September 20, 2015

Is It Okay To Be Shy?

So you discovered that you’re kind of, sort, of, maybe, definitely shy. How do you feel about it? What are your thoughts about it?

As a confidence and communication coach, I’ve talked and worked with hundreds of shy and socially anxious people. I’ve discovered they have all sorts of attitudes towards their shyness, and their attitudes drastically affect what they do about it.

There are clearly attitudes towards shyness I would call healthy, realistic and useful based on their effects, as well as ones I would call unhealthy, unrealistic, and mostly useless. I’d like to talk about some key attitudes of the former type, which I encourage you to adopt. They constitute a constructive, reasonable way to answer the question: “Is is okay to be shy?”

Being Shy Does Not Make You a Loser

Many shy individuals feel like complete losers because they are shy. At some level, some even deem they don’t deserve to be happy, loved or successful since they are shy. To them being shy is worse than being a leper.

This is a faulty way to view shyness. If you think about it, shyness is merely a personal trait that creates some negative consequences for one’s social and emotional life. Call it a flaw or a shortcoming if you will. Nevertheless, it’s only one single flaw, even if it can carry a heavy cost. It does not define you as a person and it does not make you a loser.

In fact, most shy people I coach have a bundle of amazing qualities. They are often intelligent, well-educated, creative, hard-working, reliable and caring individuals. And they are also shy. It’s just a flaw in a whole constellation of personal traits; nothing more.

By thinking that being shy makes you a loser, you’re only adding pointless frustration, guilt and sorrow to your life. Also, this belief makes you even more insecure socially (because, you know, you think you’re a loser not worth talking to), so it adds another layer to your shyness. If you have this belief, it’s crucial to let go of it.

Shyness Does Create Complications in Life Though

Although many people think they’re losers because they’re shy, there are also many people in the mindset that being shy is not a flaw in any way, so they shouldn’t try to do anything about it.

Some of them almost try to wear their shyness as a badge of honor. Some claim that “people are stupid and boring anyway”, so there is no point in trying to become more social, and they attempt to make themselves feel superior for being loners.

In my view, this attitude is even worse. It’s one thing to accept shyness as only a shortcoming and not feel ashamed of it; it’s another to deny entirely its negative consequences.

Shyness does create real problems in life. Shy people have a hard time building deep, genuine relationships with others, which are critical for our life satisfaction. They often feel lonely and depressed, they squander their potential in the workplace because they don’t make themselves heard or noticed, and they miss out on a lot in life.

As for the idea that other people are too stupid to be worth socializing with, that’s a sweeping generalization some shy individuals use as an excuse and a shallow source of solace. The truth is there are many cool people out there. But it’s much easier to judge others than to face your fears and work on overcoming them.

Do not attempt to deny the cost of shyness. It will make you miss out on so much in life, hiding behind a wall of rationalizations, when you could be doing something about your shyness and enjoying life much more. Which brings me to my next point.

It’s Possible and Worth Trying to Overcome Your Shyness

Fortunately, personal traits can be changed. The human psyche is fairly flexible. We can develop new thinking and behavioral habits, and with them new emotional reactions. More specifically, we can successfully overcome shortcomings such as shyness and social awkwardness.

Many shy people struggle in trying to overcome their shyness, but many of them succeed as well. As a confidence and communication coach I’ve seen hundreds of shy people who’ve entirely freed themselves from the shackles of shyness. The difference that makes the difference is twofold:

  1. The latter type of shy people had the right techniques and advice, whereas the former just used cheesy, simplistic and ineffective self-help tips.
  2. They applied this advice consistently over a period of time, until they achieved the level of social confidence they desired.

I’ve been coaching shy people since 2008. Based on my years of experience, I’d like to show you how you can overcome your shyness as effectively as possible.

This is why I’ve created a special instructional video in which I discuss the sources of shyness, as well as my tried and tested, step by step method for overcoming shyness. Go to this page to watch the video right now.

Also, I suggest you join my free social confidence newsletter for regular and practical advice from me, which I’m sure you’ll find very useful as you work on improving your social life.

Being shy does not make you a loser, and shyness is not a disease. However, it is a psychological condition with many nasty consequences, and it’s worth working to overcome it. You can do it. It all starts with making a firm decision to do something about your shyness, and do something smart.

Filed Under: Attitude, Psychology Tagged With: , , , 2 Comments
December 29, 2014

Fixing the Issue of Coming Across As Shy

Working as a confidence and communication coach, many of my clients are shy and socially anxious people. Many of them express to me big concerns about coming across as shy to others around them.

