🇬🇧 How to overcome shyness

I was asked how to overcome shyness. I am not a psychologist, but I will share my experience with this. Unfortunately, I was born at a time that apparently it was super normal for parents to be authoritarian and to force children to be obedient and meet their parents' expectations. And for some reason I was not supposed to live up to my expectations and I lived most of my life with my maternal grandmother. I don't know where I lived when I was 8, but an incident happened at school that made me carry trauma for thirty years and from then on I stopped answering roll calls at school. So I considered myself a shy person, although if I go to analyze it in depth, maybe I was an extrovert with problems of self-esteem. After that incident, I changed schools and two years later I changed again. And in this school where I studied from the age of 11, the slow transformation began. In the first year I didn't even leave the room during the break. And a gentleman, “Seu Cecílio”, came to lock the doors of the rooms. He told me over and over that if something went missing in the room it would be my fault, trying to get me out. I just said that nothing was going to disappear. And it never disappeared. And I didn't leave the room. In the second year I went out and sat on a small wall in front of the room. At some point there I started to make friends. In seventh grade, my third year at school, I already had a class of friends. But I continued without answering roll calls and without presenting papers until the end of high school.

I say that maybe I was an extrovert with self-esteem problems because I work since I was five years old. Initially I helped my grandmother organize the products at my aunts' store. When I finished what I was told to do and saw someone at the counter unattended, I would go there and try to help. I already knew how to read to inform prices and I knew where each product was, so it was very simple.  Not everyone accepted my help, but it was something I usually did on my own.

When I decided to enter college I also decided that I was going to be a normal student, answering the roll calls and making presentations. And then a new change began. At first I sat in the back and answered quietly, but answered. And I presented works without looking at colleagues or teachers, but I did. In advertising college, my second degree, I started to become more loose and confident.

When I finished the advertising course I started attending Buddhist meetings at Soka Gakkai International, which I met at the end of the seventh semester of the eight of the course. I was converted just over a year later and right away I was invited to present a story to... leaders! I, recently converted, explaining something to leaders, some of whom were born in Buddhist families! But, curiously, this idea didn't even cross my mind and I accepted. But in the day it was very hot and the fans were turned on, so it was difficult to hear my voice. I had to speak with a microphone. And I had some stupid problem with microphones, but I ended up being able to do the presentation with it and it was great because it helped to destroy the blockage I had. At Gakkai I had many other opportunities to improve myself and overcome limitations. In Porto Alegre I became part of the youth choir, with a group that was much younger than me. I felt a little out of place. More recently, living in Curitiba, I was part of the Arco-Íris group, where I faced again the problem of being in a group with people much younger than me. And I won. At the inauguration of the BSGI Cultural Center in Curitiba, I was very comfortable and a member even scolded me for talking too much with the youngest girl in the group during the event, where we should both take pictures (and we did it! With several good photos, by the way).  The age difference between us was more than twenty years.

I cannot guarantee that this will work for everyone, but willpower usually does well, and coupled with a hard work of self-knowledge, which few people face to do in depth, brings surprising results.

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Nycka, the Nomad