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Overcome Your Social Phobia
In our modern culture, everyone is focused on becoming more social, popular, and liked–since all of these personality traits come with many benefits. Extroverted people generally have more friends, fun and success than introverts. They also tend to suffer from loneliness and depression less.
Becoming more outgoing and social is about living life to the fullest, unafraid to express yourself or go after what you want in life. Since being extroverted has so many benefits to it, it makes sense to want to get rid of your shyness.
Getting your conversation skills up to speed is one quick and easy way to start becoming less introverted. In particular, you want to start becoming more impulsive in what you say.
While there are some situations, like job interviews, where you want to be very careful about what you say, in most you should focus on talking more often and more spontaneously. This is going to sound bad, but try not to think too much before you speak in informal social situations.
If you put too much effort into everything you say, you’ll come across as a try-hard. By being spontaneous and just letting the words flow, you become easy-going, which is what people like.
In some situation, you can probably already talk to people easily and spontaneously. It could be around your family, your niece or nephew, or talking to a close friend.
However, when around people you don’t know well or are intimidated of, you aren’t able to act the same way. Your shyness gets in the way. A lot of the time, this issue can fix itself through gradual exposure.
An intimidating stranger soon become a close friend if you hang around him several times. By spending more time with people you’ll start to get the hang of talking to strangers.
Believe it or not, how well you make conversation is not a talent you were born with, but a skill set. Just like riding a bicycle, the more you practice this skill set the better you will become and the easier you’ll find it to be relaxed around new people.
In lowering your levels of nervousness when talking to people, there are many useful techniques to help you relax. Relaxation has the effect of demonstrating to your brain that there is nothing to be afraid of in this situations, which makes your brain’s anxiety lessen. You want that: nothing kills feelings of nervousness and anxiety faster than physical relaxation.
Your relaxation routine should be structured in a way that gets you the maximum results in overcoming shyness. It is not an event, it is a process. It is more effective to implement relaxation as a new routine rather than try it out one time incorrectly when you are in the middle of a full-blown anxiety attack. It will be the compounding of accumulated change that yields the most substantial results.
Set aside some time every day to practice relaxation. This will let you become relaxed when you are feeling at your most tense and nervous around people.
The Worst Shyness Advice in The World
Here are 5 of the worst pieces of advice
1. Focusing On Other People
It’s a piece of advice that sounds great on the surface … to people who have never had shyness.
If overcoming shyness was as simple as telling someone to “focus more on other people,” then nobody would be shy. The advice is simply not SPECIFIC enough to be helpful to the average shy person.
2. Rehearse What to Say
If you want to sound like a robot, then this would be great advice.
But for everyone else out there, rehearsing what to say is a terrible thing to do because it completely ruins your ability to talk to people naturally and spontaneously.
Preparing what to say for a job interview or a speech is normal. Rehearsing daily conversations or phone calls because you are shy is ridiculous. It turns your life into a performance, and is that really how anyone should live?
Do normal people have to rehearse their daily conversations like an actor? No, they simply talk to people. And the reason why they can talk to people easily is because their inner psychology is free of anxiety, insecurity and inhibitions, not because they have memorized the perfect “lines.”
So you need to focus on getting your inner psychology right instead of rehearsing what to say.
3. Ask More, Talk Less
Back when I had really bad shyness, I would barely speak up and people would always call me quiet. If someone had told me back then that I should “talk less,” then I’d probably think they were crazy.
Here’s the truth: Shy people need tips for how to talk MORE, not less.
4. Affirmations
Affirmations are basically positive statements that you repeat to yourself like “I am confident and happy.” Literally hundreds of self-help books have repeatedly recommended using this technique for overcoming shyness or low self-esteem… without any scientific proof that it actually works!
In fact, every scientific study recently done on affirmations has consistently shown that they don’t work, and can even make you feel worse!
Here’s a quote from one of these studies. (Pay special attention to the parts I’ve bolded.)
Canadian researcher, Dr. Joanne Wood at the University of Waterloo and her colleagues at the University of New Brunswick who have recently published their research in the Journal of Psychological Science, concluded “repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most.”
The researchers asked people with low self-esteem to say “I am a lovable person.” They then measured the participants’ moods and their feelings about
themselves. The low-esteem group felt worse afterwards compared with others who did not. However, people with high self-esteem felt better after repeating the positive affirmation–but only slightly.
5. Just Do It!
Just like other shyness advice that sounds logical but doesn’t work, asking yourself questions like “Who cares what they think?” or “What’s the worst that can happen?” does NOTHING for making you feel less shy, nervous or anxious in social situations.
For more ideas to overcome shyness, watch this video –How to Overcome Shyness
By Sean W Cooper, the author of The Shyness and Social Anxiety System, is an ex-sufferer from social anxiety and shyness. This program is a compilation of his research and effort in overcoming shyness and anxiety.
Sean W Cooper’s Shyness and Anxiety system is a step by step audio course broken down into modules that are easy to access. It teaches you ways to start overcoming your social anxiety and self-doubt. The system utilises cognitive behavioural therapy which explores how feelings and thoughts can drive behaviour.
The Shyness and Social Anxiety system is endorsed by professionals and praised by psychologists due to the way it provides the relevant skills to manage issues of shyness and social anxiety.
To find out more, click on Overcome Shyness – Two Easy Ways to Get Rid of Nervousness
