I used to worry about my reputation…  Until I discovered that it was not worth anything to me.

Now, I just worry about how all this rain is ruining my bike riding routine.

Reputations can be:

• Made and lost
• Good , bad or indifferent
• Fact or fiction
• Solid or slippery
• Tradeable (translates to “worth a lot of money”)

Even though we are born without one, we get one as soon as we make our first cry. Then it can just get out of hand from there onwards. And the funny thing is that not only will our reputation precede us, it will outlast us. Simply because it is not us…

We build it up, defend it, hold a stake in it, and place so much value in it, that many lives, fortunes and relationships are victims to it. We even try to take complete control of it so that we become our reputation.

Unfortunately, we do not own our reputation or have any control over it – because it is totally what other people think about you. Not what you think of yourself.

Reputations are made up – like Chinese opera singers.

In my younger days, I was a career man. This was when résumés were critical to the development of my professional reputation. Little did I know how worthless it was to me.

When I left my profession to become a ‘tradie’, I encountered a huge personal dilemma. Who was I and what sort or reputation was I supposed to uphold? I had to gradually forsake my profession which I had been in for almost 30 years – and become just an ordinary guy.

After a while, I realised that my reputation was not really owned by me – but by everyone else. Nobody cared what I thought of myself – this was worthless. What they thought of me was all that mattered to them.

Reputations are tradable. The share market is no more that company reputations made up by analysts and punters who then make a game out of their subjective valuations. Movie stars grace the covers of magazines that you see at supermarket checkouts because publishers trade on star reputations. The Nike brand (itself a shored up reputation) trades on the big names in sport.

Tiger Woods has a reputation. But it is largely owned by his sponsors, the fans and the gossip columnists. They determine his worth. Tiger has little control over it.

One of the most liberating things in my life is to start treating my reputation like lego pieces in a kindergarten rather than like the solid bricks and mortar of real estate.

I will be whatever you want me to be – but what I am is quite worthless.