388 Holly Worton ~ How to Give Yourself Credit and Why It’s So Important

Transcript 

Holly: Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 388. This is the last podcast episode of the year and this is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.

Today I am going to talk about how to give yourself credit for what you have achieved this year, even if it feels like you haven’t done much, even if it feels like you haven’t achieved much, even if it feels like you haven’t had all the adventures that you wanted to have – this was a rough year. So in this episode you will learn: why it is so important to give yourself credit; how to give yourself credit for what you achieved in 2020; we are going to talk a little bit about perfectionism and then practical you can do to actually give yourself credit and make the process easier as we move into the New Year. I think this is really important, I originally was planning to talk today for this episode about planning your New Year, because of course I have just released my planner, The Year You Want, and I talked last week about how to wrap up the current year before you plan the new year, but I think this year it is really important to talk about this because 2020 was such a weird year and 2021 is not looking like it is getting back to normal, it is still uncertain and strange and things are still getting cancelled and so it is important to talk about.

Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to give a huge thank you to Marie, new patron and thank you so much for signing up, I really appreciate your support. I would also love for you to join me on Patreon, if you get value from the podcast, make sure you head over to Patreon and check out that, you can support me and make sure that this podcast can continue production. If you head over to Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month. This month I am actually giving the ebook for the Year That You Want for all of my patrons. So normally, my patrons at the $11 a month and above levels get all of my ebooks included but I have decided to do that as a special holiday gift to all of my patrons, so if you sign up at $1 a month you will get that.

So without further ado let’s move into today’s episode.

So 2020, it was a rough year and I think probably no one had the year they thought they would have when we started out in January. I know we have talked about how to reevaluate your plans and your goals and that’s a really useful companion episode to this one and I will link to that in the show notes; but I think it goes beyond that, it goes beyond just having to adjust our goals and plans and come up with plan b, and c, and d, and e. I think we have to give ourselves credit for what we did achieve, even if all you did, and I am saying that with air quotes, was ‘just’ (just again with air quotes) survive and make it today. A lot of people had a really rough time and as the year went on I found it a lot easier but I find it really difficult to deal with uncertainty and I had some rough times at the beginning of the first lockdown here in the UK and I think I forget that, because this weird year has kind of become the new normal and I am used to it, even though it is still a bit rocky and things are still getting cancelled for January and beyond. So give yourself credit.

Why is it important to give yourself credit and what does that mean? So, to me, giving yourself credit shifts your focus from putting yourself down and feeling bad about yourself to lifting yourself up and feeling good about yourself. Give yourself credit for what you achieved in 2020, even if it wasn’t what you planned, even if it wasn’t what you hoped for, even if you couldn’t do what you wanted, even if you couldn’t travel to all of the places that you wanted, even if you couldn’t have the adventures you wanted and even if ‘all you did’ (in air quotes) was survive and make it to today, you are here, you are listening to this, maybe you are still having a rough time but you are here, but that is an achievement (it is always an achievement) especially in this weird year where things have just been absolutely unprecedented.

I think a lot of people sometimes have the tendency to be perfectionists, you know it is what it is but we wish it were better and maybe your year could have been better, maybe you could have taken better advantage of the situation, but it is what it is and you did what you could and you did the best that you could with the tools and the resources you have throughout this year and I think this is an important perspective to have, it is one of the NLP presuppositions, I can’t remember the wording for it but it is basically that everyone is doing the best they can at any given time, with the resources they have available to them. So think about that, maybe it could have been better, maybe you wish it had been better, but it is what it is, and you did the best that you could and that is all you can ever do. So it is really important to accept what is and accept that what happened is good enough and accept that you are good enough.

I know when I was a business mindset coach that was one of the biggest topics that came up over and over again, with the entrepreneurs that I worked with. So many times I found myself balancing with them for the belief, ‘I am good enough’ ‘I am good enough just as I am right now today, I am good enough’. And I think that’s a belief that, no matter whether you are a business owner or not, it is a very important belief to have. So maybe the year could have been better, but you did what you did, and it is good enough. Accept what is and give yourself credit for what you did manage to achieve.

So I think it is really easy to sit here and say, ‘give yourself credit’, but what does that mean? How do you actually give yourself credit? I think there are a few different things you could do and I am going to talk about them now and you and you might want to make notes or just pick and choose some of the things that feel right for you or just pick one thing, but then again, do what feels right for you, not all of these things are going to feel right for you, or maybe they all will and you can do them all. But I think giving yourself credit starts with being kind to yourself and that goes back to what I was just saying, accepting that you did the best that you could throughout the year with the resources that you had available to you, you did your best – and yes, sometimes we wish that our best would have been better than it was, but it was the best. So be kind to yourself and just accept that it is what it is, you did what you did, you did the best you could and just be compassionate to yourself. I think so often it is so easy for us to be compassionate to other people and be kind to other people but inside we are beating ourselves up and it could be our mind gremlins or our limiting beliefs, or it could just be our negative self talk. It is so easy to beat ourselves up for not being good enough. And that leads me into my next thing…

Know that you are good enough just as you are. You are good enough. Can you grow? Is personal growth important? That is super important to me, I am always looking at growing and improving and learning from my mistakes, but today, I am good enough. Do I want to get better at certain things? Yes. Do I want to improve? Yes. But today I am good enough. And that has been one of the biggest mindset shifts for me and it is one of those things where, when I talked about mindset a lot, I used to talk about going up the spiral staircase and one step was your mindset work and one step was your practical action and you would go up the staircase but every once in a while you would hit a new level of the same mindset stuff that you were working on a week, a month, or a few months ago. So I am good enough may look different now than it does a year from now and it may look different now from what it did a year ago. So your version of good enough will be changing but having that deep knowledge that you are good enough is really, really, powerful and it is a huge mindset shift, and it will really help to prevent self sabotage.

