5 Channels To Confidence And Freedom

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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of Shrink for the shy guy. I'm Dr. Z is your host. And today I am excited to share something of great value with you that hopefully you'll come back back to many, many times to practice, which is a guided process that I was doing at first with an individual client, and then I led all my mastermind program through it. And then a recent virtual event, and then now also here with you, which is called the five channels to confidence and freedom. Five channels. So what are these five channels? Well, I'm going to describe them briefly to you here, and then I really want to guide you through a process so you can practice it. Now, this is something that you can do while you're at the gym, while you're walking, running, exercising, driving, sitting stationary. However, you're listening to this podcast, so this doesn't have to be like a. Oh, I'm going to do a formal meditation. Let me close my eyes and get in the lotus position and be totally still and have chimes and quiet. And I can't have my kids in the background. Oh, God. Oh, no. There's a dog barking. I can't meditate with this goddamn dog. Right? No, this is to be used in your life. Now, I don't know if I might in this guided process. I'm gonna drop in the recording that I've done for this in a moment. I might say you can practice this with your eyes closed. I think it helps. It's like early on. But don't use that as a reason not to do it. But what I'm gonna guide you through is the five channels that you can place your focus. And the reason this is so essential and important to know about is you don't experience your life. You experience what you focus on in your life. There are so many things happening right now. Even as you listen to this, there's sounds that are going on around you. There's Other people and what they might be doing and thinking and feeling. There is, you know what. What's going on internally in your body and your bio rhythms, and are you sleepy or tired? There's your schedule for the day. There's the weather. There's your plan. There's literally what you're doing in this moment. There's colors around you. There's objects around you there. I mean, there's so much happening. What do you focus on? Maybe you're hungry and you're like, oh, I'm so hungry. I don't like the feeling hungry. Oh, this sucks. Okay, then maybe you're feeling, I don't know, a little bit restless, looking forward to when you can eat. Maybe you're hungry and you're thinking, oh, but I shouldn't eat because, oh, I'm gonna get fat. And I'm trying to lose weight now. Okay. Oh, but this is so hard. And now you're feeling angst or you're feeling anxiety about your weight or your physical appearance. Maybe you go into like, oh, no, well, I better not gain weight, because if I gain weight, then I'm not gonna be attractive and no one's gonna want to date me. And now you're in your dating life. And then you think about, oh, man, I really shouldn't have messed up my last relationship. Why do I always mess up my relationships? I mean, probably was because I also was in good shape, but I'm also such a boring person. And why did they say that to me when our. When we fought last? How offensive. I can't believe. And now here you are, whatever time of day it is, you are nowhere near this moment. Now you're in your last relationship on the fight you had before you broke up. Ouch. Right? And until you become aware of this and start to get some. I want to say control, but that might be a loaded word because it isn't about the grit your teeth kind of control. It's about the waking up and becoming to observe what's happening for you kind of choice. Maybe that's a better word choice. You can't have that choice if you're just in your own stories and your mental models and your movies in your head, and you're freaking out and then you're reacting and all that stuff. So to really make profound change, you have to be able to observe where your focus is going and change it. And so there are five different channels. Of course, there's more than these five, but these five are great ones to. It's too many, is Overwhelming five is a very manageable amount as you'll see in this process I'm going to guide you through and you just get to play with cycling through these channels. So in the future if you want to come back and just listen to this, the guided process, the five channels process, then go ahead and skip to about minute, minute four and a half here and we're get started within just maybe minute five I'd say. And you could be diving right in. Now I'm not going to put an action step at the end of this episode because the action step is going to be to do this practice. And if you want to do it again at other times, great. You want to do it without following along with my audio, great. But I would encourage you as your action step is to practice this regularly. You'll be amazed what it shifts for you. Okay, so that is a great lead up. Now I'm going to transition over to the recording of the five channels process. Enjoy. Welcome to your daily guided peace process, which is a practice to help you become more at peace with feelings. Both the feelings of others outside of you and ultimately your experience of feelings. Because ultimately in life we're not afraid of what's going to happen, of what they're going to think, of the events. All of our fears in life are fears of feeling how I'm going to feel when this happens. And so the more we can become at peace with any feelings, both those outside of us and more importantly those within us, the more free you become, the more you can experience peace no matter what happens. And then the need to control others feelings, to control events outside of us, goes away. So to do this, it's best to be able to bring your full focus at first. And that would be sitting or lying down with your eyes closed. As time goes on, you might be able to start doing this as you're driving, as you're walking, even real time with other people. But at first we want to give our full focus to this practice. And ultimately this is a practice of awareness and surrender. So let's start by becoming aware of your breath. Bring your full attention to the next in breath as it's coming in, filling your nostrils, down through your throat into your lungs. And then feeling that air release as you breathe out, letting go. As you become more aware of your breath, you might realize that there are other things that are calling for your attention. I like to think of these as channels. You can imagine a simple remote control that just has a button for each channel. Channel one, channel two, Channel three. And so on. You can think of your breath here as channel one. You just brought your attention to channel one. You pressed channel one and your breath became the focus of your awareness, your attention for moment. You might notice, though, that there are other channels calling for your attention. Channel two is thoughts, and that can really pull our attention. Channel 3 might be our feelings. These are sensations of energy and physical phenomenon in your body. They're often experienced in your chest, your stomach, your ribs, your throat, around your eyes. And then channel four might be physical sensations. And while emotions are physical sensations, they're slightly