I was scrolling through social media, you know, how you do. And one of my friends just recently started a new job in a new city and she’s been sharing about her experience. And I looked at her post and I started feeling this little pang of jealousy. I thought to myself, wow she’s so cool, like she worked really hard and it paid off and now she’s living in this cool city and doing what she loves and she has a cute little desk and cute little office supplies.

And then I realized all of a sudden, that I also did that.

I graduated college and less than six months later had accepted a new job in a huge metropolitan city, miles away from home. But for some reason that accomplishment doesn’t count for me. My brain immediately switches from: Hooray! Go me! To: OK what’s next. Now what? Which is so incredibly unfair on myself! And I am only just now developing the kind of self-awareness to recognize when I put myself down. I don’t celebrate my own accomplishments for very long ever! And that’s so unhealthy.

Like I said in my previous post, one of my resolutions this year is to give myself more grace. So I’m really proud of myself for catching this negative thought and turning into one of appreciation. Both me and my friend have jobs post-grad! We both stepped out of our comfort zones and moved to  new places. We both have desks and cute office supplies. We both are taking giant steps into our career path and future. We both are going to face hardships and new challenges and we’re both figuring it out as we go, just how EVERYONE is. Part of that journey for me is training my brain to celebrate my accomplishments for a longer period of time than just the initial instance. I’ve lived in Atlanta for seven months now. It’s still awesome that I moved here, that I had the courage to pick up and move from the state that I’d lived in for fifteen years and take a new job in a new city. I deserve to celebrate that and not just dismiss it as something in the past and now it’s time to look for the next big milestone or huge accomplishment. Your life isn’t just the big crazy changes , its the day to day victories! Those deserve to be recognized too.

We also need to remind ourselves how everyone has an internal experience too. You’ve heard this before, but social media is a highlight reel. No one is sharing their failures. (Although we should sometimes, we’re all human.) Celebrate your friends’ successes and support them through their failures. We’ve all had sleepless nights worrying about our futures and we’ve all had days where we feel like we’ve got it all figured out finally and are on cloud nine. That’s life, we’re figuring it out as we go.