I had a very interesting experience lately. I visited a school nearby, such a modern, nice facility with all the colours (I mean on paints on the walls and colourful doors, desks etc. + colourful ideas for life and teaching too!), bright kids and positive faculties, everything seemed to be just so perfect - for learning and for teaching as well. But there comes a turn: they seemed to be a little bit less interested about people's (opinion on- and offline). Not about mine, not about others. That is just so sad. (And let's say the opposite: they are very interested indeed. But then why do they let others feel this way? Do you feel the irony here, the vicious circle what I can see?)

And I had a very sad influence in my private life as well. This person let me down so badly. And doesn't care really. Hurted me pretty bad and never came to me with a simple word: "sorry".

I can't help but wonder: shouldn't we care about others opinions? Is it a good way to live a life or run a company (or a school) with such an ease? Is it really a stressless living like that? Shouldn't we care about the image what we form in others? Is it now an important or non-important thing?


This is just my opinion. Don't be mad if you don't like it. Or be mad, if you like. Your decision. But there's an opportunity to share your thoughts below...

To be honest, earlier I had a plan how should I start my English posting; first I wanted to write about something else, in completely differenct field. Something about positivity, what I experienced around for example Sugata Mitra or what I read from Carol Dweck. They are some kind of examplars for me. I have to store those ideas for later...

Nowadays it seems (in general and on my field as well: teaching practice and education) we care so much about self-communication, and that actually could be a good thing as well, but I think it's just not like that, when we're getting down the focus from listening and being too rigid about the feedback we get back from others.
Let's be clear, I was always interested about this topic, more like in a corporate way, as a corporate aim/purpose/goal, so self-communication of a company, a comminity or a school for instance. The topic of PR and image in education was my main research field earlier. It's such an exciting and interesting, sometimes even revolutionary issue!

So let's get to the point straight, shall we? Oh no, I have to be a little bit more patient, approaching slower to the main "message".
We have a lot of big words for self-communication, this topic grew so huge so it actually spread itself to different

• studies and topics - if we talk about that as a science field
• departments - if we talk about business, firmas, communities
• techniques, patterns, heights and depths - if we talk about the way we do it.

Maybe I could even continue this specification, but I guess today, this topic is not aiming to write one more book about it. I mentioned these things because I wanted to show how important this is for people.

As you can see in the wordcloud above (oh yes, that was a massive spoiler), there are many things came to my mind in the last couple of hours when I started my post in my head. A lot of words which actually form or influence our thoughts and judgements about things. Half - or more - of those words are also true for personal opinion-forming too.


An image of a self ≠ self-image?

I know people who actually said in my presence that they "don't give a damn what others think" and sometimes I get this idea from their acts as well. At least they speak their heart, right?
I also know people who are so much about other's opinions, so they don't actually really live their life (to give some material for opinion-forming), but they work on their appearance (again: on and offline), or on their speeches, trying their best in their relationships and hardly never give themselves away.
The golden mean should be in between these two, don't you think? IDK, I'm just thinking...

About personal relationship-managing I can tell it's important in professional and in private way as well. I won't tell how should it be done, everyone has a different, own way to live their life, express themselves... Some are working better, some could work more on development. There are even videos on youtube how to have better relationships or "being happier with ourselves". (With the usual tips like smile, be honest, no trashtalk, avoid gossips etc. - there are some interesting ones, though...)
One thing is surely sounds a good tip: be yourself, and believe in yourself. (As Aibileen Clark said: You is kind. You is smart. You is important.) That teaches you to strenghten your self-image. If the self-image and the image in others are close to each other, then you must be a well-balanced person, you do something really good :)

Why do we have to keep progressing to form our own image? Honestly, because we are sociable creatures, we care about each others things in a good - and also in a bad way. Some of us will always deny that, but we do. We comment on each other, we say nice things and then bad things...
Anyway everyone has policies and principles to live with, we need those. It's a human thing, for that we have to devote special attention. Like... when it's time to meet with and talk to somebody, we make impacts. This is like we all have an inner politician and this way we can "claim" people around (or scare them away), we get friends, good friends, or just pals, or maybe the opposite. The thing is, that there are different ways of getting closer to someone else (not really physically!), different styles, "tastes", what's alright with one, the other would take as an offense.

By the way, there are a lot of what-ifs... Because you never know what life brings in your way. There are karmic encounters, and even if you don't believe in these kind of things, there are weird coincidences in life like those. We all have to watch our steps. It's a thin ice we're walking on sometimes...


PR-ofession

And here's the field I like the most. (I mean I enjoy forming a persons image, but I mostly care about my own personal image.) Explore a community's system feedbacks, observing procedures and mark its advantages and disadvantages, best sides and worst ones, find all the weaknesses and strengths, and then shaping, designing or redesigning the image, one step to another, make a plan how to be more conscious about being better in small things and in general too.
But how to form or influence on a comminity's image is never an easy task. Maybe that is one thing I like in PR, it challenges me the most, because it contains various of assignments, I have to see correlations between things, link them together like I solve a puzzle and/or I need to use my imagination to see and fill the gaps with new ideas to make the whole picture better.

At a serious company there are several people who actually spend hours and days with PR forming, they actually have PR department, and there they care about all the company's allkinds of partners to be satisfied. Whenever or wherever the company is represented, PR people do a good job in attracting people, they're responsible to get potential new partners feel involved.
For a school, it's everybody's responsibility that the school actually represents itself in the best way it can, but the whole procedure is not so direct, not so controlled, not so conscious. However, it should be. (Not only companies collapse and can go bust, sometimes schools have to sthut down because of less interests.)

We use these words daily, like: honesty, loyalty, reliability. Some of the words from the wordcloud are actually not particulary from the lingo of PR or education as you can see. But they are very very important, their presence or absence can form or destroy the image of any kind of society, company or even just one person.
Think about it: how would it be, if teachers wouldn't be reliable and responsible at school? Wouldn't it make a complete chaos?  What could happen, if they were disloyal? They could anytime abandon the kids, their job just like that?

And here's a thing...

I find that nowadays only the really big companies afford themselves an actual PR specialist. Someone whose profession is actually to care about the image of their employer in everybody's mind. And it's just sad.
I could imagine this role two main ways:

• As a permanent job the PR specialist (manager and maybe some co-workers) could observe and control and advise the management in a long-term.
• For a shorter time the headquarters of the company/school could hire an external expert (or maybe a smaller team) for the job. 
• In between the two there is one more way I could maybe imagine this role: a senior worker could do a part-time job as a project manager and together with some colleagues they try to write a simple plan to develop the community's image.

I think there are many people doesn't take image serious. Even as a member of a larger community. They don't count with consequence of what they have or haven't done.
I think that is important indeed if you promise something. Your words, your reputation. And/or your employer's and colleague's, the whole company's! If you don't keep what you promised, so don't be surprised if people wouldn't look for your partnership anymore.
I think that somewhere there's an unwritten must, a rule that if you get a professional email and it's waiting for some kind of reply: You must answer it.

You have to think sometimes with someone else's head or at least imagine yourself in their situation.