TJ Walker tells Angelica that shyness is normal but avoiding conversation costs you relationships and happiness. He explains why social fear evolved, then offers concrete steps: start small with people you already care about, skip the networking events if you hate them, and build from there.
Angelica wrote to me and said, tj, is it wrong to want to run and hide when people speak to me? Well, Angelica, you're not wrong for doing that. But to me, the question is, what makes you happiest? What makes your life as meaningful and as enjoyable as it could possibly be? Now, it's okay to be shy. It's okay to think of yourself as an introvert. I thought of myself that way for most of my early life. But you have to ask yourself, is this creating the ultimate amount of happiness and joy for your life? Because as human beings, we're hardwired to want connections. You talk to any 90 year old, 100 year old, what is the most meaningful thing in life? They all say the same thing. It's relationships. It's time you spent with friends, with family. And they mean talking to them. They don't mean just sitting in silence watching TV together. I want you to have a meaningful life. And therefore talking to people is a part of it. No, you do not have to go out to a business networking event every single night, pass out a thousand business cards in order to be successful. No, you don't need to do that at all. You don't have to go to a busy place like Times Square in New York City, stand there and wait for strangers to come up to you, talk to you, trying to selling you something or get your money. You don't have to do that. But when friends want to talk to you, I do think you should want to talk to them. When family members want to talk to you, maybe not after you've gone to sleep or too early in the morning or before you've had coffee, but at some point, people you care about want to talk to you. Yes, you should want to talk to them. And realize that talking doesn't mean you have to put on a show, doesn't mean people are judging you and judging the quality of your voice or what you look like. People talk to you because they want to be heard, they want to be recognized, they want your attention. So if you don't talk to people, if you don't let people talk to you, you're really telling them you don't care about them, you don't love them, you're not interested in them. That's isolating. We as human beings are not hardwired to go through life completely isolated. You've got to figure out who you want into your life. You and I might meet and you might say, I don't want TJ in my life at all. That's okay. But I want you to find someone. Some people you do like, you do care about family, friends, close professional associates, people you respect. Where you want to hear them speak. You want to know their professional concerns, their joys, their personal concerns. In part because you care about them, but in part because you want to share elements of your own life. We all have personal turmoils, bad days, things we want to just get off our chest and share it with someone. We want someone to hear us. We also have professional goals, ambitions. Now, I don't know what your ambitions are, but most of us want to accomplish something. Most of us would like recognition in the world and most of us want to make a living. Doesn't mean you have to be Steve Jobs and make so many amazing contraptions. You've changed the world, you become a billionaire. It may be you like to cook briani in a particular way. And you would like recognition that you make the best briani in your town. Okay, well, talking to a customer, listening to a customer tell you exactly what they like about yours, what's different should be rewarding to you. Telling people about your passion for that dish should be rewarding for you. I want you to make this fun. And to do that, I need you to step back for a moment and ask yourself, why do you want to run away just because someone wants to talk to you? Now, as human beings, from an evolutionary standpoint, evolutionary biologists believe we are hardwired to not want to stand up and be seen by a lot of people. Because 2,200 thousand years ago, if you're on the savannah, if all of a sudden you stand up, all sorts of predators can see you. A saber toothed tiger could see you and come and eat you. So it made sense to crouch down, not be seen, not be heard. And for so much of human history, if someone heard you speaking and they're from a different tribe, they don't know you or trust you. They might kill you for fear that you could kill them. So it does make sense to have some fear speaking people getting close enough to you to see you. I understand that. But in the modern world, very few people are going to hear you say hello or good morning and then all of a sudden kill you. It just doesn't really work that way. So there's very little downside if someone says hello to you and you say hello to them. However, there's tremendous upside. There's a tremendous positive side. If you do speak to people, if you do have conversations, if you do engage people, it could be just a more pleasant way of passing a half an hour when you're at a coffee shop. It could lead to a stronger friendship, could lead to a romance, it could lead to new business development, it could lead to a new job, it could go anywhere. But you've got to start the conversation. So I don't want you to get hung up on Is it wrong for me to run away when someone talks to me? It's not a right or wrong issue. It's really about what is going to make you happiest in your life. And for most people, and I believe for you, you're going to be happier talking to some people some of the time about mutual interest and things you have a passion for.
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