The Fearless Warrior Podcast

095: How Being Awkward Is a Super Power with Henna Pryor

• Amanda Schaefer

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This week, I had the privilege to sit down with workplace performance expert, author, and speaker, Henna Pryor. She explains how embracing awkwardness can be a competitive advantage and shares practical strategies for building confidence through vulnerability.

Episode Highlights:

• The most confident people don't avoid awkwardness 
• The "spotlight effect" 
• "What gave you butterflies today?" 
• Specific questions help pre-teens and teens open up more meaningfully
• Building "social muscle" through intentional practice helps combat social anxiety


Connect with Henna:

IG: @hennapryor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hennapryor/

Book: Good Awkward: How to Embrace the Embarrassing and Celebrate the Cringe to Become the Bravest You

Article: Social Muscles


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the fearless warrior podcast, a place for athletes, coaches and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife and mom of three. Each episode we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success, so if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Fearless Warrior podcast. Today I get to hit record with another amazing coach and friend of mine, hena Pryor. We are connected as fellow coaches through Limitless Minds, founded by Trevor Moad, russell Wilson, harry Wilson and DJ Edison some amazing names you might recognize in the mental performance space.

Speaker 1:

I have watched Hena as a workplace performance expert who speaks and writes about performance, mindset, interpersonal dynamics, high-impact communication. As a workplace performance expert who speaks and writes about performance, mindset, interpersonal dynamics, high impact communication and embracing bumps in a world that keeps optimizing in smoothness. Her book Good Awkward. She encourages us to lean in to the awkwardness and to help us be more successful. She's also a regular expert columnist for Inc Magazine and a global keynote speaker. She gets to travel the world empowering others and I'm so honored to get to have her share her wisdom with you today. So with that, Hannah, welcome to the pod.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me. I feel like Amanda. You and I have circled for like over a year now and I'm so sad to say this is probably going to be our longest conversation. We need to fix that after the podcast too, for the record.

Speaker 1:

It's always in a group, but that's okay too. Yeah, yeah. So one of the questions I've been asking recently that I love is it goes beyond our titles, beyond our intros. Who is Hannah?

Speaker 2:

At the core. Hannah Pryor is a girl who has been on a lifelong journey to untangle the difference between love and worthiness, and I think worthiness is very tied up with this idea of approval, of doing it right, of being the best, of getting the A, of making sure her parents were proud of her. And for a long time, I think, I thought and assumed that in order to feel enough or in order to feel loved, I had to deem myself worthy, and so I think a lot of my work has really been driven by that personal underpinning.

Speaker 1:

Worthiness. That is a great topic. Let's just dig in. What are you doing as a person to create these ripples into the world? So tell us, with a little bit more context how are you accomplishing this? I know you're an author, I know you're a speaker, but what is your day-to-day life look like when you're on this mission?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you know, without making it sound simplistic, it starts with us right, and so I'm no good to be a teacher or an idea generator to anyone else unless I spend at least 30% of my day trying to figure out my own stuff.

Speaker 2:

And so, for many of us, my day trying to figure out my own stuff.

Speaker 2:

And so for many of us, you know, we can read books, we can have tools, but if that deep, deep self-awareness of understanding our own mental blocks, our own limiting beliefs, our own conditioning, our own wiring, our own deep rooted training, if that's not there, then we're only going to be in service to others.

Speaker 2:

So much right, it's going to have its limitation, and so I think, on a day-to-day, there has to be for me an equal mix of input and output. So input is reading books, working with coaches, listening to podcasts, talking to friends who I trust we just mentioned some shared friends Colin Henderson and Charlie Smith are people who are people who love me but will give it to me straight, you know, and that's such a beautiful gift and self-awareness. And so I think, as much as I can, I try to make sure not necessarily in a given day, but let's say in a given week, that there's a good balance of working on myself, building my own awareness, my own inner. You know, work in order to feed the outer work. What am I learning and how could that be of use to other people?

