Shy brothers and sisters, this one is for you.
There’s great value to be mined from the quiet individual … the meditative recluse … the contemplative outsider. I have always innately trusted shy people just a little bit more than the boisterous, bombastic type. They’re genuine. There’s nothing to hide because there is no facade. Quiet individuals have nothing to prove, no one to prove it to, and are content simply living their lives to the fullest for their own enrichment.
That being said, it’s a fine line we walk, dear shy ones.
We can be doing all the right things, living a positive existence full of morning meditations, physical challenges, and awareness practices, but if there’s no one to share it with, well, how are we enriching the world?
Why Are We Shy?
Shyness comes in many forms and exists for many reasons. Sometimes it’s anxiety-related, sometimes it’s just a person’s demeanor, and sometimes perhaps it’s even physiological. A 2010 study performed by Stony Brook University in conjunction with two Chinese Universities suggested that shyness and introversion can actually be due to a person’s brain processing the world differently than their extroverted counterparts. The results of the study show that highly sensitive individuals pay more attention to detail – this was tested with a series of images and an MRI – and they have more activity in certain regions of their brains when trying to process visual information than extroverts.
So there’s that, which is really quite cool and lends power to the mysterious intrigue of the quiet observer, but ask any introvert – who will speak with you – and you’ll hear all about the drawbacks of shyness. There are plenty:
- Social isolation
- Missing out on new relationships
- Not getting credit where credit is due in career and education
- Fear and anxiety
Shyness & Business
Businesses have begun seeing the value of stepping out of the shyness box too. In the last decade, it’s become common practice for large, medium, and small businesses to have corporate social responsibility programs, CSRs, that do things like promote environmental awareness, give back to the community, and generally better the lives of local citizens.
This used to be something that corporations just did as a matter of course in an effort to improve stakeholder trust. But according to corporate marketing firm BrandStar – [bctt tweet=”consumers no longer view social responsibility as a feel good ad-on” username=”JerryKennard”]. It’s a necessity. It’s vital to the company that the community sees and fully grasps the scope of a business’s CSR programs. Being coy about the work being done is simply no longer an option.
Once again, whether we’re talking personal life or business life, it’s a fine line we walk my shy friends. Over promotion of oneself is annoying at best, but under promotion can be detrimental to the wellbeing of the whole.
Even though it might feel uncomfortable, we shy people must get out there into the world to be seen. Yes, it will be awkward. Yes, we’ll probably stumble along the way and we will never be as charismatic or cool as we want to be.
But think of it this way: it’s not about proving anything, about ego; it’s about offering your gifts to the world. They deserve to have you.
Brooke Faulkner is a writer, reader, and career optimist. She is constantly working on coming out of her shell.