How to Still Slay the Day, Despite Shyness
Many people struggle with shyness, but once you learn it isn’t a weakness you may come to cherish your shyness. Shyness is just another personality trait. However, as with any trait, there are drawbacks as well as perks to it.
Defeating Your Shyness
Tips and Tricks from a Former Shy Girl
Don’t let the #GirlBoss girlies you see all the time on your stories intimidate you. Chances are, they were once shy gals like you! I was always the kind of kid who never raised her hand to ask a question in class and would mumble my words during presentations in front of the whole class. To be honest, I still struggle with that to this day but there are ways to dealing with shyness.
Overcoming Shyness & Anxiety In The Workplace (On Your First Day)
First of all, congrats on your new job (if that’s your current situation). If not, this is still relevant to you because you should start planning ahead in your career.
It can be intimidating to enter a new environment with people you have never spoken to before. Even for virtual positions, you may feel excluded from your co-workers during a Zoom or Google Hangout call because you have not developed any rapport with them yet. Continue reading
Your Shyness Is Your Super Power: The Power of the Reframe
Maybe you’ve been working on being less reserved. You want to speak up more during meetings, advocate for your business, and become closely connected to the women in your circle. Each of these things can feel like a ten-mile upward hike when you are overcome by shyness. But in a journey to excellence, it’s common to become overly critical…and doing so can cause you to miss out on some of your greatest strengths.
3 Ways to Hold an Online Vision Board Workshop if Your Social Circle is Spread All Over the Country or World
Vision boards are all the rage these last few years because they allow the creator to dig deep into their hearts and really verbalize what kind of lifestyle they want. Simply thinking about their current lives and what they would like to change is a good start. To get more excited about the vision board process, create a vision board workshop for your tribe of family, friends, local community, coworkers, etc.
Keep reading…
5 Ways to Set Up a Vision Board Party to Enhance Your Communication, Social and Personal Accomplishments
Even if you work on vision boards for and by yourself, running a vision board party for your small circle of family and friends is one way to take care of multiple goals at once. An intimate gathering for a vision board party will help you enhance your:
- Communication (because you will have to utilize communication before during and after the workshop),
- Social skills (because you will create stronger connections during the workshop); and
- Personal accomplishments (because the act of creating a vision board will help you with your goals).
Everyone can benefit from focusing on what they want out of life – focusing on their ideal lifestyle – so it’s quite possible that you’ll fill your room to capacity with family and friends.
What If You Don’t Have Family and Friends To Invite? Keep reading and you will get tips on where you can find other people to invite if family/friends are not a current option. These ideas work for all: family, friends, local community members, etc. Keep reading…
Continue reading
Road tripping while shy
If you’re looking for fun and adventure but you’re shy, anxious or just plain wary of solo travel; plan a road trip with a few friends. It’s a great way to explore new places. A bonus – you have your own ride so you can go where you want and you have a built-in support system to make you feel safe and secure. All it takes is a little bit of planning and a spirit of adventure to enjoy a few days of fun with friends.
diary of a shy black woman series #001 – flashback
This is a new series. A flashback series into an old blog I used to write. I’ve come a long way and am so glad I documented my experience back then. Hope you enjoy and stay for the ride. Hopefully my old readers find me on this new platform. My experience is one that many of you are still experiencing and I hope you realize, by reading my story, that you’re not alone AND you’re still growing no matter how old you are – young or older. Don’t give up on you! I’m still a work in progress. I’m not 100% free of social anxiety and I’m not 100% “un-shy” and I’m okay with that BECAUSE what I am is a person that won’t let those factors get in the way of my dreams, my passions, my purpose…my life! And if I ever feel like they are becoming debilitating again, I’ll continue to challenge them.
My weekend started today. I spent my day off from work, cleaning and having a blast online, while the television kept me company in the background. If I were as social in real life as I am online then this would be the end of my blog. Unfortunately, I am what others call ‘painfully shy’. And I don’t use the word ‘painfully’ loosely. Since I can remember, I have always been shy and here I am in my 20’s…still as shy as I use to be and maybe even more so.
Continue reading
Planning a holiday gathering (for those less inclined to party)
Are you planning a holiday gathering? Are you concerned about how to put it all together? Well no need to worry. By paying attention to a few details, you can plan a party that your guests will remember and look forward to attending year after year.
Continue reading
Fear of “You can’t sit with us” and the empty table
If you’re an introvert, you are probably a table ranker. When you walk into a room, you immediately rank the tables in the order that you prefer to be seated. The system is simple enough with one being your preferred seating and five being the please don’t seat me there section. Let’s take a look at a sample table ranking system for introverts.
Continue reading
TIP: Small Talk: Can you be great at it?
Silence… Perfectly fine if you are all alone. However, in social situations, it is just kind of expected that you’ll talk to others. If the thought of being a “Chatty Kathy” or “Chatty Kenneth” 
makes you want to steer clear of others in social settings, here are some thoughts on how you can come to appreciate and be great at small talk. Continue reading
Strategies to help you make great decisions (even if you’re shy or anxious)
Back in the 80’s, I was able to participate in a Pepsi Challenge. It was quite simple, you sipped two colas and chose your favorite. For the non-cola drinkers, there was a serious conundrum. How do you choose one over the other? What makes one better than the other? What do I like about Cola A versus Cola B? How do you make such an important choice on the spot? For most people, the choice was to go with the familiar or do a quick mental check and just go for it.
Start where you are by using your shyness
So, you’re painfully shy.
Ok.
Going from painfully shy TO feeling pretty good in social settings ISN’T an overnight process.
