I have a couple of suggestions for you (I have mentioned these before on FGB, so my suggestions will be familiar to some) 1. Pretend to be someone else or Pretend to be your own Manager - when you need to write up your accomplishments for your annual review or write your cover letter or when you need to ask for a raise, pretend that you are "your manager", and write down everything that you are good at and all of your accomplishments as if you were writing the accomplishment and value of one of your direct reports. 2. Keep a Success Journal - Track your own successes. Since you are going into ask for a raise (and if you didn't keep track of your success as you went along), then take a few days to write down everything that you did, were involved in and had success doing. - keep a journal of your good ideas, your successes, your saves, your value. I use a note pad document that I keep on my desktop and every Friday, I jot down the big and little things that I and in my case, my team did. I reach out to other teams to get feedback on those projects and because I'm working on this list throughout the whole year, then it's easier to get feedback from other team because you have the time to ask and follow-up. At the end of each quarter or at least before my annual review, I open up that document, and review it. I am always amazed at the things that we accomplished that I forgot about. 3. Tell your own story After I have the data from the previous quarter or year, then I weave the narrative that I want to tell through the story of my year - Do I want a raise? then I focus on the value I brought. - Do I want to work on different projects or have the company to pay for my training/education? then I focus on the success I had with special projects. - Do I want to move into a people management role? Then I focus on the success I had as a people leader. Having a year-long contemporaneously-generated list of my accomplishments made it easier for me to talk about my value to the company - because all of my value is right there, and because I started writing this document months ago, it starts to read that someone else wrote it. 4. And practice -- find a friend or a loved one who you can tell your story too. If you don't want to lean on a friend or family member, then speak the words out loud to the mirror. Hearing the words spoken out loud will make it easier for you to say those words again during your meeting. Good luck