3 Secrets To Get Yourself To Take Action Now

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. I'm Dr. Aziz, and it's good to be with you today. Today we're going to be looking at three secrets to getting yourself to take action. And of course, this is not in everything in your life. I'm sure you're taking lots of actions already, doing all kinds of things where we need. This is the places where we tend to not take action, tend to avo, avoid and put things off and procrastinate. And that's where we want to apply this. Because if you've listened to any of this show or anything else I put out there, I'm a big believer in action as one of the key ingredients to creating confidence. In fact, one of my favorite sayings is confidence is a byproduct of action. And so if we're waiting around to feel like it and feel more confident doesn't quite work. And if we can get ourselves to just do the thing, then we might get confidence as a result. And that could be very specific things related to building confidence, like social practice and putting yourself out there and taking social risks. But there's also all kinds of things you could be doing that are going to generally help you in your life directly with confidence, indirectly with confidence. So, you know, getting up, having a morning routine, or getting to bed earlier, eating better, not drinking, other things like that can directly relate to how you feel and your confidence. And it also involves, you know, getting your life in order and feeling just better about your life circumstances, which also can build your confidence because you feel the. The essence of it is like, yeah, I'm on top of things. I'm. I'm proactive in my life. I'm taking things on, and I don't mean any one specific thing, but just a general feeling. And I'm sure you know the feeling I'm talking about where you're just like, you have your stuff together, you're addressing Things versus the other feeling, which I'm sure you know, we all know where it's kind of like, ugh, I'm just getting through the day. And like, our capacity to face things and take things on feels kind of soft and weak and we're just like, ugh, I can't deal with all that. Ugh, I know I should. I know I should. Ugh, I'm not right. Lots of groaning, whether you do it outside or internally. And that's what we're going to address today. So I'm excited to dive right into it. Before we do, let me have a quick request slash invitation that if you've listened to a handful of these shows or more and you have not given it a review on itunes, this show is entirely free. There's, I don't even know how many done. Almost 600. Coming up on the 600th episode. Oh, my God. Let's take a look. Yeah, we're at episode 590 right now. So this is like, I don't know how many years, 10 years or more of doing this for free. So if you. And they're all available, if you want to go back and go on a. On a binge. Who needs Netflix when you have millions of hours of me? In any case, if you're benefiting from it and you think other people would benefit from it, then my big request for you is to go to itunes or Spotify or, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and just give it a review. Because what that does is that helps it actually reach more people. And then if people are curious about the show and they want to check it out and they look at the reviews, they're like, oh, this is legit. And maybe that's what you did, too. So that's my request. I know it doesn't cost anything, but it's just a moment of your time. And I would really appreciate that because it helps me spread the mission, which is the point, because there's, you know, as many people as here right now, and we're doing this, there's 10x more, a thousandx more, who don't know anything about this and think that social anxiety and low confidence is just who they are and how it is. And I'm on a mission to reach as many of those people as I can who are in that exact same place that I was and help them realize that something, so much more is possible. So if you want to support me in this mission, be on this mission together, mass liberation, then let's do it and you could put that review, obviously, five stars, right? Am I right? Whatever you want. Okay, so let's talk about getting yourself to do things like giving me a review. No other things in your life that are more directly relevant to you, which is. What would that be? First of all, you know, some examples might be, I hear this from clients all the time. I want to get out there and interact more with people. I want to go to social events more. I want to approach people. And there's different things, right. You know, it's the dating life, the social life, the career stuff. Depends on what people's main goals are. But I'm sure you could think of at least half dozen things right now that would be great to do. You'd feel good doing them. Maybe not in the moment, but afterwards, like working out or eating certain ways. The social side of things. Oh, if I spent more time with this person or if I had that difficult conversation. So when I ask anyone and we start to probe a little bit in their life, they can easily come up with six things, 12 things that they would do or could do that would improve things. And even if we don't know, maybe there's a challenge you're facing. You're like, I'm not exactly sure what the thing to do is here, but you could try a variety of things, right? And then you could find out. And so maybe you don't know the exact one thing, but there's a. There's some options. So we have a lot of ideas, we know a lot of things, and then what happens? Well, we don't necessarily do them. And then we tell ourselves, ah, I