Shyness is something you experience when you are in new situations or when you are with people that you are not familiar of. When you are feeling shy, you get the feeling of apprehension and you feel awkward. Shyness is generally a characteristic with people who lack confidence. Basically, shy people are afraid of being negatively accepted by other people. They are afraid of being laughed at, humiliated or rejected. This is the reason why shy people avoid social situations.
According to Dr. Bernardo J. Carducci of the Shyness Research Institute, shyness has three building factors namely excessive self-consciousness where you are too aware of yourself especially when you are in social gatherings, excessive negative self-evaluation where you have a negative perception of yourself and excessive negative self-preoccupation where you pay too much attention to all the things that you do wrong when you are in a social gathering.
Now there are a few things that you can do to overcome your shyness and these are:
- Understanding your shyness and how and when it happened in your life. Some people have developed shyness because of their environment when they were growing up, and how they were raised by their parents and guardians. You have to understand how it happened to you in order to understand your shyness better. Observe yourself and take not of the situations that trigger your shyness, and check your concerns at that point when you are feeling shy.
- You can be proactive about your shyness. If you seem to be overly self conscious, look at yourself in a different way! Start being more self aware. Don’t focus too much on what other people think of you because they are too busy minding what others think about them.
- One way to overcome your shyness is to remember how unique you are. Look at your strengths. Focus on the things that you do very well to boost your self confidence. This way, your strengths will help you identify yourself better. Remember that everyone is created in a unique way, and there are things that you can do that others cannot, so there’s practically no reason to be shy!
Start liking yourself! Shy people usually develop shyness because they don’t like their own personalities. They don’t like the way they look, they don’t like their careers and they don’t like their current situations. That’s why they are afraid that other people may not accept them, because they don’t even accept their own selves. Embrace who you are and love yourself for what you are! Once you start liking and loving yourself, you will find that confidence that you are looking for.- Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on others! Focus on the people that you want to get to know. Focus on what they have to say about themselves. Listen to others more. You will find that preoccupying yourself by listening to others will take out the self consciousness.
- Once you are in a situation that gives you intense feeling of anxiety, then take deep breaths and focus on your breaths. Focus on each breath until you feel the anxiety going away.
- Accept the fact that you cannot please everyone, so don’t stress yourself about not being accepted. The reality is, there will always be people who are not willing to accept you. But the good thing is there are a lot of people who will accept you, no matter how awkwardly you handle your shyness! Don’t take rejections personally, because there may be a lot of reasons why people won’t accept you.
- Practice engaging in small talk, and once you master it, engage in conversations more often.
Shyness is something that you can definitely overcome! Practice the things above regularly, until you feel comfortable doing them, and you will just wake up one morning realizing that you have already overcome your shyness.
