The Art of Acknowledging Achievements

Our words and thoughts have a big effect on our actions and attitude. Most of us understand this principle, but it’s a lot harder to put it into practice than it might seem. But your words and thoughts about yourself can be the difference between continuing down a path of success and feeling overwhelmed and unsuccessful. 

I’m here to challenge you today to become aware of the words like “only” and “should” that are sabotaging your joy and sense of accomplishment in what you’ve made happen. Change the sentence “I’ve only lost X pounds…” to “I’ve lost X pounds!” and see how your perspective shifts. Noting your accomplishments and giving yourself credit for your wins is empowering, and everyone deserves to be proud of themselves for the things they work hard for. I want you to begin basking in the accomplishment of your wins, no matter how big or small you may think they are (because side note, Rome wasn’t built in a day). Spend time recognizing all the things you do to get you closer to your goals! You have so much to be proud of, and I want you to feel that. 

Resources:

The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan

Quotes

“When you use the word ‘only’ when describing your accomplishments, you are massively minimizing the effort that you’re putting in and the transformation that’s occurring.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“Stop minimizing when you’re putting in effort and work and doing hard things.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“When we remove words like ‘only’ and ‘never’, it can feel like we’re just playing around with semantics and words but we’re not. Oftentimes that’s the only thing that needs to change.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“We don’t need to lose more weight, we don’t need to go faster, we don’t need to do anything. We need to stop beating ourselves up and stop minimizing where we have come from and how much we have done.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“If you’re someone who’s a real go-getter, when you achieve something you might celebrate it for one second but you don't really let it land, or stay in the win. There’s always that next thing which is not inherently a problem, but it is if you don’t let yourself enjoy where you’re at at the moment.” - Matthea Rentea MD

“When you’re on these longer health journeys, there’s no arrival! There’s no reaching the summit and now we’re good. So if we want to keep going, we need to love the process and where we’re at. And part of that means acknowledging how much we’re actually doing.” - Matthea Rentea MD

Audio Stamps

00:48 - We learn how important language is, and making sure we’re celebrating our journey and successes in how we talk and think about ourselves

03:55 - Dr. Rentea shares her philosophy on celebrating victories, and how important taking time to recognize your personal accomplishments is 

07:10 - Dr. Rentea challenges us listeners to take a step back and reevaluate how we are speaking and thinking about ourselves and our accomplishments