should do them. And we create this leaning, this pressure inside. And maybe that works often not because then to. The response to the pressure is resistance, right? It's like, what is it? A force is met with an equal and opposite reaction. Some Newtonian physics up in here. That's right. I remember things from school and stuff. But, you know, we have this resistance and that's just a human phenomenon too. Someone leans on you and like, hey, you should do this or think this. And we're like, I instantly don't, right? Or there's some part of us that resists. So that's what happens with ourselves too. So you should on yourself, as they say in cognitive therapy. And there's another part of you is like the rebel inside who's like, you ain't gonna shoot on me. I'm a free. I'm a free citizen. I'm a free human, right? So then what well, now we have this inner tension going on, and then we can also collapse into a negative identity. Oh, I guess I'm the kind of person who just can't. Blah, blah, blah. I guess I'm just a scared person because I'm just an awkward person. I guess I'm just a lazy person. I'm not the kind of person who can follow through. Now, the thing about your identity is it's usually not. It's not verbalized. It's just perceived known about yourself. We conclude it without necessarily having a long verbal story and certainly don't talk about it much out loud with others. So we just kind of see ourselves that way, and then we become consistent with that identity. Right. So boo on this whole pattern. And how do we shift this? Let's talk about the secrets to getting ourselves to do things. Well, first things first is just seeing this whole pattern and how it doesn't work. Because if you keep trying to shit on yourself, and that's not gonna work. If you really believe your identity about yourself, like, I'm the kind of person who can't do blah, blah, blah, then that's gonna keep you stuck. So the first secret. We've already done it. Ha ha ha. Yes. Look at that. It's like Mr. Miyagi. No one knows that reference anymore. It's from the 80s. So sad. Anyway, there you go. The first thing is to notice that pattern and do something different. So when you catch yourself having that identity of. I guess I can. I'm not the kind of person who can catch it and say, oh, that's a very limiting identity. The truth is, I can do all kinds of things. Just depends upon where I put my energy and focus over time. And I'll be a whole new person if I just did that over time. Right? That could be with anything. That's very obvious. With, like, physical transformations, right? So someone who's really overweight and sedentary, and then you see them a year later, and you're like, whoa, look at you. You know, and everyone applauds. I lost 35, 45 pounds. Everyone's like, Whoa, clap, clap, clap, clap. Or someone is like, I used to be an alcoholic, and I've had two years sober. And everyone's like, yay, clap, clap, clap. Right? Because we're celebrating the identity transformation, and it happened. But why? Because the person consistently did something different for a year or two, whether it was the alcohol or the eating example, right? So we do very different things and become a very different person. Very different version of yourself. Is Maybe a different way of saying that. So what's, what's another secret beyond just noticing the pattern? Choosing something different. What do we choose instead? Well, one thing that's really beneficial is to be very connected with. So we want pain and pleasure. That's what motivates humans. We're very, you know, we're animals. And animals like to move towards things that feel good and away from things that feel bad. That's true for every animal on the planet. Whether it's an insect, even a singular cell organism will move towards whatever its form of pleasure is. Right. Sugar, versus a path toxin or something. It'll move towards or away. And it's the same thing all the way up to us mighty beings that are humans. Barely animal at all, really. So above it, look, I have a suit on and a haircut. I am totally not an animal, except for I am. I am very much an animal. So we all are. And therefore, we want to motivate ourselves with pain and pleasure, which are the two other secrets. So which one do you want to start with? Pain or pleasure? Ooh, is this some sort of weird, sexy game? No, no. But guess what? We're going to start with this pain. We're starting with pain. That's what we're going to do. Because that's the biggest motivator for you. And I could say that even without having known you, and maybe we've met, I don't know, maybe we've hung out, an event. But even though I didn't know you, I could say for every human, the biggest motivator is pain. That is because that's what research shows. And we're twice as motivated to respond to pain than to pleasure. Like, we're more twice as motivated to do something to avoid pain than to get pleasure. So we want actually both levers on ourselves, pain and pleasure. But the first lever we're going to look at is pain. And there's a term from nlp, it's called getting leverage on yourself. Right? But think of it as, you know, you have. You want to lift something really heavy and you can't. And then you get a lever which allows you from far away to be able to lift it up. Or think maybe no one does that at this point. But imagine like turning something right. Like you can't turn it with your. With your hands. So you get a tool that gives you a different angle from further out. You get more leverage. Think of like a wrench or something. So we need leverage on ourselves to get ourselves to move, especially when we Feel stuck. Pain is the best form of