The PR pro’s Independence Day

Most people aren’t working for what they really want. This scourge is especially prevalent among PR pros.

Are you falling victim to it?

When you’re really honest with yourself, when you think about your job and career, does the word “independent” come readily to mind? Or do you think more of words and feelings such as “tied” or “stuck” or “pressure” or “stressed”?

Most PR people are pursuing goals by default. Goals they think they are supposed to have, based on what other people seem to think is important.

For example, the most common career goal for a PR person is: keep advancing, get more responsibility and a higher salary.

Yet when you ask them why, they often don’t have a good answer (especially after they’ve climbed past entry level).

Here are some more specific and purposeful goals that I’ve heard from a select few pros who are really in tune with themselves:

• Be the best of the best – climb the ladder and see what I can accomplish working with the best and the brightest.
• Make a fulfilling contribution to society regardless of salary.
• Make as much money as possible in the least number of hours per week.
• Save enough so I don’t need to work anymore so I can (insert noble purpose here).

You can’t achieve all four of those, but you definitely can achieve one of them. As long as you free yourself from stereotypes and assumptions based on what others think.

I don’t care what your career goal is. All I care about is that it’s yours. Not your mom’s, your group of friends’, or the collective example of the people you follow on Instagram.

This 4th of July, shun default thinking and declare independence for yourself. Like Ken Li did – this is still my all-time most popular post.