“Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.” –Elsa Maxwell
We all have our share of embarrassing moments in life. We make mistakes, stumble and sometimes even fall down, both literally and figuratively. Much of the time we can’t avoid these things, but we can control our reaction to them. We often have a tendency to get terribly upset with ourselves, and sometimes we just feel like crawling into a hole and hiding for the rest of our lives. But we don’t have to react in this way. We can try to see the humor in our mistakes and laugh before anyone else does.
Most people can empathize with others during embarrassing moments because they have also had their share of them, but people often don’t know how to react. In most cases, they have no desire to hurt us, but they don’t know whether we want sympathy or whether we would feel better if we all just had a good laugh. We can set those around us at ease when we do something embarrassing by being the first to laugh and thus letting others know that it’s OK to laugh.
Even when nobody is around we often do things that can either upset us or give us the opportunity for a good laugh. This is the perfect time to cultivate the habit of finding humor in our mistakes. Since nobody has seen what happened we don’t really have to feel embarrassed, but we can still get a good laugh out of our blunders much of the time. If we develop the habit of looking for the humor in the mistakes we make, we will find that there is usually some to be found. In fact, most of us have opportunities to laugh at ourselves on almost a daily basis.
Perhaps the problem is that too many of us are perfectionists. We don’t want to ever make a mistake, and we are upset with ourselves when we do. But we must remember that making mistakes is a natural part of life. In the words of William Gladstone, “No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.” If we try anything in life we are going to make mistakes and have embarrassing moments. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, and mistakes do not reflect nearly as badly on us as does the unwillingness to try anything. Making mistakes does not lower our value, so why not quit worrying about making them and develop the habit of trying to see the humor in them when they occur?
Think about it.
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Copyright 2023
Allen W. Smith
