Today I’m going to teach you how to eliminate shyness in up to 60 seconds. Literally, that’s as long as it takes if you do these 3 steps. So this is going to be useful to you if you’ve ever been out because I know I have. And then, you, all of a sudden, just gotten trapped in your head.
And, maybe, some of you left the conversation, maybe it was that someone you did know entered. Whatever it was, all of a sudden, the things that you have to say don’t seem as clever or smart or funny, or even worth expressing, and your hands, you don’t know where to put them. You can’t put them here, you can’t put them there. It just feels uncomfortable. So I want to help you dispel that so that you don’t hesitate and wind up missing out on opportunities to connect with people that you care about.
The first step is going to be this.
When that moment of shyness hits and the hands don’t know where to go, you feel that you’ve got nothing worthwhile to say, instantly, recognize this and stop trying to do anything, and just exist. In fact, let yourself suck. What I mean by this is you can be boring. When I feel this happen to me, it happens sometimes when I’m out at a bar or a club and I’ve been separated from my friends that I find myself alone and feeling like I don really want to jump back in the conversation with anyone. What I used to do was say “I have to be fun.” Then force myself at that moment.
Give yourself 20 to 30 seconds to stand there and go, “You know what? I’m gonna suck. I don’t feel like doing this right now.”It’s such an amazing reboot. So what it looks like is I’ll be out and I will, literally, my hands will drop to my side. I’m not gonna smile. I’m not gonna make or create eye contact. I might wander a little bit and I’m gonna do as little as possible. And what this does is it frees me because shyness is when you don’t feel like the things you have to say are enough, when you don’t feel like the way that you feel is enough, or good enough to engage with others people.
What happens when you allow yourself to be boring is you give yourself that worst-case scenario, right? Nothing is worse than this out in a bar or club or a networking event, right? And what that does is eliminate the need to perform anything, and for me, this only takes 20 to 30 seconds before I feel myself reset. And all of a sudden, I don’t feel like I should do anything after about 20-30 seconds; I kind of feel like I want to because, now, I’m boring myself. Well, I just go home. But at this point, you know you fully reset when you feel that switch from “I’ve got to, I need to do this,” to “I kind of want to know.”The caveat here, this doesn’t mean that you pull out your phone and you text on your phone for 30 seconds.
That’s the opposite, That’s you trying to look busy, right? That’s the opposite. And you don’t need to go up against the bar or stand there looking cool. You try to look powerful. You release others’ judgments of you. If they think you’re boring–totally fine. But don’t try to look like anything else; let yourself go slack, breathe deeply, then 30 seconds later, feel a massive difference, and that’s when step 2 comes in.
Step 2 is to go to your body.
When we want to get started on the right foot but the best way to do this is not necessary to jump in a conversation, but in my experience, is to go to your body. The problem with shyness is that the voices in your head are telling you that what you have to say isn’t good enough or that you should just shut up, that your hands are in the wrong place. Those voices are more numerous and louder than your actual voice. You’re not speaking–your interior, not exterior. We got to get you out of your head and the body is a great place to go. I focus on three things. I’m normally concerned with my arms. I need to move these guys around, for sure. My voice, and when I say my voice, I mean my whole vocal apparatus talking down through my diaphragm.
The deeper I can breathe, the lower I can make my resonance, the better I’m going to feel, and then, of course, lastly, once I’d get these things going, my face, my eyes, and my smile. The way I do this depends on the environment. If I’m at a club, I want to go to a place where I can move and make all of these things be as vibrant as possible; that’s the dance floor for me. So I go to the dance floor, 20-30 seconds, I dance, I will make noise, I would yell to my friends, whatever it is. That’s going to make me feel better. That’s going to make me smile, right? 20-30 seconds of that, I’m in a great mood.
What if you’re not at a club? Because we feel shy in lots of places. Well, let’s say you’re in an office, do it to the degree that you can. So if you’re in an office, you’re sitting in a meeting, and you’re, “Okay, I’m feeling shy.Reset.Okay.”Arms–my arms need to open up. Go out, expose the underside of your body, just let it go. So, if not your body, if you’re gonna expose the underside of your arm, that’s gonna make you feel a little bit more at ease. Your voice, to the degree that you can, if you have anything, try them in, but if you can’t, you can just hum it or breathe deep. That’s going to engage sort of these vibrational things that I have found are key, actually, to feel good. And then, lastly, the face.
If someone is talking to you, you can make eye contact with them. You can send positive feedback via your smile and eyes. This will help you get back on track. If you are in a 3-person conversation, two people are talking and you feel left out, you can’t touch any of them, you can’t get big, what do you do?
Well, what you can. You can stretch your arms, okay? That’s step 1, not bad. With your voice, if you need to, you can actively listen.”Oh, yeah, cool. Oh, he hadn’t said that to me. Interesting, right?”You get your voice going. You get your vibrations going and I’m telling you, it makes a difference. And, then, of course, your eyes and your smile, look them in the eye. Give them some active feedback with this. The more that you move, the easier that is going to feel. So you get all of these three things in place, which brings me to step 3.
The step 3 is sealing it.
We’ve used up, basically, the full minute; the first half is 3 sets, the second half is getting ourselves off on a good foot by getting into the body, the third thing is sealing it because we don’t want to go back into our head. So, to seal it, we find the most receptive, the nearest person that you can go speak to, and, typically, you want to use something that is prepared beforehand. And what I mean by that is that I don’t want you to go back into your head and go, “Crap, what do I say now? What do I say to him on the networking thing? It’s so dumb to ask what you do. I know what he does.”Don’t go back in your head.
So, typically, it’s good to have prepared for these situations that you find yourself, something common that you can say to strike up a conversation. It didn’t depend on wherever you are. Now, I get that not every situation is what you have, but what I can give you are two killer prepared lines that are gonna help you in most situations, like 95%.
The first one is if you do not know the person, and that’s very simple, you walk up to them at this point, you’ve broken your shyness to say, “Hey, what’s up? I don’t think I’ve met you yet. I am Jatin, may I have your name?”And what that does, that “I don’t think I’ve met you yet,” is so powerful. You could say, “Hi,” that works, but this is better because what that communicates is I know a lot of people here and this is an environment in which people are saying hi, so you should be polite and friendly. It works very, very well. Take that one. Use it with people you don’t know.
If you’re in conversation with people you do know, or maybe someone you just met, and you can’t re-introduce yourself, one of the very simple things is to just take the phrase, “Hey, this is totally random, but…” and then say whatever you want, and specifically, speak to a passion, speak to something you like. So, say you like books and you’re fascinated by the kinds of books that people read, which you might say is in conversation, “Hey, this is totally random, but have you read any good books lately?”I always like to ask people, right? or “Hey, this is totally random, but have you actually seen any good movies? I’m looking for one that I should see this weekend.”Whatever it is, pick something that you’re interested in because, then, that topic of conversation is more likely be the one that you’re interested in.
That is how you break shyness.
I wanted to give you something just for this situation when you’re actually uncomfortable. I realize there are things you can do beforehand. You’ve got a whole conversation at this point to handle, but the more that you are out of your head and in your voice, shyness will disappear, right? You cannot feel shy when you are exterior to yourself, only when you are judging yourself and wondering how other people are judging you, and this is meant to break that state. So, I hope that you found it helpful.
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I hope that this tip is good. I know shyness can be a really, really daunting thing; I’ve dealt with it a lot in my own life, and this isn’t intended to eradicate it from the entirety of your life, but it is how you can stop it in the moment when you have it, which I find is really the thing that most of us want to do most. So, I hope that you found this helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next upload.
also, check How to Start Conversation?