why be shy?

I used to be awfully, painfully shy as a kid. I had terrible self-confidence. I hated competitions because I was scared I’d win, and then there’d be attention on me, and I’d be embarrassed.

Thank god I grew out of that.

I’m still a quiet person —that’s my personality— but slowly, slowly, things are becoming clear to me. I’m realising that we’re all the same. Every single person in the whole world has insecurities; it’s not just me. We’re all just blood and guts and thoughts bundled up in different packets of skin. We’re all just spirits having a human experience. We should be nice to each other.

When travelling solo last year, I revelled in the solo-female-backpacking life. I made friends on every bus ride, at every hostel, in every city in every country. Travellers have this openness and approachability that I wish we carried in everyday life. It was the easiest thing in the world to walk into a situation in a city/country/continent where you didn’t know anyone, and to make a room-full of new friends. The trick was just to smile at them.

Back in Melbourne I snapped out of it. I have a life here, I have family and enough friends in this city, so I stopped connecting with new people. It was inevitable. Even when travelling up to Queensland on my own I found myself shutting myself in my iPod and book, not saying ‘hi’ to anyone sitting around me as I would have done overseas. It’s a completely different mind frame. It’s easy to be private and unsociable on familiar soil.

For me, losing face is the cause of all shyness. I don’t want to appear dumb/desperate/rude/wrong/annoying/unattractive, so I often choose to keep my opinion to myself in case it portrays me “badly”. At this stage of my life, this is the major habit I am trying to change: to care less what other people think. My heart knows none of it matters, so why does my brain care?

Shyness is an especially annoying hurdle in second-language learning. To think of all the hours of French lessons I’ve done through high school and uni, terrified of speaking out loud in case I made a mistake. Ridiculous. Outgoing people are willing to practice speaking at every opportunity, and don’t care if they make mistakes or have trouble being understood. In this way they learn faster than those who hold back. I really tried to change my language habits when I was living in Peru, and it worked. I made ridiculous mistakes that had the kids roaring with laughter where I volunteered, I struck the barrier of not being understood with my host family, and I flaunted my terrible Spanglish accent in the language classes. And I learnt so much in that one month that it killed me to realise how much better I could have been at French by now if I didn’t care so much about how I sounded!

All habits can be changed. I just need to take the more difficult option (for me) every time — to choose to try and speak in Spanish or French when I have the opportunity — instead of standing back or answering in English or trying to get out of it; to stop taking the easy, lazy choice.

So, why are we shy in front of strangers? There are billions of them in the world. It’s your friends who actually know your soul, and they’re the ones we can let loose with. They’re the only ones we should care about.

From the infinite wisdom of Dr Seuss: ‘Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.’

– Jessica Hoadley

(Image credit: 1.)