3 Confidence Lessons My Son Taught Me

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy Helping men Everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. I'm excited to be with you today, and if you're enjoying this show, then I highly recommend going to my site, that's SocialConfidenceCenter.com where you can get my ebook. If you haven't already got that, you should. It's free, and it's awesome. Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. And you can also go over to Facebook. Facebook.com Social Confidence. Is that what it is these days? I don't know. Find us on Facebook, because that's. That's the thing to do, right? Hang out on Facebook. So in this episode, I'm gonna share something that's near and dear to my heart, which is confidence, but also confidence that I've learned from my son Zaim, which is really interesting because, you know, you might not think that you would learn confidence from your son. He's three years old, but I do. I learn a ton from him and from my other son, Armand, who is a year old. And they teach me a lot about myself, about human nature, about people in a lot of fascinating ways. And I wanted to share the three of the key insights I've learned about confidence and about this work that I'm doing, that you're doing on yourself to develop yourself, become more of who you are, more bold, more powerful, more authentic, more expressive, more free. I'm always thinking about that stuff, about how I can be that way, how you can be that way, how all of us can be that way. And when I'm hanging out with my kids, I see all kinds of really interesting elements around this. So I want to share these with you. And I know that they can help you in your life, just like they've helped me. And we can all thank Zaim for this. So here we go. Here's the first one. It's okay. The first confidence lesson is it's okay. And let me share what I mean. So he's a little kid, and starting, you know, when he was two or a little older, he would want to grab things and move things around and try to pour things himself. So for pouring, like, hemp milk out of a little box, he wants to grab the hemp milk and pour it. You know, if you're grabbing a handful of raisins out of a jar, he wants to grab the handful of raisins you're scooping some protein powder. He wants to scoop the protein powder. So as we're doing this, I let him do a lot of stuff because I, you know, it's part of natural development to want to use the tools and the things that your parents use and that you see around you. So I want to encourage him to do that. And so he's doing it, and I'm kind of monitoring and helping hold the box or helping make sure that things don't just spill everywhere. And sure enough, occasionally he'll do something where he, like, pours the hemp milk all over the counter, and it, like, pours onto the ground. And I remember he did this one time, and I was trying to help him, and he messed it up. And he did this little thing where he, like, shook his hands, like, big inhale and shook his little hands back and forth like he was surprised or scared or not sure what to do. And I said, it's okay. It's okay, buddy. It's just milk. We'll just clean it up. And then we cleaned it up. And just the other morning, this is the first lesson I learned from him, is I'm doing something over by the sink, and he's at the table, and I'm not even seeing what he's doing. And the next thing I hear is, uh, oh. And then I look over, and there's just, like, he spilled some glass or something, and it was just like, liquid Coke. We give him coconut water mixed with water. So it's like coconut water water mixture all over the table, his chair, the floor. And that stuff's sticky, too, man. So I look at it. I'm like, ugh. And my reaction was like, ugh. That was what I actually said. And he looks at me and he goes, it's okay, Daddy. And in that moment, I mean, before that, I was feeling frustrated. I was feeling angry. I don't have time for this. I don't want to clean this shit up. Whatever was going through my mind, and he said that, and it, like, pierced through all of my resistance in that moment. And I paused for a second, and I was like, you're right, you're right. It's okay. It's no big deal. Let's just clean it up. And it kind of brought me back to that state of being relaxed about things, about life, about. It's not that big of a deal when something happens, it's just a little bit of thing to clean up. And that is a powerful lesson. And it was a lesson because he reminded me of it. I've done that enough with him that. That's his reaction when he spills something. It's okay. It's okay. What would your life be like if that were your reaction to mistakes, to setbacks, to failures? You forget to do something. You forget to turn something in. You forget to reply to someone.

Or.