So, what do you do TODAY?
Here is a list of how to maximize your current situation while you keep your eye on your prize of becoming a person full of moxie!
- FIRST AND FOREMOST: YOU MUST KNOW THAT YOU ARE PART OF THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD – MEANING, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, TOO!
- ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL STUFF, YOUR HARD COPIES + YOUR PERSONAL SPACE
- I recommend this book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” by Marie Kondo <<< (If you purchase from my affiliate link I get a small percentage of the sale.)
- SELF-CARE
- When your peeps on your favorite social media sites are posting amazing photos of all the places they’re at and the cool people they’re hanging out with, don’t feel jealous. DO THIS INSTEAD:
- Be happy for them
- Be happy for your future self
- And pamper yourself from head to toe
- Deep condition your hair and maybe indulge in a hot oil treatment
- Take a relaxing bath or soak your feet
- Paint your nails
- Just love on yourself however you want to!
- Don’t waste those precious alone moments on toxic thoughts. INSTEAD: leverage those moments to make you whole!
- When your peeps on your favorite social media sites are posting amazing photos of all the places they’re at and the cool people they’re hanging out with, don’t feel jealous. DO THIS INSTEAD:
- CREATE A MUSIC PLAYLIST
- Play music and pay attention to the songs that really uplift you in ways unimagined and make a playlist with those songs ONLY!
- There are so many music apps you can use or simply create a playlist on YouTube
- WATCH MOVIES THAT FILL YOU
- Take this time to revisit movies that were life changing for you
- Watch movies that are meaningful to you
- LISTEN TO PODCASTS THAT FILL YOU
- Find podcasts you think you’ll enjoy and start listening to them while you clean, or while you style your hair.
- “Fill your cup!”
- READ BOOK THAT FILL YOU
- Brew some tea or your favorite cozy drink and snuggle up or luxuriate with a book in hand (or an audiobook)
- GO FOR A SHORT WALK
Those are a few tips on how to work with what you’ve got RIGHT NOW rather than feeling bad about being painfully shy. USE THIS MOMENT AS A GIFT.
TIP: The very thing you are avoiding is going to peel away shyness!
Conversation can feel icky when you’re painfully shy – but it wasn’t always that way, butterfly!
Something or a collective of things happened to you in your life journey that caused you to look at people and conversation as something to avoid. An overwhelming fear took over you.
The immediate gratification of avoiding people and conversation conflicts with the emptiness it renders over time coupled with the friction toward your big dreams.
There has to be a happy medium for you.
You need an effective way to repair your broken relationship with communication – itself.
Here are 3 tips: Continue reading
How to succeed as a shy student
A shy student may find that shyness is interfering with success in school. Do you find yourself struggling to ask questions in class? Are you a student that is often overlooked for projects or study groups because you don’t stand out?
If being a shy student affecting your school success, you can develop the skills to become comfortable interacting with others. You can try some of the same strategies used by teachers to help their “shy” students feel more confident in the classroom. Continue reading
Owning your shyness at work
It’s the night before the first day of your new job. You’re standing in front of your closet, trying to decide what to wear. Your goal: not to draw attention to yourself. If you’re lucky, no one will notice you and you won’t be forced to engage in conversations that end in awkward silence.
If this is you, you need to remember something very important. Your future boss may already know that you are shy based on your interview, but guess what? He/She picked you for a reason. Not only did you demonstrate that you were the best candidate for the job, but you have something that your boss longs for–the voice of reason. This voice is something that you’ve developed strongly, probably as a result of your shyness and your experiences as a shy person. Continue reading
Leverage Halloween: Uncover Your Confidence
Why not use Halloween to assist in uncovering your confidence? You can try dressing up as a character or person you admire. One that is a close match to who you know you are at your core and at your best! Even if it is a spooky or scary character, what can you draw from that as you take on that persona for a day? Maybe it is a way to be one with your fears and to understand the challenge fears are presenting to you to make you better? Deep, right? LOL. But seriously – you can connect with your authentic self with any character you take on if you are making that link and either exuding the best or learning from the weakness in a way that makes you grow.
This year, despite making huge strides in whipping social anxiety’s behind, I’m still going to leverage the power of Janet Jackson as a pathway to allow my inner dance goddess to shine through – circa the ‘Rhythm Nation’ era! I may post a photo on my social media pages so be sure to follow me! I’m constantly working to make myself better because I compare myself to myself and want to continue to make strides. Halloween is a fun way to do some of that work. Continue reading
Is there such a thing as a shy actor?
Most people believe that actors do what they do because they love to be the center of attention and to have people watching them all the time. Believe it or not, many of the famous people we love to watch are incredibly shy and only do what they do because they love it. The perk is, it can help them overcome their shyness or help them express themselves through a character. Continue reading
Differences: introvert, shy, social anxiety, empath, HSP
Most of us have had times in our lives where we’ve felt shy or uncomfortable meeting other people, especially if it is in a large crowd. But, sometimes, the problem is more than being shy and sometimes it is not shyness, and sometimes it is not a problem – per se. Either way, you should understand that there are lots of other people who understand how you feel. Continue reading
Find that “thing” within you that keeps you reaching higher
I have a bachelor’s degree with a concentration in communications. I went through a lot of hurdles to obtain my degree and it is one of my greatest accomplishments. My first stint at college was unsuccessful as a result of my social anxiety. I had the smarts but I found it extremely frightening to ATTEND class, and when I did attend I was not able to participate and could barely breathe. I managed to barely make it through the first year, then in the following year, things increasingly became unbearable. Continue reading