3 Keys To Confidence In Dating & Relationships

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. Today is all about love and relationships and in fact it's gonna be the three keys to confidence in this area of your life. So if you don't feel confident in your love life, definitely listen to this episode and we can feel insecure or unsure of ourselves or doubting or anxious about this area of our lives for many different reasons. And we're going to dive into the three most powerful things that you can do starting right now to have a lot more confidence in this area. Whether you're single and you want to meet someone or maybe you're already in a relationship or already dating and but you don't feel as confident as you want to, or maybe you're feeling discouraged or down, or maybe this isn't the right person for me. Maybe I'll never find the right one. And any sort of doubt or insecurity there, all of that we're going to clean up and help you get a lot more confidence in yourself in this area of dating and relationships. We're doing a little series around this this month because it just started yesterday. Actually, the early bird tickets for my upcoming live event in October of this year, October 20th through 22nd, it's called Unlimited dating and relationship confidence is going to be happening October 20th through 22nd in Portland, Oregon. And the early bird tickets just went on sale yesterday. So you're definitely want to check that out. If you've been considering about coming to a live event, now is the time. Because you know, pretty much any area of life doesn't get better unless we really address it and face it. But especially our love lives, like we just kind of wish and hope that it will get better, but it doesn't. And we might just say, well, I just gotta find someone else or find the right person. And you know, partner selection and compatibility is important. It's huge. And if we have patterns of insecurity and fear and self doubt and anxiety that hold us back, we're gonna bring them. And so you meet the next person. We're gonna do the same things as we did with the person before. Whether it's pleasing them too much, not saying no, or maybe just not even starting the relationship because you're too scared to go talk to them. In any case, I highly recommend investing in the time to get out here. I know you gotta fly out Here, if you're not local, you gotta invest in the ticket. Although they're half off during the early bird, so that's pretty sweet. You know, I know it's a commitment. And when we're committed to something and we're willing to do what it takes, we transform quickly. So you can go to 30daystodatingmastery.com event to get your early bird tickets. That's 3zero days to datingmastery.com event to get YOUR ticket. You can also go to socialconfidencecenter.com which is my website, socialconfidencecenter.com and there's an events tab on that page at the top there. So just click on events. You'll see that event. Click on it and you can get access to the early bird. And I'm not sure the exact room size on this one. The last one sold out, though. The room was totally full and we probably had about, I think it was like 38. 38 or 40 participants at the last one, something like that. So we'll see what this one is, but something similar. So if you're on the fence and considering it, now's the time to do it because you get the, you know, you'll be sure you get a spot and you'll also get the ticket for half off for the early bird special. So let's talk about you and how to have confidence in love and relationships. Here's the first one. First key tip, having a compelling future vision. This one is so important because most people unfortunately have some idea. I know I had this for many years, an idea in the back of our heads which goes something like this. Relationships are not going to go well eventually for some reason. Check with yourself right now. See if you feel that somewhere. Just a sense of that. So either maybe they see what your story is. Here are some of the common ones. See if it resonates with you. One is maybe they start great and everyone's all in love. But then you fall out of love and then you fight a lot and then you break up. Or there's this belief that it's like, yeah, well, you can't, you know, even if you fall in love and it's amazing and you don't break up, you just kind of sort of meh after a while and then you're like roommates or friends. It's nice, but it's not hot. There's no passion. It's just kind of like meh. So that's another common story. Or, you know, worse. You're kind of distant. And you kind of just lead your own lives and you do your thing and they do their thing, and you kind of don't like to see each other that much and sort of complain about each other to your friends. Ugh. The old ball and chain wants me to do this. Maybe that's what your vision is somewhere in the unconscious part of your mind. Or this is almost getting into the second key for confidence. But I'll see if I can explain it without sharing what the second key is. Or perhaps for some reason, you don't think you can have what you want in relationships. Maybe you think it's possible for other people to have a lasting, fulfilling relationship, but not you. And so in your mind, you're going to end up settling. You kind of have it already written on the wall, like, yeah, I'm gonna settle. They're not gonna be great, but that's what I can get. And, you know, probably won't be that fulfilling, but, yeah, you know, better than nobody. Are any of these ringing any bells for you? Cause all of them are shit. They're trash. We gotta throw them out. It's garbage, isn't it? This is, like, depressing. It's limiting, and it is not true. We need to find. You need to create a compelling future vision for your relationship. What you really, really want, what you're excited about. Forget for a minute about what's possible, what would juice you, what would excite you, what would compel you to move forward, to put yourself out there, to take risks, to open up your heart, to do what it takes to create a relationship. Because the truth is, it is scary to put yourself out there. Maybe that first moment of walking over to someone you don't know and starting a conversation, they could reject you. Maybe you think that's terrifying. But guess what's even scarier? After you've gone on that second date or your third date or whatever, just being 100% you, being yourself. And then let's say you start to fall in love with them. Let's say you really, really, really like them. And then all of a sudden, one day, you're at home by yourself and you're like, holy shit, I love them.

