Don't let your shyness tie you to the river's edge when it's perfectly safe to jump in.

As a normal run of the mill shy introvert, I hate drawing attention to myself and as you can see by the photo I was unable to avoid it after I had a suspected heart attack.

I’m fairly healthy and hadn’t seen a doctor in almost 10 years but when I had severe chest pains one morning, I knew it was time I did. However I hadn’t anticipated how quickly things would escalate and I had no control over any of it. From a simple visit to the doctor to explain what had happened to spending 4 hours in Emergency hooked up to all sorts of machines that went ping and looking like the Emperor Dalek from Dr Who, it seemed I had the full attention of the medical profession and after I made a innocuous post on Facebook, it seemed I had the full attention all my 500 FB friends as well. To quote my sister in law ‘your facebook post went into meltdown’.

Now for a shy introvert, it was hard to hide anywhere.

So I went with it.

I was showered with blood tests, X-Rays, prodding, probing and gentle interrogation and secretly I was enjoying it. I sat back and let them have their way me, I was actually enjoying the attention.

Thankfully all the tests came back negative, the X-ray revealed that I did have a perfect heart and 2 good lungs and Facebook showed that there was a lot of love and concern for me.

In any other situation I would have been embarrassed that I clogged up the medical system because there were many people worse off than me, I would have felt bad for making the nursing staff go out of their way and pulled my post off facebook because I would be scared of what people would think.

But on that morning when I had the chest pain, for the first time in my life I put fear and shyness aside and took myself seriously and the rest of the world took me seriously too.

I don’t want to be frightened of the world and hide behind the so called attributes of meek and mild.

Humility and gratitude are different things all together and they are assets to have, but to be frightened of sharing your voice with others, to be scared to stand before the world in love and share what you have, then I no longer want that fear.

Introversion is my ally as I draw my energy from quiet times, nature and inner reflection, but shyness only crushes my connection to the world and finding my place in it.

Don't let your shyness tie you to the river's edge when it's perfectly safe to jump in.