Cure Your Achievement Amnesia
Contributed by Sylvia Warren of SimplytheBestCoaching.com
Busy professionals and executives execute complex strategies, lead wildly divergent teams, meet ambitious goals, and deliver on their commitment to the success of their organizations. Yet often they feel like professional and personal success still eludes them.
Why? It’s not just because the pace of work and life keeps accelerating. Smart women like you want to perform at their best. Driven by their own expectations of perfection and performance, they want to achieve all the lofty goals thrust upon them. Even when those goals are unrealistic, they feel compelled to accomplish them. So they try to get more and more done, faster and faster.
As a consequence, they find themselves moving at dizzying speeds. Constant races to the next finish line overwhelm their focus and drain their energy–day after day, week after week, month after month. The result…their remarkable achievements become a blur.
This leaves highly accomplished women in business, law and financial services feeling like they are not productive enough or effective enough. They are suffering from a modern day malaise – Achievement Amnesia – no immediate recall of achievements or successes.
Do you experience these symptoms? You’re so focused on what you haven’t done yet that you can’t remember what you’ve already achieved. Although you’ve made substantial and significant progress on your priorities, you only pay attention and give credence to what you haven’t done yet.
If this sounds or feels familiar, Achievement Amnesia may be robbing you of balance in your work and life.
Daily work/life balance practices allow you to experience and enjoy the success you seek. You learn to build on your small wins and leverage them into big gains. When tailored to fit your needs and values, simple proven practices make a real difference in the satisfaction and fulfillment you gain from your work and life.
Easy practices are the most effective. So try these 3 daily work/life practices on for size and see how they work for you:
- Start-Your-Day Strategy. Start your day without email. Spend the first 15 minutes of your day planning and prioritizing. Use the next 45 minutes – your prime time – to work on a high-yield priority. Notice how much you get done when you schedule and keep this first hour of your day free from constant email and phone interruptions.
- Energy Management Practice. Take 2-3 minute brain breaks every 90 minutes. This allows your brain to be in its natural oscillation where it refreshes itself for another round of peak performance. Stare aimlessly at the sky to clear your mind. This is probably the real origin of blue sky thinking.
- Daily Check-In. At the end of your work day, take 5 minutes to review your progress and see what you’ve achieved. Check items off your to-do list and notice the pleasure it gives you. Rank each priority accomplished as a ‘small win’ or ‘big gain.’ Jot down what worked well for you and what could work better. Have fun with the conscious celebration of your small wins. They lead to big gains. So toast with a glass of water what you achieve each day, savoring the clean, clear taste of what you have accomplished. Give yourself an “A” or a gold star on the checked-off items of your to-do list. Share with loved ones and family just one memorable thing that each of you is delighted to report. It may sound silly. Just notice how you feel when you pay attention to all the incremental states of your well-earned success.
Let these daily life balance practices release you from the fog of Achievement Amnesia. Savor the satisfying difference in your sense of accomplishment and watch your self-confidence thrive.
