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A while back, I pulled a lat muscle at the gym. Now, if you’ve never pulled a lat muscle, let me tell you something:
You are lucky!
It hurts like heck. You use your lat muscle to lift, while you’re sitting, and it hurts every time you twist your body.
Well, after taking it easy for a few weeks (treadmills are boring), I was ready to get back to some weight training.
But not wanting to take any chances, I was pretty much on light weight training (and for full disclosure, my gym activities do NOT include lifting heavy weights…I have no intention to be the next wannabe Schwarzenegger.)
How did it go?
Picture this:
I was hitting the weights. Pumping the 8-pound dumbbells. All the while, I had a small Asian woman half my size pumping 12-pound dumbbells on one side of me with these two extremely ripped guys curling 65-pound dumbbells in their hands on the other side.
Both small Asian woman and extremely ripped guys were doing quite well while I was grimacing in pain from the 8-pounders. All the while, they would glance at me with a “what-the-heck-is-your-problem-8-pound-lifting-boy” face. I’m not sure how other people saw this when viewing this scene, but let’s just say that my “coolness” factor at the gym probably took a hit.
But guess what? It’s better to work your way up slowly than to re-injure yourself. It’s not worth hurting yourself just to avoid looking like a complete idiot. And besides. I know that the ripped guys and the short Asian woman probably won’t even remember who I am next time I hit the gym.
Why am I telling you about my humiliating experience at the gym?
It’s to illustrate to you this very valuable lesson:
It’s OK to embarrass yourself.
No one likes to be embarrassed and humiliated. In fact, people often go to great lengths NOT to be embarrassed or humiliated. To do this, they will avoid activities outside their comfort zones. They will take no action when they should do something. They will refuse to try new things for fear of being “laughed at”.
Maybe we picked up this habit from when we were children. I mean, who wanted to be the one who looked stupid? But the truth is without looking stupid and embarrassing yourself, you will not be able to grow personally.
On your personal growth journey, it is not only important, it is imperative that you embarrass yourself a time or two. As I have sought to grow, I have experienced a wealth of embarrassment, but the embarrassment was temporary. Some examples include:
While learning to play violin at age 30: Being shown up by a 7-year old who laughed at my out-of-tune rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
While learning Korean in my early twenties (to the present): Thinking I was asking a woman to go somewhere with me, instead I asked her to sleep with me (just one syllable difference). Asking a high school girl who was the cashier at a Korean KFC for breast meat, but instead asked to see her breasts (how was I supposed to know that a woman’s breast and chicken breast were two different words?)
Had I been concerned about how I looked, I never would have learned Korean. And the truth is many people I knew people who lived in
Most growth opportunities in life slip right through our fingers because we are afraid of looking stupid or being embarrassed. But let me end this post with this thought:
Did you find this helpful? Consider buying me a cup of coffee.“Embarrassment is only temporary.
But the personal growth we experience out of that embarrassment lasts a lifetime.”
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5 Responses to “The Importance of Embarassment in Personal Growth”
Comments
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July 17th, 2007 at 11:40 am
OK, seriously,
I so much enjoy reading your blog.
You rock.
And now I look back, if I was not thick skinned, I would’ve never been able to speak English as I do now.
July 17th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Absolutely… growth involves taking risks!!
July 24th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
[…] Haas presents The Importance of Embarassment in Personal Growth posted at Possess Less Exist […]
October 7th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Easy to do. Embarrassment is just another opportunity to place less importance on our ego
October 27th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Thanks for sharing your embarrassing moments with us to remind us of this. So many times we don’t want to take a chance because we know we will do something stupid. But like you said, it’s only temporary. We can get through it. And afterwards they sometimes turn into great stories like yours.
:0)