Speaker 1:

I love that you bring that up, because one of the surprises that a lot of my athletes will kind of underpin, or their eyes get really big and they realize, wait, but you're a, you're a coach, you do this work for a living. You can't possibly have negative thoughts. You can't possibly use these things. It's the when I concept right, like when I get recruited, when I get that dream job, when I make it to a certain level, then it'll just disappear.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's funny because I think that's true of every discipline to some degree, and one of the main concepts from the book that tends to resonate for people is you know, the book in my case is about awkwardness, right, the emotion of awkwardness. But one of the things that people learn pretty quickly in the book is that the most confident people you know, the people that you admire, that you feel like are flawless. They never get it wrong, they never have egg on their face. They don't get to avoid awkwardness. They have just worked on improving their comeback rate, right. So when that moment happens, when that feeling comes, they're able to recover from it a lot more quickly. They're able to come back from it a lot more quickly. I think that's exactly true of what you just said, which is you, amanda, me, hannah, who teach mental performance.

Speaker 2:

We have negative thoughts. We're not made out of stone. Of course we have negative thoughts, but what we've learned to improve is our comeback rate. What we've learned to improve is maybe we can't choose that first thought, but we can choose that second thought. I think that is a powerful knowing. Don't ever feel bad about being human. The improvement edge is what are we going to do about it. How can we improve that rate of return?

Speaker 1:

Right, well, and I think the pressure cooker comes from when we say, okay, yes, hannah, like preach, I feel this. That's amazing. But when it comes down to it, when I'm in that pressure cooker, one of the things our athletes always say is I am terrified to let my teammates down. I'm terrified, I don't want to let my parents down, I want to let my coaches down. And so what's your advice? In that string of awkwardness of like, are you letting you know you talk about this in your keynotes in your book of awkwardness? Stand in the way of on the other.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So it might be helpful to just quickly define awkwardness in this context. So awkwardness is a social emotion of discomfort, so we can talk all day about getting comfortable being uncomfortable. I know on your podcast and in your work you do a lot of things about mental skills and discomfort.

Speaker 2:

Awkwardness, in particular, is a social discomfort, meaning if I am practicing, you know, a move in the backyard, if I am saying someone's name out loud and I mispronounce it, but I'm by myself and nobody was there to see it or hear it, I might feel something, but awkwardness is usually not it. Right, nobody saw me and therefore I don't feel awkward about it. When we do those things in front of other people, right, we have a missed play, we bungle something up, we fall on our face, we say it wrong, we make an advance at someone that gets brutally rejected right. When it happens in front of someone, we feel awkwardness, we feel embarrassment. So it's a social emotion of discomfort and while it does share traits with other ones, what's unique about this one is because it's a social emotion. It has a lot to do with our experience, with approval. Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly scanning our environment, for do other people approve of what they see and, at the next level, do they like what they see? And we start to change our behavior and our expectations based on that lens. And so, just to give a little bit of context, this is not a bad thing.

Speaker 2:

This is how humans evolved. We are creatures of social belonging. We don't want to stand out Back in our cave. People days, if we stood out too much, we'd probably get killed, right? If we stood out too much, we'd get kicked out of the tribe, we'd get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. It's just helpful to know that we have those same brains and so this standing out instead of feeling like we might get killed now. Instead we feel awkward, we feel embarrassed, we feel flushed in the face. But it is sort of like an evolutionary version of the saber tooth tiger, but the saber tooth tiger is not here anymore. So instead we just feel like idiots all the time, even though the threats are not as big as we think they are.

