On Friday, I became a Salesforce Certified Administrator. (You can learn what that means here.)
Because I believe that it is important to share your accomplishments with friends, I shared my good news on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Here’s what I wrote:
Woohoo! I am officially a Salesforce Certified Administrator. Happy Friday, everyone.
It didn’t take long before the post started getting “likes” across the various platforms.
Then, I got a comment that soured my mood a little bit. One of my friends (read: a guy I knew in college) left a comment for me.
You’re excited about that . . . why?
To be honest, I was pissed.
Here I was, sharing some good news with my friends, and someone felt that he had to bring me down.
Blah, blah, blah. Troll, troll, troll.
It was then that I realized something important: someone will always try to bring you down.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished. Someone will always try to bring you down. More than that, it seems that, the bigger the accomplishment, the more people try to bring it down.
Instead of letting someone else’s jealousy, resentment, ignorance, or misplaced self-loathing bring you down, take it as a compliment because you are doing something significant. You are accomplishing something. You are moving closer toward your goal, whatever that may be.
Smile at them as you think, “While you trolling, I actually accomplished something. For that, I will never apologize.”
Use their criticism and negativity as fuel to propel you into the future. The more negative they are, the more power they give you.
Caveat: Consider the opinions of those whom you respect.
If I had gotten that comment from other sources, I might have considered it more seriously. However, because I found the troll’s comments to be ill-founded, I ignored him and focused on the positive comments, of which there were many.
While he was busy trolling, I got over 65 likes on Facebook and 23 on LinkedIn, plus I shared my good news with more than 200 email subscribers. Now, I’m sharing it here, on a blog with more than 18,000 visits per month.
I don’t know about you but I’ll take thousands of positive impressions over 1 lame attempt at trolling any day.
The next time that someone trolls your good news, focus on the good impressions because there are probably a lot more of them.
When was the last time that someone trolled on your good news? What was the good news? What did they say? How did you respond?
Went back and looked at your original post, and I guessed it was one of two people. I was spot on. Good for you bud, keep working hard to put yourself in a better position!
Thanks, Paul! I appreciate the support (and the comment). Another friend told me to “keep on keeping on,” which was also good to hear. Sometimes, it’s hard to block out those types of people.