A Reputation

So what is "reputation"? According to Merriam-Webster online, a reputation is:

1 a: overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general b: recognition by other people of some characteristic or ability
2: a place in public esteem or regard : good name

The "overall quality" of a person is not decided in a minute. It is decided over a lifetime, possibly even longer than that. Every single action you do will affect how people view you, and your reputation might grow or decline accordingly.

A reputation is also one of the few things in life where money has no positive effect on. Somtimes, spending money on building a reputation will have a negative impact as people might percive that as trying to cheat your own character and ethics.

Still, without the influence on money, a reputation is one of the greatest thing a man can have. A great reputation means great salary or lovely friends. A bad reputation is the hallmark of a failure at social standings or just a plain failure.

I personally have a split reputation. As a friend, I percieve my reputation to be one of a jokster, one who can't really focus on one topic and one who does the stupid stuff. As a tennis player, I'm somewhat respected in my local area. As a clarinet player, I'm known as the Asian dude who's really good. As a math student, I'm the one who's pretty good at the maths.

Now, notice that I use the word "percieve" in the last paragraph, this is because your reputation is not determined by yourself, it is determined by others. This simple fact makes your reputation even more hard to altar for the better (because man is inherently evil) than for the worse.

So how do you build a perfect good reputation? You watch yourself. You gaurd yourselve from anything that you don't want to be talked about. You lock yourself out of the realm of deeds that should not be told. You do what is expected.

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it” -Benjamin Franklin

-runiteking1

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