Personal Suck #2: Shyness

April 16th, 2005

One of the few things I remember from my early childhood is constantly hiding from folks behind my mom’s legs. I did grow out of hiding behind her legs, but I never outgrew being painfully shy. I’ve tried to overcome this irrational shyness over the years, and feel like, lately, I have made some decent strides. My approach has been to

  1. read books on the subject
  2. get comfortable useing the principles and skills in familiar situations
  3. venture out into world to use these principles and skills on strangers

When I set out to create this patch, I didn’t actually plan this approach. It’s just naturally evolved: By reading about how to handle different social situations and how to handle people, I discovered some skills I wanted to try; I tested these skills in situations and on people in which I had an established comfort level. Seeing positive results in these situations, I wanted to—wanted to—venture out into unfamiliar situations and try my growing skillset on strangers.

In a matter of months, I’ve changed from someone terrified of social situations to someone who is actually seeking out social situations in which to network.

Yeah, I know I sound like an infomercial, but my suck is getting patched.

Constant readers will readily recognize the two books that have helped me the most:

Back in January of 2005, Merlin Mann wrote about patching your personal suck.

Find the bad code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the fastest, easiest, most elegant solution that could possibly work.

So, that’s what I’m trying to do. Patch my suck.

Posted in Life Skills, Personal Suck |

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2 Responses to “Personal Suck #2: Shyness”

  1. John Richardson Says:
    May 12th, 2005 at 2:26 pm

    Hi Rick,

    I have suffered from shyness all of my life. The key thing for me has been Toastmasters. Giving speeches to a friendly, supportive audience will do wonders. I was a different person after my first “ice-breaker” speech and it just kept getting betterspeech after speech. You can find a local club by going to http://www.toastmasters.org and doing a search for your local town.

    Highly recommended…

    John

  2. Duff Says:
    June 16th, 2005 at 10:04 am

    Hey Rick,

    I know this comment is coming a bit late, but I just happened upon your blog today.

    I too was once a shy, fear-laden geek! (And the geeks shall inherit the Earth….)

    My main technique for getting over shyness (really social anxiety or fear) was outrageousness. I attack my fears head-on by blowing them out of proportion on purpose. For example: if I’m feeling particularly geeky, I’ll go out and buy some UBER-geeky clothing from a costume store or thrift shop and wear THAT as a joke!

    The metaphor I use is “finding a way to turn fear into fun.”

    The other thing that I’ve found useful is improv theatre and dance, which is basically structured outrageousness! And anything that gets you into your body and into fun social environments (dancing especially) will be beneficial.

    Enjoy!

    ~duff

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