Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Hesitancy is forgiven early on because it reads as modesty, and there is time to grow out of it. Later the same reluctance costs something: rooms where you had knowledge and said nothing, people who needed your view and got silence instead. What was becoming at twenty is a withholding at fifty, since by then the reticence keeps something useful from other people. Shyness is real, and it stops being the whole story once you have something to offer.

Find the situation where you have most experience and least to lose. Say the thing you would normally leave for someone else to say.