Are You a High-Achiever? The Simplest Way to Tell

The 1sfa definition of a high-achiever usually means someone who has an abundance of:

• money, wealth

• degrees, awards

• position, title

“Your measure of achievement depends largely on your definition of success or your vision of ‘happily ever after’.”

— 'Are You A High Achiever?' www.kishasolomon.com

While these are certainly indicators of a person who has achieved a great deal, they aren’t the only ones. Unfortunately, many people who are very high-achievers are overlooked or uncelebrated (even by themselves) because they don’t have any of these indicators to ‘prove’ it.

In my opinion, the simplest and most reliable way to tell if you are a high achiever is to ask yourself (and at least 1 other trusted person) to honestly answer these questions about you.

Do you regularly:

1. set out to do big things?

2. do those big things?

Bonus points if you learn from or use those big things to do even bigger things.

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Your measure of achievement depends largely on your definition of success or your vision of ‘happily ever after’. If you don’t have your own vision, you will likely adopt the one-size-fits-all version that says you have to have a lot of money, degrees or title to be considered a high-achiever. And nothing else but that matters.

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the trick for dealing with change

20 insights about work and relationships

Obvious observations about how we work and how we engage in relationships with friends, family and significant others.

1. Life is about relationships.

2. Work is one of them.

3. Relationships are where we learn about ourselves and how we interact with the environment and people around us.

4. Relationships are a form of energy exchange.

5. Most people (but specifically, black women) approach work and relationships from the role of supplicant.

6. The majority of our life from childhood to adulthood is focused on either: getting a job or a pursuing a romantic relationship.

7. Your identity is deeply connected to what you do for work or your relationship status.

8. Money is the least important factor to consider when looking for a job. Love is the least important factor to consider when looking for a life partner.

9. We tolerate things in our work or romantic relationships that we would never tolerate in our friendships.

10. Friendships are more likely to be self-defined vs. defined by culture, society or tradition.

11. Friendships are often our most authentic relationships.

12. We are also in relationship with ourselves.

13. The quality of our self-relationship determines the quality of our other relationships.

14. The quality of our self-relationship is determined by the quality of our relationships with our parents.

15. Our relationships with our parents serve as templates for our romantic relationships.

16. Our parents didn’t share much with us about their work experiences or romantic relationships.

17. Quitting a job or quitting a relationship can be more powerful than staying.

18. Healthy relationships are characterized by individual sovereignty and mutual interdependence.

19. Stories, symbols and images help us record and encode information about our environment and our relationships.

20. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves define our reality.

I’ll be delving into each of these insights about work and relationships over the coming weeks. Get ready for some thought-provoking topics and some life-changing mindset shifts. 

Declaration of Self: How to Create Your Personal Manifesto

I recently completed a 5-day self-directed, self-clarity exercise.

Each day, I took one of the following self-assessments designed to reveal insights about my personality and natural talents:

• Natal chart

• Typefinder

• Enneagram

• Life Values Inventory

• StrengthsFinder

On the 6th day, I did a final self-clarity exercise where I perused the Ultimate list of Archetypes and selected the top 3 archetypes that fit me best.

On the 7th day… I rested. :)

Mainly because at the end of all of that self assessing, I was swimming in self-information.

And… I’m not that strong of a swimmer.

So - I set out to create something that would let me assemble all of this self-information into a statement I could actually USE to keep myself focused and afloat in times of uncertainty, difficulty or great change.

The result: My Declaration of Self.

It’s like my personal manifesto or mission statement - a declaration to myself and to the world of WHO I AM and WHY I’M HERE.

Here’s how I crafted it.

How I Created My Personal Manifesto, aka, MY Declaration of Self

Based on what I know of each of the self-assessments and what they were designed to tell me about myself - for instance, the Enneagram tells me about my ego and how I face challenges; the ascendant sign in my natal chart tells me what role others usually see me as playing - I drafted the template below.

Each self-assessment provided a result that was very similar to an archetype or that could be translated into an archetype.

WHAT IS AN ARCHETYPE?

I like to think of an archetype as a symbol or a character. Archetypes represent known patterns of behavior, a set of personal characteristics that can be summed up in a single word.

Watch MY IGTV VIDEO on ‘Defining Yourself with Archetypes’ for more on how I define and use archetypes.

