Celebrating My Accomplishments

From face value, people may not realise that I am a rather shy person. I try to portray myself as being outgoing and confident, but much of the time that couldn’t be further from the truth. Because of this, I very rarely share or celebrate my accomplishments. This comes partly to being pretty shy without white wine as Dutch courage, but also from my upbringing. Living in the North of England, we are not a braggy kind of people.

Some people can actually get pretty uncomfortable when success, careers and finances are brought into the conversation. Which is why over the years I have allowed some of my accomplishments to fall under the radar. But that is something that I want to put right in this post. Today I am going to share and celebrate my accomplishments with my audience….

 

 

Excelling in my career.

The first thing that I need to mention is my career. I still cannot believe that I have the job that I do and that I am able to earn the money that I make. As a person who grew up essentially poor, I pinch myself every single day that I am in the position that I am.  With that, I don’t like to talk about my career and never would I discuss money with my family or friends. I sympathise and recognise that not everybody is as fortunate as I am, I never want to seem like I am bragging or rubbing my wealth in somebody else’s face. But as a result of this, I don’t celebrate the accomplishments and milestones that I achieve in my career.

Seeking help for my mental health.

For a long time, I thought that I had things down when it came to my mental health. I thought that I was dealing with things really well and staying on top of how I was feeling. That couldn’t be further from the truth. When I accepted that I needed help and reached out to the doctors, it was a really scary period in my life. I thought that I was crazy for needing professional intervention and I didn’t know how to speak to people about it. Which is why I kept it under wraps and didn’t share it with people for quite a while. But even though it was scary, it was also something that I should have been incredibly proud of.

 

Fighting imposter syndrome.

In my life, I battle with imposter syndrome every single day. Sometimes I think about what I have going on in my life and I can’t believe that I have to shoulder this level of responsibility and sometimes I have to wonder if I am able to do it. Continuously I remind myself that I am in this position in my life because I deserve to be, but that isn’t always easy to put my positive thoughts into practice and actually believe what I am telling myself. There is always a small part of myself that is screaming that I am not capable. Trying to overcome this is fucking hard work and something that I don’t believe many people understand.  

 

Sticking with blogging.

I began blogging well over a decade ago and I still love it just as much as I did all of those years ago when I sat down at my old school PC and made my first blogger site. It was hard at times to maintain the motivation and to keep at it, hence the name ‘The Reluctant Blogger’. But to stay with something like this for well over 10 years is something to share and celebrate. To write a new post each day, edit it, take images, post it, engage with people is hell of a lot of work. On face value it may not like it takes much work to upload posts, but it can be hell of a lot of hard work and dedication to keep it going.

 

Writing a book.

A couple of years ago, I was struggling with insomnia and to try to fall asleep at night, I would make up stories and narratives in my mind. One morning when I woke up, I decided to write down my thoughts roughly, then the following night I would move onto the next stage in my story. Eventually, I began to put meat on the bones and turn my scribbled notes into a novel. In the beginning, I didn’t think that I would stick at it, so I deleted everything and scrapped the idea. In the end, I couldn’t fall asleep without these ideas whirling around my head. Eventually, I decided to do it for myself, and I wrote an entire book. That then quickly spiralled into me writing 4 books within the space of a year.

 

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this post about me opening up and allowing me to celebrate my accomplishments. Not all of my accomplishments are monetary, but there are also things in this list that people still may not understand. Some of the discipline required to achieve these things is immeasurable. Not to mention brave when seeking help for my mental health. These are all things that previously I have kept to myself because I wasn’t sure that people would be on the same page as me and realise that these are big things in my life. As always, I would love to hear from you guys following this post. What are some of the things that you would like to share and acknowledge in your life?