leverage. And how do we get that on ourselves? Well, there's a few different ways. One is the problem that we need to solve to get leverage on ourselves is we need to stop the distance and the denial, the defenses. Basically, we have defenses against the pain that we're experiencing or creating. And so we actually want to feel the pain. I know, it's crazy. We're like, no, I'm already in a lot of pain. Yeah, but it's kind of like the pain that's the consequences of your inaction. That's the kind of pain that we're talking about. Or the pain of the negative identity and telling yourself that you suck. I mean, that's painful for sure. Trust me, I lived in that one for many years. It's awful. But it's not the good kind of pain. Here's the good kind of pain is. Let's say you are. What's something you want to do? And let's put it in the realm of social confidence so we're not just completely general or abstract in this episode. So let's say you want to have more friends, more social connection, right? And you don't really have that many people in your life. And you're like, I should probably go out and meet people more. I don't want to. It's so hard. And I'm awkward in conversations and negative identity statement number one and negative identity statement number two and blah, blah, blah. And then I'm feeling stuck and procrastinating and I should go out and do it. Okay, let's notice the pain right now. What pain? Well, what is it costing me to not have friends in my life at the way that I want? Now this. This is. This is interesting because they're like, oh, my God, I don't. I can't go there. I just. It feels. So if I don't want feel this loneliness and it's pain, here's the thing. Pain is really hard to use as a tool, as leverage, even though we need it. It's the most important form of leverage. It's hard if we are also in a negative story that it's impossible and it's hopeless and we can't change it because then why would you want to go to the pain? That's very scary, right? So if someone goes into man, I don't have any friends. I feel lonely, missing out on my life. I'm missing out on adventures, right? That's like a good form of pain to see. But then we're like, and I'm never gonna have it. Oh, now I'm depressed. Right. So the way we around this is to take total ownership of your life, and that means being willing to see through the identity stories you have. I mean, that's so beyond the scope of this one episode. You could find other episodes all about your identity. You could check out my book, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence, where I go deep into your identity stories and how all your stories, including your identity stories, are actually just a cover to try to keep you from fear and then from doing the things that you really want to do in your life. So it's a whole elaborate illusion. It's a ruse. But just for now, that's the short version. That was the Cliff Notes of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence, and I recommend checking that out for more. A deep dive on that. So we have to see. Take total ownership. It's like, I'm going to not buy that. I'm going to see what's true. I really want to know. And, of course, I can shift these things in my life. And you really want to. You want to want freedom. You need to want freedom more than you want that sense of certainty and security through what's the familiar, the. In fact, that's how we start the Book of Extraordinary Confidence. The Art of Extraordinary Confidence is like, you are addicted to as a warning. Like, comfort is killing you. And they say actually it's your addiction to comfort that's killing you. Right? There's nothing wrong with comfort. There's nothing wrong with binging out to Netflix once in a while. But if that becomes your default, you do that every night, your life's gonna suffer, whether it's your physical health, your social life, your relationship. Something is not going right if that's what we're doing all the time. So we have to see through that, challenge that, and then get real leverage on myself. Like, what is. Man, this sucks. I'm alone. And then we got to go into the future. We got to say, where is this taking me? Where am I going to be in five years doing this? Where am I going to be in 10 years? In fact, that is how I got massive insano leverage on myself when I was 21 years old and I lived in social anxiety for a decade, formed the worst identities I could about myself and would still be in that 20 years later had it not been for one night. When I got massive leverage on myself. It wasn't even on purpose. It just happened. I didn't even know what I was doing. But there was a Moment where I felt this massive amount of pain. I worked up the courage to go on a date, and then she didn't want to be with me again. That happened many times. Well, not me a few times. That's the only. The few times that I worked myself up to. To actually be able to get a date, which is very few and far between. And, you know, my roommate was with his girlfriend, and I just was like, oh, God, I'm gonna die. And I was about to go try to numb out to the pain, you know, the video games and other things. And then I had this moment where I felt like I was. I felt. I don't know if it was the next decade or maybe even the rest of my life in that pattern. And it felt so effing bad. You know, you could call this being associated to the pain, not just intellectually. Like, it's like the smoker who's like, oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sure my lungs will have problems later, you know, whatever. Maybe they even have a mental image of them, you know, on oxygen or in a hospital. But they're