You are known by the company you keep

As I said in one of the earlier blog posts - humans are social animals. We cannot live alone. We like to have friends and live in a society. We like to spend time with our friends, play with them, work with them, chat with them and in general spend time doing things we love doing.

So when we are such social beings - it is obvious that we are tagged and labeled by the people that we spend time with. As humans we generalize and when others generalize - you get the same label and level of respect that is given to others in your company. One bad person or a person with bad reputation and the whole group gets labeled bad and when the whole group gets labeled bad - guess what - even you get labeled bad. The other weird thing about humans is that - if we show humans a white canvas with a black dot - most people notice the black dot not the white canvas. Moral of the story is - most people notice the bad thing in others before they notice the good thing - so even if most people in the group are good - one bad person gets noticed the most and the whole group gets a bad reputation.

The other strange thing about us humans is that - we do one bad thing and people remember us for that one bad thing and not for the hundred good things you might have done. You do one good thing and most people will tell 2-4 people about it - you do one bad thing and most people will tell 15-20 other people about it.

Keeping a good company has another advantage. Most people in a good group are most likely doing some good things - they are quite likely to be a good student, a good polite person, a hard working smart individual and when you keep company of good people like that - you inherently start realizing that they are doing good things - start following their example, start doing good things and automatically become a good person.

So stay in a good company, a company with good reputation and it will make you a better person and will also result in creating a good impression about you.