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self confidence for university
I will be going to university in one year and i am a bit worried due to having no self-esteem and self confidence. I am a very anti social and introvert person. What should i do because i have no idea how will i deal with it. Also that "Fake it, till you make it. be brave no one can tell" thing doesn't work, i have tried it.
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I have truly been in your shoes and had severe social anxiety besides being introverted and low self esteem/confidence. But no longer. You have a year to work on this. But you won't need a year. I will first share about the self esteem part, although you may have difficulty with this unless you work on the anti social part first. I don't know what causes you to be anti social but for me it was being terrified of talking to people.
Heres the first part now:
Gaining Self Esteem/Self Confidence
First Lets see what the difference is between the Two. Self Esteem is what you think of yourself and self confidence is how you come across to others. It is really difficult to appear confident if you truly have no good self esteem. So therefore, the 'fake your confidence' doesn't work for most people.
I learned myself how to overcome shyness/social anxiety. I was outgoing and could talk to others but there was still a sliver of doubt in me as to what others might be thinking of me. I tend to compare myself not often but sometimes with others as in she is better at painting, he's better at writing than me, and so on. I had to realize that all people have different tastes in things. So for someone who really can't write at all for example, then what I do, or my particular style seems terrific to them. But do I think I am terrific. The real problem is our minds always trying to measure up, trying to be what we see as perfect. No one has to be perfect. Plenty of people are loved and admired even if they are not perfect. I had to get to a place where I realized that where ever I was at, it was good enough for others, maybe they even followed me, like those following in an online puzzle page or those who prefer to address questions to me rather than someone else on here. Yet I still occasionally had a problem with this, until I read an article in a woman's magazine while at the doctors. This was about 12 years ago or more but I remember it well as I followed the instructions trying it.
The exercise calls for you deciding what is your best feature, your hair, lips, eyes, etc and then thinking of a celebrity whom you admire the same feature in. I know this may be sounding like a fake it and make it thing as you read the rest of this. But what it truly is, is not faking it to others, but retraining your mind. If you read any tabloids, you will know that at some point in time, you will hear of some dirty secrets of a celebrity you love. Even though you hear they have ADD, dyslexia, had a child outside of marriage, bite their fingernails, lied to a cop once, etc. . . knowing their shortcomings does not effect how much you still like what they do, whether singing, acting or something like that.
This is what we need, to experience people reacting to us, the same way one might if meeting a celebrity. They are liked for their personality and their background or private life or how professional they are or how well they do anything other than the one thing you know them for, doesn't matter.
So here is what I did to show how this works. You'll need a good imagination because you need to be able to picture yourself as looking like this celebrity you've chosen for the feature you chose as being your favorite, even if it doesn't look anything like your celebrity. I like my eyes and so I thought of a female actress whose eyes I liked. They really caught attention. Next I had to picture myself as looking like her and getting the same reactions as she would if she suddenly stepped out into society. This means doing this picturing things before you step out of your house, before you get out of your car, before you enter any kind of building, office, school, shop, or even a room.
Do this without any expectation of any kind. Just get into this habit. The eventual success will blow your mind.
I did this for a while, not months on end, but it was a couple weeks before I saw response and when I got responses, it was several, one day after another. I will share a couple ecamples. My husband and I were at a sports bar listening to a band brought in. A man was sitting next to us on a bench seat. In between songs, he turned to me and said, “I couldn't help noticing you have beautiful eyes, the prettiest eyes I have ever seen.. Another time at a restaurant, even thought the lighting is darker and I was not wearing any makeup, as I was walking to the restroom, a woman stopped me and told me, “Do you ever hear that you have the prettiest eyes? Really they are exceptional!” I was feeling good and when I returned, as I passed a table where a man was also returning he took a glance to let me pass first but then he stopped and looked again and the words came out. I did not get compliments on my outfit, or hair or nails, etc, again as always, it was the eyes. He told me how beautiful my eyes were and taps his wife saying “Look honey, don't you agree she has very stunning eyes?” The woman took a look at me and lit up and gave me a compliment as well.
Now I knew that my eyes did not resemble the ones of my celebrity, nor was I wearing eye makeup to enhance the looks yet everyone was complimenting my eyes. Why?
It wasn't so much exactly how my eyes looked. What people were picking up on is this thought I kept in my mind. See, if we don't think we measure up somehow, then the best thing is to do this exercise and learn how it is something entirely different that people are responding to, not the actually looks or talent, etc. All humans have an ability their sub conscious minds pick up on, an invisible signal, like a radio wave, or call it the vibes you put out there. When focused on what we know to be our not so good traits, the vibes we put out are ones of 'Something is wrong with me, I'm not good enough, you don't want to know me. When I was thinking of my eyes and being this actress because she has stunning eyes, I had tricked myself into putting out good vibes of feeling good about myself. Once I had the success with this experiment, I stopped using it because I had learned how to love myself exactly for where I was at and that it all was good enough.
