Embarrassment better than regret
Founder of the Happy Cow Milk Company
On Boxing Day in 2004, a massive earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia. It caused a devastating tsunami that killed 250,000 people on beaches in 13 countries.
But Mai Khao beach in Thailand suffered no deaths, despite it being right in the tsunami’s path.
This was thanks to Tilly Smith who was 10 years old at the time. She was on holiday from the United Kingdom with her parents and they were on an early morning beach walk.
Tilly noticed the tide had receded and there was no water on the beach. But no-one seemed to be worried. The resort staff were not bothered and neither were Tilly’s parents.
But two weeks prior while at school, Tilly had watched black and white footage of a tsunami in Hawaii that took place in 1947.
She recognised that the funny frothiness of the water looked just like the movie she had watched in science class.
She started to tell her parents but they did not know what she was talking about. People had not actually seen a tsunami before.
But Tilly became more and more agitated as she was sure this was a tsunami.
If Tilly’s parents listened to their daughter, they would cause panic on the beach.
What if it was not a tsunami? After all, the chances of it actually being a tsunami were extremely low.
If it was not a tsunami, Tilly’s parents would have looked like complete idiots. Can you imagine the embarrassment?
But Tilly’s parents did listen and they ran up the beach yelling ‘‘tsunami, tsunami’’.
The guards and resort staff cleared the beach and everyone ran to a three-storey building minutes before the first wave arrived.
Tilly and her parents saved the lives of 100 people that day and Tilly went on to be thanked publicly by Bill Clinton.
I take two lessons from Tilly’s story.
First, you don’t need credibility to do something.
What credibility did Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old from Surrey have on the subject of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean?
It would appear from the outside that she had no credibility. But I would argue she actually had the most credibility of anyone on the beach that day, due to the recent video she had watched.
Credibility doesn’t come in the form we expect. Credibility is over-rated anyway, it only comes after the fact.
Second, Tilly was not embarrassed. She was too young to be embarrassed. She had not yet felt the pain of embarrassment that develops with adolescence and continues throughout adulthood.
She would not shut up about the tsunami because she did not care how she looked.
As adults, we fear embarrassment almost more than anything.
Every year people die from choking on their food in public places. They get up from the restaurant table. Unable to breathe, they head to the toilets, where they can’t look silly.
After failing to dislodge the food alone, they die out of sight.
You could say they are literally dying of embarrassment. Fear of embarrassment stops us from asking silly questions in meetings. It stops us trying new things or thinking differently.
Fear of embarrassment hinders innovation and the discovery of something fresh and new. Fear of embarrassment stops us dancing like we mean it and it stops us asking that girl or guy out for coffee.
I am somewhat of an expert in doing silly things, writing silly things and looking like an idiot.
But trust me, you lose the sense of embarrassment quite quickly when you realise there is a feeling far worse than embarrassment and that is the feeling of regret.
Regret is worse than embarrassment.