How to face an embarrassing situation?

Well life never is the smoothest thing in the world is it? And things rarely happen the way we want them to. It is as if discomfort is facing us right in the eye and asking us what we will do. The natural response is – Avoid eye contact, head down, smile sheepishly, pray that the person is not looking at you, look the other way and pretend as though nothing has happened.

Well if there were ways to make the response a little more effective so that it would be mutually beneficial. Lets explore…

1)    How bad is it?

Assess the situation, sometimes it can be embarrassing, sometimes just a simple thing about which you can share a grin and sometimes colossal an error. After doing this, try the one size fits all rule – GRIN! It’s a mistake for god’s sake, lets leave it at that. There is no point in trying to make an autopsy over it, it is something which was unexpected, something which was not a true test of who you are, try and establish that – not to others, but to yourself first. Most times we end up overemphasising the importance of a mistake, sometimes they don’t really deserve that much

2)    Hunt for the solution

Apologize quickly, look at what the situation has presented you, of course there is a problem – there are two ways you can handle it – One you can lament about it, or two you can start identifying what all are the things you can do in order to solve this. The faster you look for the solution, the faster you get out of that uncomfortable mode and better the state of mind.

3)    What is the situation trying to tell you?

Please don’t tell me that the situation is telling that you are an idiot! It rarely ever does. We all know how intelligent we can be, but there are those stupid states where we make some mistakes, sometimes very silly and sometimes very crucial. But we can’t let that get to us.

On the larger scale, no matter how many times you ascertain responsibility on yourself – nothing is going to change, what has happened has happened. The situation is trying to tell you that there was something which went wrong there and the immediate step is to try and identify how to make it right – one for the current and two for the future so that something like this doesn’t happen again.

4)    How bad does it make you look?

Truth be told, the answer is how much you let it. There are two parameters here – you and the situation. The situation is something which has already happened and we have established that it is distasteful. Now do you let people judge you based on that one silly thing or do you stand up and show that there is more to you than one stupid occurrence.

Of course people will try to divert the conversation to that incident. They will derive a pleasure out of it. I don’t blame them, instead I ask you, why are you letting them? Why don’t you laugh it off and bring out your charm? Public memory is extremely short, you just have to remind them that ;)

5)    End of the day, it is just an episode

End of the day, only you decide what to take along with you. If you want to take the bad things that happened in the day and feel bad about it for the next couple of days, be my guest. I am not going to stop you. On the other hand, you can realize that you are still the bigger person, bigger than the situation and leave it at that.

The choice is always yours, it is your life, your day and your incidents, you can’t let the externalities take control of your life.