Shyness-To Shy-

Ways To Sooth Shyness And Change Your Life For The Better

It's no fun being shy, because, shyness can cause you many problems. To name a few, it can cause you to miss out on so much fun, enjoyment and opportunities.

We are all social creatures by nature, and although it can be nice to spend some quality time alone sometimes and it is good to have a great relationship with yourself.

Shyness becomes a problem when it is holding you back in life and preventing you from living your life on your terms and blocking you from being the person you really want to be, and the socially confident person that you can and will be.

Being shy, can make communicating socially very difficult, it can prevent you from expressing yourself and getting your point of view across, and it can even cost you your relationship.

Shy people get stuck in their own head, and to a large degree, they get controlled by their shy, self image that they and others have created about themselves.

Shyness is very often linked to social anxiety and although you can be shy without suffering social anxiety, as a general rule, if you scratch beneath the surface, then you will probably find out that there are usually some underlying fears and insecurities behind your shyness.

The chances are, you were conditioned to believe that you were shy or quiet from an early age, and you began to buy into and believe this shy label that you were given by others, after all, as young children we accept what others are saying about us as being true.

After a while, these beliefs and opinions of others would start to shape your self image of yourself which would have determined your character and personality.

On top of this, the chances are that you've learned to associate certain social situations with danger.

All too easily we readily accept the opinions and suggestions made by others, and they go on to shape who we become, or to put it another way, we play the role of the character of our self image, until we start to write a different script.

The good news is, shyness is just a choice, and if you're fed up with being labeled as shy, then change your inner beliefs and the shy self image that you're acting out.

Because, you do not have to live your live on the premise and assumptions that what others have conditioned you to believe as being true and absolute.

Everything in life is a choice, and you can choose to make it your intention to start to ditch your shyness tag, and gradually you can change and re-create the new preferred self image of your choosing.

There is nothing wrong with being quiet or introverted, if you're happy with that, but you shouldn't not have to be shy, because of your self image that you have forged, and you should not have to sit quiet, if that's not what you want.

Also, there is nothing wrong with spending time on your own, but again that should be a personal choice, and you should not allow your shyness to hold you to ransom and imprison you.

The jump from shy to being extrovert will take time, so take one step at a time and go at a pace that suits you.

Getting rid of your shy, self image and label

First of all, although shyness can rob you of so much, there’s nothing wrong with you and there is nothing wrong with being shy, and you have not got to conform, please or try to impress others, and if you prefer to be quiet, avoid big social events and live your life the way you want to live it, that's perfectly fine, so long as you're doing it on your terms

But do not let shyness, fear and anxiety, to stop you from doing the things that you truly want to do and to stop you being the person that you desire to be.

Feel the fear, keep calm and detached from it, and carry on, despite how uncomfortable you feel, remember it's OK to feel uncomfortable, but do not let your anxiety from preventing you doing or saying what you want, because you have to go through the fear, to grow and expand your comfort zone.

Visualize the self image of who and what you want to be, and visualize you, feeling calm, comfortable and in control, feeling safe and having fun, in all the types of social situations where you used to feel insecure.

Be yourself and live your life on your terms, but if you choose, you can quite easily learn how to be not so shy, just to it at a pace that suits you, and don't try to force yourself to try and be something that you're not before you are ready, just take one step at a time.

Sometimes shy people or those who worry a lot or suffer with anxiety, tend to spend more time stuck in their own head living the emotions of their problems.

Try to take your attention off your worries, and get out of your head and engage more in what others are saying or your hobbies and interests.

Try not to monitor yourself, like,

How you're coming across
How you feel
How you doing
What others think about you

Develop your wit and have more fun. Take an interest in current affairs, popular TV programs, read lots, other people's interests, learn lots so you have plenty to talk about and engage in.

Change some of your limiting beliefs, too

You are good enough
You are a worthwhile person
It's OK to make mistakes
You don't have to be perfect
You are interesting
You can do it
It's OK for you to be the center of attention
You have not got to impress people
You have not got to conform to others beliefs about you
You are a capable person
You have limitless potential

Start to replace or override your negative beliefs that you hold about you, take one limiting belief at a time, and replace it with a more positive belief about you.

Try not to be too aware or too concerned about your feelings, as soon as feel any fear, just distract yourself or sing some feel good tunes, because the more sensitive you become to your feelings, the more you will experience them.

Take positive action

The key to overcoming your shyness, is to take action, you're not going to make the leap from being shy to extrovert and confident overnight.

It is all about making steady progressive improvements and being prepared for setbacks, knock and allowing yourself to make mistakes or get things wrong, so you develop the traits and personality of a socially confident and happy person who is fun to be with.

