How I am Overcoming Social Anxiety.

I have been talking about my struggle with social situations for a while on here and on my youtube channel.  On the channel I have shown how I came from talking alone in the house, to talking on the porch, to in front of my girlfriend, to in public in the mall.

I remember the first time talking with Brittany by me,  I would keep laughing while making the video and it took me a few tries and like 10 minutes of procrastination to actually make the video without criticizing myself.  And now last week I was able to record a video in public and the mall twice, and once was on the same topic as this blog post.

Sure people were probably staring which does terrify me, but from where I started it is amazing and I know you guys can learn from me talking in public if you have the same type of social anxiety as I do.

I do still have trouble talking with people, but I do feel as if the videos make it easier to communicate in real life with people, even if I only communicate a little bit more with them at the time I am writing this blog post.

How can you use this to start a journey of your own?

I can not describe how hard it was for me to put myself of camera for the first time without anyone around.  I was afraid of people watching my videos and making fun of the way I talk, if I pause or think for a second, or stutter.  But I realized I would never be able to share my message without putting myself out there.  And people weren't, going to watch me to troll on my videos and hate, but  instead to learn something or try improving their life in some way.  

If you have trouble talking on camera I have some ways to help!   Now in no way am I close to the best at speaking on camera but I keep improving.  From the start I said this blog was going to be to help you guys improve by watching me share my journey, as watching people who are already where you want to be can get discouraging.

In no way is speaking on camera easy for someone who deals with social anxiety, and maybe even an outgoing person may have trouble doing it, because you are just talking in to a lens.  But what has worked for me is saying a few things to myself.  "I am talking to people who really do enjoy watching my videos and do want to grow, the video isn't about me but about the viewers."  and something I say for a lot of things I need to do, "If I were to die today would I regret not doing whatever it is."  In this case a video. Even though I won't live forever my videos will always be there to help someone, and life can end at any moment, so why not try and hep someone if I am still breathing?

In short, take small steps in doing small things that scare you, and before you know it what seemed hard before will be easy to do.  Just like how I talked about it being hard to make videos with Brittany around me in the beginning of the blog, and how that was so hard for me to do but taking that small step lead me to be able to make that easy and encouraged me to talk around a bunch of people in public, and hopefully it encourages you to do the same with whatever you are trying to take steps towards doing!