Speaker 1:

That's a great way to explain A lot of the times athletes will come. I'll ask you this question is athletes will say Hannah, I'm crushing it at practice and you you mentioned in the backyard. That makes so much sense because if it's a social emotion, if I can sink you know I'm shooting hoops in my driveway and I can sink those threes, no problem, I'm not worried about who's watching me shoot hoops. But as soon as I'm on the free throw line, or as soon as I'm in the game with a crowd full of people and the buzzer and all the the social norms of performance, what would your advice be for an athlete of like okay, I know this now, Thanks, hannah, but what do I do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's typically one of two things happening. It's either, you know, an opportunity to refine our focus skills, which is to, just you know, narrow the vision, narrow the aperture Can I focus on the one thing in front of me or the recognition that we're giving over attention to the things that are happening around us. So one of the big findings that people quote a lot in business psychology is the spotlight effect. So Cornell psychologist Tom Gilovich talks about the spotlight effect, which is we think people are looking at us way more closely than they actually are. So we think the spotlight is on us like intensely brightly. Oh my God, everyone is picking apart everything I do. Now here's the thing about athletics If you are in a game and there are people in the stands, of course they are watching you, I don't want to be naive and be like nobody's really looking at you.

Speaker 2:

Of course they are. That's the game. But here's the version of that that comes into play After you bungled that play. They're not thinking about it 10 seconds later. Right, yeah, they saw you, but you're the only one still obsessing over it. They've already moved on.

Speaker 2:

So that spotlight, while it might be bright on you momentarily, it's not following you into the next hour. The way you probably feel like it is Like you can't stop thinking about it. You're hooked by it. You think other people still think, oh, you are this kind of person now, but actually they're already like is there something on my shirt? Is that cute boy looking at me, right? Like they are already onto their own spotlight very, very, very quickly. So it's just helpful to know you know which is it. Usually it's a combination of both, and so that's something that can be trained. I mean, you know that as well as anyone. I know that's the work that you do with people is. We can train ourselves to filter out the noise and rewrite. How much attention are we actually giving this thing? That doesn't have as much power as we think it does.

Speaker 1:

Right Training, I mean training, self-talk training routines, focal points, grounding. I mean you're nailing it on, you know, on the athletic side. Tell me more about the corporate side. This is a lot of the. We have a lot of parents and coaches and so we could talk spotlight, effective being on the hot seat, or or parents. How does this relate to just beyond clinics?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you know, to be awkward is to be human. Right, if you are a neurotypical human being who experiences social dynamics in a in a neurotypical way, you're going to feel it, you know. It's basically what happens when there's this gap between this person that we believe ourselves to be and the person that we think other people see in that moment. So again, if you're an athlete or if you're a financial analyst, it's OK. I bungled something up. This person that I believe myself to be a good pitcher, a strong financial analyst who knows how to use numbers Right All of a sudden did this thing where it didn't go the way I planned. I either bungled a play, or I said something in a meeting that didn't sound right, or I was wrong about it. In that moment we're like oh my God, that's not who other people saw. They think I'm an idiot, they think I don't know how to throw Whatever it is. And in that gap between these two selves the version we believe ourselves to be and the version that we think other people see, we feel awkward, we feel uncertain, something feels socially unsteady. But the big learning for people is that that gap's not going away ever. It's not going away the more you try to improve at your game, at your craft, the next level of success that you're trying to get to, that gap is going to show up bigger and bolder than ever. It's always going to be there if you have someone whose goals are constantly moving up a little bit.

Speaker 2:

So the goal isn't to learn how to eliminate the gap. The goal is to learn how to get comfortable in it, to recognize okay, cringe, that was embarrassing. But we can either tell ourselves that was embarrassing, I'm an idiot, I never want to do that again or you know what, like good for me for having you know this, this cringey feeling in my stomach because it means I'm trying something, it means I'm putting myself out there. It actually kills me right now when you know millennium or millennials and youth are like oh, it's so cringe, it's so cringe. Millennials and youth are like oh, it's so cringe, it's so cringe. I'm like everyone who's doing anything worth a damn right now is quote unquote cringe. Somebody's trying something and being a little different than everyone else and that's now cringe.

