“What was a lesson you learned this year that changed you?” This is the topic for today’s Best of Blog Challenge 2009.
I think that the biggest lesson I learned all year is that I can’t let my shyness rule my actions. I have always felt the need to hold back and not make a scene. Here’s how shy I can be – it can be my birthday and I can be celebrating at home with friends and family. As soon as they bring out the cake with candles lit and start singing the birthday song TO ME, I want to run and hide. Another shy example was when I was in high school and even in college and taking foreign languages (I studied German, Latin and Ancient Greek in college to support my History degree) if we had to practice speaking in class, I was always really afraid to speak to my neighbors because it felt like a performance. So, you can see that shyness has had a profound effect on my life.
I believe my shyness really started when I was in grade school. There were two events that shattered my young ego and set the stage for what I described above. First, my second grade teacher sent me to another classroom to retrieve the big can of scissors for an art project and when I entered the classroom and interrupted the lesson, the teacher asked me what I wanted and I replied, “Can I have the scissors?” to which she replied, “I don’t know, can you?” which garnered a huge laugh from the students (also second graders and many were my friends) which embarrassed me and caused me to correct myself and ask, “MAY I have the scissors?” Now, I understood she was trying to teach a “lesson” in grammar, but the humiliation of being called out like that in front of my friends was horrifying.
The second event occurred after it got out that I had a picture of one of my classmates, a VERY popular girl in my class, in my wallet. Mind you, this was the second or third grade. Girls had cooties back then. But, nonetheless, I really thought she was cute and so I kept her picture in my wallet. One day, in a fit of stupidity, I let it be known to a couple of the boys in the class about this and before I knew it, she found out. Then, a day or so later, as we were lining up as a class (boys and girls) to go in from recess, she loudly announced to me, in front of our whole class, how she hated my guts. Needless to say, if I could, I would have melted into the ground right there, but I didn’t. Again, everyone thought this was the height of hilarity, accept me of course. Ahh, the joy of youth.
So, why am I admitting all of this? Because I attended a one day “un-conference” known as BarCamp. BarCamp is a day long series of sessions devoted to tech and geek topics like blogging, social media, podcasting, digital media, etc. and one of the sessions I attended as a session called “Networking in Nashvegas” which was a fancy name for a session on how to mingle and build relationships, particularly business relationships. And, during this session, the two ladies giving the talk asked if anyone was shy. Of course, being the honest guy I am, I raised my hand. Naturally, they called on me and a person named Hannah and asked us to come forward. They then proceeded to roleplay with us about how to break your shyness and “mingle” based on the body language of the other people we might try to meet or mingle with. And, because of their open, honest approach and the advice they gave, I found that it’s actually quite easy to overcome my shyness in many situations where before I would be afraid of being noticed or speaking out in a crowd of strangers.
Because of BarCamp and this session in particular, I have started to make friends in the Nashville “tech/geek” community and to develop a good network of business contacts that will only get better and richer as time progresses. I have joined the Nashville Geek Breakfast group that meets monthly for breakfast and networking. And, I have even volunteered to be part of the spring “un-conference” known as PodCamp for 2010. Finally, after over 35 years of avoiding the spotlight and any kinds of confrontation, I am finally out and facing the world with a new sense of “self” and the knowledge that it’s perfectly OK to be me and if the world doesn’t like it, well, it’s not my problem.
