Build an Atta-Me File
She is talented, committed, on her way to an advanced degree. An ultimate trainer, she is adept in multiple disciplines from martial arts to standard workouts. With grit, determination, and unwavering focus, she guides, teaches, leads others to set, meet, exceed their personal best.
Describing how she feels about her art, she wrote that sometimes the process is “amazing and rewarding, other times like you’ve been shoved in the washing machine and left there.”
I’ve done that, left clothing in the washing machine so long that it needs to run through the washing cycle again — or be tossed. That is one awful feeling.
I read further. Students made negative, scathing comments about personal trainers and instructors, not to her or about her, but about the profession, about the people. It had been a long hard day after weeks of hard days with no hope for brighter, easy days up ahead.
She’s juggling work, studies, marriage, two children, and a full life. Her daily routine is so packed, so tightly wound that it would send many over the brink, others to hobble off screaming into the night.
While she used her best thinking to filter out the idle negativity, it still chafed. Being reasonable and mature, she accepted that there are excellent teachers and others who are not as committed. Being reasonable and mature, she knew that there might be something she might learn from the offhanded comments.
She was just so tired of being reasonable and mature and keeping on going no matter what because she had to do so in order to get where she wanted to go.
She felt wrung out and forgotten.
Time to open the Atta Me file.
I don’t know if she has one. I hope she does — and if she doesn’t, I hope she starts building one right away. She can start with this blog article, if she’d like. I can testify to her commitment, her genuine compassion and abundant generous creativity.
I’d encourage her to build a file so that there would be perspective. Its filtered goodness would hold praise and recognition to counterbalance all the other stuff that threatens from the outside world and the inside one, too.
On a day like the one she’d had, she could read the kind words, the true compliments, and admiration for all she has done to bring light, energy, positive attitude, and growth to the world. There would be pictures of smiling faces, competitions won. She could run her fingers through the ribbons, medals, and accomplishments of her own and those she taught.
Going through the file, she could feel proud. Remember victories. Savor what she’s built, how she’s enabled others to become stronger, healthier, happier human beings.
Even feeling wobbly and unsure of herself, doubting everything, she could still feel once more the zing from having done a good job — especially since she’s not used to praise, shrugs it off, and moves on quickly.
If you don’t have an Atta Me file, start one.
Right now.
What I would tell her is that writing can feel like you’ve been stuffed in a washing machine and left to molder. There are those days.
There are also days when the words flow, when someone buys a piece, signs you to a contract, thanks you for changing their world.
What I goaded her into, I would say holds for any of us. We all need an Atta Me file.
I have one. It’s a strange assortment of stuff, but it’s my strange assortment of stuff and I love it. It works for me — and I appreciate the mentor who insisted that I create one for myself when I was about to start work.
When you receive a compliment, a certificate, an honor, a thank you note: Get it in writing.
Put it in a folder.
Keep that folder close to hand for the days when you don’t know if you should keep on going. Read it, touch the praise. Bask in it.
What you put in that folder is truer than anything else. What you save is what you value, what you have done with your passion, your energy and time on this earth. Nothing has to match, be well-expressed, be anything other than your own personal joy.
While you might not refer to that folder very often, you still know it’s there. You did do great things, advance, grow, contribute — even when you doubt it and especially when it’s late at night and you can’t sleep and can’t stop wondering if you’ve done everything wrong.
You haven’t.
There’s a folder of proof right there — as long as you have one and kept it close.
