Flash A Smile At Everyone You See

Here is yet another confidence building activity for you. This one builds on an activity that you may have done before, which is to walk around making eye contact with everyone that you see as you go about your daily business.

Well, that’s a great activity to do, and this week what I want you to do is to add something on top of that and in addition to making eye contact with everyone that you see, flash them a big smile. A nice, friendly smile, and just notice how other people respond.

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Make Eye Contact With Strangers

Hey there, it’s Graham with another confidence building activity for you this week. And this activity is all about making eye contact with strangers. As you’re going about your daily routine, as you’re walking particularly through crowds of people and you see other strangers, the basic thing that you need to do here is to simply make eye contact with them and hold that eye contact for as long as possible.

Now, there’s an interesting little social phenomena here when two people make eye contact, particularly two strangers. One of them will always avert their gaze first. And what happens is that the person with the highest level of social status and self-confidence, which tend to go together, is the person that maintains the gaze the longest. This is very interesting and you’ll start to notice this. Whenever you make eye contact with someone, the person that averts their gaze first is the one with the lower level of self-confidence.

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How to Overcome Social Anxiety

Social anxiety and the sense of shyness that it causes can be one of the most frustrating aspects of a lack of self-confidence. Much of our joy and happiness in life comes from our relationships with other people, and shyness cuts off many of our opportunities to meet new and interesting people before we’ve even begun.

In this age of computers, iPods, the Internet, chat rooms, online forums, Facebook, Twitter and other social media web sites, we’re getting more and more used to relating to other people electronically. That means we’re getting less and less practise at social skills, so naturally we’re gradually becoming more socially anxious.

But like any form of anxiety, social anxiety is treatable if you approach it in the right way. You don’t have to be held hostage by your fear of other people in social situations. I’ve been working on this for a long time myself, and here’s what I’ve found most helpful:

Understand That It’s Normal

Firstly, understand that some degree of social anxiety is normal. We’re all biologically programmed to be wary of people we don’t know, and to suss them out to work out whether they’re friend or foe before trusting and being able to fully relax around them.… Continue reading…