In this running post, I will develop a single, unified master plan for overcoming shyness and turning around my social life. This includes both ideas that I plan to try, as well as strategies that I have found to be successful. This post will be a great work in progress - I hope to succeed in turning my life around by July 9, 2008. In the meantime, many proven methods will be added, and failed techniques will be purged. The end result should be a definitive solution for the world's silent mass of shyness sufferers. Last Update: 11/30/2007
Principles
Practice
Overcoming shyness is not something that can be done by merely studying a book, a blog, or even a thousand web sites. The single most important thing to be done is practice. Lots and lots of practice. As much as possible - this can't be stressed enough.
Persistence
Overcoming serious shyness requires extraordinary persistence. Starting out, and even later on, things will inevitably not go well in many of the social activities we try. There is no way around it - if this weren't the case, then by definition there would be no problem in the first place. It's critical to remember that it doesn't matter how things go when we're out there getting practice. Failure is the price we pay for success; every effort made in doing something social is an accomplishment - a stepping stone in the path to turning things around.
Non-Acceptance
In researching shyness online, I've come across many threads on sites like yahoo! Answers where someone asks for help in overcoming their problem, and others respond. There is almost always a response essentially telling the person that it is OK to be shy, and that they should accept being they way they are.
No one should ever accept being shy. This is serious. Living is largely about love, friendships, comradery and the like. Being shy causes us to miss out on some of the best parts of life. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Inhibition
Inhibition really is the crux of the problem here. This is part of the current, working plan:
Try to force ourselves into some uninhibited behavior. Dancing in the streets would work, but starting out, it's easier and good enough to force some comments, questions, jokes, compliments, etc. in conversation.
Sometimes things come to mind to say, but we feel too inhibited to say them. The plan is that whenever that happens, defy the inhibition and do it anyway. The idea is that by force, you have allowed yourself to indeed be yourself (saying what you're thinking), a little more than usual.
The positive responses that you get should reinforce the behavior of being yourself, allowing you to eventually do it without needing to force anything. Now, what I learned the first couple times that I tried this theory is that you don't simply have to use force: you usually have to use brute force! This is simple stuff on paper, but when I've been in social situations, I've felt too much inhibition to say even some simple things, despite my strong will.
It's really a lot like jumping out of a window blindfolded when you know there's a trampoline to catch you. It requires a leap of faith, and some intense willpower in the moment, but you can certainly do it.
So far, practicing this every chance I've had has helped - it gets easier over time. It also helps to try to speak or act soon after something comes to mind; the longer you wait, the more psychological force you need to do it.
Being Yourself
Be yourself. This simple phrase summarizes the goal of this entire blog. My life's greatest mission. We simply want to be ourselves around other people. Nothing more, nothing less.
While it will take time and many of the strategies written here to achieve this ultimate goal, there is one thing that has to be done immediately. What we can already do is not try to be anyone other than ourselves. What I mean is don't try to impress by trying to make yourself sound more interesting, or anything like that. I learned this through experience; trying to impress tripped me up horrendously when I first started my mission. Hopefully you can learn from some of my mistakes, instead of having to make them all yourself.
I also believe that when other people respond positively to you when you're not making an extra effort, or putting on any kind of show, that will also reinforce your normal, relaxed, uninhibited manner.
Reading
1. Conversationally Speaking: Tested New Ways to Increase Your Personal and Social Effectiveness. By Alan Garner.
To be continued.....I will be fleshing this post out greatly, editing it several times each week.
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