Like gold ore, your achievements have to be "panned" in order to find the nuggets, small and large. Your achievements have to be examined, and laborasca separated from the gold. When you have the golden information, when you know your best self and your best capabilities, you will come to know the goals you want to reach. As each goal is gained, the habit of success becomes more deeply entrenched, and constantly bigger and more enticing goals become attainable.
Now, to uncover your achievements. Of course, I have asked that you make a list of at least ten, but if you have already done so you are an exception. If you are like most of us, you haven't been able to locate many, if any, significant achievements, mainly because they have been blanketed under layers of modesty. Or perhaps, like many of my clients, you have procrastinated in fisting your achievements in the hope that I will reveal some magic words to make your success inevitable and spare you a lot of homework. I pause to shudder at where I might be if I possessed abracadabra of such potency. The fictional Svengali hypnotizing his little Trilby to singing triumphs would be a naive innocent compared to the man who holds the key to everyone's success.
Only you hold the key to your success, and only in your achievements is it to be found. So start writing, preferably in a new notebook that will in itself signify a fresh start toward success. Start with the first achievement that comes to mind-something you enjoyed doing, and did well, which made you feel good when it was done. But it must be written down.
Do not concern yourself with listing your achievements in chronological order, or in order of importance, or, least of all, with what others may have thought of them. Though we are all different, we all share many of the same talents, as the conformists are happy to point out, neglecting, however, to mention that no two individuals are equally strong in all the same talents, nor do they have the same opinions of them. And it is in these differences of strength and opinions that one individual differs from another. Sometimes we can see talents in some people showing up so strongly that we refer to them as born salesmen, or born actors, or born artists, and then we look at ourselves where these talents are conspicuous by their absence, and wonder if we were born with anything. For the most part, when we think of people born to this field or that, we are thinking of those whose talents were clearly evident quite early in life. I know a born sales manager who, at the age of nine, had four boys working for him on his paper route. My actor friend, so mortified at making a wrong entrance, declaimed to the cows in his father's barn when he was eight. General James Gavin had read all the military books in his local library before he was twelve, and Stanley Hiller of helicopter fame was caught speeding at the age of nine-in a scooter he powered with his mother's washing machine motor.
But what of those whose talents are not so conspicuous? Of those it was customary to say that their talents "showed up late in life," or that they "came as a surprise." Not so. Their talents were just as surely present early in life as those of their more conspicuous friends. What was lacking until recently was a means of recognizing them at all ages. Now we can not only recognize them, but we can apply them to fields of opportunity that didn't even exist when these talents were first demonstrated. I am reminded here, of a four-year-old boy who plagued his uncle with questions like, "Why does a nail stick to a magnet?" and "Why does a compass point to the north?" and "What is magnetism, anyway?" In 1883 these questions, indicated only that the boy was a nuisance, but at the age of 43 Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his development of the theory of relativity.
The age at which your achievements occurred is not important. However, in selecting your achievements- your veins of gold-be sure you include experiences that brought you personal satisfaction as well as accomplishment. That others might not have recognized them as achievements is of no consequence to you. For one achievement, such as winning a spelling bee, you might have received praise and a pat on the head. For another, such as collecting a dozen different eggs of song birds, you might have been soundly punished. For another, such as mowing the lawn for an aged cripple, you might have been rewarded with both cash and gratitude. For another, such as braving yourself to go off a ski jump, you might have been soundly punished. For another, self and the family bank account when the doctor bills come due. But no matter what your friends, parents, and neighbors might have to say about these incidents, the only thing that counts is your own opinion.