As part of YSN.com’s 4 week series about achieving success in your professional and personal relationships, today we’ll focus on finding the love to complete your career/life/love balance.

First of all, it has to be said that at the end of the day, you’re never going to be truly satisfied in a love relationship if you are not happy with yourself in the first place. Treat your time in the single zone as precious opportunity to really get to know who you are, what you want and improve life on your own. It will make adding someone special into the mix easier and can lead to a much sweeter partnership, too.

It also helps to just take a look around and truly appreciate your family, friends, possessions and accomplishments. Being grateful is the easiest way to stop feeling sorry for yourself in the romance department. Write down everything you appreciate in your life and memorize the list.

But if this love-what-you’ve-got notion is making you gag, let me throw in some practical advice to finding your one true love ASAP:

1. Go online — everyone else is doing it! Sign up for eHarmony, PlentyofFish.com, JDate.com (Jewish), Black Planet (African American) Christian Connection (UK) or any other reputable dating site.
2. Cruise Craigslist or any other classified ads, if you are daring.
3. Ask your friends to set you up with their friends, relatives or coworkers. What about their significant other’s friends, relatives or coworkers?
4. Try Speed Dating: Increase your odds by dating as many people as possible in a short amount of time! Check out HurryDate or 8 Minute Dating, and if you are outside the United States, try 25 Dates (Canada) or SpeedDater (UK).
5. Be proactive! Grab the bull by the horns and introduce yourself to as many people as you can! Your best bets include church functions, networking parties and volunteer opportunities, but if you must, bars, grocery stores and coffee shops will do, too.

Jovie Baclayon is a communications associate for the Young Presidents’ Organization and a freelance writer based in Santa Monica, California.

Be Sure to Check Out the Entire Series!

Live By Your Own Rules: YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 1)

Get Over It! YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 2)

It’s Time to Find Love: YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 3)

It’s all in the Contract: YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 4)

Aside from the basic rules of engagement LinkedIn has established, here are a few other courtesies to remember while making the most of your LinkedIn experience.  Follow these points and you’ll be sure to get the most out of LinkedIn—and you’ll avoid aggravating other users in the process.  Here are four mistakes to avoid while using LinkedIn:

1. BLINDLY REQUESTING CONNECTIONS WITH NO MUTUAL BENEFIT
On Facebook you can request new friendships with anybody at all.  It’s a social network of friends, and if you want to be friends you simply make a request.  With LinkedIn you’re making a ‘connection’ that will hopefully create a mutually beneficial networking opportunity later on down the line.  Be strategic when deciding with whom you will connect, and explain to the person why you want to connect; what’s in it for them—and what’s it in for you?  Don’t request to connect with just anyone at all; understandably, people will want to know why you are requesting the opportunity to connect.  So provide a brief sentence or two explaining what you think a mutual connection can bring to both parties.

2. NOT BEING TRUTHFUL ABOUT WHY YOU WANT TO CONNECT
If it’s being brought up, it’s because people have done it.  Others have complained about it.  It’s hard sometimes to establish a connection with someone when LinkedIn only allows you certain ways to request connections.  That being said, you should still be truthful in why you want to connect.  If the purpose of networking is to create mutual connections that may help either party in the future, do you really want to start that connection with mistrust or deceit?  The most frequent use of this is presenting yourself as a ‘friend’ of someone or ‘colleague at XYZ organization’ when you really are not.   It’s not going to get you the connection, and in the end you’re going to be perceived as being dishonest—and who wants to connect or potentially help someone who isn’t honest?

3. PROFILE CONTENT IS NOT A REPRODUCTION OF YOUR RESUME
This mistake is so well ingrained in users that you’re now probably experiencing some disbelief.  Don’t just copy and paste your resume into your LinkedIn profile.  Here’s why: When you network with someone in person do you give them a word-for-word rundown from your resume of what you’ve done?  No, you personalize the conversation and speak in the first person.  It is a more casual conversation—not as formal as your resume.  Your profile should be keyword-rich so that recruiters can find you if they’re performing a search, but it should also be authentic and sincere, as though you’re talking to the person about what you’ve accomplished.

4. KEYWORDS ARE NOT JUST FOR RESUMES
Recruiters and hiring managers are performing searches on LinkedIn for qualified candidates, and you want to be found.  Why else would you be there?  Seriously, make sure your LinkedIn profile is peppered with industry-specific keywords relevant to the target position you want.  It should be called LISO (LinkedIn Search Optimization)—like SEO—but for LinkedIn.  Keywords = Being Discovered = Interview = New Job.  Get keywords now.

