3 Secrets To Becoming LESS NICE And MORE YOU! (Webinar Replay)

So welcome everybody to this training, this live training, which is three secrets to becoming less nice and more you. Super important. And maybe you came to this because you've seen some of my videos on YouTube where I talk about niceness. It's a big topic. My book Not Nice, which I got a copy of right here. Maybe you've read that or listened to that or part of it. I know it's long. So I want to distill some key ideas down for you today so that you can put this stuff into practice. Because I know reading a book and listening to it and oh yeah, that's, that's maybe I'll do that one day. And I want to make it something you can take away like today and go use. And if you've already read the book or are reading it, this will just reinforce the key ideas for you. And we're going to get into all these key things that I mentioned in the email, in case you didn't see it. But we're going to talk about what nice is, but nice really is. We're also going to look at the three major unconscious fears that are driving you to be nice, which is why you've probably seen long before you came across my work, you said maybe I'm too nice. Okay, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be a bit more assertive. I'm going to be a bit less of a doormat. I'm going to be more bold. And you decide you're going to do that in your bedroom and then you get to work or you get to the social event or you get to the date or whatever and you're back in nice guy or nice girl mode and you're like, what is going on here? What's happening? And this really tripped me up for a long time. And what's happening is there's these unconscious fears that are driving you and until you become conscious of them and uproot them, it's very hard to make this change. So we're going to highlight them, which is going to be a game changer for you. Then we're going to get into two specific techniques to break out of approval seeking and people pleasing, which is a big part of niceness. So we're going to help you shift those and it's not going to be theoretical. I'm going to do the techniques and guide you through them together here today. Then we're going to look at the three core steps of being less nice and more you. Very simple, top level process of how we're going to do it. And, and then the biggest mistake that I've seen of why people don't break out, it's probably hands down the biggest pitfall. Can't hear the duck. You guys can't hear me? Can't hear me. Who can't hear me on the app? You can, okay? Most people can. If you can't, I'm sorry, disconnect, come back in. Okay. Most people can call in on the phone is what someone said on the messages. And if you can't call back in and worst, worst case scenario, then just send out the recording. So you'll have to watch that, but hopefully you can sort that out. Okay, here we go. I'm excited. I'm not going to go into super in depth about my own story and my own experience with niceness because you probably know it already. You've seen my videos. I talk about it a lot in the book. But I'll give you just a quick overview because it's important. I really struggled a lot with niceness and I see niceness as a facet of social anxiety. So I'm very anxious. I don't want to talk to people. I'm uncomfortable in my own skin. I don't want to approach women I'm attracted to. I don't want to speak up in a group. And I start to overcome that in my life. I start to face my fear like many of you are doing. I start to take action even though I'm scared. And that's good. I start to build confidence. I start to break through some of my shell of social anxiety. But then niceness is just another layer. So I can go talk to that person, I go talk to that woman, I go speak up. But I do it in a very nice way, a very people pleasing way, a very non assertive way. And you still don't get the results that you want. People don't take you seriously, people don't want to date you as much. People don't want. People don't see you as a leader, they don't follow you, they challenge you more, they ignore you more because we're oozing this energy of niceness. So let's talk about what nice really is. This one is controversial. People either love this book or they hate it. They either love my videos about niceness or they hate them. And they hate them because they think when I say nice, I'm saying kind, generous, good, loving person. And you should not be those things. You should be some asshole that just stomps on people and that could be Nothing could be further from the truth. So niceness is not the same thing as kindness, as you're going to see in just a moment because of the core fears that's running a nice person's life. But basically niceness is a pattern of relating to people in the world to stay safe and keep people's approval and love and connection. It's a strategy you have to stay safe in the world. And it has nothing to do with being a good person. In fact, oftentimes when we're really nice, we can appear to be a good person, but maybe we don't follow through on our commitments. Maybe we feel a ton of resentment inside, right? So it's not what it seems. And in fact, the less nice you are, the less people pleasing you are, the less I'll say yes to whatever you want. And I'll never have boundaries. The more you get that handled and become not nice, the kinder you are, the more generous you can be, the more truly loving you can be in a relationship. Let me give you one example, just so this is not just all abstract. I tried to be a real nice guy when it came to dating because that was my programming. I got to be a nice person and so I overcame my fears, right? That was a big journey. You might have heard about that in my other videos. To be able to go talk to women, then I can start talking to them, then I can start to date them. And what I found is, as I found a woman to start dating, there would be this connection forming and I wanted to be the nicest guy. So I wanted her to feel really good about herself and I wanted her to feel very special. And so I would represent that she was very great and very special. And that means I was super into her, I was super available to hang out. You know, almost like, I love you at first sight. You're so great is what I wanted to communicate, because I really wanted her to feel good about herself. A very nice thing to do, right? Well, no, because how long can I sustain that? What if that's not true? What if I feel that way for a little while and then I'm not actually that into her, and so I'm not being real. And at the core of it, when we're playing the nice person, we're not being real. And so if you want to know what the opposite of nice is, is to be boldly, authentically and unapologetically yourself. That's the opposite of nice. That's what we're here to do. So let's get into it. What are the unconscious fears that drive us to be nice? And these are actually the core elements of what niceness really is too. So the first fear that makes you really nice is the fear of disapproval. We're afraid that other people aren't going to like us. In fact, it's an idea that I need you. I need you to like me. And I cannot tolerate it. It's intolerable in my body if you don't like me. In fact, let's just look at that right now. I want you to take a moment and think of. You can close your eyes if you want and think of someone in your life that matters, that you think is significant or special or cool or someone you want to be friends with or someone you work with or a boss or a partner or a date or a friend or someone. Okay. Doesn't matter who they are. Just let them come into your mind. Now I want you to imagine that person being upset with disliking you for some reason. How does that feel in general? It doesn't feel good. And look, we're not here to be like, ah, yes, I love it. Bring it on. Like, no one's gonna like that. No human with a heart is gonna like that. But when we're. When your niceness. I have a nice. How nice are you? Test in the book, when your niceness is off the charts, you cannot tolerate that. It is like liquid fire being pouring in, poured down into your nervous system. And it is just like, we won't even go there. And so we develop a very elaborate, extremely elaborate set of behaviors, actions, patterns, all designed to avoid that disapproval. And that can be summed up as something called approval seeking or people pleasing. So this leads to approval seeking and people pleasing. And there are a million one ways that you might do it. You might smile a lot and nod a lot and agree a lot when you're talking to people. You might always say yes, even when I'm not happy. That's what Oscar said. I want you to like me. I mean, so these are. I love the comments, by the way. I'm going to reference them when I can. One says his niceness is way off the charts. I know, man, I know. I've been there. It's. And for me, as you hear in the book, I'm always working on it. How can I lower that? So it's so uncomfortable that we're unwilling to go there. And then let me give some other examples of how we might be approval seeking. I mean, you just feel it in Your body, you feel nervous. Like, I want this person to like me. That's the key one. I want this person to like me. And that will make that. We'll try to make that happen by sharing a certain part of ourselves, but on another part by saying, okay, I'm only going to show them that I'm happy but not sad. I'm going to show that I'm pleasant but not disagreeable. I'm not going to disagree with people. I mean, it's sort of like your best behavior at your, you know, your grandma's dinner or whatever. That's what people will do. It's like they'll be polite, they'll be nice, they won't bring up topics that are controversial. They won't disagree. They won't. And here we'll even take it further. We won't even say what we want or don't want because you might not like that. You might disapprove of me. And the disapproval is just a thought or a feeling that they have towards you, a passing, judgmental thought. I mean, we can take this to the nth degree. Do you like my shirt or not? Right. Have you ever been in a situation where you're like uncomfortable in public, wondering if you're close or a certain setting? Maybe you go to networking meeting, you're like, am I dressed up right enough? You know, is my hair, my hair right enough? Right. And we get into this mode where it's like, I need everyone, I need everyone to approve of me. And some of this is human. Like, we want to be seen as positive. We want people to like us. So I'm not saying that if you have this, there's something wrong. It's a matter of degree. When we're too nice, we take it too far and we cannot tolerate it. So it's the first unconscious fear that's driving you. I need everyone to like me. The second unconscious fear that's driving you to be excessively nice is a fear of hurting others. You're afraid of hurting others. And again, at face value, that might sound reasonable, right? Like, why shouldn't I not want to hurt others? Yes. You know, as a well adjusted human, we don't want to go like Hulk smashing people and we walk around in public. But what I mean by this is we're overly concerned about hurting others and we think everything is hurting people. So you, anytime that you feel anything negative around me, sadness, disappointment, hurt, irritability, anything, that's