How To Feel Better After Doing Something Embarrassing

This guided meditation is for anyone who has said or done something that they regret and is feeling embarrassed. During today's meditation, I tell you my most embarrassing story, and together we'll start to feel better by becoming aware of the thoughts that retrigger negative feelings and emotions. I'll also offer a few positive mantras that can help replace the unhelpful thoughts. Bit by bit, we can forgive ourselves and let it go.

Transcript

Hello,

Hi,

Welcome.

So if you've chosen this meditation,

That probably means that you've just said or done something that you wish that you hadn't.

And look,

We've all been there.

We've all said something that we wish we would have worded differently or done something that we regret.

If it helps you feel a bit better,

I'll share my most embarrassing story.

It was at my freshman year orientation and there was this extremely objectively good looking guy.

And I knew his name because I had kind of been noticing him throughout the orientation,

But we'd never spoken.

And finally,

Everyone in my orientation group was kind of standing around and we were standing next to each other,

About to introduce ourselves.

I'm,

You know,

Meant to be very casual and I was going to say,

Hi,

You're Alex,

Right?

I'm Amber.

But instead what came out was,

Hi,

I'm Alex.

And he kind of looked at me and he was like,

No,

I'm Alex.

And everyone standing around us kind of laughed.

Even to this day,

Years later,

I feel mortified when I tell that story.

Even now I can feel my throat closing up and my chest is getting tight.

If you're new here,

Hi,

Welcome.

My name is Amber.

At my day job,

I'm a consultant for a Fortune 100 tech company.

And this is where I teach meditation for people who live in the modern world.

One of the things that we talk about here is how mindfulness can be one of the tools in your toolbox to help you navigate life with all its ups and downs so that you can thrive and be your best self.

If that sounds interesting to you,

I hope you'll like,

Subscribe or follow.

And with that,

Let's get into today's meditation.

All right.

So as we get started and start to get settled in today,

There's really only one rule.

You have to be kind to yourself.

So often when we feel embarrassed,

We beat ourselves up.

We're like,

Oh my gosh,

That was so stupid.

He thinks I'm an idiot now.

We're not doing that today.

Just for a few minutes,

We're going to meet ourselves here with kindness and gentleness because we're probably feeling a little bit delicate right now.

And it's good to handle ourselves with care today and every day.

So once you're seated in a comfortable position,

Let's close the eyes and focus on the breath,

Breathing in and breathing out.

Just getting settled in here.

There's an interesting study that shows that physical emotions,

That pain you feel only lasts 90 seconds at most.

After 90 seconds,

The body processes it and it passes.

But the reason why we feel embarrassed for hours and even days is because we keep thinking about what happened and talking about it with our partner or our friends and re-triggering those 90 seconds.

Just like telling you that embarrassing story made me feel embarrassed again,

Going over what happened in your mind over and over resets that 90 second clock so that you feel embarrassed again and again.

So as you go inside yourself,

Start to observe your thoughts in your body.

At first,

It might be kind of a challenge to get settled enough to start to see this process happening,

Especially if you're reacting to something that happened pretty recently.

So it's okay if you feel like you can't stop your thoughts from popping up.

All we have to do for now is to observe what we see is happening.

And if your thoughts and feelings are pretty intense right now,

You can ground yourself with an anchor,

Something that you can focus on when you feel like your attention is wandering off.

You can use your breath,

The feeling of your feet grounded on the floor,

Or the feeling of the seat against your back supporting you.

There's a phrase that my meditation teacher uses,

Feel it to heal it.

What that means is in order to recover from embarrassment or negative emotions,

Unfortunately,

The only way out is through.

We have to really let ourselves feel embarrassed.

All the stomach clenching,

The palms getting sweatier,

But don't worry,

This is a controlled environment and you're safe here.

Breathe through it and just observe what's in your mind and in your body.

Sometimes it helps to find a alternative,

Kinder thought to replace the negative thought.

Something that doesn't trigger feelings of embarrassment.

Here are a few that might work for you.

Feel free to try them on and see if one of them fits.

Doing something you regret does not change your worth as a person.

Making mistakes is part of being human.

You are allowed to make mistakes.

You are safe.

I'll repeat those one more time.

Doing something you regret does not change your worth as a person.

Making mistakes is part of being human.

You are allowed to make mistakes.

You are safe.

Don't forget to breathe,

Observe,

And return to your anchor if needed.

As we come to the end of today's meditation,

If there's a small voice in the back of your head that whispers,

Maybe we can let this go.

Let that be the voice of reason.

Because there's no virtue in holding on to shame or embarrassment of being an imperfect human being.

Forgive yourself and let something go.

Thank you so much for meditating with me today.

If you liked this meditation,

You might like to check out a recent one I did called Meditation for Anxiety.

It focuses on naming and examining your thoughts and keeping only the ones that are useful and true.

Don't forget to rate or leave a comment and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Reviews

This was really helpful to listen to and try to work through feelings of guilt and shame I experienced after struggling to regulate my emotions in a healthy way. The shame in the aftermath of a mental breakdown is something that can sometimes take me days to overcome. This was a good reminder that I don't need to re-trigger myself with the thought how embarrassing it was and playing that moment on loop in my head. I can take a break from being hard on myself and choose to be gentle with myself to try and work through hard feelings, rather than let them boil over.

Thanks for making me feel better after an embarrassing moment at work. I opened my mouth to respond to a question without fully thinking it through, and ended up just waffling on in front of an entire room of more than 10 people.

Absolutely perfect, thank you so much ❤️ I've never embarrassed myself so much before in front of my future in-laws and a whole group of eight family members. they've started to ignore me, treat me differently, and their entire energy towards me is totally different and no longer positive and accepting and I've become completely insecure. But this is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you thank you Amber, you are amazing💗🥰🙏💖👍

Educational, insightful talk followed by a relaxing useful meditation. Will save this!

Thank you for this meditation! It's tough to break out of the loop sometimes but this was very helpful!

Thanks Amber. This really eases the clenching and angst of embarrassment.

Thanks so much! This is a great meditation for this specific emotion. A great reminder of the “90 second rule” we are all humans!

This helps me so much could you please do one of if someone videos this moment

Thanks for making me feel better and knowing that everyone gets embarassed and makes mistakes ☺️