A success résumé is a simple tool to record and organise your wins – big and small. It’s a powerful reminder of all that you’ve accomplished in life which helps to boost your confidence and self-esteem.
We can all benefit from extra confidence. We enjoy things more, try harder and get better results when the fire of self-belief is burning hot within us.
The problem is, we have a bad habit of undermining it. We focus on the negatives and talk ourselves into a fragile mess that’s too scared to try anything. And as a result, we play to protect ourselves, instead of playing to win.
Think about this for a moment: What would you do, if you couldn’t fail? How would you play, if you felt you could win? What moves would you make, if you knew you could pull them off?
Today, we’re going to build the kind of confidence that unlocks your potential and allows you to express it fully.
What is a success résumé?
A success résumé is a 1-2 page document that showcases your successes. It highlights your strengths, your hard work, the growth you’ve experienced, and the great things you’ve accomplished.
By writing down and reviewing your ‘wins’, you build confidence and self-esteem. You focus on the positive aspects of yourself and your life, which cultivates positive feelings and self-belief.
If you’ve done something before, it will help you to do it again. If you’ve solved a challenging problem, it will help you to solve another. If you’ve built skills in one domain, it will help you to build skills in this one. How? Because you have the confidence and the belief that you can.
A success résumé is a simple, yet powerful tool that makes you feel good about yourself and increases the chances of you succeeding in the future.
3 benefits of a success resume
Success résumés are beneficial for adults and children alike. They help boost confidence across professional, sporting, and creative pursuits. Consider the following benefits of creating your own success résumé:
1. Increases confidence. Recording and remembering your wins keeps them fresh in your mind, which increases your confidence and builds your self-esteem.
2. Improves self-awareness. This exercise shines a light on how you talk to yourself, what you think of yourself and how you perform as a result of this self-image. Are you even capable of giving yourself a compliment? Awareness is the first step in creating positive changes.
3. Overrides negative self-talk. That voice in your head that tells you you’re no good, and shouldn’t even try, needs to be gagged often. Focussing on wins increases the presence and volume of positive self-talk, which can effectively drown out negative self-talk.
You are perfectly capable, you just need to be reminded of that repeatedly in order to believe it.
How to create a success résumé
A success résumé can be as individual and unique as you are, so feel free to create your own design using whatever medium you prefer. Paper and digital docs (word, pages, google docs) both work, as long as it’s something you can access easily in the future.
Follow these steps to create a success résumé:
1. Write a list. List all of your skills, strengths and successes. Use a mix of positive statements that include the process as well as outcomes. Remind yourself of what you’re good at, the work you’ve put in, how much you’ve grown, and what you’ve achieved as a result.
2. Include positive feedback. Don’t forget to add positive comments and feedback you’ve received from coaches, peers and people whose opinion matters to you. If they’ve said something remarkable about your skills, work ethic or performance, include that in your list.
3. Add some illustrations and images. If you’re a visual person you may benefit from including illustrations that bring your résumé to life. Alternatively, you can create a slideshow of photos to accompany your résumé and add music that uplifts you. Images help with visualisation and positive reinforcement.
4. Keep adding to it. As the weeks, months and years pass, continue to add to your success résumé. Create a document that’s so compelling you feel a rush of energy whenever you read it.
5. Review weekly. This isn’t an exercise you do once and forget about it. You should have a regular time slot to read your success résumé as an ongoing reminder of how capable you are. Once a month is good, once a week is better. You can read it before training sessions, practice runs and big events, or in the midst of difficult times.
It’s good to create a success résumé with the help of a coach, or someone who plays a key role in your development. They can help remind you of your wins and frame them in a way that further builds your confidence and self-esteem.
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Featured Image: @ylblife
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