295: The Value of Awkwardness with Melissa Dahl

Pete Mockaitis
Melissa, thanks so much for joining us here at the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’re going to have a whole lot of fun in this conversation. I think we both had our fair share of awkward moments. Could you tell us a little bit about a time you once ran into a light pole?

Melissa Dahl
Oh my gosh, you heard about that too. Yeah, okay.

This happened a few years ago. I am very much not a morning person, but sometimes I kind of like to pretend to be one. I was meeting my friend, Marie, for like a 6 AM jog on the East River. We had just started and I do not know how it happened, but I like ran straight into a pole, like a light pole. To this day I have no idea how it happened.

I write about this in the book and how you’re instinct when these sorts of things happen is to just play it off and say, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m fine. It was fine,” even if you’re like really, really hurt.

The funny – we can kind of get into this later I guess, but the funny thing about that was I didn’t tell my friend Marie I was putting that in the book. When she got to it because I gave her an early copy, she was like, “Oh, I mean I kind of remember that, but I don’t remember it in this much detail,” so yeah, it didn’t have as much of an impact on her as it did on me.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. I guess emotionally in the memory and physically.

Melissa Dahl
Physically. Oh my gosh.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh mercy. Yes, that is an illustration of an important principle that we’re going to get to. But maybe you can orient us first and foremost, so your book, Cringe Worthy, what’s it all about?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, so the book is about – so I am a senior editor at The Cut, where I cover – which is a New York magazine website. I cover health and psychology there. I’ve written about psychology for a long time. I’m really interested in emotions, kind of relationships, how we understand ourselves, how we understand each other.

This book is sort of an outgrowth of that I wanted to understand the feeling of awkwardness, which is something that, I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot.

What I’ve always really liked about my job is it’s like almost like highbrow self-help. I’m reading these academic studies and there’s some kind of just nugget in there of “Oh, I could apply this to my life and it’s going to make me better at this or it’s going to make relationships go more smoothly,” or something like that.  I just kind of couldn’t find anything that applied to awkwardness.

That’s what the book kind of is, just me trying to understand this feeling and what the purpose of it might be. I actually have to tell you, it started as a book about how to avoid awkwardness, how to kind of overcome it and protect from ever feeling this way. By the end, I kind of came to really like this weird little emotion.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. First of all, for those who are curious or intrigued, what’s there to like about it Melissa?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, a few things l think. One of the things is – the subtitle of the book is A Theory of Awkwardness. My sort of major theory is I think that awkward moments happen when the version of yourself you’re trying to present to the world is shown to be incompatible with reality in some way.

I would like to present to the world that I am not the kind of person who runs into lamp poles and then I do. Or a good recent example of this is at the Winter Olympics a couple of months ago, there was this picture that went around of a – I think she was a Russian athlete – wearing a shirt that said something like, ‘I don’t do doping,’ or something like that. Then it turned out she failed a drug test.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, bugger.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah. I remember someone at my job put that into the chat and just wrote ‘awkward’ on it.

I think it kind of shows you that there’s a gap sometimes between the version of yourself you’re trying to present to the world and the version of yourself the world is actually kind of seeing.

If that’s true, then I think one good thing about these kinds of moments is that it kind of maybe shows us some places where we need improvement if we’re open to it. It’s going to show us some places where we can grow. That’s sort of my main theory of awkwardness.

But the other aspect of it is that I came to really love is these moments feel isolating, it feels like you’re the only one who just feels like an embarrassing idiot, but of course we all feel this way. If we are a little more open about it, it’s a way to kind of connect with people.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh that is good. Well, I want to follow up on a couple of those points there. First you say that the awkwardness happens when there’s a mismatch between sort of your self-perception or the version of yourself that you have in mind versus what is picked up by others.

Would you say that this is a mismatch in sort of the net disappointing direction, like, “I think of myself as someone who doesn’t dope and yet, here I am being found out as someone as dopes,” but can it happen in the opposite as well, like, “I think of myself as just sort of like a normal guy, but then people are telling me that I’m a genius.” Does that also feel awkward?

Melissa Dahl
I actually sort of think – I think we certainly think of it more in the negative direction. If you think you were having a pretty good hair day and then you see a picture of yourself and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, actually my hair was super greasy or something like that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and no one told me. That’s happened before. It’s like, “We were talking for more than an hour, you didn’t think that this worth a mention?”

