Customer Reviews

Talking with Confidence for the Painfully Shy: How to Overcome Nervousness, Speak-Up, and Speak Out in Any Social or Business S ituation

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I was extremely disappointed in this book. More than half of it applies to interviews and business situations, and the section on social situations is extremely short and only took about a half an hour to read. I found that the language and situations used were very unrealistic to the point of being phony. Overall I found this book to be very unhelpful and I would suggest to people looking for help on this subject matter to look elsewhere. I think the author should try updating his ideas and try to apply them to more modern situations.

I was eagerly looking forward to this book, but am very disappointed by it. I just received it today, and though admittedly I haven't had time to read it fully, I have skimmed the topics and several dozen pages, and I'm not even going to bother reading it. This book would seem to be useless to anyone but a yuppie business executive holding million-dollar meetings and having power lunches. And obtaining such a position would seem to me to require a reasonably outgoing, aggressive personality, not the painfully shy person to which this book is allegedly directed. Oh, there's also sections on how to meet with difficult clients, and how to become a master salesman. All topics of great interest to a painfully shy person (I'm being sarcastic, of course). If you want a book by this author, buy his other book, How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends. It's much better, and has lots of halfway amusing cartoons. Gabor has completely missed the mark with Talking With Confidence For the Painfully Shy. Avoid it.

The book has a few tips for what to say in various situations. Maybe they would be useful (or at least good for a laugh) for a person who doesn't have shyness problems. But the book doesn't address anything at all about overcoming the problem of shyness. Shy people experience pain and sometimes even panic in social situations. Simply telling them to "have a positive attitude" doesn't solve the problem - we need to know how!

So I'm still looking for a good book on the subject.

I agree that the situations and phrases described and prescribed in this book are tacky and unrealistic. Some of the advice would push someone further into their shyness shell because of the reactions they would get. Not recommended. So many of these self-help books are so unrealistic as applied to real life situations. Why is that?

I am a teenager and I listened to the audio tape of this book. I thought that it was helpful but confusing. If you are thinking of buying the book on audio, you may want to also buy the printed book because Don Gabor gives a lot of steps for everything he talks about, so it gets confusing sometimes. Other than that, I thought this book is helpful for everyone, not just business people, because the situations in a business meeting can be related to, for younger people, making a presentation in front of a class. Overall, this book has really helped me out to have confidence when I am speaking.

I think this book is mis-named. It should be called, "Talking with Confidence for those who are just a little bit shy." The author doesn't seem to have any idea what it is like to be "painfully shy". This book is NOT going to help someone who is truly "painfully shy". Maybe it would help someone who just has a tiny bit of social awkwardness but certainly not the "painfully shy", as it claims in the title. I was extremely dissapointed

This audiobook was definitely a waste of time to listen to. Everything is commonsense, and not inspiring at all. Personally, I like books and tapes that pump you up, but in an intelligent way. This has none of that, and the ideas contained in this tape aren't worth spending your time on (ie. everybody already knows them, and it doesn't take a person with a university degree or PHD to explain them to you).

well worth a read...helped me a lot