How to Navigate Embarrassment and Master a Swift Recovery

When embarrassment strikes like a slap in the face, swift recovery is key. In this episode, I share a recent cringe-worthy moment and my foolproof plan for swift recovery. 

Join me as we explore:

• Strategies for navigating embarrassing moments in high-stakes situations.
• Practical tips for managing embarrassment in real-time, ensuring the focus remains on the task at hand.
• The importance of concentration and mindfulness in overcoming awkward situations.
• Insights on training the brain to respond effectively in high-pressure scenarios.
• Engaging with listeners to foster dialogue and gratitude for their ongoing support.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Hey friends, this is Jill Griffin, the host of the Career Refresh podcast. Thanks for being here this week, man. I am talking about embarrassing moments and how embarrassment requires immediate management. I recently had a very high profile meeting with a media company CEO. So here's the scene we're seated on the couch in her very gorgeous, expansive New York City office. It was a face-to-face meeting. I was thrilled.

Speaker 1: 1:18

It was about 15 minutes or so into the meeting and I realized that like my forearm, kind of around my elbow, is like scratching against something. I'm like what is that? But I'm like in the conversation but I'm now being distracted because I'm like noticing something. So I just kind of move my palm and go and feel and I realized that it's a tag, it's the washing instructions tag that's on my blouse. So in this moment, fresh from the dry cleaner, they had put my shirt inside out, clearly didn't notice it, put it on, and now I'm actually wearing my shirt inside out and, friends, it had a zipper which was more ornamental than useful. But the idea that I had a zipper inside out also, I mean it's just insanity. Anyway, I was all seams, I could feel the seams. Now I'm noticing all of it and I'm like.

Speaker 1: 2:18

So you've probably been in the aftermath of an embarrassing moment and if you haven't been good on you, but at some point I'm going to guess that you're going to have an embarrassing moment. This is like the video won't load and you're on the stage and now there's a sound check and you feel everyone's eyes on you or you are in a space where maybe you trip or fall. I've had that happen where I worked in a building in New York City where the lobby was this gorgeous, highly polished marble and if there was like a teacup of moisture anywhere, it was forget it. You were slipping. Or on a really humid day you were definitely slipping. And I've been on my way to greet a client in the lobby and then like oop, sort of the banana peel effect. So any of those things it could be our zippers open, right, you know your fly is down Any of those things that can feel super embarrassing and very, very intense in the moment. And these intense moments, we know they require management, right.

Speaker 1: 3:27

So if you do a Google search, you're going to hear that there's plenty of tips about how to handle the embarrassment to you know, find grace and compassion for yourself and lean into humor and can you be self-deprecating about it and, you know, letting people know that, hey, I'm human too, and this all makes you super vulnerable and humanizes you as a leader. These are, these are really good qualities to have, because it makes you more approachable. All of that's super useful, but nothing out there tells you what to do in the seconds after All of that's telling you what to do in the coming days of like, how do you think through every time you think back to that gaffe or that event? Or do you need to go, take it to your coach and talk about it with your coach or your therapist? Like, to what degree is it? All of that is in, I would say, like stage two of the aftermath I'm talking about in the immediate space. How do you get yourself refocused? Because you're still on the stage, you're still leading the meeting, you drink your water. It gurgles all over your shirt and now you have a big white. You know you're on your white shirt as a big wet stain and if your skin is showing through it, you're like everyone can see. You know, how do you continue to perceive and in my case, I'm still on the couch, I got to pay attention this idea that you're still performing.

Speaker 1: 4:49

The moment of the gaffe might pass, or the embarrassing moment, but the task at hand has not passed. What do you do? So the first thing I'm going to tell you to do is this is the shift. So when you have an oh shit moment, this is when you go, oh, shift. So I want you to shift your focus from your mind. That's like oh my God, did they see this? Did she see the zipper? Is the seams there? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah All that very normal, very typical thing that our brains do, because our brains are doing what it's supposed to do looking for the danger and trying to figure out how do I fix this.

Speaker 1: 5:22

I want you to shift from your mind into your body, and some ways that you can do this in a split second is you can feel the sensation of your feet on the floor. In my case, I'm sitting on a couch. It was sort of like a new Bucky feeling. I could feel the sensation of the couch, like getting out of my head and getting tactile, getting the physical sensation. You can feel the breath. You can feel the sensation of air coming through, however you're breathing, whether it's on your nostrils or whether it's over your tongue and through the back of your mouth, just something to get you out of your brain. It's giving yourself a beat to just refocus.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Any of you longtime listeners know I've discussed it before, it's evolutionary biology. You cannot be in the sensation of fight or flight, the fear, and be using your prefrontal cortex. It is biologically impossible. We need to stop the intensity and shift to the other. So if we're all in our head, we need to get into our body, and if we're all in our body, we need to get into our head. It just depends on the scenario. So that's the first thing you do.