me and I'm not. And I need to do something to fix It. So I talk about this a lot. In my book, it's called over responsibility. I need everyone to be okay around me, and otherwise I'm hurting you or otherwise bothering you. And so here's a classic example of what that will show up as is someone's like, hey, do you want to come to this thing on Saturday? And inside you're like, no, I don't want to go to that thing on Saturday. And what comes out of your mouth? Yeah, maybe you do this weird head bubble where your head doesn't know if you're saying yes or no. And your mouth says, yeah, I think I can make it. You want to be doing this? Or we do the. Oh, yeah, yeah, maybe I could. Yeah, I can see. Let me check my schedule. Even though you know you're not gonna go, and you might not even tell them a no directly. You might just. No show. Right. So we don't. We're not direct with people, because if I say no, their feelings are gonna be hurt if I don't want to go to that thing. And that's a small example. Let's take it to a bigger example. There's a lot of people I work with who've been in relationships for months or years longer than they ultimately want to be. That's not an exaggeration. Literally years. Different clients, different people who are like, yes, I wanted to break up with this person, but I didn't want to do that then, because then it was, you know, we were going to go visit her family for Thanksgiving, and then there was Christmas and then this and then that. And I don't know. I don't know if she could handle it. And I should just be this and that, and they stay in the relationship for, you know, until we start to work together. And so that's just another example. But it's this over responsibility. You're constantly thinking everyone around me is feeling the way they are because of me. Because of me. And so I need to make that all okay. I need to fix everyone. And that leads to a lot of guilt and a lot of anxiety. That's the second fear that's driving you is, I can't hurt anyone or make anyone else upset. The third one, the third unconscious fear that's driving us to be too nice when we don't want to be, is the fear of angering others. This leads to conflict avoidance. But the fear of basically the belief here is, I need you to not get upset with me. Don't be mad at me, whatever you do. So, again, I can't tolerate you being upset. And this one leads to again saying, yes, we want to say no, but. But it also leads to like no disagreement. Someone says something, we're like, yeah, okay. Or it's just silence. And I don't mean just full on disagreement like, you sir, are a fool. I disagree. I mean subtle stuff. Like someone's like, oh, that movie was awesome. You just walk out of a movie theater and you want to be like, I didn't really like it. You might not say that I've had periods of my life where I didn't do that. It seems so small. But that's just how comprehensive this nice pattern can be. Another example might be in a work situation. So someone else is sharing an opinion in a meeting and you have a valid opinion. And maybe it's not even a head on confrontation, it's just a different opinion than that person. I don't want to say it right. Or if we do, we do a huge song and dance to try to make sure that no one is upset. So we do all kinds of qualifiers and like, well, I understand that your opinion is this and that makes a lot of sense and you probably know more than me, but I guess in my perspective, which is not that I understand it's new and I'm not that knowledgeable yet, but you know, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you know what I mean, like we, we sell ourselves short. And even if it's not that extreme, with all our qualifiers and stuff, our voice tone is very hesitant. Our voice tone is very soft, like don't be mad. But that's what our body language is communicating. If we confront at all, if we disagree at all. So this obviously leads to a lot of conflict avoidance, a lot of again, real contact with other people avoidance. We're not being real with others. And so these are the core problems of niceness. We can't have boundaries because we can't say what we want and what we don't want. Because what if I, what if I, what if what I want is different than what you want? Maybe you'll dislike me, maybe you'll be upset with me, maybe you'll feel disappointed. You know, you want to hang out on Friday or you want to have sex now, or you want to go to this thing, whatever it is, with a partner, with a friend, but I don't want to now. We have differing wants. And so the nice person I remember, for me it was like, here's the other person. I would wrap myself around them like a piece of plastic, like a plastic bag. And I'd try to just be the same as them, and it doesn't work. We need real contact between two humans. That's where we have real relationships. So this might be new for some of you. This might be some stuff you've heard in the book, but I really want you to get that. These are the things that are preventing you from being how you want to be. And we're going to talk about now how to. How to change this, how to break free of this. Some of you might already know this by rote. You might have a very good intellectual understanding from the book of, like. Great. Yes, of course. Approval seeking. That's what I do. How do I stop doing it? Great. Okay, let's talk about that now. Take a sip of water, Rock. I'm going to look at some of these comments too. Ooh, that's a great point. Amira says it feels like a craving when I get the approval. It feels like a high. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and again, there's a human level of, like, people approving of you. You know, evolutionarily feels good. We're kind of programmed that way. And people disliking you feels bad. The matter is the problem. The problem is when we're unwilling to experience the disapproval, we don't show up fully or authentically because we don't want to get approved. That's where it becomes problematic. But enjoying the approval, I don't know if that's a problem. It's just the inability to tolerate the disapproval that I think really leads to niceness. Purvy says I'm bang on. I like that phrase, bang on. Okay. Yeah, I have a loud inner voice. Hard to turn that down. I get it. Yes. Okay. So that's where these techniques are gonna be about. We're gonna get into more in this training. But the biggest obstacle is that there's that voice that tells you that you're bad, that you've hurt that person, that you've crushed that person for saying no, for being a little more direct with them. You're a horrible, rotten person. How could you do that to them? It's really strong. And this is a good time to mention what I call your safety police. So you have a voice inside your collection of voices inside of you that is pushing inward, that is trying to get you to stay in the middle of your safest, most comfortable zone. And in the nice person's case, the safe zone is where no one disapproves of me and everyone likes me. And Everything's okay. And this is beyond probably the scope of this training. You have to look more in the book about this, where I talk about nice training, but this gets a lot back to our childhood, and we were just like. I just want people to like me. I just want to get the connection and approval and attention that I need. And. But maybe I'm not, or I have to be this way to get it. And so your safety police says, hey, the world out there is scary. Being bold, speaking up, saying no, asking for what you want. Yeah, that all sounds great, but not really. But that's dangerous. That's risky. You could lose your relationships. You could lose what little love and connection that you managed to eke out. We could die out there alone in the woods, free of any connection with any other human. You better stay safe. So it's gonna push you to stay in your comfort zone. That's why you stay quiet. That's why you say yes when you want to say no. That's why your tone is hesitant. If you speak up at all. And the way it pushes you in is with these voices, the different voices. You're so bad for having done that. Don't speak up. That was too direct. You're being an asshole. You're being unreasonable. Oh, just. Just go along with it this time. What's the big deal? Why do you got to be so difficult? Why do you got to be so picky and on and on? And we believe that voice, and it squishes us into the center of our comfort zone. So when we get into the three steps to break free, we're going to talk more about that. Yep. Yep. Erasmus, this is a great point for me. I get so angry at times, but I don't want to express or say anything, so I leave or cut that person out. Yes. Yes. So this is one of the downsides of niceness, is when we're nice and we have to, you know, we have to avoid conflict because we can't, you know, upset anyone yet. We're still human animals. We still have, like, a limbic system of emotions that's gonna get angry. In fact, the more we suppress stuff and stuff it down and be submissive to other people, the more pissed off and resentful we're gonna get inside. The more we say yes when we want to say no, the more pissed off we're gonna get inside. But it's not okay to be angry, right? So we stuff it down even more. So what's gonna happen is we're forced to express the anger Indirectly, it's our only option, right? It's gotta go out somewhere. So how do we express it indirectly? One of the most common ones is to just cut someone off, be less available. That's what I used to do in dating. You know, there's something not going right in a dating relationship. And I would just end the relationship after, like, three weeks instead of having a basic conversation. Like, when you do X, I don't like it, or it feels like we're doing too much of this. I want to do more of that. Instead of saying that, I just end the relationship and I feel an aversion inside, like, ugh, get away from me. Right? I call this micro versus macro boundaries. So a micro boundary is when you can, like, tell someone, like, hey, you know, I noticed you're interrupting me when I'm sharing a story. What's going on there? Like, it seems like that happens a lot, right? You're speaking to a very small thing that you might be able to tweak and fix with them. That's a micro boundary. You're saying, I don't really like it when you interrupt me a lot. The macro boundary is like, I'm done talking to you. You're out of my life. I hate you. Right? That's all we got. That's our only option. If we can't speak to the. If we can't have disagreements or conflicts, just got to cut them out. So, Rasmus, that's a great point. And another interesting point, just for those of you wondering about anger. A lot of nice people don't even know they have anger. They don't even feel it because they suppress it so much. And it's going to come out indirectly. As I said, passive aggression, cutting people out, irritable tone, freaking out in your car when no one's around because someone cuts you off and you just want to, like, rip their face off. I don't know that one. That's just what I've heard from others. And then here's the worst one. Physical pain. A million and one forms of physical pain from an overloaded autonomic nervous system, ranging from stomach problems, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, plantar fasciitis, foot pain, neck