Feeling embarrassed? Don’t.
We’ve all had that feeling, when we do something we shouldn’t have or didn’t mean to do, in front of family, friends or strangers or even people we were trying to impress. That horrible feeling of embarrassment.
Everybody hates that feeling. It could hit you at any time in your day-to-day life, and when it does, it hurts. It could be when we are doing something new, something difficult or something we think is too easy when it isn’t. Then when you get a hold of this feeling, you feel as if your whole day is wrecked, you are overthinking about it, saying to yourself, if only I had done this or that, maybe I could still do this. People may be even teasing you about it.
I bet you’re thinking of a time when you embarrassed yourself now, aren’t you?.
And what do you want to do when it happens… You just want to go home, curl up on the couch and comfort eat, because you think that will heal the wound, won’t it? No, it won’t. Let me save you the ‘embarrassment’ and self-pity stories and tell you the best way I found to overcome this feeling and stop it dead in its tracks.
The best way to overcome embarrassment is tell yourself these two small sentences:
· ‘you are not that important’.
· ‘I’m just over thinking it’.
“Marge, you can’t keep blaming yourself; just blame yourself once, then move on” — Homer Simpson
Now don’t take this the wrong way, everybody is important but not THAT important. What I mean by this is that you are not that important to the point where people think about you constantly and especially think about when you embarrassed yourself constantly. When it happens they may notice it at the moment, but then they forget. In truth, nobody actually cares about what you did, or why you did it.
Yes, that’s right. No matter what you did to embarrass yourself nobody truly cares. People may tease you about it when it first happens or bring it up one time in the distant future, but they don’t care, and I’ll tell you why.
People don’t actually care when you embarrass yourself because they are too busy thinking about their own lives and what they have to do. For example, thinking about what bills they have to pay, jobs, school, whether they look good, their kids, assignments, passion projects, family, future commitments etc. the list goes on. They are even thinking of their own embarrassment stories (Everybody has one even if they don’t tell you).
Due to what other people have going on throughout their lives, they are not consistently thinking about your ‘embarrassment’ the way you are, whatever your embarrassment may be.
If you don’t believe me let’s try looking at it from a different perspective. Do you remember when you saw your friend or a family member embarrass themselves? Yes? No? if it is a yes, I bet you had to think for a minute and try to remember what they did, it wasn’t right at the front of your mind, the chance is you’d probably forgot about it if I didn’t bring it up. You weren’t constantly thinking about it. If it was no, then you don’t remember.
This is the exact same thing that happens with your situation. After it has happened people won’t and don’t remember it and if they do, they don’t remember it as ‘bad’ as you remember it. Memories fade.
Let me provide you with a really good example. Do you remember when you were in school when some ‘big’ event would happen? There was a fight, a student was reading in class and got a word wrong, somebody got friend-zoned, or somebody got suspended. Do you remember what happened afterwards? people forgot and moved on with their own lives.
Yes, it may have been the talk of the school for a few days, a week at most, but then the weekend came, everybody went home for a couple of days, got on with their lives and forgot.
When people came back to school, people had practically forgotten. It slipped their mind. It was old news. Everything was back to normal.
This is because it was a new week; everybody was so occupied with their weekend that they stopped thinking about it.
It was only ‘the talk’ for about a week because everybody would see each other every day so it would still be fresh in people’s minds. However, when everybody left for 2 days, it gave them enough time to reset.
The same thing happens even when you leave school and go into the real world. When you embarrass yourself, everybody goes home. They reset and forget; they don’t remember it because they have their own lives. They also have bigger priorities than in school, so they forget about your embarrassment a lot quicker.
If you do end up feeling a little embarrassed one day, put some time aside to do something you like and enjoy to take your mind off things and make yourself feel better. This will help you forget the same as everyone else has. Then just tell yourself one thing “I’m not that important” and keep moving.
Just remember this when next time you embarrass yourself, you are not the president. You are not the most important person in the world or country. You are not as important as you think you are, and sometimes, that’s a good thing.
Even if you are the president and took the time to read this, a new week starts, a new year starts, a new term starts and eventually they get a new president in. So, again, people forget and it won’t be fresh in their minds.
Try thinking of life a bit like this, everybody is the star in their own movie, so you are not the main character to everybody.
“The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else’s story.” — Don Miguel Ruiz
The take away:
- You are not the main character in everybody’s story so when you feel embarrassed it is nowhere near as bad as you think.
- You are probably just overthinking it.
- Go and do something you enjoy.
“Stop kicking yourself kid, we haven’t finished yet.”
Thank you for taking the time to read my article. If you found it helpful and think it could help someone else, then please share it with them.
I’m an independent writer, writing mainly on self-development.
I occasionally write on personal experiences, interest, business, criminology, books and places.
If you are looking for a way to try and better yourself, then please feel free to read some of my other articles linked below as you may also benefit from and enjoy them.
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