Almost Always On My Own Side (Principle 4)

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 gonna 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. Today we're gonna be talking about the fourth principle of sanity and victory. Do you remember those? Well, if you listen to this show, you will. Maybe over the last, I don't know, month and month and a half, I've shared three of the other principles of sanity and victory. Number one, remember what number one was? Well, if you didn't listen to it, then you won't remember. But I'll tell you. Number one is I am the captain of my ship. It's about taking ownership for our lives. And number two is surrender is the ultimate life skill, helping you realize that while you do take ownership for your life, you're not in control of. Well, not a whole lot, really. Maybe yourself to a degree, but certainly not major events around you and other people. So how do we get in the flow with life? That's surrender. And then number three is the process, is the purpose. So it's not about getting to something, and then I'm gonna finally be that somebody, and then I'll be liked and great and happy. It's more so really embracing this, the growth and that. The. The point is the growth not getting to the end as much as we want to get to the end. And as I talk about in that episode, getting to the end is kind of like the carrot that life holds in front of us, Right? All right, well, if you're intrigued by any of those or you didn't listen to them, go. Go check them out. They're from the last, I'd say in October and early November. And here we are in December and just in time for principle number four. Well, what is principle number four? You might say it is almost always OMOs. In case you don't know, OMOs stands for on my own side. So the long version is almost always on my own side, or OMOs for short. That's O M, O, S. That's just the acronym for on my own side. Maybe you've followed this podcast and listened to episodes because it's a common theme. Omos On My own side. I have a whole book called that and it's one of the key things in the Mastermind that I run, the Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind. It's a year long program where I'm helping people just radically transform their confidence over that time. I mean, OMOS is one of the key foundations, the principles. It's what leads to the biggest change in our lives, in my life and in the people that I serve. Because that's what I discovered from my own experience. To really free myself and from social anxiety, people pleasing, all of that, I needed to become more on my own side. So why isn't this called always Omos? Shouldn't I always be on my own side? Maybe we'll get into that in a minute. But first let's identify some terms here. What does OMOS mean? Well, it's kind of a mixture of things, because you might have heard about the term self esteem, right? You probably have an idea of what that means. Self esteem means to regard oneself in higher esteem with value, of value to the world, value to others. I bring something, my presence matters. It's beneficial to those around me, right? That's the essence of high self esteem. And low self esteem would be the opposite of that. I am nothing. I don't bring anything. My presence is a burden or a bother. Who would be interested in me? I don't have anything of value or interest to add to, you know, social situations, dating, relationships, career, work, meetings, life. Right? So it depends on how many areas this shows up in. But in an area where you have low self esteem, you basically don't think much of yourself. And you imagine other people will not think much of you either, because you perceive that self esteem as not just a self perception, but an accurate, objective perspective on yourself. Does that make sense? So it's kind of like saying, no, no, we could all agree that is bad. Let's say you don't like sunflower seeds. What's wrong with you? By the way, they're delicious. But anyway, let's say you don't like sunflower seeds. That's fine. You might say, I don't like sunflower seeds, but my friend over there loves them. So are sunflower seeds good or bad? You'd say, well, I don't know, it depends. If you ask me, they're bad. If you ask him, they're great. But when it comes to self esteem, we kind of have this distortion. We don't think clearly. And so that would be the equivalent of saying, I don't like sunflower seeds. Everybody in the world knows that sunflower seeds are the worst. That's what they're all gonna think, right? But really, your friend might. In fact, you probably have. People with low self esteem have people that love them. They have partners and families and children, and their mom or dad's the greatest or whatever. It doesn't matter. You don't necessarily feel that. Or you might feel like, yeah, yeah, my kids love me or my husband loves me or my wife loves me, but you know, at work I'm a loser, right? So it depends on where it shows up. So that's self esteem. Now that might seem like, okay, being on my own side means having high self esteem, right? Yes. And there's more, which is if your value determines your worth and you see that, you bring value, that's great. But what if it fluctuates? What if you're a beginner and you're not that great at something? What if you make a mistake? Does your value go in the toilet? Right. So self esteem can be limited. It's sort of conditional. And we need another element to be fully on our own side, right? Because on my own side, that doesn't need a whole lot of defining. I'm kind of going into these sub elements here. But the purpose of that phrase was to make. Have it make sense just from hearing it, right? So when you hear, hey, are you being on your own side? Am I being on my own side? Doesn't that you can kind of answer that yes or no. You get a feeling for it right away. Because many people and I live this way