Melissa Dahl
Exactly. I think it’s typically in that direction. I don’t know.

I sometimes think it might be – I think we feel weird whenever – I think we feel unsettled a little bit whenever we realize the self you’re trying to present to the world is not the way other people are seeing you.

There’s a story I read about in a book. It’s anthropologist story from the late ‘60s. He went to this tribe in Papua New Guinea. He had reason to believe that these folks had never seen their reflections, that they’d never seen a photographic image of themselves. They’ve never seen themselves in a mirror.

He kind of came and his arrival changed all that. He brought mirrors, he brought Polaroid cameras, he brought tape recorders. As he writes it – he wrote this report about it later – they all just kind of cowered and kind of just like clenched their stomachs, and kind of gritted their teeth. I think you could say they cringed. They cringed at the way they looked, at the way they sounded.

I’m not sure we can say they all thought like, “Oh, I’m uglier than I thought,” but just like oh, there’s just something existentially weird about thinking there is the you that exists in your own head and there’s the you running around out there who other people actually see and that those are often the same, but sometimes they’re not. Yeah, I think that’s kind of a part of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true I guess. It would be unusual if all of those villagers were disappointed.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Because I guess some of them would probably be surprised like, “Oh, I’ve got some good muscles.”

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s paying off all that work I’ve been doing.

Melissa Dahl
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I just think there’s something strange about the fact – confronting the fact that – I don’t know, you don’t just exist in your head that other people see you maybe a little differently than you see yourself. It’s just a little strange to reckon with even if it is in a positive direction.

Pete Mockaitis
It is strange to reckon with. One thing I find strange to have a hard time reckoning with is when you’re in the midst of a situation and someone actually explicitly says the word, “Awkward.”

Melissa Dahl
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s up with that? Any research insights on that one?

Melissa Dahl
Oh my gosh, I know. That was such a thing when I was in college. Oh my gosh.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m glad it’s died down a little bit. I don’t hear it as much anymore.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, I know. I feel like it’s kind of migrated to people like my mother now says it a lot, although she might just say it because I wrote this book.

I think that term kind of has become kind of a cliché and almost kind of annoying. But I think that it’s – what it was supposed to be, what it was intended for actually helped a lot. I think there’s something about calling attention to the awkwardness of a situation, but if you do it right, it can kind of diffuse it.

Your listeners want to be awesome at work, there’s a lot of awkward situations at work. You maybe have to give someone feedback and you don’t know how to say it or maybe you have to tell someone they didn’t get this promotion they put in for.

I think sometimes it can help kind of cushion the blow a little bit or make it a little bit less uncomfortable if you just kind of acknowledge this is going to be a little hard to hear, this is going to be a little uncomfortable, maybe even this is going to be a little awkward. I think that’s where it came from a good place, but the awkward thing worked into something very annoying, so don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. I like that because I think if you just sort of declare in advance, “Hey, this is what’s going on,” that really can be helpful as opposed to just saying, “Awkward.” It’s like, “Ah, shut up.”

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, don’t do that. That’s annoying, but the impulse makes sense. I think the impulse is a good one, so kind of digging that out of the annoying

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. Thank you. I also want to hear a little bit about the awkwardness vortex turn of a phrase. What does this mean?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, so this is something I discovered in the research. There is all this psychological research linking nervousness and self-consciousness. Basically if you are nervous, you become more self-conscious. If you are self-conscious, you become nervous. The two kind of exacerbate each other and it goes round and round and round. I called this the awkwardness vortex.

It’s the kind of thing where if you’re going in for a job interview and you sit down and suddenly you can’t remember like, “Wait, what am I supposed to do with my legs? Should I cross my legs? Should I cross them to the side? Should I go to the other side? Should I just not cross them? What should I do?”

You’re nervous, so you’re kind of like zeroing in on your body, like “What am I doing? What is my arm doing?” Then focusing in on yourself makes you more nervous and it just goes around and around and around. Yeah, that is the awkwardness vortex.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. That’s intriguing. Can you give us a couple more examples of how that can play out and sort of if you find yourself emerging or beginning to enter that, how do you escape?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, well another example because it’s kind of a pop culture example, but – it’s like a silly example – but it’s in one of the Austin Powers’ movies. I think it’s like the third one, which is not a good movie. But there’s a part where there’s like a spy or a character or something who has a really big mole on his face.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yes.

