How to Overcome Shyness, Timidness and Social Awkwardness?

1. Introduction: Do you often struggle to find things to say when making casual conversation or small talk? Do you keep quiet at parties or meetings? Because you find it difficult to contribute to conversations? When you do get involved in a conversation, perhaps you find that the discussion fizzles quickly as you and the other person run out of things to say? Your attention during a social interaction is on yourself and how you are coming across to other people. You worry about how you look and what others are thinking about you. You may avoid others at work for fear of criticism or ejection. You stay uninvolved unless you are sure of being liked or not being ridiculed. You are inhibited in strange social contexts, feel inferior and fear being embarrassed. Hiness is to do with lack of satisfaction with life, reduced opportunities for enjoyment and happiness, wanting to create a particular impression upon others, feeling insecure and lacking confidence, awkwardness, and being ill at tease with other people, extreme discomfort during social events. The behavior of shy people, their body language, shouts discomfort. They silence and nerse. They mentally scroll through all the different ways in which the conversation might fail. While doing this, they miss debt and the discussion moves on. Their statements are rare and erratic. Their words disrupt the rhythm of the dialogue. Shy people unsettle others because they unsettle the unspoken social rules. Shyness is regarded as a deviation from normal and desirable behavior, and shy people are often misperceived as rude, aloof or antisocial. This course will teach you to feel more comfortable in feared social situations to feel more confident and improve your self esteem, to increase your ability to express yourself. You will learn how to deal with feeling uncomfortable and awkward and how to overcome embarrassment. 2. Being a shy person: Shyness refers to nervousness or discomfort in social situations. Usually, because of fear about doing something embarrassing or foolish. Making a bad impression or being judged critically by others. Some people are very uncomfortable in formal work related situations, like presentations and meetings, but are quite comfortable in more casual situations, like parties and socializing with friends. Others may show the exact opposite pattern with formal work situations being easier than unstructured social gatherings. We all can become shy when we meet new people. Ask someone for a date. Attend social get togethers where we don't know anyone. Give a speech at a wedding. Ask a neighbor not to park their car in front of our house. Remind a friend that they haven't returned a book they borrowed or money we have lent them. Speak to our manager in the office. Complain about faulty work, or return unwanted goods to a shop. We dread these occasions when they come around and we may put off confronting them for as long as we can. So we hang around outside the manager's door, postponing knocking on it, or we take advantage of every opportunity to delay the meeting. We chat about the weather and everything else. Other than draw the decorators attention to the quality of work we are not happy with. We go to other shops before we can face entering the one where we want to return the garment that doesn't fit. We might spend a lot of time and energy rehearsing what we are going to say, practicing our opening lines, thinking what to say if the decorator tells us that the work is exactly what was asked for, or the shop assistant implies that it was us who scratched the item. It's difficult to find the right words to say. Although lots of things we might say, raise through our mind. Will it sound stupid? Will I reveal my ignorance? By the time we have summoned the courage to utter a remark, the conversation has moved on. We feel ill at, self conscious and out of place. Shy people feel ambivalent about the prospect of interaction. On the one hand, they want to participate. On the other hand, they fear that they have nothing to say or will say or do the wrong thing and face embarrassment. Shy person is not simply absent from interaction as an introvert might be, but rather remains there, hovering on the fringes, indicating a desire to be recognized, but seemingly unwilling to participate. She experiences an internal conflict between wanting to be included, but not to be judged. Some psychologists think that shyness is a self importance. They think that it is based on the assumption that you matter so much that everyone pays or should pay you lots of attention. 3. Feeling out of place: Heating a meal when other people are in the room becomes unbearable. If you have an intense fear that you will visibly tremble while you are holding a knife or fork, you avoid canteens and restaurants. Speaking to your neighbors makes you perspire or stammer. You arrange to leave and enter your house when they are not inside. You can never think what to say to a fellow commuter whom you see regularly on the journey to work. When you see her walking ahead of you to the station, you hang back so you can sit in a different carriage or even catch a later train, anything to avoid having to make conversation. When you are shy, you are uncertain what to say or do. Sometimes you cover this with gambling. Deep down, you are worried about what others will think of you. You fear that you will show yourself to be inadequate or stupid or make public that you do not know anything about the topic being discussed. You might also fear that others will find out that you are shy. You don't want them to know. This immediately creates a conflict. If you remain quiet, you are more likely to be seen as shy, but you can't speak up because of the inhibition that your shyness creates. You fear that people will see you for what you really are and that they will think badly of this real you. Being shy involves feelings of awkwardness and being out of place. These people lack a sense of belonging to the groups with which they associate themselves. They are not able to join in with people around them and to feel comfortable with them. That's why they are overlooked, not invited to events or thought of when promotion is under discussion. They may be perceived by others as lacking interest in other people as being self centered, rude or unfriendly. 4. The shy faux pas: Room breaking is the fu pa or an actual mistake that the shy person makes when trying to negotiate social encounters. This might be a clumsily performed action, mistime statements, awkward silence, bodily gestures, such as shaking or blushing, or simply a demeanor that is given off. The body shuts off when people are shy. They are not expressive. They are not waving their hands when they are talking. They don't have a lot of eye contact or facial expressions. The shy person is extremely concerned about the risk of making a fo pa and exposing what he sees as secret flaws in his character. All of these fo pa occur as a result of trying to conceal lack of social skills. She feels as if everybody else seems to know the unspoken rules of interaction and thus are able to provide a more poised socially competent performance. For the shy people, silences can be very embarrassing. Probably because you don't know what the other person is thinking. When it goes silent, you are thinking. What are they thinking now? And the longer it goes on, nobody can break it. It is as if you are not intelligent enough to keep the conversation going, or you are not exciting enough, or you are boring. As if you ought to be talkative and cheery, in order to be worthy company. The silence of the shy person is accompanied by intense mental activity, thinking how you appear to others, mentally rehearsing what you might say, thinking up something to say and then rejecting it because you are unsure about the impression it will create. Often, we can talk easily with colleagues at work about work stuff. But when there is any social conversation over coffee or in the pub after work, we feel shy and don't know what to say. We rarely join in a group discussion, are embarrassed and tongue tied if we are asked a question, and a conversation never seems to get going when we are taking part in it. We can find it particularly hard to join in teasing or banter. It is impossible for us to tell a joke when a group are listening, even if the joke has raised a laugh when we had told it elsewhere. 5. Are you shy?: Is it hard for you to know when or how to end conversations? Do you find it difficult to know where the fine line is between appropriate self disclosure and talking too much about yourself? Do you often offend other people with comments that you make? Do you avoid going to parties, particularly when you want to know people there? When the telephone rings? Do you avoid answering it? Do you wear certain clothes to hide defects that you perceive in your appearance? Do you purposely end the presentation late, so that there is no time for questions? Do you avoid making eye contact with the audience? If you are attending a party, do you stay close to someone you know well, so that you won't have to talk to other people? Do you have a drink or two as soon as you get to the party so that your anxiety doesn't get too high? Do you offer to help in the kitchen? So you won't have to talk to the other guests? Do you take frequent bathroom breaks to avoid being with everyone else? When you are talking to other guests at the party, do you ask the other person lots of questions to keep the focus of the conversation off of you? How about stating your opinion? Talking to people with a lot of status? Meeting someone you find attractive, performing tasks in public, eating, riding, dancing, using the telephone in someone's presence? A 6. Overcompensating behaviors of the shy: Are there are ways in which you try extra hard in social situations to compensate for faults that you perceive yourself to have? For example, do you over prepare for presentations by putting together too much material, memorizing the presentation or reading the d from your notes? Do you everything you are going to say before meeting someone? Just in case you become overly anxious and lose your train of thought? Do you go out of your way to talk a lot to appear outgoing? Just so people won't notice that you are anxious? The thought of eating in public terrifies you. You couldn't cope with an argument at work or was being criticized. You would brood on it forever. You think that others will notice your weaknesses or awkwardness, that you will be dismissed, ignored, or criticized for not behaving more acceptably. You have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend because you can't bring yourself to ask anyone out. You wonder whether you will measure up in the eyes of others. You focus exclusively on the other person to draw attention away from yourself. You take a friend to an outing so that you don't have to deal with new people. You joke or talk excessively. You don't have to engage in serious conversation where people might find out about you. You over rehearse what you are about to say to minimize the chances of seeing the wrong thing, or you go along with a popular opinion, even if you don't really agree. You may feel as if you are the center of attention. At the same time, you may feel so inferior and inadequate that you believe that no one is at all interested in you. You may become preoccupied with yourself and with what is happening to you and experience self consciousness. At the same time, you may be quite uncertain about your identity, about who you are. You do not want to be disregarded, but you want to be invisible. You think you are not worth noticing, but you are quite sure that everyone notices you. Most of us are shy on at least some occasions. We know this and can cope with it. For others, shyness is crippling. It impedes their social functioning and prevents them from living the life they want to. A. 7. Different types of shyness: There are different types of shy people. Some people see themselves as shy and are recognized as shy by others. There are people who feel secretly shy, but manage to cover it up. They may appear to be poised and competent. But feel that this is very much a performance. They often look confident on the outside while experiencing intense anxiety on the inside. They have the impostor phenomenon and have this fear of being exposed as a fraud. Shyness can be divided into two types. One form of shyness is simply a personality trait. Whereby, people take their time to feel comfortable in social situations and with strangers. Another form of shyness is closely related to social anxiety. This shyness has more to do with concern about being evaluated. Anxiety is an uncomfortable internal state, usually associated with uncertainty or the unknown. It is a lot like fear, but fear is when you know what you are afraid of. When someone points a gun at your head, you don't feel anxiety. You feel fear. You know exactly what it is that is causing your heart to raise. When you exit the door of your house to take out the garbage at night, you may feel anxious, wondering if someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting to attack you. This is anxiety, not fear, because you don't know whether something bad is going to happen. You think it is a possibility, but you can't be sure. You feel anxious about it. Anxiety is an emotion you feel, when you believe there might be a threat. Fear is an emotion you feel, when you know there is a threat. Social anxiety is discomfort you may experience when you are around other people. Usually, social anxiety is associated with concerns about being scrutinized. When you are around other people and you worry about what they think of you and feel uncomfortable, you are experiencing social anxiety. Usually, we can identify a shy person by observing their behavior. In contrast, anxiety is an internal state. It is something people feel. If you only feel somewhat uncomfortable in some situations, then you have shyness. But if that feeling of discomfort becomes more serious to the point of panic attacks, and it affects your daily functioning, then you have social anxiety. Most shy people don't experience overwhelming anxiety in the face of social situations. They need a little time to warm up in the presence of others or in unfamiliar situations. But once they get involved, their anxiety evaporates. Some people experience shyness to such an extent that they avoid social situations or they endure these situations with intense inner discomfort. A person can be so afraid of rejection that she avoids people and social events as much as possible to minimize the risk of rejection and the risk of experiencing anxiety. Maybe your shyness lies between mild and extreme, but you need to realize that this need not be permanent. People move up and down the continuum, depending on life circumstances and inner strengths and resources. 