How Reputation-Anxiety Limits Our Achievements
Knowing who we truly are helps build resilience
“The best performers learn to focus on their identity while not worrying about their reputation. They pay attention and draw strength from who they are and mostly don’t care about what others think about them.” ( Dr. Eric Potterat and Alan Eagle, the co-authors of Learned Excellence: Mental Disciplines for Leading and Winning from the World’s Top Performers
Our identity is who we are. It’s our authentic self.
Our reputation is how others perceive us. It’s a story they create about who we are. This story is patchy and imperfect because it’s formed on the basis of their brief association with us. They only see a part of our identity and tag it as our reputation.
We tend to worry more about our reputations than our true identities. This mindset makes us behave unnaturally because our reputations misalign with our true identities.
Our anxiety to defend our reputations limits our ability to realise our potential. Constantly worrying about what others think about us drains our energy. We fail to achieve excellence in whatever we do.
Reputation-management is disguised self-sabotage.
The first step to overcoming our reputation-anxiety is to know ourselves.
We should write down what we think our core values are, what gives us joy and fulfilment, and what energises us.
We can discover our true identity by monitoring our behaviours and responses.
Excellence in any endeavour is only possible when actions align with values.
The clarity of our identity will help us ignore mistakes and temporary setbacks. Our failures do not define us. Instead of obsessing over their errors, and worrying about public criticism, top performers in every field focus on learning the lessons and avoiding the same mistakes in the future.
Self-knowledge is the key to achieving self-actualisation.
I appreciate you taking your valuable time to read this story.
