Quiet Confidence: Breaking Up With Shyness

By Joel Annesley and Turner Jane

How would your life be different if all your interactions were undertaken with confidence?  What if you weren’t the ‘shy’ person in the office but the respected deep-thinker?  What if you could change how you are perceived without changing who you are?  Can an introvert still radiate confidence without attempting

• Language: English
• Publisher: Power Writers Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648423003

Joel Annesley

Joel Annesley was born in Queensland, Australia to two alternative-thinking parents who nurtured his passion for the natural world. He attended The Queensland University of Technology where he earned a Bachelor of Creative Industries. Over a decade later, Joel discovered his true passion: Life Coaching. Today, Joel lives in Sydney, Australia. When he's not working with his clients and facilitating personal development and mindfulness workshops, he searches for nature amongst the concrete jungle and lives for the perfect coffee in calm, quiet hideaways in a city with plenty of noise.

Book preview

Introduction

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell

This is a story about breaking up with shyness. It’s a tale with an almost impossible challenge: how to once and for all overcome debilitating shyness and embrace a life of Quiet Confidence. The journey is a race against the clock. Do nothing, and the relationship with shyness becomes toxic. I can think of nothing worse than to fast forward my life and picture a man who lived with shyness and regret, regret for not having the guts to finally break up with shyness and start to do the things that he thought would be impossible.

This book is a personal journey about my own toxic relationship with shyness. This journey revels not only in small, simple wins but also larger victories. It taught me not only to break up with shyness, but also to embrace Quiet Confidence.

The Mission

This journey prompted a personal mission that I’ve set for myself. That is to help over 100,000 introverts break up with shyness and discover their Quiet Confidence. Are you one of them? If not, you are not excluded—the insights shared in this book will be of great benefit to others in your life who share a similar temperament.

If you’ve just picked up this book off the shelf, I pose a simple question: How would your life be different if you were no longer shy?

As a child, I believed that my shyness was me. I embraced every definition of shyness; I was too shy to speak up in class, to answer the telephone, to pee at the pee trough, and to make friends. In time, I discovered that shyness was separate from me. When shyness took on its own form and identity, it suddenly didn’t have the same powers it once had and I could distance myself from it. Over the course of this book, I’m going to help you see this for yourself and help you distance yourself from shyness.

I don’t know what you look like, but I’ve got a pretty good idea about how your mind works, how you think and feel. If I were to take a guess, I’d say we share a lot in common. We are empaths, highly sensitive introverts who overthink our decisions and actions to the nth degree. Most of us suffer in silence and experience the same challenges and problems with our self-confidence but we aren’t willing to talk about them. That part is uncomfortable. In this book, we are going to address the uncomfortable. I warn you, it will be challenging at times. We are going to face some ugly characters that might stir you up a little and it might get a little turbulent at times. But within these trials is the opportunity for massive personal growth and development. You have the opportunity to emerge with ‘new sight’, a different way of seeing and perceiving yourself in your world: You will discover Quiet Confidence.

The Journey

Writing this book for you has been an incredible personal journey. It has grown and evolved significantly since I started writing it. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to express but struggled with how I would transfer these ideas into fully-formed, well-crafted, and thought-provoking ideas.

It’s as though the act of writing this book has been part of the solution to overcoming my shyness—and it’s my hope that reading it will be yours. It has taken time, but it’s been worth it. The physical product that you’re seeing is only the tip of that iceberg. It’s a combination of weekends, lunch hours, and burning the flame at both ends. Trust me, you’re going to laugh when you hear about my challenges to wake up early! Clearly, I’m not a morning person.

Making a commitment to put together some of the craziness from my head into some form of logical, coherent order wasn’t easy. From the beginning of this journey, I want you to know that it means the world to me that I get to share some of my own personal lessons, insights, and reflections with you.

In this book, I’m going to talk about how to break up with shyness and also touch on themes such as social anxiety and low self-esteem. I then introduce to you Quiet Confidence. I believe that you and Quiet Confidence have the potential for a long and healthy relationship, one which will enable you to take the goals that you only dreamed about and turn those dreams into reality.

This is all possible by understanding and controlling that little voice inside our heads. You know that voice of judgement that’s often screaming its head off while your lips are sealed? You’ll discover the secret to quieting and controlling that voice. This, in turn, will help you finally start to change the way you see yourself. You’ll appear calm and relaxed, and you’ll care a lot less about what people think about you. You’ll see yourself in a completely new light—and it’s going to skyrocket your success.

If you’ve suffered from shyness, and find yourself with an overthinking mind, this book presents an option to change your life. But you must be open to it. It’s a big call to make, but my story provides irrefutable evidence that shyness can be overcome. The result? A life without shyness is a life of freedom. Discovering my own Quiet Confidence has become my ‘get out of jail free’ card. Finding it wasn’t an overnight process, but it’s one hell of a journey I’d never trade for anything.

