The hectic pace and constant demands of your job push you to move forward without ever stopping?
It may be worth taking a moment to recognize and celebrate your personal accomplishments. Celebrating your small and big victories reminds you of the value of all the efforts you have made. It will also strengthen your self-esteem and fuel your motivation to persevere.
By honoring your past successes, you will anchor positive feelings that will propel you towards new achievements. So, what have you accomplished of note in your life? What makes you proud?
My 7 Wonders is an exercise in accomplishment Who gives you the opportunity to examine the most satisfying accomplishments of your life (or career) and, as a nice bonus, discover the skills you want to prioritize using in the future. You’ll have the opportunity to look back on your greatest accomplishments, in all the areas that really matter to you.
Step 1: your moments of glory
Make a list of 10 to 15 personal and professional accomplishments that you are particularly proud of. You can select them at different times in your life: your youth, your studies, the start of your career, your last position…
Write down everything that comes to mind, even if it doesn’t seem significant at the moment. Try to think of concrete examples, specific situations and activities, not general skills or abilities.
To get you on the right track, I’ll give you an example: generic skills are, for example, “giving a speech” or “running a distance.” Specific situations would be more like “giving the inaugural speech of my class in front of 500 people in Lyon” or “running the 20 km from Paris in 1 hour 36 minutes”.
Here is a sentence to complete to help you collect your memories: “There was a time in my life when I was particularly proud of having done this…”
Step 2: choose your 7 achievements
From your list, choose the seven achievements or achievements that you appreciated the most. Analyze them by answering the following questions:
- What has been the main personal achievement for you?
- What did you like most about this production?
- What have you done that is out of the ordinary or “your ordinary”?
- What motivating factors led you to fully commit to this project?
- What other people were involved and what was your relationship with them?
- In what environment did you prepare and carry out this project?
For each of your seven wonders, you will then be able to fill in a table that looks like the example below.
| My Wonder No. 1 | |
| Accomplishment | Publish my first book |
| Pleasure | Become an author and gain some legitimacy in my chosen field. Lots of pride at the finish and, icing on the cake, a good success bookstore (10,000 copies and reprint). |
| Extraordinary | My ability to continue the writing project (2 hours per day and every weekend for three months) in addition to my full-time “food” job. |
| Motivation/Commitment | It was a childhood dream to publish a book, I promised myself I would get to the end! |
| Collective/Relationships | I worked alone on the writing but Christine, my editor, helped me a lot with her regular feedback during the revision phase. |
| Environment | I isolated myself in Brittany, with my grandmother, for three weeks to manage to finish the first draft of the manuscript. |
| Skills/Strengths | Preparation, research and planning, writing skills, personal discipline, perseverance. |
If the 7 Wonders exercise gives you wings and stimulates your creativity, you can go further than a simple painting. For example, you can use photos, physical souvenirs (like medals or trophies), create a PowerPoint-type presentation or even an illustrated notebook to showcase your accomplishments…
Step 3: your skills and strengths
For each of your seven wonders, you will then draw up a list of all the strengths and qualities that the accomplishment in question has brought to light. Which ones come up most often?
If it is more of an achievement or an activity that relates to your personal life, you will primarily look for your qualities and your soft skillsand if these are professional achievements, then you will have the opportunity to focus on your recurring skills.
In conclusion, it is essential to take a moment to celebrate every victory, every achievement, every wonder in our lives. These moments are not simply poses of nostalgia, they nourish our soul, strengthen our self-esteem and illuminate our journey.
Each accomplishment, small or large, is a new stone that we lay to build the wall of existence. Your 7 Wonders shape not only who you have been, but also who you will become.
