Why you should value achievement and recognition

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Achievement, success, and recognition are all values that many women don’t like to admit are important to them. But the problem is not that these values are bad or wrong, it’s that they’re not balanced with rest, leisure and fun. In today’s podcast, I share why each of these values are important to your success as a working mom and what it will take to find balance while striving for them.

Topics in this episode:

  • What it means to value achievement, success and recognition

  • Why many women think it’s wrong to have these as key motivators

  • What makes an achievement-driven woman amazing?

  • The importance of separating yourself from your achievements

  • The art of self-validation and how to do it

Show Notes:

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Transcript


Intro

Achievement, success, and recognition are all values that many women don't like to admit are important to them. It feels sort of icky. 


But in today's podcast, we're going to talk about why each of these values are good and important to your success as a working mom. It's not that these values are bad or wrong, it's that they're not balanced with rest and leisure and fun. 


This is going to be a total perspective shift. 


So you ready? Let's get to it. 


Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it. 


Okay, so in the last three weeks or so, I have on-boarded about five or six new clients that are working with me one on one. And in our very first session, which is a 90 minutes session, we talk about their core values. 


Determining our core values.

Actually, before they even get on this call with me, I have them do some exercises that help them to determine their core values. And then in the session together, we spend time diving into them, defining, talking about why they're important, and so forth. 


And I've actually wanted for some time to go back through the last several years of my clients looking at their different values, because I have them pick no more than seven out of about 60 of them. And I am always surprised at how similar the values are for my clients. 


I know I really shouldn't be surprised because I work with a very specific type of woman. I work with high achieving, ambitious, career driven, top of their class, have worked their way up to a good career quicker than most kind of woman. These are like my people, right? These are my clients. And so it makes sense that there would be some similarities and values in the things that motivate them. 


But regardless, I still find it really fascinating that out of 60 words or so that I give them, my clients tend to choose a lot of the same ones. We're going to talk about a couple of those values here today, a couple of those common ones, because they sort of get a bad rap. 


Many of my clients are sort of ashamed to have the values that we're going to talk about here today. They tell me that they don't like that this is what they value, that they wish that they valued something else. 


And here's what I know - If a good portion of my clients have these values and feel sort of ashamed to have them, it is highly likely that many of you listeners have these values too, and have some sort of icky feeling about them as well. 


Reframe your thoughts on your values.

So here's what we're going to do today. I want to debunk the idea that the values we're going to talk about today are bad or wrong. And I want to reframe your thoughts on these values so that you can start to think about yourself differently and in a more positive way. So let's dive in. 


Achievement, success and recognition. 

Here are the three values we're going to talk about today. Achievement or success. I'm actually going to wrap this up into one. So really we're going to talk about two values achievement/success and recognition. 


I know that achievement and success are not really the same thing, but I find that most women I work with, they sort of use these words interchangeably. They sort of have the same meaning when we get to the heart of it, which is to put in your best effort towards the completion of a goal. That's sort of the definition that a lot of people come up with on some level. 


Now, on the surface that doesn't sound like a bad thing, right? To put in your best effort toward a completion or a goal, it's a good thing to want to finish what you start. It's a good thing to be driven toward completing the things you've set out to achieve. 


Your achievement or your success focused self has in fact served you really well. You've moved up in your career, you make good money and have good benefits or you're on the track to do so. You've done really well in school. You were probably top of your class or one of the best ones in your sports or your activities. 


You're reliable, you're dependable. When somebody gives you a task, they know that you're going to get it done because you're a goal getter you're an achiever. You're not going to drop the ball and people know it. Every team needs an achiever like you, someone that is hyper focused on just getting it done. And when everybody else is talking about one more strategy to potentially get it done and they're researching more and more, you're just over here saying, hey, let's make a decision, let's go get it. It's going to be fine. You are necessary. 


And yet having this as a central motivator also has caused a lot of challenges for you. Mostly relationally, because you are hyper focused on achieving your goals and getting things done. The trade off is oftentimes the people that you love and you care for. 


Achieving goals can come with sacrificing time with your family, time for yourself and none of that feels good. 


In fact, being someone that highly values achievement and success, that's one of the reasons why a lot of women come to me for coaching. They want to stop valuing achievement and success as highly as they are and they want to balance it out with learning to be present and restful and leisurely. And they want to have more fun and adventure in their life. 


They don't want their life to be always about goals and work and tasks and doing more right, which is where the motivation of achievement and success kind of tends to push them. 


The healthy and unhealthy side of our values.

One of the conversations I have with almost all of my clients as we talk about their values is we talk about the unhealthy versus healthy side. I want you to imagine a T chart. On the left side, you have a column of behaviors as a result of overvaluing achievement and success. And then on the right side, you have a column of behaviors that indicate you're valuing achievement in a healthy way or in a balanced way. 


