Ask HN: If you used to be socially awkward and shy, how did you improve?

Other advice here is good, but I think it's worth pointing out that psychology, spirituality, and religion contain the tools for working on problems like this.

Fundamentally: you are afraid, so you will want to work with tools that work with fear. That's probably most of them.

Prayer, psychedelics, meditation, any of the thousands of healing traditions, shamanic traditions, psychoanalysis, personal development methodologies.

What's important is to open yourself to the possibility that life could be *a lot* better, and that there are more avenues to achieving that than you can count. Stay curious and try things.

Another one that gets poached by the extraverts.

May the status wars be kind upon you.

I too used to be awkward, anxious, and not finding within me the possibility to show my true self in new social contexts.

A few things that made a difference:

1. Moving. I moved many times in my twenties and each time I had new neighbors and coworkers was slightly easier. Practice works, and it was a relief the first times to start fresh with new people. I was also following a path that I had actively chosen for myself, and this gave me more self-esteem and made it easier to introduce myself. Especially moving into the city made a big difference with many shops and offices around me. Here was all these fancy-dressed people roaming there in whose company I often felt self-doubt. And now I was seeing them from my window while I was eating breakfast/dinner. In their rush to and from work they seemed to drop the mask of self-esteem and looked vulnerable instead.

2. Getting kids. This caused my brain to go "I don't care anymore what you think about me since my kid is the most important thing right now, and I'm too tired from too few hours of sleep to feel awkward anymore."

3. Age. With age most people have gone through some hardships (losing loved ones, psychological health, bad relationships/friendships, etc). With this comes a greater value on just being your true self and acting accordingly. When you can show some vulnerability, it takes some stress of others that can acknowledge to themselves their own insecurity and vulnerability. Now they know they are not alone, and that maybe there is nothing wrong with them since you too exist.

I don't know if only the gym helps, I think all kinds of diverse experiences help getting a sense of belonging among others (which is maybe different from self-esteem?)

That said, there is nothing wrong with feeling discomfort in some settings. You have your innermost values and you will not be fully compatible with everyone. Don't let others limit you or take advantage of you. Make the choice to be you and live fully on your terms.

Ultimately it's a mind game.

For the most part, we are all forgettable, and it doesn't matter what we do won't be memorable for most people.

When you think about it, you are a single person looking at out the world. You are neither a collective, or part of an explicit audience. It's your eyes, and your thoughts looking out. There may be 100 people around you, and each one of them will be having their singular experience.

A very small number of them will be having sharing their 1 person experience with your 1 person experience. But it is still them.

Look around next time you are the gym - notice how many people are actually looking around. (Of course if you are looking around quickly, you might get a few more eye contacts than you would otherwise).

Make sure you are not looking out and judging others, I know a number of people who can't even consider doing anything that might get a gaze. But they are also the first person to comment about others. It's a tiny, tiny percentage of people who do that though.

Building resilience is probably the biggest direct action you can take. Choose one thing that is just uncomfortable and do it. Do that every week. As you push your boundaries of what makes you uncomfortable, you will find that the comfort buffer that you had around you was much, much thicker than you expected.

Now there will be times you may step into something and you may actually awkward. But even then, you will learn where that boundary is, and with friends it will become a story. With strangers it will just be a easily forgotten anecdote.

Be other focused, not self focused. You have to want to interact with people. You can cultivate that (if you don't have it naturally) by working towards a real interest in other people, who they are, what they like, what they can teach you, etc. Learn to listen, to ask questions, to remember names and details. In practicing that, you may find you are no longer anxious. The real benefit, though, is that you will make friends much easier and find that you really do like people and social interactions. (P.S. this will also make you better at work and any other interactive relationship.)