Do you sometimes feel as if those awkward teenage years never really happened?

This week find out how those cringeworthy moments can actually help you live a happier life.

If you are the kind of person that feels vicarious embarrassment a lot,

then you're in a really good spot to use that empathy as a kind of a pathway towards compassion.

Hello, this is Jeff Sanders, and welcome back to another episode of the Live Happy Now podcast.

Melissa Dahl is a veteran health reporter and senior editor of New York Magazine, but she's also no stranger to awkwardness.

After a lifetime of moments that she calls Cringeworthy,

Melissa decided to put her reporting skills to work

and studied the universal emotion of awkwardness.

Her new book, Cringeworthy, a theory of awkwardness,

makes some surprising discoveries about how awkwardness

can actually help us understand ourselves better and even lead to greater

happiness. Melissa talked with Live Happy's Chris Libby about her book and the unexpected discoveries

she made along the way.

All right. We are here with Melissa Dahl, a senior editor at New York Magazine, who covers

health and psychology, and is the author of her first book, Cringeworthy, A Theory of Awkwardness.

How are you today?

I am great. How are you?

I'm excellent. I just finished your book, which is great. I really liked it.

I mean, there are some parts I couldn't get through because they were cringeworthy.

Good. That's the point.

But yeah, of all the human emotions or human behaviors, what inspired you to write about this topic,

...