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WHEN I WAS GROWING UP I was shy, no doubt
about it. Except around my brother and good friends. And since
then I've spent time and money getting over it, and I have. I
feel comfortable meeting and talking to strangers. I give speeches,
do cold calling, do media interviews. But I can still be shy.
I can still feel introverted. Sometimes in writing articles about anxiety and recalling times
I've been afraid, it brings the feelings back and I can feel
withdrawn again thinking of myself as anxious. Or I can pop right
out of it and feel very much less anxious than most people.
The point of this is that part of feeling
anxious is how we think of ourselves. Feeling shy and withdrawn
is wanting to avoid trouble. Feeling unconcerned is often because
of a lack of something rather than the addition
of something like confident self-talk.
A natural tendency to produce excess stress
hormones doesn't help. It tends to stimulate anxious thoughts
and desires for withdrawing. But even then, having a goal seems
to blow right through that. As long as I'm not adding anything.
For example, adding the thought, "I want to do X but I'm
not that kind of person."
Train yourself in good human relations
and get yourself a good purpose and then give up adding "anxious
personality" to the baggage you carry. Just let it go. Don't
nurture that way of thinking about your personality. Forget about
it. Literally, quit feeding it and eventually you may remember,
"Oh yeah, I used to be shy."
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