Speaker 2:

Cringe is essentially now defined as someone who is not following the social norm. Right. They're not doing what all their other peers are doing. I mean, I hope I'm not being too hyperbolic here, but those people are going to rule the world. They're going to rule the world because they have decided at a young age that what other people think isn't going to define how they walk through the world. Those people are in a huge advantage. So I cheer every time I see someone be referred to as cringe, because I'm like they've strengthened a strong mental muscle that you are not paying attention to yet and there's going to be a point where you'll be less cool, you'll be less concerned and they will have a head start. So you can decide now that you want to care a little bit less about that, or at least start to do the mental work to understand the difference between you know cringe and somebody who's doing something, and you'll be a little bit closer if you make that attempt now.

Speaker 1:

Well, how many times have we seen that everyone's death wish or reflection back on their life is everyone says I wish I would have cared less about what other people thought. Yeah, and if we can figure this out at 30, 12, 13. Yeah, yeah, like how empowering and how freeing is that? I struck that too of you know what, what will people think and you know who am I to teach this and doing the work, and we could get into imposter syndrome and you know all the things that we experience in the corporate. It trickles down and into all ages, and so why wouldn't we have daughters, our sons to now?

Speaker 2:

Can I tell you something interesting? Is it something I've recently started doing? And it's funny because I've never talked about this on a podcast. But you know, part of the challenge is we live in the highlight reel era, where we see people doing their best work, posing in their best you know angles, and flattering lighting and sharing their wins, myself included. You know, like we don't want to be the Debbie Downers of the internet, so I'm not sharing about how my kid didn't want to eat the dinner I worked hard to prepare. Like nobody cares, right? So I feel like I don't talk about that stuff.

Speaker 2:

And I remember once somebody came into my DMs and was like you just are like, success after success after success, you are killing it, you're on fire. And I was like, oh, thank you, that's very kind. And then in the next statement they were like, is it ever hard? Like do you ever have a bad day? And I was like, wow, I, you know, I'm just, I'm generally an optimist, and so it didn't really occur to me to I don't. I don't dwell in like the negative stuff that much.

Speaker 2:

But what it made me realize is that I accidentally have created this persona of constant highlight reel, you know, and so I was very honest about it. I said, yeah, here are some things that have really been hard for me lately, have really gone wrong. A thing where I was recently rejected I really wanted it At that time. That was really hard for me at home. Like I gave this laundry list of things and they're like Hannah, you have no idea how badly I needed to hear this, because I've been comparing myself to you and comparing myself to your journey and I just needed this so badly and so that inspired me.

Speaker 2:

From time to time, with people who I trust right, but people whose careers I look at as aspirational and at least we have some sort of friendship, I'll occasionally like shoot them a message and say, hey, you're killing it. I would like to say inspired, and part of me doing that is understanding like the behind the curtain stuff Can you share, like something that's been hard for you lately or something that didn't go your way, and they're like absolutely Like happy to you know, they're like thrilled to share it, because Because criticism doesn't come from the top they want to share the journey, the authentic, real journey.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but it's weird because they want to share it but at the same time, social media doesn't reward the people who whine and complain regularly. So we've got this weird paradox of like we crave this, we want to know people's real real, but if somebody's too on the internet, then we're already having enough of a hard time with the uncertainty and challenge and change that we don't want to invite that in or we don't want to be accosted by it, but then it creates the tilt too far the other way. So I feel like you can do this as a youth athlete, you can do this as a business professional is don't force other people to have to pop the highlight reel bubble. Ask them occasionally. Ask them like have you ever had somebody tell you that your content was trash? Have you ever had somebody you know criticize you to your face after something and how did you deal with it? We all have our stuff. What you see is not what you get. So, like have these conversations, don't make your own assumptions.

Speaker 1:

I think the magic of that is that these conversations are going to be happening in community, because the community I think what the next generations are going to find out is community is not Snapchat. Community is not Instagram. Community is not TikTok. That's a past community. Some of the coolest moments we host a retreat once a year where it's the only softball camp where you leave your glove at home and these girls will come and for three, four or five days we will create this community where they're allowed to talk about the non-highlight real stuff.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love it, you know, and we're not.