pain, a million and one types of back pain that can be diagnosed as a thousand and one other things. Problems with hearing, headaches, migraines, jaw problems, tmj, shoulder problems, neck problems, carpal tunnel problems. I mean, so many of these things, and there's a whole field, and I talk about that in the book you can check out Dr. John Sarno, s A R N O. If you are struggling with any sort of chronic pain, you have to become aware of the mind body stuff. That's helped me go from being on a medication for an autoimmune disorder for 15 years. Yes, I had the pain for 20 years. I was on the medication for 15 to be completely free of all medications and in the most physically fit shape of my life, running 10ks, lifting weights, all because of understanding this. So that's a. I don't want to. I could go on that. That could be a whole other webinar in itself. But be aware of that and if you want to go deeper with that, check that out. Okay. These are long comments so I'm going to actually read through all these later and maybe even do a follow up video where I talk about some of this stuff. So. Okay, but let's keep on with the. They're so good though. They're so good. Okay, let me see if I can address one more. Danielle says yes to the micro and macro boundary. That's exactly it. I'm definitely guilty of building up resentment over a long time and they're getting so that I end up just launching the macro. This is quite triggering, but good to know I'm not the only one. Yeah, no, this is extremely common, Danielle, and it's. I like launch the macro. I'm going to launch the macro. Okay, so let's talk about how to shift some of this stuff because you know me, I'm all about identifying the problem in a really clear way. But then we got to get to the solutions here because just being able to describe your problem, what good is that? I mean it's helpful, it's the first step, but we got to find our way out. So how are we going to do that? Let's talk about the first technique which is plug in your hose. It's a very official name engineered by scientists in a lab. Plug in your hose. What do I mean by this? So we need love and approval. You know, I'm talking about wanting approval is a natural because we need connection and can love and approval. Acceptance of who we are is part of connection. You need that, I need that. Every human needs that. So when I'm talking about overcoming approval seeking, it is, you know, some people want to say like I just want to not care at all what anyone thinks of me ever. It's like, well, if you don't care what anyone thinks of you ever, how's that going to work for like relationships, you know, like, you just want to care a little less, right? You want to kind of get in the middle. So we need that love, that connection, that approval. The problem is we don't have good sources of it. So think of it like this. You have. Here's your heart. It needs that stuff, right? And you feel it. When you don't get it, you feel this pain inside. And imagine that there's a hose that's like hooked right into your heart. And we have the end of this hose, like a big hose, like a fire hose. And you have the end of this hose. And what most of us are doing when we're in nice mode is we're walking around all day, every day and just like going up to people and saying, like, can I plug my hose into you? Can you give me the approval that I seek? Yeah. No. Can I plug in my hose with you? And so what this shows up as is, like, you're gonna go meet a friend for dinner and they're gonna bring a friend you've never met before, and you're meeting that new person, and inside you're like, I need this person to like me. Was that funny enough? I don't know if that was funny enough. That wasn't good. I should tell a better story. Oh, I'm so nervous to meet these people. And so basically you're saying, well, this new person that I don't know, can you. Can you put that in my heart? Can you give me what I need, the approval that I need? And even in long standing relationships, let's say you have an ongoing relationship with a spouse or a friend. You know, of course there's an ongoing flow of love and approval back and forth. But it's like, let's say they're pissed off at you, or let's say you need to say no to them for some reason, or you need to have an honest conversation with them about they didn't do something or they're not meeting their commitments or their word to you and it's upsetting you in that moment. They might not be, like, oozing love and approval at you. They might not be like, oh, thank you so much for telling me. Yeah, they might be like, what do you mean? They get defensive or whatever. And then we're like, oh, no, no, no, I have to keep the hose plugged into you or else I'm toast. So we have to be able to do something about this. We have to be able to plug our own hose in or else we're gonna suffer from this forever. And I find there's two main places that you want to be able to plug your hose in and, and start to fill that void of love and connection and approval. And you probably already know what one of them is. You want to throw it at the umbilical cord. That's right, umbilical cord to your heart. So throw in the chat. What do you think? What are your guesses as to what those two are? The two things that you need to be able to plug your hose into by choice, consciously, regularly. Death and ruin. Let me guess. Yes. Yes. That's the yes. Please guess. Friends, family and friends. Good guess. Any others? Yourself? Boom. You guys nailed it. Those are the two. We're going to talk about both self love. So let's talk about the first one to yourself. And this topic is so big that the next book I'm going to write, which is probably not going to be until 2019 just because of all the stuff I got going on. Confidence University coming out in month and a half. Omg, we're doing a lot to make that happen right now. So that's the big project right now. But the topic of self love and how to be on our own side no matter what is so important that I have to keep teaching about it and we'll write a book on it one day. But we need to be able to give ourselves that approval. And this is a big. There's a big disconnect here because people know this intellectually already and so they shut down when I start talking about it often. And the problem is because a lot of the strategies out there don't work. They don't work very well. They work at face value, but they don't actually deliver like affirmations. And I think there's a time and a place for affirmations and I'll use them and. But I think it's very targeted and limited and only works for a very short shift in your state so you can go take real action in the world. So for example, the affirmation of I am bold. I think it's fucking great. And they use it a lot of events. We do a lot with that. My wristband here. Get at the live events. Be bold. I am bold. So if I'm in a situation where I'm feeling nervous and I want to activate and I go like this and you might, you know, not do this literally in public, although you could as an embarrassment inoculation. But if I were to do this. I am bold. I am bold. I am bold. Now I've activated a ton of energy in my nervous system and I can go take a bold action right there a lot more easily than if I was in a tired, low, stressed, depressed state. And so that's an example of an affirmation, or as Tony Robbins would call it, an incantation. Because you're using your full body. That's powerful, that's great, right? So they have a targeted use. But the problem is saying I love myself or here's what I like about myself. Like, maybe that has a short term effect, but you do that all day long. Or how do you. And what if it doesn't sink? What if you say, I like myself and some part of your mind's like, bullshit? Or what do you say? Like, well, I'm good looking or I'm attractive. Another part of your mind is like, no, you're not. You just feel aversion when you look in the mirror. Right? So how do we shift this? And there's a guy named Kamal Ravikant who's awesome. I interviewed him on my podcast. He has a book called Love like youe Life Depends On It. You can check out the episode@shrinkforthshyguy.com just type in Love yourself should come up. And he's a big advocate of just saying in your mind a thousand times a day, I love myself. I love myself, I love myself. That technique works for him and other people. EFT emotional freedom technique. You can look that up on YouTube if you don't know what that is. Involves tapping on certain points. And as you do that saying, even though I feel anxious right now, or even though I feel guilty right now, even though I want this person to like me, I love and accept myself. And it's trying again to work that pathway. And that can be effective for people. What I found to be most effective is for helping people build self. Love is actually to give yourself what it is that you most need and what you most need. You can even think about this in a relationship. Think about it this way, because this does relate to childhood a lot for all of us, whether we know it or not. What is it that kids need? Like the nutrients, the emotional nutrients that kids most need. Think of young kids, what do they most need from their parents and others? There's a couple of key things. First and foremost, they need some form of attention, right? Like if you ignore a child, they're gonna freak out. They need attention. That means like, hi, I'm looking at you. Like my younger son Armand, who's two and a half, he'll just sometimes come up to me and be like, hi. Hi. And I'll just be like, hey, hi. And then he'll go, he just like, there's a little joygasm at getting that attention from me. So attention. The next thing is understanding or empathy. Understanding or empathy. So it's not just like, I see you, it's like, I see you and I get you. And understanding empathy might be, you know, the kid is scared. And instead of saying to the kid, don't be scared, you say, you're scared right now. The kid is angry. Instead of saying, why are you so angry? Stop that. I'm gonna get angry to make you not be angry. You say, wow, you're angry right now. That's like the empathy, the reflection, the understanding is like, I get it, I get it. Of course you're scared right now. It's okay to be angry right now. And you might think I'm just talking about being with a kid, but I might also be talking about how you can be with you. So we have attention, understanding, and empathy. And then if you can, some sort of approval or seeing the good within, acknowledging the strengths, that's part of it, too. So let's do this right now. Let's give you an experience of this. And the biggest reason why this doesn't often work for people is they try to do it from here. And where we need to do it from is here. So I'm going to encourage you to do this fully. If you're driving or whatever, and you can't, just do it the best you can with your eyes open. You know, if you're walking somewhere, whatever, just do it with your eyes open, kind of follow along. But if you can close your eyes right now. And I'm going to close my eyes. So we're all going to close our eyes. So close your eyes. And I want you to take your dominant hand and put it on your heart, whether it's your right or your left hand, your dominant hand, and then put the other hand over it. So you have two hands on your. On your