The way I see myself has been completely transformed. I don’t constantly beat myself up anymore. I’ve transformed what I thought were my greatest failings and weaknesses into my greatest strengths and assets. Now, as a life coach, I witness breakthrough moments of Quiet Confidence unfold in front of me. I’m enjoying the fruit from small, consistent, and quiet actions over a number of years. This has enabled me to facilitate breakthrough workshops, create transformative meditative programs, and connect to thousands of people like yourself. I do this in my own way, with Quiet Confidence. None of this required me to be an over-the-top extrovert or somebody I’m not. I followed my heart, and I did it my way. In fact, the more I follow my heart, the more life-changing opportunities fall into my lap.

Today, I’m a far cry from the extremely shy person with zero confidence I used to be. I was envious of anyone who exuded confidence, because I felt like a fumbling fool and a hopeless case. I confused extroversion with confidence, and I felt like extroverts had a competitive advantage. Today I live a life that I was once thought was impossible. I have made the impossible probable. Now it’s my turn to help you quietly and confidently break up with your shyness so you, too, can invite life-changing opportunities into your life.

What This Book is About

This book isn’t about teaching you to be more extroverted by giving you techniques on how to speak and communicate better with others. It’s not about how to direct your voice or become a public speaker. This book is about embracing who you are, not changing it. It’s about discovering new levels of confidence in yourself and your abilities, stepping up to become someone who is courageous and passionate, and living a purposeful life.

Why should you make a commitment to this book? I’m not here to sell you on what you should or shouldn’t do. I’m here to share with you my journey and some of the insights I discovered along the way and encourage you to pause, think, reflect, and act.

Doing this takes a level of commitment that you perhaps haven’t made before. You need to decide to make it your personal mission to break up with shyness and embrace Quiet Confidence. It’s a commitment to do more than just read this book once and forget it. It’s a commitment to engage, to take part in the Quietly Confident Community. They will keep you accountable, as will I.

I want you to know that I’m here with you on this journey. Reading through the book, no doubt you’re going to share some parallels with my journey. I want you to openly reflect on this. I also want you to know that this book is also going to develop levels of familiarity, a bit like old friends who have shared our stories and encouraged each other along our paths. Maybe we’ll meet over coffee one day and you’ll share a few of your stories with me.

As you progress throughout this book, I’m going to prompt you to engage with me. It is my goal that this book becomes more like a two-way dialogue, where I get you to stretch your mind a little.

How to Read This Book

Reading Quiet Confidence should be a pleasurable experience that will, at times, make you think and reflect. You might need to let the book rest a little, allowing time to reflect and digest your own realisations. To help you with this, you’ll see the following icons pop-up periodically to prompt you to think, take part in a reflective activity, or embark on a creative visualisation or meditative exercise:

Point of Reflection: is a moment for you to pause and think about your own insight and perspective. You might like to take notes.

Guided Audio: is a prompt for you to download a guided meditation or creative visualisation to follow. Accessible at quietlysuccessful.com.au/quietconfidencebook.

Activity: is a prompt for you to stop and work through a number of questions or activities.

Chapter Summary: is the key points from the chapter for your review.

Sharing Your Insights

Behind this book is an ever-growing community of like-minded individuals known as ‘The Quietly Confident’. I encourage you to join the community by visiting thequietlyconfident.com and sharing your insights within our private community; it’s free to join.

Hashtags

For more public conversations around the book, you can use the hashtag #quietconfidence or #thequietlyconfident when referencing The Quietly Confident Community.

DISCLAIMER: Before we get started, a quick disclaimer. In this book, I make mention of a cross-section of themes about understanding your mind and body. I’m not a medical doctor, a scientist, or a psychologist, and I’m not going to pretend to be one either because that’s not me. This book isn’t backed by hard science, it’s backed by life experiences and personal observations. While I write this book, I am acting as your personal Life Coach. At times, I will ask questions and ask that you engage with me. Some of these activities might be difficult but I ask that you do the uncomfortable and fully engage in these activities.

In this book I share some of my stories, allowing you to reflect on your own. I caution that sometimes these parts can be emotionally charged and traumatic. It might get a little turbulent. Of course, my story is my story, but it will no doubt share some similarities with yours. If you find this challenging and it makes you uncomfortable, don’t hesitate to speak to someone about it. Never feel shame in asking for help.

Ready? Raise your tray table and buckle your seatbelt. It might get a little bumpy, but if we don’t go through the uncomfortableness of the journey, we can’t get to the destination. On arrival is paradise. Getting there is not the end goal, but rather the fruit of the journey.

Okay… here goes!

1

Naming It

Scientists have found the gene for shyness. They would have found it years ago, but it was hiding behind a couple of other genes.

Jonathan Katz

He Who Must Not Be Named

There lives a deep dark evil that shadows us. It is an evil that has haunted you and I since our childhoods. At first, you probably weren’t even aware that it existed. But it’s lurked in the shadows, watching and monitoring us very closely. Its power is fuelled from within. Our actions unknowingly call this evil into existence. Its power is debilitating, one could even say soul-destroying. For that reason, I liken the villain to ‘He Who Must Not Be Named!’ For when we call its name, it grows in intensity. It gains power. The act of bringing attention wills this evil into existence.

The odds might appear hopeless, but there is a way to defeat it. But first we must understand and know the enemy’s weaknesses. We need to study it so we know how to defend ourselves when it strikes. Who is this enemy, you ask? It is shyness. Shyness is our Lord Voldemort. The