You don't know how to do something, or maybe sometimes we make mistakes and we don't even know why it's a mistake. But, you know, you tried to get a connection with someone or have a conversation with someone or have a date, and it didn't go well. It was tense or it was awkward or they didn't like you or you didn't like them or, you know, whatever. It just didn't work out perfectly. And you're feeling upset about it, upset at yourself, oh, I messed that up. Oh, what's wrong with me? Oh, I should have. What if your default response was, it's okay, it's okay. How could you bring that more into your life? How could you make that your default response? What would it take? Could you start with something small? Like when you spill a bunch of stuff or you drop something you crack an egg and spill somewhere. Like, little things like that you hit a red light when you're trying to run through an intersection and you're late? Those little moments, could you pause and say. And actually just say that phrase, it's okay. It's okay. And what if you started to bring that more and more and more into your daily life? To where, oh, I need this thing done. It's okay. It's this soothing, calming, and, you know, a great way to think about it is I don't know what the story is with your parents, and if they were loving or picking up, patient or attentive or maybe not in some ways. And regardless, isn't that how you'd want to parent your own kid? They make a mistake, you know, an innocent mistake. You just drop something and you say, it's okay. Instead of being like, what the shit? God damn it. Like, no parent enjoys being that way. I mean, sure, it happens to the best of us, but no parent wants to be that way. And so why would we want to parent ourselves that way? Why would you want to talk to yourself that way? No one wants to hang out with that parent. No one wants to be with that person. So. But you're trapped. You're stuck with that person. It's you. So see if you can bring that more in. It's okay. Bring that into your life. We're going to take a pause right now, take a quick break, and then we're going to come back in with a second confidence lesson that I learned from my son Zaim, who's a little confidence genius trainer in the making. Are you tired of feeling stuck and helpless when it comes to meeting women? Well, I'm gonna show you one powerful technique that will make her absolutely go crazy for you. I mean, she'll become so addicted to you that she won't be able to help herself. I started using this technique and I was sleeping with over 45 women a month. Does that sound too good to be true? Well, it probably is. I'm Dr. Aziz from the center for Social Confidence, and there is so much stuff on the Internet that is frankly garbage and really doesn't teach men how to create awesome relationships from a place of knowing that they're valuable. And that's my intention for you, is to learn how to increase your self esteem, how to improve your social confidence to the point that where, sure, you can get into relationships, you can meet women, you can go on fun dates, but it's all coming from a place where you are fully confident in yourself and who you are. And you don't need to use any strange scripts or techniques or any other pickup artist stuff. So check out SocialConfidenceCenter.com to start your journey into greater social confidence all by being yourself. Welcome back. So the next lesson that I learned from Zaim was actually a really interesting one because it highlighted something that revealed something to me about myself. It increased my own sense of self awareness because I didn't even know I was doing this. But basically we were sitting around the breakfast table one morning and Zaim said, grownups don't cry. Just kind of spontaneously. We're just sitting there eating like eggs and kale. And he's like, grown ups don't cry. And my wife said, what do you mean, Zaim? And he said, grownups don't cry. Daddy doesn't cry. And I thought about that. I was like, hmm, that's probably true. He's probably rarely if ever seen me cry. And then I thought, well, you know, to him, crying might mean something different because with him, when a kid cries, it's loud, it's intense. They're sobbing or yelling or bawling. When an adult cries, typically it's like, you know, we've conditioned ourselves at least especially United States and other Western cultures, to be very restrained. You know, in some cultures, in Africa and Middle east, different places, when people grieve, they Cry and they wail and they moan and they yell and they bang on the, you know, the walls of the building. I think that's actually incredibly healthy. It's very expressive. But, you know, growing up in like a Western culture, very repressed in a lot of ways. So if, if he's seen me cry, it's been like some trickles down my, down my cheeks, like strong man cry. Just a few tears slip out. And. But even that, I was like, even that, he's probably not even seen that much. So that got me thinking. I was like, yeah, I don't really cry that much. And I'm a pretty, you know, sensitive snag. Sensitive new age guy. Right. So I. I'm definitely not super shut down nom vet or something. It's like I