A while back, I heard the idea that shyness is selfish, and I blogged about why this selfishness (insofar as it is selfish) seems perfectly reasonable to shy people.
However, explaining the concept as "shyness is selfish" is unhelpful, because what it's really saying is "Stop being shy!" And you can't just stop being shy. You need specific strategies, accrued experience, a safe environment, and cumulative empirical evidence of the net results produced by non-shy behaviour. It isn't a matter of convincing people why to do it, it's a matter of explaining in specific terms how.
Today it occurred to me that the real point is that non-shy behaviour is helpful and useful. I learned this by watching my Gen Y colleagues, who are so much more confident and Entitled than I am. This is useful to me. I don't have to think of everything myself or start all the conversations or figure out what the other person needs. If your goal is to get people to unshy, it would be far more effective to show them why and how unshying is helpful to others rather than just making them feel guilty for being "selfish" on top of feeling shy.
I've heard this presented in loose terms by people saying you should "contribute", but that implies that what you say has to be big and important enough to be considered a "contribution", which adds even more pressure. And there's also conventional wisdom like "Ask questions!" and "Approach another person who's shy!" But that doesn't work so well, because if you're shy the last thing you want is some stranger wandering up and interrogating you.
It's more useful to express precisely what unshy actions a shy person can take and why exactly they're helpful to others, and even more useful to witness this in action. It takes self-awareness and bravery and a supportive environment, but it's far more useful than just telling the shy person they're being selfish.
2 comments:
I've been thinking about this. How can a personality trait or a general orientation to life (or however you want to classify shyness) be considered selfish. I know your earlier post - I went back to check it was the one I remembered, and it was - but I don't get where the people who claim this are coming from.
Two other issues come to mind that are frequently called selfish, neither of which have anything to do with selfishness or altruism.
One is being childfree, the other is suicide. Calling either of those choices selfish speaks of a real lack of empathy and imagination.
I think calling shyness selfish is a similar blind spot - and perhaps even worse, because one's personality is not a choice.
And now that I said that, I will think about your idea of a more useful approach.
I think part of the problem is that "selfish" has been made so negative it's almost considered malicious, while in real life it can be absolutely neutral. I've been doing housework and catching up on my reading all day. Completely selfish! All about me! But so what? It's not like there's something I should have been doing for someone else instead.
And then on top of that, there's "selfishness" where you could be doing something for someone else, but not doing so isn't malicious, it's just...less than focused on others than you could be. Shyness is like this. If you're shy, you're not taking the initiative of helping the other person as much as you could be (assuming you know how). But that isn't bad enough to actually go in the minus column.
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