And I just love doing this exercise with my clients because our brains like to make things out to be very black and white. We just label the value of achievement as being bad or negative. But it's really not that simple. It's not that black and white, right? 


There's a healthy side to achieving and an unhealthy side to achieving. 


Just like with food, sugar and flour are not bad as long as you're balancing it out with a diet of fruits and vegetables and labeling something as being right or wrong or good or bad or black and white. The reason we do that is it helps our brain see a very clear delineation on what we should be doing right. It helps make our choices a little bit easier. 


And that's one of the reasons why I have my clients write this T chart with very clear behaviors that indicate when they are overvaluing achievement, that's the unhealthy side. Or when they're valuing it in a balanced way. That's the healthy side. 


Because your brain needs to see exactly what you do when you're living into this value in a really balanced and healthy way. And when you're not, the value of achieving and success, it's not bad. 


In fact, oftentimes when I ask my clients what would happen if you stopped valuing achievement or success, for most of them, a whole host of fear rises up within them, because this drive to achieve has been such a key motivator in their life and in their career. It's what their brain thinks have gotten them this far in life. 


So to think about letting it go altogether, your brain sort of just freaks out. And I don't want you to get rid of this motivator. This is an important part of you. It's part of what makes you who you are. I just don't want it to be all of you. 


Another reason why I like the T chart exercise of sort of labeling the unhealthy and the healthy behaviors is that it shows your brain that the bad behaviors, if you will. I hate labeling it that way, but the behaviors that aren't very useful to you - they actually come from a good place because a lot of women, when they come to me in coaching, they have a very negative view of themselves. Their negative self talk is high. Their inner critic is strong. And they've identified this sort of drive for achievement and success as being one of the main problems. 


As humans, we label ourselves.

And the problem with that is that for most human beings, our behavior and who we are sort of become the same thing in our mind unless you're very intentional about it. So if you label being a high achiever and being motivated by success as being bad, you're sort of labeling yourself as being bad, as if you're wanting the same thing. Your brain has a really difficult time separating those two things unless you have gone through a process of really doing that, of really separating your identity from your work. 


One of the things that we do as we start talking about being motivated by achievement and success is why it's a good thing to have that as a value. Now, I gave you a host of reasons earlier as I was talking about achievement, right? 


I talked about the fact that you're dependable, that everybody wants you on their team, that you get things done, that you're a closer, a finisher, that you have a high capacity to move those tasks forward for your team, right? 


We need a lot of high achievers in our society, just like we need a lot of people that are gifted at valuing other things. There's a place for all of us, right? 


We need women that are focused on nurturing and empathizing and having a ton of compassion for people. We need women that really know how to drop everything and sit with someone through hard times or frustrating moments. 


Just like we need women that say, you know, enough with this emotional stuff. It's time to just make a decision and move on. 


We need both types of women for our society and our culture to really work. 


If you have been overly critical of your high achieving self, the part of you that prioritizes tasks over people, then this is your first step. You need to spend some time really considering the good that comes from this part of you. 


Your worth is not found in achievements and success.

Another very key conversation I have with women that value achievement and success, or really this is an ongoing conversation with them, is that we need to show their brain that their value, that their worth is not found in achievements and success. That it's a piece of you, but it's not all of you. 


This is such an important part of the process, and it's such an important part of our coaching together. Because if your brain continues to see your value, your worth solely being found in your achievements and your successes and the amount of things that you check off a list, then it will always prioritize achieving more and succeeding more and checking more things off of your list, because that's where your value lies. 


In order to balance out your value of achievement and success - in other words, to deprioritize checking more things off of your list and deprioritize success and achievement, your brain is going to have to believe that you still have value when you do that. 


Now, I talk about this a lot on the podcast. There are a couple of different episodes that really dive into the difference between your human value and your accomplished value. And I'll put a few of those in the show notes for you if you want to dive deeper into that. 


In order to prioritize rest and leisure your brain cannot think that you are a failure when you do that.

But this is the work of someone that values success and achievement at a high level - let me say this in a different way. In order to prioritize rest and leisure and fun and vacations and playtime with your kids and being completely off work on the weekends to just being present, in order to do that, your brain cannot think that you are a total loser or a failure. It has to believe that you are valuable and a worthy human being, even when you're resting and enjoying leisure and having fun. 


Okay, quick recap. Having the value of achievement or success is an amazing thing. It's a really good part of who you are. It makes you dependable, it makes you a go-getter. It makes you someone that is reliable, that people can depend on. It's helped you achieve so many things, but it's not the only part of you. 


