Perhaps your family has a bad reputation. Or maybe you have made some serious mistakes in your life and people only associate you with that now. When we have a bad reputation attached to our name, it can feel difficult to overcome.
Reputation of your name can put you at a disadvantage, but it is not your final destination.
The truth is, it takes a lifetime to build a good reputation and only a moment to lose it. But what if you are born into a family with a bad reputation? Are you fated to be guilty by association forever? Of course not. You have the power to change your reputation and change how people see you. You just have to be willing to put yourself out there and show the world who you really are and that you are different.
Growing up, I had two cousins I was close to. They were brothers and one is five years older than me, and the other nine. The younger one was a star athlete and went on to hold a high position in the education system in our small town. The older one, who has since passed away, was also successful and lived in town. But he had more of a reputation for getting into trouble when he was younger. When he got married and started having children, he had an accident at work where he hurt his back. His doctor ended up prescribing him pain medication, which ultimately lead to addiction to prescription drugs and then eventually, heroin.
He was such a good person, with a good heart, but addiction doesn’t care. It will destroy you from the inside out. Through the years he had many lows, and people in town knew about it. He also had many victories, managing to stay clean for long periods of time. His reputation was always being looked at, though. Sadly, even when he was clean and doing good, people still judged him by his prior acts when he was active in his addiction.
With his younger brother being in a prominent position in the school system, people in town knew about the different paths each brother had taken. And I think that weighed on both of them.
People are judgmental. It isn’t right or fair, but it’s human nature. The best way to overcome any kind of pre-existing judgment someone has about you is to consistently show the world who you really are. There is no need to defend yourself. Just show, by your actions, that your actions are consistent with your words.
I remember when people lost their minds about Logan Paul in the Aokigahara forest in Japan a few years ago. He recorded himself and his friends visiting the haunted forest that is a notorious place where people commit suicide. He ended up recording a man who died by suicide in the forest. This was posted on his YouTube channel and taken down quickly afterwards, after Logan publicly apologized.
What Logan did was in very poor taste. But after that incident, it was like everything else the guy had done was erased and the video from the forest was his only legacy.
We also live in the digital age where any misstep can redefine who we are to the world. We post so much out on social media and once it is out there, there’s no take backsies! It is in our best interest to become more cautious with what we share and who we share it with.
