Embarrassment has a short half-life. What felt like the end of the world is already a vague memory for everybody else.

Embarrassment is loud and short. The thing you said in class or the way you tripped in the corridor lives in your head for months and in everybody else’s for about a day, because they are busy running their own version of the same tape. Your memory keeps it because it was about you. Theirs drops it because it was not.

When it replays, put a date on it and ask who else could still be thinking about it. The honest answer is usually nobody. Then go do the thing you have been avoiding because of it.