A few years back an acquaintance of mine said something, the concept of which has stuck with me. I cant remember the words exactly but he said something to the effect that you have to be careful what you do cause a reputation is a hell of a thing to rebuild and it only takes one screw up to ruin it perhaps permanently.
Was thinking about that and also thinking about how folk perceive us this morning. May be a duality thing like Amadeo was talking about today but we all have sides that some see and others don't.
Its all about perception, viewpoints and personalities I guess. For the most part the human beast sees his fellow human from a certain vantage point and gathers his perception of that person from this perspective. So just as how a building's facade can be glass on one side and straight solid panels from another perspective so we see only what the vantage point we are at allows us to see of a certain person. Hence your coworkers may see you as a hard worker or alternatively a lazy ass but your church congregation may know you as sweet gentle Bob the Organist. Its all in the vantage point.
The other factor is personality. Without even considering multiple personalities we all behave differently in different settings. You may be the life of the party outside work with a gregarious personality but you may be locked in a mind-numming job or dislike your co-workers and not interact with them during the day giving them the impression that you are a withdrawn reserved person.
It is what it is.
How many times have you had those out of the office gatherings after which a coworker says wow I didn't know that John was so cool, or I didnt know that Margaret was into Extreme Underground Fighting or something similar. Its possibly both because of the vantage point between office and recreation or a possible personality shift between office John and out of office John.
Anyway I could go on but there was no point to this blog. Its just something that came up because I had a conversation in which the name of a mutual acquaintance came up and remembered another persons comment that he was such a nice guy and a sweetheart which he could well be but from my perspective I just think the cat is shady and try to distance myself from him as much as possibly. Thats where it goes back to that whole Rep thing I mentioned in the first paragraph.
Perspectives right.
and why do I think I wrote this blog before but better?
6 comments:
You been on CC tooo long:)
Had this same conversation many times.
I'm still trying to get past:
Margaret was into Extreme Underground Fighting
People compartmentalise various aspects of themselves, they let them out accordingly, as a defense mechanism, mostly. It's second nature. Margaret might not be too sure of how her workmates would view her if they knew she's into Extreme Underground Fighting, and so on...
Our perception of others is based on the traits and the personality they display in our company and also our own mood, personality and beliefs!
I always say there are two or more sides to every story...same with people.
Though some people are basically who they show themselves to be...I guess the trick is to accept people as they appear and keep an open mind. That is one darn hard trick though, I must admit.
True. reminds me of Eliot Spitzer. I must admit that I adjust my personality to fit the situation, and I know that others do too. E.g., people are more PG in church.
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