How To Overcome Social Anxiety

Do you get anxious during social situations or interaction? Do you find it difficult to participate in social events because of your shyness? Do you worry that people will think bad of you?  If the answer to any of these is yes, then you may be suffering from social anxiety.

First of all try not to worry about experiencing social anxiety. Many successful people have been through this. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg started strutting and sweating at his first interview. But then he eventually got over it and the rest is history. Many people tend to get nervous while being interviewed or giving speeches.

Social anxiety can often lead to embarrassment and our brain tries to find ways to avoid such situations. However, avoiding this may only serve to add more to your anxiety and act as a potential hindrance to your leadership and role modelling. A leader is known for the way he talks and encourages people around him.

There are many ways to overcome social anxiety but, remember it will take time. Miracles don’t happen overnight. You will get over your social anxiety slowly and not in a day’s time, since it is a psychological process, known as cognitive-behavioral therapy.

What can you do get rid of your social anxiety

1) Focus attention on the people around you, not yourself

2) Take deep breaths and make yourself comfortable and familiar with your surroundings

3) Be a challenger to negative opinions and unrealistic expectations

4) Look and face you audience during a speech or presentation, and don’t forget to look presentable and smile

5) Try and enjoy the moment and the experience

 While doing the above, try and avoid the following

1) Mind reading: Assuming that people have a negative mindset about you

2) Fortune telling: Predicting the results in advance. Predicting that you will end up embarrassing yourself

3) Not giving yourself time: Never hurry or speak at fast speed. You will add more to your nervousness and build a pressure on you. There are also chances you will stammer or forget your words.

Focus on overcoming your social anxiety. Confront your negative thoughts. Find out what is making you anxious and find ways to tackle that problem.  Fight it, rather than run away from it. For example, if speaking in front of large crowd makes you anxious try speaking in front of your family member or friends first. Take feedback and improve, and that is how you will build confidence and move ahead.
Social anxiety is not visible to anyone other than you unless you show it deliberately through your words or actions. People will never know how anxious or nervous you are. Thus you can exude confidence and ace that interview or speech, even with butterflies in your stomach.
Says Dr Thomas A. Richards, psychologist and director of the Social Anxiety Institute,

“If we want to overcome social anxiety, we need to practice new rational thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and actions.  If we do this, our brain does change.  Thankfully, this is a permanent change, and we can go on to live the kind of life we desire.”

LEADERS PRACTICE HUMILITY

 

Leaders need to acknowledge failures too

A leader is someone who is in position to guide, encourage and is a visionary. But being a leader is not easy. Author Arnold H. Glasow says,

“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.”

IBM’s Thomas Watson once said, “The fastest way to succeed is to double your rate of failure.” Over the years more and more leaders have inculcated this point, accepting failure as a step to working harder. While failures or mistakes allow an individual to learn and grow, they can cost a lot to any business. One should be willing to take the risk and always have plans for the future in case one’s plan fails.

You need to accept the fact that you cannot be a perfectionist at everything you do. Be a ‘failure- tolerant leader”. Colonel Sander’s secret chicken recipe was not always a big hit. This recipe was initially rejected 1000 times before a food joint accepted it and then later Colonel Sanders founded Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 65 years old.  Not only was his brand a huge global success, but so too was his system of creating franchise around the world.

As a leader you might be doing your job right, hitting the right notes, but it’s your team behind you who is doing the work. It’s because of their job that you have earned success. Good leaders practice humility. Practice humility even when failure occurs. Stand first to take the blame squarely, and do not throw anyone ‘under the bus’ as a scapegoat.  Your team will respect you even more when you acknowledge the failure yourself, rather than making pitiable excuses as a means to escape from the moment.

Every tactic or idea will not work for everyone or every time. You need to give yourself some time and re-access your ideas and priorities and do the work again implementing new things and you will come up with flying colours.  Before making 5.7 billon dollars by selling his company to Yahoo, Mark Cuban failed at so many jobs. He failed as a cook, a carpenter and even as a waiter. He says that he learnt that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed, you only have to be right once.

Of course one needs to learn from failures and ensure that these are not repeated. Pepsi has initiated “Marketing Maven” awards, awards not for achievements, but for the biggest failures in the marketing department that year. “If you’re thinking about cultivating creativity, you have to look at failure as not something bad but something you can learn from. It helps a lot of the junior talent in getting more comfortable to share their ideas,” said PepsiCo North America Beverages CMO Seth Kaufman.

You will become successful and stay on the top if you accept your failures. Acknowledge them. Learn your lessons. You need to have a positive outlook towards criticism and carve out your work accordingly. Failures can be a stepping stone to success. Acknowledging them and tackling them is half the battle won.

Toxic people – How to deal with toxic people at the workplace

There is a saying, ‘You cannot pick your family’ but you can choose and pick people around you. However at times you may find yourself in the midst of negative, mean, rude, and toxic people at the workplace that you can’t seem to escape. They may be constantly hovering around and trying to poke their nose in whatever you are doing. They love to criticise, and try and pull you down always.

A toxic person is someone who nags you all the time, finds flaws in your work, tries to demotivate you, is friends with you because he wants to know what you’re working on so that he can plan his action on how to fail your actions or projects.

