Quote:
Originally Posted by ribbons
Thanks, Erica. I hadn't expected me to participate in the Music Banter Voice Exchange, either! But thanks for your kind feedback on the "results". I've been told I have sort of a halting enunciation at times. It's due to a shyness about speaking, shyness in general. I remember reading a book about shyness years ago; it stated that shyness is actually a byproduct of thinking you're more "important" than you are -- feeling that all eyes (or in this case ears) are on you, when they're actually not. I think that's true. I remember that book also listing the most shy/least shy groups by ethnicity: most shy was Japanese and least shy was Chinese. |
I'm glad you surprised yourself.
I didn't hear any halting in your enunciation, but of course I was expecting spaces between your words.
That's interesting that the least shy were found to be Chinese people and the most shy were the Japanese. I am reminded of that Japanese saying, "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down," to encourage people to fit into society and not draw attention to themselves. I would have expected the Chinese culture also to suppress individuality such that people fear being the center of attention and become shy when they think the are.
I've concluded almost the same thing about shyness as that book's author: shyness involves an exaggerated sense of others' attention being focused strongly on you, scrutinizing you. Yet I'd add (the obvious) that shyness results from concern about them thinking
badly of you. In reality, I think most people are focused on how *they* themselves appear, and so they don't really care much when you make a mistake. Also, so what if they have critical thoughts? That's their issue.
I suppose some lucky people out there have the opposite of shyness and think others are focusing attention on them and having wonderful thoughts about them. (In your case, this would be true!
)