No One Said Life Would Be Easy, But Does It Have to Be Awkward?

We’ve all been there. Maybe you froze when you got up to give the toast at your best friend’s wedding and forgot the lines you had rehearsed. Maybe you fumbled through that interview at your dream job. Maybe you’re learning how to cook or paint or play the piano. Maybe you’re just trying to make conversation or make a friend, but somehow it always ends up feeling… Awkward.

As humans, it’s hard to escape awkwardness. But we sure expend a lot of time and energy trying to. We avoid potentially awkward situations or conversations. We stop trying new things. We constantly worry what other people think about us.

But here’s the thing: What if we were to reframe awkwardness? What if it’s not about feeling embarrassed, but it’s about the growing pains of creating the life you want?

Awkward and brave or fearful and comfortable?

Think about what you most want in life. I’m not talking about reclining on the couch with Netflix and a bowl of Cheetos. Let’s be honest, everyone wants that on some days. I’m talking about what you desire deep in your bones, in your very soul. What would make your life feel fulfilled?

I’m guessing it’s things like community. Relationships. A sense of belonging. Expressing your creativity. Doing work that you love.

These are the spaces where we make life beautiful.

They’re also the spaces that make life feel messy, uncomfortable, and… you guessed it — just awkward.

So we sabotage ourselves. We trade the life we want for the comfort and safety of not struggling, not awkwardly failing and trying again.

Perhaps you draw a circle in the sand around yourself and erect walls, declaring to the world, “This is my comfort zone! This is where I feel safe and not awkward. This is where I will live.”

You might avoid feeling awkward and uncomfortable (although life seems to have a way of thrusting us into these kinds of situations, doesn’t it?). But when we choose to live this way, we are handing the reigns over to a companion far more terrible than awkwardness or discomfort: Fear.

Fear makes big and lofty promises to keep us safe, to protect us from feeling awkward, embarrassed, or ashamed. But in the end, it prevents us from stepping outside our circle and exploring the world around us, the richness of experiences waiting for us. Those walls you erected to protect yourself? Fear transforms them into a cage. Instead of protecting you, they imprison you.

Here’s the thing: fear keeps us out of the spaces that make life beautiful.

Fear will try to protect us from the awkwardness of showing up, trying new things, and failing. But ultimately, fear will never get us where we want to go in life. We get the life we want by living bravely, by showing up in these spaces even when it’s scary. Just like a toddler determined to walk, we keep getting back up every time we fall, knowing that eventually we will run.

But while living bravely and having courage sounds great on paper, when the rubber meets the road, it really is just, well… Awkward.

But is that really so bad? I don’t know about you, but I would rather live awkward and brave than live a life of comfort controlled by fear. So, to that end, here are four tips to help you move through awkwardness and live bravely.

Four Tips for Living Bravely and Awkwardly

1. Name it and normalize it

One space where we often feel awkward is when we do something new. Brene Brown, renowned research professor and author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers, has developed a term for this. She calls it a TFT, for “Terrible First Time.”¹ (Actually, that’s her G-rated version. She really calls it an FFT — I’ll leave you to decipher what that stands for).

Brown says there is a lot of power in naming our experiences, and that when we do, our feelings of insecurity or awkwardness or fear lose their power over us.

Whenever we try something new, it’s going to be awkward. Whether it’s learning how to ride a bike, developing a new skill at work, playing the piano, or making a new friend — it’s all awkward. And that’s ok. When we normalize our experience as a TFT, we set expectations that help us push through the awkwardness and give ourselves the grace to grow in something new.

2. Reframe your failures

Failure feels uncomfortable and awkward, but the path to success is paved with it. Behind every successful person, business, and nonprofit is a trail of failures and awkward attempts. Ask any of those people, and they will tell you that they couldn’t have reached success without the discomfort and awkwardness of walking through their failures and learning from them.

If you never experience failure, perhaps you need to ask yourself if you’re truly living bravely.

Let’s reframe failure. Like Thomas Edison said, he didn’t fail 10,000 times at making a light bulb. He simply found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. But at the end of the day, he still created a light bulb. See that reframe? It makes all the difference. Failure is just practice. When we view it as practice, as just a step in our growth journey, it loses its power over us. Failure doesn’t have to define us.

One way you can start reframing your failures is by celebrating them. Seriously. If you never fail, it means you’re probably not trying new things and seeking to improve yourself. Celebrate a failure as a sign that you are showing up, trying, and growing.

3. Rebuild your life narrative

As humans, the way we make sense out of our life experiences is through story. We do this subconsciously even, by emphasizing certain life events and assigning meaning or significance to them.

For example, if I focus on events in my life where I feel like a failure — why can’t I get this job, why am I so bad at technology, why can’t I make friends more easily, etc. — then eventually I start linking these events together. I assign meaning and significance to them, and together, they form the basis for the plot of my life story.

That means I will begin to see all events in my life through this lens, and I will subconsciously be on the lookout for other events in my life that confirm this growing narrative. At the same time, I will ignore events that contradict the narrative that I am a failure — like situations in which I was brave or showed up or succeeded. Those positive events become “exceptions,” or outliers to the primary narrative of awkward failure.

There’s a lot to this concept of recognizing and rebuilding your life narrative.² Instead of emphasizing our awkward failures and letting them define us, let’s rebuild our life narrative around experiences where we show up, live bravely, and simply try. When paired with the practice of reframing our failures, this becomes a powerful tool for creating change in our lives.

4. Focus on others, not yourself

Do you ever find yourself in conversation and you’re so busy thinking about what you’re going to say next that you realize you’ve lost track of what the other person is saying? The irony of this behavior is that a lot of times we’re trying to avoid the awkwardness by planning what we want to say. But in trying to avoid it, we actually create it.

Let’s stop rehearsing what we’re going to say to people, and instead just show up and be present in the moment. This is harder than it sounds. One way to start is by practicing active listening techniques:

• Ask clarifying questions
• Repeat back or paraphrase what the other person shared
• Show empathy
• Refrain from judgment

While this is not a guaranteed method to avoid awkwardness, it will facilitate deeper connection and move us closer to the meaningful life we all want.

Stop avoiding awkwardness

At the end of the day, wouldn’t we all love to never experience awkwardness again? Sure. But I’ve come to believe a life that never feels awkward is not a life worth living. Any time we try something new or step out of our comfort zone, it’s going to feel awkward, shaky, and maybe even a little scary. But just because you feel awkward doing it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. In fact, it’s normal!

I think we have to practice pushing through the awkward feelings and moments so we can find the beauty and the joy of being alive. It’s time to acknowledge that the path to success and growth is paved with struggle and awkwardness. So let’s extend grace to ourselves and to others as we all awkwardly journey through life together.

And let’s stop avoiding awkwardness. Instead, let’s work through it. Move through it. Grow through it. So we can embrace our one beautiful life.

As Brene Brown often says, “Stay awkward, brave, and kind.”

When was the last time you leaned into awkwardness? Let me know in the comments.

[1] https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-ffts/

[2] Morgan, Alice. 2000. What is narrative therapy? Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.