The importance of every experience we have with others.

Essentially your reputation is your most valuable asset- so guard it well. But don't be terribly demoralized if you make some mistakes along the way. With time it is possible to repair a stained reputation. Over the years I have come up with the metaphor that has helped me put this in prespective: every exprince you have with someone else is like a drop of water falling into a pool. As your experiences with that person grow, the drops accumulate and the pool deepens. Positive interactions are clear drops of water and negative interactions are red drops of water. But they aren't equal. That is a number of clear drops can dilute one red drop, and that number differs from different people. Those who are very forgiving only need a few positive experiences- clear drops- to dilute a bad experience, while those who are less forgiving need a lot more to wash away the red. Also for most people the pool drains slowly. As a result we tend to pay attention to experiences that have happened most recently, as opposed to those that had happened a long time ago. This metaphor implies that if you have a large reserve of positive experiences with someone then one red drop is hardly noticed. It's like putting a drop of  red ink into the ocean. But if you don't know a person well, one bad experience stains the pool bright red.
You can wash away negative interactions by flooding the pool by positive interactions until the red drops fade, but the deeper the red, the more work you have to do to clean the pool. I've found that sometimes the pool color never clears, when that happens, it's time to stop interacting with that particular person.