How To Overcome Being Shy and In Love

I'm a shy person, and I always have been. I'm not nearly as bad as I use to be, but I still have difficulties whenever I'm around new people or women I have affection for. It brings along many difficulties, but I am learning to deal with them as they come.
During my high school days, I never had the courage to stand up for myself and tell the person I loved how much I wanted to be with them. This, of course, led to many heartbreaks and failures.
Being shy is not something which should be taken lightly and is something which needed to be changed. However, there wasn't anything I could do overnight to make myself not shy any longer.