A friend of mine suggested I write this post. The other day, she called me because she was feeling embarrassed about an awkward meeting.
When she first got to the meeting, she introduced herself to someone who turned out to be a high-ranking executive — someone she maybe should have recognized.
He said they had met before, although they had not. Likely he had her mixed up with someone else.
Then she realized that she was at the wrong meeting entirely. Her meeting had been cancelled.
She was right to call me, because I have socially awkward situations all the time. Unlike hers, mine are often 100% my own doing. I could tell her, with confidence:
“Nobody cares. That guy is going to have three more meetings today, and he won’t even be thinking about this at the end of the day.”
Every day brings the potential for social awkwardness.
We answer an email in a way that makes it abundantly clear that we did not carefully read the email.
Someone tells us at church that Melissa is pregnant, and we go and congratulate the wrong Melissa.
We brush someone’s butt or boob while getting off the elevator.
Or we say goodbye to someone, discover that we are walking in the same direction that they are, and can’t think of anything else to say.
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Other people rarely spend much time thinking about our awkwardness, however. They have a hundred other things on their mind, including their own awkwardness.
So there’s no reason for us to give it much thought, either. If we can think to ourselves, “LOL that was weird” and go on our merry way, we’re going to be a lot happier.
It’s usually a mistake to make a big deal about your awkwardness. When you go on and on about it, or apologize later, you just prolong the weirdness. You also make sure that people will remember something that they would otherwise forget.
We think about social grace as a matter of not making any mistakes, but I think it also has to do with recovering quickly from missteps.
Do you have socially awkward moments, or are you smooth all the time? (If it’s the latter, tell us your secrets!) And if you do have awkward moments, do you obsess about them, or just let them go? I’d love to hear! Have a great Friday!
I’ve always been socially awkward. I kind of suspect if I were a kid today I’d be put on some kind of spectrum. I have one secret for getting along socially: I assume everyone likes me until they indicate otherwise.
I started this years ago when it suddenly dawned on me that my previous assumption – that people didn’t like me, and if they thought they did, it was only because they didn’t really know me yet – was leading me to behave in ways that brought about exactly what I was avoiding. At that time I decided, ridiculously, audaciously, just to pretend people liked me! so there!
It totally worked. People responded so positively that I made it a habit to assume that every person I meet likes me. The funny thing is that, when I think about it, I mostly don’t actually care anymore what people feel or think about me. Mostly we get along, so what difference does it make?
Still awkward, all the time. But I know how easy it is to overlook awkwardness with people I like, so I know that others do the same for me.
I completely relate to all of this!
Haha, thanks Meg! Glad I’m not the only one!
Well… I never thought of you as socially awkward, but then, I was probably comparing you to me. 😀
“Assume other people like you” is SO. BRILLIANT. I’m going to be giving my friends who are socially anxious that advice for a long time to come! It’s the smartest thing I’ve heard in a while.
Hi everyone, I’m the awkward friend featured above! Bryn saved the day after my recent gaffe. It’s true, nobody else thinks about our awkwardness half as much as we do. Now I look back on the whole thing and think, Who cares?
Haha, thanks for encouraging me to write about it! Like I say, that weirdness was not your fault at all! It’s just proof that weirdness can happen to anyone 🙂
This is a huge struggle for me. As an indie author, marketing is a huge part of getting the word out there about my books. I’m very shy and attending author events has been a struggle. Professionally, I’m a consultant and I have to meet with people throughout the week. This takes a lot of effort for me and by the end of the week I’m exhausted and need to have some alone time. (If you see me in the airport on a Thursday night with earbuds in, do not disturb me) Attending weekend author events was hard at first, but I’ve come to enjoy the interaction with other authors and meeting new and potential readers.
Oh man Don, I know just what you mean about author events! I can be very shy. I’m usually glad later that I made the effort 🙂
I am pretty introverted, and I’m lucky with work because I usually only have a couple of meetings a day — sometimes fewer! When I have to talk to a lot of people during the day, I need to hole up by myself for hours to recover.
good for you for persevering.
Growing up I was constantly worried about how I was being perceived. I always felt at least 5 years older than kids my own age, due to the fact that I basically raised myself with the help of my siblings. I felt like an alien around the kids at school and hated it when anyone looked at me. Every tiny stumble, every spot on my shirt, every little thing seemed like the end of the world. Then there was this weird turning point in 7th grade- we were all in this classroom with folding chairs and we were going to watch a video, and I literally “sat down” where there was no chair. I fell flat on my back, and for whatever reason I started laughing hysterically without a conscious thought. Everyone laughed WITH me, and I got a chair and it never came up again. If I had been mortified I know that it would have followed me around for the rest of the year. I don’t even know what happened – maybe it was SO mortifying and over-the-top my brain just gave up on being embarrassed. Either way, I must have subconsciously realized I had cracked some sort of code because I never looked back.
Michele I love that story! I wish I had overcome some of my self-consciousness that early in life. It took me so long!
I’m always awkward. And I’m always thinking about it after the fact. I blame my shyness.
I’m really shy, too, and yeah, I think it does make me more awkward. But it really is true that most people won’t hold it against us. 🙂 Thanks for reading!
Agreed. I hide in books or corners. Someday I want to be the person who doesn’t mind, but I’m just past 50 and am not sure it will happen. People scare me. I recall a story at a seminar, the lady speaking told about an experience she accepted. She had just been to the bathroom and stuffed her skirt in her hose on accident. Someone came up behind her and fixed it. She got on the podium and thanked whoever it was who untucked her skirt from her hose and remarked, ‘it probably embarrassed you more than me.’ I would have been mortified beyond belief! I am so thankful for books!
Hi Kris! Ha, I can admire that speaker’s composure. 🙂 It is a hard thing to change. But hey, 50 isn’t even close to old, you might have all kinds of changes still in the future 🙂
I have the kind of social awkwardness where I never know what to say, so I end up making lame jokes or I just say something stupid.
Or I try to talk and engage, but then the other people in the group just start talking over me about whatever, so I learn to just shut up and try not to embarrass myself.
Ugh.
Hey, lame jokes are my specialty! 😀 And oh man, that’s so awkward when people talk over you so you just sort of stop in mid-sentence… that happens to me now and again.
I’m pretty shy myself, except around my family. At nineteen, I worked at a daycare and that helped me overcome some of my shyness working with kids and having to talk to their parents on a daily basis. But when I’m in larger crowds I tend to back off a little more. I think back of all the times I’ve fallen, run into people, my red curly hair going haywire in every which direction except the way I want it, and my aargh moments when I can’t seem to get the right words out without it sounding weird or even stumbling over my words. Now I tend to shrug things off, laughing at some of my own awkwardness, thinking oh well, I’m only human!!