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Recall the most embarrassing thing that you can think of in this moment...remember those emotions? Whether it’s saying something dumb on a first date, trying something new and totally failing, or even thinking back on things you did in highschool...we’ve all been embarrassed! So what’s happening when we’re embarrassed? How can we navigate embarrassment and develop more happiness? Find out on today’s episode of the happiness playbook!
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TRANSCRIPT
I want you to recall the most embarrassing thing you can think of in this moment. Do you remember those emotions? Whether it's saying something dumb on a first date, trying something new and totally failing, or even thinking back on things you did in high school. We've all been embarrassed. So what's happening when we're embarrassed and how can we navigate embarrassment?
And develop more happiness. Find out on today's episode of the happiness playbook.
Hey team happiness. I hope you've had an amazing week. I'm really excited for today's episode and as always, we're going to kick it off with our highlight reel. When student Anthony Moore showed up to class, wearing a hat in violation of the school's dress code. Stony Brook intermediate and middle school principal, Jason Smith knew something was wrong. Eventually he was able to get the student to open up. After about 30 minutes, the youth finally explained he was embarrassed by a bad haircut. He had recently received.
Now the principal could have done a lot of things. He could have enforced , the dress code and he could have come down on the student, sent him home, got him in trouble, but. This is where it gets really cool. The principal actually.
Took him into the school. And right there at school gave him a fresh haircut. Turns out the principle actually in a previous life was a barber for a number of years and knew how to cut hair really well. And so he took this poor embarrassed student who didn't want anyone to see his hair. And he gave him a fresh, clean haircut, so much play theory happening in this highlight reel, but it's specially except in build and let go and play. Now, when he saw the student breaking the honor code, it would have been really easy to just go with the enforcements and to stick to the policy, but he actually took the time to investigate and ask the student what was going on. I found out and then excepted and built on the situation and helped him overcome this embarrassment. So what a beautiful story. I love this. I hope we can all be more like principal. Jason Smith. Last week we discussed redefining true success. And I want to know how it went for you. Were you able to take a moment and ask yourself how you will know when you've been truly successful? It was an awesome exercise for me and I even reworked some parts of my vision board that used to have more financially focused elements of success. And I reworked them and it was so fun to dig deep and really envision what true success is. I want you to keep this in your heart for a while longer. All right. This is not just the play of the week. I want to extend this one out, keep thinking about success and what it will take for you. To be fulfilled by the end of your life. That is a very powerful concept.
All right. All right. Huddle up, everybody get in close because I want to share for our team huddle today, some encouraging, awesome words from Hannah fryer who shared play theory has helped me to better understand what it means to be selfless. Something I'll never forget is when I realized that my self-consciousness was turning into selfishness. I wasn't the only one suffering from my negative thoughts. The people around me were also affected. I have a responsibility to push out my negative thoughts and be present so that I can make better use of my time. See what's going on around me and use my talents, skills and unique traits to do what is needed.
There are so many beautiful nuggets. In these. Uh, beautiful words. And thank you, Hannah, for sharing this with us and for sharing your own experience of play theory and how it's impacted you. It sounds like a very profound shift has happened in your life as is the case for all who apply play theory.
And it's so awesome to hear the realization and the paradigm shift that's happening.
That's what I want for you as your happiness coach here on the other. Side of the speaker. I want you to have that paradigm shift and to really live a more fulfilled and happy life and to develop this skill of happiness. And this is so encouraging. Thank you, Hannah. Again. You're amazing. I keep going team happiness. All right break.
So as we get into our play-by-play here, I want to start with a story, a quick story. This last week, I had the opportunity to play some golf and anyone who knows me knows that I am no pro golfer. And I'm kind of at that awkward stage where. I'm like definitely good enough to go out and play with people, but I'm not good enough to like really pull the team, every now and then I'll get a good drive or when it comes to putting them a little better.
But I'm kind of this awkward stage where I really enjoy it and it's fun. And I'll never say no to somebody, but I always have to give this. Disclaimer, right. That I'm like, Hey, just so you know, uh, I'm not a pro golfer. Anyway, an opportunity came up, there was this fun little tournament.
