 American Psychological Association, shyness is defined as the tendency to feel awkward, worried or tense during social encounters, especially with unfamiliar people. Sivallish-eyed people may have fiscal symptoms like blushing, sweating, a pounding heart or upset stomach, negative feelings about themselves, worries about how others view them and a tendency to withdraw from social interactions. You aren't born or bold, almost nobody is. The millions of people whom you see out there have some battle of shyness at certain points in their life. They all had to find ways to break through that awful mold. So if you're terribly shy, you don't have to berate yourself. You're not alone. Needless should you think you'll remain like that for the rest of your life. As with every wrong attitude or habit, shyness can be overcome. Shyness can ruin your self-esteem, your social Stalin and the relationships you keep. You could keep losing opportunities because of shyness. And if you are anything like me, so many times you have lost opportunities and even hurt your most important relationships because you are shy. Since shyness often involves you being unable to be free around people or being able to start and continue a conversation or filling off when you are around people, it is a thing of your mind. If you can fix the thought process that encourages shyness, you can overcome shyness. The power is right there within you to overcome shyness. It's right there in your mind. I know how much shyness can cost because it cost me a lot when I struggled with it. Sometimes being shy would mean not being able to speak up for yourself. This can make others take advantage of you thinking you are a pushover. But if you are tired of being shy and determined to overcome shyness, I will share with you 9 tips on how you can overcome shyness in this video. Subscribe to this channel below so you don't miss other psychologically helpful videos to improve your life. 1. Start with your mind. Shyness, as I said, begins in the mind. If you get your mind right, you will get your attitude right. Strength does not come from winning. The first way to overcome shyness isn't to deny its existence but accept its reality in your life and strive to overcome. If you are shy, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are introverted, you just lack the will to maintain confidence in social gatherings. But you can overcome this by starting with your mind, knowing that the struggle you face can be overcome. Anottrashnega said, your struggles develop your strength. When you overcome hardship and decide not to surrender, that is strength. You will experience too much anxiety about social conditions when your shyness is cognitive. This way, you will tend to worry a lot about people judging you. Instead of allowing this, the first thing to do is to look away from yourself, remind yourself that nobody is judging you. And this is what I have personally found about life and socials. People are too busy with their own problems to even be focused on you. They start to pay attention to you only when they observe your too self-conscious. Get your mind off the idea that people are judging you. You are not in their mind. And if they are, it's just people being people. Also, people are obligated to think what they want about you. You only have to make sure you stay true to being who you are supposed to be. If you focus your mind so much on people judging you, you miss a lot of things. Too many things, you'll be surprised they aren't even thinking about you when you get close to them. Get your eyes off yourself. 2. Focus on your successors. One of the ways I overcame and still overcome in shyness is by choosing to focus on my success rather than my failure. Shy people tend to beat themselves up too much for their failures while overlooking their successors. Make it a personal habit of thinking more about your successors instead of berating yourself for each failure. Celebrate your wins and learn from your failures. You may appear to be the most awkward person in the room but it is often not true. When you step into a garden or meet someone new, remember some things you have been able to overcome which were once difficult for you. This should show you that you are strong, you are not weak, mark your success and celebrate it, you'll find it much easier to keep going. 3. Stop imagining the worst. If you're shy, one of the traits you exhibit is that you dwell so much on your mistakes. By doing this often, you project them into the future too. If you allow this to become a trend for you, your mistakes make you expect the worst. You will keep making more mistakes because your expectations will keep creating problems. Negative expectations could always produce negative results. Break the circle and stop imagining the worst. Too often, nothing worse can happen if you just believe differently. Work on positive images of social interactions by using visualization. When I want to start a new project, I visualize myself having finished the project before getting down to execute the project. This way, I am emboldened to face the project. When your plan will succeed when you attend your next social event, think through the specific steps you plan to take. It will ease your tension and focus your mind on the positive. 