They tell me that they often get comments like “You don’t talk very much”, or “You’re really quiet”, or plain bluntly “You seem really shy”, and they fear that being perceived as shy makes others dislike them. So they wanna know how to not come across as shy.

Of course, the reason they come across as shy is because they indeed are shy. They feel nervous in social settings, they keep to themselves, and they hardly contribute to conversations. So when their chief desire in social situations is to not come across as shy, it is in truth a desire to hide their shyness and seem this confident, outgoing person, which, for now, they are not.

This is an intriguing subject in my view, which is why I thought I’d address it and express what I consider to be some critical ideas on it.

The Deeper Issue Here

First of all, it’s worth saying that, clearly in my mind, the even bigger issue than coming across as shy is actually being shy.

Shyness, although not something to feel ashamed of, is detrimental to you and your social life. It makes it hard to enjoy social interactions, to express yourself as you are, to connect with people and to build meaningful relationships. Acute shyness is often linked with high levels of social isolation, loneliness, depression, and even physical illness.

That’s the real issue. The fact you also come across as shy is less than ideal, but it’s only a minor, superficial issue in comparison to the rest. Being shy is the major matter.

You Can’t Fake It

shySecond of all, it’s worth mentioning that you can’t really fake social confidence. Shy and socially anxious people would like to believe that they can just act as if they’re not shy, and that will quickly fix how they come across, without the need to address the deeper issue. But that doesn’t really work.

You need to understand that being shy and not talking much is mostly an emotional issue, not a behavioral issue. It occurs because one feels nervous and uncomfortable when interacting with other people. You can try to act socially in a way that’s different from the way your emotions dictate, but one way or another, your emotions will come out on top and they’ll reveal your true social tendencies.

If you wanna fix how you come across socially, you have to change how you behave habitually. And in order to change how you behave habitually, you have to change your emotions.

How This All Got Started

It’s useful to note how all this shyness stuff even gets started. Shy people wanna know how to not come across as shy because they are extremely concerned with their reputation. And it’s this very concern with their reputation that makes them shy in the first place.

What happens is that, because they care too much about their reputation and they have certain limiting beliefs, the shy person will fear that if they express themselves in social situations, they’ll make mistakes, or seem stupid, or something similar, and get a negative reputation. So they hold themselves back and they don’t talk much. Thus, they end up getting a reputation as a shy person, which is also a negative reputation for them.

So the shy person ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they talk, they may go wrong and gain a bad reputation, if they don’t talk they gain a bad reputation. All of this arises because they are so extremely concerned with the way they come across to others.

So How Do We Fix This?

Ultimately, shy people need to put aside this concern with how they come across. Instead they need to put their focus on actually developing social confidence and overcoming their shyness. That will naturally take care of how they come across as well.

As I already alluded to, overcoming shyness entails learning to not care so much about your reputation, as well as overcoming several other limiting beliefs. This is what will free you to be confident, authentic and outgoing in social situations.

Working with shy and socially anxious people over the past 6+ years, I’ve developed a step-by-step method for overcoming shyness and social anxiety, which goes to the very root of the problem.

I describe this method to beat shyness and social anxiety in this free instructional presentation, which I suggest you check out. The confidence advice you’ll gain from it is practical, unique and to the point. So go here and watch it right now.

Also, for more practical tips from me on building social confidence, social skills and a fulfilling social life, get onboard my free social confidence newsletter.

Shyness is something you can deal with successfully. There are now fast and reliable solutions for overcoming it. You don’t have to concern yourself with faking social confidence. You can truly be a confident person others enjoy talking to. But you have to make becoming confident the priority, not merely appearing confident.

Filed Under: Attitude, Psychology Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment
December 6, 2012

Shy Guys: Their Psychology and Their Recovery

Most statistics state than shyness is somewhat more common for girls than for guys. Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, there are heaps of shy guys out there, and many of them are in fact extremely inhibited.

These guys feel anxious in social situations and they feel particularly anxious around girls, especially the ones they find attractive. They have trouble engaging in conversations and keeping them going, they hide their sexual side, they are often invisible to the girls they like, and if they’re not they often get friend-zoned by these girls.

Unsurprisingly, their social life in general and their dating life in particular look pretty gloomy. And taking care of this issue is one of the most valuable actions they can accomplish.

As a social confidence coach, I work with shy guys on daily basis. Over time, this allowed me to see certain recurring patterns regarding why they are shy and how they can fix this. So, in this article, I’d like to share with you my most important findings.

The Making of Shy Guys

Generally speaking, shyness is the result of an overestimation of the risks social situations pose for you. But what these perceived risks are exactly, why they are perceived and what they signify varies from one person to another, and it varies based on gender as well.

