1. Overcome Your Inferiority
From my experience teaching hundreds of shy people over the past couple of years, both guys and girls, I’ve found the cause of most shyness is a feeling of inferiority. If you feel you are somehow “less valuable” than the girl, then you will feel shy and nervous around her.
Let me illustrate this with an example.
Fat Girl Syndrome
Imagine a fat or unattractive girl who you know. Do you feel any anxiety or nervousness around her? No, probably not. And if you do, it will still be far less than around the girl you are attracted to.
Think about the way you talk to girls who you aren’t really attracted to. Are you more relaxed and casual around them? Do you talk to them the same way you would talk to a guy friend? Meanwhile around a girl you find attractive your mind suddenly goes blank and you can’t think of what to say.
Why does this happen? Why are you only shy around certain girls? This happens when you place so much value on looks that a good looking girl becomes intimidating.
The solution is, of course, to stop placing so much value on looks. Treat an attractive girl in the same casual, natural way you would treat a guy friend or unattractive girl. Sure, you may be attracted more to a good looking girl, but physical looks alone shouldn’t be enough to immediately make you intimidated and won over.
I remember back when I was very shy around girls, I would start to really like a girl and start to fantasize about our future together… without ever really having talked to her!
In hindsight, it seems so foolish, yet so many shy guys do it. They become infatuated with a girl just based on how she looks from a distance. They haven’t even talked to her yet, yet they start to imagine a future together with her. (I’ll talk more about these unrealistic fantasies later.)
It’s better to have an attitude of “what else do you offer?” Does the girl have something other than her looks going for her? There are plenty of cute girls in the world, but it’s rare to find a girl you can have fun with and one that has a personality that “clicks” with yours.
Do not put the girl on a pedestal before you even know her. Treat her as an equal human being, not a goddess. That’s why so many women give guys the advice to “be yourself.” They don’t like it when a guy is trying hard to impress them and get them to like him. Especially when they haven’t done anything to deserve his attention yet except looking pretty.
Realize that how someone looks does not dictate how valuable they are. Being good looking is more about luck in getting the right genes than anything else. Would you think that a lottery winner was superior to you?
Being Less Experienced
Another way of feeling inferior is thinking that being less experienced than the girl with relationships will immediately make you repulsive to her.
Back when I was shy, I remember I kept having to think I had to “hide” the fact I had never had a girlfriend. I thought that if the girl realized from the way I acted that I was romantically or sexually inexperienced, then that meant she would just get up and leave automatically.
The truth is, by having an attitude of feeling undeserving of more experienced girls, then you are only sabotaging yourself. If you have grown up somewhat shy and socially awkward, then it will be almost inevitable that most girls will be more experienced than you.
In order to “catch up,” you need to start to talk to, and become involved with, these girls. That’s actually a great perspective to have. The fact that you are less experienced than average does not mean girls do not like you. It just means that you have some catching up to do because of your shyness or social anxiety. You just started later than everyone else. And that brings me to the last point…
Being Hard On Yourself and Insecure
Remember the first key lesson: The less valuable you think you are compared to someone, the more shy you will feel around them. Inferiority makes you feel not entitled to be confident and express your personality.
Ask yourself: “How do I make myself feel inferior than other people?”
One big problem you may have to overcome is your own thoughts. Many shy people have a constant stream of thoughts that point out what a loser they are.
If you constantly think about why you’re a loser, how you aren’t good looking, how you have some physical flaw that needs to be fixed, how you’re a loner with little or no friends, how you’ve never even kissed a girl, etc … then you are just sabotaging yourself.
By being too hard on yourself and being insecure about your appearance you are constantly reinforcing the idea in your mind that you are inferior to the girl. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE for you to be confident around her, because you think she is more valuable.
And if you are lacking confidence and can’t even talk to her normally, then you have no chance of attracting her and forming a relationship.
Confidence and personality are more attractive than physical appearance to most girls. Your looks don’t matter nearly as much as you think they do. If you don’t believe me, then look around. All the good looking girls are around the confident, popular, charismatic guys. On the other hand, many of the good looking guys who are shy are stuck alone or with a girl they’re not really attracted to. Looks matter much more to guys than girls.
So the most important thing is to cut out any thoughts that sabotage your confidence or make you inhibited. This means to notice when you are having self-defeating thought patterns and stop them in their tracks.
Any thought that makes you think you are less valuable will only sabotage your progress in becoming less shy around girls. Notice when they occur, challenge them with the ideas you’ve learned so far, and instead try to focus on your good qualities that you are proud of. Remind yourself that girls aren’t really after the best-looking guy, but one who can be confident and talk to them without being intimidated by their superficial qualities.
2. Stop Being Too Invested In One Particular Girl
If there’s one thing that all shy guys have in common, it’s that they have a tendency to pick one girl that may show them even the slightest interest an then become obsessed by her.
Stop The Unrealistic Fantasies
Do you find yourself picking out one girl that you like and then thinking for hours about what it would be like to date her and have a relationship with her?
Maybe the girl showed you a little bit of interest. Maybe you just talked to her once for a couple minutes. Or maybe she’s in your class and you’ve never spoken a word to her before.
