How to Overcome Shyness in 12 Minutes

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today we're gonna talk about 5 ways that you can overcome shyness. The 3rd way is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for my thoughts on the subject too.

When that moment of shyness hits and the hands don't know where to go, you feel like 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 club and I've been separated from my friends and I find myself alone and feeling like I don't really want to jump back into conversation with anyone. But what I used to do was go, "Okay, you've got to. You got to be fun. This is your YouTube channel. You're Charisma on Command. You got to do it," and I'd force myself in that moment. Giving 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," is 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 great eye contact. I might wander a little bit, but I'm gonna do as little as possible. And what this does is it frees me because what shyness is, is it's 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 other people. What happens when you allow yourself to be boring is you just give yourself that worst-case scenario, right?

That's—

it couldn't be much worse than this out at a bar or a club or a networking event, right? And what that does is it eliminates the need to perform anything. And for me, this normally 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 to 30 seconds. I kind of feel like I want to because now I'm boring myself, right? Or I'll just go home. But at this point, you know you fully reset when you feel it switch from "I've got to," "I need to do this," to "I kind of want to now." 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. It doesn't mean that you go up against a bar or you stand there and try to look cool or you try to look powerful. You actually release the judgments of everybody else. If they're going to think you're boring, totally fine, but you don't try to look Like anything, you let yourself just go slack, breathe deep, 30 seconds later you're gonna feel a massive difference.

I'm very shy, so it's hard for me to make friends and get noticed at work.

How can I change that?

Uh, come naked to work. I think that'll change it very quickly. I would say, first of all, all of us have kind of an identity for ourselves, a way of defining ourselves, and human beings don't usually stray from that. So if you consider yourself to be a conservative person or a shy person, I know the way you move to some extent. I know the facial expressions, the gestures, the way you use your body, and it's all consistent with the fact that human beings, our strongest drive is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves. If your self-definition is, uh, I'm a situation where I'm kind of— what was the word he used?

Uh, shy.

Shy. Then you're going to find a way to get to a place where you kind of cower back, right? The fastest thing you could do to change your experience would be to Create a new little thing, a simple thing like erase. The minute you go, "I'm shy," you go, "Erase." That's a BS story. BS meaning belief system. That's just a story. And if you tell yourself a story long enough, you start to believe it, and once you believe it, you act like it. When you keep calling yourself shy, you believe it. You go, "Tony, I've always been shy up until this moment." Do something that's completely outside what you would normally do. Do something, become somebody else. Decide who's the most playful, passionate, outrageous, fun person you know and behave like them for 2 or 3 days. Just push yourself to behave like that. And here's what's happened. It'll be shocking, you'll be weird, you'll be different, you'll feel uncomfortable, but after a while you'll get reinforced. It's like if you get a nice haircut, you make a change in the way you look, people will compliment you. You'll get some compliments, and those compliments will make you want to use those other parts of yourself.

Well, to really overcome shyness, you have to start to overcome your self-image, and you have to start to overcome this idea that people are looking at you, and people aren't really caring about what you're doing. The problem, the fundamental problem, is that you care too much about what other people think of you. And that is something that you're gonna have to numb down through a process of progressive desensitization. Is that you're gonna go through, and you're gonna, whatever technique you use that I'm gonna give you here, is you're gonna numb yourself down to this idea that it's important what people think of you, because right now you care too much. And maybe because you care so much about how people think of you, you stutter, or you don't make eye contact, or you don't go up and you introduce yourself, or you're afraid of approaching someone and putting yourself out on the line because you either fear rejection, you fear embarrassment, you fear that people will laugh at you, you fear that people think that you're weird, or any number of these kind of, uh, doom and gloom scenarios. The fact is that that's something that you've constructed in your mind, and I know because I have this. I've had it really bad in the past, and I still have it to some degree now. It's still hard for me to sometimes go up to a stranger and introduce myself, or to go on the line and go, you know, like hit on a girl in a club or at a bar. That's still challenging. It can be. So first of all, realize that you're totally normal. And that there are a lot, a lot of people in the world, millions of people, that are caught in this situation. And the reason is that they haven't gone in there and they haven't numbed themselves down to it. So the only way that you're really gonna overcome shyness is by actually going out and interacting with people. You can't really avoid that. What you can do is kind of build up gradually so that it's not as painful or as scary as it would be if you just, for example, went up and you had to give a speech. In front of 1,000 people in an auditorium, that would be so scary that you'd probably throw up and you would never do it. Whereas if you start yourself small and baby step your way up over a long period of time, then you can get this problem handled. So, for example, if you are shy in the context of work, like you're not asserting yourself at work, and you know that other people are more involved, their voice is being heard more, in group meetings, etc., what you gotta do is you gotta start opening yourself up. Start very small. So what can you do? What's one thing you could do? Well, you could maybe find one colleague or two colleagues and just make friends with them and start building up relationships with them. And maybe you could start going to lunch or meeting up with them during coffee breaks or at the water cooler and just start chatting them up. This is something that you're gonna have to you're gonna have to train yourself to do, right? Is you got to push your comfort zone a little bit, because naturally you're not gonna wanna go and just have some idle chitchat with somebody at the water cooler, or maybe ask them to lunch. Maybe what if they reject you? You have to put yourself out on a limb. It's a small limb. Fact is that most people will not reject you. You'll be surprised at how good they respond to you. And even if you're socially uncalibrated, they'll still respond well to you in most cases. And even if they don't, again, this goes back to the problem of why do you care so much? Why do you care so much that someone doesn't want to go to lunch with you or snubs you at the water cooler? It's not that big of a deal. And you have to get yourself accustomed to that, because right now, if you're very sensitive to it, if you have got thin skin, then that's gonna be painful. But you gotta put yourself out there and try it. So start small, and then once, for example, you've got some lunch relationships built You're going out with people at lunch. Maybe then you're going out first with, with one other person, so it's just the two of you. Then maybe you invite a third person. Then maybe you hold a weekly lunch with, you know, with your team of 10 people or 5 people, and all of a sudden you start kind of hobnobbing with them, interacting with them in kind of a more casual lunch environment. Then all of a sudden when you're at work in a group meeting, then you can be more assertive there. And it'll just, it'll just transfer over and you'll get better and better and better at it. It's something you have to practice.

