Authenticity vs. Approval

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. Today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about authenticity versus approval. Oh, no. Are they against each other? Can you not have both? What do I do? Well, in today's episode, you're going to learn where you can have both and where you can't and how you go about getting both, experiencing both. I don't know if you get authenticity, but you get to be authentic. And maybe why you'd want that, because you might say, I don't want to be authentic if it means I lose all my connections and have to be isolated in the forest. Well, actually, you don't. There's good news here that you can actually have it all. You can be authentic and you can have love and connection and approval of others. In fact, maybe even more approval from others, but not if you go about it seeking the approval instead of being your authentic self. So we're going to uncover more of that, and you're going to leave this episode with a renewed enthusiasm for being yourself, which, again, being yourself is one of those things that kind of makes me roll my eyes. It's like an Internet meme at this point, but it goes way beyond, like a bumper sticker, a motivational poster. It is perhaps one of the most important things that you can practice in your life. And so I think it's very meaningful and I'm excited to share more with you. If you are benefiting from this show, perhaps this is your first episode, in which case you can. You can wait before you. Before you do this, but if you've listened to a number of episodes and really benefited from it, it is absolutely free. It's my contribution, part of Operation Mass Liberation, also known as Divine Liberation, to help as many people become more free. You know, really be on the same journey that I've been on. And so we're all in this together. And I want to support and help people out there who are feeling Discouraged, stuck, the hopeless to realize that, no, you can shift this and you can connect with people and have friendships and relationships, just like all those things that I discovered in my own life. And that hopefully you're discovering too, listening to this show. And if you're benefiting from it, please just take, what, 30 seconds to go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and give it a review, preferably a five star review, but that's up to you. That's up to you. You decide. But in any case, I'll be very grateful for that and you'll be helping other people because the more reviews this show gets, the more people can see it in their podcast feed as well as if I go, you know, ask a guest or something and they look at my show, they get to see that it's more legitimate. So that would be great. Thank you in advance for that. There. There's me authentically asking for what I want. That's part of authenticity, isn't it, to ask for what you want? Well, let's describe authenticity and then talk about approval and how sometimes those things can be at odds. So you probably have a general sense of authenticity, right? Means being yourself, being genuine, saying what you really think, expressing what you really feel, as opposed to presenting something that isn't true but other people might like. Right? That's the opposite of authenticity. I go really in depth in authenticity in my newest book called Less Nice, More youe, which maybe you've already listened to or got yourself a copy of, but I highly recommend it. Less Nice, More you. It's a short one, very fast, easy to read. In fact, so easy to read. And my brother is reading it. I think it's the first book of mine that he's ever read. Maybe because it's so short and easy to get, just to dive right into. But the whole last section of the book is all about authenticity, the winding road to authenticity as I described it, and all the levels of authenticity. So that's kind of the deep study if you want to do that. But the high level version of it is that there's, you know, there's authenticity on all different levels. There's the moment to moment level. What do you say right now when someone asks you how you're doing? How much do you reveal? How much do you share of yourself? You know, if you disagree with somebody, do you say that or do you not? And these aren't rhetorical questions like you're always supposed to disagree. If you do, maybe you don't maybe it's not worth it to you. Maybe it doesn't feel like it's a fruitful conversation if you do. So this isn't some dogma that you have to always say or do something, but it's for you to reflect on how real am I being? How much is what I'm sharing and presenting and expressing congruent with what I really feel, what I really think? And you'll know it. We all have a kind of BS meter going on inside of ourselves where if we get too far off of what's real, it feels bad. So that's moment to moment authenticity. But then there's bigger forms of authenticity, like, are you living your life? But what does that mean, your life? Well, what do you value? What's important to you? What's meaningful to you? Are you doing those things? Are you practicing those things? Is it meaningful to you to spend time with certain people or go certain places or do certain things? Are you actually living that? Or are you living someone else's life, a life that you're supposed to live? Maybe it's pursuing a certain career or a certain type of relationship that you're supposed to do. Now, a lot of people, this is a little less conscious. They're not saying, well, I hate this life, but I'm going to pursue it. For my parents, I guess, right? It's a little more internal conflicted, oh, I feel like I'm supposed to or I should. They feel guilty if they don't. They feel like they're not enough, or they're not a man, or they're not a woman, or they're not a good son, or they're not a good partner. There's some role that they're trying to fulfill by kind of pushing themselves down this path that just doesn't quite feel right. And then it might be. There might be layers on top that say, well, look, life's not about feeling good. You can't just go pursue whatever you want in life. You got to get this, you got to do that. This is what life's about. And there's this kind of inner voice, whether it's from family or the cultural field, that almost steers you away from authenticity and portrays authenticity as a fantasy. Doesn't work. It's foolish. And yet if you're not living it, you're not living your life. It feels bad. So this is where we want to look at the moment to moment authenticity, the larger life authenticity, including where you work and who's your partner and what kind of things you do with your time and how you are with family and in the