Lack of fear of embarrassment
If you can’t handle the risk of embarrassment, rejection, and failure — you need to learn how.
“Caring what other people think of you is a security hole. Patch it or be exploited — including by mere script kiddies like sales & marketing departments or political campaigns.” [1]
Embarrassing moments are important, they are experiences to learn from. If you never put yourself out there you will lose out on much experience in a lifetime. So many discussions, ideas, projects that would give massive XP if you simply did them.
Usually the main factor stopping you is fear of embarrassment. And under a lifetime you will always have this feeling of potentially being embarrassed. Learn to learn from embarrassment. Learn to see challenges with risk of embarrassment in a positive light — something to look for, not something to avoid.
Additionally, how many people remember or care in the long run? People forget what they ate for lunch yesterday, I bet they forget that embarrassing thing you did last year.
Full disclosure: Learning from embarrassing moments is key. If you’re constantly embarrassing yourself in similar ways without progress then something is not right. Key word here is learning. Asking a stupid question a few times is smart. Asking it over and over is hitting your head against the wall.
There is risk here because you might think purely intellectually that you are not affected by embarrassment . However, your experience is molded by more than your thoughts — feelings and unconscious calculations are always present. In my experience if there is a mismatch between what you think and how you feel, the feeling will win in the long run.
So pay attention, put yourself out there as much as possible without wrecking yourself emotionally and go from there. There is hopefully no limit to what you can learn.
[1] https://twitter.com/patrissimo?
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost-everything-and-still-win-big
