News Flash… Being shy isn’t about feeling unhappy or even about behaving a certain way.
Shyness is the result of
having a limiting belief because it’s how you let that belief make your decisions.
Can I stop being so shy?
When this question is asked, the overwhelming response inside my mind says hell yes.
Why? Because fear is only an emotion and fears usually lead to irrational thoughts.
Limiting beliefs are formed because of irrational thinking, those thoughts we have that get stuck in our minds and impact our memories and experiences.
From these past experiences, we form beliefs.
And when a belief does us harm it becomes a limiting belief which we can go back and change to an empowering one.
When an emotion does damage, we can agree it’s irrational because it’s only causing us pain.
Once we begin to look deeper into things we learn it’s a response triggered in our minds because we have not taken the time to learn how to deal with these emotions.
For any type of fear, we need to learn and understand exactly how it’s triggered. To do this, we look at it from the point of view of somebody who isn’t obsessed with that same fear.
We know it’s not an imminent danger, we don’t have a real reason to be concerned about our safety. In other words, we are not experiencing a fear of dying from embarrassment, we just create a thought making that comparison.
The problem for us when shy is we just don’t realize this. Since after all we are the ones who created the fear from our irrational thoughts.
Changing your beliefs about fear
More specifically a fear of (insert fear here). Let’s think about what our minds consist of when it comes to seeking things out. We are drawn to pleasure and repulsed by pain.
We avoid pain like the plague and generally go to extremes to find things which are pleasurable.
Where does a belief actually form?
In our minds and we control those beliefs.
Just think about it for a few moments. Does everyone have some type of belief system? Does everyone seem to follow those beliefs without needing those to be reinforced each time?
Yes, people form a belief system as a way to cope with things as they come up. This way they are automatically going to decide very quickly what they should do.
Knowing that beliefs are formed by our experiences(good or bad) we learn a few tidbits that allow us to go back and reprogram certain things about those experiences.
Taking things by the reigns we will want to work on each one individually. This is the part that get’s people to feel despair because we are going to be required to work hard to remove the unneeded ones.
What consists of an unneeded fear vs a needed fear?
To understand what kind of things we can alter we must figure out which fears are needed and which ones aren’t.
By doing a self-explorative process known as journaling.
Writing down the dreaded activities we do that we wish didn’t involve things like fear, anxiety, lack of motivation, or some other defense mechanism we have in place.
It will be well worth the time it takes to sit down and address each fear we have individually.
One thing to keep in mind is that we need to work on the ones we can remove before we work on the ones that need to be tweaked.
Unneeded fears cause us pain. They serve no purpose other than limiting our actions and are therefore useless.
This is different from needed fears, which are the ones that are necessary for survival. I don’t want to replace any of these because that will probably get me killed.
Rejection is a kind of unneeded fear because it’s a ridiculous one. Why do we care about being rejected?
This is the type of question we need to figure out to get to the point of letting it go.
Honestly, the world has enough possible situations that 1 percent acceptance will still end up giving us what we desire. That desire is a pleasure of some sort.
Even if you get rejected 99/100 times, all it takes is one. You only need one person to be interested in you before it can evolve into something wonderful.
You only need one person to hire you before you can unleash all your potential and become a brilliant success on the job.
The problem with only needing 1 percent approval
As human beings, we get taught all the wrong kinds of things so after being rejected a few times we assume things are always gonna be the same.
We stop trying and that is when we form a negative belief such as being a failure. We believe that since 5 girls are not interested in us that must mean all girls will be the same.
There is no way to win when we allow these types of thoughts or beliefs to exist. And when we also have a belief about being shy it’s like we have accepted something to be true even without any experience positive or negative.
This genuinely gets thrown around inside our heads anytime we see a reason for it to be triggered. I think she is cute but I can’t talk to her because I am shy, or because I am too stupid to form words.
Exaggerating things because we may not be ready for it to change. That is okay if this is you because I know how to fix it. The problem with 1 percent approval is that it’s not that hard to succeed.
I only bring that up because we almost always feel it’s an uphill climb which for some reason as shy people we tend to make it 10x harder to overcome.
Stop Doing This!
When you learn what to believe in you know how to change
I am not going to mention religion because that really can mess people up in both good and bad ways.
What I am interested in showing people is that we are the ones responsible for what we believe.
These may have started early in life, or been pushed on us by other people but that isn’t a problem when you decide and learn to change them.
I will be completely honest and open with myself anytime I want to make a change for the better.
This is how we can start to diagnose the many issues that trouble us.
You may already be spending all your time by yourself, or at least more time then you really want to be. That isn’t introversion by the way if you want to be social.
That is more of an indication that you need to start this process sooner than later before it gets to paranoia.
Whether you know it already or not these negative thoughts and wrong beliefs slowly drive us to a brink of destruction. When given the chance these limiting beliefs become much worse.
This can be called your inner conflicts since we all know that something just doesn’t feel right about the way we live. And we are correct in feeling that way.
We all start to feel empty inside because we are faced with an internal conflict. We know we are better than something which is holding us back. We just haven’t been able to find the right way to handle the conflict.
What should you do right now today to change things?
In order to start working on what you perceive as your identity. Shy or whatever the label you have put on it, know that it’s not a permanent label.
These things can be changed like a temporary tattoo. It’s just a matter of scrubbing before we get back to a clean patch of skin.
Then we get to find out what really matters to us and start working to understand more about it. We determine what we will believe because we are the ones wanting to and not from what anyone else says.
I get goosebumps whenever I feel something is just right for me. I hope you are able to feel that way too when you are ready to start working on improving yourself.
Can I stop being so shy? The answer will always be yes, and you can get things headed in the right direction right now.
Thanks for reading and if you have anything you would like to ask please do so below. _______________________________________________________________________________
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About Author
Eric
How are things going with you? My name is Eric and I am owner and operator of Overcome Life Obstacles. My main goal with this website is to provide answers to anyone who was like me and got lost or stuck in their lives. While you are here I wanted to make sure you check out my click herewhich is where I got my start in affiliate marketing as well as with self-improvement.
Man, after reading the sections on belief systems and the 1 percent approval, I was taken back to my college days and sociology courses. Many of the things you discuss in your article correlate to “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” specifically to the esteem level of the pyramid. I totally concur you can make certain changes within your character as long as your focused and prioritize.
I wrote this article prior to reading about Maslow, but I did take sociology in high school and again in college. Guess my subconscious mind was doing the writing for me. I am glad you liked it and appreciate you taking the time to comment. Please feel free to do so anytime.
Are you making any progress?
If you need help with anything please feel free to ask, I even have an option in the sidebar so that anyone can ask me a question in private.
Looking back on overcoming things is generally much easier than when you’re just starting to make the changes. But that’s the point really, get through to most uncomfortable parts while your desire is strongest and find the confidence or motivation to keep at what is working for you.
I appreciate you taking the time to share and please feel free to do so anytime.
Your article about shyness is very good. I admit that I am a shy person who has to cope with this problem my whole life. My shyness comes from the fear of being rejected by other people in social encounters and looking for job opportunities.
I used to be SUPER shy, and I have gotten better over the years. I can’t actually pinpoint when that happened or how though. I think it has just been the fact that we moved around some when my son was a competitive gymnast. It was a must that I become a bit more outgoing, or otherwise be completely isolated. I think it was something that I just had to do. It is hard though!