Do NOT adjust your picture—

Yes, this is Kristin Kenzy, sliding into your inbox on a SUNDAY with this week’s issue of Drunk Business Advice.

I’m going to try this weekend thing for a little while.

Let me know how you feel about it.

Heavy bats, nimble balls, and loose lips.

Spring has sprung!

Happy opening weekend to all the baseball fanatics out there—

Like my husband, who is an obnoxiously unapologetic Phillies diehard. 

And if you follow baseball, you know that it’s been a decent few years to be a Phillies supporter, having made the playoffs three years in a row, and nearly clenching the World Series in 2022.

The team’s success is due in small part to one particularly talented right-fielder with an aptitude for smashing homers — Nick Castellanos.

But Castellanos has a rather vulgar (albeit flattering) nickname. 😬

One night, my husband was watching a playoffs game, and texting with his fantasy baseball league-mates, when Castellanos hit his 5th home run in 3 games—

A first since Reggie Jackson in 1977.

My enthused husband jumped up, cheered loudly at the TV, and quickly grabbed his phone to celebrate with his friends by text-chanting Castellanos’s moniker:

👉 BIG DICK NICK!

But as quickly as excitement had consumed him, it faded into dread—

For he had not text-chanted Castellanos’s nickname to his league-mates.

Instead, he sent it to a dozen little old ladies who had formed a group chat to coordinate visits to his mother in her nursing home. 🤦

I saw it, and fell on the floor laughing.

But my poor husband was mortified — so much that he requested I don’t tell anyone, even though it’s the funniest shit ever.

It’s taken him 18 months to get over his embarrassment, and allow me to tell this story.

Why?

Because gaffes keep us awake at night

I still get a pain in my stomach every time I think about the time I used the word “whimsy” instead of “whim” in a meeting with a Senior Vice President…

…Or the time I accidentally CC’d about 100 customers who were supposed to be BCC’d on an email, thus accidentally sharing private email addresses…

…Or the time I used the term “for shits and giggles” with my Australian boss while trying to convince him to let me do something, only to learn that this is most definitely NOT a universal term in the English language…

…Or, last week when I forgot to hit “send” on a ghostwriting client’s newsletter, after putting a shit-ton of work into making it awesome for him…

Unfortunately, the list goes on. 😬

Unlike times of failure where we learn important lessons, or times we tried our very hardest and just couldn’t get across the finish line — gaffes are just plain misery.

They’re stupid mistakes.

We knew better.

We were careless.

We f*cked up.

And now, we have to live with the embarrassment.

Or do we?

Embarrassment isn’t a life sentence

Why do gaffes haunt us like some shamey little poltergeist, popping up at 3am to whisper “remember that time you forgot to lock the bathroom door, and your co-worker walked in on you changing your tampon?”.

Because our brains are wired to overestimate how much other people care about us. 

It’s a phenomenon called the spotlight effect.

There’s a little gremlin inside our heads that makes us believe everyone noticed, remembered, and judged us for our screw-up — when in reality, most people were too busy thinking about their own shit.

“We tend to think we’re being noticed more than we actually are,” says social psychologist Thomas Gilovich, who coined the term.

But others rarely notice our mistakes. And if they do, they don’t care.

👉️ Embarrassment is a self-centered emotion.

It’s your ego thinking you’re the main character in everyone else’s story. 

You’re not. 

But just knowing this may not be enough to get over your most embarrassing moments.

The neuroscience of moving on

Our brains are built to replay negative events more than positive ones — a little survival trick called negativity bias. 

But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck there forever.

You can actually train your brain to stop cringing every time the memory pops up, using a technique called cognitive reappraisal — reframing the event in a more humorous or compassionate light.

Instead of:

👉 “I’m an idiot for texting ‘Big Dick Nick’ to the grandmas.”

Try:

👉 “I accidentally created the wildest group chat story in nursing home history. You’re welcome, Barb.”

This stuff is real. 

MRI scans show that people who regularly reframe their thoughts have less activation in the amygdala, the part of our brains responsible for fear and shame.

But I have a personal tip that has really helped me—

Share. That. Shit.

This is something I’ve only recently figured out, and I wish I knew sooner—

When I share embarrassing experiences with others, it reduces the emotional sting. 

Vulnerability, as it turns out, isn’t a weakness. It’s a release valve.

And it elicits trust on both sides. Anytime I disclose something embarrassing, I feel closer to the person I’m talking to, and I feel less shame about the embarrassing thing.

Which helps me quickly find the humor in it. 

And I’ll tell you what — laughter cuts through my anxiety like a good bourbon through my willpower.

You’ve messed up. Probably more than once.

And you’re going to mess up more. Hopefully in increasingly hilarious ways.

So if you’ve done something dumb, here’s your permission to not just cry about it to your therapist, but fess up to your friends— 

Or even post about it on LinkedIn like a goddamn warrior. ✊

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin :-)

P.S. — Feel like opening up? Hit reply and tell me about your most embarrassing moments. It’ll help, I swear. 😉