8. Why do we become shy?: There is evidence that shyness is based in biology, but learning and experience also contribute. Everyone has some degree of shyness. Some people have a lot. Some have a little, and most have an amount somewhere in between. Think of it as you would hight. Height is a physical trait. Some people are tall, some are short, but somewhere in between. Height is one of those physical traits that are largely heritable. That is due to the effects of genes. You are born with a predetermined likelihood of being a particular height. Height is also influenced by factors such as diet, exercise, and perhaps the amount of stress in the environment. Chines like height is influenced by genes, but not exclusively so. Chiness is a trait. The things we learn throughout life, and the experiences we have, the choices we make can strongly influence the vast majority of our traits. There are many factors that can contribute to the development of a shy personality. They include bullying by siblings or classmates. Often over things we have no control over, such as freckles, weight, wearing glasses, and so on. Being different, such as being extra or short. Suffering deformities, feeling marginalized due to race, poverty, or ethnicity. The chaotic household, frequent relocation, emotionally unstable parent, early trauma, such as illness, accident, or loss of a parent. Family difficulties may also have contributed to being shy. These include growing up in families where there is a lot of conflict between adults or where the adults are overly critical of the children, and nothing is ever good enough. There is excessive concern about what other people think. It is important to realize that many people have these kinds of experiences and don't develop shyness. It may be that people who are genetically prone to shyness are sensitive to these kinds of experiences. A very extroverted gregarious child, we find it easy to brush off negative comments from an over critical parent, but a timid introspective child may be more likely to take these comments to heart, leading to greater insecurity and self doubt. Blaming people, parents, teachers, siblings, or peers for how you have turned out will not lead to changes in yourself in order to tackle shyness. You need to learn new ways of relating to people and new ways of thinking about social situations. Genes and biology are not destiny. Many conditions are strongly influenced, but not ultimately determined by genetic factors. Examples include diabetes and heart disease. We have the option of choosing to change the way we experience our lives. We can adopt a new world view. We can get rid of old habits, shy genes or not. You can overcome shyness. 9. Feeling shy: Shyness sometimes can lead people to engage in frequent checking and reassurance seeking. For example, frequently looking in the mirror to make sure that your hair is perfect or continually asking your friends to reassure you that you are interesting or smart. If you are shy, you tend to go to familiar places only. Stick with old friends. Agree with majority. Dress low key. Take great pains to dress immaculately and tend to be over helpful and agreeable. You obsess about how you are coming across to the other person. You think about what to say next, rather than focusing on what the other person is saying. It's difficult remembering what the other person said because it was difficult to pay attention in the first place. In social gatherings, you think to yourself. I really don't belong here. Nothing I could think of to say would interest these people. This makes it harder for you to join in the conversation. You keep quiet and retreat into your shell, aware of how inept you must seem in other people's eyes. You look out for a way of leaving early, hoping that you can slip away without drawing too much attention to yourself. You may believe that everyone is always watching out for your feelings and noticing your shortcomings, or you think that everyone is more confident and competent than you are. By shrinking your body, lowering your eyes, and keeping your thoughts and your feelings to yourself. You protect yourself from others. You may have found ingenious ways to remain invisible and unnoticed. Many shy people are not sure how to start conversations or how to keep conversations going. They are not quite sure what to say and when to say it. They mentally rehearse what they are going to say. They repeat it over and over to themselves, wondering if it will come out right, imagining what others will make of it. Many things come into their mind, but they don't voice them. By the time all these potential contributions have raised through their mind, the opportunity has passed, and the conversation has moved on. It is L s wondering what others will think that is at the heart of their quietness and shyness. 10. What is shy person’s problem?: O. Shy individuals believe they are in some way weak, inferior or inadequate than others. Some hide behind non descript clothing, long hair, a shrunken posture or a too quiet voice. They think too much of what others think of them. For example, before giving a presentation, you may tell yourself that you are going to lose your train of thought and that others will notice how uncomfortable you are. You imagine that the others will interpret your discomfort as a sign of weakness. As you continue to dwell on these anxious thoughts, your face feels flushed and your heart rate increases. Finally, you make a decision to read your presentation word for word. To be sure that your anxiety doesn't cause you to lose your place during the presentation. In successfully avoiding the object of their fear. Shy people isolate themselves from the warmth of human contact that is essential to all of us. They vividly imagine all the possible horrors of a relationship and become obsessed with the rewards versus the costs of dealing with anyone. They often fail to convert acquaintances into friends, Friends into lovers. Many live by the gold plated rule, give nothing to others, as you would have them give nothing to you. No commitment, no sharing, no obligation, no responsibility, no favors to be returned or expected. But no man or woman can exist happily with the terrible knowledge that they are not needed by some other person. Over a lifetime, the actual pain of feeling insignificant is far greater than the imagined pain of an occasional rejection. O 11. Difficulties of shy people: Many shy people long for the small talk, idle chatter, laughter, and friendship that seem to be going on with other people. Sometimes they feel anger at being left out of the fun, even when they have turned down the invitation to join in. The shy may often become bolder if the other person indicates warmth and a readiness to relate beyond a superficial smile and a shallow greeting. But the other person has to send up obvious smoke signals for the passively shy person to get the message and begin to act on it cautiously, of course. Shy people often have trust issues. They either have little trust in others or place too much trust in people, which eventually leads to disappointment and hurt. They can even develop a fear of intimacy of getting too close to someone because they dread that intimacy with another will only lead to abandonment and rejection. For some people, shyness is something that prevents the expression of their true selves. The person's true self is confined within the shell. This shell prevents the shy person from revealing too much personal information or making herself vulnerable to criticism. The shell confines and constrains her, making it difficult for anyone else to get close to her and to see who she really is. The shy belief that anything they may say has to come out perfect, useful, supremely witty, as if everyday life is some situation comedy. They believe that everybody is watching and judging them, which is narcissistic. You can easily exaggerate in your mind the degree of attention that others pay to you or how much of your behavior others notice. Others might not notice that you are being quiet. Even if they do so, they might not attribute this to shyness. They might see it as natural quietness, since not everyone is noisy or extroverted. Some people can be confident in the impression that they create in others, but inside, it's a different matter. The confident impression they convey is not achieved easily or without cost. They rarely feel at ease in these situations. My shy people re feeling more comfortable when they are alone. No one can hurt us if we are alone. But isolation doesn't eliminate pain. It creates a different kind of pain, loneliness. Choosing solitude out of fear is a painful way to exist in the world. O 12. Shy person’s safety behaviors: F. Shy people tend to scrutinize their own performance in social encounters before during and after the event. They set themselves unrealistically high standards for performance, and then think about how they have failed to meet them. The most common behavior of shy people is to either avoid the anxiety provoking situation completely or to do something else to reduce the anxiety. These behaviors are often called safety behaviors because they are carried out in an effort to feel safer. Avoidance is effective at reducing discomfort in the short term. However, in the long term, it maintains fear in social situations because it prevents you from learning that your negative predictions are unlikely to come true. Here are some examples of subtle avoidance strategies. Making an excuse not to have dinner with a friend. Having the room dark during your presentation in order to keep the audience focused on the slides, rather than on you. Wearing makeup and a turtle neck sweater to hide your blushing. Staying close to a friend or your partner at a gathering, and relying on that person to do most of the talking. Remaining in one location at a gathering, trying to converse with one or two people and not mingle with others. Having a few glasses of wine before going to a party, and a few more when you arrive. Escaping early from social situations. For instance, leaving a party after a few minutes can have a negative impact on your fear by reinforcing your experience that being in the situation makes you uncomfortable, and leaving the situation provides relief. In reality, staying in a situation despite the fear that it arouses also leads to a reduction in anxiety. By staying until your fear decreases, you will learn that you can feel comfortable and safe. Taking the role of the detached observer appeals to the shy because it allows them to satisfy the need for socializing vicariously. They can feel as if they are part of the encounter without needing to contribute actively to it. There is relatively little stress to be faced. Some people find Salus in this marginal position because it allows them to relax the monitoring of their own behavior. They retreat to their own private world, minimizing their participation. They enjoy being with people and observing them, providing they do not have to take an active part in socializing. People often resolve the dilemma of developing new relationships by doing nothing. They almost always choose to be alone other than risk rejection. But in protecting themselves, they lose important feedback from others who might be sharing the very same feelings. We must all take this risk to establish the important relationships in our lives. 13. The difference between Introversion and shyness: A common perception among the population is that shyness and introversion go hand in hand. Introverts may be misperceived as shy because they do not say much in conversations. But there is a difference between these contentedly quiet people who feel able to perform, but simply prefer not to and the shy, who desperately want to say more, but feel unable to. Shy adults take longer to produce their first words in conversation with an unfamiliar person. They are slower to break a silence. The introvert avoids social situations by choice because he simply prefers his own company. He is not highly sociable. Unlike the shy person, the quiet introvert does not feel an anguished ambivalence about being noticed and listened to when necessary. The introvert is not actively trying to think of things to say. She's just being quiet because she wants to. It's like when you don't really care about what other people think about you. He may not say very much, but when he does want to speak out, he has no reservations about doing so. Shy people feel motivated to be with others and enjoy social encounters when they go well, but shyness prevents them from satisfying this need. There are shy introverts and nu shy introverts, just as there are shy extraverts and no shy extroverts. Introverts are people who get their energy mostly from within themselves. They enjoy their inner world of thoughts and reflections. They like to spend time in their own company. A non shy introvert has no trouble interacting with others. She can keep up a piece of high social energy, but only for a limited amount of time. After a while, she gets tired and needs to find a quieter place where she can be by herself and restore her energy in quiet ways. A shy introvert also gets his energy from within himself. However, he is not as easy going when it comes to social interactions. He's troubled about being self conscious, troubled with feelings of inferiority and self conscious with superiors, worrying over humiliating experiences. You can be a shy extrovert, like Barbara Strason, who has a larger than life personality and paralyzing stage fright, or a non shy introvert, like Bill Gates, who by all accounts, keeps to himself, but is unfazed by the opinions of others. You can also, of course, be both and an introvert. 14. Shyness. Self-consciousness. Alcohol abuse: The experience of shyness is related to other personality traits, including social anxiety, perfectionism, self consciousness, depressed mood, and a negative body image. People who are overweight may be concerned about having their physical appearance judged negatively by others. In fact, dissatisfaction with any aspect of physical appearance, for example, losing your hair, not liking your nose, and so on, can lead some people to experience shyness. Self consciousness is believing yourself to be the object of others attention. You feel as if you are a spectator of your behavior, and this makes it very difficult to behave in a natural way. You are preoccupied with how you appear to others. When we are self conscious, we are not engrossed in what's going on. We find it hard to fit in with the conversation. Our thoughts are focused on ourselves and not with the topic of conversation. We miss the subtle signals that other people give about taking turns in conversation. It's difficult to decide just when to make a contribution and what to contribute. The sense of being observed from another perspective makes it difficult to act naturally or spontaneously. Some people start to drink to loosen up. Drinking turns off the ever present monitor. Over drinking turns it too far off into social irresponsibility. The fear that originally motivated to drink finally becomes a reality as the drunk is cast out of society for being different, inadequate, and inferior. It is not unusual for someone to have a few drinks to become more comfortable at a social event. While alcohol's immediate effect is to reduce anxiety. Later that day or the next, it can produce feelings of increased anxiety, irritability, or depression. This can happen even at moderate levels of social drinking. The person may not consume enough to experience a hangover, but mood and anxiety may still be affected. It is never easy for an adult to make new friends. For the shy alcoholic, it becomes impossible without a few good belts of booze. The sober alcoholic is the man in the iron mask. What he seeks in alcohol is liberation from himself. What he wants is for the eternal sensor to go to sleep for a few hours. Over time, he needs increasing amounts of alcohol to produce the desired relaxation effect. Shyness or feeling inadequate is not a trait that you have to live with. You can change without using a crutch like alcohol. 15. Feelings of embarrassment: Embarrassment is what you feel when something often unexpected draws unwanted attention to you. Embarrassment, though intensely unpleasant, is fleeting. People who are shy worry a lot about being embarrassed and they go out of their way to avoid having this happen. Embarrassment seems to be elicited by specific events, whereas shyness seems to be about the anticipation of things going wrong. You can be embarrassed when you forget someone's name. Discover that you had tucked the back of your skirt into the top of your tights. When you accidentally enter the wrong restaurant, when you realize that you've been talking loudly, when other conversations have stopped, and everyone hears what you are saying. Embarrassment threatens loss of face in front of other people. You appear foolish or incompetent. It creates uncertainty about what to do next, how to rescue the situation. This leads to being fostered and feeling awkward. Your quietness or abrupt answers to questions can lead to an awkward conversation with many silences. Embarrassment is what you fear when you are a shy person. Imagine going to a pash restaurant or dinner party with people that you do not know very well or with your managers from work. It quickly becomes clear that there are rules or conventions about which cutlery to use, how particular fruits are to be eaten. Which glass to use for which drink, and so on. If this is all new to you, you can become hesitant, watch others and try to take your cue from what they do. In short, you behave in a sh inhibited way. Quite unlike the way you behave when eating with friends or in a familiar environment. 