Overcoming Shyness

All my life I am known to the people who know me as someone who is not very outgoing. These posts about me, my family, my hobbies and other topics are really helping me to express myself and also to be more spontaneous and outgoing and I have my friend @felander to thank for bringing me here and showing me this fantastic channel where I can express myself.

‚Be more spontaneous‘

I can be spontaneous, but I purposely choose not to. Well … I don’t know if I could still be spontaneous at my age, but every child is spontaneous and it is circumstances that make them more shy. ‘Don’t touch that, be quiet, sit still, etc’.

Children are taught to behave the way it’s expected of society, however nothing like that had such a big impact on me as being called a ‘f*ing Jew’! As a kid, what had I done wrong and how did my actions impact what has happened in history or even influence what’s happening in Israel. This happened to me on a few occasions and despite people telling me in school and college later that I have a nice smile and should be more spontaneous, I am always on guard. I can’t let it go anymore and I’m also a person that once someone done something to hurt me or lost my trust, then it’s over. I can never treat this person in the same way and they will never fully be able to regain my trust again.

Form your own opinion about me

I hope you who follow me and read my posts regularly have been able to form your own opinions about me, as a person and about my character. The stuff I post here is me, it’s me opening up and being myself. It’s also sharing my experiences and engage with you about these topics.

These experiences have made me to the man I am today. For me engaging with a stranger more than saying ‘Good morning’ is a huge thing. If I see an elder person or pregnant woman on a train, I hope that there’s space for them so that I don’t have to ‘offer’ them my seat. I want to give them my seat, but I don’t want to tell them that they can. Luckily for me, I tend to travel outside peak hours on the public transport, but it does not help me get into these kind of situation, so that I can overcome my shyness.

Thanks to you guys and my chance to open up over here, I am getting over it slowly. I am meeting some fantastic people over here all with their own stories and experiences, troubles and challenges and it helps me a lot to see that I’m not alone and that we talk about these kind of subjects.

Real Life Experience

The other day I had to go shopping for the family. All the time there was this mother with 2 children in my vicinity. She was also ahead of me at the registers and when I went with my shopping trolley to the car I noticed her running around alone, quickly bringing her trolley back to the store and dropping something off at the post office. Her kids she’d probably left alone in the car whilst she finished these little tasks.

When I went to drop my trolley back in the store I noticed that the person who had dropped the trolley in front of me had left their CHF 1 coin in there. As I hadn’t seen anyone else dropping their trolley ahead of me, I assumed it was from this mother with her kids, so when I walked back to my car I had an internal struggle whether I should approach her or not. Off course, if she’d driven off already this would all not be an issue, but I noticed she’d parked 2 spots away from me and she was still there.

The good Samaritan and house father in me of a family on a budget got the better off me and I knocked on her window as she was over the front seat dealing with her kids. I was very conscious of how I might have come across to her, maybe a guy wanting to chat her up, or maybe someone with worse intentions. But when I told her about the coin she was happy that I considered it might be hers, but it wasn’t.

I left her car with a good feeling in my heart and again a step closer to overcoming my shyness.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share these experiences with you and to help me overcome my shyness.

Doron