You are an amazing human being. Not just because you succeed and achieve at a high level, but because you just simply are as a human being. That is your human value and your achievement focused self demonstrates itself in healthy and unhealthy ways. 


And helping your brain to understand what those behaviors are and when you've sort of crossed over the line from healthy to unhealthy is going to be a very important part of you learning how to prioritize things other than just achievement and success. 


Let's talk about recognition.

Because the value of achievement and success can oftentimes go hand in hand with the value of recognition. Essentially, it's not enough to just hit the goal or to achieve. You need to be recognized for it. You need someone to notice and acknowledge what you've done and the effort you've put in. That's essentially what recognition means. 


And if achievement as a value sort of feels icky to you, then likely this one feels even worse. And it's why a lot of my clients don't want to admit that this is one of their core values, that this is a driving force behind what they do in their decisions. 


But the reality is, for a lot of high achieving women, it is important and it’s a natural motivator. And even for people that don't have achievement as a value, validation feels good. 


Recognition feels good.

When I start really diving into talking about recognition as a value, I ask my clients what's important about being recognized? And usually what I hear is that it feels good. It motivates them, it’s a positive affirmation that creates dopamine in your body that makes you feel good. 


That's why positive reinforcement or positive affirmation is one of the key tools in parenting. Because when our kids hear that they're doing something well, it releases that feel good experience in their body. That's the dopamine. And then their brain says, oh, that felt good, I should do it again. 


The same thing happens for us as adults when we are validated or affirmed for our work. It releases those good feelings and our brain says, well, that felt good, let's do it again. 


Now, another thing I hear from my clients when it comes to valuing recognition is it helps them to know that they're on track. It helps them to know that they're making progress in the way that they're supposed to make progress, essentially that they're doing the right things. 


Why I value recognition.

I can also tell you that one of the reasons why I value recognition is it makes me feel significant, like I'm doing something that matters, that's worthy of acknowledgment. And feeling significant is a driving factor for me. It's not enough to just simply achieve or set goals. I need them to matter. I need to know that they're making a bigger impact, that they're significant. And usually when you're making a big impact, that is noticed and it's acknowledged. 


Is it a bad thing to want to be recognized?

So recognition sort of comes with the territory of doing big things for me, and I want to be somebody that does big things. So recognition is important. Is it a bad thing to want to be recognized? Is it a bad thing to want to know that you're on track, that you are moving in the direction that you should be, that you're making a big impact in your work? When phrased in that way, of course it's not a bad thing. 


Again, one of the conversations I often have with my clients around their values that feel sort of icky to them is to paint another perspective of it. We spend time finding all of the reasons why it's a good thing. Now, just like achievement and success with recognition, there is a healthy and an unhealthy side to it. 


There's another T chart here of behaviors that indicate that you are valuing recognition in a healthy way. And then there are behaviors that indicate that you are valuing recognition in an unhealthy way. And your brain needs to know what those are. Instead of labeling all recognition and behaviors associated with it as bad, instead you need to be very specific because it's not all black and white. We can make arguments for the good and the bad associated with this value of recognition. 


Now, I also find that my clients that have recognition as a value, they have a tendency to second guess a lot. They make decisions and then they question them, and then they do a little bit of research, or they ask more people their thoughts and their opinions, and then they remake the decision, and then they do the whole cycle over again. 


And they do that because they need that validation, that recognition that what they're doing is good and right and on track.


Learning the art of self validation.

In coaching, one of the conversations we have again, it's all sort of this ongoing conversation over the course of our six months together, is to learn the art of self validation. It turns out you really don't need someone else to tell you that you're doing it right, or that you're on track, or even to tell you you’re doing a good job. It sure does feel good when someone does. It sure does make decisions easier. But you don't actually need it. 


You can provide that yourself. You can tell your own brain that you're on track and that you're making the right decision and that the effort that you put in is good and right. You can self validate that and in many ways, produce the same exact result. You don't need to be waiting around for someone else to validate you and recognize you. 


Now, I said something just a moment ago that was really key, and I want to make sure you heard it. Having a boss or a spouse or a coworker, that's really good at validating your decisions and choices, acknowledging your wins and your successes, that makes things easier. It can help a lot with the second guessing and the spinning that you do in your head, but it's not the only way. It's just an easy way. 


Sometimes, wanting validation makes women feel needy.

The reason I see a lot of women feel icky about this value is it makes them feel sort of needy. It makes them feel conceited, like they need to hear good things about themselves. And as women, we're still fighting an uphill battle where it's okay to move up in your career, where it's okay to be the breadwinner, where it's okay to choose achievement as a value. 


It's still embedded in our culture that women are better at raising our children and shepherding our families over men. So it makes sense that just from a cultural perspective, our brains need to know that it's okay, that we're okay, that we're doing things good, and we're doing things right. 


