Telling myself I'm awkward. And stopping that.

I have had a lot of awkward conversations in my lifetime.  You might say I'm particularly gifted at them.  When I walk away from one of these encounters, I typically assume the fault was on me, like 100% of the time.  Under very few circumstances do I leave and think, "Man, that other person was super weird and hard to talk to."  On the contrary, I carry on with life, rehashing the strange, possibly offensive, confusing words of chit-chat I attempted to contribute, telling myself that someday I won't be so goofy and uncomfortable.  If there's one thing I can do well, it's own my awkwardness.  I do give myself a little credit for trying.  If you knew me 20 years ago, you'd probably think I've come a long way.  Credit where credit is due.

What I didn't realize is that other people do this too.

A few days ago a sweet friend came up to me and said, "I'm sorry I was so awkward when we talked last night.  I thought about it all night."

I was taken aback.  I didn't think the exchange was awkward at all.  In fact, I had thought nothing about it after I left.  I assured her nothing about it was odd in the slightest and confidently declared that if it was awkward, I accepted sole responsibility.  I wish she hadn't worried about it at all.  I hated that she spent even a moment thinking about it on my account.

And that's when I realized that this is exactly what I do.  How many times have I replayed what I presumed to be awkward for hours on end, fretting about what I could have said instead or maybe not at all, worried the other person was upset or thought less or differently of me because of it.

Only, that other person?  They didn't think about it.  At all.

You may have heard it said, "You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!" — Olin Miller

I never really believed that until the aforementioned conversation.

Sometimes people don't believe I'm an introvert (hahahaha!).  Sometimes, people tell me they don't think I'm awkward (that's really kind of you, thanks).  I don't think that introversion is a bad thing that needs to be fixed, nor do I think we're all meant to be public orators or the life of the party.  Thank God he created us to be unique.  I am a big fan of the fake-it-till-you-make-it philosophy though.  Sometimes, you have to be cordial to strangers and engage in nominal conversations, clunky as it may be.  A few things are possible: it was not as awkward to them as it seemed to you, they thought it was awkward too but assumed they were responsible, or they literally thought nothing of it and carried on with life.  None of those are worth losing sleep over, right?

I have an idea.  Let's be as generous with ourselves as we are with other people.  This is a little corollary to the Golden Rule.  Of course, we should treat others the way we want to be treated, but sometimes I think we speak so unkindly to ourselves that we start to believe that we're....whatever we say we are.  Maybe you tell yourself you're awkward.  Maybe it's something else altogether.  Slow-witted, disorganized, too fat, lazy, un-athletic, boring, a terrible cook, fill-in-the-blank with your own personal brand of self-deprecation.  Then, stop saying it.  Seriously, stop it.

Speak kindly to yourself.  You are always listening.

This means I'm TOTALLY NOT GOING TO THINK ANY MORE ABOUT how I exhaled Twix cookie crumbs all over our precious church preschool director this morning because I giggled (naturally) mid-bite.  Surely she didn't think that was as awkward as I did.  Right?  RIGHT?  Right.  Definitely.