1 Mar 2023 · 22 min
Podcast episode (March 1, 2023) in the Shrink for the Shy Guy series by Dr. Aziz presenting the second of three core confidence truths: action is required. The host argues that confidence is built through taking action (both immediate and consistent), accepting that action entails risk and unwanted outcomes, and practicing willingness to experience those outcomes to create an extraordinary life free of social anxiety.
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Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Zyz, and I am excited to be with you because today we're going to be talking about fundamental confidence truth number two. And this one. This one's. I can't say if I have a favorite, but this one's probably my favorite. And this is part of a series of three fundamental truths about confidence that will radically help you build the muscle of confidence. If you haven't listened to the first one, I recommend you check that out, because I talk about the idea of confidence as a muscle having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And I also talk about the first and fundamental truth of confidence, which is life is unstable. And that might seem like it has nothing to do with confidence, but as you listen to the episode, you'll see that it has actually everything to do with confidence because it gets down to the core of how you approach your own life. And I want to build on that today in the second confidence truth, which is. Drumroll. You ready? Action is required. Action is required. And action is risk. We're gonna get into that in today's episode. If you're not checking these out on YouTube, did you know you can? We have them not just in audio format, but also on YouTube. If you go to YouTube and type in Shrink for the shy Guy, you'll be able to see a video of me recording this episode. It's a great way to be hanging out together. And if you're benefiting from this show, you've listened to it a number of times and you really appreciate this free resource. I would request that you go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this from and give it a review, because what that will do is that will help the show reach more people. When I reach out to guests, cool guests that I want to interview, sometimes higher profile guests, and I say, hey, I Have a show that's been going for eight years. We got all these reviews on Apple podcasts. Check it out. It gives them a sense of, wow, I want to talk to this guy. Like, this show is legit. And so it really helps. It also helps new people who are considering listening to this show if they want to check it out. And it also helps Apple spread the information if it's got more listeners and more reviews. And so you're going to be benefiting someone out there, because the mission of this show is to find the person who is isolated, disconnected, thinks that there's something wrong with them, thinks they can't make the change, and to start to listen to it and say, I, oh my God, I'm not alone. And then I want to hopefully take it further with them. Maybe they come to one of my virtual events or go further and really make these changes and fundamentally approach life in a new way, which is what these truths are all about. So I would really appreciate that if you're able to put that review in when you're able to. And let's talk about the fundamental truth number two, which is action is required. Humans are always in action. Humans have to act. And you might say, well, no, wait a minute, I sat there this morning and I meditated. I didn't do anything. You weren't doing anything, huh? Sitting there is an action, right? Because you are. You must choose something. And so you're either walking around or you're making breakfast, or you're sitting there or you're reading or you're talking to somebody, or you're meditating. It's all doing something. And so you're constantly choosing what actions you're going to take. Humans are an active species. Now, that might seem, again, pretty fundamental and not necessarily directly related to confidence, but what it means is you're going to be constantly choosing among the array of options, what it is that you're going to do in this moment and throughout the course of the day. And in order to create confidence, action is required. Action is risk. And you might be asking the question, well, what actions? The actions that make you uncomfortable, the actions that are outside of your comfort zone, the actions that might feel scary. Ultimately, all of these actions are risks. And they're risks because any action is gonna produce an outcome. In fact, let me rewind here for a second. Let's link this to something really meaningful for you. You wanna create an extraordinary life, right? Perhaps so. A life of confidence, a life of freedom, a life of self expression, a life of deep connection. And if you want that life, action is required, which is fundamental confidence. Truth number two that we're talking about in this episode. Action is required. Action will produce the outcomes that are going to lead to that extraordinary life. So if you want to be able to connect with someone, you know, the action you might take is to ask someone out or ask someone to spend time with you as a friend, right? And then that action will get an outcome. And some outcomes you're going to like. The person says yes is one that we all tend to like. The person agrees with you. The person thinks you're sexy, they want to hire you, they want to buy from you, they praise you. Life goes your way. That is the outcome that we're hoping for. And all of the subsets of that, right? All the nuances of that. Then there's other outcomes that we give a big thumbs down to. We don't want those outcomes. That's when the person says no to you. That's when the person doesn't want to buy from you. That's when the person says, I don't like you. That's when the life goes the way other than what you want, life's against you at that moment, right? Or so it seems. And so when we take the actions, we get the outcomes. Some we like and some we don't like. And what I've seen across the board is when people are stuck in niceness and social anxiety, they are operating as if action is not required. They're reducing their number of outcomes and number of actions because they don't want the quote, negative outcomes. I don't want the person to reject me. So I'm not going to take the risk of asking. So I'm not going to act or I'll do other actions that are avoidant. Instead of asking the person, I will go be by myself. Instead of, you know, showing up in the meeting and sharing my perspective. I will be totally silent in the meeting or only speak when spoken to and only be only share 5% of what I really think I can contribute here, right? Because I'm scared of the outcomes that I don't want. And you can see how this way of approaching life is not going to build confidence. And at its root