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Many shy people are unaware of what shyness costs them. Our body’s need to remain in the comfort zone can sometimes restrain us from seeing what shyness truly robs us of.
Lack of this awareness means you continue to miss out on good things in life without knowing why.
It also robs you of knowing how being shy may affect those around you.
Several benefits come with the traits that accompany shyness.
You are less likely to do something stupid in public. It may cause you to be highly aware of the environment, sensitive to danger, especially the ones coming from people.
It forces you to prepare harder for things because you don’t want anxiety and nervousness to mess things up for you.
In most situations, you tend to act and appear mature, calm, unassuming and composed.
These are all useful traits to have in a person.
But the disadvantage is that you’re doing most of them out of fear rather than being your true self.
Does it mean you’ll lose those good traits if you overcome shyness? No you won’t. But being shy causes you to do good things out of fear and that’s not how it should be.
Disadvantages of Being Shy
Shyness comes with numerous problems. And we need to know how bad they are.
Otherwise, we’ll never know what the best approach is for shy people.
Here are a few reasons you should deal with shyness and get it out of your life for good.
You’ll miss out on Opportunity to make Good Friends
One of the things I truly regret are the opportunities to make friends I have missed out on.
The thing with shyness is that it makes you hesitate and wait too long. In the end, you miss out on doing what you should have done.
When this happens, in order for you to feel good about yourself, your brain ignores all the benefits of trying something new, and finds a reason to gaslight you into thinking you dodged a bullet.
You block out all the benefits you could have had by making the approach, and focus on the negatives just to feel at ease with yourself for being shy and passive.
So you miss out on the chance to talk to that intelligent, fun, beautiful, or wealthy person.
You miss the chance to discover something new, to meet someone that could change your life, to meet someone you truly love and admire.
You miss out on making friends with an intelligent person you’d have a great time with.
This is one of the greatest disadvantages of shyness I know of.
It’s not worth it. Get out of your skin. Be bold. Fail, fall, get up and keep going.
Your life is your business. Live it with freedom.
You Stop Being Attractive
Is being shy attractive? Is it not?
You may ask, “If being shy is not attractive, why then are people attracted to shy individuals.”
To a shy person, that’s what it looks like, but that’s not what happens.
People are not attracted to shy and timid individuals.
People are attracted to the qualities that a shy person may have, such as being quiet and respectful.
It’s the humble and mysterious nature that attracts people, not anxiety and timidity.
When people start to discover you’re shy and awkward, they’ll want you to be more confident and bold.
Shyness, with timidity, is not attractive. It may embarrass you for no reason. It keeps you from being yourself. It makes you shaky when you want to do something important.
While your gifts and talents may attract people, they won’t find it funny if you’re too nervous and anxious to deliver.
It gets worse if you also struggle with a lack of self esteem.
Because they have a hard time being themselves and lack the ability to stand up for themselves, some shy people most times appear childish.
That is not attractive at all.
The good news is, you can decide now to stop all the negatives and live just how you should.
You have to kick shyness to the curb. I don’t care how hard you must fight to get yourself back, believe me it’s well worth it.
Make the decision today, and watch your life get better by the day.
You can’t stand up for yourself
I have witnessed someone embarrassed in public but they couldn’t speak up.
I have seen situations where someone is cheated, sometimes offended wrongly, but they just couldn’t utter a word.
While I’m not saying get in a fight or abuse someone, you should be able to defend yourself and make the person realize you won’t take the crap they’re dishing out.
It won’t be easy if you’ve not done it before.
But do it. As a responsibility to yourself and your loved ones, learn to stand up for yourself unapologetically.
You are as much a person as other humans on the planet. Stand up for yourself and don’t apologize for doing so.
Apologize if you disrespect someone or cause problems, but not for defending yourself and your loved ones.
You may fail at things you can do
So many times we’ve seen people who can’t deliver at important moments because they’re too nervous.
We’ve seen someone mess up a presentation they prepared for.
Some of us have talents, products to sell, but when it’s time to share the importance so people can buy in, act or become part of something, we just get too annoyingly humble or passive for our own good.
This puts shy people in a disadvantaged position in groups, at work, in life, and the world.
So much that you sit and watch people who don’t know half of what you know get ahead of you.
Isolation, Loneliness, and Depression
Since they can’t make friends, and their sensitivity to everything forces them to notice danger and fold back in, most shy people find themselves lonely and isolated.
When you’re lonely and isolated, depression finds it easier to thrive.
One of the things that help a lot with depression and heartache is having someone to reach out to.
Yes, many shy people know how to spend time with themselves. But this doesn’t mean you can’t make friends.
Don’t be afraid of making friends, knowing people.
And when you do, don’t be afraid of setting boundaries. They will respect your boundaries.
If you don’t want to be hanging out 24/7, let your friends know. They may make fun of you or get angry but they will respect it.
The ones who don’t like you at all will leave, then so be it.
Be okay with those who stay.
Inferiority Complex and a lack of Self Worth
Many shy people struggle with self worth. This is mostly because of the way society deals with those who have emotional challenges.
This problem gets worse in a social media generation where people go online and talk about things they have never experienced, getting everything wrong while amassing followers, likes, and even get paid to spread crap.
They call you names, attach labels like “inferiority complex.” This makes shy people feel worse about themselves.
“I’m a shy person so others are better.” Wrong! They’re not. They are who they are, who you are.
This is why I took time to talk about dealing with labels in How to overcome shyness.
Believe in yourself. Don’t focus on the negatives, focus on the positives.
Change how you think about yourself. Realize how good you are. Work on areas of your life that need improvement.
And remember, no one’s perfect. We’re all dealing with one crap or the other. So focus on yourself. Enjoy the best of you as you work to get better in other areas.
Overthinking and anxiety
The curse that comes with staying calm and doing less, is your brain working round the clock.
Many times you’re anxious. This mostly is a result of your mind trying to deal with the fear of messing something up because you’re constantly overthinking everything.
Seriously, relax. Breathe.
Don’t let your nervous system betray you. Retrain your mind.
Train your body to realize it’s all good. Learn to realize that most things you worry too much about are not even as bad as you picture them to be.
Give yourself a break. You didn’t kill anyone.
Inability to Focus and Concentrate when others are involved or watching
To learn or do anything effectively, focus and concentration is necessary.
But because over half of a shy person’s thinking power is constantly taken up by fear of what people think about them, they use too little of their thinking ability in problem solving.
Too much brain power is wasted thinking about others, instead of focusing on the task at hand.
It makes it difficult for most shy people to focus properly, which mostly causes them to underperform.
Think of your brain as a computer’s RAM.
When you have too much going on in a computer, the RAM has too much to handle and this causes the computer to lag or underperform.
The same thing happens to us when we are angry, anxious, oversensitive, etc.
70-80% of the brain is overloaded with crap and too little is used for important tasks such as doing and listening.
This is another downside with being shy or emotional when you should be focused on something.
Wrapping Up
We’ve seen shy people underperform, miss out on opportunities, live less, work more but get too little in return.
The disadvantages of being too shy far outweigh the advantages.
And I don’t see these advantages as real advantages. This is because you can still possess those traits without having to be shy.
If you struggle with shyness, the best advice is, deal with it. Live more.
Keep whatever good qualities you have now.
But work to silence and destroy shyness.
