Recall Your Accomplishments
Posted on Monday, May 28, 2007 At
3:42 AM
Think back over your life and try to recall all of your major accomplishments. Again, it might help you to jot these down on a clean sheet of paper.
What have you achieved in your life that you’re proud of? These can be in your work or outside of it. Don’t forget areas such as:
Once you’ve done it, take a look at each item in turn, asking yourself:
As a double check to make sure that you haven’t forgotten any of your significant achievements, you might want to write a retrospective log of your life.
It’s a very simple exercise. Begin by taking a notebook or several dozen fresh sheets of paper. Write the current year at the top of the first page, then last year’s date on the next page, and the previous year’s date on the page after that. Carry on until you have got to the year that you left school.
Now, for each year, write down the answers to the following questions:
An alternative exercise is to take a large sheet of paper and draw a graph of your life since you left school. The X-axis (the horizontal line, going from left to right) represents the years of your life. And the Y-axis (the vertical dimension) is a measure of how good or bad the year was – the higher up the page the line goes, the better it was.
You might end up with a graph like so:
Now, think about the following questions:
What have you achieved in your life that you’re proud of? These can be in your work or outside of it. Don’t forget areas such as:
- any sports you may participate in;
- hobbies and interests;
- academic achievements;
- community groups or charity work;
- clubs or societies you may belong to;
- personal triumphs.
Once you’ve done it, take a look at each item in turn, asking yourself:
- What was it about each one that made you feel pleased?
- What skills or talents did you use in completing each of your accomplishments?
As a double check to make sure that you haven’t forgotten any of your significant achievements, you might want to write a retrospective log of your life.
It’s a very simple exercise. Begin by taking a notebook or several dozen fresh sheets of paper. Write the current year at the top of the first page, then last year’s date on the next page, and the previous year’s date on the page after that. Carry on until you have got to the year that you left school.
Now, for each year, write down the answers to the following questions:
- Where were you working? Or what were you doing that year?
- Where were you living?
- Who were the major influences on your life that year?
An alternative exercise is to take a large sheet of paper and draw a graph of your life since you left school. The X-axis (the horizontal line, going from left to right) represents the years of your life. And the Y-axis (the vertical dimension) is a measure of how good or bad the year was – the higher up the page the line goes, the better it was.
You might end up with a graph like so:
Now, think about the following questions:- For each of the ‘peaks’ in the graph – your high points – why was it a high? What skills did you use that made it a high? How did the events of the time relate to your values?
- For your low points – the troughs in the graph – what happened? Why was it a low? What did you learn about yourself and your values? Were there any lessons about what you should avoid in the future?