This is a lengthy comment I recently posted under a youtube video (I edited it so it makes more sense to y’all). I thought you guys might wanna see it. Tbh I feel like I sound smart when I’m not meaning to but when I do want to sound smart, I just sound like a dummy. But anyways, here is a peek to my past.

A few years ago, I watched a video of Matthew and felt offended by being called boring. But a part of me decided to take the leap of faith and believe in what he's saying. Now, I am able to communicate with others more and I would dare say that I am at least slightly more outgoing than most people. That doesn't mean it was easy for me to get where I am today. It was a fucking battlefield in itself. I had to face extreme insecurities and his videos are what helped for me along with other writers/ speakers who say pretty much similar wisdom as he does.

It wasn't easy changing my mindset because I grew up in a religious judgmental household and it had made me skeptical about listening to other ideas that didn't already align with mine. So naturally, after hearing these words and shit, I turned blind eye on it. Until one day, I convinced myself to open my mind to other ideas, which now I am so grateful for doing. To put things into perspective, I was someone that never left the house, hell, in fact, I never left my room. I barely talked to my family and stayed glued to my computer screen. Making eye contact was a nerve wracking experience for me and even literally just saying a person's name I was deeply insecure about. I had little to no opinions as I was scared if someone were to have an ability to look through people's minds (I know, kinda dumb. I was 8-9 ish grade) they'd laugh at my dumb thoughts. So even inside my mind, I filtered my thoughts. I couldn't even do messaging through group chats or personal message. Whenever I try and post something in an online forum or yahoo answers, even if they were anonymous, I was extremely nervous about and I ended up overthinking about them.

I wasn't really diagnosed with social anxiety but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere close to that. And this little video helped me. Matthew Hussey's channel helped me. It helped that he was blunt about it instead of the wishy washy: oh just be yourself, take your time and everything will be alright! No, I needed someone to tell me it was time to cut the bullshit and that I can't blame my past for who I have become anymore. Because now, I have the power to change that- and I would- and I did. It all started with a single message in a group chat, expanded to personal messages, to forcing myself to maintain eye contact with people no matter if they thought I was being weird or creepy, to saying hi to acquaintances when I see them around. Just as I kept doing it and increasing the difficulty of the challenges I set for myself (I figured this is the hardest step for me to swallow at the beginning because I would have never imagined myself to be able to do more than I already did), my confidence rises a bit and it just snowballed exponentially.

Now, I'm still riding off the momentum I had created for myself with the help of this single video (or other videos and books too, or maybe it's just my personality). I understand the deeper meaning behind what he teaches and I apply it to my life.