It’s best to stay away from such people, as negativity spreads, and can start having an effect on your overall performance and motivational levels. Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. You have to take charge and stop giving such people your attention or your time. Instead you should start questioning your own thoughts and seek out positive feedback from other colleagues. Try not to change or alter your decisions according to them.

Said psychologist Paul White who has co-authored a book on how to rise above a toxic workplace, “When there are unhealthy people within your organization, you’re not just fighting the market and your competitors, you’re now fighting internal battles between departments and individuals just to get something done.”

There are ways to deal with this. One thing you need to do for sure is distance yourself from such company or people. By distance we mean both physical and mental distance. By distancing yourself from such people you tend to avoid them and not let them interfere in your working and you can work more creatively and freely.
A toxic person’s behaviour is his hallmark. You should never take it personally and let it affect you. A toxic person will never take responsibility of their actions or results which occur because of them. They will always want to run out of difficult situations and blame others for it.  The best way is make sure you hold them responsible for the results which occurred because of their actions and not pay attention to their lame excuses which they are using to run out of the situation. A toxic person can be anyone your employees, your boss, your co-worker, literally anyone.
Try and focus on yourself and believe in your actions. It is really simple. Do not let anyone tell you or nag you and keep telling you your own work.  You are a master of your own so, don’t listen to toxic people and don’t be influenced by their negative energies.

How to survive rejection

Rejection hurts, even when you’re prepared for it. But the good thing about rejection is that it gives you a reality check, you can analyse your work and then grow further. So the key to failure is getting over it. Rejection opens several other doors for you which you are failing to see right now but will see eventually with time as you keep working. 

A well-known Princeton university professor who teaches psychology and public affairs, sent ripples through the academic community recently when he posted online his résumé of failures. In this he gave specific details of posts he applied for which he was not selected for, and also research grants that were declined. In spite of these rejections Prof Johannes Haushofer said that this resume actually reflects only a tiny slice of one’s experience – and perhaps not even the most important part. 

Take rejection as a lesson of your life.  Step back, assess your thoughts, learn the lesson, change your approach and take the challenge and come out a complete winner. Be strong enough as a person and as a leader. Put up a good example in front of others, be a role model. Pick up yourself, and start all over again.

The CEO of a pharmaceutical company,  attributes his successes to competitors constantly trying to trip him up. He admits he had a few falls in the beginning, but that today his company was one of the leading ones in that sector.

Steve Jobs, one of the most influential people in recent times, was fired from his own company board of directors. Although devastated, he did not give up on himself. He went on to continue working on other projects and earned a name for himself in the industry. Later on, Steve Jobs rejoined Apple and he took the brand to newer great heights.

Rejection is not easy. It makes you unhappy. Your rejection should inspire you to work harder every day. Remember your rejections, learn the lesson and continue working harder. Rejection is your wake up call to improve your life. Take feedback from people, get to know the reasons behind your rejections and use it to improve your work.

“Rejection is an amazing catalyst for evolution, and it’s as much a part of every good leader’s story as their successes,”

said Donna Wiederkehr, CMO of Dentsu Aegis Network.

Talk to people about your rejections. Discuss it with your advisors, mentors or with other successful people around you. They will inspire you to work more and not lose hope. And talking will send out a good message that you’re keen to learn and deal with rejections.

Are you treating yourself nicely?

Do you keep working around the clock? Are you taking too much stress? Are you criticising yourself too much for the mistakes? Is it getting harder to complete all your pending work? Is your performance dipping?

Studies show that treating oneself with more kindness is a way to achieve better results. Self-compassion is the key. It balances self-acceptance and self-improvement and helps you take a kind and realistic view of your experience.

Said Dr Kristen Neff, self compassion researcher,

“Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect?”

Self-compassion has three components: Self kindness, common humanity and mindfulness. You should avoid self-criticism and motivate yourself to work harder. Accept that failing at things is universal and there is a long way to go. Mind your negative emotions and suppress them with positive ones.

Self-compassion can help you be more successful than before. It improves your social, psychological and physical health. It increases motivation and helps you recover from failure.

According to a series of tests, researchers discovered that subjects studied more for the test after an initial failure, while practicing self-compassion. Self-compassion also makes you happy. It improves your mood and is associated with positive traits such as wisdom, optimism and curiosity.

It also improves body language. Self-compassion leads to a healthier body image and those who appreciate themselves as individuals feel light and happier.

Self-esteem depends on external situations, but self-compassion comes from within. Self-compassion makes you feel good and inspires you despite of little failures and inefficiency. Higher levels of self-compassion decreases psychological distress and other mental problems such as anxiety, depression, etc.

Treat yourself nicely, and appreciate your work. Lots of failures will come in your way but then one step-one action will make all the wrong right and make you successful. Go out of your workplace, host a small party, travel places appreciate yourself and your work. Work smart and efficiently. Don’t focus on logging in work hours, but rather focus on working efficiently and focus on maximising results and achieving your desired goals.
Make a small diary, or take notes. Get up and early plan your day in advance. Write down your goals, devise your plans and how to go after them.

As a leader, you should be serious about your work. But it is equally important to fill yourself with positive ideas and energy. The better you treat yourself, the more people you will inspire on your way to success.

In the words of the Dalai Lama,

“If you have no compassion for yourself, then you will not be able to have compassion for others.”