Melissa Dahl
And Austin is trying to say anything but calling attention to the mole. Then it just kind of comes out, like, “Oh mole, mole.” It’s a funny scene.

But I think that sort of could be applicable here. If you’re trying so hard not to offend somebody, but then all you can think about is what you’re saying, what you’re doing, and how that might offending them, and then that’s making you nervous you’re going to offend them. It’s just that link between nervousness and self-consciousness is a really established thing in the literature.

The good thing is because it’s so established, the folks who study this say that there is a pretty clear way out, which is if self-consciousness is part of the thing that triggers this, the way out of the awkwardness vortex is to focus on anything but yourself. Just focus on trying to get to know the person in front of you.

To go back to the job interview example, maybe do some work beforehand and think like, “Okay, these are the three things about myself I’m going to get across in this interview.” Just focusing on anything but yourself, calling attention to the weather, calling attention to, I don’t know, some third party thing, that should help.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. That notion of fixating on what not to say causing problems just reminds me of a scene in The Simpsons where Principal Skinner is addressing the student body. He doesn’t know what to say regarding girls and math. He’s just trying so hard not to say the wrong thing and he just breaks down and says, “Tell me what you want me to say.”

Melissa Dahl
Oh my gosh, yeah. I think that – this is kind of a lot what I was writing about. The book is kind of aimed at people who are acting in good faith, who don’t – that chapter about the awkwardness vortex is people who don’t want to offend someone, not in a politically correct way, but just don’t want to be offensive. They’re people who want to be kind and make other people feel respected and welcome.

Sometimes I think focusing so hard on that, it just causes us to clam up and get more nervous and get more self-conscious. Part of this is kind of just taking a few steps back and not doing in so hard on yourself. It really helps.

Pete Mockaitis
You say we have good reason to feel less self-conscious. Can you unpack that a little bit, if you’ve got a handy exercise?

Melissa Dahl
Well, a really interesting thing about self-consciousness that the psychologists who study this say that it doesn’t exist to torture you. The point of self-consciousness is to help you learn.

A baseball player or something who is working on his swing he has to be – or someone who’s learning to play a sport like tennis or something like that. That’s maybe a better analogy. You are being pretty self-consciousness. You’re zeroing in on your actions, on your body, and that’s a good thing. That’s what you have to do to learn.

That’s actually helped me too to talk about kind of why we feel self-conscious. It’s there to torture me. It’s there for a purpose.

But that said, ways to not let it completely run your life, one of them is the focusing on other people. Then the other thing is just realizing that nobody else is as self-conscious of yourself as you are.

No one else is as focused on you as you are, which I know we all know in our heads, but you forget that when you’ve done something really silly. You think everyone’s looking, everyone’s – like the example with the lamp post. My friend didn’t even really remember that. She kind of did, but not really.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Now you suggest an exercise right in terms of really kind of checking that out with a best friend with regard to your awkward or embarrassing memories.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So can you unpack that a bit?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, it’s kind of the same thing. It’s the opposite version of my friend Marie not remembering me crashing into a lamp post.

We’ve been friends for a long time and I kind of can’t – I’m trying to call to mind something embarrassing she’s done. She’s someone I see all the time. I know I’ve seen her do something or say something embarrassing, but I really can’t remember anything. Now I’m trying to think of my college best friend, like I’m sure I’ve seen her do a million dumb things. We’ve been friends for a really long time.

To me that’s a good exercise. Your brain will come up with some things if they’re funny stories or if you’ve repeated them a lot, but I think for the most part it’s pretty hard to remember something that – I don’t know, something dumb your coworker said last week that she might be still really punishing herself over, like, “Oh, I can’t believe I made that stupid joke in the meeting. I’m such an idiot.” I can’t remember any of that.

Yeah, trying to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to call to mind an embarrassing thing someone else has done is a pretty good exercise.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Thank you. Now I’m curious, if we are going to enter into some territory that sounds like it could be awkward, you mentioned one pro tip is just sort of kind of setting the stage of the context and admitting what’s there, calling a spade a spade. Do you have any other perspectives on what is the optimal way to go forward into a conversation you perceive as likely to be awkward?

Melissa Dahl
Okay, so I have a chapter in my book about awkwardness at work. One kind of like underrated awkward thing at work is friendships. We work with people but we’re also friends with them. We’re kind of playing these two roles with them.

