3 Fundamental Confidence Truths #3

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 the show. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. And today you're going to be learning about the third fundamental truth, confidence. That sounds so formal, doesn't it? Anyway, in the last couple episodes, we've been covering these key principles that I've distilled down from studying confidence for many years. And this third one builds on the previous two. So the first of the three fundamental confidence truths is. Do you remember? Did you listen to that episode? If not, I'll say what it is here. But to really know what this means and why it affects your confidence and how to really use this truth to improve your confidence, you're going to want to listen to the first episode in this series, and that is life is unstable. And in there, we get into how you are relating to the inherent uncertainty of life. And the more tense you are about it, the more unwilling you are to let go, the more addicted you are to needing to certainty and predictability and control, then the more you're going to have social anxiety and other types of anxiety. So that's the first one. Life is unstable. Number two. Do you remember fundamental confidence? Number true. Number true. That number two, Truth to truth is. I'm just gonna pause for a second, see if you know what it is. Maybe you even heard it last week or something like that. What is it? All right. Action is required. Action is required. And in that episode, we talk about how action is actually a risk, too. Inherently baked into every single action are the potentials of different outcomes, some of which you like and some of which you don't like. So that episode will help you get into action, help you deal with the what ifs about what if things don't go the way that I want, and help you establish a much deeper courage to move forward and take action, as well as have a stronger baseline sense of confidence. And that brings us to today, which is our third fundamental truth about confidence. Are you ready for what it is today? It is that your stories false. Yes, you and yes, all of them. Now, we'll break that down because again, this might seem a little confusing or maybe extreme in its language, but I think if you stick with me, you'll see that it is true. And that's actually great news and actually very liberating. So what do I mean by your stories? Well, we are constantly making sense of the world around us. Verbally in our minds. We're thinking about the world, we're making conclusions about the world. Every experience you have, you have a mind interpretation of that experience, whether you're aware of it or not. You might not be consciously doing it, you might be unconsciously doing it, but you are not a video camera. You're not recording with your eyeballs about what's going on around you. And it's just going and being stored on a. Some sort of data drive on your brain. That's not how we work, right. We are meaning making machines where your brain is an interpretation mechanism. It's a. It's a filtering mechanism and interpreting, interpreting mechanism. So you're going to have all this information. Some of it's visual, but it's not just visual, right? That's why when you watch something on a screen, you can get immersed in it, but you know it's not real. And then there's sound. Sound can make it more immersive, right? You think about a movie or a movie theater where it's a big screen, big sound, and yet you still know you're sitting in a theater. You might forget that for a few minutes, but then you just reach down for your popcorn, you remember that you're, you're, oh, I'm watching all this thing, right? So we are. The more senses that are involved, the more immersed that we are. You got smell, you got touch. Like all these things come together. The temperature on your skin, all that comes together to create a sense of being immersed in whatever environment you're in. And so you're observing all this through your senses. You're getting data input through your nervous system. And though it's all being coalesced and conclusions are being drawn from it, basic conclusions that keep you alive. Like what's happening right now, Basic orientation, right? Where am I? Which way is up? What's happening? That's basic orientation. Then you know, as a human, we're complex, so we have more advanced orientation. Right. What's happening in my workplace environment, in the workplace, politics right now, how should I behave around this person? What's happening in my family, what's happening in the community that I'm in, what's happening in the broader economy. So I can understand how best to make choices for my career or my investments. Right. You're orienting yourself to so much bigger than just, you know, where you are in the woods or something like that. And all that's happening just really rapidly underneath the surface, mostly unconsciously. And we're not going to go into all that in this episode. That's probably, you know, how you orient and the heuristics you have and the conclusions you make are coming through your belief systems and your past and your frames of reference and all that. But we really want to focus on confidence and your social confidence and its converse, social anxiety in this episode. So we're going to