Being painfully shy has had its ups and downs throughout the course of my twenty-eight years on this mortal coil. It has prevented me from doing a lot of things I probably would have regretted. It has also made me regret not doing a lot of things that would probably grow me as a human being.
Because I end up feeling embarrassed about myself either way, I figure I ought to err on the side of action—to take more courageous leaps in “putting myself out there,” however embarrassing that might be. (If anyone’s reading, putting my thoughts into a public forum is a surefire formula for humiliation.)
I need to develop the guts to do the little things if I’m going to do anything worthwhile and bear the true image of the Creator. If I cultivate my soul, artistic endeavors should follow. If I make a habit of sitting down to write, I am overcoming a small part of that Resistance that hinders me in my craft.
This is my purpose in keeping this blog, however mundane the entries may be. It is to develop the habit of doing, to improve my being, for the sake of doing more, doing better, and eventually being better.
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July 10, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Yeah shyness has kept me from doing some things before, but I’m working on it little by little and it’s made me realize a lot!
July 19, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Best wishes to you, Brittany!
I had a wonderful documentary professor in college who was very compassionate about helping me overcome my shyness (which is definitely career suicide if you want to be a documentary filmmaker!). He told me to write down on a piece of paper, “Why are you shy?” For whatever my response was, I was again to ask, “Why?” ad infinitum until I started to uncover the root of my shyness.
For whatever reason, it is still difficult for me to get through this exercise without a few tears. However, I think it was the idea that someone braver, wiser, and more successful at life cared to pull me out of my shell that helped me more than the exercise.
Cheers, and good luck on your quest 🙂