for many years are not on your own side. You're at odds with yourself. You're your own worst enemy, your own worst critic. Haranguing yourself, bothering yourself, diminishing yourself, critiquing or criticizing yourself, attacking yourself even, right? So they don't. I'm definitely not on my own side when I'm doing that. So we want to come back to being on my own side, my own champion. Like, you know, if you had a friend and they were going through a hard time, you hopefully wouldn't do a line from Dumb and Dumber and be like, you're one pathetic loser, man. You might be like, hey, I'm sorry that you're having this challenge or that's painful that happened, right? Let's say they came to you and they said, oh, man, my, you know, my, I have this family Member who's really ill and it's hard and you know, we're trying to support them, but they're maybe not receiving much, they're not very good at receiving or they're pushing people away, but we want to help them and they're, maybe we're trying to help them with treatment or whatever's going on. Maybe you have someone in your family that's got an illness or something, or a child that's got a challenge, and your friend is probably not gonna say, yeah, well, you're not doing enough. You're not a very good son, you're not a very good daughter. You should probably be doing more. What's wrong with you? Your parent is suffering. You need to give everything to them. Or your child is having a problem and you haven't fixed it yet. What's wrong with you? Whoa, you gonna go share with that friend again? What's up with that friend? Right? That's intense. And be like, no, maybe the friend has a solution or an idea or they can call you out on something that they see you're avoiding or whatever, but they're gonna do it in a way more caring, loving way. Right? So the essence of almost being on my own side is you treat yourself like someone that you love. There's a little bit of space, a little bit of patience or maybe a lot of patience. And so this is where there's another element that's needed. And this is where I did a lot of research when I was doing my doctorate in clinical psychology on self compassion. And honestly, that research was entirely self driven, selfish, focused, self focused. I was like, dude, I hate myself. I need to solve this problem now. You know, I, I didn't fully know the extent to which I'd be sharing and helping people with this at the time, but I did have, I did have enough foresight to know, oh, this is going to be useful for not just me, this is useful for clients too. And I spent a long time trying to heal that relationship with myself. It was so toxic. And so the self esteem stuff was limited because it was like, well, just think better about myself. It's like, but I don't, I don't. And it's really hard to see my value. I don't believe it. And this is where self compassion comes in. Self compassion is. Think of it as like the infinite nurturing of the divine mother, where it's not about your achievements and are you bringing value or not? Today it's just unconditional, infinite compassion or love. Of course you are. Worthy because you exist. Here you are. What more do you need, Right? It's you. You. You got up or you got down. You won or you lost. You're the best or you're the worst. People like you or they don't like you. Like, it's, here you are, here you are, and you. And you matter and I love you. Can you feel the quality of that? That's self compassion, Another way to think about compassion. And Kristin Neff is a psychologist, and at the time she was writing a lot. When I was in graduate school, she was in Austin, Texas. I don't know if she's still there, but she even wrote a book called Self Compassion. I think Almost is a better book, so you should read that one. But anyway, it's a bit dry, but it's a useful book. And her research was very helpful for me in understanding. But basically, you know, compassion is being moved by the suffering of somebody. You see someone begging on the street who doesn't have limbs or something, and you feel something whether you give them money or not, you know, you feel. You're like, damn, that's a hard life, right? That's compassion. That's feeling for the suffering of another. And self compassion will be being moved by your own suffering. So there's a moment of acknowledgement of pain or hardship or discomfort. And that can be missing when we're focused on self esteem and talking ourselves up and you're unworthy. It's, hey, this is a hard situation with this family member. Oh, you're sick. Ugh, that's hard, man. That's rough. It's compassion. A simple phrase is to acknowledge, like, this is a moment of suffering. Like, I'm suffering right now. And that could be physical suffering. Like, you're in pain, you got a body part that hurts, or you're sick or something, or it's emotional suffering. You're anxious, you're stressed, you're worried, you're feeling shame, and you acknowledge it. Like, hey, I see that you're suffering right now. This is a moment of suffering. I'm sorry. If one you can add in a term of endearment, that's really powerful there, right? What is it? What a loved one used to call you when you were at kid, honey, sweetheart, darling, buddy, or something more, you know, unique to you, like some. Some nickname for you from your family. Can you think of one now? No one really ever called me darling, but I like that one. I like that one. I learned it from Thich Nhat Hanh, but it's like My darling. And then just following that up with like, hey, this is a moment of suffering. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, whatever. I'm sorry your back hurts, I'm sorry that this is happening at work. And then you just be with that for just a. For just a bit. Be with yourself, be with the suffering, be with space and compassion for the suffering. Then there can be some reassurance, right? Like, hey, even though this is a hard moment, that doesn't mean that you don't bring value. Or even though you made this mistake, that doesn't mean that you have nothing to offer. That's crazy, right? So there can be some finding and acknowledging your value and worth, but it starts really with that compassion. So these are some of the core underlying elements of OMOs. And again, if you want the. This is the short version. If you want the deep dive, then you can find out more. You can get the book on Amazon or you can just go to my website, draziz.com and under books there under Resources, you can find out more about that book. You can go to the Amazon or Audible page from there. And also you can go to omosbook.com, o m o s book.com and get some of the bonus resources and materials that come with the book as well. And there's some great audios and other things there. So really this is a learnable skill. That's something that I would not have thought when I was younger that you can actually learn to be on your own side. Well, one, I didn't even know it was a thing. And then two, I didn't know you could learn it. And then I didn't even know that I needed to learn it. So you're way ahead of me if you're aware of that. And like, oh yeah, I want to be more on my own side. And man, I gotta tell you, there are so many people that I've worked with over the years where they just come back to this being the thing. And they're like, oh my God, this is what you were saying in the very beginning. Like, yep, yep, that's the thing. And it's not cause like, oh, haha, I'm so much smarter than you. I know that's the thing. And you don't. It's more just from my own pain. I'm like, yeah, man. Or lady. Man, yeah, lady. That's what I call my clients, man and lady for those anyway. But I say, yeah, that's. I get it. I know it is. It's so important And I'm continually practicing it. And that's a key point here, is this is a practice. It's not something that you just got it. I got it. I bought it. I bought, on my own side. The book, right, or the concept. I got the concept. It's great. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of Omos. Okay. Are you doing it? Well, I don't know. I won't go that far, but, you know, I'm working on it. Yep, yep, yep. And it is. I mean, maybe you are working on it. Maybe it is a progress and a progression. And remember from our previous principle process is the purpose. So increasing your capacity of almost is maybe perhaps the whole point, not just getting there and progressing. It is great. It's a world of difference. You know, in the Mastermind program, we have people go through and take this PCA called the Precision Confidence Assessment. And there's a way to measure all these different aspects of your confidence every quarter to see what's improving and what needs work. And one of the metrics is almost how on your own. On your. On my own side am I or are you in this case? And people can notice it, and it rates it from 0 to 100. It's not totally linear in the sense that, you know, if your score is 25 and then your score is 50, it's not like 50 is double the amount of be on your own side. It's actually significantly more. And to say go from. To go from, like, you know, a 10 to a 20 is big. It's for sure big. But it's a lot easier to go from 10 to 20 than it is from, say, 80 to 90. Right? It gets harder and harder. You have to be more and more on your own side to up that thing. But we have people that start the program, and their scores are terrible, just terrible. You know, like eight out of a hundred, you're like, ooh, that's a rough life. And they're like, yeah, you're telling me. That's why I'm in your program, buddy. And I say, hey, listen, lady man, no, we got eights, 10, 20, and lower 15 somewhere on the right. Anyway, let's say they get it from an 8 to a 40. They're a radically different human. You can see it. You can see the way they carry themselves, the way they talk, the way they share, the questions they ask, how much they reveal of themselves, what's happening in their life. It's radical. It's radical, man. And I don't mean that in The Ninja Turtles kind of way. I mean that in the complete. The actual definition of the word which is complete or totally undeniable, other people notice it kind of change, and they might not know that's what changed. They just know, like, wow, you seem very different. You seem a lot more confident, right? So why is this not just a principle of confidence, but a principle of sanity? Because. And that's why the whole first section, part one of OMOs, is called insanity. Because it is insanity, right, to constantly be attacking yourselves. And sometimes I help people see this by saying, imagine it wasn't in your head. Imagine it was someone that was following you around, like your partner or something. And they go with you everywhere you go, though. You go from the bathroom to the bedroom to your office. They follow you. They get in your car, they sit in the passenger seat next to you. You go to restaurant, they sit there and watch behind you what you're ordering, and they observe how you're eating. They watch every conversation you have. They even watch you when you're alone. And whatever you're doing on that screen when you're alone. Oh, yes. Mm. Yep. It's watching you. And imagine that person was watching you everywhere you went. Even that would be a little creepy, right? But then imagine they were either regularly, frequently, or in my case, they were constantly just critiquing you. That wasn't very good. Why did you do that? Ugh. That was a stupid thing to say. Ugh. Why did you say that? And they just go on and on like you're driving home and like, but why did you say. Say that? Oh, so awful. Or they might just make a sound or a look of contempt. Idiot. And they don't need to say more than that. Conveys everything, right? That's just really. Imagine that for a minute. And