And I got to go and be on a team of four people. Thankfully, we were doing a scramble, which means everybody takes a turn for that round and you just play off the best swing. So that helps. Right. But I was just doing pretty good during the first three holes. But then. To this. Whole, and I just. I felt the pressure, right? So they had these people watching. There was a, there were sponsors at these different holes for the tournament's along story, but there was just a lot of people watching and I decided, Hey, you know what, I'm going to go first. I'm just going to go in there, go for it.
But then I just felt everyone staring right. And they're watching me. And pull back my swing. And I go and I just totally whacked the ball into somebody else's green. Like it was so bad. All of my teammates. Had to yell for, which means incoming golf ball summit isn't know what they're doing basically. Right. Obviously very embarrassing moment. I had a decision to make in that moment. The one choice is to let my pride get the best of me, right. To kind of shrink, to get awkward. To, Say something awkward and, just try to move forward and hope nobody notices. Right.
The other option was just to embrace the mistake, embrace the situation. And infuse some humor. And I tried the second option. And I said, Wait, which hole where we going for? I thought it was that one. And I pointed to the other green that clearly was not the hole. And so it kind of diffused the situation. And I just laughed at myself. There were a few very embarrassing moments while I was playing golf. But I had this thought in and I knew we were going to talk about it today and I thought, okay, embarrassment shows up a lot in our lives. He shows up every day. And it's so important that we know how to navigate that embarrassment, because if we're not careful that embarrassment can derail our happiness and really cause some problems for our connection with others. And so I wanted to address that today.
Embarrassment happens all the time. Right. But what's really going on when we're embarrassed. There's this awesome article on psychology.com that gives some helpful insight into embarrassment on their site. We read. Embarrassment is a painful but important emotional state. Most researchers believe that the purpose of embarrassment is to make people feel badly about their social or personal mistakes as a form of internal or societal feedback.
So that they can learn not to repeat the error. Now, this is so interesting because in this article we see That embarrassment can have a purpose, right? It's this really strange form of internal or societal feedback. So that we learn to not repeat an error, right. That is what's happening in our brain, in our psyche. And it can do that for us. But what is not helpful is when we allow embarrassment to become this default setting. And it's really easy to slip into this. It's really easy to just feel the emotion of embarrassment unnecessarily and what could be viewed as feedback. If we're not careful can become something much more detrimental.
And I want to distinguish here the difference between shame and embarrassment.
While embarrassment and shame are similar. There are some very key differences that we should take note of shame often carries moral overtone said embarrassment does not.
It portrays a sense of character failing. Rather than a loss of societal status or image. Meanwhile embarrassment colors, the gap between how one wishes to be perceived and how one believes that others are actually perceiving them. Embarrassment can be viewed as helpful feedback, but if we don't address that healthily.
It can start to become shame. Shame is not helpful. Shame has to do with a belief of internal inherent inadequacy. And shame will prevent you from taking risk. It will prevent you from letting go and playing and it will prevent you from being present. Embarrassment can do that as well, but it's less detrimental. The truth is a lot of people will bounce back from an embarrassing incident rather quickly. But there are others who are more sensitive who may develop feelings of anxiety or panic when they think about it, and what can happen if we let this shame come in, if we start to view ourselves as inherently inadequate, Then we might even find that we try avoiding specific social interactions. Out of fear of being embarrassed or humiliated again. And just one embarrassing experience can be detrimental to someone's confidence and sense of self-worth over a long period of time. If we're not careful.
And if we really play this out, if that embarrassment is not addressed and becomes a habit.
It can lead to anxiety, depression. And in extreme cases, the impulse to self harm, which is obviously the opposite. Of happiness in everything we want to promote here on the happiness playbook. So, what can we do?
I'll never forget a very humiliating, embarrassing experience I had in high school at a dance. And this experience is single events. Blasted a crater. In my emotional state that lasted for years. Without going into details. It was a very public thing that happened. Lots of people saw it. And it wasn't just embarrassing, but it was misinterpreted as well. And everyone talked about it. Everyone in my youth groups, all my friends and this thing, goodness was before social media was a very popular thing. and so, thankfully it didn't spread. Uh, didn't go viral or anything, but. It was really hard. And I struggled for about a year and a half, just really addressing this and overcoming this. I stopped going to dances for a while, and it was really hard for me to process that.
