There were many reasons as to why I was a shy person. My family by nature for whatever reason are seemingly always worrying about something or other. The majority of us basically have the wrong attitude to life; I am not really sure why this is but the result has been detrimental to our quality of life.

I also grew up having to cope with a stammering problem which as you can imagine did not help my own confidence levels and only added to what was already the difficult task of mixing with other people. I did eventually manage to achieve fluency and stop stammering but only after suffering with the speech impediment for eighteen years.

I now help people to overcome stammering, I also work helping a business cost reduction specialist as well as advising people about jobs in foster care.

I have to say that I always preferred to be by myself and was what many people saw as a loner. When I am on my own nobody can hurt me and I was also in no danger of stuttering. The weird aspect was that inside I was a very confident person who was desperate to show the world, the real Steve Hill.

Being shy made it difficult for me to form relationships with women and made my work life also more of a choir.

At the age of around twenty-one I decided to attempt to overcome my shyness once and for all. I had to understand the real reasons behind why I was shy and to deal with each one in turn. I went through a period of asking myself a number of questions; for example:

Why are you scared of people? This was because I had a fear of not being accepted or liked. They may hurt me by being aggressive towards me or by taunting me about my speech etc. This was me being paranoid, so I decided that if I don’t try, I won’t know.

Why are you afraid of socialising? This was because I did not feel that I had a lot to say and believed people would think I was boring. I decided just to try my best and to see what happens.

Why will you not have the guts or the bottle to talk to girls/women? I guess this was because I was worried that they would not have any interest in what I was saying or that they would make fun of me. It is similar to the case above; how I am supposed to know if I am not willing to give it a go.

I am now fully aware that there will be people in life who, for whatever reason, will not like me - that is just human nature of course. Life is to short to be constantly paranoid and stressed. I have to battle against my shyness and break free of it once and for all.

I am pleased to report that my overall level of self-esteem and self-confidence is currently higher than they have ever been. I still have periods where I become shy but these are becoming less and less as time goes by.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,