How to Beat Shyness

So you wnat to know how to beat shyness? Do you feel like excessive shyness is one of your worst enemies? The first step to achieving this is to accept that your shyness is actually an OK part of who you are. Once you start getting into this mindset then it can set you along the path of actually reducing your symptoms. Here are 10 steps you can take to start beating your shyness:

1. The first step is to think to yourself "Yes, I have excessive shyness and social anxiety reactions. Do you have a problemwith that?" By adopting this "so what" attitude you can protect yourself against worsening symptoms that can come about by trying to hide your symptoms. As an example, some people with excessive shyness can become people people with excessive blushing and the fear of blushing. This happens as a result of embarressment for blushing about something - often added to by someone making a comment about the fact that you are blushing. But what if you were to say, "Yes, I blush easily and it is part of who I am. If you don't like then that's your problem". Of course you don't actually have to say that, but to think that to yourself helps you to develop the right attitude to beating shyness.

2. The second attitude you need to have is "I value people and relationships. I want to deepen my relationships by being real and skipping some of the formal stuff." You may notice that socially outgoing people have this attitude. The reason is that they do not have many fears about what people might think of them. For people who suffer with excessive shyness it is important to get used to allowing people to get to know your thoughts and the "real you" rather than the more formal persona that you might be used to presenting. People often fear the unknown, and allowing people to see the real you does occasionally lead to criticism and a feelings of feeling exposed. Once we have experienced it a few times we become less sensitive in the context of the overshadowing joy of letting people know us more deeply.

3. The next step is to think to yourself that you have more important things to do than impress people. By decreasing the seeming importance of making the right impression on others this causes an automatic down-shift in your tendency to feel shy (which is mostly rooted in a fear of making a mistake that would bring embarrassment or shame).

4. Think to yourself that you are not defined by what other people think about you. The important point here is that you purposely define your sense of self in terms of the values and life-directions that you pursue rather than as an accumulation of the ideas that other people have formed about you.

5. Think to yourself that any effort I make to go beyond my social comfort zone will pay off later, and this will help you feel okay with feeling a little uncomfortable now. This mentality supports the efforts that you will take to undermine excessive shyness by expanding the boundaries of your comfort zone. You will only become more comfortable in the long run by investing effort in the present circumstances you face.

6. Think to yourself that you will succeed at becoming less anxious no matter what. This attitude is crucial for any endeavor that you are serious about succeeding with. It has to do with being certain that your efforts will pay off. Developing a sense of certainty that you will achieve your desired outcome if you persist long enough and hard enough will allow you to do just that.

7. Think to yourself that you can control your actions even if you cannot control my feelings. Shyness is only a feeling until you let it control your actions. " Some people with feelings of shyness and social anxiety end up giving their feelings way too much emphasis when they evaluate their lot in life.

8. Laughter is the great eraser of stress and anxiety. When you are actively laughing at yourself for feeling anxious, making a social blunder, or whatever, you are, for that moment, free.