Oh, my God.

It's too soon to say that. I can't say that. That's crazy. That's bad. I better keep that to myself. But you know it, right? You know what I'm talking about. There's like this excitement, this joy, this energy. You just. Did they text me back? Did they text me back? You're Kind of freaking out and checking your phone 85 times a day. But you don't show them that, of course, because that makes you look insane. So keep it together, keep it cool. But inside you're wondering, you're excited. It's all this energy. Guess what? Then it gets even scarier because now you got something on the line, you got some skin in the game. And you know, if they all of a sudden, after the fourth or fifth date, are like, just not, you know, I just don't feel that way about you, or it's okay, but I'm not that into you, you know that it's gonna fucking hurt. And same. If you go even deeper and you both fall in love, there's a part of you that's like, really excited about it. Another part of you is like, oh, my gosh, I can get hurt so bad. Especially if you have past experiences getting hurt, getting, you know, having someone end a relationship with you or worse, cheat on you. So that's why we need to create a compelling future vision that's going to help us get through all this scary stuff. Because, yes, it's scary, but, man, it's worth it. And life can be magnified a thousand fold by having an incredible relationship. In fact, let me show that to you. When something amazing happens in your life, you know, something in your career, you have a breakthrough, you have an awesome experience, or maybe you just go do something really fun and you what's one of the first things you want to do? You got the news like you got the promotion or you got the job. What's one of the first things you want to do? That's right, you want to pick up the phone and tell someone. You want to text. Some people, it's relationship, it magnifies the experience and it grows it in your life. So there's great value, there's great meaning, there's great fulfillment in it. But we need to have a compelling future vision of what it is. So let me ask you this. What would you ultimately want if you could have any kind of relationship that you wanted and forget about if it's possible or if you deserve it or any of that bs, Say, what would be amazing to experience? Think about that for a minute. You know, for me, it was, I want to be with someone who is. Who, like, not only meets me, but exceeds me. Because, you know, obviously I like to think a lot of stuff and read ideas and share. And I remember I would date women and some of them just, like, couldn't talk about me with psychology or Any of the stuff I was learning at all. And that wasn't a very good fit long term. But some women could kind of, you know, oh, yeah, that's an interesting idea. Thanks for sharing it. And they could kind of follow. But I wanted someone who could like, hear what I was saying and be like, oh, yeah, that reminds me of this other idea. Or, oh, I read this in the books. I wanted someone who was, like, really smart and had to be a lifelong learner. I wanted her to be in, just absolutely beautiful to me, gorgeous on the inside and on the outside. I want her to have the body type that I like, the appearance that I liked, someone that I was really physically turned on by. I also wanted her to be very, like, loving, nurturing and sweet. Because I remember I dated a few women who were, you know, physically, externally beautiful, but man, they were kind of cold and mean and critical. I was like, bleh, I don't want that. So I got a clear vision of really who I wanted in a lot of ways. And then. And then it was like, well, I want a relationship where we're excited to be with each other, where we just cannot get enough conversation in. There's not enough time in the day to keep talking with each other because we just want to share and listen and be with each other. And I love the way that this person sees the world so that I keep wanting to hear about what they do and what they've experienced and how they see things. And then I want there to be passion where I feel sexually aroused and turned on and excited and to be with that person, to make love with her, to spend time with her, to touch her and be touched. I want all of that, and I don't want it to go away. I don't want it to end. Now, for me, when I was creating this vision, and maybe you're creating a similar vision for yourself as you're listening to this. When I was creating it, it was all sounding well and good until I got to that last part. And then I started to feel, I don't know, a mixture of, like, scared and kind of discouraged. Because in my mind it was like, yeah, you can have all that in the beginning, but then, hey, man, then reality sets in. You know, if you're with someone for a long time, you just lose interest in them sexually. It's just how it is. Yeah, people just kind of fall out of love. And I remember I had that even when I met Candace, who's now my wife, who will be teaching some at the event with Me and the dating and relationship event because she got tons of great insight around this from her. She's decades of personal growth experience and she led her own workshops for many years. She's an amazing woman. So you get a chance to meet her at the live event. If you take advantage of the early bird. Go ahead and do that now. Nudge, nudge. Anyway, so I remember we had a conversation pretty early on because we started dating and I was like, head over. I fell in love with her even before we started dating. I remember having my first extended conversation. I knew her for a couple of months, but I didn't actually have a one on one conversation with her. We had one shorter one, about a 30 minute, 20 minutes, and it was nice. And then we had this car ride back from somewhere. It was a big group of people and I was next to her and we talked like two hours went by like that. And I remember I came home, I was living with a couple roommates at the time, and one of the women I lived with was there in the kitchen. I came home, she's like, oh, how was your trip? I was like, it was awesome. I'm in love. And she knew my relationship woes and struggles at that time. And she was like, yay. And I said, but she's married. And then she's like, ugh. And so that's a whole nother story. Probably have to come to the event to hear that one. But in any case, I knew I was in love with her, but we didn't actually start dating until about six months after that because things had to transition in her life for her to become available. Anyway, she did become available, and we started dating. And I remember pretty early on, maybe even a month into things, I was like, this is great and I'm scared. And we talked about it. I was like, what are you scared of? Basically that love is gonna end. It fades. That's just how it works. That's how I've seen in so many different relationships. And she had a great alternative perspective. She's like, you know, Aziz, in my experience and what I've seen, I think love deepens. And I think that you can be endlessly fascinated with another person. And she said a lot of other really good stuff, and it stuck. And I said, wow, maybe that's possible. And you know what? It is. Has been. We've been together for seven years now. Six or seven years. I don't know, long time. And I also found models of relationships. I looked to other people and found at least two other couples that I could learn from. I could be like, wow, what do they got? Because they seem to experience that love, passion. They were connected. They had great communication. And you know, what I found was a pattern in those couples was that both people were into learning and growth and personal development. So interesting. Something to see there. Anyway, so what's your compelling future vision? That's a super important key to have confidence in love and relationships, to see what you really want and get excited about it. We're going to take a quick break right now. When we come back, we're going to talk about the remaining two keys for confidence in love and relationships. Stay tuned.