By translating my assessment results into corresponding archetypes, I was able to come up with a list of words that could be plugged into my templated statement, mad-libs style.

Finding the Archetypes  for my natal chart signs and houses

To get the zodiac sign archetypes for my Sun, Ascendant, North Node, South Node and Moon signs, I relied on Kathryn Hocking’s 12 Archetypes of the Zodiac. You can find it here: https://kathrynhocking.com/the-12-archetypes-of-the-zodiac/

 

To get the house meanings for my North and South Nodes, I used the Zodiac House meanings from Labyrinthos. You can find them here: https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/astrology-horoscope-zodiac-signs/tagged/houses

The final outcome was my personal Declaration of Self:

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create Your Own personal manifesto

The 5 Self-Assessments I Do Before Goal-Setting

Every wise explorer carries something to navigate by.

Especially if what you’re exploring is yourself. 

Whenever I’m planning to make a major shift or a significant life change, I carve out time for a little self-exploration beforehand.

Why?

When I’m do something that doesn’t look like it makes sense to others, I have to be pretty sure of myself and the ‘big whys’ behind my big leap or big shift.

A few of the ‘senseless’ things I’ve done in the past:

• Quit my ‘good corporate job’ as a management consultant to invest in real estate

• Quit my ‘good corporate job’ as an IT project manager to become a freelance writer

• Quit my ‘good corporate job’ as a content strategist to move to Spain and teach English

And I recently quit my ‘good corporate job’ to start following my purpose.

After 4 years of working in an environment that tested my self-confidence and my commitment to my personal values, I knew I needed to spend some time getting reacquainted with myself without the constant stress and anxiety that comes with being in a situation or environment that is just not the right fit.

I turned to several personality assessments - some I’d taken before, some I hadn’t - to help me dig deep and really put some effort into my answers to the questions: 

‘Who Am I?’

 and,

‘Why Am I Here?’

Answering these questions allow me to enter my life planning or goal-setting process with clarity. Not just clarity about what I want - i.e., what I want to accomplish, what I want to have more of, what I want to have less of - but clarity about who I am now, who I am becoming, and what will help me bridge the gap between the two.

Having the answers to these questions gives me the essential ingredients I need to begin writing my life story. To assume the role of the hero in my own story. To stop waiting for external achievement, relationship or reward to make me feel complete or valued.

I believe that each of us was sent to the world at the exact time we were born because we have a mission to complete. Some call that mission destiny, others call it purpose. But whatever you call it, it’s this driving force that will really help us feel fulfilled in life versus only feeling accomplished.

To make sure I get the maximum value out of these personality assessments, I developed a process of extracting the most meaningful bits of each assessment and using them as inputs to:

1. Defining my life story’s main character

2. Creating the outline for my life story

As with life, it’s not just about the results of the test, but what you do with those results that matters most.

Below are the 5 personality assessments I use before I begin life planning or goal-setting. For more details on how I use each assessment, and how I create my Declaration of Self and my Life Value Map from the results, click each link to explore further.

My 5 Go-To Self-Assessments:

1. Natal chart

2. Typefinder (aka, Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator)

3. Enneagram

4. Life Values Inventory

5. StrengthsFinder

The Life Planning Outputs I Create from My Self-Assessments:

• Declaration of Self

• Life Value Map

New Year, New Story!

New year, new me! 

It’s a phrase we hear a lot at the start of a new calendar year. What it means: we’re ready to summon the newest and best version of ourselves to begin the year ahead. The funny thing is, the ‘new me’ that we think of, aka, the evolved self, is usually revealed at the end of a journey, not at the start of one.

So, I think the more fitting proclamation would be: New year, new story!

Your story is the process of transformation, aka, the journey, that brings about the new you. 

Goals motivate us. Goals give us something to strive for. An accomplishment to go after. But stories inspire us. Stories give us something to live by. Stories transform us and provide meaning.

So, why are we not writing stories at the start of a new year instead of goals?

The good news is: When it comes to planning your year, or your life, you can write pretty much whatever story you like...

... as long as you know how.

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Ready to Write your Story?

Want a peek at how I use stories for New Year’s goal-setting? Click below to learn more about my 4-step process.

How I Use Stories for Personal Goal-Setting and Life Planning

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Using Stories for Goal-Setting and Life Planning: Write, Then Edit

Writing Your Life story isn’t just about being inspired.