16. How to deal with embarrassment?: One approach to coping with embarrassment is to do nothing to hope that no one has noticed or that the embarrassing situation will just go away. Sometimes this works, and you might be able to cover up a mistake before anyone does notice. Sometimes it is everyone's best interests that those who have witnessed your mistake or loss of poise pretend that they haven't noticed. This helps you to regain your control and carry on with what you are doing. People will help you out with your embarrassment because it creates problems for them too. They won't be able to get things moving again either. The cause of the embarrassment hangs in the air, making it difficult for the conversation or meeting to resume. The waiter may pretend not to notice that you have picked up the wrong cutlery. Your guest will not seem to notice that you mispronounced his name. Another form of coping is to make an apology. You accept responsibility for what you have done wrong. An apology can be very effective if it is sincerely given or if it is convincing. If you fail to apologize. You run the risk of being seen as boorish, unpleasant, or immodest. An apology helps you to be seen as a worthy person who has simply got something wrong. You minimize the significance of your mistake because you have apologized and people can show sympathy to you. Humor can also be effective way of managing an awkward situation. Stories about embarrassing situations often induce a smile. If you are shy or sensitive. You can find it very difficult to join in teasing and joking. Humor also provides a means of recovering from embarrassment. If someone can make a joke about embarrassment or laugh it off. This provides everyone with a way to break the deadlock so that they can get the social encounter up and running again. Despite the pain that embarrassment can cause, it can be very useful. It facilitates the smooth running of everyday life. Displaying embarrassment does diffuse anger and shows that the individual is sorry for the awkward situation and any offense that may have been caused. 17. Pressurizing thoughts of shy people: Here are some thoughts going through a shy person's mind. What people think I'm not as competent as everyone else? What if people think I'm stupid when they hear what I say? I'm afraid to ask her out because she will probably say no, I won't ask her out, so I won't get hurt. It would be terrible to be unable to think of things to say during my date. If someone shows signs of not liking me, it feels like the end of the world. It is unacceptable if my boss makes any negative comments or suggests an area for improvement during my annual performance review. I must socialize more at work. I must think of something interesting to say. I ought to try harder to be amusing and entertaining. These words add pressure to the tension and anxiety. They also suggest that there are definite rules that you must obey. But we are all at times impolite and angry. We often want to do things our own way, irrespective of what others want. Social conventions are frequently broken in practice. Think of the people you know who break the conventions, but do not worry about it. It helps to look for more balanced and moderate ways of seeing things. For example, things often work out better if you can be polite. Everyone gets angry at times, but it does make a difference how you show it. I will take a risk and ask her out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It's perfectly all right for me to come first at times. I'll try to chat to people from time to time when I feel able and ready. 18. Social clumsiness: Here are common beliefs held by people who are shy. It's essential that everyone likes me. People should always be interested in what I'm saying. People should never have a disapproving or bored look on their face when I'm talking. People should never talk about me behind my back. It's awful to blush, shake or sweat in front of others. If my hands shake at work, it will be a disaster. Anxiety is a sign of weakness. Sometimes our beliefs are exaggerated or incorrect. For example, you may be quick to assume that another person doesn't like you just because he seems uninterested during a conversation. In reality, there are many reasons why a person might look uninterested when talking to you. For example, the other person is not interested in the topic of the conversation, but still likes you as an individual. The other person is hungry. She is in a hurry. For example, she is late for an appointment. The other person is tired. He's feeling sick or unwell. She's shy or socially anxious. He's thinking about something stressful that happened earlier in the day. He's worrying about something that is coming up. The other person is someone who generally doesn't enjoy conversations. She is someone who always looks somewhat uninterested, even when she's having a good time. You are incorrectly assuming that the other person is uninterested, even though he's showing all the usual signs of interest. We often mind read and catastrophis other people's reactions. Thinking, they probably think I'm stupid. They are not going to want to talk to me again. They pity me for acting so pathetically. We waste entire days ruminating about past events. There is nothing wrong with having regrets that motivate you to do better the next time. But if your post mortems only add to your steadily rising mountain of self criticisms, then these regrets are useless. From time to time, we all make mistakes, offend others or look foolish. Stuttering, stammering, and forgetting your place in a sentence are all common ways in which people fluff their lines in everyday interaction. One difference between people who are shy and those who are not particularly anxious is how they deal with these unfortunate social events. People who don't suffer from shyness are often able to say to themselves, who cares what this person thinks? I have the right to make a mistake from time to time. Or I feel sorry that I upset that person, but everyone puts their foot in it at times. Changing your behavior is not about learning how to do things right, nor is it about learning how to behave so that bad things do not happen to you. Nothing you can do will guarantee protection from the occasional rejection or a moment when you feel embarrassed and painfully self conscious. Everyone has times when they cannot think of anything of any interest to say to anyone, when they are undeniably boring. Social awareness will continue to plague a so, but social problems can come to feel less dangerous and threatening. They can stop holding you back from being yourself. 19. Shyness and perfectionism: Perfectionism is the enemy of self esteem. Many shy people feel they need to be perfect in order to be accepted by others. Perfectionists hold standards that are unrealistically high and overly rigid. They may have exaggerated concerns about making mistakes and often go out of their way to ensure that mistakes are avoided. They tend to place too much importance on making a perfect impression on others. If they are not guaranteed to be approved of by others, they may feel very anxious in social situations or avoid socializing altogether. Perfectionism is different from simply having high standards. High standards can be useful because they motivate us to work hard and succeed. In the case of perfectionism, however, the standards are so high and so inflexible that they cause a person to over prepare for tasks, procrastinate, or be overly critical of his own performance. There is nothing wrong with striving for excellence, but there is something wrong with perfectionism that enslaves a person to ideals and principles that cannot be reached. People postpone or avoid projects and activities to avoid the possibility of doing something that is not good enough. Perfectionism is the thought, and procrastination is the action or more accurately the lack of action. To some people, mistakes are enemies, showing the world that they are inadequate and somehow flawed. To other people, mistakes are just mistakes. Mistakes teach them how to do better the next time. The purpose of mistakes is to teach us, not because we are stupid, but because we can't possibly know everything. Perfectionists tend to rate themselves based on how well they perform in something. You tie up your self esteem in how well you do in school, how well you play a certain sport, how popular you are, how many friends you have, how confident you appear, and so on. As a result, you try to perform perfectly, to appear fulles to everyone outside of you. It is often easier to strive to be perfect than to be who you really are. Be to accept who you really are is to accept that you can be not only loving, but also hateful, not only generous, but also miserly, not only kind, but also mean, not only bold, but also shy. For this is the human condition. Each of us contains opposing qualities to some degree. Each of us is human, and that's all there is to it. The sooner we let go of perfectionism, we will become. When we accept our humanness, there is no need for constant worries about every little thing we say, do or think. The critic and judge move out of the way to make room for spontaneity and reality. 20. Negative consequences of being shy: The shy are often misjudged by others and are seen as cold, aloof, conceded, and having no interest in anyone else. If you send the message to others that you are unavailable. For example, speaking very quietly or letting your voice drop off at the end of your sentences, Standing far away from people when you are talking with them. Answering questions with very short responses and displaying a closed body posture. Eventually, people will be more likely to leave you alone. If someone says hello to you, it is expected that you should respond in similar fashion. If you enter a room that someone is in, you should acknowledge their presence in some way. Perhaps by greeting them, nodding or smiling at them. If someone does something for you, then thanks are expected. Shy people can fail to make the appropriate responses in these circumstances and may be seen as rude or unfriendly. They can fail to respond, not because they do not know what they are supposed to do or how to do it. But because their shyness inhibits them from doing what is needed, and the other person usually does not understand that this lack of response is due to shyness. Much of our personal identity comes from our relationships with other people. Having social relationships increases positive emotion. That is our general level of happiness, joy, and curiosity. Indeed, one of the most effective ways of increasing such positive emotions is to interact with other people. Positive emotion in turn makes us feel sociable and more positive about people around us. Shyness can decrease the quality of your life. You feel that you are drifting along in a state of wake unhappiness with the sense that life is meaningless or deficient. 21. Shyness over the phone: F Shyness also arises on the telephone. We might expect the telephone to represent a relatively safe way of communication. The lack of face to face contact takes away the reason to worry about how you appear under the spotlight. But the inability to see people's reactions makes a p. Unexpected phone calls her anxious. The person becomes increasingly self conscious about the risk of saying something stupid or sounding nervous, verbally clumsy, ill informed, or unprepared. Not being able to see the person on the other end and to monitor their reactions is also a problem. It is even harder when she cannot see herself through their eyes. The shy person is always worried that he might be ringing at an inconvenient time, intruding on the privacy of the other person. Though this may just be an excuse to put the call off if she is calling a household or office where she knows several people. She worries that she has to exchange small talk with somebody she doesn't really want to talk to before she is put on to the right person. A phone conversation won't normally allow for long silences, and unexpected questions often have to be answered instantly. Sometimes without enough time for thought. Also, there is the fear of a bad line and the prospect of missing what people have said with more potential for confusion and embarrassment. All these factors individually seem quite trivial, but they build together to give the shy a real sense of stress and a real hatred of using the phone. If you have a difficult call to make, you can plan what you want to say and even prepare a written script for your side of the call. If you are using a script, be sure to allow a lot of pauses to give the other person time to respond. As you become more comfortable with telephone calls, make sure that you do not restrict yourself to calls requiring a script. If you are making a call, the first thing you do is identify yourself. Don't assume people who recognize your voice. If you are calling someone that you have just met, be sure to include some information that will remind the person who you are. Next, it is a good idea to ask if you have called at a convenient time. The person you are calling may be preparing to eat dinner or go out the door. If so, make arrangements to call again or quickly mention why you are calling. Even though the other person can't see you, it doesn't hurt to keep your body moving, to smile, to make gestures, to make a point. This keeps your energy flowing, which will be reflected in your voice. Remember to focus on the other, not on how you are coming across. Ending telephone conversations is like ending face to face conversations. If it's a business call, you can thank the person for her time. If it's a personal call, you can tell the person you enjoyed talking with him. B. 22. Shy person’s strategies for coping: Many shy people want to protect themselves from the embarrassments and humiliations that they fear. They attempt to disguise their incompetence by seeking out settings that provide control and predictability. They deflect attention away from themselves. Play out eccentric characters. Smile and listen attentively. Use material possessions as camouflage. But if you try to keep yourself safe from disaster and avoid doing things that make you feel at risk, your life becomes restricted. Aprotective behaviors are small things that you may do to feel safer in the situations that you feel, like wearing extra makeup, Letting your hair fall in front of your face, finding out who else will be at a party before deciding whether to attend, eating in a dimly lit restaurant. Your date won't notice your anxiety. Wearing sunglasses to help avoid making eye contact, smoking, so as to have something to do with your hands. Some just fade into the background. Do a bit of people watching, eave strap on other people's conversations, but do not get sucked into anything themselves. They deliberately arrive late. Hang around on the edge of conversational groups without becoming part of them. Dive through the crowd to the other side of the room just to avoid being in one place too long. Some people act as though they do not care about social skills and come across as self confident. They may do things like dressing eccentrically and inappropriately. For example, wearing open toed sandals in the snow or bringing unexpected conversation pieces along to meetings, or making off the wall remarks that don't fit into the conversation. By conducting regular breaching experiments that disrupt other people's expectations. They try to regain an element of control over their encounters with others. Their act of eccentricity allow them to pass as num shy. These acts are likely to provoke comment and turn the conversation onto them. But along