really zoom in on that. Because you also have a set of stories and conclusions you regularly come to about you. When it comes to being around others socially, your social value, your worth, your lovability, you're concluding all these things all the time. You have some pre made conclusions. These might be called your identity, how you generally think you are. Well, I'm not a very attractive person or I'm kind of a slow learner or I'm not really capable, or I'm not capable of leadership or speaking up or whatever. You have a set of ideas about who you are and what you're capable of. Those are consistent conclusions you have about yourself, consistent stories that you have about yourself. And then there's day to day stuff that might come out of that. Like when so and so said this to me. What did they mean? They mean I'm an idiot. They think I'm a loser. They don't think I'm worth their time. They don't respect me. They're making fun of me. Right? All these day to day conclusions that we're making as well. Those, my friend, are your stories. And those are what are false. Yes, all of them. I'm gonna say. Well, hold on a second. I get it. I know I'm making up stories about life, Robin, but they're not false disease. I mean, come on. What Jim said at work was mocking. All right? He was making fun of me. And look, I am a slow learner and look, I'm not the kind of person to think speaks up. Okay, all right, all right. I'm not saying that your stories are complete disorganized hallucinations that are in no way related to anything that you've observed. Like you're just completely eyes spinning in your head. Disconnected and disoriented. I'm saying that they are sometimes blatantly false, other times inaccurate. They're never truly accurate. Your stories are never actually true. And let's break down why this is the case. Some of your stories, especially your identity stories, are old, super old. I'm not very attractive. How do you know that? Well, and then whatever follows is going to be information from the past. Well, when I was 11, I didn't get picked, you know, to be friends with the popular kids who were good looking. And then when I was 15, this happened and then, and you might not even remember all those moments, but you've made all these conclusions about yourself and they're from the past. They're outdated, they're not true. And here's the crazy thing about your stories. Even if they're not true, you can make them reoccur in your life. You can make them real in your life. And there's a difference between truth and reality. I know this sounds like we're going deep into some sort of psych, like you just ate a fistful of mushrooms or something, but stick with me. So what you make real. I went into the room and everyone there didn't want to talk to me. You might say, no, Aziz, that wasn't a false story. That was a real experience. If you'd been there, you would have seen it too. I generally don't challenge clients on that. I'm like, maybe, I don't know. It's true. I wasn't in the room. I do know that people have a confirmation bias. So if they think no one wants to talk to them, they're going to have that experience and they're going to read into that experience and they're going to take neutral information and they're going to conclude that the person doesn't like them. There's just, there's. That's observed in my own experience. It's observed with clients. And there's actually research about this that when people are in a social anxiety state, they tend to observe more neutral responses as negative. So I know that that's happening, but the person's attached to their story, so I'm not going to fight them on it. But I'll say, okay, let's say there's a degree to which you may be seeking that and finding it, but let's just say that's also happening that someone, you know, you walk into the room and everyone there was harsh with you or rejecting with you or didn't like you. You having the story. I'M not worth talking to and people don't like me. When you believe that story, you end up creating that reality for yourself again and again and again. You might have heard this as what's called a self fulfilling prophecy. There's also something called the confirmation bias, where you're expecting it and so you look for it and you find it. You also might, and this is the craziest part, if you're ready for this one, you might actually subconsciously bring about those negative responses from others because it confirms your story and allows you to be right and have a sense of certainty in life. Which brings us back to the first of these three fundamental truths, which is you are hungering a sense of stability and you're unwilling to let life be unstable. And so if I need life to be stable, you know what? I'm going to make my predictions about how reality is going to go stable and I'm going to prove that they're right so that I can feel more secure. So I walk into the room and everyone doesn't like me. It feels horrible for my sense of connection and self esteem, but at least I feel a baseline sense of safety in this crazy, unpredictable world. And that's social anxiety operating as an armor, as a fundamental defense from life, from a life of true connection and deeper, undefended experiences of love and meaning. So you walk into that room, you have the story. People aren't