Why is it so hard to celebrate our wins?
Honouring the distance between our 'then' and 'now'.
It's been a really, really exciting week at Tyk. Last Thursday morning we were able to announce that Gartner has recognised us as Leaders in our product category, API Management. This puts us in the same part of the Gartner Magic Quadrant as companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apigee (owned by Google), and MuleSoft (owned by Salesforce).
These companies are not small fry. They’re multi-billion-dollar, household name companies, ones that I’m sure many of you will have heard of. They’re the epitome of The Big Boys in tech, and our product and business have been recognised as a worthy peer alongside them. Seeing it in black and white like that really does drive it home what we’ve built together over the last seven years or so.
And yet, I was already, Friday morning, cup of coffee in hand, thinking about the next item on my to-do list. When you're working in a growing business, and especially when you're working for a VC-funded business, it’s pretty typical - obviously the targets always get bigger… and they certainly get higher!
Even catching up at the end of the day with my colleagues last Friday, I was thinking about how I really could have done with the time Thursday to complete another important task. Isn’t it mad how our brains can immediately diminish a big milestone (and one that seven years ago wasn’t really on our radar) to a borderline inconvenience?
It got me thinking about how commonplace it is that we skim over the achievements we hit in life. Why do we find it so hard to stop and reflect on what we just accomplished - often something that, not long ago, was still a distant dream for us. Can we ever just let ourselves luxuriate in the distance between our ‘then’ and ‘now’, and feel proud in the steps we’ve made, the decisions we’ve taken, and the curveballs we’ve dealt with to get us there?
Pushing ourself out of our comfort zone changes us, but it also changes the zone
When I go into the sea out of the summer season, I usually take it step by step.
First I put my feet in, get up to my ankles, then up to my knees, then up to my thighs until I can begin to bear the cold enveloping my stomach. At this point I usually hover, willing myself to go further, feeling the sun on my back balancing out the cold water lapping around my waist.
Then, the big one: I brace as the water hits my chest - always that ‘audible intake of breath’ moment for me. And then if I’m feeling brave enough, I go all the way in. And then I realise. It’s not that cold anymore.
Whether you’re someone who jumps plain into the water, without hesitation, or a tiptoer like me, the same rule applies. You were cold, (either for a split second or a drawn out five minutes), and now you’re not. You entered a new environment, which forced you to get physically, and sometimes mentally, uncomfortable, but very quickly you’ve adjusted. And then it immediately feels like no achievement at all. In fact, it can now feel like a new comfort zone: it can be hard to rush out that safe, warm environment of the water to grab your towel, the wind cooling the water on your skin.
No wonder it’s hard to reflect on our personal growth. Not only are we ever-changing, our environment is too. And as we change, and open ourselves up to more experiences, our perception of those environments is also changed forever. The cold, open, hostile water becomes a playground. A new city we know nothing about turns from a blur on Day 1 to a concrete map by the time we leave. That intimidating gym becomes your new community.
The Roman poet Heraclitus once said “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man”. He didn’t say how cold the river was, but this line always stays with me as a beautiful reminder that everything is always changing. And that can be scary - for some more than others - but it’s also exciting, because it opens us up to the possibility of infinite growth and new opportunities.
But it doesn’t half make it hard to truly, viscerally, feel the progress we’ve made - in our bones, our bodies and our minds. Because, in the same way as the man who steps in the river twice knows, our perception of our comfort zone is always changing.
And I think that’s why we’re bad at recognising the positive progress we make. With the constant change of your environment, the bit-by-bit expansion of your horizons, and the boundaries around you, you stop noticing the difference. You don’t recognise what a drastic change you've made because you did it step-by-step. Until suddenly you find you’ve gone from being totally dry to completely submerged.
And then it resets your horizons. You start thinking, "Okay, well, maybe I can stay in here for longer, maybe I could swim over to that buoy in the distance." You're already overlooking what it took for you to get into the water - now you’re thinking about the next marker, over on the horizon.
