Savoring Your Wins: The Art Of Pausing Before The Pivot

Hiya. Hiya. Hiya. Cadre Sphere. I'm really excited to be with you today. This is my first session, so I'm really excited about that and I'm really excited to share some of my experiences and things I've learned along the way. If you're here, say hi, introduce yourself. I'd love to see who's joined us today and hopefully you're enjoying a little bit of lunch and. Hi, Nikki. Enjoying a little bit of lunch and taking some time to relax today on this Wednesday, this work it Wednesday. My name is Christy Larson.

I am a former and brief elementary school teacher. I ran a daycare for 10 years. I was a center director and then my most recent role was at Prime Digital Academy, who was unfortunately closed but locally here in Minnesota. And I was their director of partnerships and ran kind of their non technical curriculum side program manager for the professional skill development side of things. So really been able to celebrate the impact that I've made in the lives of over 2000 alumni who have gone through our programs and being able to see them be successful has really been absolutely awesome.

So excited to see you all. Like I said, I am here to talk to you a little bit today about celebrating those wins that we get, no matter how small, no matter how big. What's up for me? I don't know. I don't know what's next for me, but I am currently celebrating the things that I've done so far in all of my experiences and all of the things I've done. So. So today, like I said, I want to chat with you a little bit about savoring the wins. Right. Something that we don't necessarily do very often. So I was preparing for a job interview.

Yay me. Right? That's when in and of itself getting a job interview. And the questions were sent ahead of time. Thank you. Companies that do that, it's always a blessing. But one of the questions was, what are some of your biggest accomplishments, professional accomplishments? And it kind of caught me off guard, to be completely honest. I had been thinking about what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses, what are some things that I want to talk about in my experiences or my background? But I hadn't really thought too much about all the cool things I've done in my career, all the things that I've accomplished, all the things that I've.

That I've been really good at, that I've done, that have made an impact. Right. That have value. And I certainly hadn't documented it. Right. I certainly hadn't Wrote it anywhere so that I could just reference it. And you all maybe chime in if you have your own kind of name for what this is. But some people call it a brag doc or a boast book or a hype sheet, right? Something where you write things down. You document the cool things that you done, whether it's your professional or your. Or your personal life, but you write them down, right, so that you have them, so that you can.

You can go back and you can look at those things. I hadn't done that. So I hadn't heeded my own advice of encouraging other people to do that. And during my time at Prime, I talked to a lot of students, a lot of alumni about buckets, buckets of things we know. And then there's buckets of things we don't know, right? We've got two kind of buckets that we think about when we. When we're thinking about learning the things we really want to know, right? We really want to learn. And the things that we already have, but maybe we've forgotten that we know that thing so we can move on to the next thing.

So buckets of things we know. Buckets of things we haven't learned yet, right? Haven't learned yet. Hello from Erie. Hopefully you are having wonderful weather out there. Hello, everyone. So I tell people, you know, we often look at all the things we feel we need to learn to be a better. Insert word. Parent, colleague, professional friend, right? The things we need to learn to be better, but we forget to look at all of the things that we. That make us better, that are our accomplishments, right?

All the things we've learned to make us a better parent, colleague, professional friend. Good lovely weather. Yes. That's awesome. It's getting hot here in Minnesota, so. So think about that for a minute, right? Maybe you do. Maybe you're already really good at that. And, hey, that's a win in and of itself for you. But it is something really to think about, because I do feel like we look at all the things we need to learn, and we're like, how are we ever gonna learn all those things, right? How are we ever gonna be able to get to where we want to be, to be that better parent or colleague or friend or whatever that might be.

So I was recently on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. If you're a job seeker, you know that. But I was recently on there, and I saw and took part in a survey, and the question was. The question was, how much of your rich career History, your career history, do you have that lives in your brain or that you have versus being documented? Right. Those are your two options, and those were the two things you're thinking about is how much lives in your brain, how much of it do you have documented?

So the choices were 90% of it lives in my brain, 10% of it is documented, or 50% of it's in my brain and 50% of it's documented. And your last choice was 10% of it's in my brain, and 90% of it is documented. Hmm. Right. How much of your career history, all of the things that you've done lives in your brain versus do you have written down somewhere on your LinkedIn profile, on your resume, in a brag doc, documented. So you can look at that and you can say, here's all the things that I've done all brain for Nikki.

Totally. Right. So the, the results didn't really surprise me all that much, I think, just simply because I agreed with them in my own personal kind of space. But 65% of people chose 90% of it's in my brain and 10% of its document meant it 65%. So over half Nikki's at 50. 50. That's pretty good. 30%. So, Nikki, this would have been. You chose the. 50% of it's in my brain, and 50% of it's documented. Pretty good. But only five people and. Or 5%. And this is like, to me, like these, these 5% of people, I'm cheering them on on the sideline because they're doing.

They're doing it right. They said 10% of it's in my brain and 90% of it's documented. There's only 5% of people that responded to this poll. What does that say to you? What are your thoughts on that? Right. It's. It's interesting to think about. What it says to me is we're not celebrating nor documenting all of our wins enough. We spend so much time chasing the next big thing, the next thing we have to learn the next thing we need to get the next certificate, the next whatever it might be. Best friend.

Yes. We also struggle to communicate those wins. Absolutely. Nikki, great point. But we spend so much time going after the next thing that we forget to pause to breathe and to say, wow, I am really proud of that thing I just did, or I was a really good friend today or I brushed my hair today. Anything to celebrate the things that some days are just hard. Right. Think about that. You can have your own personal shine document. You can Have a professional boast book. And you can take a moment each day, each week, each month, each year to look at it, to pause, to breathe, and to say, wow, I've been pretty amazing today or this month or this year or this week.

You can use it when you're prepping for an interview, right? You've got that going back to or. I always encourage people to have it when they were going and preparing for their annual review. Right? Here are some of the cool things that I've done over the past year. Or if you just need a pick me up, you're having a bad day and you need to say, hey, I know that I can do really cool things. And I'm going to go and I'm going to celebrate some of the things that I've already done. So when I was thinking about sharing this today, I was looking for a little inspiration, right?

And I found this quote by Marshall Silver and it's basically saying the same thing. It says, savor the wanting as much as the having. Savor the wanting as much as the having. It's pretty cool. So I'm gonna leave it at that. I'm gonna let you all go on. I'm gonna go and document in my wowza doc that I did this today because I'm really proud of myself. So thank you so much for coming here. Thank you for being with me. I would love to interact with you and hear about your brag docs, your wowzadocs, your hype sheets, what are.

So share those with me. I'm. I'm all the inspiration we can get from one another is, is. Is wonderful. So take care, be well and go and celebrate a win today. Bye, everybody.