"Treating our personalities as products reflects an increasingly competitive society in which the best way to stand out is to develop an engaging--and easily defined--image. Companies and celebrities have been doing it for years. Now it's the average guy's turn. 'For a long time, parents discouraged their children from worrying about what others think. They didn't realize how shortsighted and stupid that was,' says Mark Leary, a social psychology professor at Duke University who studies impression management. 'We need other people to think well of us.'"
From Time.com - "It's a Brand-You World"
I have to interpret this from my own bias - In a sense, as a Christian, people do need to think well of me... but on what basis? My personal greatness? And for what reasons? Self glory? For the world, the fear of man has become standard procedure. But listen to the words of Scripture:
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
[2 Cor 2:14-17]
