Are You Enough?

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 Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. And today we're going to be talking about a topic that you have focused on a question that you've asked yourself probably a million times. Now, that might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but when you hear the question, you're going to. Well, you probably already know the question if you saw the name of this episode. But so much for my big reveal. I got to get better at titling those. Anyway, the question is about am I enough? And it's a question that you are asking yourself directly, maybe indirectly, subconsciously. You ask it emotionally, you ask it non verbally, and you're asking it all the time. And when we focus on this question, we have some pretty significant negative consequences. Also, when you ask yourself, am I enough? You're secretly asking yourself a different question or even set of questions. We're going to get into that today as well. And this is gonna be really significant cause you're gonna discover a way out of that absorption in am I enough? Which is the question that has sunk millions of people's dreams and goals and next action steps. Because the answer to that question is no, apparently. And then they stop. So I'm gonna help you free yourself in this episode. It also has a big effect on your level of social anxiety, level of confidence. So stay tuned. It's gonna be super powerful if you're benefiting from this show. I do have a request for you though. These are brought to you for free. And it's part of my operation, Mass Liberation, where you're able to get access to all the insights I'm learning on this confidence journey that I've been on for over 20 years and have helped thousands of people through. And maybe later you wanna become a client of mine or buy one of my programs, but even if you don't, this is here available for free for you to learn and grow and liberate yourself. And, and the request that I have is if you're benefiting from this show, please go give it a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to it from and give it a five star review or whatever amount of stars you think it deserves. Obviously it's five. And let others know. I mean, that's the goal here, right? Is to spread this information because there are bajillions of us out there who are struggling in silence and feeling alone and disconnected and suffering. So let's do, do your good deed for the day and let's support lots of people that are out there. And also, by the way, if you're not checking these out on YouTube, you could be watching me right now, my animated, excited face as I talk with you. So if you wanna check Those out on YouTube, go to shrink for the shy guy. Just go to YouTube and type in shrink for the shy guy. And we have them being uploaded to that channel as of maybe last couple months ago. All right, so am I enough? Are you enough? And this question is, is in the background behind any risk that people want to take? You want to go talk to that person socially, you want to go put yourself out there professionally, you want to make a job change, you want to go for a promotion, you want to take on more leadership at work, you want to try to earn more money, you want to start your own business, you want to sell your own products, you want to invest in something, you want to ask someone out on a date, you want to see if that person wants to date you again, you want to take things further in a romantic relationship, you want to live together, you want to whatever the arena is, your career, your love life, it doesn't matter. There's a question that you ask yourself before you take a risk. And when people verbalize this question out loud, it's some version of am I enough? And the reason I say that this question is often asked non verbally is you might not be consciously saying in your mind, am I enough? But you feel the answer to that question, which is no, and then you feel insecure or hesitant or concerned. Right? You know what I'm talking about. There's that person you want to go ask out. There's that risk you want to take in your career. It's like the opposite of that chest out, confident, excited, on offense feeling. And it's that kind of deflated hunch, your shoulders pull back into the shadows and it has a feeling of smallness. You're not enough. Who do you think you are? It might even have a mocking answer to it, like, oh, you want to go start your own business? Oh, yeah. Oh, you. You know, maybe even just a berating quality of like, look at you. You know, of course you're not enough. Or maybe comparing to others, oh, look at so and so. They're so popular, they're so beautiful, they're so successful. Look at you. And the essence of all of that communication is you're not enough. And behind that feeling is the question, whether you know you're asking it or not, is, am I enough? And you ask the question, you get the answer no. And then how do you feel? Hesitant, concerned, insecure, self conscious, overthinking, analysis, paralysis, avoidant, afraid, anxious, inferior, inadequate, unlovable, unworthy, and generally bad. Right. Is this making sense for you? Is this resonating for you? Does this ring true for you? Because whenever I talk to