don't feel my feelings, but. And yet. And still the level of repression in me, the level of suppressing my tears, my emotions, especially crying. And so I thought, man, I don't want that to be true, that I don't cry. And maybe some people do. A lot of men especially are like, yeah, damn right. Damn right, men don't cry. But of course, we're not gonna probably guess from the kind of person I am. I'm not gonna tell my three year old son, like, men don't cry, boys don't cry. I don't think that that's in the top tier of parenting in my book. So I want him to be free to express himself and to have his feelings. And so I realized, man, maybe I need to start doing that too. So I thought, okay, Operation Cry More. How does that work now? I don't know about you. I don't know if you're a big crier and it just comes easily, like, here come the waterworks kind of thing, or it's. You're like a lot of men who are just really clamped down about it and you kind of want to sometimes, but you just can't. That was my experience. It wasn't like I was actively stopping myself from crying. I just didn't do it. Even if I felt really sad. And it was because I'd conditioned myself, because I did get the message. Boys don't cry directly or indirectly. From family, from kids, from. You know, I remember crying on the soccer field when I was like six or seven. And that was. I was already feeling ashamed about that at that age. I'd already learned that that was bad. So I learned how to suppress that and I started to study that. And what's really interesting is I would notice that there's these different physiological ways that we suppress tears. So when there's a wave of sadness coming, for me, I would notice like a clenching in my throat. It was like a squeezing in my throat. And that keeps emotion and energy kind of stuck. And it prevents it from fully coming up into your face. And there's also some squeezing or tension around the eyes too, I would notice. So I thought, okay, let me see if I can cry more. And I know one of the best ways for me is actually through music. So I did this little thing, a little experiment for. And I didn't know how long I was going to do it. I just did it one morning and I ended up doing maybe like six or seven days in a row because it felt so damn good. But what I did is I put on some music. And for me it's usually some sort of chanting or pretty beautiful spiritual music or maybe some like, I don't know, folky kind of indie alternative guy, singer, songwriter kind of stuff. Guy on a guitar, woman on a guitar kind of thing or some sort of chanting or something. One of those. If I slow down, I just listen and I just feel I can start to cry. And so I did that one morning and just said, let me just feel more and see if I can actually cry. And I did. And, man, it felt good. And I did it here in my office studio, which is soundproofed, you know, no one could hear it. It's in the back of. It's like near our house, but not part of the house. And I had the lights off in there and was just feeling and listening and meditating and then started crying and it felt really good. So I went and did it the next morning. I went and did it the next morning and I would just feel, like, lighter and more refreshed and more connected and more loving and more alive and more open and just more human. And now since that morning conversation, he's seen me cry several times. And that was, you know, we'd be playing music in our house or something and I would cry, right? And it would. I realized that just those number, whatever, four or five days in a row of doing it, and the intention to not hold it back has allowed more. And just the other day we watched a movie. My wife and I don't watch a whole lot of movies these days because our schedules are so, so crazy with the kids and early morning workouts and whatnot, but stayed up late to like nine o'.

Clock.

Whoa. And watched a movie called Water for Elephants, which, if you haven't seen. It's a fantastic movie. Stars Edward from. From the Twilight movies, not that I've seen those, but. And Reese Witherspoon and the guy, I don't know his name, but he's the villain in Inglourious Basterds, the Tarantino movie that like SS creepy SS agent in. In that movie. Anyway, he's the bad guy in this movie. Plays this like kind of crazed dictatorial circus owner from the 1920s or 30s or when it is. Anyway, fantastic movie. Sad in moments, beautiful and sweet in moments. And notice myself bawling during that as well and just letting it come and it feels so good. So I would encourage you as well to look at your own relationship with crying. How do you hold it back? Where do you suppress it? Is there a way that you can invite more of it? Can you learn this lesson just like I did from a little kid who has not learned yet that it's not okay that it's bad or that it's wrong? And what if that were the case for you too? What if you let yourself cry? So that'll be the second thing that I learned from Zaim and the second thing that I would encourage you to look at in your own life. And we're going to take one more break here and then we're going to get into the third lesson, which happens to be the most fun one in just a moment.

