The Importance of Giving Yourself Credit

Macy Cassera is a life coach and freelance writer who helps others rebuild after loss and change so they can create a fulfilling and authentic life full of purpose. 

This blog post is dedicated to Ehlers-Danlos Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month and the importance of giving yourself credit for how much you do accomplish.

As a life coach, I focus on helping my clients get to a better, more authentic place after loss and change. Oftentimes, due to physical and mental health challenges, we lose a sense of identity, accomplishment, and confidence. While there may also be things that we could accomplish before that we can’t anymore; this can create a sense of loss and many times, grief.

We get lost in this cloudy cycle, lacking self-worth. Leading to more mental and physical exhaustion, until we’ve drained ourselves so much and can’t even accomplish the one thing that we were trying to do.

But that one thing that you could accomplish deserves immense credit and acknowledgement. This recognition is not so much from others, but from yourself. Nobody can live in our bodies and minds. Therefore, we must give ourselves the deserved credit.

It’s difficult to deframe our mind to think about all of the things that we can accomplish rather than what we could not do now or before. It’s especially challenging when our baseline was once in a different place.

And the only way to move forward is accepting where we are now.

Give yourself credit for:

• The shower you took even though your body wasn’t up for it.
• The laundry you folded.
• The emails you sent.
• The uncomfortable conversation that you chose to have anyway.
• The pause that you gave yourself to regroup and ground.
• The support you accepted by venting to a trusted person in your life.
• The mindful moment when you noticed your negative self-talk.
• The willingness to carry on and take each day as it comes.

If you’ve been able to accomplish one of these tasks this week, then I’m clapping for you, as you clap for yourself!

Here are 5 things to consider when you’re trying to give yourself the credit that you deserve:

1. You are human

Humans are not invincible, perfect, or able to prevent loss and change. But what humans are good at is learning how to adapt to what life presents. This is done by finding the best ways to move through it, in order to meet each person’s individual needs. Not for anyone else, but you and your own personal journey.

Being human also means that you have your own limitations as well as strengths that are different from the next person. It is our job to find those strengths and move into that direction by finding ways to incorporate them into this current chapter of life.

2. Be enough for you

Society has set standards on just about everything. Ask yourself how you would feel if you had no idea what others were doing? Would it relieve any of your own pressure? I hope so. But the reality is, we don’t actually know what every person’s battle is. That’s why it is so important to focus on our own worth and embrace what feels good for us, moment to moment. What is enough for you may be more than or less than what someone else needs. When you focus on what is enough for you, your own unique qualities surface.

3. Be creatively you

Maybe we don’t give ourselves enough credit because what we are doing doesn’t fulfill our values. You have to get creative in the context of whatever that personally means for you. Again, we have the personal power to create some of our reality (not all), but how we express ourselves is a big outlet to allow our creative needs to be met. This in turn, creates a space for each of us to naturally feel accomplished.

4. Being vs. doing

I cannot emphasize this enough; your mere existence and presence are enough. Your credit lies in telling yourself that you are worthy and believing it.

A quick exercise: Choose one word or phrase that’s created negative self-talk for you. For example: unworthy, unaccomplished, weak, or unmotivated. Now think about that word and spend a minute thinking of a time when you were the opposite of that negative phrase toward yourself. Picture what you were doing when you felt worthy, etc. How did that moment make you feel? You now know that you’ve been in a better place before and that it’s important to seek help to rediscover this part of you. Figure out how to get back to that space and do it first by just being, rather than doing. This will help you find the energy to do it in the future. 

5. Why are you here?

Why are you still fighting this battle here? And why are you literally here? As in, taking the time to read this post? My guess is because you know that it’s worth fighting for. That you know that you are worth fighting for. Whether each day is a struggle or not, there is still a fire inside that wants to be ignited (again). There’s a part of you that longs for support and love in order to get to a happier place.

So what steps will you take to give yourself more credit moving forward?

All of the things that you do each day deserve credit. We need to remind ourselves of this and celebrate each small victory that we accomplish. And we need to actually celebrate them!

Whether you use my small victories workbook, a notebook, a computer, or your mind - I suggest toward the end of every day, recalling the things that you did do and were able to accomplish.

So recall the last day that you had just one victory.

You deserve all of the credit in the world because one is just enough!

To get in touch with Macy, please send her an email or submit a message through her official website.