How to Overcome Shyness at Work? A Comprehensive Guide

Updated April 27, 2023

You may be an extraordinary performer at work, but you must improve your social skills to go very far. Getting good at social skills becomes difficult when you don’t know how to overcome shyness at work. Shyness is a form of programming. You were not born shy. You learned the habits and grew up in such an environment that the product of your childhood made you nervous.

Now you don’t have any idea how to overcome shyness. But you are not alone. There are many who suffer from shyness at work, and they, with diligence and persistence effort overcome shyness. That’s why we brought this article to you so that you can learn through and through about why you feel shy, what are triggers of being scared are, how shyness stops you from becoming the best version of yourself, and ultimately how you can overcome shyness.

We will cover it all. Just sit back, relax, and grab a pen and paper. If you can, take some notes. Let’s overcome shyness together right away.

Why you feel shy?

So, here’s the golden question, and if you can answer it rightly, half of your problems will go away just like vapor. We strongly recommend you think through and have a pen and paper while reading this article. The purpose is to go to the root of the problems and find the reason. Let’s see how where your shyness comes from.

Here are possible hints.

• You suffer from shyness because you may have had a difficult or insecure childhood. Go back to your childhood and find out 3 stories that still make you feel emotional. Have you ever been bullied by anyone? Have you ever been called by many names in childhood? You might be shy, foolish, or not good enough if your parents, relatives, or teachers have made these comments. Trace your childhood and find any clue you can relate to your shyness. If you see something, write it down.
• You may have always told yourself that you are a bit shy. If that’s the truth, shyness is second nature by now. Since the beginning of your awareness, you have been calling yourself scared.
• It may so happen that you still suffer from childhood trauma that doesn’t let you express yourself completely. You feel confined within guilt, and if you feel like doing anything new, you get caught by guilt for your past again and again, and as a result, you keep expressing yourself as a shy person.

We gave hints to make you aware that shyness is not a disease. It’s a by-product of one or more of your limited beliefs. Think about the ideas we gave above and ponder. Does something come to mind? Use the following questionnaire to go to the root of the root –

• What exactly do you feel when you feel shy?
• What’s the one thing holding you back from becoming your best self?
• What is the worst thing you remember as a child growing up?
• How do you define yourself?
• What one thing has to happen right away to be able to sweep away all your shyness from your personality?

No, we are not talking about any magic bullet. Rather we are talking about what bothers you most is not shyness but what you hide behind that camouflage of shyness. You need to find that out before you do anything else. Sit back, take some time, and do some soul searching. Once you get to the root of the root, you will understand that shyness can’t be overcome, and shyness can be thrown away like a worn out cloth.

Social Triggers

Now if you have been from shyness for all your adult life, you can point out when you get triggered to exercise shyness. You may frown and say – “but I am not doing it deliberately; it naturally happens!” Do you remember how you learned to drive a bicycle? When you started, it was hard. Someone must keep you balanced from behind so you don’t fall and break your bones. And then you practiced and practiced. After a few mishaps and a few adjustments, now it’s automatic. You don’t need to worry about sitting on your bicycle and driving.

It is similar to your shyness. Even if you don’t realize this, you have practiced being shy in a few key areas in life, and then now it’s automatic. What we want you to do is find out the social triggers that make you feel more shy. For example –

• You have gone to a party, and there you are, and no one is talking to you. You feel bored and don’t want to stay there for long. Consider the next one. Seems familiar?
• You are in a meeting. It is a professional event. But even if you have prepared for the meeting, you don’t want to open your mouth because many speakers are already presenting great, and don’t want to feel like a clown among them. Again, makes sense? Consider the next one.
• You are sitting with the interviewer and cannot look directly into her eyes while speaking. You are looking at her and putting down your eyes on your shoes again and again and again.

These things are not triggers. What happened before these events are! For example, take the interview scenario. You are not being able to look into the eyes of the interviewer while speaking. What is the reason behind that? Just before you talk, you tell yourself that you are not good enough, don’t know whether you are saying right, or maybe you don’t know how to speak confidently in front of the interviewer. No matter what it is, you must understand and deal with the issue immediately. It’s not the shyness, but what you tell yourself before you feel shy makes all the difference.