chest, right over your heart, the center of your chest. And I want you to breathe and focus in. And no one can see you. Most of your cameras are off, so don't worry about it. What do they think of me? Don't let the approval seeking get in the way here. Just push it aside. You're safe, you're okay, you're loved. And go into your hands with your awareness. Like, feel the warmth of your hands against your chest. And just breathe and you can relax your face and bring your attention right into your chest. Almost like you're breathing right in and out of your heart, Filling your lungs, filling your lungs deeply. So your belly is moving too as you breathe, Just bringing all your attention. And if your mind gets active, you thinking or distracted or just, okay, just bring it right back to your hands against your chest. You can even push against your chest a little bit. Like feel inhabit your body, be in your body, breathe into your chest, feel this body. And then the first thing I want you to do is give yourself that first thing, which is attention. Open, spacious, non judgmental attention. That means like what's happening inside of you right now in your heart, in your mind. Are you at peace or are you tense? Are you excited or are you tired, drained? Are you feeling content and happy or are you feeling sad or empty or down or aching? Maybe a mixture of these things. You want to become really curious. Attention here. When I say give yourself attention, I mean give attention to what's happening in your body, your heart, in your emotions, in your experience inside of you. Moment to moment to moment. That is a form of love. That's an essential component of love. And whatever you notice, just be with it. Maybe it's uncomfortable. That's okay. We're gonna get to discomfort in a little bit here on this training. And discomfort is your friend whether you know it or not yet. So it's okay if it's uncomfortable. And then we want to bring in the second element when we start offering ourselves empathy and understanding. So just acknowledge. Yeah, I'm feeling blank right now or I'm thinking about blank right now. I'm really stressed about this right now. I really want this to go this way right now. I keep checking my damn text to see if so and so texted me back right now. Whatever is happening, you just acknowledge it. Feeling in your body, Breathing into your heart and just meeting it with understanding and giving an understanding. Like, yeah, it's okay. The theme of understanding is like, I can see why I'm feeling that way. It's okay to be feeling that way. And if some part of your mind contracts and says, no, it's not okay, and your body tightens up, just breathe and relax. Part of loving, part of this muscle or this skill of learning to love yourself is being able to let it be okay. All of your feelings are okay. Even one of my teachers would say is love the unlovable. So even if you fell short, let's say you're, I don't know, you're trying to eat a certain way and you didn't, or you wanted to speak up in a certain way and you didn't, even then. Especially then. It's okay. Yeah, I was scared and I didn't do it. It's okay. I get it. I get why I'm so letting go of resistance. Like, I shouldn't be scared or I shouldn't be feeling this way, or why am I feeling that? And just soften into your body, into your heart, and it's okay. Empathy and understanding. And then the third element is this acknowledging the goodness, approving of yourself. Like, can you tune in, in your heart into a feeling of, I'm okay, I like who I am. I am who I am. I don't need to be this perfect version of me or this version of me that solved all my problems or has obtained all my goals. Like, I'm. I'm okay. This is where you can, like, again, really, by staying in your heart, though, giving yourself some acknowledgment or credit. If you wanted to give yourself credit for something right now, no matter how small, think about what that is and acknowledge that for yourself, even if no one else knows about it or no one else ever will notice it, And really breathe into that to make it real and let yourself feel that. And then while we're here and in this state, we're going to transition over into the other place that you can plug in your hose, which is there are people that already love you right now, in this moment, you are deeply loved, and many of us forget that. So in this moment, with your hand on your heart, as you stay focused on your heart breathing, softening your stomach, softening your face, surrendering any demands or pressures on yourself to be different or better, and thinking of who loves you right now as you are, without you needing to be perfect or better for them. Think of one person in your life who just loves you right now. Maybe they're not even alive anymore. They're loving. They loved you when they were alive. Maybe they're loving you now from whatever realm or ether they exist in. Can you. Can you tune into that and feel that. That love in your chest, that approval? How long has that person loved you? Whether or not they say it or can express it in the way that you want, deep down, you just tune into the. You know, the energy of it. You know that they love you good. Let that person go now and think of someone else. This could be a friend, a family member, a dog, a cat, a grandpa, an uncle, a colleague, a client, someone else who loves you, appreciates you, likes you, approves of you. Some version of that. Bring that person to mind now. And just breathe into your heart and feel it. Let it in. Good. So speaking. Taking one more moment here and just breathing in and just noticing how you are, what does it feel like? Maybe you feel a warmth in your chest or perhaps an opening. Maybe it feels good. Maybe. Maybe you're coming against a block or your mind is stopping something, or you're tensing and blocking. That's okay, too. Meet that with empathy, with curiosity, with love. Good. And when you're ready, you can bring your hands down, open your eyes. Okay, so there we go. That could be a new experience for some of you. Some of you have done something like that, but maybe, maybe not. So. So let's just put in the chat if you. I want to hear how that impacted some people. What did you notice? Ishmael says felt feels good. Gina said cried. Yeah. Yeah. Reconnecting in there and offering ourselves that love can bring tears for many reasons right now, that we have to understand all our tears up here. But sometimes it's just feeling that love that we are, love that we're okay. There can be tears of relief. Just the profoundness of the connections that we have with others and with ourself can make us cry. I have that often with my kids, I'll just. As I think about them, or my wife, I'll just. Or other people in my life, I'll just tear up. I'll feel the power of that. The meaningfulness of that significance of those relationships. And sometimes when we start to go into and love ourselves, we feel a. We cry because we feel sad. We feel sad for how much we've abused ourselves and neglected ourselves and taken that little part of us that just wants that attention and approval and said, I'm not going to give it to you. You don't deserve it yet. You know, be better. Then you'll get it from other people. And it's this whole trap where we never get enough from other people because we're never good enough. And we start to see that and feel that, and we just feel grief. And that's good because that's waking up to like, hey, I need to. I need to heal my relationship with myself. Natalie says she noticed anxiety. Yes. So very common when we start to go inward. A common experience is super mind activity. It's trying to block it. I got to figure out my to do list or a lot of anxiety. And the fear here is the fear of feeling. It's the fear of going in. Because when we go in, we can feel love. We can feel self love. We can also feel pains and wounds and times we were hurt. And we can heal all of that by going deeper and deeper into it and being with it. But there can be some fear or anxiety about that too. Absolutely. Yeah. Good. Filling up my love tank. We always have access to this. That is true. The biggest obstacle here is not that it's not there, it's that we don't do this. But that was what, 10 minutes could be a very powerful practice for any of you who want to do this. I usually try to. It's around 30 minutes a day that I'll do something. And it's not always with my hand on my heart, but it's usually I'll be either walking in motion or sitting, but I'll be going inward with my attention specifically focusing on my heart, but maybe elsewhere on my body that just feels like tight or needing something. And I'll just give it attention, give it love, do kind of what we did here, about 30 minutes a day. And I find that's essential for processing yesterday's emotions, Being on my own side today, not getting clunked up with all this old upsets that can build up day to day. Yeah, recording. Yes, we're gonna send you guys a recording of this. Don't worry. In case you want to go through that again. Okay. Yes. So let's. Let's plugging in the hose. And so it's very valuable to take that time to be. Give yourself that approval. Seriously. If you do that, you will find that your need to get that approval for someone else will start to go down over time as you give yourself more of that. And also taking that time to think about and really not just intellectually list the people that love you, but really feel the people that love you is very important because we as humans need to bond and connect with others. As I said earlier, it's called attachment theory. In psychology, we need to attach and have healthy attachments, connections to others. The problem is we forget about those and then we go into a social situation or a work situation and. And we become very insecure in our attachment. And we think that everyone there, all the strangers there and acquaintances there, those are the people that are going to become my primary attachments in life, but they're not. So you have a family or you have friends, or you have a spouse, or you have a dog, or you have someone that you are, that's a primary attachment to you. And then you Go out into the world and can interact with them and then, okay, that person doesn't like me, well, that's okay. I am still loved. And for those of you who are, you know, you can also tap into something bigger. You can go inward enough to get it or go outward enough to get it. And you can find a spiritual source of love, of connection. So if some of you are like, wait, I don't have family, I don't have friends and no one loves me, first of all, I would question if that's really true. That's a story you tell yourself. And secondly, can you find a way to tap into something deeper? And sometimes you get there by doing a meditation or getting in nature, getting out of your head. So that's plugging in the hose. The second technique to break out of people pleasing and approval seeking is to own your reality. Own your reality. So let's shake our bodies out because we just did a deep kind of inner thing, self love thing. This other technique is more of a power based one. So you want to shake your body out, take a few deep breaths in, kind of quick, through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth. Good. So own your reality. When we're in the people pleasing approval seeking mode, we exist and reside. We live in other people's reality. And what I mean by that is, what do you think? Is that a nice color or a bad color? Is that a nice shirt or an ugly shirt? Was that a good thing to do or a bad thing to do? Was that movie good or bad? Are tacos delicious or not delicious? Whatever you say matters more than what I think. And that's how we operate. So you know, you're in a situation and let's say people are sharing their opinions and someone shares their opinion and you share your opinion and then you're afterwards you're like, oh, you know, I didn't say that right? Or my opinion wasn't very good there. Or like they know more than me or whatever. And you're, you're saying their perspective matters more than my own. Their opinion matters. What they want matters more. Everything of them matters more than me. Instead of deciding I'm going to live in my reality and in my reality it's okay to speak up and share your opinion. My opinion in my. And I talk about, I have the, your bill of rights in the book chapter. It is somewhere in there. 