I've tried to incorporate the notion that it's none of my business what other people think of me. I don't always get it right, but having that attitude has helped tremendously on reducing my cortisol levels.
This is a huge relief, but it does come at a cost. What other people think of you is one of the largest inputs to access to jobs, sexual partners, and likelihood you'll be referred or witnessed against for prosecution for some inane zoning/HOA ordinance or petty crime (whether you did it or not) because you're not on someone's good side, etc etc. So the high cortisol levels may be warranted from the Darwinist perspective.
Having a good thing happen or preventing bad things from happening sadly show up as high stakes butterfly effects of the perverted social ranking and opinion games.
Caring about what other people think of you doesn’t actually result in other people thinking more highly of you.
I have fallen into this trap (and still do from time to time) of trying to control the way other people perceive me. The thing is, it only works like half the time and often actually backfires.
There are two reasons this doesn’t work: 1) you’re spending energy trying to control others’ perception of you and 2) you don’t actually know what’s going on in someone else’s head, so a lot of the time that energy isn’t well spent
If you look at this from the perspective of the judicial system, a huge part of the judicial process exists to compel you to be physically present and in-person at a court room.
On the other hand, social media is really the pinnacle of "the court of public opinion"; people feel more comfortable seeing what photos and social groups you appear in as evidence of "who you are". He/she appears in <insert well established group here> and therefore must be <well-established person>.
