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Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. Today, I want to talk to you about being a shy speaker. And
what this is about isn't you speaking your native language where you feel fine, and
you're not nervous, and you're not shy, and you can say what you need to say. This
is about when you're speaking a different language, maybe English if you're
watching this. Or maybe you're a native speaker and this applies to you when you
speak Spanish or French. So when you speak in the other language, that's when you
become shy, and you have all these uncomfortable feelings happening. So I want to
talk about being a shy speaker today. And I also want to give you an exercise for
you to try to push, push, push, and break that feeling of being a shy speaker. Let's
do this. First, I want to talk about the people who
have this problem of being a shy speaker when you speak a different language. The first
group of people is introverts because when an introvert speaks a different language,
they are really, really deeply affected by not being able to be precise and
exact. When you speak a different language that you don't know very well, you
can't say the exact thing you want to say. And introverts are very precise people.
When they have a thought, an idea, a feeling, they like to put it in words, exactly.
They actually really care about communicating what they want to say more than
others. And when you speak a different language, you
can't do that. And that leaves you feeling like you've lost a part of yourself.
And on a neurotic level, you worry that people misunderstand you, take you the wrong
way when you can't be precise. So you experience feelings of shyness; you become
more guarded; and you say less. Even if you're not shy in your own language
-- I'm an introvert. I'm absolutely not shy speaking English. But speaking other languages
-- different question, different story, because I can't be precise speaking
those other languages. Another group of people -- or personality
type, better to say -- who experiences this problem of being a shy speaker, I have observed,
is really funny people, the kind of people who always have a crowd of people around,
laughing. And what's happening there is these people are very used to charming
people in their own language. And I'm not saying "charming" like it's a bad
thing. It's your gift. It's the way you are socially. And when you speak a different language,
for many people who are funny, it feels like having their arm cut off or
something because they can't be funny. And therefore, they feel so awkward. They've lost
a part of their personality. So you can see the similarity between introverts
being shy speakers and really funny people being shy speakers because they
care a lot about using their words in their interactions with other people.
What I want to talk about now is doing an exercise that anyone who experiences
this feeling of being a shy speaker in a different language can do. And I recommend
you try it. The first thing to say about doing any kind of exercise to train, develop
yourself, smash issues to do with confidence, is that they are not supposed to be easy.
If you do it, and you experience it, like, "Oh, that was fine", it's not working.
It's not hard enough for you. Because when you want to smash confidence blocks,
you need to keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. It always needs to be difficult.
And this is the reason that so many people are not willing to do them. People say,
"Oh, that's just stupid." That's their ego telling them it's stupid. Or they think, "I
don't really think that will work" because they're using their minds to just make a
decision like, "That's not helpful", when really, the only way I know to change the
way you feel in terms of personality and overcome blocks is by pushing against
things that make you feel uncomfortable. So here's the exercise. What you need to start
doing is recording yourself when you speak the other language. So this means that
you have conversations with yourself; this means that you do two to three-minute-long
conversations with yourself. It also means that you could remember a dialogue from
earlier in the day, and do it as a kind of performance to yourself. As long as
you're speaking the other language, it doesn't really matter what you do. But I don't
count reading in the other language. You need to be performing in the sense that
you turn your thoughts into language in that moment, and you don't prepare, and you
don't read anything. Because when you're a shy speaker, you don't yet have enough
experience of talking, talking, talking. And it really needs to be a physical
thing. It needs to come through you and out of you for it to count. It can't just
be you thinking in the other language. You need to say it so that you get more and more
used to speaking. That's the most important thing.
So when you record yourself, and you've never done it before, you will feel stupid.
"What am I doing? I'm talking to myself. Only mad people talk to themselves. This
isn't working." That is your ego screaming against something that makes it feel
uncomfortable. It doesn't want to do anything that presses against its fears. And its
fears are talking in the other language. So when you see yourself telling yourself,
"No, I can't do that. I can't talk to myself", that's very, very good evidence that that
is exactly what you need to do. You need to talk to yourself. And when you do this
often, you will get to a point where you notice you've changed your opinion about
your voice and your speaking. At first, you listen to yourself, and you think, "I am
terrible. I'm the worst person who's ever spoken English in their life. Ugh! I hate
the way I speak." And you'll change, and you'll
start to see the good in your speaking. And you will start to get really enthusiastic
about this development that you're seeing. And you'll want to make it better.
And when you get to that point, you're really, really, going forward very, very fast
because what you're doing is you're learning to appreciate your own voice, and
you're learning to want to develop it more and more.
So there's an exercise for you to do. You can record it on video if you want to see
the full communicative aspect. And you can also record it on your phone if you just
want to listen to your voice. And it's a bit easier. You can do that anywhere. So know
that it's supposed to be uncomfortable. It's not meant to be easy. And also know that you
can change that. And the way you change that is by leaning into the fear of
doing something stupid. So give it a go, and come back again to my
channel for more videos about communication, English, accents, and being
an introvert, which was related to today's video. And until next time, see you.