30 simple strategies to overcoming shyness

Shyness can truly hold people back partly because those who are shy tend to avoid public situations and speaking up and partly because they experience so much chronic anxiety.

You can be confident and comfortable in social situations that have haunted you your entire life. See 30 simple strategies for overcoming shyness:

1. Your anxious thoughts lie to you. They always tell you you will mess up and someone will reject you. A rare few people do. Most don’t.

2. Open your mind to interpreting people’s actions differently. Usually, your anxiety looks for visual confirmation you “screwed up.” Your shyness aims to see this in someone’s face, words or actions. Assign new meanings to the way other people act. Perhaps, they are equally afraid of you.

3. Ask your friend for their understanding of the situation. People comfortable in social situations have a realistic or optimistic understanding of other’s behavior. Ask someone you trust what they thought of the other person’s actions. Work on accepting their insight as reality.

4. Don’t fight your fears. When you fight your fears, you lose every time. I do. Everyone does. So, don’t try to hide them. See them. Acknowledge them. Let them pass through your mind

5. Focus on what you can do for others. When you get anxious, you become gravely concerned everyone’s obsessed with criticizing you or perceiving you negatively. So, turn that process around by placing the focus on others. Ask them about their lives. Give them a compliment. It gets you out of yourself.

6. Reduce your contact with negative people. Many people only make your shyness worse, and they don’t care about ways they can help you. Limit or eliminate your time with these people.

7. Do something healthy for yourself. This activity can be whatever makes you feel good about you. Perhaps you like to work with your hands. Or, you want to read a book. Do something you love simply because you love it.

8. Take care of your spiritual life. This dimension of human nature often gets overlooked.
9. Never stop learning and growing. Most people stop learning after high school. Settle in your ways and change becomes hard. Never stop. Your social anxiety will have a difficult time catching up.

10. Share your anxious thoughts with someone you trust. Ideally, this would be another shy person. Try to meet someone online. Take the relationship offline. Discussing your anxious fears cuts them down to size.

11. Let go of outcomes. If you don’t hit it off with someone socially, remember you are not responsible for that. The final outcome, whether things go your way or not is not your responsibility.

12. Let go of the pressure you put on yourself. As a shy person, you put intense pressure on yourself to not make perceived mistakes. You believe that you get more outcomes to go your way when you don’t. That only builds the pressure social anxiety puts on you. So let that thinking go too. It gives you more freedom to be yourself.

13. It’s totally okay for you not to be perfect. Do you know a “perfect” person? If you do, you don’t truly know them. If someone has to be perfect, they are really deeply insecure with who they are. Give yourself permission to make mistakes.

14. Live your life one moment at a time. Shyness always pushes you way into the future, or past. Instead, focus on this moment. Be here. Now. When your mind drifts, let the thinking go and refocus on now. Easy to say. Challenging to do.

15. Cut yourself, and everyone else, a break. You’re not perfect. No one else is, either. Give everyone some slack.

16. Let go of resentment. Social anxiety sometimes robs you of important life milestones. It’s easy to become consumed with resentment when life does not go your way. Let go of it. It only separates you from others even more.

17. Let go of judging others. Your shyness criticizes you intensely. You often treat others the way you treat yourself. So, it’s easy to criticize and judge others. Whenever you want to do it, pray for the other person or wish them well.

18. Get enough sleep. Test what amount of sleep leads to you feeling rested. Get that every night. When you are tired, anxiety grows.

19. Count your blessings. Sometimes, your shyness makes you feel like life has robbed or cheated you. Let go of the negative. Focus on the good things about your life and watch your anxiety melt away.

20. List your strengths. Everyone has strengths. Including you. Make a list of what you do well. Spend more time doing that. You don’t think you have strengths? Time to get out there and try new things.

21. Spend time with people who appreciate you for who you are. Some people think you have something wrong with you. Others think you are great. Spend more time with those who like you because you are. If you don’t know people like this, keep joining groups and trying new stuff until you find your fit. Everyone fits somewhere.

22. Listen to others. What do most people love to talk about? Themselves! So, focus your conversation on them. Ask them questions about their life. Most never run out of things to say.

23. Admit everyone has a role in the world. The world was not made just for extroverts. Socially anxious people have skills too. You may make a good listener, mentor, entrepreneur or friend. You have a spot. Find where you belong.

24. Let go of your need for affirmation. Everyone likes to have people admire them. But that’s dangerous. Because, then you continue to behave in ways to get it. Instead, let that thinking go. Realize you know people who love you. Trust them over strangers you just met.

25. Practice social skills. Sometimes, you don’t know what to say because you haven’t practiced your social skills enough. So, before a social engagement, strategize three ways you can start conversations. Compliment someone on what they are wearing. Discuss current events everyone knows about.

26. Let go of judging your feelings. Being shy in social situations doesn’t make you “bad.” It just makes you…shy in social situations. Nothing wrong with it. Accept it. Embrace it. Realize you have strengths others do not have because of your anxious personality.

27. Remember famous anxious people turned out okay. Gandhi was so extremely anxious he initially failed as a lawyer. Richard Branson hid behind his mother as a child. Johnny Depp has said he can’t stand being famous. Actor Will Farrell was extremely shy during his college years. You may not end up famous. But, you can certainly do well in life.

28. Accept a life with no limits. Your mind caps where you can or can’t go in life. If you don’t think you can, you certainly won’t. Let go of that barrier. Accept you can be as relaxed and comfortable as you want in social situations.

29. Take breaks. Working on a personal challenge like shyness takes extensive energy. You will feel worn out at times. Take a break. You need it and deserve it just as much as anyone else.

30. Learn to love yourself. At its core, shyness means you feel ashamed of who you are. Healthy self-love does not include shame. Let go of that feeling every time it comes up. Instead, accept yourself. Take an accurate inventory of your strengths and weaknesses.