How To Overcome Shyness

One of my best friends and I met at a piano recital rehearsal when we were about 13. We happened to be sitting by each other during the rehearsal and neither of us said a word to the other, hindered by our shyness.

I thus thought she was stuck up and snobby. She thought the same of me. All because of our silence. Truth was, neither of us was stuck up. We were just shy. 

My friend and I didn’t start becoming friends until she began coming to my youth group later that summer. Then we realized that we had a lot in common, like how we had both been homeschooled (myself in elementary school and herself all the way through graduation), or how we both liked old English.

Over the course of that year, our friendship grew and grew. We remained friends into high school and were roommates in college for a year. I’m so thankful that we were able to push past our shyness and become close friends. :)

Over the years, I’ve continued to battle shyness.

My closest friends probably don’t think I can be shy since I’m a bubbly person around them. But around people I’m first getting to know, I can definitely experience shyness.

I think it’s important to make a distinction here: shyness isn’t the same thing as quietness. You can be a quiet person without being shy. And you can be a shy person who isn’t necessarily quiet.

Also- neither quality is inherently bad. I think that shyness can hinder us from making friends or from fun experiences if we allow it to control us.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned how to overcome shyness and I want to share what I’ve learned with you :)

1. Learn that it’s easier to be your true self from the beginning.

In 2016, I decided to go on a mission trip to England with my university.

I didn’t know anyone else who was going on the trip so before the first few training meetings, I would sit down in a chair and look nervously around me. I wondered if I should try to talk to someone or just casually stare at the lock screen of my phone to pretend to be in the middle of something.

A month or two into the mission trip training, the mission trip leaders divided us up into teams. Now that I was a part of a team, I started to relax in the meetings. Now when I walked into the room, I would see smiling, familiar faces motioning for me to sit by them.

Yet I still wasn’t my normal goofy/bubbly self around them since I didn’t know the people on my team very well still.

It wasn’t until we went on the actual mission trip that I found myself able to be my true self around them- the part of me that is extremely talkative and giggly. I ended up gaining some great friends from the trip.

My one regret is that I wasn’t me from the beginning.

I was a quieter version of myself, scared to let people in. Worried that they wouldn’t like me when they saw who I really was and how silly I could be.

I learned that I wasn’t doing myself any favors by hiding who I really was. If I said silly things and then laughed at myself and they just stared, so what? If I made a joke or a pun and they didn’t get it, oh well!

I discovered that by hiding who I was, I wasn’t letting my teammates really know who I was. I was inhibiting them from truly deciding if they wanted to be my friend or not since I was pretending to be different than who I am. I’m not quiet around my closest friends… so why should I be quiet around them?

If you are shy and find that once you get to know someone well you stop being shy, examine yourself. See if you’re acting differently because of your shyness or if you’re hiding your true self because of it.

If you’re a naturally quiet person and your shyness enhances that- great! But if you’re not naturally quiet and your shyness deceives people about who you are, the following points may help you.

But the first step to overcoming shyness (in my opinion), is to recognize that your shyness may be hiding your true self from others.

2. Realize you have not received a spirit of fear.

A great verse to memorize and meditate on if you are trying to overcome shyness is 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline” (NLT).

If you read the context around this verse, you’ll see that Paul is talking about being timid when it comes to sharing the gospel with others. I don’t know about you, but I’ve often found myself feeling shy when it comes to sharing the gospel.

As Christians, we have the Spirit of God dwelling within us. And as this verse states, this is not a spirit of fear or timidity. A huge key in learning to overcome shyness is to recognize that God is with us and that since He is by our side we don’t need to be afraid.

Memorize 2 Timothy 1:7 and then recite it to yourself whenever you start feeling overwhelmed by shyness.

Related: How To Be Fearless

3. Change your mindset.

I became a part of my church’s youth group when I was in 7th grade. At this point in my life, I was super shy and rarely talked to anyone who I didn’t already know.

On Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights, I would enter the youth room, walk to a couch and sit down, waiting for someone to come talk to me. I had a “here am I” attitude, nervous to approach anyone.

On the other hand, by the time I was a senior in high school, I’d go talk to anyone who was already at youth group when I arrived. Then, I’d try to talk to any other people who came in after me. If I saw someone new, I made sure to talk to them and help them feel welcomed.

I now had a “there you are” attitude.

This wasn’t an overnight change. I didn’t wake up as a senior and suddenly find myself being bold. Nope. Rather it was a week-by-week change, taking baby steps and gradually growing.

By slowly switching my mindset from “here I am” to “there you are,” I took my focus off of myself and how I was feeling. I stopped allowing awkwardness to stop me from talking to people that I didn’t know well.

If you’re shy too, I encourage you to try this out. Purposefully change your mindset and try to reach out to people instead of being inwardly focused.

4. Purposefully go outside your comfort zone.

This past May, one of my students was telling me that a girl in her grade was throwing a pool party and had invited everyone. I asked her if she was going to go to it.

“Yeah,” she replied, “because even though I don’t like social situations since I’m shy, I know it will be good for me.”

I will never forget that response nor how brave I found this student to be. She was extremely self-aware and knew that going to this pool party would probably make her uncomfortable. Yet, she chose to go anyways because she knew it would make her stronger in the end.

I challenge you and I both to be like her. Don’t say “No” to invites just because the event might make you uncomfortable. Go outside of your comfort zone and stretch yourself to be social even with your shyness. You may just find that it get’s easier and easier each time.

5. Have a stash of questions to ask others.

I don’t know if this is true for all shy people or just myself, but when I’m feeling shy I don’t like talking about myself. For the longest time, I didn’t know how to have basic conversations with people because of that.

But then I discovered a simple trick that allowed me to have conversations with pretty much anyone: Ask the other person questions about themselves.

This helped me learn about the other person, see if I have things in common with them, and helped take the focus off myself.

When you meet others for the first time, it can be helpful to have a list of conversation starting questions. In fact, I created a Small Talk Questions PDF with my go-to questions to ask children, pre-teens & teenagers, college students, and young adults.

If you’re an email subscriber, you can find this PDF in the Freebie Library. If you’re not a subscriber, you can learn how to gain access here.

The Small Talk Questions PDF is just some ideas to get you started. The trick though to keep it a conversation rather than an interview is to add “Why” and “How” questions.

Examples:
“Why did you decide to study that?”
“How did you learn how to play the ukulele?”

As you converse, you’ll start feeling less nervous and will hopefully be able to find some commonality between you and the other person :)

These are my best tips for overcoming shyness.

They are what helped me over the years, and I hope they help you too :)

If you have ever experienced shyness and have any other tips or stories you’d like to share, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment and share that with me and the other readers. :)

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Posted by Kara Beth & filed under Friendship. This post has 6 comments.