if you want, you can do an experiment, have people do this sometimes of just imagining it external, or I call it personifying it and naming it and saying, okay, I see you. I hear you. Give it a name. Harry the critic. Susan. Doesn't matter what you want to name it, right? You just give it a name. You say, hey, Harry. All right, there you are again. Hey, Harry. There you are. Okay, I hear you. All right? And people are shocked at how frequent it is. And separating yourself to a degree from it is part of the key of shifting this, right? But it is insane to hang out with Harry. No offense, if you're an actual Harry or Susan. You know, these are just arbitrary example names, right? It's insane to spend time. And what's more insane is to have that voice be the authority in your head and one that you defer leadership of your life to. And you say, okay, insane Harry, you just tell me that I'm awful and that I should hide in the hole and I'll do it, whatever you say. There's an old line from the Simpsons that I love. I have these, like, fragments of Simpsons lines because I watched them as like, seminal. My developer from age, you know, I don't know, 8 to 18, you know, we're talking hundreds of hours of watching this. Back in the day, Back in my day. Hold on a second. Let me get my old man grandpa hat on. Back in my day, there was no streaming Netflix. They came on discs to your mailbox. Anyway, shows were not just like, here's like 95 shows that are all amazing and Emmy, you know, high produced with billion dollar budgets to look good. And you can just click the next one with no commercials and watch it. Back in my day, you had to watch the commercials anyway. They did Simpsons reruns, like two an evening. You couldn't watch more than that, right? Eventually you get the DVDs. But I mean, when I first started watching, it was like VHS was a thing, man. Man. My dad used to tell me stories about, like, how things were different in tech and I super didn't care. I remember when a floppy disk was like 95ft wide. It's like, nobody cares, dad. I don. Care. Anyway, now I'm there. I'm a dad. I'm telling my kids. I remember when Simpsons, you had to watch commercials. In any case, you can only watch two of them. But I did every night from like 6 to 7pm Because I'm awesome. And anyway, there's a Simpsons where Homer's talking to somebody and they say something that's like, not very convincing or intelligent. And he's like, tell me more. And he's really into it, and he says, I like your ideas, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. And that always sticks in my head where imagine that your critic is like, you know, you're gonna fail at everything you do. This is awful. And if you don't get it all done today, you're gonna die. And we're like, mm, mm, yes, tell me more. You know, I like your ideas. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. And then you imagine getting this newsletter that's like, you're going to die today and you suck. And why would you. Why would you subscribe to that? Well, that's a longer Question as to why we're under the thumb of the critic. And definitely check out other episodes of this show or my YouTube channel, if you're not familiar with that. There's tons of videos about it there as well. It's gonna called get more confidence on YouTube. We got shorts as well. We're doing a lot of shorts this year. So in case your attention span, well, if you made it this far in the episode, then your attention span is solid. But if you want to erode that attention span and Give yourself pseudo ADHD symptoms, then start watching shorts on YouTube and TikTok where my videos are. So you can check those out. They're under 59 seconds, because who's got time for longer than 59 seconds? In any case, let's turn this into something that you're gonna do now with your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is gonna be to practice some sanity. So one version of that is just to set an intention of. I'm gonna be more on my own side today. What if. If I were on my own side right now, what would I say to myself? Maybe you'd take a different action. Maybe you'd take a break. Maybe you'd give yourself a break. Maybe you'd ease up the pressure. Maybe you just drop something you've been replaying and ruminating on and criticizing yourself for. I don't know what you'd do, but you will. You'll discover it. What if I were on my own side right now? Another way, another thing to reflect on is just throughout the day, on a scale of 1 to 10, how almost am I today? How much am I on my own side today? And notice like, oh, and you could simplify it. Am I being on my own side right now? That could be a yes or no. So there's many different ways to play with it, but you see, you're bringing attention and awareness to it. And if you want more tools and how to really radically change this, and obviously, you know, check out the book, or if you, you know, are ready for just a rocket ship of transformation, then I'd highly recommend reaching out and, and checking out about the Mastermind program, because we're stepping into 2025 here, and it could be a powerful time we have. Definitely some people join at the beginning of the year and it's a cool milestone to see what changes over the course of a year. So if you're drawn to that, you can find out more at my website@draziz.com, that's D R A Z I Z.com and just go under the coaching tab there. All right, well thanks for being with me today. I hope you do know deep down that you're awesome and you feel that and you feel connected to yourself and you can access the value that you not only bring because of what you know and your skills but the inherent value that your presence brings. And I and I wish that you can connect with that and that that brings you more peace and more confidence in your life. Until we speak again may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.