lines that they have planned for, if they can direct bits of it through anticipated eccentricities, that gives them back some of the control. Distraction involves escaping from anxious thoughts and feelings by focusing on thoughts that are more pleasant. For example, while traveling on a bus or train, you might always be sure to bring a book to distract yourself from feeling anxious about making eye contact with others or from thinking about what others might be thinking about you. Such distractions may help you to feel comfortable while in social or performance situations. But in the long term, they prevent you from learning that you can manage the situation without having to rely on subtle avoidance. If you are fearful of making small talk, you may spend hours preparing topics of conversation and rehearsing what you might talk about. If you are afraid of looking unattractive, you may put too much effort into fixing your hair, choosing your clothes or building your muscles at the gym. In many cases, these situations might be managed with less effort. Leaving time and energy for other things. Safety behaviors decrease your confidence because they leave you with the message that you need protection, that you would be safe without it. You feel safer, but you also prevent yourself from having any interactions that may help you change and grow. Avoidance prevents you learning that the disasters you fear are more imagined than real. Oh. 23. Attitudes toward shy people: F One type of social reaction that the Shi receive is that of being given special consideration. They are viewed as sick, weak or vulnerable and in need of protection. This reflects an attitude of sympathy, bordering on pity. Non shy others may make well intentioned moves to include the shy without expecting too much of them, which can feel quite patronizing. Being selected for special treatment can be highly embarrassing and increases the self consciousness that the shy person feels. People who are shy often exhibit non verbal behaviors that communicate to others. Stay away from me. For example, leaning back or standing far away from other people, avoiding eye contact, crossing your arms over your chest, clinching your fists, and maintaining a serious facial expression. For instance, at a party, people are most likely to approach someone who is smiling, making eye contact, and talking at a reasonable volume. When someone stands far away, speaks quietly and avoids eye contact. It is natural to assume that the individual is either uninterested in speaking or difficult to get to know. 24. Shyness in western culture: Western societies consider s hyss to be a sign of immaturity, weakness, or lack of confidence. Shyness is seen as a problem, a barrier to success in relationships or career, and people have a moral responsibility to overcome it. Our society values extraversion more than introversion. Television shows, movies, and advertising reinforce the notion that the ideal way of being is to go out there, B a celebrity, B and in your face personality. Non shyness is normal and acceptable while shyness is undesirable form of behavior. There is a message out there in society that says, it's not okay to be shy, that everyone should be aggressive, assertive, and strive for the limelight. This propaganda pressures us to feel that we too, should be so bold. It matters little whether this reflects our true nature or not. Many people today are superficially friendly and outgoing, but they have problems with intimate relationships. Some people who like relating one to one are not appreciated in the public world and are often perceived as outsiders. Shy characters in television programs, films, and fiction are portrayed as sad lonely types who never quite managed to achieve what their bold counterparts do. Journalistic accounts of Shy celebrities follow a story of triumph over shyness, reinforcing the idea that it is incompatible with success. The Shi person represents the anathema of Western culture's ideal worker by appearing to reject the go getting team building. You can do it, Spirit of the modern office. The Shi person poses a silent threat to the goals of an efficient service economy and the social benefits of exploiting human resources. Shyness is seen as a problem about which something must be done. It is associated with incompetence, anti social behavior, lack of the social skills. It results in emotionally impoverished relationships, a less than perfect career, and a sense of unrealized potential. But why is it seen as wrong or irrational to feel apprehensive about talking to people we don't know or about opening ourselves up to scrutiny? What is it about our culture that demands that we pretend to be poised, skilled, and assertive in our dealings with others? When a person appears unwilling to uphold the negotiated order of a situation by smiling, talking, and so on. They are breaking some of the basic unspoken rules that govern social interaction. They are seen to be committing a moral offense of not showing sufficient involvement in a social situation. They breach the taken for granted assumptions about how the interaction should unfold. Therefore, a shy person is seen as different, and outsider to mainstream social life. The mass media perpetuated the notion that it is natural to have an active social life. There is a pressure to be gregarious and to enjoy being center stage. But this is not something that comes naturally to some introverted people. Communication may be a universal human drive, but we vary in the extent to which we like to spend time with other people and in intensity of interaction with which we feel comfortable. Culturally, we have come to place high value on extraverted traits, such as ambitious assertiveness. The Shi tend to be passed over for promotions in the workplace. A person with an overbearing, aggressively self promoting attitude not only maintains her position, but is frequently rewarded with advancement. What is a shy person to do? You can't change yourself into an a obsessed, aggressively self assured extra and why would you even want to? Shy people have to find a way to navigate social situations, including their career without succumbing to external pressure to be someone they are not. 25. Is being shy a bad thing?: F. Just because you think of yourself as shy, does not mean that you are in need of help because of that. Almost everyone experiences shyness or anxiety from time to time. There is nothing wrong with being. But if it keeps you from forming relationships with others, advancing in your education or career or carrying on with everyday activities, you may need to confront your fears to live an enjoyable, satisfying life. If the belief I should make a good impression on others motivates you to do a good job at work. That's great. If on the other hand, the same belief makes you feel paralyzed and unable to get any work done. That's a problem. China is not a fixed state. It is fluid. You can change shape and its quantity. You can definitely reduce it. Once you accept hinaus as a part of you, you can choose which aspects you would like to keep and discard those that are no longer promoting growth and optimism. Oh. 26. Conditional and unconditional self acceptance: The confident people accept themselves and think highly enough of themselves to talk freely and say what they want to say. The people who are not confident are on edge, because at any second, their acceptance of themselves can drop based on if other people's acceptance of them drops. If you can walk and move normally when alone in your house. But then feel tense and self conscious in social situations. It's because you are aware of how other people are seeing you. Instead of letting your legs and body move themselves like you usually do, you are trying to monitor what other people will think of your actions and you try to adjust them manually. You are being overly conscious about how you look from other people's perspectives. If you can't think of what to say when you are around popular, important, confident people, but you can speak perfectly fine to close family members. It's because you are trying to get them to accept you. You are worried that if you say the wrong thing, they will reject you. You weigh every word carefully for its effect to try to control how people will respond to you. Your own acceptance of yourself hinges on other people's acceptance of you. You are trying to get other people to love and approve of you by trying to live up to their standards. Whenever you feel shy, try to trace to the root of it and find out how it relates to fear of disapproval? Anxiety and shyness are usually caused by you commanding yourself that you must do well. Look for the shot must thinking. Are your actions a result of thinking that you must be loved or accepted? Is your behavior driven by approval seeking? Do not rate yourself in any way, shape, or form. If you do badly on a test or lose your job, it does not mean that you are an inferior person. Your worth as a p does not change depending on how well you do and what other people think of you. You are not rateable. Your actions can be good or bad, but not you. You just exist. If you get a bad mark on a test or lose your job, it may mean your actions weren't the right ones, but it says nothing about you. It is essential to rate your performance in order to correct it, but don't rate yourself based on your performance. This is true for other people too, do not rate them. You can condemn acts, but not any human beings for any reason whatsoever. If somebody steals money from you, their actions were bad. But it does not mean that they are an inherently bad or inferior person. In order to stop condemning yourself for doing poorly. You need to stop feeling somehow superior to others when you do well. Whenever you are thinking of some logical reason why you should feel superior. Let it go. The fact that you are more educated, smarter, or more mature than someone does not make you superior to them. The fact that you have more money or possessions or more going for you does not make you superior to anyone. You need to quit the habit of trying to logically convince yourself why you should feel confident. There are no reasons to feel confident because your acceptance of yourself should be unconditional. People who build self esteem based on an accomplishment, ability, physical appearance, and so on, feel good about themselves for as long as their skills, abilities, and accomplishments remain intact. Yet when their skills, relationships, or accomplishments change, they lose themselves in the process. The fact that sometimes you get approval and sometimes disapproval from other people says nothing about you. It's just a useful feedback. Your feelings of worth or inadequateness should not be attached to other people's positive reactions. Desire or preference for approval is good, even human. As long as you don't feel you must have it, lot of the time, you will not get what you want. It's okay to feel appropriately sorry and sad if some of your basic human needs aren't being met. If you mess up on a public speech, it's normal to feel sad that your performance is bad. The issue is when you feel inappropriately horrified and ashamed of yourself for it. Instead of feeling ashamed of yourself if you aren't doing well in some area, say to yourself. I wish it weren't so. What do I do to either change it or live with it? This applies to lack of friends, lack of a social life, lack of romantic relationships, lack of success, and any insecurities about your physical appearance. You no longer need them to be different in order to accept yourself, but you may wish to improve them. You may wish to improve them in order to increase your own quality of life. No because improving them may make you more worthy of other people's approval. Instead of needing other people to love and accept you, you can feel good about yourself for no logical reason whatsoever. 27. Fear of being disliked: At the core of shyness is an excessive concern with being negatively evaluated by showing themselves to be a certain kind of person with particular attributes. Shy people hope to increase the degree to which other people will value having relationships with them. Many shy people have this core belief that says, I must be loved, I must be approved of. If you stay quiet, then there is very little risk that you are going to offend anyone. You only feel free to express yourself or open up when there is no chance that the other person will reject you. Minimizing your involvement in a social encounter may reduce the chances of doing or saying the wrong thing. If you are quiet, unassuming and undisclosing, other people won't disapprove of you, but they also won't notice you. Shy people also often adopt a nice persona. They tend to be ingratiating. They don't have to face the challenges of sustaining arguments or standing up for themselves. Most people who suffer from shyness are trying to live up to other people's standards. They are constantly worried about if their appearance will appeal to others. Whenever they say anything, they look to see how other people reacted to decide if it was good or not. If people react well, they feel pride. If other people appear to disapprove, they feel shame. Next time you see someone shy in a group conversation. Look carefully at what they do after they say something. Most of the times, their eyes will dart quickly to the person who is the highest social value. It's because they are looking for his approval. People who are self confident do not look for reactions after they talk. If you have this habit of looking for a reaction, make yourself keep eye contact with whoever you are talking to or look away. Instead of looking at the person, you feel the urge to look at. 28. Self-monitoring your behavior: Shy people try to micromanage and control what other people think of them? They constantly think about little things that are unimportant? For example, is what you say next going to be liked? Are your close representative of your personality? Will the way you work give off the right vibe? Do people secretly respect the way you are? What should you say next? Will it sound good? What's the best way to say it? It is exhausting just to think of the things that go through the shy person's mind. This type of thinking is called self monitoring, and it's bad for several reasons. Instead of just letting go and expressing yourself. You think and think and think, when you finally do something, it feels unnatural. It's not fun for you, and it's not fun for other people. The more you hesitate before doing something. The more contrived and phony, it will seem when you finally do. If you think of something to say, and then wonder if you should say it. You get nervous. It stops becoming something that just popped into your head. You put more and more importance on how people will react to it. When you finally do say it, it comes out unnatural. When you self monitor, you seem out of focus like you are actually 10 seconds in the past or 10 seconds in the future, instead of being in the now and enjoying it. Confident people do not think about what they are going to say next. They get a general feeling of what they want to communicate and they say it. When you think about everything you say and do, it doesn't come from you directly. It's been filtered by your brain and people can feel it. They can sense a slight offeness when you've been thinking of a remark for a minute. They don't feel the same energy coming from you as from a person who comes up with something to say on the spot, and that lack of energy turns them off. Anytime you are trying to create some impression on people, you are sabotaging yourself. Only someone needy and desperate for approval would be trying so hard to make others perceive him well. On the other hand, if you don't really care about the particular impression you make on someone, it shows that you are securing yourself because you don't require other people to approve of you. Most of the time, your breathing is an unconscious behavior. You are not conscious of it because your body takes care of it without you having to do anything about it. But