You know, the biggest problem that a shy person has is that they label themselves as shy. And when we label ourselves as shy, we act like a shy person would. And people don't naturally gravitate towards a shy person because we could feel their discomfort. So the best thing that you could do is to challenge yourself by going into social situations that you either know somebody that you trust, that you can really rely on to help you overcome that initial first step, which is always the most difficult, or you can really put the focus onto somebody else. The great news for a shy person is that people are so self-absorbed, they love to talk about themselves. So all you need to do is ask a question As simple or easy as, "How was your day?" And the other person will start talking and you could be more focused on them than you. And sooner or later you will find that the only reason why you are shy is because you thought that you were.

Lastly, a lot of guys are nervous to talk to girls because they don't believe they have something to bring to the table. So what you can do to combat this is to bring value to conversations that you have. What you can do is make a list or think about all the things that you could do to bring value to a conversation. Is it an interesting story, a funny joke? Are you just offering unique information about yourself that might inspire someone? Can you teach someone something? Can you make someone feel good about themselves? Those are some of the examples of ways that you can bring value to a conversation. And once you're bringing value, then you will know for sure that people want to talk to you and therefore get rid of your so-called Shyness.

So my quick thoughts on shyness, I have two. The first is, one, maybe you don't need to change it. If you are not a naturally extroverted person, you don't have to look at those people who are massively extroverted and say, I want to be like them. Recognizing that you have strengths, you're good at things. Being introverted is not a problem. It's not something that necessarily needs to be fixed. And to be comfortable and happy with who you are and recognize the strengths that you do have and and go all in on your strengths. I'm a big believer in what you are really good at, you should go and try to accentuate and try to be one of the best in the world at, and forget about the weaknesses. Stop trying to fix the weaknesses, 'cause you'll at best be mediocre at them, and then you never actually get to do the thing that you can change the world with. Where instead, go all in on what you're really amazing at, and that can allow you to have that big impact that you're looking for. The second part though is if you feel like this is something that's holding you back, or you have some big goal that you wanna reach and you're afraid to do it, or you're afraid to talk to somebody and you feel like that's really limiting you, practice, Practice really helps and small steps really help. So for me, you know, speaking on stage was something I used to be super nervous about. So talking to a small group really helped. Practicing by getting in front of the camera and just doing some YouTube videos really helped me. And so pushing yourself to like that one big step may seem insanely huge. Break that down into a smaller step and do that one little step that is still scary but not super scary, something you can do. And then you take another small step and another small step and another small step. Step, each time push your comfort zone just a little bit, and when you look back, you'll notice that you took that giant leap, but it wasn't all at once. It was in steps, and I found that that really helped me as well. So thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know what you thought about this video. I'd love to know if you are a shy person, if you feel that it holds you back, what you've learned from this video that maybe you're gonna apply to your life and your business. Leave it in the comments below. Really curious to hear what you have to say. And finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Michael Ash. Michael, thank you so much for purchasing a copy of my book. It means a lot to me. Michael was also one of my proofreaders or pre-readers at the start where he had the book that was twice as long, and so he gave some amazing feedback. Michael, really appreciated that. For those of you who want your chance at a future shout-out in a video, make sure you pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipt so I can keep track. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.