world, everything. It's a larger expression of you. So that's authenticity. What about approval? Well, approval is not love. Now people mix up the two all the time. In fact, they will settle for approval or go for approval, but what they really want is love. So what's the difference? And what is approval? Well, approval is people judging you positively, right? And then they might have positive feelings as a result of those judgments. He's a good guy, she's great, she's impressive. He's smart, right? So they evaluate you, they judge you positively in the evaluation and then they might be feel positively towards you. Now someone could judge you positively and actually feel negatively towards you, which is kind of a. Well, screws you with your head. If you're a nice person, you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. But I did all the things to make them judge me positively. I did the dance, I did the hustle for the approval. And then they did approve me. They said, wow, that guy's really smart. But instead of feeling positively towards me, they actually had mixed feelings towards me. What do you mean? How could that be? Well, have you ever been around someone who was really impressive? Did you only feel positively towards them or did you feel something else, perhaps envy? My, my younger son, my 8 year old Rumi was asking me the other day, he's like, dad, what's envy? I was like, well, you know, instead of looking up the definition, I like to kind of think about what, what, what, what is it? You know, because there's always words that we kind of know. But then when a kid asks you, you have to try to describe it and you have to do it in a way that's not just some other dictionary definition word. I hate that in the dictionary, by the way, where you look up a word and they define it with another word that's like the same word or just obscure, right? So I'm trying to define it in a simple way and I'm like, well, someone has something that you want or is a certain way that you want to be, and you feel like you don't have that and maybe you can't have that. And so you feel inferior or bad about yourself and maybe even angry at them and want them to not have it either sometimes. And he said, oh, I feel that all the time. And I was like, yeah, welcome, welcome to being human, right? You know, so his brother gets something or does something and he feels envy, right? We all, we all have those little Moments of envy. And so that might happen. You might be impressive. You might think you're gonna get approval because you're so smart, or you do it so well, or you look so good, and then someone might have negative feelings towards you. What the heck, right? But the fantasy is they're impressed by us, and then they view us, you know, positively or want to be around us or want something from us that makes us sought after or desirable, and that's approval. It might also be not necessarily strong attraction or desiring you because you're so great. It might just be not judging you negatively because you're doing what you're supposed to do. You're fitting in conformity, right? Like, well, I approve of you because you're not standing out in a negative way. You're doing what you're supposed to do. So, you know, you got a good job. Your parents approve of your good job, right? And maybe they're not impressed by it, but they're like, yeah, nod of approval, good job. Yes. And you get that from your parents. You get that from your neighbors. You get that from people that you might date. Look. Look at me on my profile. I look like this. I got this body and I got this job and I got this car, and I live here. And people nods like, mm, that's right. That's about what I expect. That's how I approve of that. I approve of all that. And so they're not gushing about you, but they're also not judging you. So approval is about trying to impress people so that they like you or avoid the judgment of not fitting in, of being weird, don't want to be a weirdo. Right? Or sometimes people feel like there's a blueprint for my life and I got to follow that blueprint or else I'm going to be falling behind or somehow judged negatively, disapproved of, because I didn't follow the blueprint. Now, the problem with this is whatever blueprint you have for your life, it's not universal. Not everyone has that blueprint for either themselves or for you. You might say, well, my parents think. My family thinks this. The cultural field I grew up in says this. So that's totally real. Yeah, but there's a million other cultural fields out there and a million other families. And so in your family, you're supposed to have a certain amount of money or whatever. I talked to one guy who had to have sold a business by a certain age and make some X amount of millions, or he was a nothing because he was, you know, he was playing the role of successful entrepreneur. And it's like, great. If you want to play that game and you're good enough to do that and you can pull it off, that's nothing wrong with that. But there's a. I don't look at somebody and be like, who cares? How many businesses have you sold, you loser? Like, that's not even in my. I don't even care about that. And that's true for many people. You might not care about that. So. But in his world, that was part of what he needed to do and be in order to be approved of. And you have the same list of criteria, whether you know it or not, to be approved of. And you think it's about them, it's about what they're going to think. And no, it's about you and whatever cultural field you have participated in and are buying into. I'm not saying that some people don't have those expectations of you, but what I'm saying is the whole world doesn't. And here's where the fantastic news comes in and where you get to break free, which is you don't have to live in that particular cultural field. You don't have to do the things that you learned you had to do in order to fit in. And you think, but if I don't fit in, then bad things are gonna happen. No one's gonna like me. No one's gonna love me. Ah, approval and love, my friend, are very different things. They. They don't. They're not the same. We can be confused because they have similar qualities. Well, someone feels positively towards me or they desire me. Isn't that. Well, no, not really. Because love goes way deeper. Love is about a connection that's created through vulnerability and common humanity. It's not because you've impressed somebody that might, you know, someone you love might also. You might also approve of them. You might also be impressed by them, but you don't need that. Case in point, I was just mentioning my son earlier. I love my kids. I love my two boys. It's not because they're impressing