I discovered that shy guys have two limiting beliefs in particular, which feed their timidity.

Firstly, shy guys perceive themselves as losers.

Success and status are very important for men. On average, they are significantly more important for them than they are for women. Men are especially competitive, achievement-seeking and results-oriented.

If a guy doesn’t see himself as successful and as having a good status, if he thinks other guys are better than him, he will tend to feel inferior and insecure.

Of course, success and status are very relative and the problem is that shy guys distort the reality in their heads and make themselves seem much, much worse than they are. And this generates unreasonable coyness.

Secondly, shy guys perceive themselves as sexually unattractive.

Even if they may seem themselves as successful, they still don’t see themselves as sexy. Deep down, they believe that a woman could never be sexually interested in them.

This is why they regularly try to compensate for their alleged lack of sexual attractiveness by being extremely nice with girls they like, paying a lot of attention to them or buying them expensive gifts.

Yet again, this lack of sexual attractiveness is merely a figment of their imagination, a result of some very faulty stereotypes used to understand human sexuality. It has little to do with the objective reality.

Now that you have a better understanding of the problem shy guys have, let’s talk about the solution.

From Shy Guy to Social Guy

A lot of shy guys appear to deem that their lack of social confidence is the result of their shortages in terms of success, status, looks, charisma or sexual experience.

Although these shortages may be to some degree real and they can be contributing factors to shyness, their role is only secondary. As I already alluded to, as a shy guy, the primary source of your shyness is your faulty thinking, not the way you are as a person.

Whatever your condition may be, trust me, I know several guys in the exact same condition who are very confident socially and have no problems making friends or enticing members of the opposite sex.

But your thinking amplifies your flaws, even invents false ones, and embellishes their meaning. This takes places automatically when you’re in social situations, and generates your feelings of anxiety and hesitancy to just be social.

Obviously, the solution is weeding out these automatic thinking patterns and replacing them with more accurate ones. It’s a step by step process which entails:

  • Indentifying unrealistic thoughts you have in social settings;
  • Challenging and correcting these thoughts;
  • Gradually developing a more social behavior;
  • And being persistent with this process.

This is a just a gross outline of the process. I’d like to show you in more detail how to implement it effectively. For this purpose I have created a special video presentation for you.

Go here now to check out the presentation and learn how the psychological process of changing your thinking and eliminating limiting beliefs works. You’ll get a lot of value out of it.

Unfortunately, shy guys miss out on a lot on life. I should know: I used to be one. You notice other guys making friends, having girlfriends and enjoying social interactions, while you’re just being an observer, waiting for something to simply fall in your lap. But it almost never does, and if it does, you’re not able to leverage it.

The good news is that you can change all of this. You can take charge your thinking, eradicate your limiting beliefs and gain the social confidence you want. All you need is the right guidance and the wiliness to apply it consistently. The improvements will follow naturally.

Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon

Filed Under: People Skills, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , , 6 Comments
July 6, 2012

Jobs for Shy People: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

If you’re shy and interested in finding a job, you may be wondering: What are some good jobs for shy people?

The traditional advice concerning jobs for shy people goes something like this: since you are shy, you will feel uncomfortable dealing with people. Therefore, you should pick work where you don’t interact a lot with others.

Based on this line of thinking, several career fields and jobs with minimal human interaction are recommended for shy people, such as:

  • IT. Good jobs include: computer programmer, software developer, computer systems analyst and web designer.
  • Finance. Possible jobs are: accountant, financial analyst, credit analyst and actuary.
  • Writing. Good jobs include: author, photographer, article writer and content translator.
  • Health Care. Some nice jobs are: lab technician, researcher, equipment preparer and medical transcriptionist.
  • Blue Collar. Possible jobs are: janitor, maid, gardener, repairman, factory worker or truck driver.

While it is true that the jobs above won’t involve too much social contact so you won’t find them stressful from this perspective, there is a potentially huge problem with pursuing such a job.

In order to comprehend this, consider a few important ideas which, as a social confidence coach, I’ve discovered to be very accurate.

1. Deep down, you may actually love jobs that involve social interaction.

Many shy people I’ve coached were deep down very sociable and they loved interaction with people. But on top of that was a layer of insecurities that made them feel nervous in social situations.

However, once they managed to remove that layer, the love for social interaction became obvious. Many of them work in fields where they regularly deal with people, such as sales, recruitment, training or management, and it’s deeply fulfilling for them.

If they would have just avoided jobs that entailed social contact, they never would have ended up doing what they truly love.

