Why confidence can be overrated and how a little dose of awkwardness makes a person more attractive.
I consider myself a pretty awkward person, being nervous around people at times, and maintaining effortless banter in social settings doesn’t come naturally to me. Though I still feel a flicker of embarrassment when it occurs, I generally push past it and carry on.
This trait was way worse when I was younger, peaking in my teenage years up to when I graduated from college. It’s mainly attributed to my insecurities and low self-esteem growing up, and my awkwardness only toned down after I got married. But still, its a part of me that I carry around and if you know me, you’ve probably seen my awkward side quite a bit.
How I Navigated My Awkwardness as an Adult
My confidence began to build up after I started working, one reason being that I had to put a lot of my resources into my work, and I was mentally engaged and functionally had a task to complete or a goal to achieve. I had to get myself into a work mode where I presented myself better, learning to read the room or the person I was engaging with at the moment.
Maybe I had masked my way around to achieve a purpose, and eventually that become part of me and how I coped at work to get things done. Over the years as I entered my thirties, I grew to feel more comfortable with myself, having more confidence in my decision making and showing myself to others, but I still kept that awkward part of me.
I suppose aging helped as well, and being married to a person who really accepted me as who I was.
Interestingly, another reason for my growing confidence, or my increasing indifference to others opinions of me, was because I had my children. I think as parents we tend to change our priorities when kids come into the picture, and what used to be a big insecurity for me has suddenly become a much smaller issue in the grand scheme of things.
Why I’m Finally Comfortable With The Awkward Parts Of Myself
I no longer resent the awkwardness that still lingers in me, because here’s my opinion on being awkward and why I’m embracing it as part of me now.
Personally, I find that I value and like people who displayed to some measure their own awkwardness, because from my experience, they are more endearing, honest, and thoughtful in nature. In fact, they are more approachable because the way they present themselves usually appear more harmless than other stronger, more dominant personality types.
Take, for instance, their accidental ramblings or oversharing of their thoughts, the long pauses in between their sentences when they think too deeply on a subject, or the vocalized pauses in speech. Even their eye contact — whether too little or too much — feels quirky and relatable. And I recognize some of these exact traits in myself, too.
Their lack of bravado and confidence was appealing to me, and I think people may even tend to trust them more. In my experience, I find that people were more open to share their problems and personal life stories with me, even if we were not that close. Maybe its because I appear to not have any other agenda other than to listen, and because I was open myself to show some vulnerability.
Knowing When to Adapt and When to Just Be Yourself
Awkwardness can simply be a harmless quirk you retain, because instead of completely changing yourself to become a well spoken charismatic persona, why not carry a mix of both traits?
Maybe the better way to know how conduct yourself is to read the environment you are in and adapt based on what is needed, work settings, key social events, you put on a work mode persona, and when there is no need to present yourself well, just be free to be yourself even if you are not the smoothest person in the room.
The other reason is that by just being myself, genuinely, was a lot easier, and I could now accept that not everyone may like what they see in me.
And it goes both ways anyway, because people may or may not like me, and likewise, I too can form my opinions of them.
Final Thoughts On A Personality Quirk
Life is not scripted, so why add more stress in trying to shape yourself into a perfect conversationalist, when there is no real harm being a quirky, genuine, and maybe awkward version of yourself.