Show Notes
The second “A” word that helps us in the life journey. We normally try to avoid Awkward, and we discuss why that’s not a good idea. This topic gets uncovered to empower us to have stronger emotional wellness.
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
Welcome to at MADISEL Coach and MADISEL TV's Words Fitly Spoken podcast. Hello there. I'm Coach Sandra, and I'm the host of Words Fitly Spoken podcast. Words fitly spoken are words spoken at the right time for your encouragement and enrichment? On this podcast, we will deal with emotional and mental wellness by talking about the conflicts we have in our everyday relationships, whether at home, work, school, and the community.
Stop in to hear some helpful words that create awareness about your emotional health. So now let's take a look at another one. Not as heavy, but it actually is very interesting that we try to control it. We try to, uh, pretend it's not there and we really don't like to deal with it. I love leaving you guessing on this word, but I'm gonna take the guessing away.
And I'm gonna tell you the word is awkward. Yes. Awkward. That's the other a word I wanna deal with. Awkward is a feeling, so we don't talk about it in our emotional health enough, but it is something that we all experience and what's unique about it is that we try to avoid it. So I wanna challenge you. As myself being Mattel coach, understanding, I, I I come to bring your, bring you some encouragement because awkward is not a bad word, it's not a bad experience.
Um, it's a powerful word. So I created a card so that people can interact with this and think about it at different times. And so I'm just gonna share with you some of the notes I put on this card. So I say that I. I want us to look at at awkward as the powerful word that it is, because we all have experienced it and we're gonna continue to experience it.
Until you die. Literally, there will be more and more awkward moments, and most of us can remember being maybe, um, 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there. And you start noticing awkwardness and someone makes you feel uncomfortable. And usually we'll say, Ooh, that was awkward. Or even if we don't say it, We try to avoid an awkward experience and without knowing it, we continue that behavior beyond those middle school, high school years.
We take it into our college life, we take it into our adulthood, and I believe even into our senior citizen life, we're still overly concerned and super protective about avoiding awkward. So my challenge, stop avoiding it. Let's go ahead and take the mask off. So awkward unmask, right? Um, yes. It's odd. Okay.
It's the feeling that surrounds us when we are mentally labeling. Think about this. You're mentally labeling something as uncomfortable. Or as embarrassing a situation or a scenario you feel like it's going to be uncomfortable or it's embarrassing. So if you're honest, awkward mainly appears when we self judge or condemn or we judge others.
Ouch. That thing that no one likes for us to do to them and we don't like done to us. Think about. That's what is really the, the heartbeat that's happening in awkward. You're either self judging, you're condemning, or you're judging others. You could be doing all of that, by the way, at one time. So again, we're taking the mask off of awkward.
You see, awkward is connected to our need for vulnerability. Oh no. A V word. Yes, vulnerability. And unfortunately, here's what happens with vulnerability. We are not encouraged to spend the needed time learning how valuable being your vulnerable self is. So what if we just switch things up? What if we switched it up?
We crowned awkward as acceptable. It's not only acceptable, we're gonna say awkward is welcome. You know what? How about we say it's necessary? Just like we said, anger is necessary, awkward is necessary for your personal growth. We need awkward experiences. I know it sounds strange. So what? This is my podcast and it's okay to be awkward.
That's what I'm telling you. I'm letting you off the hook. So what if in our switch up, you know of this, you know, this situation of awkward, what if we actually looked at awkward as a type of superpower? Awkward, like we put it on a t-shirt, awkward. Some of us are totally embarrassed to even think about that because we don't want to be seen or looked upon as awkward.
How did we get here? How did this word become such a heavy, weighted word that makes us feel like we're less than? There's a problem there. This word should not affect your value. As a human, as I said earlier, you're going to experience it, it's going to happen. Awkward situations, they're human situations.
So in that, I like to, you know, even go on to say since, you know, we know that awkward is going to be, it's gonna appear when we least expected, uh, it can appear in the most unusual places. We should just go ahead and expect it. Expect awkward to be a part of the community. Stop trying to avoid it, embrace it.
I then go on to say, you know, like, Hey, hello, awkward. I've been waiting for you. I've been expecting you. What will you teach me today about myself? Awkward. That's what it's there for by the way. You get to learn something about you. That's important. We each are going through this universe and awkward is going to be a part of the universe.
Let it be a teacher, not a prison, not something that we're trying to avoid as if it's cancer. Many things in life will make us feel awkward, accept that we often respond. Our, our different connections with other people. We'll go overboard and, and, and you can make comments to me, uh, in, in the comment section if you know what this is like, or send me a note or an email.
Um, we go overboard and we go beyond the situation so we can avoid the awkward moment sometimes. Happens. We will even go to the extreme opposite direction, and then we become rude and we become disrespectful because we don't want that awkward feeling. We're trying to avoid dealing with the feeling of awkwardness in front of others.
Remember, you're thinking about the self judging condemnation or other people judging you. Are you judging other people? So we get rude as a response? Awkward moments can be the most memorable. By the way, for those of us who are adults listening, think back to being awkward. I remember some awkward situations.
I lived through them and I can now look and say, they made me better. They made me better.
Think about this. What would happen if we stopped demanding? Neat, perfect, exact? What would it look like if we just let frizzy messy, uneven frazzled? Oops. Imperfect just have space to exist in our world. You had a bad hair day. All right. I'm so glad you lived to tell about it. It's okay. You see my hair. I want, I love my curls and my coils to be totally in the right place, but some days they don't cooperate 'cause they have a mind of their own.
And I can try to push it down or recoil it or put a little extra, um, water on it or some hair cream and it still won't cooperate. Okay. We're moving on. I'm not gonna let that one hair being outta place totally adjust my whole day. And some people will let it adjust their whole mood for multiple days, weeks.
Sometimes we just need to sit somewhere for a minute or two and let the awkward encourage our emotional and mental wellness. That should be our goal to be emotionally and mentally well, emotionally and mentally well, very important. Awkward actually can help us get there because we take the pressure off ourselves to feel like we need to be perfect in this universe.
That's one of the, the phrases that I hear all the time. Well, I'm not perfect. Okay. Who said you had to be? Well, I'm not perfect. This is not perfect. It's not supposed to be. Let it be messy for a moment and let's live through it. Enjoy it, by the way, so again, as I wrap up the second a word, which both of them are just super powerhouses, awkward again, might be a superpower.
That we are mistakenly avoiding. Awkward is not going to disappear. It's always gonna be in the universe. So where are you gonna let awkward lead you? How are you gonna learn from your awkward experiences? How are you going to embrace just being awkward because. This coach is telling you that awkward can be an encouragement for your emotional growth and wellness.
Let it do what it wants to do. All right. Thanks for joining me. So excited to have you. Always love it when you come back. Keep coming back. Make sure you like it, comment, subscribe, share it. We want to share this great information. With a multiple of people and you get to help us with that and we totally appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us. We will see you next time.
