The late great John Wooden often talked about being much more concerned with our character than our reputation…
Just about every intellectual savage sage human has warned against concerning ourselves with the subjective opinions of outsiders as well as over identifying ourselves with our current financial situation or position in life.
Playing Major League Baseball forced me to encounter all of this at a relatively young age…
Athletes and other professionals who live their life in the limelight are constantly being judged and are either put onto a false pedestal or harshly criticized and condemned for their perceived shortcomings… This in turn creates a public persona and reputation that either unfairly ridicules an individual or creates a false persona that will never be able to be lived up to…
When I signed for a bus ticket to Medford Oregon, I had a couple hundred bucks in my checking account and a Dodge Ram pickup truck that my Mom had to make the payments on in order for me to keep it from getting repossessed… During instructional league in 1999, I was a struggling minor leaguer who shared a 1 bedroom apartment with 4 other dudes because that’s simply all we could afford…
A few years later I had established myself as a legitimate major leaguer and was making millions of dollars… By far and away the most proud thing I can honestly say is that I had just as much fun & joy in my life when I was making $350 every 2 weeks crushing Taco Bell nightly as I did when I was making $350,000 each paycheck eating at Ruth Chris. 😅
Just recently ran across a quote from Epictetus on the Daily Stoic that put all of this in a beautiful perspective…
“Don’t trust in your reputation, money or position but in the strength that is yours… Mainly the judgment about the things you don’t control and the things you do control… For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, picks us up by the neck from the depths, and puts us eye to eye with the rich & the powerful.”
The strength that Epictetus is talking about is our ability to adapt & adjust to any and all situations with an attitude of gratitude and acceptance. It’s my belief that the “rich & powerful” are not the ones who have money and a fancy title but rather the ones who hold this beautiful, humble and grateful perspective… No matter what sort of power position we are in or how much money we make, absolutely none of it matters if we are weak in judgment of the things we do and do not control.
Ultimately, like Epictetus points out, the 3 things that reputation, money & position have in common is that we can’t trust any fucking one of them 👊
-EB
P.S. Have you hopped on a Team GoHard Foot Reflexology Board yet?
