What is shyness? Webster's defines shyness as being "uncomfortable in the presence of others." For the shy man this refers to being uncomfortable in the presence of the opposite sex.

Shyness can be a crippling mental handicap and its consequences can be devastating in the following ways:

1. Shyness breeds negative feelings like anxiety, de-pression, and loneliness.

2. It encourages you to think too much about yourself and to be over-preoccupied with your own reactions.

3. It will limit you in voicing your own opinions and values and speaking up for yourself.

4. Shyness hinders your thinking and ability to communicate effectively.

5. It has an unfavorable bearing on how others will evaluate your personality.

6. Shyness makes it more difficult for you to meet new people, make friends, or enjoy potentially good times. Thank goodness, shyness can be cured and overcome!

As an example of shyness, at every nightclub you will find the shy man. You'll see him just standing around all night, being afraid to approach a woman and start up a conversation or even to ask a woman to dance. So what happens? They get frustrated and leave the club. They keep coming to the nightclubs and repeat the same routine. They stand around wishing they could meet someone, get frustrated, and then go home frustrated and depressed.

You can overcome your shyness and you "must" if you're going to nightclubs, etc. This kind of social setting can be most threatening and anxiety-provoking if you are a shy man. This kind of setting will only aggravate your shyness condition if you don't take the appropriate steps to overcome your shyness.

In order for you to promote this change yourself, first you must believe that change is possible. You must really want to overcome your shyness condition. Last, you must be willing to commit time and energy to take action and to risk some temporary failures in initiating change procedures that can lead to long--term success. To sum it up you can change if you believe you can but it takes work...hard work.