if you start to make yourself breathe differently, you have now made breathing into a conscious behavior. Most actions that relate to socializing should come naturally, not by conscious effort. Don't try to control how you move your mouth when you talk. Don't think about how your arms or legs move as you walk or sit down. Don't worry about what position your arms are in. You can't force your walk or speech to be more natural. Giving up the need to control everything will make you communicate better. It's like you've been driving your whole life with brakes on socially, and now you discovered how to release your brakes. It feels like the right words are somehow coming out of your mouth automatically. You aren't stuck in your head, trying to come up with something to say. It is all flowing, and you feel in the moment and connected to the other person and you are having fun. T. 29. How to socialize naturally?: Your eventual goal should be to socialize naturally. That means without thinking. Just like you can ride a bike without thinking. What gets in your way is self monitoring and controlling your actions. This is what causes you to act self conscious and inhibited. Let's go of control and allow your arms and legs to do what they may. First, you have to realize when you are self monitoring. You have to catch yourself in the act. When you realize you are doing this, you need to switch your focus. Your attention needs to be directed. If you think about all the things you are doing wrong and are focused on not embarrassing yourself, you will end up playing it safe. You might say as little as possible, and when you do speak, you will be self conscious, and it will come across weird. But if your focus is on getting to know others and sharing laughs with them, you will fit right in and people will accept you into the group. If you are totally immersed in a conversation so that all you are thinking about is what is being discussed, then the words will come automatically and spontaneously. Don't think before you act. Don't wonder in advance of what you are going to say. The first thing is when you rehearse what you are going to say in your head, before you say it. Very social people just get a general gut feeling of wanting to say something and they open their mouth and say it. Don't plan, act first. Then correct your actions as you go along. Wen a thought pops into your head, express it within 2 seconds. The longer you wait, Diverse your fear of expressing it badly becomes. You build it up too much in your mind. The solution is to downplay. You are just talking to someone. Being spontaneous is a muscle. The more you use it, the easier it becomes to rely on it. Don't criticize your actions after you do something. Do not analyze how well it went. Don't say to yourself, maybe I shouldn't have said that. Maybe the other person will take it the wrong way. Your criticism is unnecessary because when you make a mistake in a social situation, your mind learns the lesson and automatically adjusts your future behavior. It's the same as learning to ride a bicycle. If you fall, your brain gets feedback from the experience. Over time, you'll learn how to keep your balance and not make the same mistakes again. Learning social skills works the same way. You may start out awkward and weird, but your brain continually learns from your experiences and improves your behavior based on the feedback you get from interacting with other people. And stop tearing yourself apart. Constantly second guessing yourself on a daily basis is defeating. If you don't run through whatever you are going to say in your head, how do you know what you are actually going to say? The answer is you don't. You just have to trust that over many years of conversation and hearing other people talk. You have enough knowledge to be able to come up with what to say intuitively. This takes a lip of faith at the beginning. You've been thinking about what to say for so long that just talking without a filter will seem unnatural at first. But it's how most people actually talk. It's impossible to totally not care what other people think of you. We will always care, no matter what. It's built into our psychology. Do not worry at all about being too uninhibited and saying embarrassing things. Only focus on practicing, being less careful, less concerned, and less conscientious of your actions. 30. Body image of shy people: F Everyone has a self image. It's a picture in your mind of who you think you are. Many shy people have some serious body image problems. You may feel other people can't or won't accept you for how you look. Short, tall, bold, hairy, skinny, fat, bad teeth, large nose, foreign accent, ugly, a physical defect, et cetera. Why is it that when you try to be more confident and social, it always feels like you have to force it like you are putting on an act. It's because you are trying to change your outer behavior without changing yourself image. That's why you can fake confidence for maybe a couple of minutes. But then you go back to being shy. When you try to act confident, it's like a fish that's trying to swim upstream. It can do it for a bit, but eventually, the stream overpowers it, and it is swimming in the direction it always has. The stream is like yourself image, and it is always bringing you back to acting in ways that fit yourself image. If your self image says you are inferior to other people, then you will find it difficult to act in ways that contradict your inferiority. For example, an overweight person can lose weight through sheer willpower. But if they see themselves as a fat person, then they will feel a gravitational pull to become the person they conceive themselves to be. If you believe deep down that you are inferior, then you will behave in ways that communicate to people that you are inferior. You will be much less confident around them, unable to hold eye contact, or your voice will become quieter. You may try too hard to seek their approval. When you act as though you are inferior, the other person sees this and has no choice but to believe you. After all, who knows you better than you know yourself? People who then treat you as if you are inferior to them. When you see this, you will gain further evidence of your inferiority. Your background, your looks, any physical defects, your life situation, your upbringing. All of these do not matter when it comes to achieving social success. They may have contributed to making you feel inferior or inadequate in the past, but they do not have to control your future. It's not your looks themselves, but your thoughts about them that hold you back. Maybe you feel insecure because you are overweight or unattractive. But there are plenty of people out there who are overweight and not good looking. Yet they are still able to have self esteem that allows them to be confident and express themselves. They may be overweight, but they don't see themselves as inferior or a failure because of it. 31. Beauty, Shyness and Self-esteem: In Western culture, beauty is considered the prime measurement of human worth. People are being conditioned and brainwashed into believing that the more good looking someone is, the more valuable they are. The philosophy is, look like this, or you are ugly. Purchase our product to make yourself more valuable. If you buy into the superficial values of the media, then you will never measure up. You could be a doctor who has saved thousands of lives, but you will still feel inferior to someone who happened to be born good looking. You judge and measure yourself not by your own standard, but against someone else's. You feel inferior because you are constantly trying to live up to other people's standards. So they accept you. You try to fix yourself to make yourself more acceptable to people. If you have crooked teeth, you may get them fixed. If you are overweight, you go on a diet. If you are ugly, you get plastic surgery, whatever you think is a barrier to other people's approval, you try to get rid of. The problem with getting rid of a perceived inadequacy is that you are not fixing the real flaw, which is in the way you think. If you feel like a loser because you are over weight and you become skinny, then there is always the threat of you sinking back down to being a seless loser as soon as you gain a few pounds. As soon as you stop meeting the standards, you immediately turn into a sless loser in your own mind. Many shy people make the mistake of thinking that if they had just been born looking like a model, then they wouldn't be shy and insecure. This is a huge misconception. People who are confident aren't confident because they have no flaws. They are confident in spite of their flaws. In fact, their defects just make them more unique and interesting. They may have flaws that you yourself would be ashamed of, but they don't see them as an issue. They need to be perfectly acceptable to people to feel okay. They don't need to live up to other people's standards in order to be able to accept themselves. 32. Superior and Inferior People: When you see someone who is better than you at something, do you feel the need to pull them down from their podium by criticizing? Are you uncomfortable if someone younger is more successful than you? Do you feel the need to put down people who you think are more attractive than you? For example, you think she's got nothing going for her. She works as a waitress and has probably never even finished high school. I, on the other hand, a more intelligent, have a good job, et cetera. When someone thinks he is inherently inferior in some way, he will overcompensate, beetle, put down, criticize. It's a way of reducing uncomfortable feelings caused by thoughts of inferiority. It reveals your own insecurities. People have been conditioned since childhood to achieve. Society puts an over emphasis on competition and individual achievement on proving one's worth on material success, status, on measurable achievement, to be loved, accepted, and valued, people must produce the desirable responses are recognized on the basis of what we have produced, not on who we are. You may have deep seated beliefs that you are not a vers file person unless you achieve, unless you are the best. Unless you live up to society's expectations about social life, relationships, and financial situation. When you equate what you do with who you are, you feel inferior or superior to others. Inferiority and superiority are two sides of the same coin. The solution is to realize that the coin itself is false. You are not inferior, you are not superior. You are simply you. You as a person, are not in a competition against anyone else. Simply because there isn't a single other person in the universe the same as you. Your value comes from your uniqueness as an individual. Stop measuring yourself against their standards. You are not them and can never measure up. Neither can they measure up to your standards, nor should they? You can be inferior to other people in some way or another. But if you compare yourself unfavorably with them, you will feel inferior and depressed. Just because you can't do certain things as skillfully as others, does not mean you are no good. Just because you are inferior in doing something does not make you an inferior person. You are not atable. Your actions can be good or bad, but not you. You can condemn and think low of acts, but not any human being for any reason whatsoever. For example, say you make a presentation in front of a group and do. In this case, your performance was bad, but it doesn't mean that you are a or inferior person. It is essential to rate your performance in order to correct it, but do not rate yourself based on your performance. O 33. Do You Feel Inferior to Other People?: We interact with people differently based on how valuable we see them. If you place a lot of value or importance on someone, then you are going to act a lot more inhibited and anxious around them than someone you don't care much about. For example, at work, we may treat our boss differently than our co workers. We fear the disapproval of those who we think have a higher value or are superior than us. Do you ever feel like some people you try to talk to automatically brush you off? They don't let you talk and don't really listen to what you have to say. Then you see these same people giving their full attention to other people, who are seen as being popular? Imagine you were walking down the street. If the 10-year-old child ran up to you and said, You suck. How much would that affect you emotionally? Maybe you would care a little, but not that much. What about if an attractive person of your age came up to you and said the exact same words? Now, how much would you be affected? Notice how your anxiety levels differ based on which person you interact with. Chances are, the more superior you believe the other person is to you, the less confidently you will be able to behave. For example, you can easily talk to people who are seen as being uncool, but struggle to say the right thing when talking to someone aggressive, assertive, intelligent, or in authority. Have you ever wanted to be seen with someone because you thought other people would think you were a cooler person because of it? When you walk past people on the street, Are you more anxious when you are walking past an elderly couple or someone attractive around your own age? Do you try harder than usual to come up with something interesting to say when you are talking to someone popular? Are you much more laid back and natural when you are talking to someone, most people think is a loser? Do you ever want to show someone popular your better qualities, name dropping or mentioning material possessions, which you hope will impress them. You are never actually trying to treat everyone differently. It just happens. Everyone has this type of automatic system of valuing people? It controls how they act around who. In every interaction between two people, one person is higher status. H or she may be better connected socially, prettier, more dominant, a better leader or just more popular with everyone. One person is always cooler. The person who is lower status usually ends up trying harder to get the high status person's approval. It is not pleasant to be on the lower end of this social value scale, but it's very important to see how this works and to understand that everybody does this unconsciously. We don't know who are doing it. People pay more attention to people of high value. These are the people we consider superior to us. We perceive they are worse to be greater than ours. We don't feel entitled to express ourselves confidently around them. In a way we feel intimidated. When the person you are talking to is someone on your level, then you are naturally going to be much more confident and free to express your personality. When you don't feel inadequate compared to the person you are talking to, your confidence and social skills come easily and naturally. It's only when you are intimidated by someone else or feel inferior to a group of people that your mind goes blank and you start acting shy. In reality, there are no superior or high value people. The only reason why you see some people as more valuable than you is because you have some rules in your mind that determine whether someone is valuable to you or not. If someone passes all these rules and criteria you have, then you see them as valuable. Ask yourself, Does someone's confidence, decisiveness, assertiveness often intimidate me? If I see someone as having a lot more friends and social connections than me? Do I feel inferior to them? If someone is very physically attractive or wears the most stylish clothes, do I act differently around them? How differently do I treat people who are below average looking and people who are drop dead gorgeous? Am I more anxious around people, my own age, the very old, or the very young? It's usually people our own age or older people in positions of authority that are most intimidating. 