Feeling shy sometimes is quite normal. However, if your shyness becomes detrimental to your social relationships and you tend to withdraw a lot from people, then it is something that badly needs attention.

Great thing you can start with several measures to overcome shyness effectively. These will improve your self-confidence and improve your general communication skills. The shyness you feel around others will certainly fade as you become comfortable and confident with your new-found social skills.

Follow these tips to get started:

Focus more on the people you are with than on yourself. Often, you dwell too much on your emotions that you tend to overthink when you’re around people. This creates an imaginary barrier between you and the one you’re socializing with, making you feel awkward and conscious about your words and/or actions. I tell you it’s time to slowly let go of your emotions and engage more with others. Come out of the cramped space you have built within yourself and you will be surprised by how wide and welcoming the world is and the people in it.

If you are not good at conversations, might as well prepare before you communicate with others. While it sounds like an absurd idea, it actually works especially if you are the introvert type. Let’s face it, there are those who can easily spark and maintain great communication and there are those who can’t. If you belong to the latter group, there’s actually nothing wrong with you. However, there are numerous ways you can prepare to strike a conversation such as taking a relaxing bath or massage when you know you are meeting someone. This way, your mind and body are relaxed and you can communicate freely. Another way is reading or watching an interested book or show, which you get to share during a conversation. This will make you feel less anxious and will have you more words to say.

Avoid sending the wrong signals. There are instances when you tend to make people around you uncomfortable too when you talk to them just because you feel extremely shy. When you’re on this other end of the rope, your body tend to create funny languages and your words may slur. Hence, you must be aware of how you appear and act when talking to others. Do you smile politely at them or your facial expressions are somehow blank? Do you appear friendly? Do you purposely make eye contact or you avoid it? Does your tone of voice matches the other person’s? All these can show whether you’re interested in the conversation or not, so you better start working on it.

While you may not feel uncomfortable to do these things initially, the key is to engage with people as much as you can until you lose your shyness. The more you expose yourself to the world, the more you’ll be comfortable being around and talking to others.

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