I don’t about you, but I’ve certainly been in plenty of situations where I’m friends with my co-worker but also she is not pulling her weight. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I need to – I don’t know how to have that conversation.

Or something like – this is a real thing that happened to a friend of mine. Her coworker just disappears to go to the gym for a couple hours in the afternoon and she has to cover for the coworker and it’s really starting to make her mad. I think work friendships is a place where it can be pretty awkward.

Talking about how to deal with it. I think one thing that helps – I think sometimes awkwardness can come from a feeling of uncertainty. I don’t know what to say next. I don’t know what to do next. That’s such a common thing when you’re feeling awkward.

To use this example of a problem with a friend at work, the best thing you can do to cut through that discomfort I think is just to be as direct as possible, just as straightforward as possible, which can feel uncomfortable, but it’s actually I think the kindest thing to do. You can say it in a kind way, but it’s better to just say it to your friend that “You’re doing this. It makes me feel this way and you’ve got to knock it off.”

I think that straightforwardness and directness can help cut through some of the awkwardness actually. I think we think that the answer is to kind of dance around a subject and like, “Oh, I can’t say that. I can’t say that directly. I can’t bring up this problem,” but I think it would be better if we all got up the guts to be a little bit more straightforward.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny. I think you’re dead on and it makes it more awkward when you’re dancing around it.

I remember one time I was coordinating this youth leadership seminar. It so happened that there was another group in the same facilities that I was familiar with. There was this dude who was like a hero to me that I had heard of from afar. I read his book. It was like, “Oh my gosh, that is Curtis Martin,” which means nothing to most people, but for me it was like well that guy is a big deal.

He’s in the room. Actually, me and my staff we all need to get in this room and sort of set things up because we’re going to have a bunch of students coming through here soon. I was like, “Oh my gosh, how do I boot almighty Curtis Martin out of this room.”

I remember I went in there. I felt super awkward. I was like, “Oh hi, so we – hi, I’m Pete and I’m a big fan. We have also a need-“ He was like, “Oh, you need the room?” I was like, “Yes, please.”

Melissa Dahl
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
It was merciful that he directly said what was there. I think that’s a good move. I guess there’s a fear associated with going there like they’ll be offended or they’ll lash back, or sort of terribly negative things will unfold if we say what we really think.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, but I think there’s a way to do it with kindness and I think that sometimes the simplest way is the best way to do it. Yeah, I think you kind of have to either – you either have to have the awkward conversation, you have to kind of be straightforward with the person or you just have to live with the thing that’s bothering if it’s a work situation especially, but probably in any situation.

Pete Mockaitis
That will do it. I’d love to hear what’s your verbiage that you settled upon for the gym situation or the friend/coworker not pulling the weight situation. Can we hear it? Flashback, you’re back there in the scene, what were the words you said?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah. Well the gym situation is a friend of mine.

The other person not pulling their weight, this was years ago before I went through my exercise in studying awkwardness. I didn’t say anything. I never said anything. Actually the resentment grew, and grew, and grew and I don’t consider this person a friend anymore, which I guess that sometimes happens with coworkers.

Looking back I have a really negative feeling about it. I think that I could have stopped that and we could have had a much better working relationship. That’s kind of an example of I just was afraid to have the conversation. I would tell everybody else, like, “I can’t believe I’m doing all the work,” but I never said it to this person. I’m sorry that I didn’t.

I write in the book about I kind of had a spotty track record of rising to the moment of awkwardness. There was a time I was a brand new manager and some folks had kind of complained to me about one of my direct reports. He’s kind of rude. He’s making more work for others. We’re having our weekly one-on-one and I literally had written down in my notes ‘address attitude’ and I didn’t do it. I didn’t know how to bring it up, so I didn’t do it.

I have fallen. I have not stood up in moments of awkwardness. It’s hard. It can be really hard. However, I think since kind of studying the heck out of this feeling I have kind of become less afraid of it.

This is pretty awkward at work I guess. We went through a reorg here last summer as I was kind of finishing up the book. All the sudden I didn’t know who my boss was, which is like a really embarrassing thing to have to admit because I kind of let it go on for a couple of weeks. It was like, “Um, like who is-?” like that Dr. Seuss book like, “Are you my mommy?”

