Daily Inspiration: "Reinforce a realistic reputation" - Futurist Jim Carroll
People see through hype. No one likes a blowhard. Reputations that don't deliver always end up crashing and burning.
And ultimately, deceit fails.
2023 saw the bizarre situation of the ultimate defeat of the strange case of George Santos, an entirely fictional and embellished persona if there ever was one.! What was fascinating to many was not just the length of time in which he got away with it, but the ability of an entire group of people who seemed to be willing to either forgive him for his sins or let him get away with it. Think about how far we have come in our culture of normalizing deceit and fraud!
With this story dominating a lot of news throughout the year, it seems a good time to remind ourselves to double down on grounding ourselves when it comes to success. While the situation of the embellishment of personal background has always been true, the emergence of social media and our strange world of politics has made the situation of embellishment far worse - 2023 has made that clear. And after all, as you know, this is not just the 'Santosization' of deceit; in the last few years, there has been an ever-increasing number of news stories where someone has been caught padding, enhancing, or outright lying about their resume and background.
Indeed, social media, celebrity, influencer culture, and our world of bizarre politics seem to have made the situation worse.
We live in the era of the viral success story, and everyone wants to achieve this goal. And yet invariably, if you go too, the inevitable crash and burn takes place.
There is nothing new here - except the fact that this embellishment and deceit culture seemed to come to a head in 2023. That's why strategy #11 of my 24 Strategies for 2024 is to always reinforce a realistic reputation.
Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2023/12/daily-inspiration-24-strategies-for-2024-11-reinforce-a-realistic-reputation/