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 I consider myself a pretty awkward person, being nervous around people at times, and I occasionally find it difficult to maintain effortless banter in social settings. I still get slightly embarrassed when it occurs but will usually brush it away to get on with things.
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 from my insecurities and low self-esteem growing up, and then my awkwardness scaled 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.
The confidence began to build up after I started working, because I began putting a lot of my resources into my work, and since I was mentally engaged and functionally had a task to complete or a goal to achieve, I learned to get into a mode where I presented myself better, learning to read the room or the person I was engaging with at the moment.
Maybe I had I 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 we tend to change our priorities when kids come into the picture, and what used to be a big insecurity for me is suddenly much smaller in the grand scheme of things.
And I think now 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 valued and liked people who displayed to some measures their own awkwardness, because from my experience, they can be more endearing, honest, and thoughtful in nature. In fact, they may even seem more harmless than other stronger personality types.
Their accidental ramblings or oversharing of their thoughts, their long pauses in between sentences because they were thinking too much on a subject, or the vocalized pauses in speech, and even their lack of, or too much of eye contact in their conversations with people. I do display some of these characteristics too.
The lack of bravado and confidence was appealing to me, and I think people may even tend to trust you more. In my experience, I find that some 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.
And it can be a harmless quirk you retain, because instead of completely trying to become a well spoken charismatic persona, why not have a bit of both traits in us?
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 they may or may not like me, and likewise, I too can form my opinions of them.
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.