One of my friends finds time to exercise every day even though she has a crazy busy work schedule and two young children. Another friend is vegetarian and eats super healthy. Another friend lives in a 3 million dollar house in a wealthy neighborhood. Another friend loves fashion, and she looks like she just stepped out of a photoshoot even when we go for a hike. One friend grows most of the food her family eats in her garden. Another friend is building a charitable non-profit. Some of my friends are traveling to amazing places. And others have deep relationships that I envy.
Sometimes my brain combines all the best characteristics of all of my friends into one fictional, relatively perfect person. Against this ideal person, I feel deficient.
I remember feeling similarly deficient when I went to my first entrepreneur conference. With barely a few months of a new business under my belt, I was comparing my meager successes with each speaker’s greatest hits.
Go to a conference, talk to peers, get advice from a mentor, or hire a consultant, and you may start to feel that your association does not compare well to the universe of associations. That’s because often you are getting inundated with tons of success stories and best practices from a host of other organizations. But not one of these other organizations is perfect. No one does it all.
Am I ever going to be a fashion icon or live in a 3 million dollar home? Probably not, but it is interesting to see the wide range of opportunities open to me. Here and there, I pick up ideas from my friends on how to live my life better. Similarly, we can look at the range of best practices and strategies for success and pick and choose how to advance our associations.
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