Crafting your life story chapter by chapter takes commitment to a process, or at least, to a set of guiding principles or habits. Much of story-writing or storytelling involves following a process that transforms the artist into a craftsman.

I’m writing the story of my life each and every day. The quality of my life story will largely be determined by the guiding principles I follow and the habits I develop. These principles and habits should be organic enough to allow me to respond to what’s happening in the moment, but also structured enough to make sure I don’t lose sight of my story.

Some of My Guiding Life Principles

·       Flexibility

·       Experimentation

·       Experiences over possessions

·       Belonging is better than fitting in

Some of My Life Habits

·       Regular self-reflection

·       Time spent in nature

·       Travel

Editing My Story

You can’t edit a story while you’re writing it.

Writing requires you to be present in the moment. Editing is when you have time to analyze, critique, review and adjust. Editing helps refine the initial draft of your life story into a finished product that has greater clarity and meaning.

When I take time out for self-reflection and self-development, I’m editing my life story. As I’m writing my story – living each day, going on adventures, encountering success and failure – I’m in the middle of it all, I’m too close, too emotionally involved in the events that are unfolding to assess them accurately in the moment.

I have to occasionally pause and reflect on everything that’s happened to put it in context, and determine what adjustments need to be made. Regular self-reflection allows me to mine the newly-written parts of my life story for jewels that I can use to keep creating better and better storylines.

My Daily Self-Reflection Practices

I use some combination of the following on a daily basis:

• writing,

• voice notes,

• meditation,

• quiet thinking,

• listening to self-development podcasts

• reading an essay or listening to speeches (e.g., Ted talks)] 

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So, let’s recap the steps to taking a story-based approach to goal-setting:

1. Define Your Main Character

2. Understand the Backstory

3. Outline the Plot

4. Write, Then Edit

While it’s a bit more detailed than traditional goal-setting, I think that the outcome of the story-based approach is much more meaningful and makes me way more excited to pursue my goals.

Next, I’ll share the steps I use to turn my Life Value Map into a ‘neverending story’ that makes me feel like an overachiever even when I don’t accomplish any of the goals I originally set.

Using Stories for Goal-Setting and Life Planning: Outlining the Plot

Now, it’s finally time to begin plotting the story – what is the quest that the main character will go on? What will she encounter on her journey? What dangers and perils await her?

This step is similar to traditional goal-setting, but it’s placed within the context of an overarching life story.

To begin outlining my life story’s plot, I start by asking myself the following questions.

Questions for Outlining My Life Story

What do I want?

•  Who do I want to be?

•  What change do I want to see in myself? In the world?

•  Who do I want to help?

•  What problem(s) do I want to solve / fix? What wrongs do I want to right?

•  What do I want to leave behind?

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The Powerful Woman Wheel

I created the Powerful Woman Wheel as a way to define the areas of life that a powerful black woman (versus a strong black woman) would focus on. Since, ‘becoming a powerful woman’ is one of the key quests of my life story, I use the Powerful Woman Wheel to help define the main categories of my life story.

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Who / what is going to help me?

• Mentors, role modes

• Right associations

• Centering practices / beliefs (big why)

Who / what is going to stop me?

• Shadow self

• Vices

• Unresolved trauma responses; attachment issues

• Wrong associations

What lesson(s) do I want to learn?

Before my story is finished, I want to be able to say:

• I’ve mastered…

• I’ve studied…

• I’ve learned…

• I know something about…

How far can I go?

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A MORE SIMPLE METHOD: Instead of answering all of the questions above, I can draft a pretty good life story outline by asking myself, ‘How do I feed my ‘X'-factors’ ?’ My X-factors are the personal archetypes that I uncovered while defining my main character. They are also included in my Declaration of Self.

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The Life Value Map

I wanted a way to keep my answers to the life story outline questions close at hand. Something that would act as a living ‘map’ that I could refer to regularly and that I could quickly and easily add new quests, adventures and story elements to over time.

Borrowing from agile project management, the Life Value Map is like a backlog of all the things I want to do in life - a running list of my goals, dreams and visions - organized in a kanban board layout.

I use the categories from the Powerful Woman Wheel as my column headers and I add the answers to the life story outline questions under the relevant column(s).

I prefer to keep my life value map in a digital project management tool like Trello or Asana. This makes it accessible anytime and anywhere. Which means I can always use it to add new items to my life story outline.