6 maybe I have a bill of rights. Like I have a right to be here is my will. That's like, that's like claiming your reality, doing that Bill of Rights. If you haven't done that exercise in the book, I will highly recommend it. If I can find it in eight seconds, I will reference where it is. Seven, six, five, four, boom. Got it. Your Bill of Rights. Page 127 of the book. A paperback version of the book. I don't know where that. It's. If you're listening to the book, it's there right at the beginning of part two, chapter six. But create your Bill of Rights. That is, if you're. I know there's a lot of exercises in the book, and most of us don't do exercises in books, unfortunately, but, dude, dudette, do that exercise. Do yourself a huge favor. I even have a video on YouTube where I talk about it. You can type in probably just, you know, confidence, Bill of Rights disease or something on YouTube and you'll find it. But doing that's helping you to help you own your reality. In my reality, it's okay. To what? In my reality? So then when someone else has an opinion or perspective, you can say, okay, that's theirs and this is mine. Mine doesn't have to be right for you. I don't have to jam mine on top of yours. Just, okay, you can have that perspective. I think you spoke up too much in that meeting. Okay. Do I think that I spoke up too much in that meeting? No. Okay, well, there you go. Right. And so it's shifting that from. You think that. Okay, that's so. So we need to strengthen our reality. And the best way to do that is going to be creating your own Bill of Rights. I have a right to what? What are all the things that you have a right to do that's more in the book, so. And then that YouTube video. So in the service of time, because we're already almost at an hour. I'm not going to go into that because I want to get to the three steps to being less nice and the biggest mistake. And then we're going to do a little more Q and A. And then I want to share a gift that I have with you for those of you who are here that I think is really going to help you make this a reality. Make this something that's going to happen for you in your life. So three steps to being less nice and more you. Step one is you have to decide to be less nice or not nice. You have to really get down in your bones like, this isn't good for me. This isn't serving me. This is making me Anxious and guilty and having body pain and. And feeling depressed and not able to have the life that I want and not able to have the relationships that I want. This is effing me up. I don't want to be this way anymore. We have to make that fundamental decision because as long as we're thinking, yeah, it's hard, but this is how I got to be to be a good person, then we're not going to make a change. We have to say, this isn't right for me. So decide to be not nice. Step two is you have to do the not nice behaviors. That means you have to assert a boundary or say no to somebody or so inside you're like, I should say yes. I should say yes. I should say yes. No, that's not gonna. I'm not gonna be able to do that, unfortunately. So you do the uncomfortable thing. Someone's saying something that you don't like. And normally you're like, okay, okay, fine. And you're like, I gotta speak up here. I don't want to. I don't want to. Hey, listen, I gotta say something here because I don't think that that's gonna work, or I don't like that idea, or I don't like what you're doing here. And if you want very granular, specific strategies on how to do that, obviously the book's got done hundreds of examples of stuff, but you know, you have to do it. That means saying no. That means asking for what you want. That means being more assertive. And then this is the other step that, the third step that most people don't realize. First of all, step two requires courage, requires boldness. Maybe it requires some desperation because you don't want to live the way you've been living. That's how it was for me. And then step three, though, is work through all the uncomfortable shit that comes up when you do step two and take the not nice actions, because it will come up. So you say no to someone, maybe you'll feel guilty. You state your opinion more firmly. Maybe you'll feel anxious afterwards. Are they upset with me? Was that too much? Was that too far? And your safety police is going to say, yeah, it was too much. Yes, that was too far. Yes, you are a bad person. Remember that. It's going to come in so strong. As soon as you start to challenge that nice cage, safety police is going to redouble its efforts and try to smash you back in it. And this little inner battle is going to start to occur and you need to keep Reaffirming. No, it's good to be this way. This is healthy to be this way. It's healthy to have boundaries. And it gets especially tricky if the person in your life is saying, no, it's bad for you to have boundaries. And you have your own programming saying that. Those are tricky situations. You got to come back to the book, you got to come back to this webinar. You got to come back to the other trainings I have and say, no, no, this is healthy. This is the right way to be. I know it because it resonates in my heart. I know it because I see the symptoms of living with too much niceness and know that it's not working for me. So step three is work through the discomfort. And the biggest mistake I see in this process the reason why most people don't really break out the ones. So there's people that get this and take action on it and their lives change. That's how it was for me. That's what I get emails about all the time from the book and other stuff that I offer and programs and the live events and other things. And that's awesome. And then there's a big chunk of people that don't and they get an intellectual understanding of the niceness, but they don't break out. And the reason, the primary reason for that is an unwillingness to be uncomfortable. That's it. An unwillingness to be uncomfortable. And such a key reason that I have an entire chapter in the book called discomfort tolerance. Increase your discomfort tolerance. Like, to really make these changes, you have to be uncomfortable. You're going to be uncomfortable. That's true for any sort of confidence building. And again, you don't have to go crazy from 0 to 100 and start, you know, storm out of your house today and start pushing. I'm going to speak up for myself a thousand times today. Start small baby steps. But even those baby steps can be uncomfortable. And so you're going to be uncomfortable and you must be willing to be uncomfortable. And that's where you got to be honest with yourself and look like, am I really being uncomfortable? Am I really, really, really willing to be uncomfortable? And if you are, and if you do, it will work. And it's a process. It takes time. So you're not going to speak up for yourself once and then be over it. And a lot of the time people are like, yeah, but I'm not going to speak up to my. It's too uncomfortable. I was just talking with a client just the other day and we were kind of dancing around this, right? It's like I'm trying to help him get into action, get into action, get into action. And he's kind of like, I don't want you. I don't know. I want it, but I don't. I want the result, but I don't want to do the uncomfortable stuff. And I'm like, you know what this is like, it's like we're at a swimming pool and you're like, aziz, I want to be swimming in the water. That's what I want to do. I want your help to help me swim in the water. And then we're on these sessions though, talking, and. And I'm like, great, let's jump in the pool. Let's try this, let's do that, do that, and everything I do. And you're like, no, I don't want to jump in the water right now. What if it's cold? Besides, what if I jump in and my toes hit the bottom of the pool? That could hurt. You know, I heard about a guy one time who dove face first into a pool and cracked his head open. Died. Besides, what if I splash other people when I jump in? That wouldn't be good. What if I jump in and I look foolish? Do a belly flop, everyone's gonna laugh at me and a million and one reasons why. And I'm like, dude, we could spend months dancing around here before you jump in the pool. Or you could just jump in the frickin pool. And here's the good news and the bad news. The good news is, if you could jump in the pool, your life's gonna transform. The bad news is jumping in the pool as big of a deal as it seems to you in this case, jumping in the pool could be what? Being more bold? Saying no, Approaching the person you're attracted to, Speaking up in a meeting, Disagreeing with someone, challenging a boss, saying something that other people might not like putting yourself out there in some way, right? Jumping in the pool might seem like the biggest deal in the world that you've been putting off for months or years, guess what? It's just the beginning. Because once you jump in the water, now you got to learn how to swim. So if you haven't been assertive forever, now you're going to jump in the water and try to be assertive once, but you're not going to be a master at it. It's not going to be all clean and perfect, it's going to be messy, you're going to flop around in the water. But that's how you're going to learn to swim is you're going to spend time in the water. So people look at it as a one time thing. Like, okay, I'm just going to work on my courage and do it once. It's like, then you're going to work up your courage and do it once and then do it again and do it again and do it again and do it again. But here's the good news. Getting the courage to do it the first time is the hardest. And then this first couple times after that, also very hard. But once you get into a rhythm with this, once you start doing becomes easier and easier and easier. It might not be more and more comfortable. Like to this day, I mean, okay, I have times where I say no to people. I say no a lot, actually to a lot of different things. And I am completely relaxed around it. And there are times, certain nos that are very uncomfortable. But what's changed is not that it's all comfortable for me. What's changed is my capacity, my strength to tolerate discomfort has increased like a muscle because