Speaker 1:

but that's the thing is like. You don't have to wait for a retreat. You don't have to wait. You know we do this in fearless warriors inside of our community, but I think with the rise of AI, you and I both can nerd out on AI and all the amazing things that that our world is going to see.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's going to increase the desire for community. And so when you are fostering that community, what you're saying is I'm in the DMs, I'm fostering these relationships. It's like how can we, as leaders in our spaces, foster more of that community? And I don't know if that's more time at the end of a keynote more time at the end of a workshop more time with. Zoom training to just say, okay, you've learned about skills. Can we all just have a conversation in this safe space?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean in the business context. I tell leaders all the time it doesn't need to be an hour, carve out five minutes. So I call them. Have your people share cracked egg stories. They're essentially like when did you step on it this week? When did something go sideways? Whether it was an accident, just purely an accident, whether it's you tried something and it didn't go as planned a mistake, a blunder, an embarrassing moment, whatever. But it's hard for people to feel like they want to be the ones to bring it up. So when it becomes part of the design, right, we're already meeting, we're already at practice, right, it doesn't need to be an hour, it's just we're already here, we're already in community. Can we carve out five minutes for this? And man, does that five minutes go fast and does everybody immediately feel more like oh, thank God, it's not just me.

Speaker 2:

I think the danger of social emotions, of discomfort, like awkwardness, like embarrassment, is when we're in them and when they're heightened it feels like it's just us, it feels like nobody else. That confident girl over there can't possibly ever feel that way. She is just always like on it together. I mean, listen, I, as a 43-year-old woman, can still think of the girl in eighth grade that I'm like. She is always just, she never feels awkward about anything Like I can picture her to this day. Fun fact yes, she did. In fact we're like friendly. Now she still does all the time. But I told myself a story that she never felt that way because in my mind I never saw it. And so I think creating those spaces that are intentionally designed for those conversations is a really powerful, frankly modern day structure that we maybe didn't need, but now, with the highlight reels and the phones and all that, we need it more than we did in decades past.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so if you're a coach this is my shout out to my coaches that listen to this podcast. The temptation is we have to work harder on the X's and O's. We have to get to our practice plan. Five minutes is not that long If you want to create massive results with your teams like think about the amount of trust and vulnerability that this is going to create within your little unit of. That's going to work far more to build camaraderie and trust and just authentic, real connections where I can be awkward in front of my teammate and I know she's going to have my back because I know you know that like the egg, what did you call them? Cracked egg moments, cracked egg stories yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2:

And there's and there's weird ripple effect too. Like if you get to know something about one of your teammates, that's like a little bit of that cracked egg you look at them differently. It's not that they were not human to you before, but they're even more human to you now. So now when they have a misstep on the field, it's weird we get less angry or less impatient or less frustrated because it becomes a little bit more of like oh, this was a play that went wrong versus this person sucks and wasn't paying attention. Like there's a deeper humanization that it creates, which, again, like you said, creates that like stronger team dynamic, stronger bond. Most of the time.

Speaker 2:

Just to let your coaches know the first few times you do a cracked egg story type exercise, it's probably going to be like pretty surface stuff, right, it's not going to be the deep. Like people aren't going to be like oh, I'm having a really hard time with my home life. Like, it's probably not going to be that. But with repetition, five minutes every single week people start to expect oh, part of our practice is we're going to have these crackdick stories. Once they start to expect it over time, then they start to bring a little more, a little more. But it's the habit that creates a little bit more of that psychological safety, that trust. It just needs to be carved out, that's it.

Speaker 1:

Psychological safety Nailed it right there. So cracked egg stories. Do you use your mom? You have kids? Yeah, you use this with your kids.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So we do cracked egg stories and my other one that we do. So I asked the kids to share those. And then the other table, dinner table question. We ask we have three dinner table questions.

Speaker 2:

So what was the best part of your day? What's something new you learned? But then the third one is sort of the good, awkward question, which is what's something that gave you butterflies today? So the question is intentionally one that could go in several directions. So something that gave you butterflies like I have a 15-year-old daughter, it could be, you know, so-and-so. Looked at me today.

