How can I make this paragraph less awkward?

Question

I realized that this attitude was helpful in the sense that the more I challenged my-self, the greater the sense of accomplishment when I achieved my goals. Furthermore, the greater the sense of accomplishment, the more confidence I had to take bigger steps in my recovery. I took as many classes as I could and pursued the activities in which I ex-celled outside of academia.

Sorry for the hyphenation, that's how it pasted in from word! :)

Answer 1

I realized that the more I challenged myself, the more rewarded I felt when achieving my goals. Furthermore, the greater my sense of accomplishment, the more confident I was to take bigger steps in my recovery. I took as many classes as possible and also pursued non-academic activities in which I excelled.

Answer 2

The more I challenged myself, the greater was my sense of accomplishment when I achieved my goals. The habit of increasing accomplishments led to a more confident attitude and taking bigger steps in my recovery. With this helpful attitude, I took as many classes as I could and pursued those nonacademic activities in which I excelled.

Answer 3

Try not to put so much in one sentence.... Keep it simple and concise. :)

The more I challenged myself, the greater the sense of accomplishment I felt after achieving my goals. The more I achieved, the greater confidence I had to take bigger steps in my recovery. I took as many classes as I could and excelled in my extra-curricular activities.

Answer 4

I found that the more I challenged myself, the greater my sense of accomplishment. Achieving my goals gave me the confidence to take larger steps toward my recovery as well as pursue extracurricular interests.

Answer 5

I would axe 'in the sense that'...
In the second sentence, I would also axe 'the greater the sense of accomplishment', and try and make it work without that statement.

And it may be a result of your pasting the paragraph into Yahoo Answers, but neither 'my-self' nor 'ex-celled' should be hyphenated.

Don't be fooled by 'padding' when writing. Concise statements often add up into the best, most straightforward paragraph.

Answer 6

I can't find anything wrong with that paragraph. You don't need to change anything. Well, except for the "my-self" and "ex-celled", which should not be hyphenated as they are one word.