2. Shy people don’t necessarily have bad social skills and good technical skills.

Many of the shy people I know are in fact very intelligent socially. They have an intuitive understanding of people and intrinsically, they have sharp social skills. It’s just that the nervousness they feel when dealing with others can inhibit these skills from manifesting.

I also know shy people who work in jobs like computer programmer or accountant and they suck at them. Because that’s not where their natural skills are; it’s just where they don’t have to face the discomfort of dealing with others.

So, it’s a big mistake to assume that if you’re shy, you automatically have an inclination towards technical jobs and lack an inclination towards working with people. You never know what’s beyond the shyness.

3. A big part of overcoming shyness is exposure to social situations.

Yes, shyness can be defeated. And right now there is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence confirming this.

However, a very important step in defeating shyness is engaging in social interactions reputedly instead of avoiding them.

This exposure to social situations will help your brain get accustomed to them, and change your beliefs about yourself and others, thus making you more confident socially. This leads me to my next point…

4. Avoiding jobs that entail social contact just perpetuates the problem.

Shy people avoid social contact. And it’s perfectly understandable, because it’s scary. Nevertheless, considering the role of exposure to social situations in overcoming shyness, this only keeps their problem alive.

With respect to their career, shy people avoid social contact by looking for jobs that imply very little of it, it any. And they are quick to believe these are the best jobs for shy people.

I often hear shy individuals saying: “I don’t want to have to deal with others in my job. It’s demanding!”

Well, the fact dealing with others is demanding is the very reason why you should consider a job that entails dealing with others.

You can’t stay away from what scares you forever.

At one point or another, if you want to truly live your life, you need to face your fears. And a major way to do this is avoiding the “traditional” jobs for shy people and instead choosing a job that gets you interacting with people.

I’ve had coaching clients who worked, at least for a while, in jobs like door-to-door sales person or customer service representative, precisely because they were intimidating for them.

And these jobs provided a good amount of social exposure, which helped them build their social confidence.

By the way: if you want to learn how you can gain social exposure as effectively as possible and build rock-solid social confidence in literally just a few weeks, check out this presentation right now.

So: What are the best jobs for shy people?

They’re the same jobs that are best for anyone else: the jobs they have a natural inclination and passion for.

Look deep into your heart and ask yourself: “What would I really like to do if I wouldn’t be shy?”

It could be a technical job; it could be an extremely social job. Either way, that’s the path to pursue in your career.

And even if deep down, you truly want to work in a job that requires little social contact and you do have natural skills for it, you may still want for a few months to give a try to a job that requires lots of social contact. Simply because the experience in itself will be extremely useful in developing your social confidence.

Remember: the most valuable experiences in life are often the ones that you’re afraid of.

Inage courtesy of Ed Yourdon

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , , , , 12 Comments
February 22, 2012

How to Stop Being Shy

If you’re shy, learning how to stop being shy, whether it’s around girls, guys or people in general could be one of the most important things you’ll learn in your entire life.

Once you understand how to stop being shy, you can become more confident, connect with others better and have and enormous amount of fun in social settings. As a social confidence coach, I’ve been able to observe repeatedly how learning this can turn a person’s life around.

There is a lot of advice out there on how to stop being shy. Regrettably, most of it comes from people who don’t have a real comprehension of the psychology of shyness, and it’s too naive or vague to actually do anything for you.

I want to provide you the advice that truly works. So I’m gonna point out the four crucial actions that if you take, will truly allow you to stop being so shy.

Step 1: Stop Being Shy by Starting To Be More Social

Shy people typically get this the other way around. Many social settings make them feel anxious, so they try to find ways to get rid of this social anxiety from home, so they can then be more social.

But the trick is that to a large degree, you get rid of the anxiety by being more social.

Even if social settings make you nervous, you get into them anyway instead of avoiding them. Even if being more talkative is challenging for you, you push yourself to talk more anyway.

You deliberately do the things you fear. And as you do so, you gain social experience and you gradually become more accustomed to engaging in social interactions. Thus, your shyness dwindles away.

If you find it too hard to push against the anxiety and be more outgoing, you simply have to find social opportunities where it’s easier to do so. Start with those and gradually move up. This is a key idea concerning how to stop being shy.

Step 2: Catch Your Distorted Thinking Patterns 

Working with shy people, I’ve noticed that without exception, they have a way of seeing themselves and seeing social interactions that is largely inaccurate.

For instance, they may see themselves as uninteresting when this is clearly not the case, or they may think others are making fun on them in a social settings although there is little evidence to support this notion.

When talking about how to stop being shy, I always emphasize how important it is to identify this inaccurate thinking.

