Visit humiliations past.
This one will help you keep things in perspective. You know when you thought you really were going to die — or at least you wanted to? In hindsight, not a huge deal, right? As an exercise, you should list your top five embarrassments. Mine are:
Upon being prompted to tell “the thumb” joke to the Vice President of Doubleday, I proceeded to tell the wrong, very off-color one, which, I feared at the time, would kill our book contract.
At my first job out of college, I was the only one to dress up for Halloween. I went as the building security guard (borrowed the uniform and all), and only he thought it was funny.
Published on the front page of the Annapolis paper (on my birthday) was the story about how my 2-year-old pushed another other 2-year-old (the one that I was watching) into the frigid waters of the Chesapeake Bay only to be rescued by a passerby.
In line to purchase Notre Dame football tickets the first week of college, where a mob pushed their way forward, I was stung by a bee and, without my kit, had to call an ambulance.
I was almost arrested for sexual harassment my senior year at Saint Mary’s College because the creative but blunt note that I left for the director of the homeless shelter (as instructed by one of his good friends, mind you) was set on top of a set of lingerie some other woman had sent him. Thus he assumed I was the lingerie stalker.