it is an unwillingness to risk. And actually at the root of that is an unwillingness to have certain outcomes in life. Why? Why are you unwilling to have those outcomes? I just asked this question last night, two nights ago in a Mastermind call. And one of the guys answers was totally spot on. He said, pain. I Was like, you know what? You just distilled it down to its absolute essence. Because you could say, there's a thousand ones. I don't want to get rejected. I want people to dislike me. I don't want to be judged. I don't want to have a conflict. I don't want someone to be upset. Right, right, right. At the root of all that is you just don't want pain. And the pain of the discomfort, the pain of disconnection, the pain of feeling guilty, the pain of feeling shame or unworthiness, we don't want the pain. And so we don't go for the outcome, and so we don't take the action. And so our life stays in this cryo chamber. That is social anxiety, where you're frozen, hoping that something's gonna happen, but it won't because you're not taking the actions required. And action, my friend, is required to create an extraordinary life, to create a life of freedom, to liberate yourself from social anxiety. And so we got to open up our willingness to experience all the outcomes. So I was just doing this last night or the other night on a mastermind call. There's a man who's running his own business, and he also has a main, you know, his main job and the business he's running, and he's trying to get the business off the ground so that he can quit his job and do the business full time. You know, great. The classic side hustle maneuver, which I totally support him doing. And it's going slower than he would want, and he's not having the success that he'd want so far. And so he's feeling discouraged, or sometimes his mind gets hopeless. Like, I don't think this is going to work at all. And possibly it's not going to work. But the only way to find out is to really go give it your all, right? And really go for it. And I see that's. This is something that happens to a lot of people with. With confidence. When confidence is the missing nutrient, then people will fail, but they never really totally win for it, right? Because they don't want certain outcomes. And so I was exploring with him, you know, what he needs to do more of. And basically, it's partly. It's. It's sales. Sales conversations, sales presentations. And I said, well, let's. Let's break it down here. Let's make two columns. Let's call them good and bad. When the sales presentation is going well, tell me about that. You know, it's like, well, they. They want to talk to me. They open up about their challenges, they listen to the solutions I have. They are forthcoming with their concerns or objections. We talk it through, they buy it, and it really works for them and helps solve their problems. I was like, yeah, that sounds great. Right? So we broke each of those down into its own little checkbox. You know, they listen to me, they want to hear about the product, they buy it, it works well for them. Imagine each of those things is like a little line item with a checkbox next to it. And then I said, what about if it goes not good? What are the bad outcomes? He's like, well, they don't even want to talk to me. Yeah, okay, make that a line item with a checkbox. Will they think I'm, you know, stupid or bad or they don't like me? Okay, great. That item, checkbox. They hear me out, but they don't want to buy. Okay, checkbox. They hear me out, don't want to buy, and think I'm bad for offering it. Oh, okay. Give that a checkbox. And so we came up with this list of all the good and all the bad. And I said, what if I told you that the most rapid path to success here and confidence and. And breaking through is going to be to try to check off every single box as fast as possible, not just the good column? And he's like, but I don't like those. I'm like, I know, yeah. No, no, no one likes those. But that's the ticket to entry. That is the price of the success that you want is a willingness. And I'm not saying you're going to get every bad outcome, but there's a willingness that those can occur. A number of those will occur. I don't know which ones and I don't know when. Right. With any given sales presentation, you don't know which one you're going to get. So there's a vulnerability there. And you got to be willing to say, yep, I'm going to show up today, and maybe I'm going to get a thumbs up and maybe I'm going to get a thumbs down. Maybe they're going to like me and want to talk to me. Maybe they're not going to like me and they're not going to buy from me and they're going to actively dislike me and they're going to have judgments about me too. And if you don't even do sales, they don't. This applies to everything, right? Dating. I don't want to ask someone out. I don't want to share. I don't want someone to dislike me or perceive me as something that I'm not. You know, as a creepy or weird or pushy or pathetic or. All these concerns we have when it comes to dating arena, right? It's the same thing. You have all these boxes that you want and all the boxes that you don't want. And in order to create extraordinary life, you got to be willing to experience those boxes. Because when you're willing to experience the outcomes that you don't want, you will take a lot more action a lot more quickly. And this is something I talk about in the Mastering program that I run, where we want to do two kinds of action. We want to do consistent action and immediate action. And both are important. So immediate action is. You hear something like on this podcast, and that's why we end every podcast with an action step, is to invite people to take immediate action. Because when you learn something and you take immediate action, all of a sudden now it processes very differently in your, in your mind, in your body, in your emotional system. You get stuff on a deeper level when you, when you take action. So immediate action is important. You also might be energized or inspired after listening to something, and you want to turn that into momentum with immediate action. Then, though, equally important is consistent action. And we need to. So for this guy who wants to do more sales, he needs to take consistent actions that lead to more sales presentations and do as many sales presentations as he can. He reminds me of a client who also was getting into sales. So he wanted to make some changes in his career. And he didn't want to do sales forever, like be a salesman for his whole life, but he knew that he wanted to be. He's entrepreneurial, he wanted to have his own business. And so he knew that sales is gonna be an important part of that. So he had an opportunity to get a sales position at a car dealership where you're gonna get a lot of volume of opportunity of sales, right? And so he goes to that car dealership and he's in the