Guest Author - Melissa Weise
The story goes that there was once a teenager who had just started college in New York. He was incredibly shy, especially with girls and just couldnft get out a single Hi. Without stuttering or blushing or feeling like an idiot. Fed up with himself, he decided that there was only way to get over his shyness. He developed a plan. For an entire day he stood in the Bronx Botanical Gardens and approached every single woman who passed by him stating, gHi, my name is Albert. Will you go out with me?h
Every woman he asked. The ones with small children. The ones who were old and bent. The ones who were tall and gorgeous. He repeated his speech to one hundred women that day and each and every one of them said no.
You would think that that much failure would have made him feel even worse about himself. But it didnft. What that teenager discovered was that each time he approached a woman and said his speech and each time she said no, it was easier to approach the next woman and the next and the next. Until it felt entirely natural to approach people he didnft know and introduce himself and talk to them. Instead of feeling bad about being rejected one hundred times, he learned that he could be rejected and still go on. That he was still a perfectly decent person even though he had been told no.
So, after having been rejected one hundred times in the Bronx Botanical Gardens, he went back to his school and walked into the cafeteria. The place where he had always felt the most out of the place and the most anxious. But, since he had had so much practice talking to people that day, he walked right up to a table of beautiful young women that he would have never been able to even sit near before and introduced himself and asked to sit down. After a moment, they said yes and Albert had finally succeeded in overcoming his shyness.
This is a true story of a young man who would eventually become a great contributor to the very dynamic field of cognitive behavioral therapy. His name was Albert Ellis and he lived for beyond his shyness to the age of 93, writing books about human behavior and rational ways to overcome our issues.
Shyness can come from a lot of things, but a great way to get over it is to practice. In the beginning, it might be difficult. Your heart races, you sweat and stutter. You feel like everyone is looking at you and judging you. But the truth is that everyone is usually so busy wondering what other people think of THEM that they arenft really paying at much attention to you as you think. And, like Albert, you will find that the more you practice, the easier it gets. Just make a plan to practice. Call it an experiment. Decide to talk to ten people in the hall at school or finally have a conversation with the cute boy. The great think is that you canft fail a behavioral experiment. You are just using it to practice and gather more data. And if the very shy teenager Albert Ellis could be rejected by one hundred women and still do great, so can you!
