Breaking the Bad Habits of Low Self-Esteem With God's Love

Bad habit #2: Being Easily Embarrassed

The next bad habit I've noticed with people who hate themselves is that they are easily embarrassed. I'm honestly surprised that I don't see much about being easily embarrassed on the internet or in books or articles, although I'm sure that information is out there. Those who hate themselves are easily embarrassed for a simple reason; they learned to be hard on themselves because people in their lives would over react to little mistakes and chew them out. After all, isn't that was embarrassment is? When people become  embarrassed, they are usually beating themselves up for mistakes. People who hate themselves feel as if they deserve to be mocked, laughed at, and made fun of. their brains have sadly been wired to put themselves down every time they make even the smallest mistake. When people do this, they make themselves walk on eggshells. Those who hate themselves are constantly worried about doing something stupid or making mistakes. Because of this, they end up not wanting to do anything at all. This is very exhausting and completely takes the fun out of life. They deny themselves the freedom to be who they are because they fear being shamed or making fools of themselves.

I remember one time, I had this writing assignment to do for a class of mine my last semester of my senior year of college. It was rather simple really. All I had to do was read a chapter in my book and answer a few simple questions from a prompt in one page. Well, at the time I was doing the assignment, I had forgotten to bring the paper with the questions to be answered, and  I was having a horrible time focusing on the chapter due to fatigue. The result was that I completely trailed off in my assignment and took a whole page writing about who-knows-what. I gave it to my teacher without even giving it a second thought.

The next week, I had completely forgotten about a huge project due that day in that class. That evening I went up to my teacher with my head down and my tail between my legs asking him for mercy and an extension on my project. He grabbed his laptop and motioned for me to follow him outside. He sat me down and brought out the assignment I gave him the previous week and the record of my grades on his laptop, showing I was failing the class. On top of that, he pulled out my previous assignment and said "I'm seriously concerned about you. I have no idea what you were trying to say here. The assignment was rather simple, all you had to do was answer the prompt. I'm sorry, I couldn't give you any credit for this. I mean, you're not a horrible writer and you did give me interesting details about your life story...." I couldn't even look at my teacher at this point. I mean, how embarrassing is that! I totally rambled on like some drunk maniac when I was supposed to give an intelligent response to the chapter I was supposed to read. I basically gave my teacher child- level writing as a college student. Even so, he still had mercy on me and gave me the extension on the project I requested. I just looked at the ground and said, "fair enough. Next time, I'll be sure to refer to the prompt."  I walked back into class choking back tears. I didn't let myself live it down for a very, very long time. 

For every writing assignment after that, I would have the prompt in front of me and I would refer to it basically every 5 seconds to make sure I didn't repeat my embarrassing moment again. On my next assignment that got returned to me, I got a perfect score and my teacher wrote on my paper I knew you were capable of excellent writing! I laughed silently when I saw that. I knew in my mind that my teacher wasn't trying to mock me or put me down by saying that, he was only trying to encourage me. However, my inner critic kept saying you're never going to live that down!  I actually found myself telling my inner critic, oh, come on, he was just trying to encourage me, it's not that he's not letting me live it down! He's not that kind of a person at all! If he's the kind of teacher that would give a student mercy on a huge project, he's definitely not the kind of teacher that would hold a mistake over a student's head. 

So how do you break this habit of putting yourself down and being constantly ashamed as a result? Well, the first thing you need to realize is that the people who care about you are most likely not criticizing you nearly as much as you're criticizing yourself. Dr. Seuss once said "be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." Was my teacher telling me I was stupid or childish when he pulled me aside and talked to me? Of course not! I was telling myself that. That's why I felt so embarrassed. Once I realized the only one putting me down was myself, it became a bit easier to move on and just learn from my mistake. You have to learn to shrug off your mistakes, say "sorry" and move on. Honestly, the majority of the mistakes we get embarrassed about are tiny things that most people will quickly forget. When you make a mistake and start to get embarrassed about it, ask yourself did anyone get hurt by my mistake? Did I put myself or anyone else in serious danger? If the answer is no, then it's not that big of a deal. The more you are able to do this, the less you will get embarrassed, and the more free you will be to be yourself! Also, think about it; there are people out there, such as Felix Kjellberg (better known as the famous YouTube sensation Pewdie Pie) and Toby Turner (better known as Tobuscus) are getting paid millions of dollars to simply have no shame and make fools of themselves on a daily basis. If they can do it, so can you.