But once I was able to look outward and to call upon my support network. It was very healing to talk to some people that I trusted. And to share with them, to infuse some humor, find humor in the situation, which isn't always easy, but can be very therapeutic and helpful. And I, it's really important that we look outward and that we try to view the humiliating incident as an opportunity to build resilience.
So that is the first tip is to look outward. When we're feeling embarrassed. The truth is everyone does embarrassing things. We all have made complete fools of ourselves. We've all put our foot in our mouth. We've all done things that we regret.
And so looking out word and connecting with other people, especially if there's a majorly embarrassing thing, depending on the severity of it can be very therapeutic.
The second tip about overcoming embarrassment is not easy to do, but very important and very powerful. And that is to let go and play and to laugh it off. This works for less severe embarrassing experiences. But it's very powerful. I feel like it's Storytime today, bell, all these embarrassing things I've done, but I will share one more experience. And again, I'm not always good at doing these things, but the times I've chose to.
To handle embarrassment in a positive, healthy way. It's always helped me. So one day I was riding home from class. On my long board had my backpack on all of my books and I was carrying some binders. So I'm riding my long board and I go across a crosswalk across the street.
And my front tire of my long board. Goes straight into this huge hole that I could not see. It was just big enough for my tire to go in. So just front wheel goes right into the hole and just launches me right now this is at an intersection where there's a line of cars on both sides watching me.
And I just wipe out, I got launched off my white board. Backpack binders fly everywhere. Super embarrassing. Right? But again, in that moment, I said I had two choices. I can look embarrassed. I can. Just try to pick up my stuff and I can run away and shame. Or I can laugh at myself. And I decided to laugh at myself. So I got up in front of all the cars and I just took a very majestic bow to them. And I held up my hands and they start, I started honking. They saw the humor on it, and I was able to just go about my day. It's so empowering to just laugh at yourself and it's not easy because we're also very prideful beings and it's hard to, uh, engage that self-deprecation just enough.
To get over an embarrassing moment, but you know what the truth is, we've all done embarrassing things. And we so appreciate when people. Let go and play and laugh at themselves. This is the play of the week. This week when you have an embarrassing experience or your pride is wanting to show up because of mistake. Laugh at yourself. Uh, one of the best ways to get over embarrassment is to laugh it off. In fact. Research. Research shows that people who can laugh off an embarrassing moment are generally viewed as more trustworthy, likable and sociable. This is from the psychology.com article. Realizing that everyone makes mistakes can also help. So just remember everyone makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect. We all do embarrassing, silly things. As you practice. Laughing it off.
Stifling your pride. And just embracing the embarrassment and moving forward, you will be so much better off. And just like the principal who saw an embarrassing moment from somebody else who is suffering from that societal. Rejection or feedback. I hope that you can also be the one who helps others navigate their embarrassment. Never be the one contributing to embarrassment. Never be the one who is laughing at someone. If they are trying to laugh it off by all means, laugh with them, but never be the contributing factor to someone feeling that embarrassment and making that embarrassment.
Evolve into the shame and anxiety that we want to avoid.
📍 Well, well, well, what an embarrassing. Episode of the happiness playbook. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope that you can laugh it off when you do something silly or embarrassing. I'm really excited for next week. You're not going to want to miss it because we're going to talk about focus and how productivity and focus and being present will help you further develop your relationships and your happiness. And we're going to have some awesome.
Pro tips in there.
On how to level up and get more done and stay focused. So you don't want to miss it.
Let go and play, laugh it off, go do embarrassing things and then move forward and don't think about it. Help others. See the humor, help others feel comfortable
and make sure that you look outward when you're feeling that anxiety and depression, embarrassment, shame. Reach out to someone you trust. Tell them, Hey, I'm having a hard time. And I just want to talk to you about something embarrassing.
Embrace the embarrassment.
But most of all, remember that happiness is a skill and life is a team sport. Catch the. Next week.