34. People who are confident in social situations: There is nothing wrong with being quiet. But if you ask shy people about their quietness, you learn that they are dissatisfied with it. Partly, this is because they want to talk more. They enjoy the company of others and they wish that they could contribute more to a conversation. Other people seem able to know what to say and when and how to say it. To the shy, it seems as if other people belong to a secret society. Somehow, everybody else seems to have built up a shared stock of knowledge, which helps them to perform well in social encounters. Many shy people see themselves as outsiders in the social world in it, but not truly part of it. They don't know how to circulate at parties. They don't know how to re establish contact with people. They know vaguely. They don't know how to speak to a stranger in a pub. Shy person thinks that social situations ought to be straightforward. They seem to be easy for everyone else but her. Other people look more competent at conversation than she is. They all seem to know what they are doing and appear to be following a script. She feels that her problems are somehow to do with the kind of person she is. The person who sets the standards for everyone is an image of the relaxed, confident, social success, but there is no such person. People who at first seem to be models of social deafness from other angles are no such thing. The most confident people also confess that they are shy. We think we are surrounded by virtuosos of social rules, delivering word perfect performances while we alone are fluffing our lines. But everyone is struggling to learn these rules that were never written down. Although some of us learn them more slow witted and unwillingly than mo. Social competence is like riding a bicycle, a skill that anyone can learn and improve upon. If they practice enough. People who have developed good social skills might seem to be naturally adept in interaction. But day performances have been practiced and rehearsed like everyone else's. The impastor phenomenon is a theory that despite being highly successful in their career or other social areas, people may remain convinced that they are not really as capable as they appear. Central to the impasor phenomenon is a feeling of being a fraud of having fooled other people into believing in your ability and a great fear of one day being found out and sent away in disgrace. This is similar to shy people's perception of their own incompetence and the fear of discrediting themselves by doing the wrong thing. Many people feel fraudulent inside, but still dare to risk giving a performance. Even the most apparently sociable, talkative and self confident person might be giving a carefully studied performance that serves to disguise his underlying shyness. Both shy and non shy may feel as if they are impasors. It might appear that everybody else knows what they are doing, but many people probably are faking it. W are to some extent impasors. Perhaps it is quite normal to feel out of your depth in social situations. Although to explicitly acknowledge this would pose a serious threat to the interaction order. Shi people perceive themselves as outsiders to the secret society of competent others. They believe that it is their individual responsibility to avoid any embarrassment, awkwardness, or strained interaction. The Nan shy may perceive the standards of social behavior that are expected of them to be lower. They realize that they only have to give a minimally acceptable activity in order to keep the situation going. The nan shy person may feel more confident in her ability to pass because the standard she has set is so much lower. She has more trust in other people to provide protective face work, should anything go wrong. The shy person does not anticipate such loyalty, and so he experiences every social encounter as a risky, solo performance. 35. Getting Rid of Mind-Reading: Imagine that someone yawns or appears distracted while you are talking and you automatically think. I am so boring or he knows that I'm shy and have a hard time talking. You believe you know what others are thinking. This is mind reading, but we can never be certain until we ask the person out right what she is thinking. Next time you catch yourself mind reading. Just stop. Realize that if you are a normal human being, you simply cannot know what others are thinking. If a person yawns while you talk, there are so many other possible explanations. Perhaps she didn't sleep last night. Perhaps she breathes shallowly and from time to time has to yawn to get an adequate amount of oxygen. If the person is distracted, maybe he has something to be distracted about. Perhaps he's still thinking about the fight he just had with his spouse, or he's trying to remember whether he left something on the stove. Often, other people do not respond in the ways that you hope they will, but they are unhlpful or insensitive reactions, do not make you less acceptable as a person or make your feelings less important and meaningful. Have you ever been with a person who looked grumpy and you assumed that you must have done something wrong. Somehow, you feel responsible for having caused a person to feel badly. That's taking things personally. Perhaps the person is grumpy because she just missed winning the lado by one number. Maybe she has a mood disorder. Maybe she just stopped her toe. You can always ask and check things out. Don't assume that everything is your fault. As tiny children, we often assumed that the world revolved ad and that if something bad happened, it had something to do with us. As adults, we sometimes get trapped into feeling the same thing. But we need to realize that we simply don't have that much power. The truth is, we are not at the center of other people's moods. 36. Change the Way You Think: What would you think if your voice trembled while talking to a group of people? Oh, my God, my voice is trembling. Now they know I'm anxious. They will think I'm weird. This is where people usually stop thinking any further. The idea of being as weird can be so horrible that it is enough to stop a person cold. But the trick is to go on and flesh out your thinking. Ask yourself, what would happen next? If they thought I was weird, then they would stop talking to me. Then what? Then I would be all alone. Then I would cry. Then I would really make a ful of myself. Then what? Then nobody would ever want to talk to me again. I would have to leave town. Then I would have to start a new life. Now it's time to ask yourself, would I really move from town, leave my family and start a new life just because my voice trembled? Look out for such words as always, never and everyone. As soon as you hear these words, you know there is a huge flaw in your thinking. This is sometimes called black and white thinking. You think that because your crush rejected you once, that you will always be rejected. You think that because when you tried to assert yourself, your parents yelled at you, you can never assert yourself without this backlash. If you were left at once for an embarrassing moment, you don't see it as an embarrassing moment. You see it as proof that you are an awkward person in general. If you gave a bad presentation in school, you don't see it as a bad presentation. You see yourself as a bad presenter. The world simply does not work that way. You don't take into account that each situation is different. Each person is different and that you will act differently at different times. Realistically, some people at the social gathering will be confident. Others may look confident on the outside, but be shaking on the inside. Still others will experience various degrees of uncertainty. There are many shades of gray between the extremes of black and white. They are in mind that there is no such thing as perfect social skills. What works best in one situation or with one group of people may not work well in another situation or with another group. For example, the best way to ask one person out on a date may cause a rejection from someone else. Although a particular style may help you to get one job, it may work against you for another job. In other words, no matter how well developed your social skills are, they can never be perfect. Like everyone, you will continue to stumble from time to time, occasionally, you will make a bad impression on other people. If the thing that you fear happens, it may not actually be a disaster. Everyone makes mistakes, most of which are invisible to anyone but themselves. Most mistakes have no more significance than tripping over a curtone. Most of them turn out to be useful too as you can learn something from them. Like to look where you are going more carefully. If you think I should have done it better, change it to I will do it better in time. I will do where I can. No one could do more than that. There is no fixed, rigid and right way of doing things socially. There are many ways. Your way, once you have learned to relax and be yourself, will be just as good as the next persons. Oh. 37. Challenge Your Negative Thoughts: Challenging catastrophic thinking requires shifting the focus from how terrible the outcome would be to how you might cope with the situation, if it were to occur? Ask yourself these questions. What if my fears actually come true? How can I cope if it were to occur? Would it really be as terrible as I think? Does this really matter in the big scheme of things? Would I care about this a month from now, a year from now? In many cases, you will realize that even if your fear does come true, it won't be the end of the world. You will cope with the situation and your discomfort will pass. For example, what if someone thinks you are pathetic and that's why he isn't interested in spending time with you. What if someone declines your offer for lunch? Do you think you will be able to cope with the feelings of rejection? Maybe you will feel bad at first, but in the end, it probably wouldn't matter. You need to recognize that not everyone has to like you. Perhaps it would mean that you are just not a good match. Even if someone thinks you are an idiot. It doesn't mean you really are one. That person's opinion doesn't reflect that of everyone else. It wouldn't be the end of the world if people noticed your shyness. Everyone feels anxious from time to time. Who cares if your hands shake. You have the right to have shaky hands. Probably no one will even notice. Even if they notice, they probably won't care. If you are ridiculed or left at, it would be manageable. Most people get teased and ridiculed from time to time. You suddenly laugh at other people sometimes. Other than the temporary discomfort or embarrassment. It wouldn't really matter in the big scheme of things. Although some people may criticize you for appearing nervous, it's likely that most people couldn't care less. If you are worried that others might criticize if your voice becomes shaky, you might ask yourself, am I critical of other people when I notice their voice shaking? Most likely, you would not assume someone else to be incompetent, stupid, or weak, just because he or she seems a bit shy in a particular situation. The same is true of other people. Everyone is doing some things right and some things wrong. Most people are not thinking in terms of right and wrong. There are so many different ways of doing things that it matters a little which one you choose. Doing things differently from others makes people curious about you. But nothing more than that. In reality, the consequences of making a mistake or em yourself are usually minimal and almost never last very long. Even if people notice that you have made a mistake or that you appear to be anxious, they are likely to forget about it after a few minutes. 38. Social Scripts and Conventions: F. Often, scripted social situations provide an outlet for shy people to overcome their inhibition. Conventions are recognized ways of doing things or patterns of behavior. Many people feel uncomfortable if they do not know the conventions. For instance, if they do not know which fork to use or what to wear. Turning up in jeans when everyone else is dressed in their best or vice versa can be embarrassing. Some people think that in order to get better at socializing, they should learn how to behave correctly as if they were a right way of doing things. There are some situations in which the conventional ways of doing things are rather like rules. Then it can suddenly feel more comfortable to know what the rules are. For example, it's useful to know how to order a meal at a restaurant. How to make an appointment to see the doctor. Do what is expected of you as a member of a sports club or church or evening class. Learning the rules in such situations is a bit like learning a script. The script is useful because it tells you how to behave. There are several ways to learn about social conventions. First, you need to ask? You could politely ask for more information about how to behave in a social situation. Would you mind if someone asked you about what was the right way to do something? Would it be better to admit that you do not know or to do the wrong thing? For example, at a formal dinner party, you could say, I'm sorry, but I'm not sure where I should sit. Do you know if there is a sitting plan? Sometimes information is there, but you are too confused to take it in. For example, notices about wearing ties or not smoking or laying out forks in the order they would be used in. People in different places develop different conventions. There is no one right way. Watch out for upsetting thoughts if you break a convention in five years time, who will remember that you sat in someone else's place or spoke out of turn at a meeting? You may not always know exactly what to do ahead of time. Instead, you have to learn to do what feels right and to respond flexibly to the demands of the situation as it develops without being self conscious. This is much easier if you can focus comfortably on other people. 39. Understanding Social Rules: People who experience shyness often believe they will feel at ease in the world once they have all the rules. They often wonder about whether they are doing things the right way or not. They believe that there is a right way to do everything, but they are not always sure what that right way is. There is clearly no single or right way of saying hello and goodbye. But shy people often talk as if they were in danger of doing it wrong. As if there was an ideal way to behave. But whose way of behaving is the ideal? It is not a law of the land that you have to obey conventions. They are not rules or laws. In the end, people do whatever they feel comfortable with or what works for them. This is why there is no need to be self conscious about the way you do things. There are no absolute ideas for how we should behave moment by moment. There is no big rule book that tells us the one right way for every little thing we might do in the company of others. Basically, the main rule is to be considerate of others. That's why we say thank you. Why we return people's phone calls and why we call a friend to wish him a happy birthday. Rules change with time, and they change according to the culture in which you live. Chances are, there are no rules for many of the behaviors you are worried about. Whether you cross or uncross your legs while sitting in a group is of little concern to anybody. Mainly, if you are generally kind to people and don't do anything that offends your own sense of decency, you will probably fit right in with everybody else. Rules or conventions can limit your ability to express yourself in the way that feels right to you. You don't need any special skills to express yourself. It comes without teaching and is more a matter of feeling able to be yourself and finding the ways that work for you. Start with paying attention to others and responding to them. Social rules are not absolute truth. In most Western cultures, simply being considerate of others will pave the way to smooth social interactions. 