mastermind program at the time. He's already an action oriented kind of guy. And the mastermind was just fuel on the fire for him. It gave him the emotional resilience to handle those outcomes that he didn't want. And so we got to the car dealership and he's like, let's go. Like, I want to get out there talking to people. And they're like, well, hold on a second. Let's get you in the training and so he goes to the training and then he gets out there and starts talking to people. And within a week or two, he's like turning heads. People are like, who's this kid? He's probably about mid-20s. People are like, who is this guy? Because he was attempting to have the highest volume of conversations. I don't mean the highest volume of successful yeses and sales. I mean, he was going to have as many. So he was going to go try to interact with people as much as possible on the lot because he gets this stuff. By the way, if you're wondering who he is, it's a client of mine named Trevor and actually interviewed him for this podcast. If you go back maybe a couple months before this episode that you're listening to right now, I don't remember the name of the episode with him, but it's with Trevor is going to be in the title. So if you go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and you type in Trevor here. In fact, I'm going to do a quick search for it right now. Tell you name. By the way, if you haven't gone to shrinkforthshyguy.com, go there now. Check it out shrinkforthyguy.com it'll take you to the site. On my page, it's got all about the podcast. There's some strange thing. If you try to open up in certain browsers, it'll maybe you've seen this before where it'll say like, this page may not be secure. Are you sure you want to visit it? And you have to click yes and it says like, do you want to do it without the such and such certificate? For some people that's been happening. You just have to say yes. And the browser makes it look like you're going to some janky porn site or something, but you're not. It's legit. You'll go there and it's fine. It's just something about. I don't understand all the details of it because we're using a forwarder and from namecheap, blah, blah, blah. So in any case, just say, yes, I want to go to the site. It'll take you there 100% willing with Trevor. Wow, I forgot that was the name of the episode. But isn't that, isn't that fitting? So he's a beautiful example of this fundamental truth. And so if you'd like to learn more about this truth, that action is required and how to get yourself into a high level of action, then definitely go check out his episode after. After this one. So you want to get into action, immediate action and consistent action. And you want to do action as much as possible. And this sounds simple and yet it is the reason why I don't know what percentage I'm going to throw a high number out here. Let's just say the majority of people will not achieve what they want, will not create the results that they want. They won't have the confidence that they want. But there's a small subset of people who just willing to get into massive action. And if you're looking for the key for willingness, it's a willingness to have all the outcomes, not just the outcomes that you want. You might say, but I don't want all the outcomes. It's unacceptable to me if someone doesn't like me or someone judges me. Okay, well then the only result of that stubbornness is a life that is not what you really want. That's what's what you're going to get from that attitude is a life that's not what you. What it could be. Not fully free, not confident, not satisfied, not fully alive. Because you're basically giving a middle finger to life and saying, you don't give me that, none of that bs, only give me the good. I don't want any of the bad. Life doesn't work that way. Life doesn't care. In a previous episode, the last episode was talking about yelling at the wind to make it stop. You're insane. And that's how we're operating in life when we're saying I only want the good outcomes. Because then what you're saying is I'm not going to take very much action because you can't. It's a risk. You don't really know what the outcomes are going to be. And so the only way to try to control that risk or manage that risk emotionally is going to be to turn the action ohmmeter down to a crawl. And then the sad thing is then your life's not going to be what you want because you're not able to actually do the actions necessary to create the results that you truly want. And then all you're left with is a shitty booby prize that says, well, at least I tried. And when it didn't work so I can have some sense of like, maybe pity or poutiness or like, life doesn't give me what I want. See, maybe you're right. Maybe you're right about how life sucks for you or something. But it's like, man, these are terrible booby. Prizes, my friend. There's something so much better. And it's about getting into action. Time for action. Action, action. Which is going to be where can you get into massive action? You know, because you could look at the outcomes that you don't want and try to get more at peace with them. But the best thing to do is going to be to decide to get into massive action, then do that inner work along the way. Right. So what is something that you want to create? What are a bunch of actions? Just get kind of a little bit feverish, a little frantic here and make a list of all the actions you could take. And then when it comes to taking some of those actions, I want you to. If either you go take the. I mean ideally you just go take the action right away. Less thinking, more doing. Don't think, just go. That would be the ideal scenario. If you're stalling and hesitating and procrastinating, then maybe you stand up, shake your body out. Yes. Make a power move and then go freakin do it. That's the second best outcome. And if you're not able to do that, then okay, make a list. What are the outcomes? What's the good and bad in this scenario? What would be going, well, what are the things I don't want to experience? And then sit with that list and look at the side of stuff, you know, the bad outcomes that you don't want. And notice where you're clenched and you're tight and you're not breathing and just practice for five minutes. Softening, which is what I suggested for this client. My mastermind is like, okay, look at that bad list that you're unwilling to experience and see if you can soften and surrender to say, yeah, I don't want these outcomes to occur, but I'm willing to experience these things. Why? Because I'm committed to the other. I'm committed to the result. I'm committed to something better. I'm committed to something extraordinary, so it's worth it. And when he's connected to that, then he's unstoppable. And so are you. Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll 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.










