Where do you look ...

I do have to say that's part of it. It gradually started when I was cycling often on my days off. I noticed other cyclists would usually nod or wave when they saw me. I felt a sense of community when they did that. Then I started doing it in return.

After signing up for Happify.com I started doing some of the activities they suggested and smiling at a stranger was one, that also helped push me into making it a habit. My work also helped some, although it doesn't require me to look people in the eye.

I also feel it helps me to feel like I can trust others more when I do it.

Typically I look pretty much at the person in front of me and smile. Could do worse than smile at someone as they pass. Although depending on where I'm at I could be looking at something like a storefront or whatnot.

Do you describe yourselves as shy when you tell me that you look at people and make eye contact with strangers? Or you do so because you aren't shy, or not any more?

I have this problem equally valid in public transportation, where I don't have many options where to look except at people faces. That is why I either sit at the window to look outside, which is also a problem at night because the window reflects people, or hold a book and read in transportation, or at least that what I used to do. Now I've stopped reading because I want to look at people and feel normal. I am tired of me look like a soldier in from of his commander. It gives the impression to others that I don't want to talk and mingle, which has brought me to where I am now.

Public transportation was always a hard one for me as well when looking people in the face, I was also a reader. I would find a seat in the back next to a window, slouch as far down in the seat as possible with my knees on the seat in front of me and hope no one noticed me.

I got past that, as well as a phobia of escalators when I traveled to other places. The escalator phobia broke when I was in Prague. There is a very steep one there that when people are on it it looks as though they are leaning backwards. However there was no way around it and I had to do it to get where I was going.

Same with looking at people. While in NY you can't avoid people talking to you. Even though I ignored it many times, my first instinct was to look them in the face as they did so. New yorkers really are not as angry and unfriendly as their reputation would make one think.

In nutshell, exposure was the main thing that caused me to start feeling more comfortable with looking others in the eye.

I am a shy person, very shy in fact and a private person. I've always been shy. It takes me a long time to warm up to people and really talk to them and expose myself in any way by trusting them because I have trusted the wrong people. When I look at someone and smile I'm doing it in spite of my shyness.

By doing it I'm acknowledging myself by acknowledging them. I could also say that I'm acknowledging myself in them. We all forget we're all connected, in one way or another. My favorite director Krzysztof Kieślowski, made a point of making this an under lying theme in all of his movies.