If you’re anything like me, once the quiet of the night sets in and you’re lying in bed trying to sleep, a reel of your most embarrassing and shameful moments will play through your head like the world’s least enjoyable FYP. It’ll start with that time you were made aware you had been walking around with your skirt tucked into your tights by a stranger in the street and then show you each moment one by one until you finally reach the one where you were sure that your microphone would be on mute as you entered the zoom seminar complaining to your boyfriend that everybody had their cameras on…
No? Just me?
We all find ourselves in embarrassing situations sometimes. Our cheeks flush red whilst our palms get all clammy and we stand in silent shock, wishing that the ground would eat us up.
Except, it doesn’t actually have to be like that. While we won’t always be able to prevent ourselves from making these errors, we can control how we respond to them and find the power in them.
It’s often said that the best thing to do in times of embarrassment is to hold your head up high and laugh. This is very recycled advice and ‘laughter is the best medicine’ is such a cliché but it’s so easy to forget that you’re allowed, and encouraged, to find your own stupidity funny. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the moment and start to take life a bit too seriously when something doesn’t go to plan but it is so much more rewarding to just think “wow, that was a plot twist” and laugh about it. In these moments, try to see yourself as the protagonist in a coming-of-age film who has just waved back to someone who was not waving at them in order to add a bit of humour to the plot for the audience.
It also helps to remember that what is in the moment ‘the worst thing to ever happen to you in your whole entire life’ quickly becomes just another funny anecdote to bring out at parties and events. Nothing brings people together more than being reminded that they’re not the only one who has ever walked straight into an automatic door that was not, in fact, open. Hearing other people’s most embarrassing moments helps put your thoughts back in perspective and see the humour in the situation rather than applying an unnecessary seriousness to it.
Jokes aside, if the thoughts you just can’t shake lean more towards shame than embarrassment and you just can’t believe that you said that to somebody or wish that you had never acted how you did that day, just remember that you wouldn’t be feeling this way if it was something you would still do today. Sometimes, the only way you can respond to the past is to learn from it. You won’t be able to joke about and share every situation that keeps you up at night but knowing that it is something that will never happen again is a blessing. If you had no awareness that the event was even a mistake on your behalf or something to be embarrassed about then that would be a problem, you would be walking around putting your foot in it left, right, and centre. But, that isn’t the case. You feel bad about what happened and regret it but you have to let it go. Take comfort in the lesson learned.
So, relax and take a deep breath. There’s always the possibility that no one even noticed…