Turning distant dreams into concrete plans
I’m feeling that today in particular about Tyk’s achievement, but I can also easily apply it to other areas of my life.
Growing up I think I always had it somewhere in the back of my mind that I wanted to live abroad, even if it wasn’t always so clearly set in my mind as a ‘life goal’. We had friends who lived abroad and one of my dreams was to work for the Foreign Office, because then I could see the world in the way they did. It all seemed very exciting and vaguely glamorous, and I loved seeing these little windows into other people's cultures.
But getting from there to here (and not via a career in the Foreign Office, as it turned out) wasn’t so well-thought-out. In my head it felt more like ‘get to London’, then ‘get on the career ladder’, then ‘get another job’. Rinse and repeat. In the end, I moved to work at RBS, and I really wasn't very happy there. The culture was a bit too restrictive for me at that point in my career. That was what gave me the next goal ‘move from client to agency-side’, which felt like a very scary switch at the time. It was at that agency that I then got the opportunity to move abroad, which is when I went to Singapore. And then from there I moved to Tyk, a remote-first company who encouraged me to work from anywhere, so I did.
As you can probably tell by the way I recount it, none of these things were things that I really plotted out. They ‘just happened’, even if on some level I was always pointing myself forward in the direction I wanted to go. Step by step I made it closer to the ‘faraway goals’, through lots of little scary moments, followed by lots of little achievements. But just like all the other steps along the road, once I got to that once-legendary place: ‘Abroad’, it very quickly stopped feeling like any sort of accomplishment. It felt almost ordinary.
If I take myself back to when I first moved to Singapore, though, I was terrified. The idea of moving abroad was just that - an idea! I didn't know what to expect and I didn't know how to do it. Seriously, to some extent I didn't know what I needed to do other than literally put one foot in front of the other until I got on that plane.
And turns out there was something in that urge to just move forward. Around six months into my overseas adventure a realisation hit me that has stayed with me to this day:
If you want to move abroad, all you have to do is move abroad.
That sounds so simplistic now because I did not think like that before I moved. But you literally just need to pack a suitcase, grab your passport, and get on that plane.
Of course, I say that with the immense privilege that comes from easily gaining legal immigration status in another country thanks to workplace sponsorship and my nationality. And it was a big deal personally - it was a huge move for me and my family back in the UK - literally and figuratively.
But living abroad fundamentally changed who I am, mostly for the better. It's given me so much more confidence. It’s expanded my horizons, and it’s definitely been another step on my journey to Spain, to greater self-confidence, to writing this Substack.
Take this post as permission to revel in your achievements
Writing this post made me realise that I still reduce moving my life abroad, solo, twice, as "Oh yeah, it was nothing”, in the same way that I did the same last week when Tyk was recognised as Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
But it also forced me to think - really think - about the choices I made and the discomfort I embraced to get me to those points.
I’d love it if you took this post too as a reminder - and indeed, permission slip - to trace back those big achievements in your life right now. And those achievements might not be career-based. Maybe it’s a thriving family life, a travel goal you ticked off, a more balanced routine, or that you’re feeling the healthiest you’ve felt in a long time. Maybe you’ve just managed to survive the last years - a huge achievement in itself (I salute you).
Take a moment - right now, if you can, to grab a piece of paper or open up a Google Doc on your browser. Write down three things you’re very proud of achieving in your life. If you struggle with this, try thinking about what you’re grateful for - often it will help unlock those achievements. For example, if you’re grateful to live in a beautiful home, how hard was it to find the right place? To save that deposit (whether you bought or rent)? What touches have you added to make it all yours? All of these little steps are achievements you can, and should, revel in.
Now, grab a tea, coffee, soft drink or even a glass of something cold and fizzy. Set your timer for ten minutes. And give yourself this pocket of time to celebrate those moments. Say a thank you to yourself for getting you here. Let your mind take you back to five years ago, ten years ago, to when you were a child. What would they think? How proud would they be?
Do you have the tendency to brush over your achievements - even the huge ones? What achievements did this piece bring to mind for you? I’d love to hear them in the comments if you feel comfortable sharing.