How To Come Out Of Your Comfort Zone & Be Less Shy

Wassup People

I have been thinking a lot about what to post. The issue is, while I think of ideas or ask people around me about what they want to read, life throws me into a deep sea of work, in this instance my uni throws me into a deep sea of assessments. Nevertheless, I am still surviving....

This topic is based on a recommendation from a really good friend of mine (if you are reading this; Hello!). I was asked to initially to write about "what motivated me to start being more proactive with my life in terms of student stuff". Let's be honest, I am not a super proactive person, especially with my student life. I did do certain things in terms of "student stuff", which I will explain below shortly. Although I understand my friend's point, which triggered me to write this post overall. Just to point out, me giving these advice does not mean I am not shy at all at this stage. I am still quite a shy person but I learnt to work through my shyness.

Right, here we go!

• First thing, build self confidence within you. If there is anything that stops you from being active, let it down. For me it is my lack of self confidence in terms of body image. But then you realise that no one actually cares that much how fat or skinny you are. If they did, it is their mentality issue, not your flaw. 

• Give yourself time to face the challenge because this is not easy. I have been kept in my shell my whole life, so I do not expect to become the most social girl out of nowhere. You need to have the will to put yourself out there more than you usually do and it is quite hard from personal experience. Once you feel like you are prepared, challenge yourself. I personally do that a lot with myself and people around me, like my friends. If they challenge me to do something, I will do that at any cost, which can be good and bad in some instances as they say being too stubborn is not a good thing. An example of my challenge was to put myself in an out-of-comfort position and took the role of becoming one of the student representatives of my course. It is not a major position but for me it is a big matter as I am still coming out of my shell.

• Make you sure are approachable. I used to feel like no one wanted to talk to me when I was shy and I never attempted due to the same reason. Later on I realised it works both ways and everyone is in the same boat. You will get to know people and speak to them only when you express your interest. I advice to just approach new people and talk to them, making sure you have open conversations. Simultaneously, make sure your body language also shows your interest. What I mean by that is that there are certain rules to follow which you may do without realising but it shows you are not approachable. Examples of those are; having your arms crossed or having your head down.

• SMILE!!! I'm serious, smile more. You don't notice it but often times you forget to smile unconsciously. That does not mean just smile away like a retard. I mean smile when you are speaking to someone or there is people around you. Trust me it always works.

• Don't forget, everyone is in a similar  situation so it's fine.  If anything happens (maybe something embarrassing) and if you are unlikely to meet these people in the future, they will forget. Even if you are going to see them, they will forget after a while. Also, who cares... You can learn from that event and improve yourself in the future. Try to join more social events around you and get to know people.

• Learn from other people, learn from your past failures. Just learn and exhibit them in the future. This is a short story where I learnt a lot, both from my failure and the experience I had. Just remember I don't care anymore about the outcome of this event but it was a nice learning experience overall. There was some sort of autumn elections going on and as I mentioned above, I challenged myself so I nominated myself. Initially I did not care much but then when I realised how nice and suitable the post was for me, I started to feel more encouraged to campaign and rushed through a manifesto 2 hours before the announcement of the candidates. During the week I asked around for votes to my friends and social media. I must say my friends from my course were really supportive  to an extent they ended up giving their time to come with me to go around random strangers and ask for votes, till I got the courage to ask for votes on my own (thank you guys, you are the best and you know who you are) and people were really nice. I also may have embarrassing posters of me around the campus which I cringe about and should probably remove them. Anyways... I found out other candidates were much stronger in terms of their game and they won, which is fine as they probably worked hard for what they wanted, so congrats to them (I'm so not salty right now). I assumed my friend was hiding from me (or maybe just busy and did not reply) till I had to say I don't need your help, just reply to me. Point of the story, I learnt from the experience and from the failure which matters to me more than anything.

• Do not forget to have some time to yourself and have a chat with yourself. When you are alone, talk about your experiences and feelings. Give yourself the opportunity to take the break and have some private time on your own before your performance starts to collapse as you are not giving time to be in your own natural state.

Basically, break the shell and come out. This sounds easy but it is not and of course I don't expect you to break the shell in one day, these things take their time. At the end of the day remember it is natural to be shy and be conservative as it has its own beauty. 

I hope you liked the quick post and stay tuned for future posts, who knows what I may have planned for the future 🌚

Till next time

Yours, Nafiza