Create a Brag File

Something I learned early on in my career is no matter how many compliments or kind words I receive, I fixate on the negative feedback. As a professor, I tend to focus on the one negative course review instead of the fifty positive ones. As a young lawyer, I focused on the one typo or mistake and not on the high-quality work product I had created. The reality is that its hard not to fixate on the negatives.

One way to combat this (which I was reminded about by a kind reader of this newsletter) is to keep a “brag” file. That is, keep a file of all the positive feedback you receive. That way, on the hard days when you are concerned that maybe you just aren’t cut out for it all, you can go back to the kind words to remember that you are defined by your best qualities not by your weakest moments.

And when you leave: take the brag file with you (so long as there is no confidential information in it).

Keep standing out,

Jonah