You probably have a bias assumption about social anxiety. A lot of people who have social anxiety, often feel that they have this because they were born with it. Or it is because of a childhood trauma, that is why they have social anxiety. They feel that they were born with the fear of socializing and speaking to people in public. You aren’t born with this fear, it is learned. This is self-limiting belief that most people who have social anxiety have. Truth be told, most of the greatest speakers of all time started out with the fear of speaking, and being in social situations. No one is born with this good social skills, it must be trained and learned.
Social anxiety is something you have to train out of you. I remember one time I watched and listen to a guy talk to a bunch of people at once and I was captivated by the way he was speaking. He sounded like a professional speaker. So I asked him after he was done speaking, how he got so good at speaking? I also asked him, doesn’t his heart pound out of his chest when he was speaking. He told me it did at first but after repetition the feeling of fear goes away and you become more relaxed when speaking.
Being social and speaking is a muscle you have to train. The less you use it, the weaker it becomes. Just like a muscle, when you don’t workout it and exercise it, the muscle becomes weaker. You must use it or lose it.
So after doing research and experimenting with social anxiety. I discovered 5 reasons why we experience social anxiety. Now in these 5 reasons, you will uncover the ways to overcome social anxiety.
IT’S MORE EFFECTIVE TO ACT YOUR WAY OUT OF SOCIAL ANXIETY THAN TO THINK YOUR WAY OUT OF SOCIAL ANXIETY.
5 Reasons Why We Have Social Anxiety:
1.You Aren’t Verbally Talking Enough.
With the way the world is and is going, the need to speak is slowly diminishing. Think about it, you don’t have to speak to get anything you want. If you need anything from the store all you have to do is go online and it is shipped within days to your doorstep. If you want to eat, all you have to do is pull up an app and the food is shipped right to your door. If you want to get a job, you apply over the internet. If you want to go grocery shopping, all you have to do is download the app and the food can be delivered right to your door. Everything is virtually effortless.
Even meeting lovers is effortless, they have apps and websites, where you scroll through lists of potential mates, where you can pick the one that best fits your criteria. My neighbor has been dating a guy for quite some time now, and they met on a dating website. You literally don’t even need to talk to meet people anymore.
Now there is always pros and cons to having such access. Everything is more efficient and quick but our social skills suffer. Social skills is one skill that is the most valuable to us. You still need social skills to get what you want. Not everything is effortless. It’s easier to get in the door but it’s harder to stay. You can apply for a job and get an interview online but once you go meet the people who are hiring, you could blow it because of your lack of social skills and be kicked out.
This goes the same for meeting potential lovers online. Your profile could get you the first date but you are going to have to need good social skills to get on a second date. Unless you both have weak social skills, so you guys just text each other from across the table the whole time.
Anyways, you need to train your social skills. The best way to do this is by doing the 100 person challenge.
What Is The 100 Person Challenge?
For a week straight you have to talk to 100 people first. I don’t mean just saying “Hello”, you need to actually make conversation with them. So from today to next week at this time, the goal is to talk to 100 people face to face, with actual dialogue. (keep track)
By doing this challenge, you will train the social anxiety right out of you. And your social skills will actually improve. You should do this challenge until you no longer feel socially anxious.
2. You Avoid Too Many Uncomfortable Situations
Being in uncomfortable situations is inevitable in life. You are going to be place in many of them. Like for an example, first dates, job interviews, talking to your kids about the birds and bees, meeting your lover’s parents, meeting new people, eating in the break room at work, etc. For me, I remember years ago, I avoided uncomfortable situations by eating in my car instead of eating in the break room at job when I was a new employee. I felt more uncomfortable eating in my car though looking back.
I realized that the only way I was going to feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations is feeling uncomfortable first. Then when you build up the courage to sit in this uncomfortable situation, you won’t feel uncomfortable from now on. And when you have to face another potential uncomfortable situation like the one you just experienced, you will feel more comfortable than the last time.
You have to expand your comfort zone. You have to feel uncomfortable first to eventually feel comfortable. I call this your “awkward bone”. You have to train your awkward bone, so you won’t feel awkward as often.
How Do I Train My Awkward Bone?
You do this by always throwing yourself into awkward situations, so you will begin to not feel awkward as much, or even at all. So get comfortable by getting uncomfortable first.
3. You Don’t Trust Your Social Skills.
This is the one that I fall victim to. Growing up, I stuttered, I didn’t stutter a lot but it was enough that I wouldn’t say as much because of my lack of trust in my skills. I was scared that the words coming out of my mouth, wouldn’t come out correctly.
Now something like stuttering is something that can be trained out just like social anxiety. Stuttering is just a hesitation in your speaking. Kids who grew up stuttering is because their parents placed a mental blockage on them or they placed one on themselves. The parents might of always told the child to be quiet, so the child would hesitate to talk. For me it was a self fulfilling prophecy. My parents labeled me as stutter, so I grew up to stutter. Just like a twin children whose parents labeled one as an athlete and the other as non-athlete. The one who was labeled as an athlete will grow up to be good at playing sports and the one who was labeled as non-athlete will grow up to not be good at playing sports. It’s just a mental blockage people place on themselves. Now I don’t stutter anymore because I took off the hesitation and the mental blockage I had placed on myself.