Do not dwell on mistakes or setbacks, just learn how you can do it better next time. You have to take small risks and make social experiments, with the attitude of accepting your going to make mistakes along the way, and there will be times you have to challenge yourself and step out of your comfort zone.

Speak to strangers, smile at the times you feel fearful, speak up in front of groups and have your say, learn to express yourself.

Practice imagining everything going well, before a stressful situation, instead of worrying, say positive statements like, that could be fun or I'll look forward to that.

Instead of listening to, picturing and believing all those negative what if thoughts and scenarios of what might go wrong, change them to positive what if's, such as, what if that goes well, because things working out well and everything going well, is also a possibility.

Give yourself some safety reassurance like, whatever happens, I'll be OK. Be kind to yourself on the inside, say positive statements about you, ignore that self doubting inner voice.

Life is too short to worry or feel anxious all the time, and you do not have to be shy. Shyness and social anxiety are just a perception of the mind, which is not true, it's just a choice and a state of being.

It's just a set of beliefs, associations and feelings, that is holding you back, because of the negative conversation that you're having in your head and the stories you tell yourself.

Start to improve your social skills, and your self image because nothing is set in stone. Our self image, our past experiences and what others have told us, can condition us to start to label ourselves with certain beliefs and traits, and we then accept these limiting labels as being true.

You have the ability to be more socially successful and it already exists within you, all you have to is to learn how to relax and chill out a bit and let it come to you.

We get better through practice, doing and repeating, whether that is done through mental rehearsing ourselves performing and handling a situation going well, or by taking physical action, and just doing more of the things that would normally make you feel uncomfortable.

Sometimes you just have to push yourself and make more of an effort. How many times in the past, have you wanted to do something or say something, but you hesitated and you allowed your thoughts and feelings to talk you out of it.

Sometimes you have to change the way that you perceive yourself, other people and it's time to have the faith that you can and should change.

The way you think about yourself and the way you feel both physically and emotionally can have a big impact on how others perceive you and react to you.

Shy people and people who suffer with anxiety, and the two often go together, tend to spend too much time inside their own head.

This OK, if you're thinking, constructive, general or neutral thoughts, but if you're constantly worrying, analyzing yourself and your problems, doubting yourself, or you're always monitoring how you're feeling or how you're coming across, then it will increase your stress and anxiety levels.

Try to stay outwardly focused, avoid pursuing any thoughts that make you feel bad, if you have a worry, search for a solution, focus on the solution, and then forget about the problem.

Your body, shyness and anxiety

You may wonder what has your body got to do with shyness and anxiety? The answer to that is, it has a big influence on you, your confidence and your anxiety.

We are not born anxious or shy, both of these traits are learned behaviours and both can be unlearned.

Most of our fears, resolve around the uncertainty of the future and the unknown, which bring to the surface our fears and anxieties including social anxiety.

These fears and insecurities often arise because we do not have the confidence in ourselves to handle or cope with certain people or social situations, or we feel there will be a consequence, such as, we might blush, feel embarrassed, come across badly or make a mistake.

How you respond to the situations that you have conditioned with fear, and more importantly, how you respond to your anxious thoughts and the fear itself is the key to overcoming your social anxiety.

You can use your body to help you reduce your social fears and anxieties, because when we are put in a social situation that we would normally feel anxious, socially threatened or inferior, challenged or stressed, our bodies shorten in stature, we shrink and we pull our heads down which causes our body to compress.

This posture is the posture of insecurity, embarrassment and low confidence and it is related to the fight or flight and survival mechanism, which is known as the submissive and surrender state and it is the state that causes you to freeze or panic.

If your body is compressed, not only will it restrict your breathing, it will also flip your mind over in survival mode and your mind will start to search through your fearful files.

Because your mind will think you're in danger, it will try to warn you of anything, that it perceives or anything that it has previously associated with, being remotely dangerous, including anything that might emotionally hurt you, which will include all your social insecurities.

But it is not just this shrinking and submissive posture that are related to danger, you can go the other way where you tense your body, you arch your back and you stick out your chest and lift your head up.

These postures would be helpful in a real life threatening situation, with social anxiety, like most other fears, there is no real danger, except the personal threat to your ego and pride.

Over the years, your shyness and anxiety can cause you to take on these unhealthy and tense postures and contribute to retreat into a shrinking violet.

These postures and habits can become habitual and automatic and they are highly inappropriate as far as your shyness and social anxiety is concerned.

But you can start to prepare yourself to react differently to all those outside situations that cause you to either compress or stiffen your body.

Sometime people here that if they stand tall or sit up straight that it will make them feel more confident, but unless you know what you're doing, trying to physically correct your posture can make things worse, and what most people think is good posture is usually bad posture.

