Growing up, I was always known at the angry kid.
Having grown up, I was still known as an angry man.
The thing about life is perceptions, reputation and past impressions matter even if you don’t want them to.
Anger is one of the things I’ve been working on for the past 2 years. Specifically, being less angry and being angry fewer number of times.
I’ve unfortunately not been tracking all of this, so, I don’t have enough data to back it up, but, I have changed, thanks to the help of quite a few people along the way who have critiqued me in helpful ways that have enabled me to understand at the core why I was such an angry person.
I recently watched a video about the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene.
Law 5: So Much Depends on Reputation — Guard it with your Life
The video made me add the book to my reading list.
That is definitely a book I am going to take my time reading, but, the video made me reflect on Law 5 because I’ve been suffering from the effects of a reputation from the past.
You cannot change the past, you cannot ‘fix’ it.
But, you can take advantage of the world as it is.
One of my biggest takeaways from the Taleb book binging has been the Narrative Fallacy.
The core of the fallacy to me is it exposes how susceptible people are (present company included) to forming overloaded perceptions around individual stories and spreading it.
To undo harm is harder than to do it, I suppose a clean slate is the best starting point, but, for a stained reputation that isn’t always an option.
While personally I know there are several aspects to me that have undergone a significant change, it is now imperative for me to ‘guard’ my new reputation, in order to do that, I must first build it.
Reputation as a concept is something I’m going to understand better. I’ve been exploring the concept of a leader by doing quite a bit of reading on the topic.
These are just random thoughts that came to me following a conversation earlier in the day.
More reflections from the past couple of months coming over the next week. Stay tuned.
I’m also working on a follow up to my Feynman technique post.
Thanks for reading
Sainath