Doing so achieves two things. First, it gives you more motivation to go out, face your fears and be social, because you know your fears are not rational. Second, it enables you to correct the flaws in your thinking. Which leads me to my next point…

Step 3: Put Your Thinking Straight

I often like to refer to shyness as a mental bug. You’re thinking is bugged: it generates distorted predictions and interpretations, which creates nervousness. And you need to debug your mind.

Once you know what’s inaccurate in your thinking, you can start to practice thinking in a new, more constructive way.

You can begin to see your qualities, not just your flaws, see the things you do right, not just the things you do wrong, and not make a big deal out of doing something silly in front of others once in a while.

This video I created explains in more detail how to correct your thinking effectively and make the fastest progress possible. Make sure to check it out.

As you practice this new type of thinking, it gradually replaces the old type and it builds your social confidence.

Step 4: Keep Walking. Keep Practicing

The last but possibly the most valuable thing to realize is that once you know how to stop being shy, it’s not enough. It’s the implementation that yields results.

I’ve seen many people turn from shy to social: young and old, guys and girls. What they all have in common is that they found a method for overcoming shyness that works and they applied it consistently for at least a couple of months.

And through this continuous application over a period of time, they effectively reprogrammed their thinking, feelings and behavior. This is what enabled them to be more outgoing, make friends and fully enjoy social interactions.

Watch this presentation I designed to find out the exact steps these people applied to eradicate their shyness. If you want to achieve the same results, this is a must see presentation.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep walking; to apply the knowledge consistently.

One of the most common mistakes shy people make is that they give up too soon, often when the results just started to show and their confidence is close to taking off. And this is precisely what keeps them stuck.

Learn, apply, persist and be willing to invest in yourself. This is the recipe for the utmost success in overcoming your shyness. There is a big, beautiful world out there, with lots of cool people in it. And they’re all waiting for you.

Image courtesy of dreamylittledancer

Filed Under: Attitude, Lifestyle, Relationships Tagged With: , , , 65 Comments
March 27, 2011

If You Are Shy This Is Definitely For You

Many people try to make shyness seem like a cute and innocent trait to have.

Nevertheless, if you are shy and you know firsthand how shyness can disrupt your social life, you probably find it hard to view it that way. And if you have more than shyness, if you have social anxiety, the upheaval it breeds is even worse.

Well, today I’m going to let you know about an excellent ebook for people with shyness or social anxiety that I’ve reviewed and I sincerely recommend.

The Shyness and Social Anxiety System

The ebook is called The Shyness and Social Anxiety System. Its author, Sean Cooper, presents in it effective and little-known psychological techniques to destroy shyness and social anxiety.

You can get the full details about the ebook here.

I had an interesting conversation earlier this week with Sean about the way this book was born. Sean fought with shyness and social anxiety for many years. After loads of research and personal experimentation, he eventually discovered how to overcome shyness and implemented this psychological know-how successfully.

As a former shy, “invisible” guy myself, I find something fascinating in what Sean teaches in this ebook because you can tell he’s been through it, he knows personally what it’s like to have shyness and social anxiety, and he grasped how to beat it.

I think this is something few people who give advice on this topic can say. Many of them don’t really understand what it’s like to be shy; they just know part of the theory. As a consequence, a lot of the advice on how to overcome shyness is insipid and trite: “Just be yourself”, “Just do it”, etc. Yeah right!

I talk in more depth about this and issue and about the real science of social confidence in this free presentation.

My Review of the Ebook

I was pleasantly surprised by The Shyness and Social Anxiety System. It presents a both cognitive and behavioral approach to boosting social confidence, with a bit more focus on the behavioral part.

The ebook is extremely simple to read, to understand and most importantly, to apply. It contains ideas and techniques for beating shyness that you can take immediately and start applying, and you’ll see results.

On top of that, I find these ideas to be highly consistent with the scientific psychological research in this area, which is something I’m big on.

The Shyness and Social Anxiety System got me realizing things I wasn’t aware of about overcoming shyness. This is probably the finest proof I can give of the quality of this ebook, considering that I coach shy people almost on a daily basis and I believe I know a thing or two about overcoming shyness.

To conclude this review, if you struggle with shyness or social anxiety, coaching is out of your financial range and you’re looking for a quality information product to help you make real progress, this ebook is it.

Check out The Shyness and Social Anxiety System here.

Also, check out my Conversation Confidence guide here.

Shyness is a serious psychological issue to deal with and it can be dealt with successfully. But you need to use the best tools available.

Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon

Filed Under: Attitude, News, People Skills Tagged With: , , , , 1 Comment