clients, this is first and foremost the experience that they're having, whether they've totally verbalized it, like I'm doing for you now or not. So if you're relating to this, I have great news for you. There is a way out. Because the problem is not feeling like you're not enough. The problem is believing that you're not enough. That's the problem. So we take that feeling, that conclusion of I'm not enough in some way, and then think, well, I guess I better not go take the risk then. That's the problem right there. It's not the feeling. The problem is using that feeling to conclude that you indeed are not enough. So let's, let's break this down a little bit. I love to ask this question for clients. When they say, like, I'm not enough, I say, okay, not enough in what way? And this starts to probe the, the illusion a little bit, and they'll kind of start to scramble for it, and then maybe they'll find something, well, I'm not confident enough, or I'm not good looking enough or I don't have enough experience or whatever it is. Right. But even then, you start to realize that the I'm not enough feeling is usually a little bit more amorphous and is not really actually that factual. You might say, no, Aziz, I do. I am not good enough at this. I really don't have that experience. Well, then I'll say, okay, do you think you could get more experience in blank. Whether it's conversation, confidence or public speaking, then clients will kind of begrudgingly say, yeah, I guess I could. Okay, so Are you saying, like, you're not good enough at it and you could never learn how to do it better? And that's where you start to see that this thing breaks down. Because am I enough? Is not really about whether you're capable or not. Right. It seems like it's a capability question. Am I good enough or not? Right. That might be a. A relevant question. If you said, hey, Aziz, do you want to perform a surgery on somebody? And I might say, do I know how to do that? Am I skilled enough at that? The answer would be no. Obviously, I'm not that kind of doctor. And so then that would be a useful question. There's a useful answer. And I make a decision based on it. Makes sense, right? You know, am I skilled enough to pilot this plane by myself? You're learning how to fly. Am I skilled enough to take. So you do want to make an assessment before risks. If you're capable to do something, that makes a lot of sense. The problem is when you ask this question in environments where there is no flying of the plane, there is no tangible thing. It's more of a social environment. Am I enough for this party? It doesn't make sense. So there's a question that you're really asking underneath the am I enough? You want to know what it is? This is the big reveal, by the way. This is the secret question underneath the question. You're not asking, am I good enough? You're asking, will I be liked? That's the question that's under good enough. You might say, no. Hold on a second. Is that. That's not really what I'm asking. But it is. Think about it. Do you want to go approach that person you're attracted to? Am I enough? Really? You're asking, will I be liked? Because how do you know if you're enough or not? In a social situation, it's based upon how other people respond to you. I'm not saying it has to be that way, but if you're running a social anxiety pattern, that. Exactly. Or a nice person pattern, that's exactly how it's determined. If they like me, if they smile, if they laugh at my jokes, if they invite me back, if they want to be my friend, if they want to go on a date with me, if they want to hire me, if they approve of my thoughts in the business meeting and think I'm smart, then. Then I'm enough. And so really what you're asking is, are they going to approve of me? Are they going to like me, or are they going to dislike me. And then your mind doesn't know the answer to that question, but it will happily give you an answer, because the mind likes certainty. So it'll say, no, they certainly won't. They certainly will not like you. It's going to go awful. And then that produces a sense of certainty. Of course, it's swaying you in the direction of not taking risks. Regardless if they're healthy, regardless if they're ultimately gonna make you feel alive or successful or connected, it doesn't matter. That part's just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not gonna go well. So just stop right here. Stop right now. And that's what most people do. They'll get on the precipice of a risk that they want to take. You know, they want to put themselves out there in some way. And then, no, no, I don't know. I don't know, because I'm not enough. And now what's really going on here? What's really going on underneath the surface? So there's a reveal beneath the reveal of am I going to be liked or not? Which is the question under am I enough or not? Which is. And I almost need to draw you a picture, but I know you're listening to this, so I'm going to. I'm going to describe a picture for your mind. Imagine that you are in the center of a circle, okay? So just imagine you maybe a stick figure version of you. If you're drawing a diagram, there you are. There's a circle all around you. And that circle is not just a single line. Maybe it's a double line. So