Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 193. of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're all doing very well and that you are enjoying these episodes, practicing your listening, feeling more confident with your English.
I hope that you're all doing well on your English learning journey.
And in today's episode, I want to talk about the topic of being shy.
So I want to talk about my own shyness in particular.
I know a lot of you can probably identify with this.
I'm sure many of you would consider yourselves to be somewhat shy or very shy, or maybe you're not normally shy, but there are times when you feel shy.
So I think that this topic is relevant for a lot of people.
And I want to talk about my own experience with being shy, because I've been a somewhat shy person my whole life.
And when I was younger, I was very shy.
So I'll talk about my own experience with this in the past, the present and how I think I can improve in this area.
And I hope that some of you can identify with this and maybe take some lessons from this as well.
So, I'm sure that you'll like this episode.
And before we start, I want to encourage you to check out my pronunciation training if you've never done so.
If you become a Listening Time super member or any of the higher tiers, you'll have access to my English pronunciation seminars.
In those seminars, I help you pronounce things more like a native speaker.
I teach you about the sound system of English, the system of stress that we have.
Usually, when people watch a seminar for the first time, it's really amazing for them to see all the different details, and it's usually really helpful.
So I encourage you to check those out and also you can check out my advanced podcast episodes, in which I speak at normal speed, not slowly like I'm speaking now.
And so if you want those, the link to sign up is down below.
And I also encourage you to check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast, because in that podcast I talk to English speakers from all over the country and you are able to practice with conversations that two native speakers have at normal speed.
That's an essential skill.
So that's why I created that podcast to help you out with that.
So the link to sign up for that is also down below.
And let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let me talk about being shy.
So when I was a young kid, I was extremely shy.
I wasn't just the normal shy kid that you can find anywhere.
I was very, very shy.
My shyness definitely caught people's attention.
Like, they realized that I was not just normally shy, I guess you could say.
I was extremely shy.
And that lasted up until I was about five years old, I think.
So from the time I could talk to the time I was in kindergarten, I would never talk to anyone outside of my family, under any circumstance.
So, for example, when I was in preschool, when I was four years old, I spent the whole school year in that program, that preschool program, and I did not talk to a single kid at any time.
I would spend my recess—recess is the little break that you have between classes when you're in school—
I would spend recess and the lunch break that we always had with my teacher sitting by her at a table outside, not talking to her, but I would just sit with her and I would never play with any other kid.
I never wanted to interact with anyone else.
And I was just waiting for the school day to end.
And I always wanted to go back home to be with my family.
That was my whole preschool experience.
So, of course, this was kind of concerning for my parents.
And they worried about me and didn't know if I would ever return, become more social or make friends.
And it was definitely something that troubled them.
It worried them.
And I understand that.
My son now is very, very shy as well.
Almost like me.
He's three years old.
And at this age A lot of three-year-olds run around with other kids and talk and make a lot of friends.
And my son is not that type of person.
My son is very antisocial, only wants to be with us me, my wife, his sister and he doesn't really need anyone else.
And I was a little bit concerned about this until recently, because parents want their kids to play with other kids and be social.
Thankfully, he has recently started to open up just a little bit about When you open up, it's like you start to talk a little bit and become more open to other people.
So he has recently started to open up just a little bit with like one or two other kids, but this is after a long time of being around kids and just not playing with them, rejecting uh playing with kids.
So i'm uh happy to see that he's opening up just a little bit, but still I would like him to be more social, and so I can imagine how concerned my parents were when I was a kid and I was maybe even shyer than my own son right now and my wife was also extremely shy when she was a young kid.
Part of it might be genetic.
Maybe that's why my son is like that.
But I don't know.
But when I was about five years old, I started to become less shy, thankfully.
And I... made some friends.
I was still shy for sure, but I wasn't at that extreme level of shyness where it was just crippling.
When something is crippling, that means that it just doesn't allow you to function normally.
OK, like a crippling ailment, a crippling illness or something.
So thankfully, my shyness wasn't as crippling as it was before that.
And so in first grade and in second grade.
I was able to make friends and have a social life.
So that's great.
However, we moved to a different city when I was about to turn eight years old.
And I had to start all over again in third grade at a new school in a new city.
And I was miserable for the first couple months probably.
It was awful.
I think that I just walked around the school by myself every recess, every lunch.
I can remember having a plan in my mind when it was lunchtime.