Have you been considering reaching out to Dr. Aziz about private one on one coaching? Listen to what one recent client had to say about his experience of coaching. Before I met Dr. Aziz, I thought there was something wrong with me. I was constantly comparing myself to people who were more confident or successful than I was. I had done that for so long, I didn't even know I could change it. Dr. Aziz helped me see, and very quickly, I might add, that I choose my own value. So many things in my life started changing Then. I looked people in the eye. I smiled at women as they walked past me. And at work, I started talking with people in a completely casual way. Those gains themselves are worth more than anything to me. But to put the icing on the cake, just two weeks ago I was offered a promotion at work. This was directly related to my newfound confidence and leadership. Thank you, Dr. Aziz. Go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com coaching to find out more about how confidence coaching can accelerate your progress and help you transform your life.

Hey, welcome back. So the second key, and this one is extremely important and often overlooked, is core self worth, also known as self love. Now, that might sound kind of vague or kind of, I don't know, cliched or something, but man, here's the thing. If you, the amount of love that you let in that you can experience from others, from a romantic partner is not controlled by how much they're giving you. It's controlled by how much you let in. So someone could be like, ah, gushing love. I love you. You're so handsome. You're so beautiful. I love you. And you can feel nothing inside because you're closing it down. You're blocking it off. Or you can be totally open and receive it and feel warm in your heart and be like, thank you. Wow, awesome. Thank you so much. And receive the gift of love. And what controls that is your own level of love, your level of worthiness around love, your deservingness of love and how much you love yourself. Because if you perceive yourself as unlovable for a variety of reasons, then you're not going to let it in. And we need to heal this wound. In fact, that's really when I do extended work with people in the Mastermind program and other stuff. I mean, that's a huge chunk of what we're doing for like a year is healing up all this stuff that tells us that we're not worthy because there's a million one reasons why we think we're not good enough, not attractive enough, not smart enough, not intelligent enough. And therefore we're not worthy of love. And so if we're not worthy of love, then, you know, there's just so many things that come from that. We don't even go talk to that person that we're attracted to because why would I go talk to them if they're, you know, because look at me, what do I got? Or we do go talk to them, but we're all nervous because we're like, oh, they're so much better than me. I'm just this. And they're ah, right. Or we work up the courage, we play it cool, we talk to them, we get a number, we go on a date, and then we're just like, oh, they're gonna find out who I really. Right. So every stage of the game, this comes up this core self worth. So if you want confidence in love and relationships, you gotta get good at loving yourself.

So.

