Thread: Reputation is everything.

Working in the corporate world for the past few years has given me a lot to think about. One thing I have recently thought about - Reputation. Thought I'd share my thoughts and see how the collective thinks on this.

Reputation is very important, you must always have a good reputation amongst your family, peers, colleagues, and just in general in society. Your reputation is like a weapon, and it a weapon which you can use to get ahead in life.

I used to be honest about the mistakes I made at work. Always forthright, and made sure my supervisors knew where and how these mistakes where being made. I also was somewhat relaxed about these mistakes - sometimes they were trivial matters like calling a customer one day later than than schedules because I was busy with other tasks.

Then, day by day, I became known as the clown of the office. And this made other people who recently joined the company get ahead. I then began accepting this clown persona and "internalising" the persona, because this is what people were used and what made others comfortable.

I began to slowly realise this was having a huge effect on my self-esteem. I was becoming the kind of person that was likeable and pleasant to others - at the expense of my career.

This happened in other aspects of life, I began to downplay my achievement when meeting a date, or feeling inferior to an attractive women. And thereby lowering my expectations and standards.

And when you have low self esteem - you immediately look to others for direction and validation - a cycle of doom! You feel powerless and unable to make choices, unable to take initiative.

Developing a good reputation is a remedy for these issues. Reason is because even if you have ups and downs, which are temporary mood swings, or fleeting emotions - others won't notice it.

Work colleagues will always see you as a reliable, trustworthy, hard-working, diligent person and will yield to you, even if they are above you in organisational hierarchy.

Also, important to choose the right battles which you can win. If your ambitions are so high, they set you up for failure - then this is a sure fire way of being seen as the constant hard-working, decent fellow but who never actually achieves anything.

Reputation should be crafted, and slowly put together, like a jigsaw puzzle. Crafting an identity which demands respect takes time, and a mature MGTOW would always ask for more from life.

Your problems appear to arise from talking too much.
Real men don't talk that much, nobody needs to know your thoughts or actions or achievements ...... it just gives them ammunition to fire at you.

PS.
My expectations of a date were to fuck her, if I didn't have that expectation, there wouldn't have been a date.
If my expectation wasn't fulfilled, there wouldn't be a second date.
Why else would you date?

Originally Posted by MrWalton

Your problems appear to arise from talking too much.
Real men don't talk that much, nobody needs to know your thoughts or actions or achievements ...... it just gives them ammunition to fire at you.

PS.
My expectations of a date were to fuck her, if I didn't have that expectation, there wouldn't have been a date.
If my expectation wasn't fulfilled, there wouldn't be a second date.
Why else would you date?

True about talking too much - that has had disastrous consequences for me.

Regarding date expectations, I don't believe I mentioned this in my post - just curious why you shared this? I may have spoke about a related matter in another post.

The only reputation I give any consideration to is my FICO score (@850+) the rest can go ahead and call me Slithering Slut'fucker all they want!

Originally Posted by Opaque

This happened in other aspects of life, I began to downplay my achievement when meeting a date, or feeling inferior to an attractive women. And thereby lowering my expectations and standards.

There it is ......... 'meeting a date' ........ 'expectations' ............... my expectations were always to fuck 'em that night, if I lowered my expectations, I wouldn't bother turning up for the date.
Never saw any point in chucking my money away.

PS
My standards are fairly low ......... under 35 years old, weighing under 50Kg, and a woman from birth.

Originally Posted by MrWalton

There it is ......... 'meeting a date' ........ 'expectations' ............... my expectations were always to fuck 'em that night, if I lowered my expectations, I wouldn't bother turning up for the date.
Never saw any point in chucking my money away.

PS
My standards are fairly low ......... under 35 years old, weighing under 50Kg, and a woman from birth.

I have that flight or flight mechanism too! It's was my mechanism for many years, until I decided one day, don't land, just stay in the air! Nothing's gonna clip my feathers, or worse, break my wings! A woman snagging me is like a sloth snatching a bird!

I've been the same type you descrive OP, polite, humble and always willing to recognize my mistakes and apologies for that.

Nothing can be as wrong as that in the current world, my life is much easier when I keep mistakes for myself, never apologize and always pick up provocations.

This is basically certified a$$hole behaviours yet keeps you safe from most people, I also made sure anyone knows Im a MMA fighter anytime I have bruises and somehow even those above me in the hierarchy happen to be very polite toward me.

I recall when I was a nice guy and had people mocking me for no reason than having fun despite my best efforts to make it work with the group.

I have had the same realizations, I am sure many others have as well. At the moment I had the realization, I promptly found another job to apply these learnings, rather than trying to change anybody's perceptions.

The people at the previous job knew me as an open, communicative, entertaining, hard working, team player kind of guy who built very personal relationships with co-workers. The job after saw only a stern, cold, calculating guy who churned out great work, but chose every word very carefully. Care to guess which persona was perceived better?