Know and accept that you’ll never banish all social

discomfort from your life

Although the strategies in the following chapters will help you turn down the

dial on your social discomfort, you’ll never banish those issues completely.

Humans just aren’t wired to be blissfully happy and self-assured 100 percent of

the time. Even if you learn and apply every coping strategy there is, you need to

accept that the following things will still happen:

At times you’ll have worried, insecure, or counterproductive thoughts,

even if you use every technique you know to try to make them go away.

Sometimes you’ll feel anxious, regardless of how much you try to control

it or logically realize there’s nothing to fret about.

Some situations will always make you a little nervous, even if you’ve

successfully gone through them plenty of times (for example, most people

never get entirely comfortable with public speaking or trying to start a

conversation with someone they’re attracted to).

There will be instances where you’ll make a mistake, get rejected, or look

bad in a social situation, even if you do everything you can to prevent it.

You’ll feel down on yourself at times, no matter how much you try to

psych yourself up or remind yourself of your strengths.

Even if you seem to have your shyness and insecurities under control, you

may go through a stressful period in your life that makes them flare up

again.

You’ll never be able to predict the future or have full certainty an

upcoming social event will go well.

You may have been born with a tendency to be more anxious and insecure