A LIFE coach from Ashburton has just published her first self-help book about how to get on in life as a shy person.

‘Building Confidence’ provides easy-to-follow guidance and action steps to help people understand and overcome their lack of self-belief.

The author Sue Reid, 63, knows her subject inside out.

For years, she suffered from low self-esteem that saw her missing opportunities to progress in both her professional and personal life.

After beginning a career in banking, her lack of confidence meant she just did what she needed to do to pick up her salary each month.

 ‘I didn’t believe I had the ability to get anywhere,’ she says. ‘For instance, when I started out, I was told there was no point taking any exams to further my career because I was a woman.

‘Instead of objecting to this overt sexism and setting out to prove everyone wrong, I just accepted it.’

Then, in her late 30s, Sue bought a book that changed everything. It was called ‘The Monk who Sold his Ferrari’ by Robin Sharma, and reading it set Sue off on a journey to transform her life.

She took courses and read more self-help and psychology books.

By the time she retired from her financial career, the steps she’d taken to build her confidence were already achieving amazing results.

 ‘I was in the top 10 out of 500 financial advisors working for Nationwide’ she said.

After leaving that job, rather than putting her feet up, the grandmother of two, who lives with her husband, Bob, decided to dedicate her time to helping others. She took a course in NLP and meditation and trained as a life coach, qualifying in March this year.

Her book, which took her around a year to write, was self-published with the help of an independent publishing company in London.

She plans to accompany it with a podcast, also called Building Confidence, which will be available to listen to from October.

‘The book and podcast aren’t about how to stop being shy’ Sue said.

‘I still have moments when I worry about things, but now I have techniques in place to calm myself down and understand where these emotions are coming from.

‘Before I put these into practice, I used to shy away from people. Now I love meeting new people, talking to them and understanding what makes them tick.’

Building Confidence: How to Thrive as a Shy Person is published by Wrate’s Publishing and is available from Amazon as an eBook and paperback.