not as. So they're not feeling what it's going to be like to have their. Their. Whatever, their child crying there or their son looking at them and saying, man, I wish you could watch your granddaughter grow up. I'm so sad. And then, you know, it's like, whoa. We don't want to go there. But going there is what will give us the leverage to go here now and do something. Boom. There's this firework that goes off. That's exactly what happened to me. It was like, all right, let's go. Like, the pain. And I love Lisa Rankin's words on this, which is, when the pain of staying where we are exceeds the fear of the unknown, we leap, right? It's like, okay, I don't know, because it's scary to go into the unknown. What if I fail? Whatever doesn't work, what's going to be like. It's going to be different. I know who I am as this little small identity. It's going to be this other thing. And when we stay, I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid to change. Afraid. Afraid to change. Afraid of change. All of a sudden you're like, well, can't stay here. This boat's sinking. Gotta go swim. That's one of the most powerful tools of leverage we can get on ourself. The second form of leverage is pleasure. And I think the biggest thing here is to see is to be able to zoom out in time and see pleasure in the future. Because I think we are very. Of course, we're hardwired to want pleasure now. And most things in life that give you immediate pleasure can have some problems. Not all of them. Maybe you have a great conversation with a friend, or you spend time with your sweetheart, making love. Like, maybe that's pleasure in the moment, and it feels great. It leaves a great residue afterwards. And there's a lot of other things in life that give us pleasure that don't serve us long term. Right? There's like the cookies and the dopamine and all that stuff. So what we want to do is train ourselves to really see the pleasure in the future. Like, feel like, okay, this now is going to equal this. You know, I do that all the time in my life. So it's like, I don't want to feel like working out. Okay. I know on the other side, it might not be. When I'm done working out, even just 10 minutes into the workout, I'd be like, yeah, this is great. I'm glad I'm here, right? Or go for the run. That's a big one. Especially not now. It's springtime, it's nice. But when the weather's not great and it's cold outside, it's raining, it's like, I want to go outside. It's gonna feel awful. Sucks. I can totally talk myself out of it. And then if I focus, though, like, dude, by the time you get to, like, just five minutes into the run, the fresh air, the aliveness, the space, the kind of spiritual renewal that comes just focusing on that. And so, so often when we're afraid of taking action, we don't know this. We're not studying. We haven't studied our patterns too much. We just like, oh, I don't feel like it distracts myself. But if we slow down and look, a lot of time we're afraid of the action or resistant to it or avoidant of it is because we're not focused on the pleasure on the other side. We're focused on the pain of starting it or what could happen. Like, oh, and also think of this. Instead of focusing on the other side of the gap, you know, the little chasm. We're focused on what if I fall into it? We're focused on like, oh, my gosh, I gotta climb across on this ladder. And it's kind of scary. It's hard. But what if you focus on the other side of it? What's the extraordinary that you could experience? And so it comes back to something that. I don't know if I talked about it in the Art of Extraordinary Confidence, but I ask it regularly, which is, would you. Are you willing to be uncomfortable now to experience an extraordinary moment or life in the future? And that's not a rhetorical question where you're supposed to say yes to me. That's a question for you to reflect on. In fact, that's your action step. Let's turn that into action right now. Right? Meow. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is to reflect on that. Are you willing to be uncomfortable now to experience the extraordinary in your life? I think it's a good one to ponder. I don't think there's a one right answer. I mean, obviously the answer on the test, if you were just to say it, is like, oh, yeah, sure, great. Yeah, I'm totally in. But are you really? Are you really, really? And at the end of the day, there's, you know, you. You will choose. You are choosing or choosing in every moment of your life, and you're. You're going to age, years are going to accumulate, you're going to go by, you're going to get to the end of your life, and then. Well, what then? Is it. Was it a victory? Was it an extraordinary breakthrough? Was there extraordinary moments? Or was it kind of like a, oh, I should have, could have, would have, oh, regret. Oh, man, I couldn't because they. And. And that's it. I don't know. Is it a mixture of those things? How do we. How do we tip the scales in our favor to have us look back at our lives and say, wow, wow, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm grateful I got to experience this thing. I wonder what's next. All right, there we go. Zooming out, getting all existential there at the end. But hopefully that kicks things into gear and helps you take some action on things you really want to that are going to serve you and others in your life. It's great to be with you today. Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are to know on a deep level that you're awesome. 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 shrinkfortheshyguy. Com. For free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter. Com.