Wellbeing

Build belief by recognising small wins — Try a 'Done List'

A ‘Done list’ is a quick, effortless and effective tool — shared in Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis’ book You Coach You — for finding resilience and growth in your daily efforts.
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You’ve heard of ‘To-Do’ lists, you know about ‘To-Think’ lists, but how about a ‘Done’ list? When the inner critic gets the better of your inner coach, a ‘Done’ list turns the tide and helps you rediscover your resilience and shift your mindset into a growth mode.

At the end of your day — weekdays and weekends — look back and write down a small success you achieved in the last twenty-four hours.

It can come from any area of your life:

✅ ‘I experimented with some techniques I learnt from that You Can Now course’
✅ 'I submitted the client proposal ahead of time'
✅ 'I took the time to make myself a proper self-care meal'
✅ ‘I dusted off my shoes and went for an evening run’


Three helpful R's

To get the most from this exercise, Helen and Sarah recommend following these three steps.

1
Recognise

Identify a success you’ve had today.

2
Record

Write down your success in the same place, keep a pocket sized notebook of them if possible.

3
Reflect

Review your successes daily, and look at what you can learn from them.


Whether you make Done lists a daily habit or use it every now and again, intentionally writing down your successes is key. As Helen and Sarah say in You Coach You - “identifying positive moments with written words feels much more valuable than when they live in our heads as thoughts or feelings.”

How can you start reflecting on your successes in a way that builds your confidence and cultivates a growth mindset?


Keen to dig deeper?

• Want more tips and tricks for rediscovering your resilience? Sign up for our punchy and purposeful Rethinking Resilience live course.

In this bitesize video Coach and Trainer Catherine Allison introduces the concept of the inner coach and inner critic (and now to turn the latter down).

• We invited author and psychologist Ethan Kross to take us through his thinking on unhelpful inner monologues, drawn from his book Chatter. See his practical pointers here.