40. Being Assertive: To be an assertive person is not to be a selfish pushy bully, nor an insensitive clad who insists on getting her way. Assertive people get a fair share of what life has to offer by communicating their needs, relating to the needs of others and having the courage to choose a lifestyle that is in harmony with their values. C hinaus is associated with a tendency to communicate passively. Passive communication involves expressing your needs indirectly, often in a quiet voice and perhaps with frequent pauses and hesitations. Passive communication places the other person's wants, needs and desires ahead of your own. You want to avoid any possibility of offending or inconveniencing the other individual. However, because your message is not expressed directly, the other person may never receive the message that you intended to communicate. Therefore, passive behavior may cause you to feel hurt and resentful. Let's say you expected a promised raise at your workplace and never received it, although your co workers received theirs. The obvious aggressive response would be to storm into your boss's office spewing profanities and demanding your raise while threatening to quit if it is not forthcoming. The third response would be to sit down with your boss and ask why you did not receive your raise. If the answer seems unfair to you, you would now state your feelings on this inequality clearly and in a calm manner. You might also want to point out that others did receive their salary increase, and you expect to be treated the same respect as your co workers. Some of us learned that it is not okay to impose on others. We don't feel entitled to ask for what we want. We may not always get what we need, but it is still important to ask. Ask for help with a project. Ask for a. Ask for a refund. Ask for an earlier or later appointment. Ask for a favor. Ask for quiet. Ask for a hug. Ask to be treated with respect. Ask, but do not expect others to necessarily deliver. Not expecting anything in return is freeing. Oh. 41. Dealing With Criticism: As we reach out and connect with people, the inevitable will happen once in a while. We will feel hurt by others and others will feel hurt by us. If you are being criticized. Don't get defensive. Arguing or trying to prove the other person wrong tends to increase criticisms. When you have little or no emotional investment in the person who is criticizing or teasing. Go along with the criticism is an effective strategy. A general agreement might sound like you could be right. The specific agreement would be, you are right. I can be so clumsy. You should see me at home. I am forever bumping into things. Either way, The wind is usually taken out of the critics sails and the criticisms come to a hold. You can also ask the person questions that invite further details about the criticism. For example, you might say, where specifically, how exactly have I been inconsiderate? Can you give me an example? The confident person will even ask for further criticisms. For example, is there something else you didn't like about my presentation? I would appreciate your feedback. In the process of inviding details and further criticisms, you accomplish one of two things. If the criticism is constructive, you will get useful information that will help you decide whether and how to improve something. If the criticism is meant to manipulate or hurt you, you will help take responsibility for her criticisms. Either she will retreat from her critical stance, or she will be more honest about what is underlying her need to criticize. 42. Starting a Conversation: Although getting a conversation started is sometimes difficult. It often becomes easier with practice. If you are at a party, it is perfectly appropriate to walk up to a group of people who are already talking. After a minute or two of standing around with the group, you can join in the conversation. It takes practice and scripting to learn how to interrupt without disrupting. You can arrive to class or place or work early, so you can chat with others. The topic of conversation should usually begin with something friendly and not too personal. Particularly, if you don't know the other individual very well. You may begin with a question. How was your weekend? A compliment. I like your new haircut. A observation. I notice that you are not driving your usual car or an introduction. I don't believe we have met. My name is Other appropriate topics include hobbies, your job, a movie or TV show you recently saw the weather, something you recently read, your vacation, a recent shopping trip or sports. After you have been talking for a while, it may be appropriate to discuss more controversial topics, such as politics, relationships, personal feelings, difficult family situations. However, you should introduce these topics slowly and gauge the other person's reactions before deciding how far to take the conversation. Try to avoid getting too personal unless you know the other person well, or the other person is disclosing similar types of personal information. You decide how much or how little information to disclose about yourself. It's totally up to you. This is not an issue of being honest or dishonest. Rather, it's an issue of how much you want others to know about you. All of us have experienced conversations that never really take off. L et alone keep on going. Sometimes that's just the way it is. People who are shy often feel it's their fault. For some reason, they believe that the responsibility of keeping the conversation going rests entirely on them. The prospect of entering into a conversation brings on anxiety. It's important to realize that the other person is just as responsible as you for carrying on the conversation. A common problem for people who tend to shy away from conversations is that they have difficulty finding anything to talk about. Again, it's not all up to you to come up with topics. The other person will have something to say and you can follow up. You just do your share of contributing to the conversation by bringing up your own topics. If you have nothing to say, notice what's going on inside and outside of you. You might notice any number of sensations, thoughts, feelings, or impulses. Tell the other person what you are noticing. For instance, you might say, I notice the sun shining on those leaves. I notice your earrings sparkling in the sunlight. I notice your smile. I notice that I am now smiling. You can literally carry on this exercise for hours. There are millions of bits of information available to you at any moment. You can end up talking non stop. Just share your awareness. Running out of things to talk about is not a failure and it does not mean that you are boring. It is a normal feature of all conversations. 43. Improving Your Conversation Skills: Inaction is the most characteristic feature of shyness because anxiety, boredom, and passivity generate more fatigue than does the heaviest of labors. You need to get moving. You will discover untapped sources of energy when you are doing what you want to do. And of recognition, a smile, a wave of the hand. Look in the eye. You will have to put some energy behind it and some skill into it. Hello. Hi there. How is it going? Good to see you around. Where have you been? I liked what you said. Have a good weekend. To get into good conversations, you need to have something to say. The easiest way to do that is to keep yourself informed. Read the newspapers and news magazines. Know what the political situation is in your state. Read Movie and book reviews. Come up with interesting or exciting things that have happened to you recently. Turn them into brief interesting stories. Jot down jokes if you feel comfortable telling them. If you have trouble remembering the punch lines, jokes aren't your best bet. We can start the conversation with a common experience you are sharing at the time. For example, this line is so long. It must be a good movie. I had a horrible time parking around here. Do you know a good place? Is that a good book? I've never read it. That's a nice sweater. Where did you get it? How do you start a conversation? First of all, choose someone who looks approachable. The person who is smiling at you or sitting alone or wandering around. Don't choose someone who is obviously busy doing something else. There are a number of ways to start a conversation. Choose the one that is most appropriate to your situation and most comfortable for you. Introduce yourself. Hello. My name is. You can exchange information on where you live, what you do, your families. Give compliments. Then follow up with a question. This is a great drink. How do you make it? Request help. Make it obvious you need it and think other person can provide it. I can't find this law case. Can you help me? Can you show me that dans step? I don't know anything about commodities. Can you explain them to me? Try self disclosure. You will find that when you make an obviously personal statement, it will elicit a positive, sympathetic response. I'm not sure what I'm doing here. I'm really quite shy. I would love to learn to sail, but I don't know if I can make it. I just got a divorce and feel a little shaky. Use the normal social graces. Looks like you need a refill. Can I get you one? I am headed that way. Here, let me help you pick up those groceries. Once you have started a conversation, you can use several techniques to keep it going. Ask a question about current sports game or political event. Offer one of your personal stories or opinions. Get the other person talking about themselves. Where did you grow up? Do you like your line of work? Express interest in the other person's expertise. How does a book get published? How do you start a daycare center? Most important, share your reactions to what is taking place at that moment while you are interacting. Relate your thoughts and feelings about what the other person has said or done. When you are finished saying all you have to or your time is up, you must signify that you are about to take. Three messages must get across. You will be leaving soon. You have gotten pleasure or benefited in some way from the present talk, and you hope there will be more contact in the future. There are a number of ways you can do this. Reinforcement, Short words of agreement to the last thing the partner said, Sure, k, write, et cetera Appreciation. The statement of pleasure derived from the interaction. I really enjoyed talking to you. Completion sentence. That's about the sum of it. Breaking eye contact, moving legs or feet toward the exit, Leaning forward, smiling, and a handshake, are some non verbal behaviors used to say you are shipping off. Watch the ways in which your friends, acquaintances, and people you interact with end their conversations. Write down all you recall saying or doing in the last minute. 44. Improving Your Listening Skills: Effective listening should involve active participation, rather than just sitting quietly and absorbing the information. Active listening involves maintaining appropriate eye contact, paraphrasing what the person has said. Asking for clarification. That is asking questions to help you understand what was said and providing the other person with feedback. Whenever possible feedback should be immediate, honest, and supportive. In other words, it should reflect your true feelings, be gentle and unlikely to be hurtful to the other person. Pay attention to what is being said and give clear indications that you are doing so. Use verbal queues. Yes. I see. Huh. That is interesting, incredible, really, and also non verbal ques. Lean forward, sit up, stand closer, not appropriately. Active listening also involves identifying with the other person's situation when possible, or if not, recasting what you are hearing into a similar experience that you can relate to. I have never been in the military, but I can relate to having to take petty orders that are meaningless. When you are in a conversation, don't hesitate to ask for clarification if you don't understand something. Is this what you are saying? I don't understand that. Can you explain it? Don't be afraid to admit that you don't know something. People often enjoy explaining things to others. In addition, it's important to listen with empathy. Being empathic means conveying the idea that you genuinely understand the other person's message, as well as the feelings he's experiencing. Note that it is not necessary for you to agree with the other person's perspective, just to understand it. 45. Reducing Self-Consciousness: Sf consciousness goes with feeling that you stand out, that other people are looking at you. Entering a room full of people or saying goodbye when you leave are situations which are likely to provoke it. This may be because at those times, it is more difficult to do what is expected of you socially without drawing attention to yourself. The less self conscious you are, the easier it is to be yourself and to join in naturally with what's going on around you. To become less self conscious, you need to direct your attention on to other things. To focus more of your attention on what is happening outside yourself, instead of on what is happening inside. You need to forget yourself to become absorbed in your social life instead. Practice consciously switching your attention away from yourself and on to other things. Think of yourself as exploring and investigating. Notice details about other people. Their clothing, physical characteristics, mannerisms, and so on. Be an objective observer. Do not judge. Be curious, develop an interest in the people around you. You may truly want to know what makes different people ti, what makes them similar or different. Observe what the other person or people are wearing and how stylish or not you think they are. Try to guess what they might be feeling or what day they have had. Work out what their occupation might be. Many successful actors and actresses claim they are extremely shy in social situations where there are no scripts to go by, no prompts to rely on. The prospect of unpredictability is unnerving. Why is it so important to be in control and leave nothing to chance? Generally, we take control when we want to protect ourselves from disappointment or hurt. Exercising control by planning ahead can be a healthy thing. For example, we make reservations ahead of time. However, exercising control by personally pinning down every single detail of an event before it happens in anticipation of people's judgment and approval is something else. This excessive control can rub life of its luster and excitement. There is a little chance for moments that are spontaneous, delightful, and unexpected. We need to allow ourselves to take tiny risks into the unknown. 