4. Use positive self-talk. When I was terribly shy, I always sold myself shut. I remember I was always too shy to confront people. I would charge 20% for a job I was supposed to charge 100% for. The bulk of the crush I experienced in my attitude came from speaking negatively to myself. It's an age-long principle, but it is so true. You attract to yourself what you constantly say about yourself. You always have what you say about yourself. So if you are in the vein of a common shyness, choose to speak positively about yourself. Positive self-talk may seem like some hula-baloo you don't want to get into, but successful people agree that how you speak about yourself determines what you attract to yourself because your subconscious absorbs the words you say about yourself as true, whether you are serious or just joking about them. And soon, as your subconscious processes that information and ingrains it, it becomes a part of your life. So your life goes in the direction of the things you say. Say positive things to yourself. Work yourself up when you need encouragement. Sometimes we just need a little more time to get through a situation. By using positive self-talk, you can push your limits and perform better. When leveraging positive self-talks to boost your confidence and overcome shyness, use you instead of I. Some studies show that saying you can do it is more effective than saying I can do it. 5. Practice exposure therapy. It is said that courage is not the absence of fear, but choosing to do what you must do despite fear. Similarly, shyness may not suddenly go away until you start to expose yourself to the things you are afraid of. When I wanted to challenge myself to overcome shyness and timidity in socials, I played the dare game. I would choose one thing I was most afraid of and would do that thing on my bedside. By acting in spite of fear, slowly shyness began to dissipate. According to Wikipedia, exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy used to treat anxiety disorders. It involves the patient's exposure to the feared object or context without any danger to overcome the anxiety and or stress. By exposing yourself to taking baby steps in the things you fear, you lose your fear for that thing. Fear is overcome by action. Social anxiety may never go away completely. However, if you get it to manageable levels, it can change your life. You don't have to see a therapist to practice exposure therapy. Do it yourself by exposing yourself to the things you fear. Go every day into a social situation where you feel shy. Shut a little and then move on. By doing this daily, the shyness will slowly decrease. You can overcome shyness by sitting back in the house, walk down the street and talk to at least one person. When you do it daily, you get used to it. If you are extremely shy, you may want to see a therapist. That could expedite your healing process. 6. Don't hang out with shy people. Since you become like the people you hang out with, don't hang out with shy people. In fact, one of the ways you can practice exposure therapy effectively is to go out with a bold person all the time when you want to meet people. Since certain attitudes are contagious, it is easy to quickly pick up boldness when you hang around bold people. I know it can feel comfortable to hang around people who are shy like yourself. But the bad side is that such a group won't give you the boost you need to overcome shyness. You need a group of people who aren't like you. You remain the same when your closest influences hold you back. Look for more friends who are outgoing and outspoken. Look out for them when you are at social events or just out hanging out. Observe what those people do and learn from them. 7. Go slowly. You didn't become shy overnight. In the same way, you won't overcome shyness overnight. So go slowly. Although I must confess, I overcame social shyness mostly by reading the book Carnegie How to Wean Friends and Influence People. You should read a book many times if you haven't. You still should take it slow when you are out to beat out shyness from your life. You can't change overnight. Change can be annoyingly slow sometimes. So you can only expect your confidence to grow step by step as you expose yourself to more social situations. Moderately shy people will overcome shyness faster than those who are severely shy. Set goals that are realistic on how you would work on yourself over the course of months, even years. As you continue to get better, you can add more difficult social challenges to be more confident. 8. Stop thinking about what others think about you. Nobody cares. People are too busy with their own thoughts to be concerned about what you are hard for dinner. It's a painful fact but it's one that would liberate you from shyness. People are hardly thinking about you because everyone cares about their own problems not yours. KTU Bank said, For me, that is the crux of no longer being shy, taking the focus of what others think of me and placing it on being myself and placing it on being my best self and surrounding myself with others who make me want to be a better person. You may think everyone in the room is watching you and judging you. Here's the truth. No one is watching or judging you. They are just as nervous, insecure, shy and worried as you are. Instead, focus on what you think of them. Someone wrote, When we put our attention on other people and decide what we think of them, we can take the pressure of ourselves. 9. Learn to love yourself. Succeeding at anything requires that you love yourself. Love yourself enough because if you don't love yourself, you will not believe that anyone else will. Being shy can make you put yourself down. Whatever you think wrongly about yourself may not be true. Love yourself just as you. Think about your successors. Consider and focus on attributes that are good about you. Take care of your health by eating well and sleeping well. These little things indicate that you care for yourself and you appreciate yourself. If this video has helped you make better decisions about overcoming your shyness, share it with your friends. We love you.