it's kind of like a band, like a little ring around you. Now there's you. There's this ring around you, and then there's life outside of you. And that ring is your defensive layer. It's your shield, your protective layer. And a defense or a shield in life is not bad. You know, we want to have a shield or a protection against people that might harm you. People that are going to try to get something from you or hurt you or take or something, right? So you want to be able to, you know, have a shield or protection. The problem is that that defensive layer for most people that I work with has become overactive to the point where it's keeping not just the bad out, but all of life out, all those healthy risks, right? So instead of, well, I don't want to have someone take advantage of me, so I'm going to have some defense there. It's kind of Like, I don't want anyone to disapprove of me, and I don't ever want to fail, and I don't ever want to make a mistake, and I don't ever want to be embarrassed. So the only way to do that is to protect yourself from all of life. So that band is your defense. And the am I enough? Question has, you go right into that little ring that's going around you and just bounce around in there, poke around in there again and again and again and again. Am I enough? Am I enough? Am I enough? You're getting trapped in your own defenses, your own shield, and not able to get out there and connect with life. And it absorbs you, and it feels so real and almost. If someone were to challenge that and say, no, you could totally do it. You're good enough. You might even feel angry. Like, how dare you? You don't even know. You don't even understand what it's like, right? And there's this protection. I remember I was working with a client one time and. And she was pushing back on this. She was pushing back to protect her defense. And her defense was, if I reveal how I'm really feeling particularly anxious with people, they're going to judge me. It's going to go terribly. It's going to be, I can't do it in my career, I can't do it my personal life. Everyone thinks that anxiety is weakness, and I can never, ever, ever share that. Now, if you think that anxiety is horrible weakness and it's going to lead to awful rejection and ostracization and being cast out and unlovable, can you show when you're anxious, can you reveal, not just let it be seen, Right? Like, oh, it slipped out. They saw it. But actually share, hey, I'm feeling nervous right now. Can you actually share that? No. No, because it's, you know, it's death, right? So. So she was sharing that perspective, and we were working on upgrading that and challenging that and maybe seeing it a different way. And she kept coming back to, like, no, this is the way it is. And at one point I said to her, I said, you're fighting to stay in the cage that your mom and dad put you in when you were a little kid. Because that's where she learned this stuff. It's like you're fighting for that cage. And you could see her whole body was, like, in defensive mode. And then it just kind of softened. She's like, oh, yeah, right. And so we do that. We fight for this defense. Why? Because we Believe that we can't handle it if someone doesn't like us. Hence the question, am I enough? AKA am I going to be liked? And if we think the answer is no, we tell ourselves, we sell ourselves a total BS story that you're not enough, so it's not gonna work out, so don't do it. And it's all designed to protect you from that one moment where someone's gonna look at you and be like, oh, oh, I didn't realize you were like that. And that that fear of being disliked is based upon a distorted, like a logical fallacy. They call it the brush fire fallacy in cognitive therapy, which is that if one person dislikes me and, and thinks of me poorly than everybody else, like, that perspective will spread through humanity like a wildfire, like a brush fire burning through dry, low standing bushes and grasses where fires will just tear through fields like that, right? And this idea that if one person's like, oh, anxiety, that's weakness, that everybody thinks that. Which, you know, by the way, here's a little quick, quick tip for you. If you're ever having the perspective that everybody's going to think this. Everybody thinks anxiety is weakness. Everybody thinks this. You know, anytime you're doing that, just like, snap your fingers, maybe shake out your body a little bit. Like, you ever seen a dog shake itself when it's wet? To interrupt yourself, to interrupt the pattern and say, okay, I'm distorted right now. I'm not thinking clearly. What I'm thinking is not true. Because I don't care what the perspective is, what the belief is, what the story is. There is not one singular perspective that everybody, all of humanity thinks. So you are going to find people out there that think anxiety is weakness, and you are going to find a lot more people out there who are going to be connected with you, who are going to be drawn to your vulnerability. But the only way that you'll ever know that you can hear me talk about it until I'm blue in the face. The only way you're ever going to know that is by doing it and by testing it yourself. And that's what I was guiding this client to do is to. She had been trying