Your biggest triumphs show creative courage

‘Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage’ – Anaïs Nin

As Nelson Mandela famously said: Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

Past struggles leave valuable clues as to where your Creative Superpower would best be put to use for others.

Triumph through adversity hones your skills and tests your mettle. All learning is theory, until put into practice. Your ability to overcome obstacles proves you have what it takes. It validates your skills and experience to yourself, and to others.

By identifying where you have triumphed in the past, you can understand where you can best use your Creative Superpower to help others.

Why is it important to celebrate past triumphs?

The setting and achieving of goals are key to building creative confidence. Just like the never-ending to-do list, one achievement makes way for another, and it is too easy to move from the top of one ladder to the bottom of another without stopping to reflect on your success.

By celebrating small wins, you are acknowledging how far you have come, and that builds confidence.

Think of your past triumphs as the evolution of your Creative Superpower.

Most successful people have a celebration ritual of some sort. For me, it is a night out with my husband at our local Mexican restaurant. If I am feeling super pleased with myself, I usually reward myself with a margarita.

Celebrating triumphs as they happen helps to cement the achievement at the time and builds confidence.

What are Triumphs?

A triumph is defined as a significant success or noteworthy achievement.

There are the moments we understand as triumphant moments because other people notify us that they are. We might win a competition for example, or get a job and so the email or phone call might start with ‘congratulations’ and this signifies it clearly.

There are other noteworthy achievements, however, that we simply share with ourselves and they can dawn on us slowly over time.

You might run and walk around your block, for example, and then as you run more, you walk less until eventually you run the whole way. You might not have set it as a goal but when you realise you have done it, there is a feeling of triumph.

You also might take stock of your achievements and not realise there has been a triumph until after the fact.

I recently wrote a list of everything I had done in the pst six months. It wasn’t until I wrote it all down that I realised just how productive I had been and what I had accomplished in such a short amount of time.

I felt the items on the list represented a noteworthy achievement, but at the time, I hadn’t registered them as triumphs.

What does winning look like?

It can be quite difficult to know whether you are ‘winning’ until you take stock and look back. Not every moment arrives as an email that starts with ‘congratulations’. However, those moments count as well.

Start by looking at the external triumphs. Look at those moments where you have outwardly ‘won’ something. What have you set a goal to achieve and then publicly achieved? Grants, jobs, competitions, prizes, scholarships, certifications and so on. Think of the moments where you have announced things and people have congratulated you.

The next step is to look at goals you actively set for yourself and achieved. These triumphs are usually measurable, such as a measurement of weight, time or money. Have you achieved a goal weight? Did you give up smoking? Did you make a target amount of money?

The final step is to look back over your achievements and identify where you have achieved things that you didn’t necessarily set for yourself as a measurable goal, but in hindsight and reflection, you can view them as a triumph.

What if I have never triumphed?

You may never have won anything, or achieved a measurable triumph in terms of external measures. You might want to look at your own goals and terms of reference. If you feel that you struggle to achieve anything, revise your goals and make the steps smaller and more attainable.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Setting unrealistic goals does not prove you are a failure. It proves that you have set yourself unrealistic goals.

If you still cannot think of any meaningful triumphs, set some goals for yourself to achieve in the future and record what you would view as a triumph if you were to achieve it.