If you are constantly fixated on one girl at a time and playing out fantasies in your head about what it would be like to date her, then you are again sabotaging yourself.
What do you think happens when you decide you want to finally go talk to the girl in real life? You’re too nervous to even move. You’ve thought about her so long and built her up in your mind into such a perfect creature that you become literally paralyzed by fear.
Meanwhile, the girl may not even be aware that you even exist.
All the thinking makes you unable to approach her and talk to her casually. And even if you do, the way you behave around her still communicates to her that you would be totally crushed if she was to disapprove of you in any way or reject you.
The problem is, you became too emotionally invested in the girl before she had done anything to earn your attention. You put so much time and effort thinking about her that her rejection of you would ruin your fantasyland image of you two together.
Don’t Have Too Many Expectations
One thing in particular shy guys do is they may talk to an attractive girl for a few seconds and then put too much meaning into the interaction. They may start fantasizing about the girl like I said above. They may go out of their way to pass her in the hallway. They may even stalk her photos on Facebook.
(For any girls reading this: Yes, guys are creepy. It’s true.)
The key to avoiding this issue is to talk to girls without having a hidden agenda to make her your one true love. Don’t have too many expectations about a future relationship with any one particular girl until you have spent a decent amount of time getting to know her.
The reason why is that people tend to put out their best parts for the world to see.
Until you have gotten to know someone over a period of time, you have no idea what they’re actually like. That girl you think is perfect may be annoying to hang out with, she may be needy, she may be insecure despite being beautiful, she may be completely unintelligent, or she may be into the celebrity gossip shows you hate.
And if you don’t get to know her, then you’ll never realize you were just seeing her through rose-colored glasses.
The point is, don’t be won over by looks alone. There are plenty of cute girls out there. Many of those are as cute as the one you are obsessed about … and they have a personality you will like spending time with!
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying:
For every hot girl out there, there’s some guy that’s sick of fucking her.
So after you’ve talked to some girl, don’t start imagining a future together with her right away. This will just make you nervous to ever talk to her again. Instead, keep it casual and see where it goes.
Guys who have little relationship experience tend to be naive and think that most relationships develop like a romantic movie from Hollywood. Two lovers fall into each others arm when they first see each other. The reality is much different. Long-term relationships develop over time and are always a work-in-progress.
3. Be Assertive
One way to stop being so invested in one particular girl is to have many options instead of one. The best way to do this is to talk to many women on a weekly or daily basis. If you only talk to one new girl a month, then it will be hard not to think about her. But if you are constantly meeting new girls then it becomes a lot easier to see her as just a girl you talked to one time and that’s it.
Fate Doesn’t Exist
Many guys who are inexperienced with women have wrong and naive ideas about how relationships work. Maybe you think that the best strategy to get a girlfriend is to wait for the right circumstances.
Are you waiting for a situation where you just happen to meet a girl, you magically aren’t nervous about talking to her, don’t have to ask her out, and she makes all the moves? That’s like waiting for the stars to align.
The harsh reality is that you are going to have to work and learn to cope with your nervousness if you want to have a girlfriend. The universe will not deliver one to you. Sure, you may get lucky a couple times where a girl puts in much of the work to get to know you, asks you out, and makes all the moves. BUT … she probably won’t be the same girl that you want!
If you want something, you’ve got to go after it, especially when it comes to dating for guys.
Guys Are The Ones Who Make Moves
In our society, or perhaps due to our biological programming, it’s guys who need to be assertive about meeting new girls and becoming physical with them.
Don’t like that? Too bad. That’s just the way it works. It may suck if you’re a shy guy, but it is what it is. Learn to accept it and live with it.
You’re going to be the one to approach. You’re going to be the one who asks for the phone number. You’re going to be the one who goes for the kiss. Going after a girl you want involves risking rejection every step of the way.
How do you overcome this fear of rejection? You desensitize yourself to it so many times that it doesn’t bother you much anymore.
Don’t Hesitate
Being assertive is like a muscle. The more you do it, the less effort it takes.
When you try to go for the kiss with a girl for the first time, or you want to walk up and talk to a girl, you will probably hesitate a little.
You’ll stop yourself.
Then when you try to do it in a couple minutes again, your “mental barrier” to acting becomes higher. It becomes even more difficult to “just do it.”
And the longer you think about whether you should make your move or not, the more anxiety you feel. It’s just like when you think of a girl for months and it becomes impossible to talk to her. You’ve built it up in your mind so much that you’ve become a victim of paralysis by analysis.
Instead, you need to act more upon that first impulse. That first impulse is your best shot at actually doing it. All the thinking that happens later only serves to talk you out of acting on that impulse.
If a girl rejects your attempt at a kiss, then all you have to do is smile and keep talking to her normally. Then go for it again ten minutes later. Many times the girl isn’t rejecting you, she just doesn’t feel comfortable at that moment.
If you talk to a girl and she doesn’t like you, then don’t start thinking of ways to make her like you. There are literally billions of girls out there, just try a different one.
Conclusion
I hope these tips help you to get over your shyness around girls. Much of this information was a turning point for me going from a hopeless guy with extreme shyness and social awkwardness to someone who has overcome shyness and has decent social skills. Enough to talk to girls I’m attracted to without feeling shy at all.