Tight muscles are also associated with the fight or flight response, so if you're sitting or standing in a tense or compressed posture, you're basically indicating to the part of your mind that controls the fear and anxiety response, that you're in danger and something bad is about to happen.

You should never attempt to sit or stand straight. Our bodies are not meant or designed to be straight, what you should aim for is, to sit and stand poised and aligned, so you are at your full natural height, without any effort being made by you to hold yourself up or in position.

Healthy posture is where your bones are holding you up and supporting you, and not so much your muscles, where all your joints should be free.

If you want to feel less socially threatened and if you want to feel more socially secure, then you should aim to sit and stand comfortably, with the least amount of stress and tension, and when you get this right, you will respond less stressfully to your circumstances and outside stimuli.

The way you sit, stand, move and respond is largely down to the habits that you have learned or self created over the years, which can all have a big influence on how you think, feel and behave.

When you were young you instinctively knew how to sit, stand and move, where you naturally help your head in perfect alignment and balance over the top of your body, which would leave your back upright in its natural and healthy position, leaving it free of tension.

You would naturally stand and sit without having to think about it with a natural poise and balance with the minimal amount of strain and tension in your muscles.

As we grew up, we would mimic the bad habits of our elders and we would start to sit and slouch as we engaged with activities like reading and writing where our head would no longer be balanced freely over our torso.

Over time we would pick up many more bad habits, learned responses or we create them ourselves by trying to adjust ourselves into what we think or sometimes what we have been told is good posture, which causes some muscles to weaken and shorten whilst others lengthen and stiffen causing us to hunch and stiffen our necks.

Our muscles are linked to the fight or flight reflex

Our muscles, especially our shoulders are directly linked to the fight or flight reflex mechanism and survival mode.

Therefore, it is important to try to sit and stand with the least amount of tension and stiffness, because when your shoulders, your neck, your upper and lower back are tight then you will switch over into fear mode and you will feel more socially threatened and embarrassed.

This means is, because of the fight or flight reflex connection to your muscle, your anxiety levels will increase, and you will start to respond more with anxiety and fear because your mind thinks, you must be in danger, or why would your muscles be tight.

The part of your mind that controls your fear mechanism, does not use logic, it just reacts to your thoughts, feelings and any outside stimuli that it has come to associate with being threatening, even if there is no real threat.

The secret is, start to react calmly to your anxious thoughts and your social fears and to sit and stand aligned and balanced so you have the least amount of tension in your body.

When we take on unhealthy, out of aligned and tense posture we have a lot more trouble with anxiety and negative emotions, and our thoughts are influenced by our body.

When you're naturally aligned and balanced, where you're standing and sitting with the least amount of tension in your muscles, then you will begin to start to change the way you respond to outside stimuli and the social situations that you find yourself in.

The more you can maintain a balanced and aligned posture, with the least amount of tension, the more you will experience that free flowing feel good state, and the more you will begin to feel less socially threatened.

A tense body, means more tense and fearful thoughts and more startled reaction, so the less tension the more relaxed and confident you will feel, plus, you will speak more fluently and clearly and your thoughts will become less fear based.

It is important that you learn how to sit correctly, and it is especially important that you know how to get in and out of your chair so you maintain your natural curvature of your spine and you sit and stand with the minimal amount of tension.

Because if you sit badly and tense, then you will carry it through to when you are standing, and vice versa.

Do not lift up your chest, because if you lift your chest, you will arch your back, causing muscle stiffness, you want to stand at your full height without any stiffness.

You should also, tilting your head back, especially when getting in and out of your chair, one of the most important things, is the positioning of the head on top of the spine, your head should gently rest on the top of your spine, slightly angled forward, your neck should be free and your head should be forwards and up.

If you want to sit and stand with the least amount of tension, watch the video below which will demonstrate how to sit and stand with the least amount of tension

Our mind will use feedback from our body, to try and make sense of what's going in our surrounding environment, and whether or not, we are in a safe situation or we are in danger, or there is potential danger ahead.

When our body's become compressed and collapse, it basically mimics the fight or flight response and it puts you into survival mode, which will cause, confusion and you will react more with fear and anxiety.

Tense and tight muscles are also used as feedback, so it is important that you learn to sit and stand with the least amount of tension.

If you want to feel less anxious, socially, and you want to feel more relaxed, confident and comfortable, then you need to stand and sit naturally and poised with the minimal amount of tension, effort and energy.

Learn about the one muscle that can eliminate much of your anxiety!

7 Ways to Soothe your Shyness

Shy people instinctively know that they are missing out. Shyness equals lost opportunities, less pleasure and fewer social connections. Shyness can be crippling but there are tried and tested ways to make it a thing of the past.

