Don’t take it personally
You can find other people’s awkwardness funny, but your own awkwardness inhibits your ability to act, for instance initiating tricky but important conversations. Change your perspective: see it as a collective failure rather than a personal shortcoming.
You cannot be awkward alone. Awkwardness results from a collective difficulty in managing situations for which no social script exists: you’re with a date at a bar and you bump into your manager. Both of you find yourselves in different places and roles, and you each have to improvise, with varying levels of ease, how to behave in an unusual situation. Silence is the most common response to awkward situations, but it’s rarely the right one. Is there no script for the situation you’re in? It’s up to you to create and express it!
Plakias invites us to reconsider discomfort not as a weakness but as a universal and enriching experience. By embracing it as a normal part of life, you’ll build your tolerance for uncomfortable situations and learn to transform an awkward experience — often perceived as negative — into an opportunity for growth and connection.
To go further
“How to lead a conversation between people who disagree”
by Alexandra Plakias (Aeon, September 6 2024).
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