GOOD AWKWARD

Pryor outlines a strategy to make awkwardness work to your advantage in this self-help book.

In her nonfiction debut, the author, a workplace performance expert, speaker, and executive coach, explores the nature of feeling awkward, questioning where it comes from and observing how people typically react to it. Pryor likens the sensation to a balancing act, with risk tolerance on one side and confidence, experience, and, especially, conformity on the other. The fulcrum is a quality the author refers to as “EEE”: Easily Empathetically Embarrassed. Consulting a wide array of works, from self-help books to psychological and anthropological studies, Pryor outlines the ubiquitous nature of awkwardness in modern society (“Even if you’ve lived a pretty charmed life with relatively few uncertainties,” she writes, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, “the beginning of 2020 blew up that track record for every damn one of us”). She notes the high social costs associated with awkwardness (“we avoid it like the plague and work hard to eliminate it at all costs”), but she insists that embracing awkwardness is perfectly natural, even on an evolutionary level—she asserts that if somebody feels awkward in a social interaction they should give their brain “a little nod of gratitude” because registering wary awkwardness in such circumstances is exactly what the brain’s designed to do.

In the course of fluidly readable chapters full of insets and numbered points, the author lays out dozens of approaches to dealing with the “mental blocks” that people tend to put up in their own minds regarding awkward moments or situations. Throughout the text, Pryor takes an easy-going, approachable stance, regularly assuring her readers that she herself has a long history with awkwardness, asserting that if she can work through some of the most self-defeating aspects of it, so can they. At every point, she stresses that awkwardness is a natural reaction to uncertain situations; she contrasts this with overconfidence, which the author identifies as a weakness. “Feeling awkward means you’re taking chances,” she writes in a typically encouraging line, “and I love that look on you.” She reassures her readers that the judgment of others is seldom as bad as people think it is, owing to a psychological phenomenon known as “the illusion of transparency”—in reality, others can’t read our insecurities as well as we assume they can. Pryor is wonderfully convincing when pointing out how much of a difference that knowledge should make to how self-critical we are—as she spicily puts it, “Most people don’t give a rat’s arse about how you look or what you’re doing.” Pryor notes that due to social media’s amplifying effect, we now live in an era of “cringe,” when it seems like the slightest awkward moment will be broadcast around the world. The author also argues that “bravery requires being off balance,” and that real growth can be achieved only by occasionally feeling the awkwardness of not knowing what you’re doing. For many readers accustomed to the relentless cool-scrutiny of our online world, Pryor’s warm, intelligent reassurances will be much appreciated.

A well-researched and well-designed call to embrace awkwardness.