Motivation Monday: Give Yourself Some Credit

I want to ask you something and I want you to actually think about it before you answer.

When was the last time you genuinely acknowledged something hard that you did?

Not a humble brag to someone else. Not a quick internal "that was okay I guess" before moving on to the next thing. A real, honest moment where you looked at what you went through and said “That was something. I did that.”

If you are struggling to remember, this post is for you. And honestly, it is a little bit for me too.

Why We Do Not Give Ourselves Credit

Here is something I have noticed about myself that I suspect is true for a lot of people.

When other people tell me something I did was impressive or brave or hard, my first instinct is to wave it off. When I came out of open heart surgery at 25 and people told me I was brave, I did not feel brave. I just wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed. It felt like something that happened to me, not something I did.

But here is what I have come to understand looking back.

The soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy probably did not feel brave either. They looked terrified. And they absolutely should have been. But bravery is not the absence of fear. It is doing what needs to be done anyway. If I were truly a coward I would have walked out of that hospital and let the infection do what it was going to do.

The fact that I did not do that is something. It counts. Even if it did not feel that way at the time.

Sometimes being brave is just doing what you do not want to do anyway.

The Rearview Mirror Problem

Most of us do not recognize our own accomplishments until we are far enough away from them to see them clearly.

You are in the middle of something hard and all you can see is how much further you have to go, how much more you have to do, how many things could still go wrong. You are not thinking about how remarkable it is that you are still standing and still trying. You are just trying to get through the day.

And then one day, weeks or months or years later, you look back and think — oh. I did that. That was a lot.

That moment of recognition is real and it matters. But most people let it pass without actually sitting in it. They acknowledge it for half a second and move straight on to the next thing.

Do not do that. Let yourself feel it.

Your Load Is Heavy to You

One of the fastest ways to talk yourself out of giving credit is comparison.

Someone else has been through worse. Someone else accomplished more with less. There are people in the world dealing with things that make your problems look small.

All of that might be true. And none of it changes the fact that what you went through was hard for you.

Everyone has a load to carry. Some people it might weigh 100 pounds, some people 1,000. But the important thing is that everyone's load is heavy to them. The hardest thing you have ever been through probably felt just as hard to you as the hardest thing someone else has ever been through felt to them.

This is not about comparing pain. It is about recognizing that your struggles are real, your efforts are real, and your accomplishments are real. It does not matter what someone else has done. What matters is what you did.

You will never be another person. You will never go through the exact same thing someone else has. Your journey is yours. Own it.

The Small Stuff Counts Too

Not every accomplishment looks like finishing a race or launching a business.

Some of the hardest things we do are the quiet, unglamorous ones. Making the appointment you have been putting off for months. Having the difficult conversation you have been avoiding. Getting out of bed on a day when everything in you said to stay there. Showing up for something when nobody would have noticed or blamed you for not showing up.

We have a lot of mechanisms in our own brains designed to keep us from doing things we do not want to do. When you break through that and get the thing done anyway, that is worth acknowledging. Even if nobody throws you a parade. Even if you are the only one who knows it happened.

Doing things you do not want to do but doing them anyway is one of the most underrated accomplishments there is. Give yourself credit for it.

Pride Is Not Arrogance

There is a difference between being legitimately proud of yourself and being full of yourself.

Arrogance inflates. It exaggerates. It takes what is real and makes it bigger than it actually was because somewhere underneath the bravado there is a person who does not actually feel that good about themselves.

Real pride is grounded. It does not need to be louder than the truth. It just looks at what actually happened, what it actually took, and says — yes. That was real. I did that.

If you are legitimately proud of something, do not hide it. You earned the right to feel it.

Write It Down

Here is something that actually works when you are struggling to give yourself credit.

Sit down with a piece of paper and write out one thing you accomplished. Then write out everything it took to get there. The things you had to do. The things you had to sacrifice or miss out on. The moments where you wanted to quit and did not. The obstacles that came up that you did not see coming and had to solve anyway.

When it is all written down and staring back at you, it is very hard to look at it and say that was nothing.

When you are in the middle of working toward something, all you can see is how much more you have to do. When you get to the other side, you feel the relief but sometimes also a strange emptiness. That emptiness is your brain moving on before it has given the journey its due.

It is not about the destination. It is about everything you did to get there. That is where the real accomplishment lives.

Something I Want to Say to Myself

I will be honest with you. I built Bait Dogs from an idea in my head into a real business with real customers and 80% month over month growth. And most days it does not feel like much because it is numbers on a screen and emails in an inbox and late nights on a laptop.

I started this wanting to inspire just one person. It seems like we are doing more than that. And I have to remind myself that counts, even when it does not feel concrete.

So this part is for me as much as it is for you.

You are capable of extraordinary things. Because you have already done extraordinary things.

It might not feel that way right now. I know sometimes it does not feel that way to me. But trust me, you have come through more than you are giving yourself credit for. You are still here. You are still standing. You are still trying.

That cannot be discounted just because it is done. It should give you something. A sense that maybe the challenges of tomorrow will be a little more manageable because of what you survived today.

You are worthy of self love and self praise. If you sit down and really think about what you have been through and what you have done, I think you will find that to be true.

Give yourself some credit. You have earned it.

We are the underdogs. We don't stay down, we bite back.