To recap: Be sure you are honest, strategic, and explanatory in your LinkedIn connection requests; your profile isn’t just a copy of your resume; and that your profile is keyword-rich so people can find you!  These four key tips will make the most of your LinkedIn experience and keep you ahead of the game.

Article written by, Jessica Holbrook the CEO of Great Resumes Fast, an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author and presenter. She has written more than 100 articles that are featured on some of the best career advice websites today. Her passion is helping professionals and executives uncover what makes them stand out in the crowd.

For more great resources on resume writing, LinkedIn, or to view resume samples visit Great Resumes Fast. You can also receive a free resume analysis by sending your resume to info@greatresumesfast.com.

So maybe Valentine’s Day didn’t go as well as you thought it would… or maybe you’re experiencing trying times in your career. In the second segment of YSN’s 4 week series about success in your personal and professional lives, we’ll focus on the painful art of dealing with rejection.

When The Going Gets Tough: Whether you experience a broken heart, failed business, layoff, termination or rejection from your dream job or school, being handed your walking papers is never easy to deal with. It can affect your self-esteem, make you feel depressed, or worse, cause you to stop dreaming all together – and we can’t let that happen. If you ever find yourself facing hardship, it’s important to try not to lose your perspective — and keep moving forward. Besides, you know the drill: time heals all wounds, and things will get better, even though that may seem impossible at first.

Some things to help you along the way:

1. Be patient, allow yourself to “grieve” (feel and think about all the negativity and emotions). Even if you don’t usually write, try taking a pen to paper and jotting down your thoughts – you might be surprised at what you discover. And by all means, do not be ashamed or think it is a sign of weakness if you need professional help. Who says anyone has to know?

2. See if there are any lessons you can take away from this experience. Maybe if you use a different approach or take a few extra-curricular courses and give it another try in a few weeks or months, you can have a different outcome. If you can turn it into something positive, you can get past the pain more quickly.

3. Keep yourself busy so you don’t fixate on what happened. Spend time with friends, keep searching for job opportunities, delve into more research, fix your resume, find a mentor — but when you want to be alone and do nothing, go right ahead. By continuing to think positively about the future, you will be less likely to become depressed.

If you or someone you know is going through tough times, there are a lot of resources available to help, including the “Guide to Grieving: Coping with a Divorce or Relationship Breakup” and “Grief and Loss: A fact sheet produced by the Mental Health Information Service.”

Do your best not to let “No” hold you back from success. Read this article by Coping.org on overcoming the fear of rejection or Psychology Today’s helpful hints on building your self-esteem.

Jovie Baclayon is a communications associate for the Young Presidents’ Organization and a freelance writer based in Santa Monica, California.

Be Sure to Check Out the Entire Series!

Live By Your Own Rules: YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 1)

Get Over It! YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 2)

It’s Time to Find Love: YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 3)

It’s all in the Contract: YSN’s Tips for Having it All in Your Career, Life and Love (Part 4)

For a long time, a successful career was signified by receiving a shiny gold watch to commemorate your 30 or 40 years of loyal service to a single company. Getting ahead meant dedication, dependability, loyalty, putting your head down, getting your work done and following the rules.

For Baby Boomers, getting ahead took on a much different look. Think about the movies Wall Street or Baby Boom: power suit, power tie, power briefcase… huge shoulder pads. How very 1980s! It was all about influence, wealth and leverage. Everyone was eager to get ahead and more than a few people sacrificed their personal relationships.

Those who came of age in the 1990s embraced the idea of getting ahead by being their own boss. In fact, 87 percent of Gen X said they wanted their own business. This wave of entrepreneurs coupled with this “thing” called the Internet paved the way for Yahoo, Google and AOL. All of a sudden, people were clamoring for office space, patents, domain addresses and IPOs. Young people everywhere wanted to retire as millionaires before turning 40, 30…even 20-years-old!

That brings us to today where the rules are being rewritten yet again, and people are making more career changes in their 20’s than other generations experienced in a lifetime. I actually met someone last week whose son had 20 different jobs before he turned 30! These days, getting ahead involves much more than just slowly creeping up the corporate ladder or clawing your way to the top at any expense. In the age of instant makeovers, YouTube and reality shows, anyone can have a voice, be discovered, land a television show or get paid for doing just about anything people want to see. Success isn’t one-size-fits-all – it’s totally customizable.