Speaker 2:

Right, okay, that could be one version of it, but generally they know that that question is what's something that you did that felt a little uncertain, that you weren't sure how it was going to go, but you did it anyway. Right, like you raised your hand in class, or you, you know, volunteered to be the leader of the group, or you, you know, asked somebody new what their name was. Right, and the goal of the butterflies thing is we always are very clear about this at dinner. We don't really care how it went, like it didn't really matter. If it was successful, we're like awesome, you did that, that's great, and so what we're trying to do is twofold. A, we're celebrating the process, not the outcome.

Speaker 2:

Right, that part is built in. But here's the second part, and it goes back to what we talked about with the cracked egg stories. We ask this question regularly. So we're also priming them to look for butterfly moments. So they're not always going to have one At every dinner, they don't have one, but they know that when they have one we celebrate it, we applaud it. So it kind of creates this training for them on the day-to-day basis to look for the moments to raise their hand, even if they're not ready to look for the moments to introduce themselves to a new kid, because they know how happy mom and dad are when they do that. So it's got that sort of double-sided benefit.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible, because I know our parents are going to immediately try this, because some of the things that we're already talking about in our community is, you know, parents are craving for their teen.

Speaker 2:

I just want her to open up to me.

Speaker 1:

I just want her to talk to me. It's like, well, this is going to take a little bit out of the time versus a lot a little of the time. Somebody just recently said that. What's that quote? A little, a little, a lot, yeah.

Speaker 2:

A lot, a little, I like it. I like it and, again, I'm no parenting expert, but I will say that with my ninth grade daughter, one of the things that I found to be true and this is something that I do as an executive coach with my clients, so I started practicing it with her is, I find the more specific my question the better. So if I ask her something like how was school, you know, how'd you do? Like, what's going on with you? Like I don't get much right.

Speaker 2:

So if I say something like you know, ninth grade friendships can be so tricky, is there anyone in particular who's been a little like hot and cold lately? And she's like, yeah, you know so and so has been that way. But it's a very specific question. Right, it's not a? How are your friends these days? Anybody being crazy? Like it's like a. You know, I read somewhere that at this age people can feel very hot and cold, like your best friends one day, and you're not. Is there? Is there anybody that you hang out with that feels like that a little bit lately? It's so specific that it's almost hard for her not to engage with an answer. So that's something I've been just playing with transparently.

Speaker 2:

And I am finding that it's having really good results.

Speaker 1:

just being a lot, a lot more specific with my ask, yeah, one of the things that I've been doing with I have young kids, so I have my two and three and seven is what did you do with your hands today? Oh, I like that. Like, yeah, your hands today. Well, a two year old and a three year old are going to tell you the dinosaurs or the dollies, or yeah, I play. You know, who did your hands play with today? Like, oh, that's, yeah, I know that question.

Speaker 2:

They're young so it's not weird. Yet my middle schooler and high schooler would answer that They'd be like mom. This is weird.

Speaker 1:

Another question that came up for me, so I'm assuming you and your husband answer those questions too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean it's a go around the table. It's all of us, it's the four of us are answering those questions and it's funny if sometimes we'll get into conversation based on one of them and the topic gets derailed and my kids like get mad if we don't all go. They're like mom didn't go yet, mom didn't go yet. It's, it's again. It's the first few times we did it. They're like okay, mom's asking the questions now it's they don't think twice. Like it just has become ritual and um, it's funny how, when they start to become owners of that ritual, they're the ones who become the enforcers. They're like oh, the dad didn't tell us what gave him butterflies, yet he only answered the first one. Like they start to become the, the polices of the, the question, which I love, right it just. It means that it's that more, that much more deeply ingrained over time.

Speaker 1:

Well, and if it's deeply ingrained, you know they're going to go off to college, they're going to go off their own worlds and they're it's not going to stop there. I mean, think about the relationship that you're fostering. I can't wait. 10 years down the road You're going to be getting those texts right?

