How do you drive a car? You get in and just go, don’t you? Without even thinking. It’s almost second-nature. Simples! However, not everyone has the same attitude or the same ability towards driving. For some, it’s a challenging skill to master.

People often play down their own skills and achievements and yet, it is these same skills and achievements that others admire and would love to have. But for whatever reason, they haven’t or think they can’t. I imagine you too maybe have a skill or an achievement that you play down a bit because ‘it’s nothing’. Whatever it is, it is an achievement. What’s stopping you being proud of what you have achieved?

Sometimes, I’m asked how I can just get up and speak in front of a crowd of strangers as if I have acquired some kind of secret knowledge. And yet, like many people who drive, cook, fly an aeroplane or have any ‘skill’, it is not just something I do. The important thing is that I practised many times and now I enjoy it and am better at doing it and in fact, as a child with a stammer, it is something I have always actively worked on and now I’m proud of this skill and achievement.

This is the part where I say that although I can drive, I find it quite a challenge and am always amazed at how my wife, for example, can do it seemingly so easily. It’s second-nature for her, whereas driving ‘as second-nature’ would be a huge achievement for me. I’ve always admired her for that.

We’re all different. We all have different skills. We have all achieved different things. However ‘small’ you think your skills/achievements are, they’re not. For some, they’re huge. Once we accept and are proud of who we are and what we have done and communicate this, others will also see this and it has an all-encompassing positive effect on everything around you.

So, what have you achieved? What skills do you have that you maybe take for granted? In the (slightly edited) words of James Brown – ‘Say it loud. I’ve achieved. And I’m proud!’

Be proud of your achievements. After all, you achieved them. And you’re rather fantastic, are you not?