Brad on Accomplishments

Interesting topic, I've enjoyed reading both your comments. Its a pretty personal subject, one I'll attempt to dance carefully around so we can go back to arguing about how much football coaches make.

One slant on the topic that perhaps is obvious but nonetheless worth noting is that accomplishments are a reflection of priorities. Thinking how personal accomplishments are it makes sense that what you choose to prioritize in your life and invest time, energy, effort, and resources will likely create the output of accomplishments.

I'm barely 40 so I'm not feeling super accomplished in my life. I feel good about my trajectory, but have so much that is in front of me that I want to accomplish. But looking in the rear view mirror here are some thoughts on what I've prioritized in my life.

I've been able to navigate professional success and to this point do not feel I've had to sacrifice my family commitments. I've hopefully been graded kindly by my wife and kids, their grade matters to me. But I believe my effort score would be an A...as in Accomplishment. See what I did there? I'm flawed as a husband and dad, but I hope that my commitment and effort to trying to be the best I can will win the day. I hope.

Outside my family I've maintained a small network of relationships that are very important to me. For those in my extended family I feel a level of commitment to a supportive relationship with them that I hope enriches them. I hope.

I enjoy and prioritize growing and helping others. That takes a lot of forms, first and foremost my kids. But I enjoy growing the talented people that I get to work with in my career. I also enjoy engaging in my community through volunteering which the last 6+ years has been a volunteer and board leader for Junior Achievement. I hope that those investments have helped others in some way. I hope.

Lastly, I've prioritized some very selfish pursuits that are important to me. I've always wanted to maintain an identity that is based on my own personal pursuits. Completing an Ironman triathlon sits squarely on the top of this list. That's probably a shallow "accomplishment" to some, and I agree. But I have placed a priority on some selfish pursuits.

So there you go. Commitments to my family, my extended family, my community, and to myself. I'm comfortable with my steps forward and back, and am hopeful to have the opportunity to prioritize in the future that ultimately builds on my resume of accomplishments. I hope.

Accomplishments

I hesitate to respond because, well, I don't know.  Tough subject I guess.  It's tough because, like many things, what I believe in my head and what I'm able to actually live out in real life doesn't always match up.

Any time we start listing accomplishments, I feel like we're doing it so that we can compare, and I just don't like it.  We applaud when we read or hear stories about people being comfortable with themselves regardless of what people think, and yet we (yes, I'm including myself) spend our days comparing.  We can't help it.  We start teaching kids to compare themselves to others from the day that they're born.

"Just had his one-month follow-up appointment.  He's in the 95 percentile for weight, and 75% for length."

"She's only in first grade, but she's reading at a third grade level."

And it never ends.

My mental health depends on me believing that I am who God says that I am.  It's fact.  So I need to recognize when others contradict that truth and ignore it.  Comparison to others = feeling like a failure.

So accomplishment to me is hardly worth discussing.  Not that you guys would, but maybe my accomplishments don't mean a hill of beans to you.  And perhaps I'm not emotionally strong enough to handle the possibility of someone telling me that what I believe is an accomplishment isn't really an accomplishment at all.  Is a majority vote required by the general populace in order for it to be an accomplishment?

I apologize in advance because this has sparked a thought process for me that drives to what I believe is a core issue in the world these days, and that is being comfortable with yourself.

Yep, that's cliche.  But I believe it's the most powerful and transformational thinking for about any human being.  I guess I feel like so many people spend so much time and energy doing stuff so that they can tell someone else that they did it, because it will convey an image that they hope to portray.  They didn't do it because they wanted to, but because they think someone else would want them to.  Or they don't do something that they want to do, because they are afraid what someone will think if they do.

What a miserable life.

I'm all over the damn place.

What were we talking about?  Oh yeah, accomplishments.  Ed, relational accomplishments are absolutely the best accomplishments.  I wholeheartedly agree.  You don't generally hear eulogies the include the "stuff" that people did, but rather about what kind of person they were: loyal, kind, generous, loving, faithful, friendly, caring, etc.  Those are relational.  Certainly traits that can be on display at work, but they aren't work related.  They can be displayed in any relational context: parent to child, child to parent, friendships, marriages, cousins, neighbors, co-workers, teacher to student, authority figures, etc.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if we all had relational bucket lists - if our bucket lists included things that express our friendliness, our love, our loyalty, and our care.  Even just a little.  Not for the sake of comparing to someone else's list, but even if we strive to do it just a little, I think we would all benefit.

