So I have always had the terrible habit of comparing myself to others. I have been doing this recently. You see I’m not 100% happy with where I am at in my career and I am spending a little bit of time on LinkedIn where I inevitably encounter the profile of someone whom I used to be at a similar place in my career to but who now is eminently more successful to me (according to their LinkedIn profile). However, what I have also noticed is that I immediately discount all the other achievements that I have made in my life during the time that this person may have risen to this prominence of place in their career. So I have decided to write a list of all the other things I have achieved that may have led me to slip “behind”.
My unrecognised achievements
* Learned to live and recreate myself in a foreign country.
* Navigated an international relationship and worked out how to be with my partner despite major visa hurdles
* Recreated myself and my skill set, translated that into a different society to land a job where I required sponsorship on a visa so I could pursue a relationship with my now husband and father of two, soon to be three, children
* With limited sleep I managed to feed my first baby who was a terrible feeder for 12 weeks post major surgery with little support due to living far away from family and having a mother battling cancer.
* 3 x getting through pregnancy while either working in an office or working at home looking after a toddler.
* 42 months of breastfeeding three babies
* Supporting my husband emotionally through many ups and downs professionally and helping him get to a much healthier place physically and mentally.
* Keeping three children alive for almost five years (the eldest is five in two months).
This is not a complete list but perhaps the point I want to make is these are not things that are rewarded by promotions or pay raises and possibly go unnoticed by many. However, they are things that make significant differences to the lives of others. If I didn’t do some of these things two and almost three people would not exist. My husband probably would not be in as happy a place as he is. They also are things that take up a lot of time and emotional and physical energy that may otherwise have been spent progressing a career. I wish we could somehow value or at least recognise the achievements that aren’t career orientated a little more. Or perhaps more to the point I wish I could recognise these things and think they are valuable things I have done and not compare myself to others whose journey is significantly different to my own. Are there some things that you have done in life that you tend to discount when looking at LinkedIn?