I've used it again and again and again. That's your discomfort tolerance muscle. So let's get uncomfortable. That's what we want to do. And I'm going to answer some questions now. I'm very excited to dive into that for a little bit. Before I do though, I want to talk about the gift that I was talking about earlier. And that is I have a new person on my team that I've been working with for a while now who is amazing and she is our lead strategist because basically there are so many people that we can help that I want to talk to, but I can't, I can't get. I used to do all the calls myself and I just can't talk to everyone. And yet there are specific things that we can help you do. We can help you get clarity on exactly what confidence is going to look like for you. Like where, what are the changes that you want to make? Like what's going to look like in a year from now when you have like way more confidence in your dating life and your social life and your career, in being less nice and more bold. Help you get complete clarity. That's a process that's hard to do on our own. And this is what I would do on the phone with people. We can also help you uncover specifically for you what are the hidden obstacles that are stopping you and then say, here are the ways that we can help you so these calls, I call them, maximize your confidence session because you're going to leave them with that clarity, with knowing what's getting in the way. And if you want to know how I work with people and how we help people have so many different options, it's a powerful way to do that. And Lori is her name, my lead strategist. She is going to be available. She's opening up her calendar to do a number of these sessions. We can't get to everyone, unfortunately, but we're going to offer it for free. And whether you want to go further with me or not, that's totally fine. You're going to get a ton out of just talking with her to get clarity on what it is that you're moving towards and what are the hidden obstacles that is worth its weight in gold. And you can find out about more other options that we have too. So to get that to everyone, I'm going to type in the URL right here in. There it is in here it's. And I'm going to say it verbally to how to send to everyone. There we go. I think everyone should see that. Hopefully go to your confidencecode.com bookit as in book your session. Book it. Your confidence code.com bookit so if you're listening to this and you can't, you're not watching the chat or whatever. And when I send out the replay, also have a link to this, but it's your confidence code.com bookit b o o K I T and again, these will. So you go there and you can just click a button. It'll kind of tell you what the session is, which I already described. Click a button. And then there's a short survey that we have a little questionnaire. It's gonna help us know who you are, what you're working on, that sort of thing. And then you can book the session right away. And again, that's until her calendar fills up. But still reach out. If you fill out the survey, we'll get back in touch with you because, you know, she might not have enough spots, but she'll open up more because we want her to be able to talk to everyone. And it's a great way to find out about how we're helping people because that's what we're doing now is we're helping people make these shifts from theoretical to practical. So I'm very excited about that. Go check that out. Take advantage of that. I don't know how often we could do something like this where we do it for that many people for free. So now is a great time to do that. And let's talk about some of your questions now, and then we'll wrap up for today, so. Oh, great. Okay. Natalie's talking about the book, so throw in your questions in the chat. What questions do you have? And we want to get fancy here. I don't know how this works with this many people want to call. I guess I can't see everyone. Okay. So I wouldn't be able to call on you and do an audio, I don't think, with this. This version of Zoom. So let's go back to me and let's type your question in the chat. That's probably the most efficient way to do it. Any questions about anything that we covered today so far? And I'll do. I'll end with a recap, too, if you're kind of like, whoa, that was a lot. Good. It's a lot to work with. Okay. Here's a question from. Okay, S.R. brown. Hey, Aziz, how would you set a boundary if someone wants you to be fully engaged with them in a conversation when you're feeling too tired, exhausted, or aren't in a good mood to be fully engaged? They seem to give an intimidating glare after. When I'm not 100% fully engaged, this is great. These are the micro boundaries. These are questions that I love. Right. Because this is real life. How does not nice apply here? So first and foremost, in my reality, this is my bill of rights. In my reality, I get to choose where I put my attention. And so, you know, that's important. If I'm feeling down or low or hurting or something, and I don't want to give 100% attention, I don't have to. That's a new one. When I was younger, I felt like I had to give 100% attention to everyone or else they'd feel hurt and I'd be a terrible guy. So first and foremost, noticing, like, what do I got right now? Tanks kind of empty. Don't want to do this. Secondly, I would say, what's happening? I would bring that up and I would say I noticed that I'm actually. I'm having a hard time tracking right now. I'm feeling a bit. Whatever you're feeling. I'm feeling tired right now. I'm feeling kind of drained right now. So I'm having a hard time tracking. Oh, my camera just freaked out. I think I'm back. My back there. I'm back. I'm having a hard time tracking right now. And I feel a little bit drained. I want to talk about this with you, but I'm not sure if I can do that right now. And if it's a work situation, you might say, hey, let's talk about this tomorrow or after lunch. If it's a spouse or a partner or girlfriend or a friend or something, say, hey, feel a little drain right now. Let's talk about this a little bit more later. Or maybe I need to get a snack or eat some food, and then we can talk about it a little bit. So this is the nuance of assertiveness. Sometimes people think, like, assertiveness is like, listen, I'm gonna set a boundary on you right now. I don't have to give you my attention. I'm too tired. Like, no, it's just you let them know what's going on and say, hey, let's do something else. That's how I would do that in that situation. Okay. Yes, Recording. Okay. Natalie says, I'd like some insight on attempting to become more assertive, but really just coming off as aggression. Secondly, I find myself wanting to speak out or say what I'm thinking, etc. And a lot of times I find myself disagreeing for the point of disagreeing to prove to myself that I'm not nice. So I noticed sometimes it somehow becomes inauthentic. Does that make sense? Yes, it absolutely does. I was talking about this to client recently, and I was saying to him, I was like, dude, you got to pick your battles. Like, there was a scenario where someone. It's a long story, but someone talked to his spouse about something they didn't like, that she did something, and she handled it fine. She's like, I understand you're upset. It's okay. Blah, blah, blah. They sorted it all out. He finds out about it. It's like, I should call that guy back. And I heard more about the scenario. I was like, well, it sounded like the guy kind of just respectfully said he didn't like something, and she handled it fine. He's like, yeah, but it's kind of like, I need to practice. And I was like, pick your battles. Pick your battles. Find something else. So, yes, like, anything. We don't need to take it too far and say, okay, I have to disagree all the time. Look for the authentic. You know, the goal here is authenticity, right? Not to just have these skills. Like, we want to have these skills in the service of being more freely ourselves. So being able to say when you disagree in an actual situation, that's going to be the Challenge. I would not do it just for the sake of doing it. Look, if you really look, you'll be able to find little things and maybe just like small disagreements, like, oh, and a disagreement doesn't even necessarily make the other person wrong. In fact, that's a usually less effective way to disagree. Instead, it's just offering a different perspective. Oh, I think, you know, I think, you know, pork rinds are amazing is what someone says. And you say, really ew. That's disagreement, right? So look for those little moments to be authentic in that way. And that's what I would say. If someone said they like pork rinds, I would say, really ew. And then the other part was just like, is this aggression? So this is a calibration issue. And people that are excessively nice for a long time and then try to become more assertive or are becoming more assertive, it's hard to know if you're coming off as aggressive or assertive because to you, when you're overly nice, any speaking up feels like it's a terrible aggression to anyone. I'm hurting people all the time. Right, so your calibration might be off. Like, for example, someone's asking, I have a person on my team, she's awesome and she's just being in my world and the last maybe a couple of years we've worked together, she's become a lot less nice. And sometimes I'll even talk to her during a meeting about a situation. She's like, sounds like you're being nice there. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you, let me change that. So, but she's working on it and there'll be a situation where someone's asking or needing something from her and she's like, oh, maybe we'll send him an email that says this or that or that, you know, And I was like, just send him an email. Say, no, no, we can't do that. No. She's like, oh, okay. Like, don't we need to be more sorry about it? I'm like, no, I don't think so. We don't owe them that, you know, So a lot of the time it's a calibration issue, like, that's just assertive. There is a case though, that sometimes the person has been super passive, super nice for too long and then it's like all this resentment and it's like, alright, world, you push me around for too long. Now I'm gonna speak up. And then we go in there and we are, we do have an edge to our Voice. Oh, yeah. Well, I have a right to be authentic and honest, so I'm gonna tell you what I think. And look, that's okay. That's part of the process. It's messy. You'll calibrate. A distinction is that assertiveness usually has a sense of like, my needs matter and are important and I'm worthy of respect. And your needs matter and are important and you're worthy of respect. Let's put it all on the table and hash it out and see where we are. But be honest with each other. Aggression is like, listen, this is my time now. It's about me. I don't give a shit about you. That's kind of the energy behind it now. I'll say, this is where the. It gets so complex. That's why the book's 500 pages and still didn't have everything I wanted in it. When we're passive and we need to start to becoming assertive, it's okay to feel aggression inside. That aggression inside might be the very fuel that you need to speak up. So someone is saying something that you don't like or interrupts you, and in your body, in your head, is