I have been trying to find a good balance on caring what other people think of me, specifically my appearance. On the one hand, the desire to be seen favorably by others is good and useful, particularly to increase the depth of your relationships and further your career. However, feeding this desire too much can cause excessive anxiety and an overfocus on trivialities.

I think I have finally settled on something I will call punctuated oblivion. This is a recognition that though in a general sense, I do want to be concerned with others’ perceptions of me, in specific incidents I don’t want to let these concerns paralyze me. To put it another way,  in a third-person sense, I will be aware of what others think of me. However, in a first-person sense, I will be oblivious toward their thoughts of me.

So, when will I be oblivious and when will I be conscious of this? For starters, this will work nicely with the appointed times I already have in place. During each philosophical appointed time, I will allow and even encourage myself to really care what others think of me, so I can make changes for the better. I will also make a quick mental preview of the upcoming week, and think about what I will do in the situations where I might lapse into caring what others think of me.

Once I enter into a scientific appointed time, I will simply try to follow the plan I established during the philosophical. Beyond this, I will try to be as unconcerned about what others think of me as possible. I will do this by really putting all my energy and attention into the activities I want to accomplish each day.

Very important to all of this is what I intend to do with my thoughts. There will be things I want to accomplish with my thoughts as well as my actions. For example, I want to pray for certain people each day and each week, as well as have different scripture passages I think upon and recite to myself. This is not a burdensome list, just some things to have my mind focused on rather than blank and prone to exaggerate the opinions of others.

The last aspect of this paradigm is to establish definite times during the week in which to think about and try to improve my appearance (as well as communication and other aspects of who I am) so others will think more highly of me. These times will be strictly monitored to avoid getting stuck brooding about something. So, for example, I will probably allow ten minutes in the morning before I leave for the day to care what others think of my appearance. After this, however, I will become oblivious of this and just try to apply myself 100% to the activities at hand.

If no one else was around, all I would care about would be function. I would not care how long or short my shirt was or the pimples on my face. So, the majority of my time throughout the week I will attempt to just focus on fulfilling my plans and reaching my goals for that day or week as if no one else was around.

One final note: this punctuated oblivion only goes one way. Meaning, I will still be considerate of others feelings and try to love them as myself. So, if something I am doing is aggravating someone, I will stop. However, I will do this not because I care what they think about me, but because I want them to be happy. The focus will be on them, not me.