Successes Remembered
“Dad, I’m going to remember today as one of my best days,” said my son William cheerfully, as he prepared to head off to bed.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say anything like this. Though he’s in Grade 3, closing in on his ninth birthday in a few weeks, he seems more and more capable of the ennui of a junior high school kid these days. It seems like only a few weeks ago that he was a relentlessly cheerful and compliant little boy, but more and more he’s testing us, complaining more stridently about homework and chores, pushing the limits of acceptable family behaviour. Bedtime is one of his favourite areas of protest, and I was braced for a moderate amount of sulking, stomping, and grudging acceptance.
“I’m really glad to hear that,” I replied. “What made it such a good day?”
“Well, I got my green belt at karate today, and my school sweatshirt arrived, and it was Cub night and we’re working on our Kub Kars. And at recess my friends and I played some really fun games.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “It really has been a pretty great day.”
What I enjoyed more than anything about what William said was how quickly and easily he was able to recall them, and to acknowledge that today really had been a bit above average. And while not all of the good things that happened were entirely of his doing, a couple of them sure were: the karate belt was the direct result of his steady practice, and recess turned out well when it was his turn to “lead” the games he played with his friends. He doesn’t always do it this well, but today, without prompting, my child recognized his own successes.
Most of us could certainly do a bit more of this. We live in a culture that is driven by fuelling unrealistic aspirations, for wealth, health, beauty, and a well-organized laundry room, and we’re constantly invited us to confess our failure to meet the standards of the day.
Many of my clients have experienced this sense of failure a great deal. Having lived with ADHD all their lives, they’ve heard a lot about where they’ve fallen short of expectations. They’re messy. They’re aways late. They don’t focus at school. They make impulsive decisions. They’re disappointing. The accumulated weight of all the unmet expectations is so great that they often don’t know how to begin to describe their successes. Finding ways to mend this wounded sense of self-esteem is at the root of healing the damage of ADHD.
I often ask my clients to create what I call a success log. I used to use the term success diary, but I found that the notion of keeping a diary seemed to elevate the level of stress many of them felt about recording their successes. Maybe diaries seem too overwhelming an idea. So my clients can call it whatever they like, put it in any format they like, and use the medium of their choice, but they have to use it regularly — daily if possible. I urge them to document all their successes, even those where it might seem they “didn’t do anything to deserve it.” In fact, it’s often those successes that at first blush appear to have simply happened that turn ou to be of the greatest interest, bringing connections to light that they hadn’t considered before.
My success log is a simple point-form list that I make on each week of my Moleskine 18-month Weekly Notebook planner. I try to make entries every day, and I keep them short. The point here is to capture the information, not to analyse it.
Where do you record your successes?