I would say okay, I'm going to walk over to the drinking fountain very slowly, so that will take up some time, and then I'm going to walk to the bathroom.
That will take up some time.
Then I'll walk here and I wanted to look like I was busy because I didn't want people to see me sitting alone on a bench or whatever.
I wanted to look like I always had something to do.
I was going to go get a drink or go to the bathroom or whatever.
And I remember having these thoughts in my mind because I did not talk to any other kid.
I had no friend.
So I started from zero in third grade and it took me months to finally make one or two friends.
And that was a really hard experience for me.
But thankfully, I became a little less shy as time went on.
And I think in fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade, I socialized a lot more.
I had friends, thankfully.
And then I started middle school in seventh grade and I didn't continue on with those same friends that I had before, for some reason.
I don't know why, but I...
I had to kind of start over again in middle school, not completely from scratch, but still.
It was like a step back for me.
When something is a step back, that means...
Like you went in reverse and now you have gone backwards in your progress, right?
So middle school was hard for me.
I was shy in seventh grade.
Of course not as shy as when I was a little kid, but my shyness still prevented me from being really social in that new environment.
Thankfully, after a little while, I made more friends.
You can see the pattern here, right?
This happened multiple times, where I was shy at the start of a school year and then slowly after months, made friends or something.
And I was pretty social in high school.
Thankfully, throughout ninth grade, 10th grade, 11th grade.
However, in my last year of high school, I also felt that I didn't have a thriving social life.
I wasn't surrounded by friends and I felt kind of shy again.
I didn't feel like I was able to talk to people really easily.
So even in my last year of high school, I kind of felt shy again talking to people.
And so, as you can see, I went through periods of my life where my shyness just really prevented me from feeling comfortable, from talking to people.
How about now?
Well, I'm still shy.
I still consider myself a shy person, but it's more depending on the situation and I'm able to break out of this shyness more.
Let me tell you when I'm not shy.
I'm not shy when I'm talking to foreigners.
That's kind of interesting, right?
But I think the reason for this is that the dynamics are different.
I'm kind of like the teacher because I'm I've been an English teacher for many years, so I can assume that role very easily, even in situations when I'm not actually teaching.
By the way, we can say that you assume a role, to mean you take on that role responsibility, that role.
So I can assume the role of teacher very easily, and the dynamics are different because I have the advantage when the other person is not a native English speaker.
So I feel like I have more control over the situation and And I'm able to help the other person.
I like that.
Right.
So when I'm talking to foreigners, I'm not shy at all.
It's like I'm a different person.
And I'm also not that shy when I'm introduced to someone new, meaning unknown.
I don't go up and approach them.
Uh, someone, uh, brings them to me and says, Hey Connor, uh, I'd like you to meet my friend.
So, and so, right.
So when that's the case, I actually function pretty well.
Uh, What's harder for me is if I have to approach the person.
That is a lot harder.
But if someone brings them to me and introduces them to me, then I feel like the hardest part is over and I'm able to talk to them easily in most cases.
So That's not hard for me.
And I'm also not shy or I'm less shy, I should say, when I am in groups of three or four people.
This is like the perfect number for me.
Sometimes, when I'm talking to someone one-on-one, there can be more awkwardness, like things can get less comfortable, or if someone doesn't know what to say, it might feel weird.
The pressure isn't always on you to talk because there are two or three other people there.
So you don't have the responsibility of talking and breaking the silence whenever there's silence.
So I've found that I function well when I'm in groups of three or four.
And one other case in which I don't seem shy at all is when I'm talking about a deep or interesting subject.
I can get very talkative when this is the case.
So those are the cases when I'm not shy.
However, there are some situations in which I am still shy and I struggle with this.
One of those situations is when I'm in a big group of people more than four people, let's say, or maybe five people.
When I'm in a bigger group, I find it harder to make myself heard.
We say that phrase to mean that you speak up so that other people can hear you and what you have to say.
I find that I talk less when I'm in a group with more people.
So that's harder.
Sometimes one-on-one conversations can be harder when we can't really get past the small talk very easily.
This usually happens when the other person is not very good at conversing.
When the other person is decent at having a conversation, this isn't a problem, but sometimes people just aren't very good at this and it can be a little awkward like the other person isn't engaging as much in the conversation, it seems, and you don't really know what to say.
So that can sometimes be tricky.
And really one of the hardest things for me, maybe the hardest thing is approaching someone.
By the way, when you approach someone, this means that you take the initiative, you go up to the person and introduce yourself, start talking to them.