different. Physical sensations could be anything. The touch of your foot on the floor, your palms resting in your lap, Tension in your back, or physical discomfort. And while we could name more and more other channels, there's just one more that I'd like to bring your attention to right now, which is actually, if your eyes are closed, you really tune in. You'll start to hear things like right now you might be hearing my voice, but if you pause and really listen, I bet you'll hear much more, even in a quiet room. Now, what's important about these channels is that peace, the peace you seek is going to be found on channels one and five. One is your breath and five is in listening. Channel two, the mind. Good luck. Channel three, our feelings. Ah, good luck with that one, too. And our body sensations number four. Well, they can be pleasurable or unpleasant. It really depends upon the moment and what we've just ingested and where we're sitting, and it changes pretty rapidly. So what we're going to practice here and our ability to come to peace with feelings and anything else, other people's actions, the circumstances of our lives, is going to be to keep bringing ourselves back to channels one and five and letting go of everything else. And one simple way to do this is with a practice called noting. So we're in a moment, we're going to be with our breath and we're going to be with sound. And as your awareness gets pulled, which it will, to thoughts or feelings or sensations in your body, you're just going to note that in your mind and then come back to the sound to your breath. So if your mind is very active, you'll just say thinking, and then come right back to the sound that you hear in the room or to your breath feeling, when the sensations of feeling are really strong inside of you. And for physical sense, that's a bit of a mouthful. You can just call it sensation. Some people call it touch when they do this noting exercise. And it captures A similar idea. So feeling, thought and touch. So let's practice that now together, Bringing your awareness fully to your breathing and the sounds around you in the room. As you breathe. If there is a thought or a feeling, note it. Oh, thought, thinking. And then let it be there. No need to turn off the thinking. If there's a strong feeling sensation in you, let yourself feel it. You note it. You say, oh, feeling. Let it. Let it do what it's going to do. Let it rip. Maybe it moves through your body. Maybe it swirls or tightens or pulses, flushes, burns. And then be with that feeling while also being with anything you hear and your breath. Breathe fully as you feel. Listen fully as you feel. Breathing into the feeling, opening to the feeling, saying yes to the feeling. That's right. Letting the feelings that are there be there without fighting them. And if you are fighting them, if your mind, your thoughts are fighting them, judging them, analyzing them, just bring the same practice and notice. Ah, thinking. Then come right back to your breath and to the sound. And ultimately, when you're coming back to sound to your listening, it's not about hearing a specific sound around you. It's about tuning into the stillness, The stillness that's in between the sounds you hear or underneath the continuous sounds in the room that you're in. If you notice when feeling comes on and you note feeling, this isn't about turning that feeling off. No, no. Just go to my breath. No, no. Let the feeling be there as you breathe, as you listen to the silence, bring your awareness to that feeling. Maybe there's a place inside that feels really tight or hot or cold or shaky, quivering, grasping, hurting. It's unpleasant. Bring the breath to it. We're not running from the feeling, running to the breath. We're using the breath, breathing right into the center of the center of the tightest spot. With a loving embrace. Yes. Yes, I see you. Yes, here I am. I'm bringing in reinforcements with the breath. I got you. And being with the feeling with channel five to the sound. The stillness. The stillness is what's underneath any sound that comes and goes. The stillness is the sound of the cosmos, the background radiation, The unbound energy that then creates life. Being with that stillness and your breath and surrendering and allowing. And if you feel like you're fighting it, your mind is resisting or squirming or there's another feeling in there that's as if you're just hanging on. Just gotta make it to the end of this exercise. That's okay. I know it's Uncomfortable. Sometimes it's downright painful. Just remember, no feeling is too big. That's just the mind saying, I don't like this, it's uncomfortable. I want it to go away. No feeling is too big because you. Are infinitely bigger. And I don't mean the you that goes by your name or drives your car. I mean the you that is part of that stillness, the you that is breathing right now. The creative intelligence that is organizing every one of your trillion cells to work in unison through chemical energy messaging to coordinate all your senses, including the feeling that you're experiencing. All the chemicals and hormones and brain impulses and electrical impulses, physiology, energy, chemistry, working as a infinitely complex orchestra to keep you even breathing right now, all without you exerting one iota of effort to make it happen. This, this is who you are. And this you can experience any feeling effortlessly, Even the most uncomfortable, even whatever is happening right now. Noting and you think and you feel you have a body sensation. And expanding your awareness to in that moment. Also include your breathing, The sounds around you in this room, And the stillness underneath, Letting yourself go into that stillness. Nothing to control. A funny thing can happen when whatever sensation, physical or whatever feeling emotional is there. When you truly let go of needing it to be any different or controlling it in any way, no matter how painful it may have been just a moment earlier. Sometimes that moment we drop all resistance. It becomes something else. There's a warmth around the cold, there's a softness around the hardness. There's an ease or a peace around the anxiety. What if you didn't need to control all of it? You could just let go into this moment, Into your next breath, Into your life. Softening, Softening your belly. Softening the area around your eyes, your face, your jaw. Resist nothing. It's safe to feel. You're safe to feel this now. And if there's a lot of cross talk in the mind, just notice it. Ah, thinking. And come back to the stillness and your breath in this moment. Well done. If you'd like, as this audio ends, you can stay as long as you like, continuing to practice or if you'd like to re listen, to follow along, do so as many times as you need, as is useful for you. And knowing that every time you practice this, whether it's this full audio or even for 30 seconds before you get out of your car, That it's not about feeling great at the end and measuring if you did it right. Trust in this process, what you just did is profoundly healing. Even if you felt very uncomfortable, the whole time. Every repetition you do, every practice you do. Is the process of setting you free and setting your heart free and setting your soul free. Thanks for being with me. I look forward to being with you again soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com it.