going to like me, and you're going to see it when it's not there. No one came over and talked to me. I knew I'm unlikable. No one came over and talked to anybody else. Or maybe that happened to one or two people and then eight or nine other people walked in the room and no one came over and talked to them and they had to go make it happen for themselves. But you wouldn't see that data. I'm not saying you see it and ignore it. You, you literally do not see it. It's a scotoma. It's a blind spot. Your mind deletes that information and so it doesn't exist. And so it confirms its story. A story that is distorted, a conclusion that is false. Another way to say your stories are false is the conclusions that you jump to are false. Maybe the data that you're observing, elements of that are agreeably true, walked into the room and no one came over and greeted me. Maybe that's true. Maybe that did actually happen. Therefore, what does that mean? Nobody likes me and no one wants to be my friend here. Okay, so that's where you see that you've gotten off the rails because someone else could walk in the room. No one talks to them and they say, okay. And then they walk over to a group of people and say, hey guys, how are you doing? Right? And you jump right in. And I was going to go on more of what you might say, but I'll hold back. If you want to learn a lot more about how to jump into groups and conversation Mastery, there's two ways to go deeper in that. One is to check out my program, Confidence University. There is a whole course called Social Mastery which teaches you about all this stuff. And then if you want to take things even further, we're going to have a virtual event in later in the year in 2023 called supremely confident Conversation Master, where you learn all those skills, real time, live a group, and it's powerful and love to see you there. So I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. But you could walk into the room, have no one say hi to you, and then use different strategies or tools and interact with people and have a whole new experience. In fact, that's a big part of what I'm teaching in the social mastery stuff. The course on Confidence University and the virtual event is about the mindset and the self esteem and the perceptions of who you are and how worthy you are to talk to. Because this is the biggest obstacle is the story, I'm not worth talking to. And look, people I work with have never consciously verbally said that to themselves. I'm not worth talking to. But as soon as I verbalize it, does this feel like this is true for you? Their eyes go wide and they say, yeah, right. I'm putting words to something they've been unconsciously concluding for their entire lives and that conclusion is what's false. And even conclusions about yourself that are positive. Right. I'm good looking. I'm, I'm. Everyone wants to be my friend. I'm capable and intelligent. You know, even those conclusions are false. I don't want to burst your bubble. And I know I'm not saying that you're, you're not intelligent or whatever. What I'm saying is that those conclusions are inherently incomplete versions of reality. They're simplifications. You cannot be distilled down into one I am. Or even a collection of a thousand IMs. Yes, those might point towards patterns of yours. I am generous, I am bold. Sure, maybe you do behave in ways that are generous or ways that are bold. Not all the time. And what I find Is when people are trying to build their self esteem, they say, okay, I'm telling myself I'm a loser and I'm no good. I'm going to tell myself the opposite. I'm going to get in the mirror, I'm going to look in the mirror, I'm going to say I'm beautiful, I'm attractive, I'm intelligent, I'm great, everybody likes me. And that can be a useful technique if you realize that those statements are also not totally true. I think the most useful thing that might come out of those is you realize that all the stuff you're telling yourself is not accurate and not true. And it's just perspectives. And so a question I like to ask clients to get out of this loop of like, I don't like myself, okay? I gotta make sure I like, I gotta tell myself great things, okay? I don't really believe those great things and say, okay, okay. If you knew, forget about what you believed. If you just knew that you were worth talking to. That's not even a question. That's like saying, do you know your name is? You know my name is Aziz, right? Do you know if your name is Aziz today? Right. Just imagine if someone asked you that. Let's say your name is whatever your name is and someone said, is your name still the same today? You'd kind of look at them with a confused expression like, is this, Is there a camera on me right now? What are you talking about? It's a weird question. It's the same thing like if you just knew that you were worth talking to, what would you go do? How would you go approach those people? And what I'm trying to do with clients is I'm trying to get them into the state of high confidence and high self esteem. And a high self esteem state is not when someone's walking around saying, I love myself, I'm so great, I'm so awesome. I love you, Aziz, you're so great. No, no, that's. Someone with low self esteem is trying to pump up their self esteem. A high self esteem state