I invited six friends to take part in what I called a 30 Day Pride Challenge. We set out to share something you were proud of every day for 30 days. My friends are all retired, so big career accomplishments or work projects didn’t show up on the daily report out.

Overall, we posted regularly, if not quite daily. I could have been more consistent myself.

Investing in our personal fitness was often an accomplishment cited as being worthy of feeling pride. I know I gave myself credit for meeting my steps goal, doing my strength training and yoga. All these activities contribute to the strength, flexibility and endurance my body will still have when I’m 100.

No one in this group of retired women takes their fitness for activities of daily living for granted. Walking, strength training, yoga and other activities were often called out as deserving of credit.

Reflecting each day on what I’d accomplished that I could be proud of was more of a challenge than I’d expected.

As women, we’re just not in the habit of giving ourselves credit or taking credit for what we do. They have taught us to be humble lest others will think we believe ourselves to be better than them. We don’t want to be seen as bragging. Both ideas, humble and bragging, come from a scarcity mindset.

There are more than enough accomplishments

If you believe celebrating your own accomplishments is bragging, are you also thinking your celebrating takes away from someone else? That’s what I mean by a scarcity mindset. When you believe there’s more than enough accomplishments in the world, you can celebrate yourself and others for making progress on each’s unique quest.

Ignoring my mind chatter around someone else taking more steps than I did or learning something new was a challenge. I reminded myself I’m worthy and whatever I want to feel pride in is valid. Someone else taking more steps didn’t diminish what I had accomplished and didn’t mean what I had done was any less worth taking pride in.

The challenges came on several levels. Just creating the short-term habit to reflect on the day’s worthy accomplishments to post them for others to celebrate for one. The intention to be self aware and actually include something in the day you’d be willing to share, and finally dealing with the thoughts about whether what you were proud of stacked up alongside what the others had posted.

Society doesn’t us to celebrate ourselves or all the small steps along the way to a goal. Learning to give ourselves credit, cheering for ourselves the way we’d cheer for a friend, improves the relationship we have with ourselves.

We agreed to set a low bar to give ourselves credit. I didn’t cheer for myself in my head the way I cheered for my friends. I often found it difficult to report on what made me feel proud.

Why does this matter? If you’re retired and enjoying your life and don’t feel stuck or bored or too busy pleasing everyone else to enjoy being with you, it doesn’t matter.

It matters for me because I want to continue to put value out into the world. I want to create the unexpected. At this stage of life in our culture, this takes more self-confidence than succeeding in my career.

Have your own back

I’m learning to cheer for myself even when no one else is around. The 30 Day Pride Challenge gave me more insight into what it feels like to have my back. Having your own back is a mental muscle and, like all muscles, it stays strong through use.

Taking time every day to notice what I’d accomplished felt good. This process of daily reflection is where I noticed most of the mind chatter. I appreciated the accountability of sharing daily. I was, however, surprised how often my thoughts wandered into thinking about whether what I had done was good enough relative to the others.

Competing against one another was never the intention although I sometimes felt competitive. This was interesting because we weren’t all posting the same things. One was learning something new for their art practice, several posted about their exercise activities, and a few posted about their progress with their writing.

Focusing on what I’d done and on what I’d done and not on what someone else had done made some days more challenging than others.

As you reflect on your day or week, what do you find that you’re proud of? What happens if you say out loud either just to yourself or to someone else, “I’m proud of myself today because . . .”