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am so excited to be back with all of you and we're going to talk about something today that I think is really fitting for any time of the year, but especially if you are someone that over the holiday time, maybe you're more hard on yourself or just kind of negative self talk is up. I want to talk about today. The power of taking the word only out of your vocabulary and really celebrating victories more one of the things I really see that happens is when you are using the word only often in your vocabulary, when you are describing either your accomplishments or what you're doing to take care of yourself, anything along those lines, you are massively minimizing What that is for you. So, for example, if you're someone that, well, I've only lost 10 pounds or I'm only walking 5 minutes a day or I only turn off Netflix early one day a week and get more sleep. You minimize the effort that you're putting in, the transformation that's occurring, the wins that are going into that. You don't get to celebrate any of that. And here's the reason that it matters. You know, this is not This podcast is not just about mindset, right? It's really about metabolic and mindset, what we talk about on here, and what we know from studies is that if you are constantly feeling stressed, your cortisol levels are up. We know this. This is a fact and it's true. And if your cortisol levels are up, then you truly don't get to go All the way to potentially what your goals are. And so if we want to get your body out of a stress state, we've got to stop telling it that it's an alarm what's happening. So one of the ways that we get to do that is for you to stop minimizing when you are putting in effort and work and all the hard things that you're doing. So I would say that what I want you to first do is just notice when you talk about things if you use the word only. And you might even be saying these things to yourself. I only journaled. Once this week or I never do also those type of words too. So not just the word only but also if you're like I never do this or I should do that. So also having this really strict agenda for yourself just noticing those really. intense, all or nothing words that really don't serve you well just noticing if you're even doing that. And then considering what would happen if you took the word only out of the sentence. So let's just play around with this for a second. If we said, I only lost 10 pounds, And we take the word only out. I lost 10 pounds. To me, I feel like saying I lost 10 pounds hits really differently than saying I only lost 10 pounds. So again, what I want to open you up to is that sometimes I feel like, and I say this with patients and coaching clients, it feels like we're playing semantics, right? Like we're just like messing around with words, but we're actually not because that's often the only thing that needs to change. We don't need. to lose more weight. We don't need things to go faster. We don't need to do anything. We need to stop beating ourselves up and stop minimizing how much we've done for where we have come, for how far we have come. And so that's one of the things I would say, just watch out for that word only, or when you say never, or you should do it, or you have to do it. All of those kind of things. Just look out for that. Is that showing up for me? If you describe to someone where you're at and the things you're doing, what's the language you would use and do any of those type of words come in there? And let's talk about on the flip side, celebrating things. So I think especially if you are more of this type A personality where you really like to go and achieve things and you're really like a go getter, you might for one second when you achieve it, celebrate it, but you don't really let it linger or land. Or stay in the win. And here's what I mean by that. You for one second thing, Oh, I achieved it. But then again, you think you need the next thing and you need the thing after that. Also really people, if you're really into self development and into, growth, things like that, there's always that next thing that you're working on, which is not inherently a problem, but it is, if you do not let yourself enjoy where you're at at the moment. Especially when you're on these. longer health journeys. Number one, it's not ever over. There's no arrival here. We've not reached the summit and we're good. And so if we want to keep going on these paths and we want to feel okay as we're doing it, we need to love the process. We need to love where we're at. What does part of that mean that we need to acknowledge how much we're actually doing? So a big thing. That I have patients and coaching clients do every so often they'll be talking and they will be saying things like The medication got them all the results and they they're not owning any part of what's gone down. They could have lost a hundred pounds They could be doing a million things and they're minimizing all over the place What's happening and none of it are they celebrating look at all the things I'm doing so if you're someone that does not on the regular look at What are some of the ways that you've supported yourself today? What are some of the things that you've done for yourself? You're not going to be able to, on a dime, name those things if you're not practicing doing that often. I would recommend that you start a practice of writing down, you know how there's like gratitude practices? A practice of you writing down all the things that you are doing. And this could be everything from I brush my teeth, I'm drinking my water, I'm getting my protein in, I every so often change up what I'm eating based on what I notice, I watch videos to get ideas and get inspiration, and I actually go make it. I do this or that for my kids. I make sure that the laundry's clean, that we're all well taken care of, that you start to get into practice of looking at all the things you're doing. The reason I say this is that you get to then when those comments pop up of how you're not doing enough or, you know, only. You know, when you will start to hear those comments, if you are consistently showing yourself all the things that you are doing to take care of yourself, you will notice how offensive that word only sounds. And you will say, wait a minute, no. No, it took a lot for me to get to this place where 10 pounds, 20 pounds came off. It took a lot for me to maintain this, even though I might want to lose 50 more. It's taken a lot of work. I'm not going to use the word only. I would never say that to someone else. I would never treat them that way, but you're not even going to understand. How significant that is, what you're minimizing and what you're doing if you don't even know what's there. So that's what I wanted to leave you with today. Again, this is, this actually is a quick one. I always say that it never happens, but I want to challenge you to think about the way in which you describe What you are doing in your life, and does it celebrate you? And by the way, this is very different than being haughty or conceited, anything like that. But there is a reality to acknowledging how much you're doing. and harvesting that and staying in the energy of that, that will feel much better than minimizing, negating, feeling you have to do so much more to ever be worthy of the result or that that result is somehow better, bigger, all those kind of things. That will help out greatly. If you are someone that loves this particular concept and you want to learn more about This type of thinking, I really recommend the book, The Gap and the Gain. We will link to that in the show notes underneath here, because they really talk about that looking at the gain as far as, look how far I've come, look at all these things that I've achieved, and all of that. You will gain much more than always looking at the gap, which is comparing to the ideal, look how far I have to go. It's this thing that you never actually achieve the ideal, but you always keep trying to grasp for it. And again, there's, it's fine to, to do self development, it's fine to work on your metabolic health and do all these things, but we need to enjoy the process as we're doing it, we need to love ourselves where we're at, we need to be acknowledging what's happening as we go forward, it's not always about trying to achieve this unrealistic thing that we can't get to. And that is what happens when we use only, never, should, when we use those type of words, it's really, Trying to bring us to this ideal where we are not necessarily ever gonna get there. Hopefully you enjoyed today's episode. I would love if you got something out of today's episode. If you would share this episode and tag me on social, that would be absolutely amazing. All right, we will talk soon.