Speaker 1: 6:32

So the second thing you do is detach, and it's detachment. So to talk about attachment, right, attachment keeps you in the problem. It keeps you sort of ruminating on what just happened, trying to almost like fix what can't be fixed because it's already been done. So you can't erase what just happened. You want to be able to distinguish between the two, because when we're attached to a situation, we detach from ourselves and then we forfeit our ability to think clearly, to be able to think or feel or act or move wisely into whatever the scenario is and whatever it is that we want to do next.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Detachment is a universal principle that is found in many cultures and belief systems, where detach is about present moment, thinking. It's in the now, right now, right now, right. It's the second of where you are, because you're detaching from everything else. It's being in that here and now. It's detaching from the conversation or the interaction, detaching from the agony of the embarrassment, because when we stay in the problem and in this case, the embarrassment we forfeit our ability and our power to think and take the next action.

Speaker 1: 7:45

And you may, in that moment of detachment which is what I did say Jill, focus, Get back on it, right, you bring yourself back to the task at hand. It is not about the inside out shirt, it is about I'm talking to a CEO of a company and we're talking about business and a possibility, and I need to stay present. It. Also, whether she noticed it or not, I have no idea. If she's listening, she will probably now realize hi, this is what happened. But the idea that if she noticed it now, it becomes almost a test for, oh, how did Jill react when that came into the forefront? How did she pivot? How did she shift? Nothing is ever casual friends when we're in those situations, watching and observing how someone that you potentially might do business with is going to be really important to see how they act and react to a situation. Next, to see how they act and react to a situation Next, concentrate. So in order to do the shift, the detachment, you're going to have to practice concentration. So this is something that it's about doing this now, right now.

Speaker 1: 8:53

And I always laugh because whenever I set alarms for myself, whether it's something in the oven or an alarm on my cell phone, if I'm not near it, I don't have any problem with letting it go. I am aware that it's dinging and beeping and playing the little jingle, but I can continue to focus and not get distracted by it. And it makes my husband batty. He's like do you not hear that? I'm like, I totally hear that, but I'm focusing and I can't get to it right now. So it's understanding that you have to practice concentrating and refocusing, refocus, refocus yourself constantly, and you do that through two ways. One, meditation Again.

Speaker 1: 9:32

Long-time listener, you've heard me before talk about meditation, because meditation is a time-honored technique for awareness, compassion and concentration. It encourages you to focus on what you're doing rather than what you think. People say like, oh, meditation is so you don't have thoughts. No, no, no, no, it's not so you don't have thoughts. It's so that you're not distracted by the thoughts. It's the idea of like fluffy clouds going by. That's great, but we're not going to run with every cloud. We're not gonna run with every cloud, we're not gonna look for the animal shapes in the cloud. We're just gonna be aware that there is a cloud, also known as a thought, and come back to ourselves. So mindfulness, which is one of the major benefits that you get out of meditation, encourage you to focus on what you're doing versus what you think, and mindfulness helps us focus. It helps us develop precision and concentrate.

Speaker 1: 10:22

The next thing that you also need to do in order to know how to pivot in these moments is to train your brain. This is about engaging in brain boosting activities and skills. This could be learning a new language, it could be playing solving software puzzles, it can be playing Wordle. It's ways to improve your concentration, your memory, your processing and problem-solving abilities. When you improve your concentration, you're able to again refocus so that when the moment happens that oh God, the embarrassing moment happens what are you going to do next? You are able to respond versus stay hooked and attached to what has just happened. And you've seen this right.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Professional athletes have spent hours practicing and learning and improving upon their concentration because when they're on the court or the field or the pitch or whatever it is right, there's fans, there's crowds, there's media, there's attention. It's hard sometimes to pay attention If they're being distracted by all that. They have to detach to come back and focus at what's hand, and that ability to focus is what we do to achieve that excellence. And learning to concentrate will help improve your overall performance so that when this inevitably will happen at some point, you are able to respond. You're going to say shift and take a breath, you're going to detach, you're going to practice concentration and doing that practicing concentration through meditating and training your brain so that when something like this happens, you are ready. Friends, I always love to hear from you and hear what you think. You can email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom and, as always, I thank you for being here and I'll see you next time.