Shyness is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a social phobia. Depending on the degree of introversion they have, some people may actually find that it can be debilitating, depriving them of a healthy social life. It not only affects their relationships, it also affects their careers, keeping people from performing at their best and making use of opportunities that come their way.
Overcoming shyness is a process and will take time. But each step you make will reward you by boosting your confidence level and making you a better person who is self-assured and can take on anything thrown your way. Here's how:
1. Figure out the source of your shyness. You might find that certain situations trigger your shyness and cause you to fold onto yourself and allow your worries and anxieties to overcome you. Once you recognize these situations, you can then find ways to handle them more effectively.
For example, you might feel most shy during social parties but don't feel the same way during family affairs or office occasions. It may be that your shyness is brought about by stranger anxiety, considering that you only feel shy around people you don't know. Once you recognize this, you can then adjust yourself to the situation accordingly.
2. Realize that it's perfectly natural to feel shy sometimes. You can't be forward and overly confident in every situation. You will always find that there are times when you feel a little hesitant and tongue-tied, especially if something is new and unfamiliar. It's perfectly all right to feel shy when you're meeting someone new or when you're going somewhere you've never been before.
3. Don't berate yourself for being shy. Overcoming shyness means affirming yourself as an individual and as a person. If you feel shy, don't tell yourself that you're stupid and that you'll never amount to anything. More negative thoughts will fabricate negative thoughts. The last thing you want to do is to become your own worst critic.
Instead, accept that you are shy but that you are working towards overcoming it and becoming a more confident person. By telling yourself it's all right and that you're taking positive steps to improve your condition, you unburden yourself.
4. Change your posture. Believe it or not, actually changing the way you stand and walk can do a lot to overcoming shyness. Slouching and keeping your chin close to your chest will only make other people look at you more, increasing your self-consciousness and anxiety.
Keep your chin up, your shoulders level, your stomach tucked in, your arms a little loose and your legs relaxed. Breathe in heavily and exhale slowly several times to calm yourself. Do this before doing anything such as public speaking, entering a party, speaking to someone, etc. Breathing in allows you to set a natural, calm rhythm that helps you walk steadily and speak in your natural voice.
5. Prepare. If you're going to a party and not know a single soul there, you might as well find out something about them. If not their names, find out what they do, what the crowd's general interests are and what they will be like. Knowing what you're getting into sheds half of the shyness factor and makes you feel more confident.
Keep a mental list of things that you can use during conversations. Neutral topics are a good start and do not put pressure on you or to anyone to produce information or expert opinion. You'll feel more at ease if you have something to contribute to the conversation.
6. Make small steps towards overcoming your shyness. You can't expect to live the rest of your life cooped up in some small part of your little universe hoping for a miracle to happen. Even Cinderella had to step out of her glass slipper in order to find a new and rewarding life. You can never overcome shyness if you don't go out there and interact with people.
Start small. Smile at the girl behind the counter of the perfume shop, say hi to the teller at the bank, nod to someone who lives in your building. If they acknowledge your greeting, good for them. If they don't, it only shows their lack of manners.
7. Take risks. After you've known the feeling of taking little risks, it's probably time to take bigger risks. Change is always scary but isn't that what you want? Do something you've never done before like eating out alone, going on trips by yourself, volunteering for a task, taking lead in a group. You'll be surprised at how easy it will be once you've gotten started.
8. Acknowledge that it's not about you. Self-conscious behavior stems from the belief that you are the focal point of people's attentions when in fact they have other things in mind. Practice shifting your focus to other people and develop an interest in them.
By keeping the spotlight focused on someone else, you keep attention away from yourself. If you do this on occasions when you feel particularly shy, you will overcome the feeling of being concentrated on. Instead, you learn to socialize effectively and enjoy yourself.
9. Affirm! Scott Adams (creator of 'Dilbert') uses affirmation to strengthen his resolve. Even life coach guru Brian Tracy encourages people to affirm themselves. Affirmation is the closest thing you can get to a magic potion in overcoming your shyness. It will not transform you overnight but it can massage your subconscious into focusing on your assets and building your confidence.
10. Practice. From your posture to your voice to the way you introduce yourself, techniques for overcoming shyness should be practiced to be perfected. By practicing them, you slowly integrate them into your thinking and mannerisms. This makes you feel that they've always been a natural process with you. As you shed your shyness little by little, you will find small but measurable improvements that boost your self-assurance.
Centerpointe use something called brain entrainment and binaural beats to achieve their aims. Centerpointe rely heavily on binaural beats to accomplish this. Binaural beats are separate sounds created in a way which can re-adjust the frequencies associated with the brainwaves of the listener with no effort. Through a method that has been named brain entrainment, binaural beats can adjust the physical and mental state of anyone who listens. However, Centerpointe claim that their binaural beats recordings also change lives!
Experiments have collaborated that specific brainwave states, which are easily created by Centerpointe using binaural beats, can create concentrated relaxation. These relaxed states have been shown to be better for learning and holding new information, inducing a relaxing rejuvenating sleep and heightened creative ideas - to name but a few.
