Building Self Confidence: Count Your Successes

A friend of mine recently told me a story about his young son.  Evidently, the boy wanted to purchase a Nintendo DS, which costs almost $100.  With no birthday coming up, his father told him he had to earn the money.

So, his son began doing extra chores and other odd jobs, but it was a slow process.  Wanting to help, my friend offered the jar where he puts his pocket change, which he hadn’t emptied for almost a year.

They took the jar to a place that converts the change into dollars for a fee.  As the boy kept adding coins, my friend’s eyes began to grow large in surprise.  Before he knew it, the pocket change he had tossed away in a jar added up to over $50!  His son was ecstatic, needless to say.  In one fell swoop, he had half of the money he needed!

My friend laughed in retelling this story saying he had no idea the small change he’d been putting in the jar could ever have reached that amount.

This story got me to thinking about how many times we are successful during a year.  Yet, both our small and large successes frequently get put aside because we move on to other things.  Over time, we forget how many successes we actually had.  They become like my friend’s pocket change.

Then something happens and our confidence makes a nose dive.  Perhaps it’s the loss of a job, a relationship that is ending, or something we failed at.  Losing self confidence can be hard to recover from.  We tend to let it haunt us, like a ghost.

Here’s where my friend’s story intersects with building back your self confidence.  What if you set up a way to collect your successes?  It might be like my friend’s jar for pocket change, or a special box.  When a success happens, whether big or small, write it down on a piece of paper.  Fold the paper up tightly and put in your jar or designated success holder.

Do this every time something feels like a success! Keep in mind that success means doing something you are proud of accomplishing. So, it could be anything from winning a big account to cleaning up your messy office. You get to decide what goes into your success holder.

The idea is to keep your successes so that when your confidence takes a tumble, you can go to that place, pull out your written notes and remind yourself of the many times you have been successful.  Then, just like my friend’s son, you can convert them into rebuilding your self confidence.

Now, it’s your turn.

What would you use to save your successes?

Tagged as: building self confidence, pocket change, success, successes