But I just asked directly. I just went into my old boss’s office and I was like, “Hey, this is kind of weird, but are you still my boss? Is this other person my boss?” He was like, “Oh, yeah you should know that. Okay, here let me,” going through ….

I am just so a fan of being direct. The things you do that you think are saving you from awkwardness kind of just dig you in further sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s kind of what’s connected for me in terms of we fear these negative outcomes if you go there directly, but there are other negative outcomes if you don’t with regard to one, you may have the resentment that resulted in the disruption of the relationship or two for the rude coworker with the bad attitude, if you never address that for him, I don’t know where he ended up, but-

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, I’m not doing him a favor in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he could get fired.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And he’s broke because you didn’t go there. Not to heap the guilt on you Melissa.

Melissa Dahl
Right, right.

Pete Mockaitis
But yeah, negative outcomes can happen for not going on there that far exceed the negative outcomes that you fear for going there.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah. I also sometimes think we think we’re avoiding an awkward conversation because we’re trying to protect the other person’s feelings, but I think it’s more often we’re protecting ourselves. We don’t want to come off as a critical negative person.

If it’s a boss situation, you want to be the cool boss or whatever or you want to be the cool coworker, like, “I’m chill. It’s fine. Do whatever you want,” but I think it kinder in the long run to have those conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say cool boss I don’t know why I’m thinking about, what was it A.C. Slater or Will Riker, always backwards chair. “What’s up?”

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s how I have my meetings, take a chair, turn it around backwards, “Hey, …”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you’re so cool.

Melissa Dahl
You want a cigarette?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh that is cool.

But that’s a great perspective when it comes to you’re protecting yourself as opposed to their feelings. In a way if you think about what we’d call a hero or a person who is really loving or generous, it’s a person who takes a personal risk for the benefit of another.

It’s like, you’re scared of what’s to come but you know that they’ll be enriched by you sharing it potentially if they receive it. They might just reject it. But there’s a chance of them really being enriched and there’s a risk of you suffering some kind of a consequence. It might be just an awkward feeling. It might be a damaged relationship or …. So in a way you going there makes you a hero.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah. I should say, it’s not like it’s guaranteed that these conversations will always go well. The person might not react well, but I think that you can only control what you can control.

But the other thing I kind of wanted to say is sometimes you’re on the receiving end of the awkwardness, someone is pointing out something about you won’t want to hear, someone is saying to you like, “Hey, I’ve been doing all your work for you the last three weeks or something.” You’re like, “Wait, that’s because I was – that’s because of this, that’s because of that.”

I think when we’re in that situation our natural reaction is to be pretty defensive. I think if, as I kind of think awkwardness comes from, in part at least, from that gap between how you see yourself and how others see you, this is an example of that that someone is showing you, like “I see you in this pretty unflattering light.”

It’s our natural reaction to kind of push that out, but I think it’s really useful sometimes to kind of sit there in the awkwardness and hear what the other person has to say about you. It’s not always necessarily true, but sometimes it is. Sometimes other people’s perspectives about you are worth hearing because other people can see parts of us that we can’t really see. That’s the other side of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah. Do you have any pro tips if you’re feeling defensive, you’re hearing something, you don’t like it, you’re getting those defensive vibes bubbling up inside, what’s the best practice?

Melissa Dahl
All I can think is – something that helps is maybe kind of to take a third person perspective almost of the situation or just kind of distance yourself from the situation a little bit it helps, just think, “Okay, this is what this person thinks of me. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It doesn’t even mean it’s necessarily true, but this is one opinion of me. This is one viewpoint on me. Let me see if I can look at this, step outside of myself and look at this from their perspective and kind of try to evaluate it subjectively.”

Trying to kind of tap into a cooler mindset rather than the kind of heated response I think helps. Then just to me kind of having a mindset of, “This could help me grow. This could help me become a better person. If what this person is telling me is true and if it is something I can improve on then thank God they told me.”

Like the direct report I had who was pretty rude to people around the office, he was a nice guy. I’m sure he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

If I had had that conversation with him, I would hope he could have just let that in and let that perspective of himself in and let it clash with how he sees himself, I don’t know, and maybe use that perspective and use that feedback to maybe become a little closer towards that person he thinks he is or you think you are to turn it back to you. Anyway, I hope that makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is good. Certainly to focus in on like, “I don’t like this. I think this is bullcrap,” etcetera to, “There might be something worthwhile within this to facilitate my growth and so I will receive it.”