This is maybe the hardest thing for me.
This is where my shyness comes comes into play the most.
I've never been good at this.
It's something I want to improve on, but it's something that I find difficult.
I much prefer when someone introduces me to someone else or we just become acquainted naturally through the circumstances.
When you become acquainted, that means that you meet each other.
So when we become acquainted, naturally like we're both in some group together and we naturally have to start talking to each other for some reason.
That's way better than if I just see a person and say oh, I want to introduce myself to them.
Let me go up and talk to them.
That's something I need to get a lot better at.
I definitely feel shy in those cases.
So how do I think that I can improve?
Because I talked about my weaknesses here.
I reflected a little bit on the things that I can put into practice to improve.
One of them is to really try to bring my teacher personality into practice.
Different social settings.
I don't mean that I want to act like a teacher and think of everyone as my student.
No.
But what I mean is that when I'm teaching I am trying my best to really engage the other person, make them feel comfortable.
I'm kind of taking control of the situation.
I think that's one of the keys is that I kind of have the control.
I'm managing the situation, the conversation.
And And it's easy for me to do that when I'm teaching or when I'm talking to foreigners.
But I think that I need to do more of that when I'm just in other situations.
I should do my best to actually display those same things in those other cases.
There's no reason why I can't.
I definitely know how to manage the conversation and engage the other person.
I have a lot of experience with that.
So I should really make that one of my main goals when I'm talking to people, right?
Really pretend like I'm a teacher, but without the teacher-student relationship, right?
I should just act how I act when I'm teaching.
I think that's what I'm trying to say.
I think that can help me.
Like, I don't want to think about myself.
I want to think about the other person and show genuine interest in the other person.
And I think it's if my interest is on them and my focus is on the other person.
I think that things will go better.
If i'm thinking about myself and just thinking, uh oh, how am i doing in this conversation?
Am i being funny, am i this?
Then that really hurts me and it makes me feel more shy.
But when I don't focus on myself and I'm just genuinely interested in getting to know the other person, then that definitely helps me feel less shy and it helps the other person open up more to me and we can talk about more interesting things.
If I'm not just focused on myself, myself and how I'm performing in that conversation, so to say.
So that's another one.
Another thing I can do is to not fear awkwardness.
This is something that I have a big problem with.
I never want there to be an uncomfortable, awkward silence or moment in the conversation.
So I always try to fill in the gaps by saying something when there is some type of silence during the conversation.
I... worry too much about that.
And that makes me more shy.
It makes me more self-conscious.
It takes me out of the conversation more.
So I don't want to go into the conversation worrying about awkward silences or anything like that.
Because like I said, that makes it so that I'm more shy, more self-conscious, etc.
And one last thing is I don't want to put a bunch of pressure on myself.
I don't want to pressure myself to perform well.
I don't want to over prepare for conversations.
I know some of you might find that strange that people might prepare for their conversations with people, but some of us do that.
And sometimes I prepare too much.
I think it's good to be a little prepared, in the sense that There are certain things you know, that you want to ask the person or whatever.
But I think over-preparing is a bad thing, at least in my opinion.
You aren't confident enough to just allow the conversation to flow naturally.
I think that that's something that I need to do.
I need to Stop putting a lot of pressure on myself to be a really good conversationalist and have really good questions prepared.
I want to prepare a little bit sometimes, but I want the conversation to flow naturally.
And to not focus on myself, like I said before.
Focus on the other person.
And so those are a few things I thought of that might help me get better with my shyness.
Hopefully if you consider yourself shy, you can take some of these tips and practice.
Maybe they'll help you be a little less shy in certain situations.
But just know that a lot of us deal with this.
A lot of us deal with shyness.
It's not something that's rare or anything like that.
But it's something that I think we can all improve upon and get better at.
So that's what I'm going to try to do.
And I want to encourage you to check out my pronunciation training and my advanced episodes.
If you haven't done that yet, the link is down below.
My pronunciation training will really help you become more familiar with the sound and stress system of English, and those advanced episodes will help you practice with real English spoken fast.
And check out my US Conversations podcast.
It's a lot of fun.
I talk to a lot of interesting people from all around the country.
And it's great practice for your listening, because you're listening to two people talking at normal speed.
But one of them is me and you're more accustomed to my style of speaking.
So hopefully it will be easier than if you were just listening to two random people talking.
So if you want to check that out, the link is down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