I read a blog by Ryan Healy of Employee Evolution, which focuses on Millennials at work, and he said, “I don’t know anyone who will walk in the door of GE on their first day and think, ‘I’m going to do anything and everything I can for this company because they really care about me!’ This is because loyalty is a two-way street. The company must earn your loyalty and you must earn theirs.” He couldn’t be more accurate.

The notion of “getting ahead” will undoubtedly continue to morph but as generations and paradigms collide in the workplace, it’s important to know a little history. Even if you are determined to change all the rules and do things your way, your path will be more smooth and successful if you remember to show respect to the people who have been there and done that for a lot longer. Have your big ideas, shake things up, and place yourself in environments that embrace your ideas and strengths, but also make sure those opportunities and people can mentor you and help you see the world in a way that only experience can teach you. All the while, keep in mind that hard work, loyalty, integrity and passion will never get old.

“I’m no good at selling!” Have you ever heard someone say that? Or maybe said it yourself? (Now, tell the truth.)

We hear it all the time. Everyone who is not in sales thinks, “I could never sell” — and most people who are in sales secretly think the same thing.

There is a reason people feel this way: most of us look at sales backwards. Backwards how? In the most fundamental ways. For example, they see sales as convincing people to do something they don’t want to do. It’s not: it is about learning what people do want to do and then helping them do that.They think sales is about taking advantage of others. Not so: in fact, it’s about giving others more advantage.

Most people think of sales as a talking business. Nope: it’s really a listening business. Classic sales training focuses on the “close.” The true sales greats hardly notice the close — they are too busy focusing on the open. But the biggest inversion of all, the great upside-down misconception about sales, is that it is an effort to get other people to do something. Ask most anyone to define sales and you will hear some variation of this: “Sales is getting people to buy something.”

The truth about sales is that it isn’t about getting at all. Sales at its best, at its most effective, is precisely the opposite: it is about — get ready for this — giving.

The word “sales” itself suggests this. It is derived from the Old English word sellan, which means, you guessed it, “to give.” Selling is giving: giving time, attention, counsel, education, empathy and value.
Of course, this is not how most of us have learned to think about sales. The traditional approach to sales aims to choreograph the process by putting control firmly in the hands of the salesperson. Which is probably why neither party really enjoys it. It’s not much fun to have someone try to control you. For that matter, it’s not much fun to be the one doing the controlling, either.

The problem is that little word, “control.” You can’t do it.

Nobody can.

The classic sales process succeeds if you “make a sale.” But you can’t make a sale. Again, no one can. It’s impossible to make a sale, because no one can truly make other people do what they want them to do. What you can do is create a context that allows a sale to happen when the other person makes a purchase. This is not semantics: this is the secret of all great salespeople.

When you spend time with a genuinely successful salesperson, pay close attention and you’ll find something surprising: none of the hundreds of standard sales techniques are what makes them excel at what they do.

Genuinely great salespeople are not great because they have mastered “the close,” or because they give a dazzling presentation, or because they could shoot holes in any customer objection from fifty paces. They are great because they create a vast and spreading sphere of good will wherever they go. They enrich, enhance and add value to people’s lives.

They make people happier.

How do they do that? What is it that makes them great?

What makes a great salesperson great at sales is that he or she is wholeheartedly interested in the other person. The truth about selling is that it’s not about your product, and it’s not about you — it’s about the other person. The remarkable thing about these consummate salespeople is that they are not as rare as you might think. In fact, you can find them everywhere. This is because being adept at sales does not require mastery of complex or elaborate skills. The laws that govern good salesmanship are the laws that govern good relationships. Selling is not at its core a business transaction; it is first and foremost the forging of a human connection.

This is very good news, because it means that anyone can be great in sales.

It means you can be great in sales.

You might think that to do so, you need to have an outgoing, naturally jovial, gregarious personality. Not true. Shy people create relationships and get married. Introverts make great friends. You don’t need to be a “people person,” or any specific type of person, to be great at selling. In fact, the idea itself — that you might have to be a certain sort of person to be great in sales — precisely misses the point:
It’s not about you; it’s about them.

If you take away nothing from this post but those seven words, it will have been well worth the time to read it — because your life in sales will transform.

Article by, Bob Burg and John David Mann, coauthors of Go-Givers Sell More*

Click here to order your copy of GO-GIVERS SELL MORE (and get a bonus package of various Burg and Mann materials).