46. Improving Your Social Skills: Shyness and low self esteem go together. When shyness is high, self esteem is low, and when esteem is high, shyness moves out of the picture. Shy person is very dependent on other people's validation and approval. A confident person is not frustrated at not having achieved his goal. He can enjoy himself since his satisfaction is not tied to future oriented goals. He is the model of a person for whom the process is the product. People with high self esteem do not crumble under criticism or feel devastated by rejection. They thank you for the constructive advice when confronted with a no, they never take it as a rejection of them. Instead, they consider other alternatives. Their act needs more work. The approach was too fast, too gross, too subtle, too complicated. The situation and timing were not right. The person who said no has a problem that needs counsel or sympathy. In any event, the cause of then lies not within them, but without. They can analyze it and make plans to regroup forces and return again with a more polished act. It's easy for them to be optimists. They get what they want more often than not. If someone teases you. Do you feel affected? If someone criticizes you? Do you feel the need to keep talking and convincing other people that you are not what they said you were? It simply shows you care about their opinions too much. If someone has the ability to make you feel less simply by giving you disapproval? Then they have all the power and control over you? You have given your power away by requiring their validation. People, in fact, like people who are not needy for their approval, it makes an equal relationship and connection possible. Try to cut yourself free from this dependence, not to distance yourself from other people, but to become independent. You want to get to a point where you are much less dependent on other people's reactions for you to feel okay about yourself. A point where you remain unaffected by people's negative reactions, indifferent to what people think of you. There is no magic technique to achieve it. It happens over time as you gain more experiences. Practice being a social animal. Enjoy feeling the energy that other people transmit. The unique qualities and range of variability of our brothers and sisters. Imagine what their fears and insecurities might be and how you could help them. Decide what you need from them and what you have to give. Then let them know that you are ready and open to sharing. Stop being so over a protective about your ego. It is tougher and more resilient than you imagine. It bruises, but never breaks. Better, it should get hurt occasionally from an emotional commitment that didn't work out as planned, than get numbed from the emotional insulation of playing it too cool. You are not an object to which bad things just happen. A passive non entity, hoping like a garden slog to avoid being stepped on. You can make things happen. You can change the direction of your entire life anytime you choose to do so. Instead of always preparing for and worrying about how you will live your life, you forget yourself as you become absorbed in the living of it. 47. Setbacks in coping with shyness: Over time, we find something positive even in our misery and our handicaps. Those secondary gains of misfortune often have immediate benefits who are unwilling to give up for the cure. It is easier to remain shy than to change. For some of the shy people, their desire to no longer be shy is tempered by the knowledge that they will have to take more risks in initiating action. Also, shyness may be a convenient umbrella, preventing exposure to even worse feelings, being unwanted, uninteresting, unintelligent. Think about the subtle things you have gained from pasting that shyness label on yourself. What do you get out of your shyness? For example, excuses, playing it safe and not taking unnecessary risks, avoiding criticism, keeping aggressive people away, not becoming emotional or too involved in other people's lives, et c. Some degree of shyness is perfectly normal. At times, everyone has to deal with situations that are embarrassing or humiliating or evaluated less well than they would wish. Nothing you can do will stop such things happening. These events are inevitable. You can accept them, but not let them undermine your confidence. It's important to realize that setbacks are a normal part of progress and that you need not be discouraged by them. If at any stage, you seem to be stuck or even to have slid backwards. It could be because you are trying to run before you can walk. Breaking old patterns of thinking and of behaving takes time. Sometimes you will find the old ways of keeping yourself safe re emerge. But what can change once can do so again. Watch out for feeling discouraged. Everyone should expect a few setbacks. When they happen to you, try to take them in your stride. Taking risks and doing things differently can make you very anxious. You must be willing to commit time and energy and to risk some short term failures. You must be patient and expect some setbacks, some anxiety, and a lot more of you to be in the spotlight. We can learn much from our failures. If we are prepared to accept them as an inevitable but temporary consequence of trying something new. 48. Solving the Shyness Problem: All of us want to live a more fulfilling rich life. But to accomplish this, we must be willing to risk freedom to break out of our own prisons, to gamble on a new friendship, to take the chance on a love affair. It's not always easy, but there are ways that each of us can build our own self confidence. There are definite social skills that we can learn. Start with getting to know what you are like, as you begin the process of self discovery? Ask yourself these questions. What image do you project? Is that image under your control? That is, do others perceive you the way you want them to? Do you tend to feel responsible for the failures of your life? When something good happens to you, Is it more a matter of fate, luck or your own efforts? Is there anything you would be willing to sacrifice your life for? Society sends many messages that tell us that shyness is not okay, but shyness does not equal weakness. I can be shy and I can still be strong. So long as I do the task that needs doing in spite of feeling nervous or awkward. People can be loud and boisterous or sh. Shyness does not get in the way of developing strengths of character. We do not have to buy into society's negative judgment of shyness. It is an arbitrary judgment. In some cultures, there is a push for that which is big, independent, and showy. People from other cultures would be modified if they displayed such characteristics. You can choose whether you want to buy into such arbitrary values. You can choose to value that which is closer to your true nature. Some people look down on computer nerds, short people, fat people, people who are too dark, too light, not intellectual enough, not sporty enough, and so on. Power politics will always exist. It's the bigoted person's loss when he looks down on someone. Her prejudice is usually a product of a lack of education, exposure, brainwashing, or a mean spirit. We do not have to cooperate with power politics. We do not have to think that something is wrong with us, just because someone else may think so. We do not have to keep shyness a secret. Perhaps it is time to appreciate your normal shyness and to do something about that extra shyness that gets in the way of having as fulfilling a life as you might like. Shyness is normal. It is when you become about being that you run into trouble. 49. Building Confidence: When you have begun feeling more comfortable in some of your feared situations, a reasonable next step is to make some small mistakes purposefully or to do things that make you look foolish or stupid. For example, pronouncing a word incorrectly while speaking to your boss, asking an obvious question in class, or bumping into a door. If being the center of attention is difficult for you. You should try to draw the attention of others to your behavior. For example, rather than arriving early or on time for a movie or a class, try arriving a few minutes late so that everyone is aware of when you enter the room. Although you may feel embarrassed momentarily, you will learn from the practice that the whole experience doesn't matter even minutes later. Your embarrassment will be temporary. Also, people probably will forget about your late arrival almost instantly and soon we'll be thinking about other things. If shins has ruled your life, chances are your life has been restricted and dull. It's difficult to tell interesting personal stories. If you haven't been experiencing what life has to offer. Take a class. Join a study group. Sign up for a hiking club. Buy a ticket for a travel tour. Pick up a hobby. Do volunteer work. Attend local talks. As you continue to fill your life with these kind of experiences, you will find it easier to tell personal stories. Another way of increasing the contents of your storyba is to stay tuned to what's going on in the world. Listen to the news. Read good books, both current and classic. Watch the latest movies or videos. If you are going to a social gathering, you might like to prepare two or three topics of conversation based on the news stories or fictional stories you've just read about. Sometimes, another person's story will remind you of a story of your own. In the excitement of remembering, you can jump in too quickly and start telling your tale. The other person retreats, and you may not even notice that you have cut him off. Here the person out. Continue asking questions and leave your story on the back burner until a more appropriate moment. You can also try to deliberately arouse some of the symptoms that frighten you in social situations. For example, wetting your forehead to stimulate sweating before giving a presentation, purposefully appearing to lose your train of thought during a meeting and intentionally allowing your hands to shake while writing or holding a drink, by deliberately bringing on the symptoms you fear in a predictable and controlled way. You will learn to be less frightened of having these symptoms show in front of others. Being able to show embarrassment over our mistakes that may have inconvenienced others. Tells people we care about them and we care about staying in their good books. Blushing as a sign of embarrassment can be a signal of goodwill and respect for others. It can reflect our desire to maintain social connections. Besides, people who are embarrassable are often less aggressive and more considerate than those who are unembarrassiable. A person who shows appropriate embarrassment following a social mistake is more liable than a person who is too calm and shows no embarrassment. Feeling and embed occasionally is not the worst thing in the world. So we goofed. As long as we don't judge ourselves to be flawed human beings, a little shame and embarrassment can motivate us to do better next time. 50. Being Genuine. Being Yourself: H iding our true nature is not attractive. Shyness is a part of you, not all of you and is nothing to be ashamed of. It's no use trying to please others by telling them what you think they want to hear. If you lose your true self in a relationship, there is no relationship. Respect your thoughts and your feelings and share them with others. Self monitoring stems from inferiority. You don't think that people would accept you for who you truly are. You feel the need to alter people's impression of you. Becoming authentic means that the persona you try to put out to the world and your real personality become one. You stop making any impression on the people you interact with. Ironically, the best way to make people like you is not to to make them like you. You need to express your personality freely without worrying about possible disapproval. The way to make a good impression is never consciously try to make a good impression. Express yourself freely and let whatever happens happen. Live it up to fate, but do not try to control other people's reactions to you by changing your behavior. Never wonder consciously what the other person is thinking of you or how she's judging you. Share your shy nature with others. Otherwise, shame wins out and inhibition rules. Next time you admire someone for speaking up, you can tell him so. I really liked what you said to that person. I tend to be a little shy when it comes to that sort of thing. If you are asked to go out somewhere. You might say, part of me would really like to. Another part of me is shy about going. If you are giving a presentation, you might say, giving talks isn't exactly my strong suit. Frankly, I would rather jump through a hoop of fire than give a talk. But I've got some things to tell you that I think you will find really interesting. What you say does not have to be that funny or interesting. Instead of trying to say the right thing all the time, start to lower the bar on what you allow yourself to say. You don't have to entertain people so that they would want to be around you. You don't need to make some funny comment to keep their love and attention. Once you start to value yourself more as a person, you will start to believe that people can like you just for you. Stop wondering, what's the right thing to say in this situation? What you say is the right thing to say. Not because it's a great comment, but because it comes from you. Don't be afraid to say things that are boring or obvious. People are perfectly satisfied talking to another regular normal person. Plenty of people say dumb things occasionally, but it doesn't matter to them because they don't dwell on it and just stay in the conversation. Don't pre plan what you are going to say. It kills your spontaneity and delivery. You have to start trusting that what you are going to say will come to you naturally when and only when you need it. All you need to do is to keep your focus in the present moment as it unfolds. There is no right way of doing things. You can be successful without being socially skilled. Being socially skilled neither makes people love you nor prevents them criticizing you. Being flexible will allow you to be more spontaneous. L et yourself adapt as the situation demands, rather than trying to learn precise rules of the game. This way, your social life will flow naturally. Spontaneity allows you to express yourself much more authentically. Life's goal is life itself to be fully engaged in living, not hiding behind the mask. 51. Conclusion: After years of avoidance, you can't expect yourself to leap into social situations with the greatest of ease. Some situations will still provoke shyness. It's important to realize that a courageous and confident person is not necessarily a fearless person, nor is she free from all anxiety. Susan Jeffers in her book, feel the fear and Do It Anyway, writes that, no matter how much her confidence grew, she continued to feel anxious each time she tried something new. She realized this was true for nearly everyone. As long as you continue to grow and put yourself into new and unfamiliar situations, you are bound to feel at least a trifle anxious while you are getting used to things. Anxiety in a new situation is really just life coursing through your body. You are challenging the unknown, treading the familiar for the unfamiliar. You are being courageous. Taking action is less frightening than anticipating taking that action. Once you get used to the idea that fear and anxiety are a normal part of life, life becomes less fearsome and anxiety provoking. It's okay to explain to people that you are shy and that you are trying your best. Once people realize that you are a nice person and that your intention is never to snub anyone or to be snooty, they are usually fine about it and sometimes really go out of their way to make you feel comfortable. It is preferable to be accepted as a marginal member of the society and agree to change your behavior than to remain within the safety of the shyss shell, but feel lonely. Social inclusion comes at the price of conformity. But for many, this is a price worth paying. You have nothing to lose besides your feelings of isolation, sadness, and pain. The Shai are deviant only in relation to cultural values. The Western culture is obsessed with assertiveness, talk, and extroversion. Shi people have the right to be different but equal to non shy people. Perhaps society could become more tolerant of their difference. Maybe the world needs the shy and the bold and all shades in between to make up the delicately balanced ecosystem of human behavior. When you love yourself, you stop exploiting yourself. You don't have to monitor yourself, hoping that people won't judge you. In other words, you stop bending yourself out of shape in efforts to please others. Buddha went on to explain that in order to practice self love, you must first give up the idea that you are superior. In order to do that, you must give up feeling inferior. And to do that, you must give up feeling equal. You give up comparing yourself to others altogether, and you enter into connection with others. When you are no longer concerned about being superior, inferior or equal, you realize there is more about human beings that connects them to each other than sets them apart. Human behavior is endlessly rich and odd. Shyness is just there. Another piece in the intricate jigsaw of human diversity. Some see it as a form of rudeness or conceit, others as a sign of sensitivity and thoughtfulness. Without shyness, people might be happier in the same way that they might be happier, without back twinges or other random defects like acne, myopia, varicose veins, and dandruff. But perhaps the world would also be a little blnder, less creative and less interesting.