do small achievements get you anywhere ?
after lets say 10 years more or less ?
small achievements i mean
many ppl may not consider it achievements at all
do these achievements transformed ur life in any way ?
I achieve small, insignificant achievements and I am happy with that because I know that most sz/sza’s wouldn’t even accomplish that much.
Some examples from my life are:
Learning piano
Producing albums
Studying Spanish
Engaging in a live in romantic relationship
Practicing yoga
Engaging in daily prayer
Donating to charities
Cooking daily
Doing housework daily
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Definitely. It’s how I became employed nine months after getting out of the hospital when I was 21 in 1982. I spent 8 months in the hospital then I was released to a very expensive, almost exclusive, group home.
My rent was about $450 a month from SSI while all the rest of the clients paid about $2000 a month. IDK how all of them afforded it. I know that some of them had parents who were doctors or lawyers. Anyways, to live there I needed a daytime activity; they locked the doors to the house at 9:00 am and everybody had to leave until they unlocked the doors at 3:30 pm.
Several of us went to the vocational program down the street, the program served not only as a way to becoming employed but as a social place to talk and mingle. We had groups and stuff.
I’ll answer your question and make my point. When I went there, I had no plan to become employed. I just attended and didn’t give it much thought. I was still very ill at the time. Very ill.
We used to send out a gardening crew, about 6 of us in two vans would load our our equipment (a lawn mower, rakes, brooms, hand clippers, and a couple other things) and the agency who ran the house and the vocational program had contracts with private house owners to do light yardwork.
We had 4 or 5 houses we went to regularly. Two counselors would drive and be in charge but they also would pick a client to be in charge of the crew. I had no desire to lead a crew but a counselor strongly suggested I do it a couple times. So I did it. And that was my first step, but not a big one.
The next step was to be a cashier, just at the program premises. The counselors got a hold of a cash register and they had a program set up for a couple clients to go shopping for snacks like yogurt and chips or sandwiches etc. Then sell them to the rest of the clients and invest the profits into more food.
Someone had to sit at the cash register and ring up the purchases and they had people take turns and another counselor strongly suggested I take a turn. It was voluntarily and I had no desire to do that either but they put pressure on me so I did it for a month.
The third step was a counselor invented a job just for me. They made me groundskeeper of the outside of the building. I wasn’t thrilled with that either. While everybody else went gardening or doing mail projects it was my duty to take care of the outside by myself. That meant weeding, raking, clipping etc. I really didn’t like it but I did it until the next opportunity came up.
The main office of the mental health agency who owned my group home, was downtown and would hire one of us to catch a bus and go inside their main office while they worked and empty the wastebaskets, wipe down tables, vacuum and clean the restroom. And the client would do it for a couple months and then a new person would rotate in. We went two days a week for this and they paid us $35 a month.
It doesn’t sound like much but that was 1983 and I was on SSI and I was broke so $35 really came in handy. And this kind of work I could stand, I liked it better than any of the other jobs I listed.
And I did it for two months but they liked me and my work so much that they hired me on for another two months which they had never done for anyone else before. And shortly after completing that job the agency go me a “real” job out in the community. They had arranged with small businesses in the city to hire people from the vocational program and rotate a new person in every three months.
So they picked me and another client. It was the same thing again. The new bosses liked us and liked our work and after three months was over they not only hired both of us for another three months but they ended up keeping us for four years!
I was in my late twenties and I worked on my own there as a maintenance person, basically I was in charge of keeping the whole place clean and just doing odd jobs like painting or scrubbing walls. Anyways, that was how I became employed.
And I’ve been almost steadily employed at different various jobs up until the present time.
What I always took from these several jobs and the experience was that they were a series of small steps and the only reason I got those jobs in the first place was not just because of me, it was that other people saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. They saw my potential and helped me make the several small steps that eventually got me back in the job market. And I started out with small achievements which all led me to becoming employed.
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A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
I think it is an old Chinese proverb.
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All the little successes add up eventually.
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My “little success” is i poured all the drink away lol.
Hangover from hell - that will teach me. Arse. I cocked up again.
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The small achievements of clean underwear and showering every day mean you won’t smell bad and have painful fungus growing on your no-no touch square after a couple of weeks.
Yes, they add up.
I’m sort of proud of my current chess tactics score on chess com. It took me years to get there, so yes.
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Yes they give me a peace of mind when done with my whole being kind of thing.
This morning I jogged a small jog, did the laundry washed, even my hair, and now I’m thinking of even tidying my room.
Woop woop!
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I read 5 pages everyday in my coursebook. Am on page 90 now. The small efforts add up after a while.
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What is a “no no touch square”?
If I look at a wide spread of time i.e from early 1983 to now there’s a major difference . Then= at best group home/at worst long stay ward; now= Independent living with a fair amount of support. To use a football analogy-its like going from the relegation zone to mid table.
Have there be any standout achievements? Not that I can think of. Unless staying out of hospital since 1983 is itself an achievement. I didn’t go straight from the relegation zone to mid table in an instant. It took a little while.I’ve plateaued since reaching that mid table position.
I’ve now managed to tidy my room aswell
And now sorting out a bank statement.
It is worth doing the small things because they make a difference to relaxation. For me anyways
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That to me it would be a huge, I haven’t cleaned my room since I moved in 9 months ago.
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Little achievement and successes are good for ones self-esteem.
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