When I was fifteen, I was shy. I recall an attractive girl attempting to engage me in conversation. My shyness made me focus on me instead of her. I heard my own voice but not hers and I thought about what I was trying to say instead of what she was trying to say.

The formula for shyness is "too much focus on the self" plus anxiety. To make it even more unpleasant, sometimes when you are feeling shy you experience physical sensations which 'hijack' your calm logical self.

My pulse raced, my mouth dried up and I felt like the village idiot! I couldn't think what to say so I said nothing apart from making barely audible grunting noises! Cary Grant eat your heart out! When I detected pity in her eyes (or was it contempt, or boredom) I mumbled my excuse and got out of there. I hated being shy and was determined to change it.

How shyness is developed and maintained

Shyness really is a combination of social anxiety and social conditioning. To overcome shyness you need to learn to relax socially.

This enables you to direct your attention away from yourself and gives you the space to practice certain conversational skills. In most cases, the heightened emotions of socializing when young simply condition the sufferer to respond to social events with fear, instead of excitement and pleasure.

Relaxed socializing is so pleasurable, not to say productive, but it is an advantage denied to many until they learn to relax. To start reducing your own shyness, I want you to absorb the following tips and ideas and start to put them into practice:

1) Think about the way you feel and behave around familiar people you are comfortable and spontaneous around. It's that feeling transferred to new people and situations that equates to your emerging social confidence.

2) Focus your attention away from yourself. Sure, you can think a little bit about how you are coming across, but if all your focus is on your own words and feelings then you might as well be by yourself.

Notice what other people are wearing and make a mental note, listen to their conversation, imagine where they might live, make a point of remembering names. Not only does this give you more to talk about, it also 'dilutes' social anxiety leaving you feeling calmer.

3) Ask people open questions. Many people like to talk about themselves and will find you interesting if you find them interesting.

Ask questions that require more than a 'yes'/'no' response such as 'What do you like about this place?' rather than: 'Do you like this place?' Once they've answered use 'add-on' questions connected to the first such as: 'What other places do you like in this city.?' Next you can express your views.

This is a great way to get the conversation going. If the conversation doesn't 'take' then no matter, you've done your bit.

4) Stop trusting your imagination so much! Have you ever had an imaginary picture in your mind of a holiday destination only to arrive and find the reality is different from the way you had imagined? That's how reliable imagination is.

Stop imagining what others think. I do lots of public speaking and I've long since stopped trying to second guess what others think of me - it's just too painful. Besides, what a person thinks about you has a lot more to do with who they are than who you are.

5) Stop using 'all or nothing' thinking. The 'completely this/completely that' style of thought occurs when you are emotional. People who are depressed, angry or anxious see reality in terms of differing extremes, simplistic all or nothing terms.

An angry person is 'right' and you are 'wrong'; the depressed person feels like a 'failure' while others are a 'success'. In reality, life is composed of infinite gray areas.

So stop fearing that you might say the 'wrong' thing! Or that people will 'hate' you. Once you start to relax more socially you'll notice much less black or white thinking because anxiety actually causes you to think in all or nothing terms.

6) Take your time. You don't have to blurt things out. Ask questions and if questions are asked of you can take time to consider your response (within reason). Don't just blurt out what you think might be the 'right' answer. A slow answer is a relaxed answer.

7) Finally, use hypnotic rehearsal. Hypnosis is the quickest way to change your instinctive/emotional response to any situation. Only think about meeting others when your mind and body is relaxed.

This conditions you to associate relaxation with being around new people. In fact, you'll find that when you relax deeply enough often enough whilst hypnotically rehearsing being comfortable around others you'll reach the point where you just can't be shy any more! This is what I call a 'happy inability!'

I now love meeting new people and suspect that my current social confidence would be unrecognizable to my fifteen year old self.

Overcome shyness now at HypnosisDownloads.com

Article by Mark Tyrrell of Hypnosis Downloads.com.

A Message Of Inspiration, From A Special Person

You are okay just the way you are! Really! Do you feel good about yourself today? It is challenging to be okay with ourselves, isn’t it? Who invented that crazy word “perfection” anyway? So many times we forget that it is our uniqueness- - - that makes us special – and wonderful.

There is no other person on earth just like you. Wow! Without you there would be loss. It is okay that you have problems to solve in your life. We all do. It is okay that you can never get enough done. That is the challenge we all face every day –- - and the day after that.

If you were perfect, no one would want to be around you. It would make everyone else feel inferior. It would! So smile - - right now. Go to the nearest mirror - -Look yourself in the eye - -And tell yourself that you are okay just the way you are!

And then say, “I love you – just the way you are right now.” Give yourself some love today.

With Love and Mastery,
Sasha Xarrian.