That third-person perspective sounds handy. Then maybe even just spending some time with it after the fact in terms of, “I thought that was outrageous. They don’t have the right context for it, but this huh. I’ve never heard that before.”

Melissa Dahl
Yeah. It’s sort of back to the analogy of having a picture taken of you where you look really unfamiliar to yourself. It’s true that maybe it did catch you at a bad angle or it’s just a weird look on your face or something, but it shows you a side of yourself you couldn’t see.

You don’t have to take it and be like, “Oh that’s me. I always have that weird look on my face,” or, “My hair’s always doing something weird.” But sometimes I think it’s good to see those unflattering aspects of yourself that you can’t really see on your own.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Tell me, Melissa, anything else you really want to make sure to cover before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things.

Melissa Dahl
Let’s see. I guess maybe just kind of going back to the part about how these moments can help us connect with each other. I did Jordan Harbinger’s podcast. He also had a story about running into a lamp post, which was like, “Wait, what?” I was so surprised to hear that.

What I have come to really love about these moments is if we look at it in the right light, it’s like these little moments where a very real, vulnerable part of you can connect with a very real vulnerable part of somebody else.

As I’ve done interviews and stuff, people have kind of broken in with their own stories like, “Oh my gosh, that reminds me of this time. That reminds me of that time.” There is something very cool about this little feeling and these little moments that just – they have the power to kind of connect us in a way that I didn’t really appreciate before I started working on this.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Melissa Dahl
I don’t know if this qualifies as a favorite quote, but something I keep returning too lately is ‘constant vigilance’ from Harry Potter, which is the Mad-Eye Moody says this. It’s about keeping on guard against the Death Eaters or something like that.

But I’ve just been thinking about that in terms of I’m trying to get back into shape. The only way to do it is – I think the way I’m interpreting that quote is the only way to do something really is the hard way if you want to do it well.

I’m trying to get back into shape and I’ve just kind of been halfheartedly doing some workouts. I’ve had this quote in mind. It’s kind of helped – this is so stupid, but it’s kind of helped me stick to – yeah, I have to stick to this workout plan. I said I was going to run three miles today; I’m going to run three miles today.

Just the idea of – I think it says to me that little efforts made every single day add up to something. It’s the constant work that adds up to big results, which is not what it means in the book, but that’s what it means in my head right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well great. Thank you. But how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Melissa Dahl
Oh my gosh, I have so many of these.

One of them, this is a good one to really what we’ve been talking about. In my work I have covered, I don’t know, hundreds of studies or something like that. Most of them just kind of leave my brain the second the story is done, but this one has stayed with me.

There’s this cool study by a Harvard Business School professor. You might have heard about this. People talk about this one.

Basically, you can do this very cool magic trick if you’re feeling nervous. Basically if you tell yourself you’re actually feeling excited, that is supposed to help you perform better because the theory kind of goes that to your body nervousness feels the same as excitement.

Your blood is pumping. Your heart is racing. That’s just your body knowing that you’ve got something big you’ve got to do. Your body’s like, “Here we go. Here. Here’s all this extra energy. We’re ready. We’re ready.”

If you interpret it as nervousness, it can make you kind of screw up on the thing you’re about to do, but if you interpret it as excitement, it’s supposed to help. I have thought about that so many times since I read that study five years ago. I find it so helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Think you. How about a favorite book?

Melissa Dahl
There’s so many books. Let’s see. Okay, I don’t know if this is a favorite book – I don’t even know if I have a one singular favorite book right now, but maybe it’s this. I don’t know. Something I return to again and again is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It’s a classic. It’s the kind of thing I’ve just pressed on all my writer friends over the years. That’s how I found it. An older writer friend at a newspaper I worked at was like, “Here you go. Read this.”

It’s writing advice, but it’s also just kind of wisdom and advice for life. Just reading that book – I’ve reread it so many times. It has such … advice for writing. She has the idea of the shitty first draft, which is just like letting yourself write the bad version of the thing and you have to do that before you get to the good version of it. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful book, especially if you’re a writer.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. How about a favorite tool?

Melissa Dahl
I guess maybe we could say Slack. We use that at my work. A lot of people are using it now. There’s ups and downs, but I think it’s helped make work feel a little more fun. It’s helped make my team feel more like a community or something. We’re just chatting all day and it’s helped us get to know each other better. Yeah, I guess I’ll say Slack, although sometimes it’s annoying too, but for the most part it’s good.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. How about a favorite habit.

