Identifying your achievements

Why are achievements important? Well, here are five reasons:

• They make us feel good about ourselves if we take note of them and acknowledge them. They boost our 'feel good' factor and our confidence because they are evidence of our abilities to do things and achieve goals or tasks we set ourselves. What have you done today to feel good?
  
  
• They give us a building block to build on in terms of the skills we have and areas of interest that we want to do something about. They identify key things we excel at.
  
  
• Later in life, when we face a similar challenge, we can look back and say, "I've done this before. I can do it again."
  
  
• They are strong indicators of what is important to us. We will always do better at things we care about, or feel strongly about. We're more committed and more likely to overcome any barriers or difficulties along the way.
  
  
• They provide future employers an indication of our 'get up and go' attitude and also an idea of how and what we like to achieve.
  
  

Unfortunately, many people don't reflect on their achievements and rarely think through what it is they did to accomplish them. They may remember a lot of hard work, but when asked about further about it, they will say, Oh that?oh that was nothing. The British are particularly brilliant at reducing achievements to a pile of nothing and could learn some useful lessons from their American cousins in taking pride in success. In the past, achievements were acknowledged when great men did great things, like flying across the English Channel for the first time; but then the world wasn't so achievement oriented and performance driven as it is now.

If you sit back and look at what you've achieved in your life, and really break each achievement down into bits, you'll learn a lot about yourself. Your achievement can be getting through a particularly trying period in your life and coming through it. You can use your achievements to help you create a new career, and live a new life. This web site wants to help you build up a record of success so that you can look back with pride over what you've done and build up faith in yourself.

Look back to understand where you are now and what resources you've got to use within you in the future.

Look back over your life and pick out three things that you were particularly proud of and write about each of them, in particular noting:

• What did you do?
• Did anyone else help you?
• What resources did each achievement take in terms of time, money, effort, commitment, energy, skill, and belief in yourself?
• How did you feel after it?
• How do you feel about it now?
• What made it important to you?
• Why did you go for it?
• What were the difficult bits to overcome?
• How did you overcome them and what did that teach you about yourself?
• What did you learn about yourself from this achievement?

Now pick three things you have achieved in your role as a PA in this specific job you're in now. If you haven't been in it for very long, use another job you had and enjoyed. Go through the same exercise and compare what you said about the achievements in work and in the past. Then go out and celebrate all your achievements together and have a toast to many more.

Why do achievements matter to employers?

Employers like achievers and people who are proud of their achievements. They like to find out what people have done, because it gives them an idea of the sort of people they're likely to be recruiting, what makes them tick, what drives them, and motivates them. In an interview, they can talk further about your achievements to find out how tenacious people are, how they cope with problems, team situations and such. That way, they can pick out areas for concern and strengths. To give prospective employers an idea of the scale of your achievements, you can talk in lingo recruiters will understand, using measures such as:

At a glance, within seconds, they know what the person they're talking to has handled, how much they can cope with. By finding out how many other people were involved, they can also work out how far the person is a team-player, or how self-sufficient they are. Achievements also make people stand out from the crowd, especially if they are described in such terms as used above.

If you have an achievement out of the office, it's important to note these, as well. Tell your manager about them. If you've used skills out of the office that you don't use in work, and you want to develop them, tell your manager and see if the two of you can work out together to see if you can use them in working situations.