Next: Write, then Edit

Using Stories for Goal-Setting and Life Planning: Understanding the Backstory

After defining my story’s main character – her traits, qualities, strengths and struggles, the next step to crafting my personal story is to define my main character’s backstory.

That is, what are the most recent and / or the most relevant events that have occurred in my main character’s life? What brought the main character to this moment, to the current situation or state of affairs?

For this, I took a day over winter break and did my own year-end-review. I made a written list of all of the major or meaningful moments from the past year that I could remember. I scrolled through social media posts and pictures on my phone to help me recall some of the moments I’d forgotten.

I probably could have done this exercise in less than a day, but I allowed extra time for sentimentality and emotional segues and side roads I tend to wander down when reflecting on the past.

Storytelling and Letter-Writing as Backstory Exercises

Earlier in the year, I’d also done a couple of storytelling exercises that helped me clarify my backstory.

One was a series of recorded interviews with my grandmother. By listening to her stories, I could see how my own life story was a continuation of hers and how much I could draw from her story to help shape my own.

[NEW YORK TIMES Article: Record and Share Your Family History in 5 Steps ]

The second was a letter-writing exercise in the book, ‘Write Yourself Into Your Dreams’. The book guides its readers through a process for unpacking unhealed trauma and unresolved inner conflict with one’s parents.

Though I was initially skeptical of the process, it was surprisingly impactful and helped me to offload some emotional baggage that the main character of my soon-to-be-written life story did not need to be carrying around.

[PSYCHOLOGY TODAY Article: Transactional Writing: Letters That Heal]

[SNAILED WITH LOVE: Letter Writing to Create Connections]

Next: Outlining the Plot

Using Stories for Goal-Setting and Life Planning: Defining The Main Character

Whether I’m working on a project or writing a story, the first thing I do is identify the key players, aka, the main character(s).

Before I began this year’s goal-setting, I spent several days (5, to be exact) doing some self-assessment. For this, I relied on a few personality assessments, a values inventory exercise, and an in-depth review of my natal chart.

Even though I’d taken most of these self-assessments previously, I still found it extremely useful to review and remind myself of the natural gifts and talents that I’m working with before I began writing my story.

Learn More About Each of The Self-Assessments

• Natal Chart

• Typefinder (MBTI)

• Enneagram

• Life Values Inventory

• StrengthsFinder

Since each of these assessments provides a lot of information to wade through, I came up with a way to condense the key insights from all of them into a mini-manifesto. I call it my ‘Declaration of Self’.

The Declaration of Self acts as a sort of over-arching intention that drives and motivates my life story’s main character. Regularly reviewing and reciting this intention statement will help re-energize my main character and keep her focused when the journey gets rough or there’s a lack of clarity.

In a future post, I’ll share the exact method I use to turn the results of my self-assessment into my Declaration of Self - so you can create your own!

Next: Understanding My Backstory

How I Use Stories for Personal Goal-Setting and Life Planning

I don’t know about you, but goals haven’t been working for me lately.

To be honest, goals haven’t been working for me… ever.

In the past, my personal goal-setting pattern has looked something like:

• set a goal that’s ‘SMART’

• Start down the path of pursuing the goal

• Get some early wins and feel extremely motivated by my own commitment and initial action,

Then… life starts happening. Work gets crazy, or I have trouble in one of my primary relationships. Or, maybe my ‘shiny object syndrome’ kicks in and a new more exciting or more urgent goal pops up. I start losing momentum, promising myself that I’m going to get back on track. But weeks pass, maybe months, and I may completely forget about the original goal or decide that it wasn’t really that important to begin with.

So, this year, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of starting with goals (aka, the trees), I decided to start with a story (aka, the forest).

I’m a big picture thinker, so context and the larger story are always important to me. When solving problems at work, I usually start by getting an understanding of the systems, people, and structures surrounding the problem or challenge, because that’s… what a good consultant does.

So why not take the same approach for my personal life?

Next: Defining My Life Story’s Main Character

First, select your destination.

Where do you want to go? 

What’s the biggest / most important goal you have right now?

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

These are big questions. Questions we tend to ask ourselves at times like this. Transition times. Times of shift or change. 

So, if you’re like me, you’ve been asking yourself these questions lately. But you may be finding it hard to come up with the answers.

