A good reputation should support your decisions, not make them impossible to change.

Reputation is useful right up to the moment it starts choosing for you. Being known as the steady one, the optimist, the person who never quits, buys you trust and then quietly narrows what you are allowed to do next, because changing course would contradict the story other people hold. Standing you earned is meant to be spent, not protected.

Notice a choice you are avoiding partly because it would surprise people who know you. Ask what you would do if nobody had an existing impression of you. Then decide on the merits.