Personal Growth and Your Reputation

I usually stick to the clinical side of things, but I want to try something a little different here. Most of what I know comes from schooling and research, and I can walk you through getting past certain problems. What I kept noticing, though, was the absence of anything that spoke plainly about re-building yourself. So this is the first piece in a series about personal growth. No yoga recommendations, no new age routines. Just the general stuff that touches every one of us.

The reason I want to start here is simple. If your outlook on life isn't steady, the heavier things (depression, anxiety, the problems that genuinely knock people down) become much harder to face. Fix the foundation first.

At some point you ask yourself: what would actually make me a better person? That question is where personal growth begins. It can mean a dozen different things depending on who you are. Maybe you want stronger relationships. Maybe you want to repair your credit score, or rebuild self-esteem that took a hit somewhere along the way.

The first subject I want to take on is your reputation, because I think most people underrate how much it steers their lives. Who you're known to be shapes your friendships, your romantic prospects, and how far you get at work.

A reputation is built out of your own actions, which is both the hard part and the hopeful part. Some advisers will tell you to stop caring so much about your image, to quit worrying about what others think. That advice ignores reality. A bad reputation can cost you a promotion, get you quietly shut out of certain organizations, or keep the right partner from ever giving you a look.

Picture someone who drank heavily in college and posted the party photos online. Years later people still read those pictures as proof of a drinking problem, and in a small college town that story sticks. Or take a woman whose friends keep joking that she only dates rich older men. A decade passes and she can't figure out why the blue collar guys never ask her out. One misreading of who she is did all of that.

Gossip moves fast, and you can't stop people from talking. What you can do is recover from a reputation that's already gone sideways. Here's how I'd approach it.

1. Re-evaluate your image. Ask yourself truthfully whether people talk because they dislike you, or because of the version of yourself you keep showing them. Presentation carries a lot of weight. Some folks lead with an aggressive, cold, or prickly front toward strangers; others project a false image to shield their feelings or cover for where they feel short. The trouble is that you do eventually have to trust someone, and the mask gets in the way. Wear tight, revealing clothes and a stranger may file you under one ugly label before a word is exchanged. Come off as too sharp-edged and people decide you can't collaborate. In both cases they judged the surface without ever meeting the person underneath.

2. Learn from your mistakes. Growing up means owning what you did and then moving forward instead of circling it forever. Not everyone manages this. Some people never pull the lesson out of the wreck. And yes, there will always be a few who refuse to believe you've changed and keep you frozen in your worst year. Let them. Usually the ones who can't move past your history haven't moved their own lives anywhere either. Expect some relationships to fray along the way. People you knew in high school or college take separate roads and drift. You might reconcile with an old friend only to find the connection feels different now. Accept that the old version is gone, and don't repeat whatever broke it the first time.

3. Time heals, and people forget. Think about what dominated the news a year ago and whether anyone still mentions it. How long did the country stay fixated on Michael Jackson's death, or Anna Nicole Smith's? How long did the Amy Fisher story hold anyone's attention? You may not even recognize some of those names now, which is exactly the point. The worst stretch of a damaged reputation is living through the shame and the sideways glances. Early in my own career I had a name for being aggressive, difficult, hard to be around. I changed my attitude over time, and the way people saw me changed with it. Whatever you've done, time is the only real cure. Don't let the past run your future, but do let it teach you something about building a better one.

- Heather Browning, MBA, BA