Speaker 2:

Well, I hope so, and I think you know one one may be saving grace, depending on the age of the coaches and parents that you're you're having. You know, listen to this is it's never too late. I mean, I only started doing this with them two years ago.

Speaker 2:

So they're 15 and almost 13. So I haven't been doing this with them since they were four. You know this is relatively recent and I honestly think, if I'm being very transparent like born from the fact that, as preteens and teens, I was starting to feel the distance and like the difficulty in connection and the difficulty of risk taking in front of their peers. You know that was really ratcheting up, and so for me it was like, okay, we need to be very intentional about creating structures and tools as a family that support the type of people we want them to be. But you could probably start doing it with little kids and then keep it going. Or, if you have a 17-year-old, start now, Like it's never too late to start incorporating questions like that.

Speaker 1:

So good. So the question that's coming up for me now is we've talked about this in depth, you've given some really great tips. What was the spark that launched you headfirst into this research about this?

Speaker 2:

social emotion of awkwardness yeah, lived experience Like I. You know people are. Like you're a keynote speaker. You seem eloquent now. I mean I am first born child of immigrant parents. I did not feel eloquent or confident or cool at all growing up. You know I, as a first born immigrant kid, my food smelled different, my clothes were different. I just felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb and all I wanted was to be. I was born in early 80s so all I wanted to was to be a Jessica or Jennifer or Samantha, but I was Hannah.

Speaker 2:

And I was like you know, just wanted to fit in so badly and I felt like all my obsession and focus was on just blending in and not sticking out. And it wasn't until I got to college, and probably like into my first job, that I think I started to find my confidence in a new way, where I started to finally feel a little less awkward in my own skin. But then when I started working, I would find that in every transition point like new job, more responsibility, bigger promotion, trying something new it felt like all those little Hannah feelings came back. I was like, oh my God, I feel awkward again, I feel like that version of myself again. And so I just got very curious about this emotion, and specifically in the business and professional development world.

Speaker 2:

Brene Brown has this tagline that she would start to use. She would say stay awkward, brave and kind. That became her little sign off on podcasts Stay awkward, brave and kind. And I remember hearing that being like okay, brene, like you are everything I love you. Stay kind, yes, stay brave, yes, but like stay awkward. I've been fighting this one my whole life. What do you know about awkward? And I realized that there was just this gap of a deep dive about this emotion in particular and call it selfish research. I just wanted to understand what made people feel that way. What made that feeling linger for some, made it dissolve quickly for others, and that's where it, that's where it came from.

Speaker 1:

And here we are, and here we are. I would love we'll make sure that we link your book below and where on socials would be the best place to to follow, to keep learning as your evolution keeps rolling forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm henna prior and all the places so H E N N A P R Y O R, instagram and LinkedIn are probably the two, so I'm the only henna prior. You can look those up. And for any of the parents or coaches listening, or or youth youth, I recently did a research study on social muscle, so social muscle strength and social muscle atrophy, which is sort of this. You know our willingness to initiate conversations, ask for help, stay in difficult conversations. It is mostly centered on working America, but there's some really good data in there and that's at my website, prioritygroupcom. Forward slash study. It's a free download. So if anybody is interested in understanding especially coaches and parents how some of these social dynamics are showing up, it's a good place to start.

Speaker 1:

I cannot wait to dive into that. I would love to see that. This is going to be the best way to end. I know you're going to have an amazing answer to this.

Speaker 2:

This is our final question.

Speaker 1:

We ask this of everybody. You're a time traveler. You can go back in time and give your past self one message. What would you tell yourself?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's taking it back full circle. People are not watching you as closely as you think. They are not picking apart your missteps. They are not picking apart your hair. They are not picking apart the pimple on your cheek. They might've noticed it momentarily, but they've already moved on Like live your life.

Speaker 1:

I love it. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been a great conversation, so much fun. Thank you for having me.

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Amanda Schaefer

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