How shyness stops you from becoming the best version of yourself?

Even if shyness is just a by-product, it causes much trouble. First, you don’t feel confident in all the situations, meaning you feel awkward to even be in the mid of a crowd. Second, you are not able to express yourself completely. Third, you miss out on meeting many people who can make you an extraordinary person (have you heard about the power of association!).

All these things happen to you because you feel shy to overcome them. Now why do you feel shy, and why do you talk to yourself like that in social gatherings? First and foremost, you feel inferior about yourself amid the crowd. You don’t feel important enough, and you don’t have any interesting things to share. It’s just a façade; it’s not real. You are not inferior to any of the people present in the gathering. And you have ideas to share. But because you feel inadequate and think of yourself too less, you don’t come out of this typical habit.

Let us ask you a simple question – “What’s the pay off?”

You may wonder if you might be having a pay-off in being shy. But it’s true. If you don’t have a pay-off in being shy or if you have a better pay-off in not being scared, you will not exercise the habit of shyness. You will be jovial. You will meet new people. And you will talk to them about your ideas even if they seem silly.

Write down your pay-offs. Most people don’t realize this. But if they can go deep and find out the return they are getting by remaining shy, they can think themselves out of their shyness by conscious effort.

How you can overcome shyness?

No, there is no quick fix. But you can do the following things right away to feel more powerful. Ready? Let’s get started.

• Go beyond your comfort zone. You don’t have to be like you always used to be. Change your roles. If you are never speaking up in a gathering, start speaking. Even if you speak a word, that would do. Just start. And you will be on your way to overcome shyness.
• Decide to do one thing that you fear in a social gathering. It can be as little as saying hello to a peer you have never talked about before or felt shy talking to. Do one small thing that scares you, and you are done for the day. Over time you will see that you can do some amazing things that a shy person can never think of.
• Get to know yourself better. Now and then, go on a self-date. Read a great book, have a cup of coffee, and eat dinner at your favorite restaurant, or else you can sit on your bed with a questionnaire answering who you are and what you want to become. No matter what you do, you need to be comfortable in your skin to be comfortable with others in social settings.
• Start talking to strangers. It can be as silly as asking them about the time. Go out on holiday. Don’t wear a watch or carry a phone (or put it in your pocket). Pick any stranger and ask her about what it is. If you become shy in front of the opposite sex, try this out with three strangers daily. See how it feels. Say thank you and smile.
• Ask questions if you are in a gathering. It’s a great way to know people and strike up a conversation. And thus, you would be able to overcome your shyness.
• Don’t try to overcome your shyness forever. Take one incident at a time. Talk to yourself – “I won’t feel shy in this situation.” And that’s all. If you talk to yourself before going into a situation, you will always overcome shyness. The key is to take one event at a time and be a master of that event instead of trying to focus too much on it forever.
• Start small talk in a gathering. Go to a party and look around. Don’t just stand or play with your smartphone. Find someone who is standing alone. Go and strike up a conversation. It may feel awkward in the beginning. But eventually, it will feel amazing. Start with – “Hi, I am _________. What brought you here?” or say, “Hi, I am __________.” You may think that what the other person may feel about it. But the other person will feel awesome. Here’s why. Imagine yourself standing at a party. You are standing alone, and you are about to pull out your mobile from your pocket, and someone comes up to you and says – “Hi, I am this,” wouldn’t you feel wonderful? Definitely yes. It will improve your social skill and will also help you deal with shyness.
• Shyness is actually a wrong perception of the situation. If you criticize yourself too much, you will end up being a shy person. You criticize yourself for two basic reasons. First, you were charged too much for anything you did in childhood. Second, you didn’t achieve much in your life till now. We can’t do much about the first. But if we take action on the second, we will be able to overcome the first eventually. Every day before you sleep, write down 5 things you accomplished. It can be a tough conversation with your boss, a project you have completed, or you finished reading an article. No matter what it is, take note. Taking notes will remind you that you are achieving much more than you realize and that a single exercise will make a huge difference in your self-esteem.

Overcoming shyness is not rocket science. All you need to do is be aware of the roots of shyness, the pay-offs of being shy, and the self-talk you use before entering any situation. Take care of these, and you will reach a new level in your professional and personal life.