So I mentioned a few weeks back that I got a job and that this job requires me to get out of my comfort zone. To go into a bit more detail, it's specifically a street canvassing job. It basically forces me to stand on the busy downtown streets of Chicago, stop people, pitch to them, and convince them to sign up to sponsor a child on the spot. Our canvassers are a little different from most others (e.g. Greenpeace, HRC, etc) in that we tend to be more outrageous and we basically get people to stop by saying crazy shit to them. (e.g. Whenever I see Asians, I say, "I'm Asian, you're Asian, let's be friends!" And there's one guy who pretends to fall in front of people and when they help him up, he says, "By the way, have you heard of our charity?" city people lmao)
So I was talking to an incredibly friendly German tourist earlier today who really took an interest in what we were doing and he asked:
Him: Is this job hard?
Me: How difficult it is depends on what type of person you are. You have to be okay with most people ignoring you and the occasional rude response.
Him: Yeah, you would have to be a "people" person.
Me: It's not even that, really. I don't think of myself as a "people" person at all.
Him: Well, you certainly seem like one right now!
And I told him that the most important thing is just to tell yourself that you can do it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would probably rate myself as a 7 in terms of shyness. Even now, this job is not really "changing me" in that regard. Outside of work, I'm pretty much as quiet as ever. But that doesn't limit me nor anyone else from performing extroversion when it's required of them. To be honest, I think shy people often tell themselves that they cannot do things that they actually can do. And part of the reason I took this job was in order to prove that shy, introverted people can do a job that requires a lot of social interaction just as well as more extroverted people. The most important thing is just to believe in yourself!
