First impressions are a first draft somebody else wrote about you in five seconds. You don’t have to sign it.

Somebody’s instant read of you is made from almost nothing: a few seconds, your posture, who you happened to be standing with, their mood that morning. It is a rough draft written fast by a person with very little information. You get to treat it as a draft, and nothing obliges you to accept their five seconds as a description of your life.

If somebody has you wrong this week, decide whether it is worth editing. Sometimes it is, by turning up consistently until the draft no longer matches. Sometimes the honest answer is that their opinion is not load-bearing and you can let it stand uncorrected.