like, what the F, Jerry? You know, shut up is what says in your mind. That's not necessarily aggression because it hasn't come out of your mouth yet. That's just anger inside. You don't want to speak up in the meeting and say, what the f. Shut up, Jerry. It's not going to go well. You want to take that energy, though, so you're not just like, okay, sorry. Sorry, Jerry. You're right. You take that energy of aggression and you funnel it. It's like a. The bellows are like a flame. And then you funnel that flame up through some network in your brain that's like, oh, yeah, let's reframe that. And then it comes out of your mouth as power. And you say, let's say Jeremy steamrolls you in a meeting. You're talking, and he overrides you and starts talking. And you say, hold on. Hold on a second. Hold on, Jerry, I'm not done. Let me finish my point. Then you proceed to finish your point. And notice how there's, like, a power to that. There's an authority to that. There's not a pleasing energy to that. That's assertiveness. But you're using the power that comes from that aggression. There's a lot more in depth about that in the book, but that'll answer that question. Okay, these are all good. I gotta Read through to make sure this is a good one from Naveed. Do you think if someone wants to be assertive and other persons around you don't let you grow? Okay, I think the gist of that question is like, I want to be more assertive, but other people around me are not letting me. They're not letting me grow. Yeah. Welcome to being a human animal as part of the pack. You know, people are conditioned to how we are around them. Not only that, but we tend to attract people that fit with us like puzzle pieces. So the overly nice guy who's very passive attracts the friends and the partner and the boss that are, like, controlling and dominant and, you know, treat them like, you know, treat others like doormats. It's like, oh, look, I'm a doormat. We were a good fit. You can step on me. Right? So we attract those people into our lives. We train them as well. Even if we take someone who doesn't treat everyone like that, they start to treat us more like that because we train them, because we're always that way with them. And so what happens is, you know, we still need. We still want to shift. We want to become more free. So what we need to do is we need to start changing our behavior. And when we do, a couple of things happen. One, it's often just a fear in our head. Oh, my God. If I did that at work, everyone would be like, what are you doing? Reality is, that's just a fear in our head. We have to test it. And a lot of times people just fall right in line and start to respond to the new you without objection. So I would really encourage you to challenge and test that in all settings. Don't use that as an excuse to not do the uncomfortable stuff. And there is a reality that in certain relationships, they found this in family systems therapy. They called it the change back phenomenon. And that is when someone would try to make a positive change, other family members would do something unpleasant to try to make them change back. And the message was almost like, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't like this. Go back to the way you were and everything's cool. And maybe they show that by, like, getting angry at the person, yelling at the person, stonewalling, or freezing another person out, avoiding the person talking negatively about the person doing something to try to make them change back. So if that's happening for you, the answer is boldness. The answer is to take total ownership and total responsibility for your life because you don't want to be 10 years from now or 20 years from now or on your deathbed and to have the primary regret of the dying and the five regrets of the dying, which the primary regret is, I did not live the life that I wanted to live. I lived. I did what others wanted. I was not who I am, but who others wanted me to be. The primary regret of the dying, from this big article that came out maybe, I don't know, five years ago or something. So you don't want to be in that situation. So you got to take total ownership and say, look, it's not them stopping me. It's me stopping me. Even if they're saying stop, I'm the one who's then saying, okay, fine, fine, fine. And we need to persevere, and we need to keep going. And what. What's going to happen is either they're going to eventually come into line or that relationship is going to dissolve. And I've seen both happen. And sometimes the relationship dissolving is what needs to happen. And that could be a friendship, that could be a romantic relationship, that could be a marriage. Because a lot of people I worked with have created a marriage. They got married in their 20s, and now it's their late 30s or 40s, and they were the nice guy when they got married or the nice woman when she got married at 30, and now she's 42, and it's like, oh, my God. And yes, sometimes we have to dissolve those relationships. Not always, though. The other person might just give you a little pushback and then, you know, say, okay, all right. That's how you're gonna do it now. Very, very good. Okay. Leila says setting boundaries causes so much anger. With my family. You nailed it. Being assertive. Yeah, man. Family, dude. Family is probably one of the hardest places to apply. Learning, being not nice, being more authentically yourself. So you have kind of spheres. The first place is you. You want to start to become more freely, authentically yourself around strangers because they don't know you. So you can be however you want to be around them. So you can be more assertive, ask what you want, say, no, Be more direct with strangers. Then, you know, acquaintances, colleagues. You don't know that well. Then closer, inner circle colleagues. You see, every day, friends is where it gets a little harder or a lot harder. And again, with friendships, I've seen this a lot. People have friends from when they were young, in high school or college or whatever, and now it's 10, 15, 20 years later, and they get around that group of friends, and they. And they can't be themselves because they've grown a lot. They don't want to be this person. And sometimes they either need to boldly show up and see if those friendships survive, or they need to find new people to spend more time with that are. That are meeting them at that level. And then the hardest level, though, I found for most people, myself included, is to be not nice is with direct family or extended family, because that's where the pressure. That's the chamber where it all developed. Right. That's where you learned the niceness. So it's where the training, the nice training came from. And so your parents or other people in your family, siblings, aunts, uncles, extended family, might lovingly be pushing you back into a certain role. And that's where it gets really interesting on, you know, how much what do I do with that? And that's it. That's a big topic, but it's very common. And I wouldn't. The short answer to that is I would be very cautious about saying, well, I guess I just. I'll stop all this growth stuff to make sure that they like me. That's a possibly a suboptimal choice. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Ishmael says, I want to share my experience. The most important thing that helped me the most was being on my own side, no matter what. Once I stopped being my own enemy, all the pain and misery just dissolved. Yeah. That's awesome to hear, man. And I would agree with that. It's huge. And it really helps this stuff in a deep way. Awesome. Okay. Sarah says how to deal with people talking over you, especially as a woman. Yeah. People talking over you is a big deal. And it can happen more in certain particular groups, cultures and. Or companies. Organizations can have cultures where the woman might get. There might be an overlooking of, like, yeah, she's getting talked over. It's just kind of how it is. So, again, this one is. It's very important we train people on how to treat us. And so if we just keep letting it happen, we're condoning it, we're allowing it, we're kind of encouraging it, unfortunately. And so we need to speak up. The solution is to actually speak up in the moment. Because if you go to that person later and be like, hey, I noticed you talked over me in the meeting, and I didn't like that. Like, that's. It's probably not going to work. I don't know the exact specifics, but it's probably not going to work as effectively as in the meeting. It's like a show of force It's a power. You're demonstrating. A lot of this stuff I talk about in the book too. Pack hierarchy stuff. Like we're animals. We are. Underneath our intellect and our science, we're animals, right? So there's all this stuff going on, power and whatever. And so we need to be able to display calm, dominant. As Cesar Chavez, not Cesar Chavez, as Cesar Milan, the Dog whisperer. Calm, dominant energy. So you need to have your calm, dominant energy. And so that would be. Someone tries to override you and you need to stop that. Hold, hold on a second. One of the best ways to do it, here's a, Here's a stock phrase that almost works every time they start to talk now it's different if, let's say it's like your boss, maybe there is a culture in which case you have to let them finish and then you still can speak back up, though, and continue on. But let's say it's not, let's say it's a colleague or a peer or whatever. They don't have that authority over you and they start to interrupt you. Or even this can happen socially too. Someone starts to interrupt you and, and I would put my hand up slightly, not like a, just like a, like it would be, look, just like this. So I'm talking and they start to interrupt and I'd say, hold on a sec, hold on a sec, let me finish. So my point is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hold on a sec. And notice I'll, I'll even sometimes do like, like it's like a halting, like, hold on a sec. You might want to even practice that like in the mirror in your car ride. Hold on, hold on a second. Hold on. And notice my volume might get a little louder. Or wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me, let me finish. Hold on, hold on a sec. This is important. I want to get to this and then I want to hear from you. And if you want to make it more, you know, rapport building, you could say, hold on a sec. And notice the voice tone. It doesn't have to be. Hold on a second, I'm not done. Can I finish? Can I finish? Can you let me finish? You know, you could just say, and this is a rapport maintaining way to do it. You could say, hold on a sec, hold on a sec. I want to finish my point here. And then, and then I want to. But I do want to hear what you're saying. So let me finish though, because this is important. Do you see how warm that Is yet firm, how assertive that is, yet not aggressive. So that's how I handle that situation. Okay, these are some great questions. I'm going to be able to have time for one more question, and then I. And then we're. Or maybe two. We'll see. Just a few more minutes here. I do want to mention, in case you missed it. What do I got? Do I still have it in the thread here? I'm going to paste into the chat that opportunity to book a session with my lead strategist, where we're going to