5 Things to Remember While Setting and Pursuing Goals

Goal-setting is a motivating exercise unless you take a social media break. Then it gets depressing, real fast. Log on to LinkedIn, Twitter, the blogosphere, or any other professional social media outlet, and you will encounter smiling professionals touting their accomplishments, most notably the recent “top-producer of the year” award, the article they just published, and how their firm was voted “one of the best places to work.” On personally-oriented platforms like Facebook or Instagram, you’ll find people’s idyllic wedding pictures, smiling children, and the perfect sunset photographed during their Bora Bora vacation.

People use social media to project their curated selves to the world, emphasizing those few moments when everything seems to be going well. They rarely post about the personal and professional rejections, the hours of hard work, and the stubborn problems that make up the lion’s share of the journey that precedes their victories. This tendency creates a reality distortion field in which everyone else appears to be enjoying the life you wish you had and exacerbates the notion that business development success is mostly for “other people.”

Certainly, business development comes more easily to some than others, but no one gets a free ride on this roller coaster. We all have the opportunity to accelerate our momentum, especially if we can consistently do these five things:

1. Above all else, do good work.
2. Make an effort to help the people whose company you genuinely like and whose accomplishments you respect.
3. Also, let them know of the good work you’re currently doing, the new things you’d like to be doing, and the people you’d like to meet.
4. Stay in the game, even when everyone else seems to be getting all the breaks.
5. Remember the wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt when he said, “comparison is the thief of joy.”

Now, get off social media and get back to writing those goals.

Authored by David Ackert