating your CV (self-management / organisation skill, or perhaps self-belief / motivation skill)
- Taking the dog for a walk (teamwork skill)
- Completing the confrontation in team work quiz
- Arriving early for team practice, a meeting or an appointment (positive attitude skill and self-management skill)
- Completing a Young Professional challenge you haven’t done yet (self-belief / motivation skill plus whatever skill the challenge helps you develop)
- Signing up to FREE Young Professional training if you haven’t already (self-belief / positive attitude / motivation skill)
- Doing the washing up without being asked (self-management skill because you can do things without someone breathing over your shoulder and forcing you)
As you can see, there are so many ways to achieve small but important successes in life. And for each one, you made it happen!
How does this problem solving challenge help you in life and work?
It’s important to start recognising your own achievements and successes. If you think about what you’ve achieved every day, it helps to train your confidence muscle and help you build more self-belief in yourself. If you start thinking which Young Professional skills you used to make that achievement happen, it can really help you with talking to employers about your achievements in CVs and job interviews!
