On Shyness and Meeting People

I used to be very shy. I took me a long time to say hello to anyone if I was not introduced. When I was introduced, I then didn't say much.
I was that child that hid behind her mothers legs. As I got older, I suppose my shyness became somewhat tamed. I remained though, lurking, and I admired people that made it all look so easy.

On the eve of beginning at film school when I finished high school and turned 18, I cried rivers in fear of having to meet people and make new friends. But, as it came to pass, through film school, I met someone that changed my life for ever, particularly in my approach to meeting people.

We are still friends to this day. Through our growing bond, I learned to adapt some of her qualities when it came to interaction with new people. If I could distill it to a brisk sentence of set of rules for all shy people to apply, I suppose it would be something like this:
1) Treat everyone the same
2) Pretend like you have known them your entire life

If you suspend all thought for just a moment, and see a human for what it is, just another person, before you judge what or who they might be, it is easy to say 'hello' to them.

Humans have such amazing abilities to create walls, which we interpret and respond to. What I am referring to are the semiotic codes that we read from people and make judgments from. Clothing, vernacular, accessories, body language, tone, facial expression and so forth all mediate our experience of people. Through interpreting these codes, we then also place our own experiences and interpretations of what that person will  be like from the messages they are sending.

If for a moment we can be acutely conscious of these restrictions, we can then suspend them, and just see a person as a human. This distinction makes the initial ice-breaking moment much more easy to initiate.

I'm still not a specialist at meeting people. I still get scared, stay quiet and hid, but sometimes, I can transcend that, and it's all a character building experience.