Henna Pryor

There was no avoiding it.

She could stay red, embarrassed, mortified, but she immediately, the first thing she said when she got us on stage is she made a joke about it.

She said, you're all just clapping because you saw me trip and you feel bad for me.

She owned it.

She took the power back because she took that situation and owned it.

Similar in other situations, she's just very quick about taking the thing in the room and taking ownership of it.

We can all do that.

Ironically,

Avoiding the awkwardness increases the awkwardness.

It's the most counterintuitive truth about this emotion.

When there's an awkward moment that occurs and all of us are just doing the eyes darting sideways and no one's saying anything, that tension thickens.

And all it takes is that one person to say, oh, okay, that was awkward.

That was embarrassing.

Let's flush that and move on.

We look at that person and say, that's the confident person.

The person who named it, who diffused it, who owned it, that's the confident person.

And so that is a muscle that any of us can build.

The ability to get used to saying things like that in those moments and the perception of confidence shoots up.

I love Michael Gervais' work on FOPO.

And I think that is such a strong and succinct way to sum up what so many of us walk around with is our perceived lived experience.