So to dip a little bit into mindset work, I used to work with a technique called PSCYH-K which I will mention in the show notes and link to. You can use that, you can use NLP, PSYCH-K is really great because you create belief statements which are kind of like affirmations and you work with a facilitator, or you can do it yourself if you train in the technique, to programme that technique into your subconscious. So unlike affirmations where you have to say them over and over again every day, 100s or 1000s of times over the course of days and weeks you just do it for three to five minutes and it makes the shift. Again, as you grow you might hit a new level of self sabotage or limiting beliefs and you might need to reprogram that belief differently, but you will be coming at it from a different perspective. That three to five minutes of work will make huge changes. Again, I highly recommend PSYCH-K, I also like NLP. I have mentioned that I trained in NLP years ago, never used it with clients, but I have lately been seeing a NLP practitioner and it has been super, super, useful. So find what works for you. Tapping might also work for you, I have worked with my friend Cara Wilde many times, she uses EFT a lot with clients and that has been really, really, helpful. Really useful to actually see someone who is trained in EFT because the way they approach it is different to how you do it you just do pre-written scripts that you find on YouTube, those are great and better than nothing, but I find that working with someone is important because they help personalise it to you and whatever your personal flavour of not good enough is. They can help you get to the root of that belief.

So know that you are good enough just as you are, right now, today. And do the mindset work that you need to do to believe that at that deep, subconscious, level.

Celebrate your wins. This is something I mention a lot in my book, The Year You Want, because I think it is important to celebrate your successes and I often forget to do so. I have worked on so many books this year, I have published so many books, and do I celebrate every time I publish one? No. And I think I should because I think it would be very motivating and I think it would help me to recognise my achievements. So I am telling you this because it is also something that I think I could benefit from doing more and that is why I have included it in my book The Year you Want because I need to remind myself. So celebrate your wins and celebrate your successes again even if it is ‘just’ surviving 2020 and just being here today, that alone is an achievement. Celebrate your successes, your wins, whatever you want to call them, no matter how big or how small.

So I am really pleased with how I was able to come up with new plans for this year, I was supposed to walk the Camino twice, I was supposed to walk the Camion Portuguese in March and I was supposed to walk the Camino Ingles in September, or October. I didn’t do either of those. What did I do instead? I walked the Ridgeway. We had that break between lockdowns here in the UK and I was planning to walk the Ridgeway next Spring, but I thought: you know what, can’t travel internationally let’s travel domestically. And I did that, and I updated my book, still working on it and hope to release it next year. But that was great, and I am really pleased with myself for being flexible like that. So celebrate your wins even if it is small, even if it is big, even if it is not that big a deal, make a list. And then, I don’t know have a glass of wine, have a glass of sparking wine, have a special meal, something, do something special to celebrate your successes. Again, even if it is just surviving the year, it has been a rough year.

Next stop comparing yourself to others. I have an episode on How to Quit the Comparison Game for Good that might be useful if you have been comparing yourself to others, that has definitely been a problem for me in my life and I realise that it is not something I do anymore, I mean, yeah, every once in a while I might think: oh I feel bad at myself because so and so is doing this and I am only doing that, but it doesn’t have the emotional charge that it used to, I don’t cling to it, I can let go of it. So I might have that thought and then it just kind of leaves, whereas before it was something that really plagued my thoughts and I would dwell on it. So just keep your eyes on your own lane. So with running, I got back into running this year and I am really into trail running and I am a slow runner, but I don’t compare myself to others, I don’t compare myself to other people’s times. I keep my eyes on my lane, I put in the miles, I run them, and I am slowly and surely increasing my distance every week. So I am just kind of doing my thing, I am improving at it and I am comparing myself to where I was last week, where I was last month, and I find that really useful.

So if you find yourself comparing yourself to others listen to that episode (which I will link to in this show notes) but just remember stop looking at what other people are doing and keep your eyes on your own lane. Imagine you were running a race, maybe not a trail race, but a race on a track, where you are kind of all in different lanes and you can see the other people next to you but instead of running your lane and keeping your eyes on your lane you are constantly looking ahead and looking at some woman who just passed you and you are looking at the people next to you on both sides, where are they? Where are you in relation to them? That is going to slow you down. And it is going to make you feel like shit, so keep your eyes on your own lane, put one foot in front of the other, literally, and figuratively, and just keep going, keep improving within your own parameters. Keep improving compared to what you did last week or the week before, or the month before, or the year before. But stop looking at what other people are doing because it is a recipe for unhappiness.

