How I Transformed from a Shy Little Kid into a Social Man

I'm a type of person who always thinks about what other people think about me. This is a quality a lot of people carry. This quality usually makes people polite and considerate towards others. However, it also restricts people in ways you might not even think about.

I'm a diver (olympic diving, not scuba diving) in college right now, but when I was around 11 to 12 years old, I was selected to go to a meet abroad with the Finnish national team for the first time (as Finland is my home country). During my time away, I competed and spent time with the team. I noticed other athletes on my team were making friends with people from other countries and it looked like a fun time. However I was too scared to go talk to any foreign people because I was afraid of doing mistakes with my English. I thought that if I did a mistake, others would think that I'm stupid or uneducated or something along those lines.
Hence I got back home and my dad asked me, "How would you rate the trip from 1-10?"
I answered, "Maybe a 7."
"But you did so well in your competition, why are you missing 3 points?", my dad continued.
I explained how I didn't gain as many friends as I saw other people gain, so I didn't have as good of a time as I saw some other people have.

My dad is a pretty smart guy so a couple months later when I was leaving for my next competition abroad he said, "I'll give you 1€ for every new foreign person you talk to during your trip, however you have to give me their names when you come back."
As a little boy always eager to get some pocket money I thought this was a damn great deal! I think I went to Germany that time and when I saw my first foreign competitors, I thought it was my time to start socializing. I hesitated at first, but then I thought about how I really wanted to buy some candy bars when I come back home, so I better earn a couple bucks.

I went on to introducing myself to these people and a bunch more during my days there. The more new people I met, the more I started realizing how everyone did mistakes in their English. And when someone did a mistake, I didn't think any less of them, so why would anyone think less of me if I did a mistake? I began to realize how irrelevant my fear was.

Not to make everything seem so sugarcoated, there were also people that were rude when I tried to go introduce myself to them. However, this population was very small. I came into a conclusion that even though a couple people might've thought that I was weird or something, it doesn't matter at all when in return I gained valuable friendships from most people.

In conclusion, with a one-time deal of 1€ per person met during my trip, my dad bought me the skill to be social and deleted a big part of my fears on people's thoughts of me. My experience was with a fear concerning a language barrier, but I gained confidence in all kinds of human encounters where I fear how the other person perceives me. I've been able to achieve great things in life due to the fact that I'm able to overcome my initial fears of facing new people.

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