to perform by hiding her anxiety for the last decade or two, and it just led to more and more anxiety. That's how it works. And so the suggestion, the encouragement, the guidance and advice I gave her was to not just go, keep talking or performing, but to actually let herself be seen as anxious in those situations, which seemed completely intolerable. But when you change the story from this is unacceptable to I'm allowed to do this. All of a sudden it becomes more available to you. So know when you're asking yourself, am I not enough? When you're feeling like you're not enough, really, you're afraid of being disliked. That's all that it is. And really, you're probably just afraid of your own feelings because most of the dislike you're going to come across is your own dislike of yourself, your own lack of acceptance of yourself. People think of dislike or criticism of themselves as always very harsh. And oftentimes people will tell me, well, I'm getting better at it. You know, I read your book on my own side. I don't criticize myself nearly as much, and I applaud that. I say, great, let's celebrate that win. And that's a low bar. I mean, what if you're in a romantic relationship? You're like, hey, how are things going with your sweetheart? You know, you're dating someone new, right? How's it going? Well, they're sure criticizing me a lot less directly. You'd be like, oh, oh, okay. Doesn't sound like it's going very well. Right. So beyond criticism, direct criticism, there's another way that people turn on themselves where you're not on your own side, where you're just very dismissive of yourself. You're dismissive of your own thoughts and feelings, your own experience. It's a lot like, yeah. Oh, come on. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a lot of that tone. Dismissive, almost condescending or contempt. And it's just imagine, run everything. When you're learning about being on your own side, run it all through the best friend filter, or, you know, great partner, great husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend, whatever. You know, like, if you were with. In a relationship with someone, would you want them to be that way with you? And if you're being that way with yourself, yeah, it didn't pass that test. Right. Okay, so to recap, when you're feeling like you're not enough, when you're asking yourself, am I enough? And thinking that you're not, interrupt that absorption. You're trapped in that little band of defense. You're just stuck in your own defenses against life. And it's time to open and expand and say, you know what I'm really afraid of is I'm afraid of being disliked. I'm afraid of rejection. I'm afraid of feeling not only other people's dislike, but my own dislike. And what's the Way out. Anytime we're afraid of something, the way out is exposure, confrontation, approach. You go into the thing that you're afraid of. In this case, the feelings that you're avoiding. Right, right there and then, okay, what if so and so doesn't approve of me? Terrible, terrible. Okay, go into it. In fact, that's going to be your action step for today. Time for action. Action, action. So your action step for today is to imagine, okay, you think you're not enough. So what, you're gonna, you're gonna show up and then someone's not gonna like you. Right? What's the gonna be a great question to ask yourself is, okay, if I'm not enough, what does that mean? What's gonna happen? And sure enough, your mind will say, well, so and so is gonna think this about you. Okay, great. So go to that so and so, thinking that about you. Whatever it is, John's gonna dislike me. She's gonna reject me. She's gonna think, ooh, this loser. I don't want to date him. Okay, go into that. Now when you go into that, I'm not saying you go in being like, yeah, oh, that's right. She is thinking that. Oh, and she's right. Oh, God. That's not healing or resolving anything. That's just writhing around in your own messed up, distorted stories. It's not going to save you. That's not going to liberate you. No, what I'm talking about is you say you center yourself, you breathe deep and you say, you know what all my fears are? Fears of feelings. So let me face the fear of someone disliking me and see if I can let go a little bit here. So you think about so and so disliking you and you'll feel it. You'll feel this like burning, anxious, twisty, writhing, sad, hurting something. You just be with it. Breathe around and expand around it. Soften the resistance around somebody, somewhere, sometime having a negative judgment or thought or perspective or feeling about you. It's okay. You'll be just fine. Okay, so practicing that. So curious how that goes for you. By the way, if you're not aware, we do have a Facebook group that you can share. It's free to join and people share and support each other in that Facebook. It's called Confidence Warriors. So just go to Facebook and type in confidence Warriors. You can share there. And I'm on there sometimes. And also we have a large community there, so it's a great way to get support if you want to share about anything you're learning in these episodes, or any support that you want to give and receive, that's a great place to do it. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.