What does that mean? Well it means you have to be clear about what your values are. When you stand solidly in your values you don’t get knocked down, even when you are getting knocked around. It makes your emotional and psychological muscle strong. If you are to spend your days performing, pleasing and being perfect the only thing you will create is an internal world of resentment, grief, judgment and anger. No human is immune from these moments. Just like a kidney stone, it’s painful but it will pass and then you can relax.

If you were feeling embarrassed, its past tense. It has already taken place; so theoretically, it’s in the past. When you stay present and let the feelings of embarrassment slide like water of a ducks back, it allows you to shake it off and stay in the moment. Now, I know this is hard when you’re feeling the psychological symptoms of embarrassment. That knot twisting gut feeling at play but if you can remember for even a minute here to pull your attention to the present, you will be relieved of the needless torment.

Sometimes when we do something silly or embarrassing you just intuitively want to say sorry! And sometimes you say sorry way too many times. Apologizing is not going to be your answer to recovering from an embarrassing moment. Apologizing keeps the attention on the embarrassing moment. Say sorry just the once if you feel the need too, but then let it go. When you keep saying sorry, your attention and everyone around you is focused on the past and not the present.

If you are an “in the closet” with your emotions and personality type of guy, then the likelihood of you feeling embarrassed is doubled. You can slip up and without realizing show a part of yourself that no one knows. This could create laughter or chatter at your expense. When you show up as you, and you do “you” very well the embarrassing moments are far and few between. Especially that you have given people the opportunity to get to know the real you, so some of your flaws, twirk’s and bad habits are to be expected.

Remember all the times you felt like you were going to die with embarrassment and then notice that you’re still here! In reality, the only one that remembers the embarrassing moments forever is you!

People are too worried about their own embarrassing moments to keep tabs on yours. Keep things in perspective.

It’s the first thing you want to do after that embarrassing moment. But hiding will only make it awkward for you later; it keeps you dragging out the situation longer than it needs too. Own it, laugh it off, feel embarrassed and then continue to do what you were doing. Feeling embarrassed is temporary; it will pass if you let it.

Laugh at it! This one sounds easy in hindsight, but you don’t have many more options. It will make a great cocktail-party conversation and some funny icebreaker material.

All in all, we will make mistakes, be embarrassed and at some point be the laughing stock of our friends. What you need to learn, are ways to be resilient when these situations come up. The best way to gain emotional muscle during embarrassing times is to keep pushing through those moments. You get better at them! Just like training at the gym, it’s the repetition and pushing past the last rep that gives you the most growth.