Influence grows like interest. Tiny deposits of being decent, and one day you’ve got a lot of pull.

Standing is accumulated rather than acquired. No single decent act registers as significant, and none of them feel like progress at the time, but they add up into a general sense of who you are that arrives long before you notice it. People with unexplainable amounts of goodwill usually just made small deposits for years.

Do the small decent thing today even though it will not visibly matter: the reply, the introduction, the ten minutes. Keep doing it when nobody thanks you. The return arrives all at once, usually at a moment you could not have planned for.