Your mountain of value includes you!

You may have heard the story about climbing a mountain, reaching the top, and rather than acknowledging what you've just achieved, you look across and see other mountains to climb.

This story is shared at conferences, workshops, and in general storytelling to epitomise all of your accomplishments so far, all you've achieved, and to spend time acknowledging them. This week I heard it referred to as our mountain of gold by an inspiring female leader - Cathy Burke who integrates mindset work into her coaching. As I was asked to spend a moment thinking about 3 or more accomplishments I'd had in my career I listed 9, which sounds high but it led to somewhere I didn't expect to uncover. We were then asked to 'notice' the common thread underpinning them all, and while I noticed that my common thread was that I'd brought my unique style of working to them all, there was another common thread - a distinct lack of recognition from others, despite bringing financial reward to companies, an increase in clients, increased brand awareness, stepping in front of audiences last minute to cover for someone else, setting up things from scratch. My victim mindset stepped in to say hi! I always hoped that one day my unique way would pave the way for others to follow it and enjoy success too but instead the win was accepted and they moved away from my ideas.

I won't wallow here as I did a couple of days ago instead I'll tell you that within hours of meeting 'victim' head on I promoted a blog I'd been fearful of bringing light to, wrote a new blog from a thought I'd had earlier that day, and completed a piece of writing for an article submission to a magazine I had read for 15 years! The next morning less than 12 hours after pressing send I received a response - my article was going to feature in the next issue! I gave up employed work only 2 months ago to pursue writing and here I was being accepted by someone else. My words had always been so silent as I'd blogged for my own therapy, self-published my own book - Coco Braveheart, and wrote for professional beauty industry publications only for someone else's name to be written at the bottom. This time someone else was going to publish my work with my name to it. All because I needed to switch my mindset from victim to growth.

The mountain story has evolved for me this week, it has unearthed further questioning such as why do I need acknowledgement from others, and why is that better than still doing what I do and moving on? The more I reflected and thought it through I started to see value elsewhere, away from the mountain itself, and all my accomplishments and achievements. I thought about the person standing on the mountain of books, medals, and certificates - me, my physical self, my spiritual self, my heart, my gut instincts, my body's memories, my intuition - gifts that perhaps we don't talk about as much when referring to our mountain of value. Our inner knowing, our life experiences, the things we don't receive acknowledgement for, and for some who don't even feel accepted for who they are in this world. That individual earthed to the ground beneath them, their foundation exists and achieves because of what's inside them and it is truly worthy of exploration when we think of standing on our mountain of value. What do we hold in our very being that we can reflect upon and acknowledge what it has achieved. What makes us who we are could be scars from operations, injuries or emotional ones. It could be living in multiple countries, poor health, miscarriages, or fitness goals reached - the rich tapestry of life that gives us our drive, and our determination to accomplish what we have and go on to do.

There's more to consider on this topic so don't forget the person standing on the mountain - you! See the 'gold' within and let it be celebrated too.