Overcoming social anxiety and shyness

Overcoming social anxiety and shyness is a mean feat. It can vary person to person as to how much work is necessary. For some people it means nothing more than practicing speaking to people to get through undesirable emotions that are not particularly strong. For others on the other end of the scale it demands years of study, trying and failing with possibly numerous different techniques until they find something that gets results . The majority of people are somewhere in the middle.

I've been thinking recently about regardless of how trapped somebody may be, just precisely what does it take to be that sort of person who can overcome it. I thought back through my past from more than six years ago now when I started out on a journey to change my life.

So what sort of person does somebody need to be in order to be successful in overcoming social anxiety and shyness?

Irrespective of the approach they end up selecting a person has to have responsibility for themselves. If you are the kind of person who will not cease whining with regards to being where you are because of other people then you will never be able to be successful. Your entire justification is that because someone else "broke" you either they or someone else needs to "fix" you. Only issue is no one will. Even when you seek out techniques to support you it is ultimately you that needs to do the work.

You also need to be the sort of person who can commit to something. Numerous people start off trying to transform their anxieties and become happy with life, of those that set out in all probability 90% or more fail. From the research I have carried out most of that 90% is due to people falling in with an unsupportive crowd. While I say unsupportive I don't suggest those who do not help out. Quite the opposite. I discovered so many people fail because they join a group (commonly an online social anxiety forum) where people are more than ready to "help" you by justifying where you are and not providing you the kick up the backside to carry on). People who end up on these discussion boards forfeit the dedication they started with, this new group makes them feel safe and supported, in truth they are just stuck in a slightly different place.

Being in a position to notice the smaller changes in life is important. When I started out all I knew was that the person I had become was not the person I wanted to be. My life SUCKED. What I aimed for were huge changes that were in line with exactly the change that I was seeking. I learned however that this is a really problematic perspective. You see when you look at life through a problem what you see at the destination of where you want to go is warped. By being able to see and take pleasure in small changes I was able to keep reaffirming to myself that life was indeed getting much better.

There are a great many other personality traits that will help you along the way these are just a few of the most important. I'd like to open up the comments to allow anyone who has succesfully overcome their social anxiety and shyness to post about the traits they needed. I may also cover some in a future post.