I mean, this is something that is so important. That's why we have multiple podcasts on it. It's a key theme in all my books and videos and teachings and programs is you have to learn this. This is a skill. This is a skill of self love. And you know, the biggest obstacle is not knowing how to do it. The biggest obstacle is this strange resistance that people have. We have to doing it. Isn't that crazy? Like right now, in this very second, as you're listening to me and you hear me saying like, hey, if you want to have an amazing relationship, you got to learn how to love yourself better. Like in this, maybe you're like, yeah, okay, I want to, or what? I've often found a lot of people is kind of like, meh, isn't there something? Isn't there another key tip? Why do we have to do this one? And there's all this resistance to loving ourselves.

Why?

Why do we want to. I don't deserve it yet. I gotta be better. If I start. This is a big one. If I start loving myself right now, as I am, then how am I gonna be motivated to succeed? And that's the most just twisted jumble of logic ever. Let me unravel that for you. So if you think I'm gonna love myself now and I'm not gonna be motivated to succeed and be better, well, the question is, is that true? Really? Does not loving yourself actually motivate you? And you might say, yes, it does. Well, really examine that, because it might actually be draining a lot of energy. And you know what? Loving yourself might actually be a. A much better source of energy and might drive you a whole lot more. That's a big one to consider. But even. Let's just say you're like, yeah, no, I'm gonna remove love from myself, therefore, I'm gonna be successful. Okay, what? So then you've gotten successful. You got that money, you got that job, you got that status, you got that car, you got that body. You got that new learning or intellectual knowledge. You've done that new experience, whatever it is you're pushing yourself to do by not loving yourself, you've gotten better in all those ways. Now what? Oh, well, now I'll be worthy of love, and then I can receive love. And so you gotta push it way out into the future just so you can get what it is that you really want right now. Isn't that insane? And yet we're doing this. And we're doing this because it's on autopilot, because somewhere we learned that our loveability is conditional. Usually learn that from family, school, mostly family. Your love is conditional. If you're this way, then I love you. And so we're like, well, how can I go into a relationship right now which is, as an adult, one of our primary sources of love? Maybe you still have it from your parents, but it's not the same as when you were a kid. Right now, you want love. You want love from a partner, want to give and receive love with a romantic partner. And so we're like, yeah, but how can I do that? Love is conditional. I got to be awesome in all these ways. And if there's one thing I want to share about, that is like, no, you don't. No, you don't. The biggest obstacle to you not having the love that you want in your life is not that you don't have big enough biceps or skinny enough legs or enough money in your bank account. That is a story. In fact, that's a story that keeps you from putting yourself out there to protect you from rejection. And the truth is that you are lovable right now. And then if you were to put yourself out there boldly, freely, authentically, consistently, then you would find that out. You would have lots of people that are interested in you, and it would be irrelevant. The thing that you're telling yourself is why you can't have love is irrelevant when you have the courage and the boldness and the willingness and the heart to put yourself out there. So that's the second key to confidence, is to really work on loving yourself. And look, dude, if you want to know how to do that, go back and listen to previous episodes. I have some interviews with a guy named Kamal Ravikant all about self love multiple. Any episode that's about self compassion. You can check out the confidence code and the whole first half of my program, the confidence code is about self esteem and how to talk to ourselves and systematically tools on how to love yourself. There's so many different ways to do it. There's books on it. You can check out Gay Hendricks. He's got a great book called Learning to love yourself. You can check out Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, which is all about how to accept yourself unconditionally. I could go on and on here. If you're really interested, you will find a way. Google or Amazon or audible. I mean, these things are accessible instantly. So when we say I don't know how, that's just. That means we're not ready, we're not willing. So if you're willing, I encourage you to take action on that. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back right after this. Have you heard about optimal self coaching? It's what Aziz teaches all of his private and group coaching clients. It helps you completely transform the way you talk to yourself in your own mind so you can instantly start feeling more confident, be more comfortable around others, and guide yourself to greater levels of career and relationship success. To learn exactly how to transform your inner Coach, go to YourConfidenceCode.com to get your copy today. Hey, welcome back. So the third key to confidence in love and relationships is to be less nice. What does he mean, less nice? And more you? Because one of the major pitfalls in love and relationships, any sort of social connection, but especially romantically, is we go into pleasing mode. We go in thinking, because I'm not good enough, because I'm not worthy, I gotta do whatever I need to do, do my song and dance and get you to like me. I gotta impress you. I gotta make you impressed by me or intrigued by me or attracted by me. And so we read books about it, we read pickup artist stuff about it. We read how to tell stories that make us look good. We do whatever, a million and one things. Make sure our hair is just right in the mirror to be just right, to please that other person, to get them to like