When you're recognized for your successes, that's not prideful.

And I've heard a lot of pushback on this idea of self validation because it feels prideful. It feels sort of like you're boasting when someone else calls something out that you've done well, something that you're good at. When you're recognized for your successes, that's not prideful. But as soon as you do that for yourself, when you call out all the good stuff that you're doing and how good you are at the things that you do, then all of a sudden, it feels bad. 


It’s okay to celebrate you and acknowledge what you are good at.

My friends, it is okay to feel really good about what you do. It's okay to share it. It's okay to advocate it. It's okay to celebrate it. If you want to learn how to not need recognition and validation from other people, then you need to learn how to recognize and validate yourself more. 


Your brain still does need to know that it's making good decisions and right decisions and that you're good at what you do. That's the driving force behind recognition. 


Your brain still needs to know that the things that you're doing matter, that they're purposeful, that they're leading towards bigger goals in order to be successful and to achieve at a higher level. 


Your brain still needs to know that it's making good decisions and right decisions and that you're good at what you do. 


Your brain still needs to know that the things that you're doing matter and are purposeful and are leading towards bigger goals. 


To maintain your ability to achieve at the level that you achieve right now, you are not going to be able to get rid of that need for validation and recognition. It's an important part of achieving. 


You don't need someone else to tell you that you're doing a good job. 

But what I'm suggesting is that you can achieve that need. You can fulfill the need on your own. You don't need someone else to tell you that you're doing a good job. You can just tell yourself it's very simple. 


At the end of the day, spend 5-10 minutes thinking not just about the things that you've achieved or celebrated or the checkmarks from the day, but it's taking it one step further - It's looking at those things that you did today and asking yourself the question, why are these things amazing? Or, why do these things matter? Or how do these things make me really good at what I do? 


Acknowledging the impact of your work.

It's not just acknowledging the check, mark. It's acknowledging the impact of it. That's the validation part of it, the recognition. So, for example, today I'm here writing this podcast. Now, I have a couple of other things to do today, but this is my main task. Why does it matter? 


Because thousands of women are going to listen to this episode and feel seen and heard. It matters because women are not going to feel alone. They're going to learn what's at the heart of who they are and what drives and motivates them. And they're going to learn that it's not bad. In fact, it has a lot of positivity. 


Can you hear that? Can you hear my acknowledgment of something that I did and then how I validated why it matters and why it's good? 


Let me give you another example. I know a lot of new moms, they struggle when their newborn babies are born, right? And they're on maternity leave. And really all they're ever doing is feeding them and changing them and trying to get them to go to sleep. And it just never feels like they're doing enough, particularly for high achievers. 


So if this is you, and this is all you did today, you're a new mom that changed their baby's diaper, like ten times and fed them endlessly and just tried to get them to go to sleep. And maybe you didn't even take a shower today because you were so focused on your newborn. This matters. It matters because you are creating a lifelong bond with your child. You're creating safety for them. You're teaching them that you will always provide for them, that they don't need to be worried or anxious about their needs because you've got them. You're telling them that I am your mom and you matter more to me than even taking a shower today, more than my job. 


Validation and recognition within ourselves.

Can you feel the shift, the recognition, the significance of the work that a mom of a newborn is doing? All I did was self validate that work. I recognized the impact and the amazingness and the goodness of what a new mom does, the desire, the need for recognition. 


If this is a value of yours, it's not a bad thing. It's a part of what keeps you going and on track. It contributes to your high level of success. But you don't need someone else to tell you that you're doing a great job if you believe in it yourself in so many ways. That's what it always comes down to. It comes down to what you believe, your thoughts, your perspective, your mindset, who you are and what you do. 


Elevated thoughts about ourselves.

When you have elevated thoughts about yourself and who you are and what you do, good emotions and good behavior and positivity flows out of you when you have thoughts about yourself and who you are and what you do. And they're sort of in the pits, and are mostly negative. The negative emotion and behaviors are what flow out of you. 


Now, I can help you balance your high achieving self with rest and fun and leisure. You might not even know what rest and fun and leisure look like to you in this season of life, and that's okay. We're going to define it together. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to help you learn to prioritize rest and fun and leisure without sacrificing your big goals. That's what we do in coaching, and I would love to talk to you about it. 


Book a free call now.

You can learn more about the process of coaching, exactly how it works, and book a free coaching call with me by going to my website, www.rebeccaolsonncoaching.com/coaching 


And working moms, you're successful, you're a high achiever, you're driven to do big things in this world. And it's all good. It's all perfect. It's exactly as it should be. All right, Working Moms, we'll talk to you next week. And until then, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson