Recognizing and Valuing Personal Achievements

In reflecting on some of my recent interactions with others I found that I am much more outwardly confident in myself and my work than I used to be, and not just that, but I actually accept this confidence, rather than reject it. I’m not sure when this transition happened, it was a slow process driven by learning not to put myself down, realizing that I had been proving myself to others all along, and finally learning to accept that I had a lot more experience than I thought to help build confidence.

An accumulation of experience

Thankfully, I have been alive long enough to move beyond my undergraduate years and nearly complete my Ph.D. During all of that, I sought out to see and do things to gain more knowledge and experience. I’ve taught agriculture at a high school and to elementary students, I left Arizona for Wyoming and Florida to work at controlled environment facilities, traveled across the ocean for workshops, grown more plants than I killed, and consistently pushed myself for the elusive goal of becoming a better teacher.

Throughout these experiences I learned much more than I have taken notes on or in some cases can even fully recall. 10 years ago, a conversation with me would have been filled with ideas, rooted in what I had been taught, but often hadn’t any experience of. Now most conversations can often spark a recollection of something from my past I saw or did that I can use to enhance the knowledge I share and how I articulate it to others.

Don’t put yourself down

I was having a conversation with a mentor about my applications for positions after my Ph.D. during which I mentioned that I wasn’t sure about applying to some as I didn’t have the experience or qualifications that other applicants will. They said, “You got that dissertation improvement grant, that’s a big deal!”. To which I had replied that it was only $5000 dollars and not that big of deal. I can’t remember what exactly they said but they convinced me that getting such a grant, or even any grant, during a Ph.D. was a big deal and to think about how many other students I knew that had gotten one (none).

The whole world will tell you not to compare yourself to others, which can be great advice as you will likely only see what they have accomplished that you haven’t. However, what I was doing in that conversation and while applying for jobs was worse! Belittling my own accomplishments for no reason other than a small dollar sign compared to grants with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This realization didn’t result in me turning around and bragging about it to everyone, but afterwards it did become much easier to view my accomplishments as accomplishments rather than just a thing I did.

Repeatedly proving yourself

Along those lines, maybe it was even part of the same conversation, is the concept that none of my experiences were just given. Each thing was something that had to be sought after and earned. Degrees, grants, awards, and (nepotism aside…) jobs aren’t just given out for no reason and often there is a bit of competition or at least minimum qualifications. Cover letters, proposals, statements, and application packets each give you a way to prove that you earned consideration for whatever you applied to. Each item on a resume/CV is another instance of successfully proving yourself to others, and if these documents are meant to convince others of this, why shouldn’t you accept that too?

Conclusion

All these ideas have come together to form some kind of sense of accomplishment that has slowly shifted my confidence levels in myself and my abilities. Part of that is a function of having the time to accumulate these experiences, but the largest contribution is this realization is that I have been constantly proving myself to others successfully. Learning to see that along with not belittling my accomplishments by shrugging them off when acknowledged by others has contributed to the change.

Altogether, I have noticed that this change makes it easier to find ways to encourage and coach others. Going beyond simply saying “good job” and helping them to realize they have accomplished something and that they too have done things to be proud of and confident in themselves for.

Proudly written without large language models.

This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0