help you get total clarity on what your life's going to be like. When you have the confidence that you want. Very powerful exercise to do that with you. What are the obstacles? Uncovering what's really getting in your specific way, tailored for you, and then how we can help you if you want to shift that. But you don't have to do that. You can still just get the benefit of talking to her. It's highly worth it. I recommend it. She's gonna do as many as she can. So go to yourconfidencecode.com bookit b o o k I t yourconfidencecode.com bookit and you'll be able to meet with her then. And we'll have the recording for this training. I'll send it out to y'. All. Y' all on the list. Also be putting it up on YouTube, so that's a great way you can find it as well. Awesome. And this is time limited as well. And you can talk about this with Lori if you wanted, but we. I have my live event. Oh, I forgot all about this. So at my live event, the ultimate confidence breakthrough. It's coming up in, like, three weeks, June 22nd through 24th, in Portland, Oregon. And the entire focus of the event is how to overcome your fear of rejection, eliminate your fear of embarrassment. And what are people going to think of me? And, ooh, what if they don't? What if they don't like me? And be less nice and more you. So if you found this training valuable, like, oh, wow, this is what I need. This is like the tip of the iceberg. You know that exercise we did earlier, when in your heart, like, imagine way more stuff, way more in depth, way more interactive, way more like, getting you to do this stuff in a way that. Where it's not actually even that bad. Like, we help you raise your energy, your power. You get to support the group, and you leave there doing stuff that you've never done before. That happens every weekend. That People do things that they've never done during the weekend. So it's not theoretical luxury. It's like interactive. I teach a lot and we do a lot and you bond with people there. It's awesome. So we have several spots left for that. The room is getting close, close to full. I don't know to talk to some of my team. Maybe there's about five spots left, I'm not sure. Something like that. And it's June 22nd to 24th. You can go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com Let me type that in here as well. Social confidence confidence center.com and just type on. Click on the events tab and then it's the first event. You click on that, you'll be able to find out all about it and book that. Ryan asked, am I coming to la? No, come here. Come to Portland. It's worth it. People fly from all over the world, different countries we've had people fly from. So Europe, people fly from Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, all of the east coast, United States. So it's, it's worth it. It's worth it. It's a big commitment to yourself to say I'm going to do this and invest the time, the money, the flight, everything like you people are there to get results. That's amazing to be in a room with that many people where people are like where I'm gonna solve this, we're gonna do this so you get inspired being around people. So yeah, check it out. No, no world tour trips planned right now. I got a two and a half and four and a half year old and I like to spend a lot of time with them and I travel enough for other things so I don't want to throw in events too. Okay. Ever coming to New York. Someday when the kids are a bit older, I might do a bit more traveling. But not right now. Right now it's all Portland or virtual. And one other just to let you guys know because I'm so excited about it. Keep your eyes peeled for Confidence University, releasing in July. It's the most comprehensive best confidence training program that I've created and I think that is out there and it is step by step guidance. It's the best thing. Like next to one on one coaching. With me it's like the best thing. So that's what I would recommend anyway. There's all kinds of cool stuff. Let me answer one more awesome question here. Michelle says live events are totally the next level experience. Highly recommended. Mike Watts says yes. His live events are game changing. Awesome. Mike okay, here we go. One more question. What's going to be the cost of Confidence University? Well, that's still being determined, but I will tell you this, that when we launch it, it's going to be an internal launch to you guys, to my list only. We're not sending it out to other people, just my list. And we're going to have what's called a founders rate. First of all, this course is designed to be extremely accessible to anyone because I can't tell you how many people from high school and college and I don't have as money to do this, and I'm like, I want to be able to help you, so. And a book is awesome, but we need something way better. So it's designed already and we're having a founders. A founders, whatever. Got to come up, better name for it. But if you're a founding member, that's what it is. You're a founding member of Confidence University. We're going to have half off the normal rate. We're still deciding all the pricing, but extremely accessible. Everyone is going to be able to afford this program. That's my goal. And you're going to be blown away because it's like 10x what anything else I've ever created for like a fraction of what the cost is. Because at this point, and you know, my game is not to earn as much money as I can before I die. My game is to. Is to help as many people make these changes as I can before I die and after I die, if Confidence University lives on. Okay, let me answer this question here. Erica says, I heard a podcast where you describe your neighbor coming into your yard. Oh, I think this might be a metaphor for bet boundaries. But let me read this. Coming to your yard, eating a peach off your tree, then finally stepping on your flowers. I can honestly say I'm ready to stop this cycle. Since my yard is now being replanted by others, I'm ready to find my yard again. Yeah, good. I hear that as, like, I want boundaries. I want to be more assertive. I want to say no to things that I don't like. Yeah, yeah, I'm on board with that. You do that. Yeah. Leela says, how can I deal with a panicky feeling when I'm being assertive? Breathing, not sure what to do. Yeah, so panicky feeling, being not assertive. So that's okay. I. To this day, when there's a high charge situation and I need to speak up, you know, for years, I used to avoid it. Now I'll generally Speak up. I can get a flush through my nervous system. It's like a strange feeling in my head. And it's like it's arousal chemicals. It's like it's fight or flight, right? Maybe the fight version of. But you're not necessarily fighting them, but it's like you're mobilizing and so that can, that can be uncomfortable. And I would say that the way that we build that capacity to tolerate that. And it's okay if your voice is shaky, it's okay if the words don't come out perfect. Like when we're learning this stuff, think of it as like a long term skill. Like it's okay to be messy. And so when you are uncomfortable as you do it and it's okay to have that be seen, you don't have to be all polished and perfect. Now if it's like it's so intense I can't even do it, then I would encourage you to start, you know, with smaller stuff. Maybe don't go confront your, your boss about X or your dad about Y or you know, your best friend about Z. Just like pick something small, something minor. Little ways to say no to people, little ways to say disagree with someone or little ways to be a little more authentically yourself and build up a tolerance, a capacity to be able to have that panicky, uncomfortable feeling and still operate. That's the goal. Sometimes people are like, no, I want all the feelings to go away and feel totally relaxed and great. And then I'll take the action. It's like, well, you might be waiting for a while on that one. Ryan's practicing in the chat. No, no, no. Awesome. Hey, it's been fantastic to be with you guys. I see so many good questions I really love. So the cool thing about the zoom thing is it can save the whole chat and I can go through here and answer some of these are really good questions that I want to give like a long, in depth answer. So I'm going to pick some of the questions out of here and do YouTube videos. I'm going to be doing more q and a YouTube videos over the next month. There's a ton of questions from the channel. So I'll be answering a lot of stuff. So great questions in here. Thank you so much. I love, love, love being with you. I love how motivated you are, how curious you are, how much you want to figure this out. And what's most exciting about this is because one of my core missions in life, this is the third one, I have three missions in life that I've identified. The third mission is to inspire radical and rapid transformation in as many people as I can. And what lights me up about this is this is you being this curious and really wanting to know and showing up and taking an hour and a half of your life to be on a webinar and study this stuff. This, to me, shows that you are, like, gonna get there because you're doing it. You know, you're reading the book, you're studying this, you're practicing like you're doing it. And that's awesome. That lights me up because that's what I'm here to do, is help you do that. So it's an honor to be with you. Thank you for being here with me. Check out that session. I highly recommend doing that before they fill up. I don't know what her counter capacity is, but she'll let you know if it's too full and then maybe get back to you later. I'm not sure exactly what the capacity is for her at this point, so go to yourconfidencecode.com bookit bookit. And many different ways to resolve these problems once and for all. And on a note about that, you know, this is a lifelong journey. So when I say resolve the once and for all, I mean, like, you're no longer totally limited. You're able to be you. And let's bring this all back as we conclude here to what we're here to do and what you're here to do, which is to let go of being nice and just. I encourage you to jump in the pool, take the risk, be uncomfortable, and just start being more bold to yourself. Because in all this training and everywhere else, we talk about all the fears and the desert and this is going to go bad. And. And what we don't focus on enough is how amazing it is on the other side, how much better your life is going to be when you start to do this. And I can say that from firsthand experience, my life is a thousand fold better day to day. I don't feel that same pressure and tension and frustration. And I feel good. I feel powerful, I feel strong, I feel capable. I feel able to speak up for myself. I'm able to massage life and relationships to be more of what I want. So I'm able to spend the time that I want with a certain person. I'm able to say no to that person and yes to that person and no to that thing and yes to that. And you get to live life more and more on your terms. So it's worth it. I know it's uncomfortable at times and it's hard, but it's so worth it. And you're doing it, and you're awesome. Until we speak again, we have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are awesome. And I look forward to seeing you again soon. All right, Have a good night, everybody.