Not because the answers are hard, but because they are overwhelming. The options are so many, the potential for messing up so great, the lack of clarity on how to get from here to there is surprisingly intimidating. 

““I want to get there,” you think.

 

“But I don’t want to bumble around in the dark, tripping over my feet and looking awkward. I just want to arrive at my destination...”

 

“...as soon as I can figure out exactly where it is that I’m going.”

 

“I just know I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m ready... but for what? Where?””

Look. I’ve been there. In a state of wanting to go, but not knowing where to go, so choosing to stay put despite the current circumstances not being ideal.

You know what that’s called? 

Inertia.

Aka, stuck.

But, the universe has a way of nudging us forward.

And now - at least according to those of us who study astrology - is one of those times that the universe is about to give all of us a big nudge.

In preparation for this ‘season of shift’, I’ve compiled a short series of audio recordings to help set the tone and get myself (and you!) ready to make the most of this time.

{ Listen to the first audio recording now }

These audio clips can be listened to while sitting quietly sipping your morning coffee, taking a walk or folding the laundry. Listen to them all in one sitting or over the next couple of days.

• Audio 1: Leaving Somewhere Is Not Going Somewhere

• Audio 2: So What’s The Big Deal With Dec 21, 2020?

• Audio 3: The 2 Things You MUST Have Before Making A Major Life Change

• Audio 4: Self-Development As Magic

Consider them your boarding pass as we begin the journey into a new season, a new year and a new age... the so-called ‘age of Aquarius’.

Boarding starts soon.

Issue my boarding pass!

Enter your email address to get your pass. Get instant access to the audio series. And get ready to make a big shift.

How to be more resilient

How do you build resilience?
The question came up in today’s leadership meeting. We were discussing overall team morale. The general feeling of anxiety at another pending org change was acknowledged by all, but so was the inevitable nature and frequency of change within the organization.

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“What can we do to help people deal better with this?”

“How can we help them to stop being worried about what’s going to happen in the future?”

“What if we bring in a speaker? I’ve heard of this guy who sailed around the world alone… it was a grueling challenge… he’s written about it. Maybe he could share his story.”

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I listen. More ideas come… a class, a series of articles, role models within the organization, cubicle posters.

I go within myself and ask… how did I learn resilience? How did the other leaders at this table learn it? 

From reading? From listening to a speech? From motivational posters?

No. 

From hitting a proverbial wall and pushing my way through until I found the light.

From realizing in that moment that if it was to be done, it was to be done by me.

From recognizing that the only way out, was through.

And most of those moments occurred outside of an office building. Outside of a classroom. Outside of a lecture hall.

Out in the real world. Sometimes in the literal wilderness. Others, while I was a stranger in a strange land. Most, when no one else was there to encourage or support. 

Some things can’t be taught.

If you aren’t intentionally placing yourself in uncomfortable, unfamiliar or undefined spaces in your real life, you probably aren’t developing the skills needed to deal with the uncomfortable, unfamiliar or undefined in your work life.

Anxiety often comes from a vague fear of what is not known. But how do you come to know the unknown if you avoid it entirely? 

Spoiler alert: the truth is, you will never come to know the unknown. But after repeated tussles with the unknown, you will come to know you.

You will come to know what you are capable of, not just what you’re used to or what you’ve done successfully in the past. You will know what you look like, how you behave when there is no easy way out. You will know what it feels like to grit your teeth, hunker your shoulders down and press forward – yes, even with doubt or anger swirling around in your head, with tears stinging your eyes, with the naysayers throwing jibes at you from the sidelines, with false friends showing you the broadside of their backs.

When you come through the unknown, you will – if you have been paying attention – recognize that you are in league with the Creator.

When you come through the unknown, you will – if you have been paying attention – recognize that you are in league with the Creator.

And whatever was broken or damaged in the coming through, can be recreated again and again in whatever image you desire.

And that is resilience.

Not knowing that the sailing will be smooth or that the storm will pass soon. But knowing that from the wreckage, you have the power, the endless power to say, ‘Let there be light’.

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Looking for proven ways to build greater resilience?

I’ve put together a Resilience Resource Guide - a collection of advice, exercises and motivational content gathered from top researchers and experts in psychology and alternative wellness. 

It’s 100% FREE and available for immediate download.

Get yours below!