How To Overcome Shyness Fast And Improve First Impressions

Social Confidence For Life - A podcast by Josh Valentine - Social Anxiety Healer, Social Confidence Teacher

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Today, we are discussing how to overcome shyness fast and improve our first impressions while we are at it. This is important because if we want to handle the area of connecting with others and being engaging, then we have to start with becoming more extroverted.  Back in my more inhibited days of shyness, feeling depressed, and being low on energy, I couldn’t handle social gatherings like parties very well. I’d have to find that 1 or 2 people I knew and stay glued to them as my safe haven! As a consequence, I didn’t meet new people, and they didn’t get to know me. I was also easily embarrassed and quick to judge myself, so that made me want to stay to myself in case people think I’m weird for being me and socializing.  It was very uncomfortable, and I would usually end up leaving these social gathering super early within the first 15 minutes to crawl back to safety where I didn’t feel so critical of myself.  It got to a point where I knew I had to do something about this shyness or I’d never make progress in my future.  I then broke down socializing and pinpointed one key element that is simple, yet profoundly liberating- friendly greetings.  The energy we can emit in our greetings is a measure of how socially confident we are because we can be timid about it, or we can be charismatic, and in-between the two lie a bunch of different social confidence levels.  Just working on greeting people can transform you.  3 key elements of making great impressions in greeting people include: 1. Solid eye contact.  2. Speaking up and clearly. 3. Making warm, friendly faces.  After applying these into my practice of friendly greetings, I was able to break through shyness and nail down my first impressions.  Now, I tend to meet anyone I don’t know because it’s more fun. Navigating through social gatherings to jump in and out of conversations whenever I want to, saying whatever I want to feels comfortable. And the same is possible for you.  Your challenge: Practice friendly greetings with 25 people. Lean into the social fears that arise, and seek to perform on higher and higher levels of social confidence as you do them.  The only way out is through. There are only 2 outcomes in any social setting. Either it went really well or it was really funny. If you don’t get an outcome you want, then place it in the funny category. The point is to work on attaching a positive meaning to any outcome you get.  Until we speak again, you were born to be real, not to be perfect. So go out there and be who you are.  I’ll talk to you soon.  To maximize confidence in every area of your life at rocket speed, get your (FREE) ebook, "5 Steps To Break The Anxiety Barrier" here.