How to stop feeling like you're not good enough
Looking back to move forward
So many well-intentioned motivational quotes, teachers and zealous personal trainers tell us to not look back, to only look forward into the future. The past has happened, it's over!
But I disagree. I think there's a huge value in taking a look into the rear view mirror and seeing where you've come from and the progress you've made.
My favourite new podcast is 'How I Built This' - an NPR podcast that interviews company founders to find out 'how they built it'. The fascinating stories go deep into the wins, losses, struggles and successes that comes with building a business (or multiple businesses in many cases).
What I particularly like is when the founders describe their earliest products or ideas. Often they are horrible. Products now lauded as being state of the art or industry changing, usually sucked to start with.
It's so easy to fall into the trap of constantly feeling like you're not doing enough or haven't achieved what you 'should' have done by an arbitrary age / stage of your career / month in the year.
Often this is because you're not looking at your progress relative to yourself but looking at your 'year one' versus someone else's 'year five' ... or even their 'year ten'.
I actively save documents, emails or videos that relate to a skill I'm working on developing to look back on in months / years to come and see how far I've come. It's painful AND therapeutic - I recommend it.
Go back and look at something you wrote or created earlier this year. Did you cringe a bit? Good. This is progress.
What can you save from today to look back on in a year to see how far you've come?
How will you actively improve on the skill(s) involved in that task over the next twelve months?
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
Theodore Roosevelt
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