is devoid of that focus on the self. It's just not there. It's like, what do I want to go do? Right now you're just into whatever you're doing, right? You get into high self esteem states all the time. Even if you don't know, when you get absorbed in something, you're working on a project, you're creating something. I just watched this little YouTube video of this kid, I think he was in Korea or something, who carved it was Wolverine versus the Hulk, like, these two comic book characters fighting. And he carved it out of a block of wood. And they have this time lapse video. It's about 10 minutes of him starting with literally a big chunk of wood and carving it into where it's this 3D sculpture of these two comic book characters fighting, like, with complete detail, and their muscles and their outfits and their facial expressions. And I was watching this thing, and I was just. My jaw was dropped open, like, what the. How is this even happening? How do you even know? Because I have studied. I can draw a little bit. I'm not great at drawing, but I. You know, I studied it for a little while when I was in college and practiced a lot. And I got. Okay, I get drawing. I get drawing with a pencil and shading and some comic book art that I got into. But 3D sculpting is like, a whole nother level of study. It's fascinating. They know what chunks to take out. It's amazing. Anyway, when that kid's working on his Wolverine versus the Hulk, I doubt he's saying to himself, I'm the best at this. I'm so awesome. And he's probably not saying, I'm a terrible loser. I'm gonna fail. If he's just in it, he's just in it. He's just doing it. He's carving. He's focused. He's in the flow. And that's what it's like when you're in conversations. That's what it's like when you're living outside of these stories, these conclusions about yourself. And so the most liberating thing that we can do by knowing these stories are false is just to not give them so much attention. If I didn't have this story right now, what would I go do? In fact, I mean, what we're talking about right here is action. So let's officially turn this into your action step. Time for action. Action. Action. So your action step for today's episode is going to be to ask yourself that question. If I didn't have this story, whatever negative story you got, I'm not. People don't want to talk to me. I'm not worth dating. I can't succeed. I'm not a leader. I'm going to fail at this. If I didn't have that story, how would I feel? What would I go do? And how would I go do it? And then you practice, Then you operate. And at first you might say, but it does feel like it's still there. That's okay. You just keep asking yourself the question, what would happen if I didn't tell myself that I was unworthy here? Well, you just might go talk to that person. You just might go share. You might speak up. And this isn't a question you ask yourself just once. I'd say ask yourself this question many times a day. So maybe you walk into the work meeting and you're feeling nervous and you see, okay, what story am I telling myself? Which is another great question to ask yourself, by the way. What story am I telling myself right now? What am I telling myself to make this situation scary or threatening? If you're anxious in that situation, then you're telling yourself, you're concluding the meaning you're giving that situation is that it's threatening in some way. So, so what's threatening right now? What am I scared of? Well, the boss might dislike what I'm gonna say and then everyone's gonna judge me and then maybe they're gonna think I'm stupid. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm an imposter, okay? If I didn't have that story that others think I'm an imposter or that maybe I am an imposter, that's the story underneath, right? Does others think it. Cause I am. I don't deserve to be here, okay? If I didn't have that story that I didn't, I don't deserve to be here, that just didn't even exist, what would I do? I'd speak up, I'd share, I just say my opinions. Okay, go do that. And you might have to remind yourself of that several times during the meeting. And you may need to keep building up your practice your social fitness muscles to be able to execute on this. But that's what this whole show is dedicated for. That's what Confidence University is about. That's what my virtual events are about. That's what my mastermind is about. So if you are hearing this episode and you're like, this sounds great, but I can't put this into action. You might need some more support and I invite you. There's so many ways to do that. So you can check out my website, drzeze.com,-r-a z I z.com Most people that join my Mastermind program have been listening to my podcast for a long time or come to one of my virtual events. I mean, we're talking a year or more and then they're like, alright, alright, I trust this dude. Let me go check out what else he's got. And so if you want to go further, you'd be in good company. There's a lot of amazing people that we're coming together and we're making these shifts fast. So remember, if you did not have that story, what would you go do? How would you go do it, and who would you be? Alright, thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. 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 it.