Do you find it easy to laugh at yourself and not feel shame?

[JCWiatt]

This is something I struggle with. I'm a bit better than I was, but an incident today has made me feel like an idiot and I wish I could just brush it off and laugh at myself. Instead I'm playing it over and thinking what other people must have thought of me. Outwardly I seem quite a confident person, but I'm very much an introvert and just hate being made to look stupid.

It was my DD's sports day and I like to shout support to all those taking part. I'd got it in my head that a boy on my DD's team was called John (not his real name) and so for every race he was in, I was shouting, 'Come on John' multiple times. Only as I was driving home, did I realise this was not his name at all! Everyone around me must have thought I was mad. He is not in my DD's year and I don't know him/his family personally, hence I got mixed up with who he was. I just feel such a wally and like I will never call out another name again! How do I see the funny side of things like this instead of beating myself up? As I'm getting older I feel like I do things like this more often and it's knocking my confidence.

I do find it easy to laugh at myself, but I’m not judging you for feeling it. If it was that easy to switch it off, nobody would ever be anxious or overthink.

The one thing I would say is that nobody is going to know all the names of every child who was in each race, so they would just assume that you were cheering for a child they didn’t know. Also, they’d all be cheering for their own kids and not listening to whatever you were shouting.

I think that it’s very easy to underestimate how self absorbed people are. You could have been shouting ‘come on you reds‘ and nobody would have paid the slightest bit of attention.

ETA The older I get, the less I care what anyone else thinks. I’ve never been hugely bothered but now I genuinely could not care any less than I already do.

I sing these lines from James' Sit Down to myself... "those who find themselves ridiculous, sit down next to me...'

We're all human and all ridiculous in many and varied ways. It's fine.

I find it really hard not to agonise over things like this but over the years I have managed to develop the ability to forgive myself for my stupidity.
I remind myself that I would be kind to a friend who made a mistake, and there is no reason not to be kind to myself. I also ask myself ‘would you do that again? No? So you have gained some experience- good’.

If this was me I'd be cracking myself up over and over again! People do silly stuff like this all the time, and it's funny. Don't worry about it.

I agree with PP that most people are in their own heads and much more aware of their own actions and words and most people really don’t notice half the stuff others do.

It did make me laugh -it’s th sort of thing I would do too, and I do laugh at myself quite a bit but used to be anxious and insecure about what people thought of me now I don’t care. (age experience and reading a lot of stuff)

Don’t know if you’d like it but I read a book called the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle about how our ego (not in bigheaded sense but in sense of self eg under threat) gets in the way of us being able to be our true selves and when you become aware of that horrible undermining inner voice you can start to interrupt with better thoughts. It really struck a chord with me and I now end up having the most incredible interactions sometimes now Ive lost that fear of looking a twit.

Thanks everyone. You are making me feel better. In general I care a lot less about what people think as I get older, but then something like today happens and I feel so foolish. I like the idea of humming words from a song!

It's highly unlikely anybody knew you were shouting the wrong name. And extremely unlikely anybody would give it another thought even if they did! If it was my actual son you were shouting the wrong name at I would be like but wouldn't in a million years think you would be feeling stupid now. Try to put it out of your head.

I find it helps to actually tell the story to someone else, who will inevitably laugh and that helps me to laugh at myself, and kind of gets it out of my head. I've had plenty of chances to practise this as I can be a right plonker.

I find it very easy to laugh at myself and I would be telling that story to anyone who'd listen! 🤣🤣

I guess it runs in my Irish family though. We've all got that sort of sense of humour where funny stories are the best.

🤣🤣 this has cracked me up “Come on John!!” I’m sure most parents weren’t paying attention to who you were shouting for / assumed they didn’t know which child “John” was. You have to laugh at yourself for this one - it is genuinely funny 😁

There is no way they all knew everyone’s name, so nobody probably noticed, but I’m really laughing at you cheering on a kid you don’t even know, you sound lovely and they were lucky to have you there.
Please be nice to yourself, you are one of a kind and it’s often the very nicest people who have these intrusive thoughts.

I keep this on my phone for moments when I have a wobble.

You've made me chuckle to myself - thank you. I think a mum next to me did know because she gave an odd look at one point and I was oblivious I'm just going to have to style it out at the school gate aren't I!

What a lovely comment - thank you. So glad I posted.

Absolutely! And you bloody do it with a swish of your hair and a big smile on your face. She won’t say anything because you were so confident in shouting out for John, she’ll have convinced herself that she’s in the wrong, that his name really is John and that she’s been mistakenly calling him Sam all these years.

If I couldn't laugh at myself I would have curled up and died of acute embarrassment long ago.

I make a lot of silly mistakes with things like names and trying to remember where I know people from! I usually get it wrong and not realise until later, then I have an 'oh no!' moment where a wave of embarrassment crashes over me and I go bright red. I had a very humiliating moment on my DC's schools social media page where I totally misunderstood something and ended up completely ruining what was supposed to be a game 🫣
Honestly, the thing to bear in mind is how little people care. Not in a bad way, but they've got their own lives to think about and while they may get a momentary laugh from you, they aren't invested in your mistakes. Just think, if you spoke about it for more than a few minutes they would get bored and want to change subject. If anyone mentions it later just pretend you don't know what they're talking about for a second, then say 'oh, that! Oh yea what a wally I can be sometimes!' laugh, change topic.