How to Embrace Awkward Moments
‘Awkward’ meaning ‘feeling uneasy, embarrassment or hard to deal with’
I don’t know about you, but I felt like a very awkward young teenager.
When I picture myself, I see someone in one of those navy Laura Ashley sailor dresses with big puff sleeves, a dropped waist, grey school socks and big clunky loafers being asked if I was a boy or a girl.
I’m told that look is very trendy now, not so sure I believed that back then.
Everyone knows teen years can be awkward BUT what about when you are an adult, a grown up? We’re supposed to have gotten through the awkward phase and yet…
Life can be awkward
From the mild:
forgetting someone’s name
not recognising someone
tripping in public and so on…
To the not-so mild:
difficult conversations
giving negative feedback
asking for a pay-rise
expressing unhappiness or dissatisfaction with someone else....
As adults, I think we are just expected to ‘suck it up’ but....
How can we make it easier?
What are ways to embrace the awks rather than dread it?
Or try to stop worrying about it and hate it when it’s happening? A few things!
1. Start Breathing
When we are stressed we tend to hold in our breath and the ‘fight or flight’ system kicks in. Taking a conscious breath, making it slower and deeper is scientifically proven to kick in the ‘rest and digest’ part of the nervous system, calming you down, getting more oxygen into your blood stream, allowing you a moment to think.
2. Name what is going on
Internally, name what you are feeling, what the emotions are.
For example, ‘I’m feeling very embarrassed, I haven’t seen that person since X and I am worried about their reaction’.
Naming what you are feeling, I believe, helps separate emotion from fact. The emotion or feeling may be transitory linked to that moment but it won’t be forever.
3. Zoom out very high to a helicopter view
This is also known as taking things from a balcony view. When you are deep in awks territory you are very much on the dance floor, flooded with emotion, and it’s very hard to view things clearly. But if you zoom out, up to the balcony or a helicopter view and look down at the dance floor, you get a different perspective.
What can you see from here?
Your point of view, their point of view, what’s really going on?
4. Ask yourself what’s important
This is the key thing to embracing awkward moments, I think, is to ask yourself what’s really important. Rise above yourself, rise above the other person and think about what matters at the end of the day.
This answer may well help you act in the moment, whether it’s standing up for yourself, standing firm on a point of contention, apologising, acknowledging the other person’s point of view or even laughing it off, making light of it, brushing it off.
It all depends on what’s important at the end of the day.
5. Show yourself some compassion
Going through awkward moments takes its toll mentally, physically and maybe spiritually. So take some time to process the moment afterwards, be kind to yourself for how you handled it, what qualities you showed through it and get what you need to move on.
Remember, if all else fails, this too shall pass. But I think it’s easier if you follow those steps.
Let me know if they work for you.
Take care.
Tracy
