Share One’s Achievements

I wrote a poem a while ago about the above object. I sent it off hoping but not expecting to win anything. But I have! Out of hunderds of poems of a high quality, so many that it took them a week longer to decide which seven poems to publish for National Poetry day, mine was one of those picked.

Check out https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/celebrating-national-poetry-day/ to read mine and the other six.

I had planned to do a blog post today [my hope is that I do at least one post a week regularly, but promise nothing – even to myself 🙂 ] So thought I could share my poem here. My plan was to just share it in a blog post and leave it at that, hoping that people would see it. But then something in me whispered “share it with everyone” and as I am trying to ‘listen to my heart/inner self’ I thought I’d go for it. So it has been shared on Facebook, with those in my writing group, via email to various friends and on to WhatsApp. I might have even shared further but don’t have any other way of sharing.

Yes it has been lovely getting the messages back that say how good the poem is and congratulating me, but what it has also got me thinking is about how often we share our successes.

I think it is more a British thing than an American thing but we too often work on the “don’t be too proud”, “don’t show off”, “be humble”, etc. And then, I don’t know about anyone else, but I get upset when others don’t notice what I’ve done. But then how will they notice what I’ve done if I don’t share it. Yes the email that said ‘Congratulations’ will know that they are some anonymous person who I might never meet. I want/need/expect my friends and family to be proud of me, to be pleased for me, but if I don’t tell them how will they know.

Being one who, a few years ago decided that I’d do New Year Resolutions all throughout the year, I have decided that my 7th October Resolution is to be more open about sharing what I achieve, sharing my success. And my hope from it is that I will start a revolution where we all stop being so self-effacing and to be proud of what we achieve, what we do and most importantly be proud of who we are whether we win competitions, whatever success criteria we base our lives out. Instead let us be proud of who we are, what we can do and get on a be.

I suppose this is a blog that continues from What Have I Achieved? and is now looking at ‘What Am I Achieving Now” and taking it onwards and forwards.

I will finish with a photo of me with Abergele’s mayor and mayoress outside The Gift Shop, Abergele. Alan, the mayor, who is a huge encourager of people, suggested I get in touch with Tracey who runs The Gift Shop to promote my book, The Little Yellow Boat. But not only did he encourage me to do that he then was the first person to come and buy a copy of the book to get it out on Facebook for advertising for this Saturday’s event when I will be in the shop for two hours signing books. He not only encourage but supported too. And I do think that if I am going to go forward with shouting about my achievements I need to also get behind others to shout their achievements, to encourage them and to help us all take a step forward into realising what amazing people we all are and what an amazing world we live in.