us, to make sure that they're impressed. But there's this funny paradox in life where the harder we're trying to get something, the more desperation we ooze and the more desperate we become actually, even if we don't start that way. And if you're trying to make impress someone intentionally, you almost certainly will not. It will most certainly backfire. And when you're trying to get someone to like you similarly will most certainly backfire. And it will backfire in several ways. Either a often, most often, they'll just energetically feel it and be repelled. They can feel like you want something from them. You're trying to control them in a way, right? You're trying to control their perception of you. And they feel that and they don't like it psychically, it feels uncomfortable. Or another way that it backfires is, you know what, maybe you pull it off. Maybe they don't feel that kind of trying to get something out of them or it's subtle or maybe they're like just as desperate as well. And so you get in, right? And you're like, ha, it worked. I impressed them or now they like me. But guess what? You were not being you in order to do that. You were either pretending to be a certain way or playing up certain things or hiding, usually hiding different qualities about yourself. And so you do that little song and dance and now you're kind of trapped. I know this one really well because I did this for a long time. Then you are stuck because you're like, well, I have to maintain this performance. I have to keep being this way. So the way out of this trap is to be less nice and more you. And that is such a huge topic that I'm actually writing an entire book on it. In fact, that book is almost done. And in just a couple of weeks here, we're gonna start a three episode series leading up to the launch of the book where I'm gonna share the best secrets from that book. It's called Not Nice. And it's coming out in the end of September. So I'm gonna be sharing the secrets from the book, the core teachings, all for free, all here on the podcast and, and then at the end of September, I believe it's September 27th, 29th, something like that, we'll be having a launch day. You'll be able to get a copy for 99 cents on Kindle. And that book is a beast. It is huge. It is extremely thorough and it is the exact path out of niceness and people pleasing and approval seeking and conflict avoidance and guilt and trying to get everyone to like you into being a way more bold, powerful, authentic version of you. So to really get a handle on that, I'm going to encourage you to check out that book. But for now, here are the key things you want to do. You want to practice saying what's true instead of what you think the other person wants to hear. That means being less worried about how is this going to be taken. Are they going to like this? And just saying what's true for you. What do you think? What do you feel? What is your experience? Sharing that, Asking the questions that you want to ask, asking for what you want, Saying no to what you don't want to do. Hey, do you want to go on a bike ride for our date? Eh, not a real fan of bike riding. Want to go for a walk? But wait a minute. What if they like bike riding and then I said that and now I ruined my chances with them. Well look, if you're being you and you don't like to ride bikes, how. And they're an avid bicyclist. Bicyclist, then shit. You want to enter a relationship with that and then have that as a point of contention, why not just be you from the beginning? Now I know that that that takes development of ourselves, that there's a lot of fear that we need to overcome. So these are just the three keys that are pointing you in the right direction. The book was really going to help you. Not nice learning to love yourself. I mentioned a ton of tools on how to do that and of course, of course, of course, of course I can highly recommend coming to the event enough because that's where you're going to learn viscerally in your body. It's not just a bunch of me talking and you intellectually. It's like we do stuff, we do activities, we do exercises, we go out into the real world and practice stuff. We viscerally help you transform. That means in your body, in your emotions, you feel a difference and that's what makes all the difference. So that's obviously the most powerful thing I would suggest as well. And in the meantime, time for action. For Action. Your action step for today is to it's gonna be a choose your own venture. Ready? Option A. Really sit down and come up with a compelling future vision for your relationship and write it out on paper or in a note file or something. Actually write or type it out. It's extremely powerful. You've never done that. It's worth it. Everything you want in a relationship, in a partner, and not only what are they like, but what are you like in the relationship? What do you do together? What is your experience? Like, how is the love? How is the passion? What kind of activities do you do together? Get like a totally clear vision of exactly what you want in your relationship. That's option A. Option B is to follow up with one of those self love resources that I mentioned and really make a practice this week of self love. And it could be as simple as like just setting the intention right now of like, hey, I'm gonna go easy on myself. That means when I notice I'm gonna attack myself, I interrupt it and I treat myself with love and compassion and kindness. That would be the second. That's option B. And option C is to pick one way to be less nice and more you. Maybe you say no this week when you wanna say no. Maybe you ask for something that you want. Maybe you speak up for yourself when you normally would be quiet. So picking one place to be less nice and more you is option C. Now, of course you can do just one of those. Option A, B, or C. If you're hardcore extreme overachiever, you can do all of the above. That's D. That choice is yours. And whatever you choose, I'm sure is perfect. It's been awesome to be with you today. Thank you so much for listening. 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 so SocialConfidenceCenter.com.