Take a twirl through your Facebook feed, and you will probably see success, success, and more success. Weddings, babies, and parties. Friends on exotic vacations. Smiling happy families doing fun things. Well behaved kids and even more well-behaved pets. Good grades, promotions, and winning sports scores. Do not be surprised if this avalanche of achievement makes you feel well, a little down.
I’ve heard experts say that one of the dangers of our social media feeds is we start comparing everyone else’s polished, published image to our own internal, messy, crazy, complicated life.
In our real lives, there are piles of dishes, occasionally the dog barfs on the rug, the car breaks down, weeds grow in the garden, and kids are not always on their best behavior.
Associations are just like this (without the dog barf, generally speaking).
We see our peers winning awards on the SAE stages. We see successfully completed association projects cited in publications. All around us, associations are rebranding, starting for-profit subsidiaries, and launching new products.
Their outside looks so much better than our inside.
What we do not usually hear about is the messy middle that came before the accolades. We do not see the time the idea was nearly killed. We do not know about the team’s morale as everything is going wrong and the project gets pushed back 3 months.
So do not compare their end to your beginning. Instead take heart that what you want to do, can be done.
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