[Raises hand to express the international "I'm sorry" gesture, steps off the soap box, and shrinks away from the blog]

What's Your Greatest Accomplishment?

I've been in job search for a while now, and a common interview question is to ask what your greatest professional accomplishment(s) are.  Because of my experience being the interviewer and the interviewee, I'm always prepared with those accomplishments in my past experience that I derived the most satisfaction from, and that delivered the most value to my employer.

But what about in your personal life?  Do you have accomplishments personally that are equivalent to or exceed what you've accomplished professionally?

And further, think about why you consider any accomplishment (professional or personal) so gratifying.  In my case, I'm judging the magnitude of my accomplishment in terms of:

• the value derived, for someone else AND for me
• how hard the achievement was to achieve, the challenge was really big
• those that participated in the achievement, I achieved it in collaboration with others

So do I have personal accomplishments that exceed my professional ones?

Absolutely.

If you have a 'life' portion to a 'work/life' balance then I suspect this should be the case.  Because in most cases (not all, but most) professional accomplishments revolve around business success.  And the measuring stick to business success is typically making money.  And while making money and being a part of a successful business is gratifying, I'm not sure it 'rings the bells' on the achievement scale I've created above to the degree a personal accomplishment can.

So when I think about life accomplishments the single accomplishment that far exceeds anything else that I've achieved in life is ...

BEING A GOOD SPOUSE TO MY WIFE, AND A GOOD FATHER TO MY KIDS.

Now you might say that's two accomplishments not one, but the two are so inextricably intertwined that I beg to differ.

There are so many admirable pursuits in life, personal and professional. Write a book. Climb a mountain.  Give your life as a sacrifice to your country. Invent or discover something. Become the best in your profession. These are the accomplishments we hold up as a society, and create statues and memorials to never be forgotten.

I do admire those who accomplish these things.  But for me the accomplishment I'm most proud of also points out what I value the most in others.

I've been a good spouse and good dad.  Not great, but good.  Because clearly there are things I regret. And there are lots of things I could have done different.  Or better, much better.  But that's also part of the value obtained, learning from your mistakes. And I also value loyalty, and loyalty comes in the form of commitment to your family - those who loved and raised you.  Those you love and raise.  Ones who cared first, when others didn't.  And persistence.  Persistence (some people refer to GRIT as a slightly different version of this) is also admirable.  Not giving up when your chips are down. Family can be hard.  Lots of emotion and passion that can be divisive in relationships.  But it can also be the most valuable.  I've been told that relationships are doomed when one no longer cares.  As long as I care, expressed as anger, disappointment, disgust, etc. there is hope.  But when I no longer care, the relationship is doomed. Well suffice to say I care about my family, and they care about me.  

And finally, paying it forward.  This has become a coined phrase that is over-said and under-used. Serve others in a way that makes the world a better place.  And who better to do this with than your own children?  They will be in this world long after I'm gone.  And I entrust our collective future more to them than anyone on the planet.  So best to invest in that future right?  Spending time with your kids, educating them, telling them of your successes and failures, and encouraging them to explore their own.  That's parenting, and I'm so proud of what Holly and I have achieved.  Our kids have made us proud, and I expect they will continue to - only further increasing the value derived from our investment!  But I recognize that my greatest accomplishment is unfinished and undone.

So why is our world today filled with accomplishment outside of being a good spouse and parent? Why is this accomplishment so undervalued in today's world?  I don't have the answer but it is a question very worthy of pondering.  Several thoughts rush into my head, all worthy of argument and debate.

But we need to get back to valuing the accomplishments of being a good spouse and good parent again.  Akin to the other accomplishments we value in life, as a society we must once again value these traits in people.

I've personally fallen prey to judging my success in life (and derived happiness) based on my professional achievements.  Forgetting about success in my personal life I've instead focused on my professional accomplishments of working for a great company, my job title, my job responsibility and what I earn.  And I've gotten down when unemployed and not able to invest in these pursuits.

Make no mistake being a success in your profession is important - but not nearly as so as being a good spouse and parent - at least not in my opinion.

So whenever the accomplishment question comes up in a job interview, my thoughts turn to what I'm really most proud of, and everything else at that point in time that I share with the interviewer seems incredibly minute and inconsequential in comparison.