Melissa Dahl
I think that there really is something to the making your bed everyday thing. I’d actually love to do some kind of psychological analysis of that of maybe it’s sort of easy to do, but it’s something that you do in the morning and it really does just kind of set your day. It just kind of organizes things right away.

That one and writing my to-do list for tomorrow at the end of the previous day. I love doing that. That’s probably better than the make your bed thing because I don’t even do that every day. I want to switch my answer to that.

Writing your to-do list for the next day at the end of the previous day is so helpful because then you wake up and you just are like, “Oh yeah, these are my priorities today.” You can just jump right into that. That’s really helped.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you do that at the end of the workday or at the end of the ‘I’m about to fall asleep’ day?

Melissa Dahl
I do it at the end of the work day, but I recently read about some study. It was a pretty small study, but interesting though. It claimed that it helped people fall asleep faster if you write your to-do list right before you go to sleep.

I don’t know. I feel like there probably is some truth to that. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to sleep and my mind is just going over like, “Oh, I have to do this. I have to do this. I have to do that. Don’t forget that.” Right now I do it at the end of the workday, but maybe I should try moving that back a few hours.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued because in some ways – I can see if you’re ruminating, that’s great to stop that and relax. But I think for me, if I brought my attention to that which tomorrow holds, I would start getting excited and fired up and the opposite of sleepy. I’d be like, “Oh yeah, these are the things I get to do tomorrow.” I don’t know.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, I can see that too. I can see that too.

I’ve tried it a couple times and I don’t know. Maybe it’s only applicable if you like me are constantly going through your to-do list in your head when you’re falling asleep. The times I’ve tried it there is something nice to just being like, “Oh, you know what? I’ve already got that. I don’t have to worry about that. I’ve already got it. Calm down.” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote you back to yourself frequently?

Melissa Dahl
There’s a couple lines in the book people seem to like. There’s one – it’s just a throwaway line my editor actually wanted to cut, but it’s, “Being human is exhausting and embarrassing.” People have quoted that back to me.

Then there’s a line people seem to like that I also really like. It’s also from the book, which is, “The ridiculous in me honors the ridiculous in you,” which is kind of how I feel about these embarrassing moments.

Now when I see someone – I don’t know. Yesterday I saw someone fall over on the subway. She mistimed her getting up and I just felt this kind of sense of connection to this stranger, like, “Oh, you’re a dummy too just trying to make your way through the world.” People seem to like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. It’s funny, “The ridiculous in me,” acknowledges or greets, what is it?

Melissa Dahl
I think it said honors.

Pete Mockaitis
Honors. Yes. “Honors the ridiculousness in you.” I guess that – isn’t that what Namaste means? The light in me honors the light in you.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Sometimes I just end up saying Namaste for no reason. I think it’s because people have wet hands and they can’t shake my hand. I end up bowing and saying Namaste. I don’t know if that’s offensive to any hard core yoga lovers. Apologies.

Melissa Dahl
I’m sure it’s a nice sense of it.

Pete Mockaitis
It feels good and I mean it. Hey, I’m honoring them. We have a laugh because it is a little ridiculous. “No, I just have wet hands. There’s no need to revert to these practices.” Cool.

If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Melissa Dahl
Probably Twitter is the place I am at way too often. They can also buy my book. It’s called Cringe Worthy: A Theory of Awkwardness available on Amazon.com or wherever you buy books, had to put that in there. But, yeah, Twitter, I’m on it way too much, so if you say hello, I will definitely see you and say hello back.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool. Do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeing to be awesome at their jobs?

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, I think that fear of awkwardness at work is something that holds people back from, “Oh, I can’t have that conversation with my coworker. It’s going to be too weird.” “I can’t ask my boss this thing that I should have figured out three weeks ago. It’s going to be too weird.”

Maybe your challenge is to think about the problem you’re having or a few problems you’re having at work and if the thing holding you back from solving it is just you’re afraid of it being a little awkward, push through that. You can do it. You can get through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, Melissa, this has been a whole lot of fun.

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, it’s been great.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you for taking time and-

Melissa Dahl
Yeah, thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well good luck with the book and all you’re up to.

Melissa Dahl
Thank you. Thanks a lot.