What If You Were Born Shy?

Were you born shy? Was there just some way that you came into this world where maybe you are a little more hesitant to connect with people, more hesitant to put yourself out there? Maybe some of that shyness, maybe some of that social anxiety is ingrained, is nature instead of nurture. And is that the case? How do we deal with it? That's what we're going to talk about in this video. It's something I hear all the time from clients, is like, hey, listen, I. I feel like this is just how I've always been. This is just who I am underneath. Now, you've probably heard me talk about how social anxiety is a pattern, and we can shift social anxiety and we can truly free ourselves from this and step into more and more confidence. But how does this jive with this idea that maybe you were shy as a young kid? Maybe you have evidence of that, maybe you have stories of that. And so I'm going to answer that in this video today. So first things first. I relate. And I was a very shy kid myself. And you may have had experiences when you were young where you didn't want to meet new people. You don't want to put yourself out there. Your parents were kind of like, come on, go do it. And you were like, no, I don't want to. So is that just kind of with you your whole life? So here's my thought on that. We all come out very different. You know, we come out different shapes, different sizes, different colors. Our personalities, our dispositions are different. Some kids are louder, some kids are quieter. Some kids are more extroverted. Some kids are more internal to themselves. And there's also different levels of sensitivity in all of us, right? The way that we see light and colors, how sensitive our taste buds are, how sensitive we are to sounds, and also how sensitive we are to other people, to their emotions, to their facial expressions, to their energy. All of that differs from person to person. A pattern I've seen in most people with social anxiety. Most people I work with is they tend to have been born with some level of sensitivity to the environment around them. They feel more than maybe some of the other kids. They perceive more than other kids. And the problem is not that. The problem is a lack of understanding of how to navigate that. So one of my kids is more sensitive. Sensitive to sounds. Like loud sounds, like the blender. He'll want to run out of the room getting water on his hair. Kind of like freaks out. You got to wash his hair in just the right way. These little subtle things that might not Seem like much, but actually they're indicators that there's some sensitivities here that we need to understand on how to navigate the world. And I think that's what was missing for a lot of us. So we didn't understand how to navigate the world. You probably don't have parents who are like, oh, I see, you're more sensitive to people's emotion, energy. Let's help you navigate what that's like. So, for example, let's say there's a relative or a friend or someone that comes over and the little kid's like, bleh, right now. What do a lot of families do? They say, hey, don't be rude. Go hug your nana. You know, go say hi to those people. Don't be shy. Come on. And the kid learns there's something wrong with me. Whatever my internal experience is, my sensitivity is wrong, so I should just push through and do it. And yet they can't. Now this pattern continues. And then they get to, usually around the age of middle school, 10 to 13 years old, and all of a sudden now you feel like, I don't fit in, I can't express myself. All these inhibitions start to come up, and then the stories come in, and that's when we lock it in. This is who I am. I'm attractive, I'm not worthy, I'm not lovable. People aren't going to talk to me, it's not going to go well. And all that it is underneath is just some sensitivity that you need to learn how to work with and how to navigate. And maybe you're more empathic, maybe you feel a little bit more. Maybe you're talking to somebody and you can feel some of the emotion that they're kind of sitting on top of and not maybe even acknowledging themselves. And you feel that and it affects you. So what we need to do is not hide and run away and bury under stories of social anxiety. And we also don't want to just barrel into it all and ignore our own experience, because that's what you were taught growing up. What we need to do is find that middle way. And this is what I do with clients in my Mastermind program all the time, is we say, great, okay, you want to be able to put yourself out there more boldly. You want to speak up, and at the same time, you feel very sensitive to the rejection or to what people are going to think or feel about you. Great. How do we tend to that? How do we really work with that? How do we nurture and nourish that part of you, that young part of you that you probably didn't get from your family growing up. I don't know for sure. You'll know you probably didn't get it. Maybe you got quite the opposite. So how do we nurture and nourish that part? That's a skill. That's being on your own side. That's one of the core things I teach you. Could sum all my confidence work down into two things with people. It's this bold action, going into the fear and being on your own side and taking care of yourself before, during and after. If you do those two things, you will succeed and your confidence will grow indefinitely. So hope this serves you on your path. Share down below what are you finding most valuable from this video? And until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.