Abstract: Who’s making you feel embarrassed? Are they someone you should look up to? If so, they’d have traits you desire like kindness, patience, and understanding. If they have those traits then there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. If they are getting annoyed or judgmental then they’re not someone whose opinion you respect anyway so there’s no reason to be embarrassed. Why would you care what they think? You can learn how to stop feeling embarrassed both internally and externally.
Embarrassment is unnecessary, and here’s why you should never be embarrassed. Let’s break down exactly what embarrassment is and why we feel it, so we can focus on how to stop letting it impact your decisions so you can be your true authentic self.
Embarrassment is shame. It comes from a lack of love and compassion. It’s self-consciousness, and being self-conscious is directly opposed to personal growth. It is a barrier to being truly at ease and present in your life. It hinders you from being able to actualize your best self. So why do we get self-conscious?
Embarrassment comes from the feeling of being perceived by yourself or someone else in an unfavorable light. You’re either judging yourself or worried someone else is. You may think you look stupid, or bad, or ugly, or weird. However, none of it is necessary. Embarrassment exists internally and externally. Here’s why:
Addressing Embarrassment Internally
There’s no reason to feel embarrassed. First of all, if your feelings, thoughts, and actions are aligned with your desire to be your best self, then there’s never anything to be embarrassed about because you’re doing the best you can. You can retroactively look back after you’ve grown and understand that there was a better option, but embarrassment is not necessary for growth. You should still be looking back at your younger self with love (younger can be ten seconds ago).
The best thing you can do at every moment is attempt to actualize your best self into existence to the best of your ability with who you currently are – By doing this, you are actualizing your best available self at every moment. I know that sounded repetitive. In other words, by trying to be your best self you become your best self – the trying becomes the doing. This process requires you to make mistakes. That is a good and necessary thing, not embarrassing.
Mistakes are good. When you identify them, it means fundamentally that you are at a higher level of consciousness than you were when you made them. It means you have the knowledge and understanding to identify traits and aspects you no longer wish to identify with. The more you grow, the more mistakes you’ll realize.
A person who never realizes they’ve made a mistake never grows. Can you imagine having the same thinking and beliefs you had when you were twelve? Terrifying. Identifying mistakes is a good thing. It means you’re on the right path. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. However, you can increase the quality of your mistakes by being present as your best self.
How Presence Helps You Stop Feeling Embarrassment Internally
You can be your best available self at any moment. You can make sure your feelings, thoughts, and actions are aligned with your best self by being present in the moment. If you’re aware of yourself, watching what’s happening in the moment, and watching your thoughts and your own inner-state, then you can choose how to act. The act of becoming the watcher and becoming aware of yourself gives you the power to think before you act consciously.
You can choose which of your thoughts to accept because you’re watching them. If you don’t like any of them, you can pick a good action regardless, because you’re present and watching yourself. You can choose to pick an action that you believe your best self would do, and bring that action, and therefore your best available self, into existence at that moment.
You’ll still make mistakes, but you’ll limit unconscious and reactive mistakes. Mistakes are necessary. Your best self now is not your best self ten years from now with all that experience and wisdom, but your best self in ten years can be a vastly different person depending on how much work you put into yourself until then.
Being present allows you to make the best option you can at every moment. You can be proud of every mistake you make because identifying them means necessarily that you’re growing and improving. By being present you’re increasing the quality of your mistakes.
Now we’ve established your part – you’ve done everything you can and made the best decision in the moment. What do you do when it still goes wrong, you make a mistake, and people are judging you? Now the correction is not on your behavior, but on your perception. Let’s go through it.
Why You Should Never Be Embarrassed
You’re trying to be your best self, right? You want to improve in many facets of your life. You want to be kinder, more understanding, more patient, more loving, more intelligent, more confident, and everything else. These are the things you’re trying to improve on at all times, and sometimes you’re able to be present and actualize those traits into your personality. You are doing the best you can, but you still feel embarrassed. We’ve determined you shouldn’t be placing embarrassment on yourself, so who around you is causing you to feel embarrassed?
We need to address how you perceive those around you. Since you want to be your best self, you surround yourself with people that help you do that. You look for people with traits that you look up to and can model. You find friends that see better perspectives and learn from them. You look up to your best self and people that can help you become them. So, who is making you feel embarrassed?
Ask yourself this: Are the people around you someone you look up to? Are they exhibiting traits you admire and want to emulate? If they’re someone you look up to, then they must have traits you desire like kindness, patience, and understanding. How would your best self treat someone who did something “embarrassing”? Would they care? Would they laugh and be judgmental? Would they critique that person and be mean? Or would they approach the situation with kindness, understanding, and an uplifting attitude? So how could someone who doesn’t have traits that you look up to make you embarrassed? You don’t look up to them. You don’t want to be like them. Therefore, you don’t care what they think.
Their opinion is irrelevant. You wouldn’t treat people that way and try to make them feel bad when they do something “embarrassing”. You would be kind, loving, supportive, and nonjudgmental. If someone has those kind traits then you wouldn’t feel embarrassed from them, because reality is perception.
If you and everyone around you are all kind and loving people who don’t believe in embarrassing each other, then embarrassment doesn’t exist. If no one in the room feels embarrassment internally or judges other people to make them feel embarrassed, then embarrassment does not exist as a reality in that room. But what if you’re not in a room like that?
Handling Embarrassment from External Sources
If the people around you get annoyed, judgmental, or mean, then they’re not someone who’s opinion you respect anyway, so there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Why would you care what someone like that thinks? If they’re not helping you actualize your best self then they’re not someone whose opinion you should value. If their behavior doesn’t inspire you to want to be better, then don’t internalize their behavior. By not giving them space you don’t become like them. They can have their rooms with their people, you’ll have yours.
You don’t get embarrassed by first not embarrassing other people. If you don’t think that something other people do is embarrassing, then you realize how low of a frequency that judgment is when other people do it. You can identify low-level frequencies in yourself and grow out of them. You can decide to approach situations with love.
If your genuine response when someone makes a mistake is kindness, love, patience, support, understanding, and nonjudgment, then when someone doesn’t have that reaction towards you you’ll realize how odd it is to add negativity to a situation where someone is trying to grow and survive on this confusing planet, and how odd you were for doing it yourself for so long.
Conclusion
There is no room for ego here. No one is better than anyone. Your goal is to improve yourself so you can help others improve. Once you stop judging people, then you can help other people not feel embarrassed. At times, you may still feel embarrassed after you realize a mistake you’ve made, but stay present in the moment and watch that feeling. Remember why it’s not necessary, and treat yourself with love and kindness.
You can become someone yourself that your past self would look up to. You can set an example for your past self. If someone else is around, remind yourself that if they’re someone you look up to, they won’t think you’re embarrassing. If they’re someone you don’t look up to, their opinion isn’t relevant anyway.
So, if you’re struggling with embarrassment, go out in the world today and practice approaching every situation with nonjudgment. Look for ways to be understanding and patient in traffic. Look for ways to be kind and helpful in the store. By practicing that enough, you’ll realize how negative reactions from yourself and others are just odd, and they hold no real weight compared to love and compassion.