So you want to learn how to overcome shyness. But the problem with learning how to overcome shyness is you don’t even know where to begin. Sure, some of us get advice from others like “Just be yourself” or “Just go out have fun”. But you know from experience that it’s not so simple.
Hope is not lost though, you can learn to tackle this obstacle if you have the right tools and structure behind it. And that’s what I’m going to talk about here.
When you learn how to overcome shyness you’ll be able to walk up to people you don’t even know and start a conversation without problems. You’ll begin to feel confident more and more from being able to just talk to others.
One of the reasons it’s hard to overcome shyness is because we “think” a lot. We’re cerebral. Most of us don’t realize this but there’s several types of “thinking”. You already know of one which is the cerebral and here’s the second, behavioral thinking.
Cerebral is when you plan things out and strategize like a chess game, it’s also where you have inner dialogue going. Have you seen that fight scene in the latest Sherlock Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr where he thinks of all the ways he’ll hit the guy and then does it? That’s cerebral.
Behavioral on the other hand is very different and contrary to what people think it’s FASTER. It’s when you’re jogging on a trail and see that rock in front of you and naturally avoid it…in that moment you don’t think to yourself “Okay, there’s an obstacle…if I go left this outcome will happen, if I go right something else will happen.” If you thought it out it’d probably be too late and you’d trip on that rock.
The problem is shy people approach the social game from a cerebral level when it’s actually a behavioral game and we “trip on that rock” so-to-speak. To learn how to overcome shyness you have to take a different approach.
The “Social Game” sits on behavioral thinking. One of the ways to get to that level is by learning conversation skills and applying them when we’re out…and getting feedback through the behaviors of others.
You NEED to go out and have good conversations so you get behavioral feedback.
Once you start having more conversations you might naturally see that you’re adjusting to the circumstances without having to plan it out step by step using your mind. You’ll also find that going back to the step by step planning starts to become too slow for you and soon stop using it.
Essentially that’s how all social conversation is supposed to be. If you find yourself getting stuck thinking about what to say next this might be the reason.