A lot of those who don’t talk as much is because they don’t trust their social skills. This is a cycle because if you don’t trust your social skills, you don’t talk as much and then the fact that you don’t talk as much, your social skills don’t improve, and they become weaker, so you talk even less because your social skills keep weaken.
How Do I Get Rid Of This Mental Blockage?
So the way you can get rid of this mental blockage is to just talk. Free flow, when you talk, even if you think it’s going to come out wrong, just spit it out wrong. You don’t have to be perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist. If it comes out bad, move on and keep talking. Get rid of the hesitation you place on your voice, just slow it down and talk.
If you want too fully master your speaking skills and get rid of the hesitation and mental blockage when you talk then pick up the book Psych-Cybernetics By Maxwell Maltz. This book will impact your life is such a positive way. This book helped my social skills, so much. The book doesn’t just help social skills, it helps you get rid of childhood traumas, it helps you get rid of anxiety, depression, and it helps you win your life.
Psych-Cybernetics is life changing.
GET THE BOOK IN THE LINK BELOW!
Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded
4. You Have Too Much Fear.
Social Anxiety means for the lack of better words social fear. You are scared to be social, you have fear to be in a public place that requires you to be social. Social anxiety is a learned fear. It wasn’t something you were born with, it is something that you learned through out your life.
TRUTH BOMB: You are born with only two fears. 1. The fear of falling. 2. The fear of loud noises. So Everything else is a learned fear that you developed
You could of learned this fear because you embarrassed yourself when you were younger, it could have been that your parents or teacher embarrassed you in front of your peers, and it had such a traumatizing effect on you. It could have been that you were called on in class by your teacher and you messed up. It could have been when you were presenting a project at work and you totally screwed up and messed up the presentation so you got kick off the project.
It could have been anything that caused you to develop social anxiety. What caused your social anxiety? Think back deep, before you started to feel socially anxious. Picture yourself overcoming this past trauma.
Now if you try to do the 100 person challenge like I mentioned above, your fear of being social will go away. Just keep facing your fear of talking to people and speaking in front of groups of people even if it’s an awkward interaction and eventually you will unlearn this fear and you will be social anxiety free.
5. You Care Too Much About What Other People Think Of You.
I find that this is the biggest reason why people have social anxiety. They care too much about what other people think of them. They are scared they are going to be judged and get made fun of. I am to tell you to today that whatever anyone says bad about you, is just a reflection of themselves. If they call you ugly, it’s because they are ugly. If they call you a loser, it’s because they are a loser. If they call you stupid, it’s because they are stupid. Anything someone says about you, is just a reflection of themselves. It’s a mirror.
So you need to change this mindset. You need to stop caring about what others think of you.
How Do I Stop Caring What Others Think About Me?
This tip will actually help you with public speaking too. You need to stop thinking about yourself when talking to people and start thinking about the other person.
Stop thinking: What does this person think of me? Does this person think I am stupid? How is this person judging me? I am afraid to sound stupid. I am afraid to embarrass myself.
Start Thinking: What can this person get from this conversation? Is this person going to leave this conversation feeling happy that they spoke with me?
Change the focus from you to them
Change your perspective from self oriented to people oriented. Starting thinking about the other person, stop thinking about what the other person is going to think of you. When you change your perception from thinking only about you to thinking only about the other person. Your social anxiety goes away and you stop caring about what other people think of you.
At the end of the day, social skills and dealing with people is all you need to master in life to be successful. The book How To Win Friends & Influence People By Dale Carnegie will help you master the art of getting people to like and getting people to do what you want. All while making them like you. This book is life changing and packed with knowledge to how you win friends and influence people around you.
After all everyone is a salesmen. We are all selling ourselves to world. We have to sell ourselves to a potential lover, we have to sell ourselves to our friends, we have to sell ourselves to everyone we meet. And not in a car salesmen way. You buy new clothes, so you get present yourself better to people, just like in clothing stores, where the mannequins are dressed appealingly. You shower, so you can present yourself better and people will like you more. Just like in car dealerships, they wash and clean the car, so it looks appealing to you to buy it. Everyday we sell ourselves to the world.
So if you want to master winning friends and influencing people and become successful with people and life then get the book by Dale Carnegie.
GET THE BOOK BELOW!
How to Win Friends & Influence People
BONUS TIPS FOR OVERCOMING SOCIAL ANXIETY:
- Limit Your Caffeine Intake. Down To less than 50mgs of caffeine. If you are going to present in front of a big audience then I suggest you don’t take any caffeine. Eat an apple instead. Caffeine increases your heart rate and sends a lot of blood to the brain. You will get stuck in your head from too much caffeine.
Limit Alcohol. (Look at my post on why I quit drinking)- Breath work. Take deep breaths before you go into any social situations. This will help you feel more calm when in public
Wolf Wisdom Empire 