And remember that there is only failure and only feedback – and that is another NLP supposition that I really, really, like. So learn from any mistakes, think about what you would rather do instead if the situation arises again, and realise that was a learning opportunity and then move on and I think this is really, really, really, important. Yes you could have handled the year differently, but what have you learned from how you handled it? What have you learned from the decisions you made? What have you learned about the things you did and what would you like to do differently next year? Learn from it and don’t beat yourself up over it. Remember that there is no failure only feedback.

Redefine success, so things are still uncertain as we move into 2021. Yes, there is a vaccine and people are getting it, but life is still weird. Things are probably getting cancelled for me, in January I had two courses, outdoors courses, I think they are probably not going to go ahead but we are not sure yet. So we are still in that weird limbo of can we or can’t we? And because the Tiers are changing on an almost weekly basis here in the UK it is impossible to know what is going to be happening three weeks from now or two weeks from now. So we still have uncertainty as we move into 2021.

So success in 2020 or 2021 is probably not going to look like what it did in 2019, or what you thought success would look like back in 2019 before this coronavirus happened. So make plans and be flexible with them. Have a plan b, c, d, e, f. Have a menu of options if your primary choice doesn’t work out. So if you wanted to travel abroad, travel domestically. When my Camino was cancelled in March, just as everything was kind of exploding with Covid, I spent a couple of days thinking, what the hell am I going to do? And I felt depressed and sad and I was mourning the loss of my walk because it wasn’t just a walk, I was also going to write a book about it and it was a big thing and I had been wanting to do the Camino since 1996 I think. I stopped, I reevaluated and then I went on that fantastic camping trip here in the UK, so have a plan b and c and d and that camping trip was such a lovely trip, it keeps popping into my thoughts because I had such a good time and want to do a different version of that perhaps next year. It was absolutely lovely and it was such a delightful plan b that honestly I felt perfectly fine about having missed the Camino and I am perfectly fine about having to wait until 2022 or beyond to do it, because I had such a great plan with my plan b.

So make a whole menu of options, when you are making your plans come up with other alternative plans as well. So maybe I won’t be able to do my courses that I have got planned for January, it is two weekends, and if we are so locked down that we can’t do those courses I probably won’t be able to do a workcation outside of the home but maybe I can do a workcation at home – that would be weird, it hasn’t worked for me in the past, but I could give it a try or maybe I can just have a great outdoors weekend where I can go running and plan some other kind of adventure. So I can’t be outdoors to do the trailing course, but I could go for a long run maybe with my husband or alone. So have options. Make plans and be flexible with them and realise that you may have to be flexible with a lot of your plans next year, because we don’t know what is happening.

And finally gratitude and I know a lot of people don’t like making gratitude lists, and I don’t think this is something that you need to do every day, which I think is what a lot of people rebel at, but it can be really helpful to just be grateful for all that you have and all that you have done – again even if it is ‘just’ surviving 2020. So maybe take a page in your journal and write down ten things that you are grateful for. I am super grateful for having walked the Ridgeway this year. I am super grateful for having had that opportunity to do the camping trip. I am super grateful that I was able to stay on track with some of my publishing calendar, adjust the rest of it and I published pretty much a book a month, I think it was 12 this year but it might be more. Just last week, or was it earlier this week, I published the final book in my Business Mindset series, Business Intuition. I am super proud of having completed that project, updating the books to second editions. Could they have been better? You know stuff could always have been better, but it is good, it is so much better than the first edition that was also good, I had such great feedback from that book. So be grateful for all that you have, all that you have done. Be grateful for all the adventures that you had, even if they were small adventures, even if you went for a run or a walk in your local area, when really what you wanted to do was travel abroad and have adventures abroad, be grateful for all that you could do. Be grateful for all the travel that you could do this year, even if it was just to a local park or a local something.

And think about how you want to redefine travel and adventure for 2021. So maybe you will feel safe in engaging in international travel, maybe you won’t. Maybe it will be possible, maybe it won’t. So make, again, different versions of your plans and adventures and travels and be grateful for the opportunities that you do have. Even if you have to keep it really close to home make a list of adventures and places that you can go to really close to home and use those as your plan b or c and be grateful that you have those opportunities because no matter where you live there is someone where you can go. Some people live in kind of more natural areas than others, some people live in big cities, but even if you live in a major city you can go to a park, you can walk around, so there is always some kind of adventure you can have, even if it is just outside your door.

So to wrap up this episode I just wanted to remind you of some of the things that you could do to give yourself credit. Be kind to yourself, know that you are good enough, celebrate your wins, keep your eyes on your own lane, remember there is no failure only feedback, redefine success and redefine adventure, redefine travel, and practice gratitude. If you try any of these things, please drop me a line and let me know what you of this week’s episode, you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Thank you so much for listening, a very happy New Year to you and a very happy 2021.

Next week I will be talking about how to plan the year that you want (again with plan a, b, c, d, e).

That’s all for now, remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/388 for the show notes on this episode, and again Happy New Year, you survived, you are here, and we have a new year, super exciting. Thank you again.