Before the invention of binaural beats technology or Centerpointe, the only way to create specific changes in your brainwave patterns was through deep meditation. Before now this type of this art has only been possible for practitioners of meditation with over twenty years of practise - such as Zen Buddhist Monks. But it's possible now to do it with the help or Centerpointe and binaural beats.
Through the use of binaural beats and Centerpointe recordings it is possible for every person to enter all kinds of meditative states in minutes merely by using good headphones and a specifically recorded pre-made brain entrainment track.
Although the science which explains the process behind the Centerpointe program and brain entrainment through binaural beats is much too complicated to explore, the fundamental hypothesis is easy to get to grips with.
The concept of binaural beats, which Centerpointe use, was discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove when he was an Associate Professor at the University in Berlin. He discovered that when two sounds that are similar, but are different slightly in frequency, are heard separately to left and right ear (Binaural) they will cause a pulsation or beat to be present in the brain - binaural beats.
Centerpointe owes its existence to a 1973 Scientific American publication on the binaural beats research paper by Dr. Gerald Oster called "Auditory Beats in the Brain" which concentrated on binaural beats. This report showed how Dr. Oster took Dove's discovery and through research found that through the use of these binaural beats he could alter the entire brainwave pattern of the person listening to match the internal beat created by the binaural beats. When this happened the brainwaves of the listener started to resonate to the frequency of the binaural beats. Thus Oster discovered that through the technological method of using binaural beats he was able to change the brainwave frequencies of the listener and incite purposeful cerebral states. Centerpointe were very interested in this research.
As far as we are concerned the use of binaural beats or Centerpointe would just be another scientific discovery which has no great significance to life in general or everyday tasks were in not because everything you do in life has a corresponding brainwave pattern. Many times the goals you strive for rely heavily on the state your brainwaves are in at that moment. The things you do have a dominant brainwave frequency associated with it. Centerpointe have used this binaural beats technology as a basis for their Holosync program.
When you're very relaxed, when asleep, your brain has a specific frequency associated with it with specific patterns such as Theta waves. When you in a physical state where you are alert and very focused your brain is displaying Beta or even Gamma patterns. These frequencies are easy to induce by utilizing binaural beats ? the technology behind Centerpointe.
After you are in state of relaxed focus like when you're captivated by TV, daydreaming or while under the influence of hypnosis, you enter the Alpha state. This is also the state that is entered into with most forms of meditation and the Centerpointe program. However people with decades of meditative experience, like a Zen Buddhist Monk, are able to enter Theta and Delta states while remaining highly concentrated. This can also be achieved with binaural beats and Centerpointe programs!
These kinds of states, which would normally take over 20 years to achieve by practising meditation, can be prompted within a very short time using binaural beats and the Centerpointe program.
So it is possible induce meditative states at will using binaural beats. Some of the benefits of normal meditation, using the Centerpointe program or binaural beats are:
1. Profound relaxed mental and physical states. 2. More profound more restful and energizing sleep. 3. More creativity. 4. A slow down of the aging process. 5. Removal of past negative emotional upsets. 6. Relief from Stress. 7. Increased energy levels. 8. Better focus and concentration. 9. Better remembering of studied information. 10. Quicker post-operative recovery times.
The above list is only a small example of the benefits of meditation, the Centerpointe program and binaural beats.
It is evident then that the benefits of meditating are very desirable. We are very blessed to live in a time where it is easy to get different forms of this technology from Centerpointe to individual binaural beats recordings.
The experiments using binaural beats and Centerpointe show that this type of brain entrainment is highly effective and can be utilized very successfully by anyone. I have listed some other resources about binaural beats and Centerpointe for further reading. Although binaural beats have been used to create states of relaxation, heightened energy, deep sleep and many more Centerpointe have developed a way of using them for major self improvement issues such as removing emotional attachment to past memories and raising a person's tolerance threshold. The Centerpointe approach to binaural beats has its foundations firmly in personal growth.
Before the availability of binaural beats recordings, such as Centerpointe produce, the only means to induce specific changes like this was by practising deep meditation. For thousands of years this form of meditation has only been possible for practitioners with over 20 years experience. Centerpointe have created a binaural beats product that does it in minutes!
Within minutes of using the Centerpointe binaural beats program you can experience Zen-like meditations using only a cd player, set of headphones and Centerpointe recordings!
So what are the benefits of using binaural beats and Centerpointe?
What we achieve in life is always in direct proportion to what we feel we deserve and can achieve. Past failures, emotional upsets and negative experiences all play their part in how we perceive the world and our place in it. Centerpointe meditations (and all transcendental meditations) are designed to eliminate all the emotional connections between our memories, thoughts and beliefs so that we are free of preconceived notions and more confident in our own power. The Centerpointe approach allows you to achieve the same results from meditation that would normally take a lifetime!
When Centerpointe creator Bill Harris realized the immense value of mediation and using binaural beats he decided to produce recordings that could induce it easily. Since the 1980s, when Centerpointe released the Holosync program, they have constantly have refined and improved on it.
After many years testing binaural beats and his Centerpointe program for myself I can say honestly that they do everything they say they will.
Both Bill Urell & Michael A. Mcgrath are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Bill Urell has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development, Health and Online College. Pick up your Free Recovery Rolodex, Over 88 pages of self help and recovery tips, resources and links to enhance your life