A month of sharing what matters.
Last month I wrote a post about feeling frustrated with a sense of never achieving enough:
I am embarking on a month of celebrating daily success: every day I am going to note a success and I am going to share it publicly to help hold myself accountable.
It doesn’t matter to me how big or small a thing it is, from getting out of bed to finding five minute of peace to have a cup of tea, finishing a report or responding to a difficult email. It all counts.
The kind of successes I want to celebrate and remind myself about are things that matter in my life day in, day out. I am not looking to mark achievement of the organisation I run or evaluate my performance. I have other places and processes for that. This is really about finding some balance in my own perspective.
To start with, I am going to share a success from each of the past few days, back to the start of the month, and after that I’ll post each day and share what happens.
https://marendeepwell.com/?p=3466
Did it work?
I posted a list of anything that mattered to me, something I felt was important or achieved from the 1st until the 31st July. I posted nearly every day, mostly on Twitter and Instagram and I really appreciated comments from people who shared their own small successes with me (thank you!).
What I shared falls into a couple of categories: work (7), personal wellbeing (8), work/life balance (7), family (6).
Most helpful for me was to gain a sense of achieving what’s important to me on any given day, and reflecting on what that was. As I mentioned in my original post, one aim for this exercise was not to be too focused on formal achievement at work, and instead to take a more wholistic view of my days.
Sharing a success each day felt quite cheerful, and often my daily calendar reminder prompted me to see my day in a different light.
I also found it fun to see what others were sharing or read the comments and DMs.
My list of successes
- 1st July: I went to the beach
- 2nd July: I completed stage 2 of coach training
- 3rd July: I ate well
- 4th July: I cleared my inbox after a week off
- 5th July: I blogged
- 6th July: I sorted out a lot of family admin
- 7th July: I published this post
- 8th July: Today’s success is to get work, pro-bono work, family support and life admin all to a place where the weekend can begin… with a long walk.
- 9th July: today’s success is resting & spending the day largely offline
- 10th July: picked a new colour to paint my home office
- 11th July: got a lot done despite the hot weather
- 12th July: Progressed three big governance projects
- 13th July: reported the successful outcomes of a project that started in Feb ‘21
- 14th July: today’s success is to get to work 45 min late… after waking up to domestic & canine chaos.
- 15th July: had a lovely lunch with a friend
- 16th July: processed my week with a largely offline day
- 17th July: signs of growth on the office plants
- 18th July: –
- 19th July: got a deckchair in my office
- 20th July: I did A LOT of work
- 21st July: cleared the decks at work ahead of a week of family care & support
- 22nd July: some editing on the book
- 23rd July: slept till 8:00am
- 24th July: had a calm and relaxing day
- 25th July: parental move day 1
- 26th – 29th July: more parental move
- 30th July: rested and had fun
- 31st July: slept until 7:50 am