As long as I could remember I had been shy.
When I hid behind my Mum as a little girl so that I wouldn’t be in the photograph or kissed by some distant relative they said I was shy.
When I didn’t speak up in class at school they said I was shy.
So I knew I was shy.
Everyone knew I was shy.
Then one day when I was in my early 40s, I was talking to a neighbour.
I don’t know now what we were talking about but she must have made a suggestion because my answer was “I can’t do that, I’m too shy”.
She looked me straight in the eye and said “You’re not shy”.
So matter of fact, not a challenge, just a statement made with complete certainty.
Her words somehow penetrated through to a place of recognition within me.
I was stunned.
And by the time I had walked back to my house a few hundred yards away, I knew she was right.
I was not shy.
I joined a public speaking club, I took up modern jive, I did things that I couldn’t do when I was shy.
I didn’t have to make myself not shy, I didn’t have to overcome anything, I just had to realise that it wasn’t true, that it never had been.
(Image courtesy of Myriam Zilles on Pixabay)