How can you use your past successes to build self-confidence in your career?

I couldn’t agree more with that. Everything you live is a new learning doesn’t matter if it is good or bad. The most important point is identify each one, learn from both and help others who are at the same step of the journey you’ve been earlier.

I've found we don't remember our successes well. But especially when you've led in complex situations, it wasn't all about you anyway. So, for one or two key situations, make a case study. What was the general issue? What was the burning issue? Which key stakeholders did you have to work with? What did they feed back to you? What went wrong and what was your part in fixing it? Rather than skills, focus on what happened because of your character, courage, capacity to learn, ability to integrate opposing ideas - in other words two or three defining talents. Confidence comes from having evidence to back up a couple of important things you can say about who you are, not just what you do.

This is true but at the same time we also have to consider the fact that past success shouldn't hold us back from exploring new areas of work. Past success is to be used as a foundation for new challenges and past success also can boost up our energy to take on existing issues. Success is surely a double edged sword. If handled correctly it can push us towards unknown but exciting journey and if handled poorly, it can put us into self evaluating and external validation mode which robs us from our happiness of growing as a person. Past success have always helped me to be grounded so that it doesn't go to my head and I be honest with my efforts.

One way I have applied this in my own life is by taking the time to reflect on instances where I succeeded, anything that I successfully completed, or goals I achieved, or an innovative solution to a problem I came up with. When you recall specific details about those instances, the challenges you faced and the skills you used your brain has a reference point to access. This helps to build confidence tremendously.

When identifying successes, be sure to use your own measuring stick of what success looks like to you. Avoid the temptation of comparisons or achievements based on what someone else wants you to do. While it is important to achieve work objectives, you should also set targets and goals that allow you to achieve personal milestones that will benefit you personally and professionally.

One must definitely identify the ingredients which made the dish taste soo delicious! And here is the big mistake that is made in the process- you stop your analysis once you identify the ingredients. You must identify the quantity and the quality of the ingredients and the cook. Identify when each of the ingredients were added. When did you turn on the flame and how fast or how slow was the flame and how did you identify to change the flow of the flame. What was the relationship between the ingredients and the flame and how did they react to the different temperatures. When did you decide to turn off the flame and put aside your dish and how did you exactly serve the dish. And yes, what about your dish did your audience enjoy the most!

Analysis is the best way to know what and how things have worked in the past. It also gives us the understanding of what can be done and what can be avoided. It also pushes us to expand and explore our potential and also helps to keep a check if we are doing less than our potential. Analysing our past success is a good way of knowing what can give results for sure but analysing our failures is also a concrete way of knowing and avoiding what can't work. Everytime we don't have to go back and do everything right from scratch. Our past experiences can surely pave a path for us to follow and approach our expected success.

Quite often it's true when people say - it's all about the journey, and that's often where we learn and grow. When you overcame adversity, or challenges that you faced, it's important to take a step back to understand not only what you did, but why you did it that way. Was it gut instinct, or perhaps learned behaviour, or could you have acted as a maverick and did something out the box?

While these are excellent questions and should be answered, I find it valuable to answer influential questions. Who were my superiors at the time, and how did they contribute to our success? What was the work environment like? How did I interact with my colleagues that led to success? Did I have contact with customers or users of my work? Was it an individual success or that of a team I was on? Understanding how you were influenced or how you influenced others can play a big part in your future success.

Celebrating your successes is important in understanding your contribution and self awareness for that moment in time. But it's also useful to look back on in the future when you need that reminder of your achievements and point of low self esteem. Every day you're creating history, so making a note, taking a picture, or writing it down will evidence this and will help in reflecting back and boost self confidence.

Celebration is a strong way of reminding our potential and what we can achieve. Our capacity and capabilities are always tested during tough times and this also allow us know how we can grow as a person. Personally celebrations have always boosted my confidence and has allowed me to spread my wings so that I can be extremely humble and be in gratitude forever. Being humble and honest is the best way to scale up and grow in life that's what I have learnt from celebrating success. It also swells up our energy and expand our context and we get to know why celebrations are important.

This is also a crucial step. I would add to celebrate the success of others to help create an environment that promotes and celebrates success without having to force it or think about it.

What we did in the past to become successful is also important to understand and replicate what brought us success. It's very crucial for us to understand that our past successes shouldn't create a hindrance in our growth. Rather we should be using our insights and learnings to make more realistic decisions and see how we can impact more lives so that success doesn't get limited to us but also goes to others around us. Applying our past successes also allows us to set tangible and realistic goals which can be achieved with a known path and set direction. And it also allows us to know what could be done better and faster so that we don't repeat the process of failure again and again.

Updating is equally important as upgrading. Whatever we have done in the past and brought us success is a set parameter for us to aim at when we begin something new. But it's also very important to keep on knowing how things can be done better. And this can only be done by knowingly updating our successes. We can get success by fluke too but when we put our heart into anything even fluke builds our confidence and then nothing ever happens in our life by fluke. Knowing our past is an easy way to build and maintain our confidence and also pushes us to go beyond. Its not only about doing what's possible but also its about aiming for impossible and achieve it. And set an example for millions to follow. That's where the strength lies.

In the process of leveraging past successes to build confidence, it’s easy to slip into “Clean slate” mode. This is when you decide to evade future risks in order not to mess up your previous records of success; so you get stuck with past glory. How you combat this is to proactively capture your setbacks from the past and document how you overcame them. This helps change your outlook on what setbacks are and drives you out of the Clean slate mode by getting you to embrace risks and failures more No better confidence booster exists than embracing past failures ??

Dr. Myles Munroe said this.."the greatest enemy of your progress is your last success." This statement can be true when an individual becomes too proud and therefore gets stagnant; however, I would say that a career professional should keep those successes in mind - not to dwell on them but to keep them close enough that as they strive to create more success in life because these use to build self-confidence on their career journey.

Past successes remind us that we are capable. We have achieved so much in the past and so is possible for the future. Past successes helps in building confidence. We can get to know what works and what doesn't work for us.