I will share one more that is really glaringly obvious. I was attending a house party where I did not know any of the guests. There were two very obese women there. One was not happy with how she looked and inadvertently was sending out negative signals so everyone steered clear of her. I didn't even want to go talk to her even though I normally seek out and befriend the loner as I used to be one.
The other woman I could not see at first because she was tellling a story and had so many people crowded near her. No one seemed to care about her extra weight. It wasn't an issue for her so it wasn't for the people. When I got a chance to see her face, even though I am heterosexual, my opinion was that she has a beautiful face, like a pixie, angel, whatever sounds etheral and different from most. Normally, I would notice how pudgy the face is but I couldn't see that at all as it was how she was feeling about herself, that my subconscious also agreed with. She was happy, outgoing and funny, the kind of person people like to be around. She was literally the life of this party. This example is to show you how it feels to be the one whom picks up the vibes and how it made me think and believe. Try the experiment for yourself. It truly does work if you can retrain your mind to think positive thoughts, not question whether you should have those thoughts and send out positive vibes for others to feel and react to.
I know that was a lot but I have one more document to paste in, regarding how to get over being anti social.
If you are a more private person, the hermit type and prefer and small circle of friends, there is nothing wrong with that. But when in social settings such as the Campus or classrooms, you are going to need to know how to communicate with people, even if its not what you prefer. If you have fear of people or talking to them, follow everything you will shortly read, if not, you will still glean ideas on how to social enough to satisfy others.
Overcome Shyness or Social anxiety
None of this involves using people you already know because you already have some comfort level there For this exercise, you will have to drop the teaching, “Never talk to strangers”. Just use common sense and talk to people in public places where other people are around and don't go off alone with anyone. So here's your lesson.
1. Smile at strangers every day as you come across them. When you are comfortable with this, move on to step 2 (this may seem silly to me, but this was hard for me because I thought if I smiled, people would want to stop and hold a long conversation with me and I had no idea how to talk to people)
2. Smile and add saying hello to people you don't know. This is already harder because your mind will be going, "They're gonna think I'm nuts cus I am saying hi and they dont even know me." When you can do this without feeling awkward or shy, move to step 3
3. Smile and say hi to and then pay a compliment to another person you don't know. It could be telling the grocery clerk you love her necklace. Keep paying compliments to people until you can do so without being fearful of their reaction or simply the act of doing it.
4. Smile, say Hi, and start a conversation with a stranger. Here's an example. When I'd be at a clothing rack and another woman was there...no matter her age, I would make a comment to her about the clothing. I'd pull something off the rack and ask what she thinks of it for me.
Keep trying statements with a question to get responses from a person. If they don't open up and start responding and sharing some of their story or thoughts then they are part of the 10 % of people who are hermit like and don't like being around people or talking to them. I took a class that taught about personality types and discovered that 90% of people are very friendly but will not start conversation first. If you can learn to start conversation first, in every situation, you will find that the majority of people respond in a very friendly and supportive way. They won't find the fact that you start talking to be weird. Once they figure you're a naturally friendly person you will see them willingly respond back and share bits and pieces of information and such.
I was trying to pick ripe but not over ripe melon one time when an older woman was tapping and listening to the melons. I asked what she was doing and she explained that there is a certain sound it makes so I learned something. Later we bump into each other in another aisle, and I say, "Well Hello again!" Her response, "Hello again. Do you use coupons?" "Sometimes." "Do you buy this product," she shows me something in her cart, "Yes I do." "Well I happen to have a coupon for a great deal on it if you'd like," and without waiting for my response reaches into pocket and hands it to me. You'd be amazed at the conversation you could have with people and be able to share helpful info with them or vice versa. And sometimes in the conversing you may find people who you have some things in common with. Another trick until you get more comfortable talking to people is the following trick: Ask people to tell you something about themselves, anything, because people love to talk about themselves. And all you have to do is listen for the most part. They will think you are a great conversationalist even though you were only listening to them talk. They might ask you to reciprocate. So think ahead as to what you are comfortable sharing about. Ideas: like mentioning if you had siblings or are an only child, things you liked doing as a child, favorite collections, hobbies. You can even describe in here being more quiet, shy, a homebody, happier listening than talking or whatever sounds right to you. You will be surprised how many who seem outgoing will say that they are also introverts. Just because a person is introverted doesn't mean they can't socialize and they will, it just won't be as boisterous as the extroverts.
Getting over shyness took me about two months. I can't remember the self esteem one but I think I did it for about 3 weeks before I started sending out the positive vibes and getting all the responses all of a sudden. It all depends on how well you stick to it and how often you do these things. I was dedicated because I knew it would hurt me in my adult life. So I did the shyness exercise when 18 or 19, after high school. The other I didn't do until in my forties.
This should help you.
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