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Hey, welcome back. Okay, so the Third lesson about confidence that I learned from my son Zaim, is how to play. How to be a lot more playful in life. So adults, if we use the word play, what we mean is, I'm gonna go play a sport, play tennis, play whatever, soccer. And that's. It's like a. If you look at how what an adult is doing when they play, whether it's a video game or a sport or a chess or a board game or something, usually play is like, super focused, it's goal oriented, and oftentimes people are not even smiling when they do it. And usually not laughing either. Maybe certain kinds of play, but that's basically how we use the word. And it's very different than the way kids play. Kids, when they play, it is often undirected, uncontrolled, spontaneous, crazy, creative, ridiculous. And there's tons of laughing, tons of screaming and laughing, and just wackiness. So I learned this lesson because I realized that, I mean, I would have considered myself a playful person. I have a good sense of humor. I would make people laugh. I like to laugh. But then when I started hanging out, you know, once Zain got to the age where he actually really played, I realized, like, oh, I kind of suck at this. And I would kind of sit there like a lot of adults, like, doop der, doop der. I'm kind of. I'm a little boring. You come up with the fun stuff, kid. I'll just sit here and respond to it like a uncreative sponge. And I realized that I wanted to get better at it, so I actually wrote a book. And that's what I do, is every time I want to get better at something, I just find a book and learn from it. And it was great. I found a book called Playful Parenting. I forget the name of the author right now. See if I can find it, though, later. Playful Parenting. And it's a psychologist guy who does a ton of play therapy with kids. And it's a great book and super approachable. There was an audio version, which is always a bonus, and I decided to listen to it, and I learned a ton as well as was just encouraged a ton by him to really just get in there. And so I started doing that more and more, and I realized, like, you gotta be just kind of wacky and say stuff and be ridiculous and absurd and spontaneous. So we're sitting there and he's like, so he's at this age, he's talking about. He's obsessed with dinosaurs, because what little boy isn't? Especially T. Rexes and he understands that they're all extinct, but he also likes to pretend that they're coming into the house and attacking us. And so one time we were sitting there and he's like, they're coming in. I was like, I'm gonna put a magic spell around the house. And that was like the first time he'd heard the concept of magic spell. So I was like, yeah. He's like, what is that? And I was like, oh, we're gonna put a purple bubble around them, around the whole house. And I'm just like waving my arms and making this shit up. And the reason it's awesome is because you get this instant reinforcement if you're doing it well. This little kid is like wide eyed, like, whoa, you're blowing my mind, man. And then he wants to do all these spells and you can get really creative or, you know, he's like blocking the door and I need to get through the door. So instead of just like, zaim, young man, move away from the door, right? Or just kind of picking him up and gruffly moving him, I grab him by his ankles and start pulling him, sliding him across the kitchen and dining room floor and shuffling my feet backwards. And I say backwards. Choo choo train. And again his face lights up and he's like, whoa, this is amazing. And then he's laughing and then I'm laughing and there's this like crazy spontaneous element, expressive element to it. And I never would have accessed that part of myself if it weren't for him. And I'm learning from him and sort of modeling that you can kind of get into his world. And you know, if you have kids and you do this, you know what I'm talking about. But the reason this is a confidence lesson and not a, you know, how to play with your kids lesson is because that is exactly what we need to bring into our lives, into our contact with other humans. Because people are everyone's fucking bored and life is repetitive and monotonous and people are so damn serious. And not to say that you're gonna, you know, in a meeting or you know, before a meeting, when there's the chit chat or at a meet and greet or on a date, you're gonna like grab their arm and go, choo choo train, woo woo. Although that's a great image. But. No, but you can bring that level of spontaneity, of energy, of doing something unexpected, of making a silly voice or a strange face or physical posture, humor, or any of those things. You can still do those and in fact, people will appreciate them. You can bring that spontaneity into your conversations and the way they twist or turn or you just say something that you think of it as it comes to your mind. You can bring that energy in and people will love it and you will love it and you'll have a hell of a lot more fun, as will everyone around you. So those are the key core lessons. If you can remind yourself in a moment of challenge or setback or frustration, hey, it's okay, it's okay. And imagine like you're saying that to a two and a half year old kid who just spilled his juice. It's okay. And what if you said that to yourself? That is a discipline of self, compassion and that's one of the core foundations of confidence in all areas of life. Letting yourself, you know, grownups don't cry. Letting yourself cry, letting yourself have your feelings, even if it's a totally private space, that's fine. You don't have to be able and willing to run around crying in front of everyone. But start by yourself. I mean, if you can't do it alone, when you're alone, then there's something to work on there, something to free yourself, liberate yourself. And I think you'll be amazed at all the different ways it can impact your life in terms of bringing more energy, more freedom, more expressiveness, and of course, being more playful, more humorous, more spontaneous, letting way more of that energy out and people will love it. And that brings us to your action stuff. Time for action. Your action step for today is to pick one of these three lessons and commit to applying it in your life. This week. Just pick one. Is it the first one? It's okay. The second one about crying and letting yourself cry? Or the third one about being more playful, more silly, more foolish in a way, letting ourselves be a little foolish and not taking ourselves so damn seriously. Would it be 1, 2 or 3? You might say those are all great. I want to do all three. Well, you know, all kinds of information about habits and how we change informs us that picking one and then doing it for the week will be much more successful than picking three. Because you will forget them. They'll be too much to manage. Might be enthused for a day, but if you just pick one and integrate it slowly, you can always stack the next one the next week and the next one the week after. So pick one now, use it in your life. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter. Com.