Give Yourself Credit for Impressive Progress

Give Yourself Credit for Your Efforts

Life is as hard as you allow it to be. Keeping your business running through a pandemic can be tough, even if it’s always been virtual. What you believe in your heart, and allow to seep into your mind determines just how hard it will be. Too often, you fail to give yourself credit for what you’ve accomplished.

You tend to be hardest on yourself; expecting perfection, and often herculean amounts of progress. It’s all well and fine when the world is relatively “normal”, but from where I sit, things have been off the rails for several years now, and the pandemic only exacerbated the mess we were already in.

In the last two years, I’ve seen my stock portfolio fluctuate widely, gaining and losing 80-100,000 dollars with wild abandon. Granted, what I own isn’t necessarily representative of the entire market, but it’s as good a cross-section as any to see that stability, consistency, and reliability aren’t exactly accurate descriptions of stocks right now. Things may be on an upswing today, but I’ve seen massive downswings too recently to get overly excited. If nothing else, when things swing too wildly upward, there’s invariably a period of normalization to follow.

Comparing Yourself to the Majors is Self-defeating

Some businesses like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and many of the other tech-related companies are making a killing right now. Delivery services are thriving, and grocery prices are soaring. In fact, anything you consider a necessity right now is probably getting more expensive. My latest AT&T U-verse bill is higher, and I don’t know why I was momentarily surprised.

Amazon stock is selling for over $3200 a share as of this writing, and I won’t even get into what Bitcoin is doing! Meanwhile, people across the US are struggling to keep the lights on, food on the table—even a roof over their heads. Small business are failing in droves, and large ones are getting fatter.

What I’m trying to say is, if you’re staying afloat amidst all the challenges; if your business is still a going concern, you need to give yourself a ton of credit. You’ve accomplished what many have tried and failed to do, especially given the odds these days. You are a rock star in your own right.

What Challenges Have You Overcome?

Many of you aren’t seeing what a huge feat you’ve accomplished. You’re focusing on what you deem failures, though many aren’t even your own making. In California especially, the combination of AB-5 and COVID has wiped out many freelancers and independent contractors, or sent them running for the border in search of a less adversely regulated state.

Granted, you set your expectations high when you decide to start your own business. Your acceptance of failure, no matter how small is very low. You work yourself harder than anyone else, expect more, and more often than not, meet or beat your own expectations.

The trouble is, there are a lot of cards stacked against you right now, none of which are in your control. Can you throttle those expectations back a little while still keeping your momentum going? Can you cut yourself some slack when your sales numbers aren’t up to snuff? Can you give yourself credit for remaining standing in the midst of a CAT 5 hurricane of challenges?

Adjust Expectations

I get it. You believe if you don’t keep pushing forward, you’ll drown. But the truth is, if you don’t ease up on yourself a little, you’ll eventually hit a wall, and won’t be able to push forward an inch, much less the miles you expect of yourself. Sometimes, just keeping the ship afloat is an accomplishment in itself.

I’m not asking you to stop, or to give up and let all the crap roll by until the road clears again. I’m simply asking that you look at the incredible things you’ve accomplished not from the point of view of where you want to go, but by looking back just for a minute at where you started from, and more importantly, the phenomenal obstacles you’ve overcome. In short, give yourself the buckets full of credit you so richly deserve for whatever distance you’ve traveled.

One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur is setting expectations that are not only challenging, but achievable. Another is knowing when to adjust those expectations downward when environmental factors make your original expectations a little too challenging, and a lot less achievable at the moment.

Test, Evaluate, Tweak, Repeat

Contrary to popular opinion, there’s no shame in realizing you need to reassess your probability of success, and bring your numbers back into something resembling reality. If you ask me, it’s better to realize through no fault of your own your original projections were overly ambitious. So it’ll take you a little longer to make your first million.

All the effort you put in this year may not have met your original goals, but it got you a whole lot farther than it would have had you continued reaching for those you knew couldn’t be reached, and allowed yourself to fall to discouragement. You kept going because you didn’t try to force yourself to strive for the impossible, and instead, gave yourself the chance to be inspired by still achieving a goal, albeit revised.

A Missed Goal Isn’t Failure

There are a lot of things I hoped to accomplish by now, few of which have come to fruition—yet. Because I allowed myself to achieve less given all the challenges this year, I’m still moving forward instead of giving up in frustration. I spend my time focusing on goals I have been able to meet, or at least get close to, and chalk the rest up to experience, both in setting achievable goals, and creating the habits to meet them. I give myself credit for the baby steps, knowing they’re what truly help me achieve the gigantic goals I continue to see on the horizon.

I have a long way to go to reach many of my goals, but I’ve also made a lot of headway. Sure, the road ahead looks longer from where I’m standing right now. But most mountains look more daunting from the bottom looking up than from the top looking down.

For now, I’ll keep revisiting and revising my goals, knowing what I can achieve, and giving myself a reason to push myself a little harder than that. I’ll continue giving myself credit for the baby steps. I hope you’ll take the time to acknowledge your own progress, and congratulate yourself on sticking with it, regardless of the odds.

 

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author.

Be sure to watch this space for news of the upcoming releases of ” Rebuilding After Suicide” and “Sasha’s Journey”.