me every day. Right? In fact, I could even disapprove of something that they do. I'm sure I do. On any given day, something annoying is happening, right? They're fighting over something. I disapprove of that fight. But that doesn't mean that I don't feel deep love with them. Love goes so beyond this. In fact, many people will hide their authenticity and go for approval and then never experience love on a Deep level their entire lives. And they might have families, they might have connections, they might have friends. And I'm not saying they never even use the word love. They might say I love you and then their partner says I love you and they say I love you to a family member. But they're so embedded in their role and doing what they're supposed to do and getting approval. They don't actually really deeply feel what love can be, which is you beyond your roles, two souls in connection with each other. So how do you experience that? Well, you start to prioritize authenticity. You prioritize realness, which is and feels like a risk. So you risk being real and see what's there. That's what the essence of it is. You risk being real. And c. Do people really actually like me? Do people want to be friends with me when they know what I really think and feel? And sometimes this could be scary for people because they're like, oh, but you can't just say everything. Well, you don't, I don't know, you don't have to go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in a second. Just take it slow, take it easy, just do a little bit, unveil yourself a little bit more. Just 5%. That's what I often tell with clients that are my coaching programs. Just, can you just be 3% or 5% more authentic, more real in your life? What would that look like? So then someone at work asks you a question and just saying whatever you think is the right appropriate approval seeking answer, you unveil a little bit more. Whether it's something personal like hey, what was your weekend like? Instead of saying it was great, went to the ball game. Haha, right. You share a little bit more about yourself. Maybe something about your family, maybe something about how you feel about something. Or at work someone shares an idea and it's saying, oh, that sounds good to me. Yep. You say, hmm, that could work. I also have some questions or concerns. Right? Yeah, it's a little bit more real. It's not radical. You're not. You don't have to practice Brad Blanton's radical honesty where you storm into the office and say, you know what I think of you, Terry Dumb. You are just complete waste of space here. And by the way, people have an idea that being authentic is actually saying all that stuff. Usually the, the harsh judgmental thoughts are not your most authentic. They're an in. They're a way of trying to express yourself without being vulnerable. Remember I was working with a client one time and he was having conflicts with it with some. Was his sibling close friend or sibling? I don't remember. It's been a number of years. And I asked him, well, you know, what would you really want to say? And it was a lot of this, and you're like that and blah, blah, blah. And I said, okay, so he sounds like you're upset with him, you're angry. He's like, yeah, I'm angry. And I said, well, what do you really want? And we explored what he really wanted in the relationship. And what he really wanted was this person to stop doing some things they were doing that were challenging for him and basically spend more quality time together. And I was like, okay, so what you want is to connect more deeply and have this quality time. But what you're doing is you're like critiquing and criticizing that person. He's like, yeah, because I don't like it. And I can't have that quality time if they're being that way. It's unacceptable to me. And you told me to be more authentic. In your book Not Nice Disease, I say, okay, well, you can do that. You can just say it like it is and, you know, let the chips fall where they may, and you can walk away saying, well, I was authentic. But is it effective? Is it skillful? In fact, also in Less Nice, more you. Which is what led me to write the chapter. In Less Nice more you called I should know the names of the chapters, but I don't. In this moment, I'm not going to pause and get the book. But it's something about the levels of skill. Three levels of skillful assertiveness, skillful authenticity, where you can just blow, say it and take it. This is what I think, but it's not as effective and it's not vulnerable. But what about something that. Where you unveil yourself a little more, saying, hey, I really value you and our time together, I really care about you. Or, you know, in the right situations, you might say, I love you, I want more time with you. I noticed I'm having a challenge with this, and this makes it harder for me to spend time together. And I want to talk about it so we can work through it. Do you see how that's. Not only is it more vulnerable, do you see how it's more true? Because the harsh, judgmental thoughts are not true. They're just a way, an unskillful way of expressing I'm upset. And it's unskillful because you're not saying what you really want. You're not using language that brings people together. So when you are more real, you can start to practice this stuff and get better at it, and then you can have better and better relationships. And here is the ultimate payoff is as you take the risk to be more real. Yes, some relationships might not totally work out. You might need to shift friendships or ship. Really, that happens to people that I work with. But the fantastic news is the ones that really stick, the people that stay with you, the relationships you create are so much more deep. And you don't have to have this background anxiety of needing to perform all the time, because you just get to show up and be you. And it's okay to be all different facets of you. And that's a whole. That's a whole can of worms to open up in a future episode. Because sometimes people are like, wait a minute, I'm not okay with all the aspects of me. And that's where Omos comes in. On my own side. Being on your own side. There's plenty of episodes in this podcast all about that, and I'm sure I'll talk about it more in the future. But for now, we're talking about you showing up and expressing more of you in the world. So that leads to your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for this episode is to practice that 3 or 5%. What if you were 3% more authentic, more real, and you could bring that to every arena that you go to. Work, family, social, relationship. But if that feels kind of overwhelming, you just pick one area. Can I be 3% more real at work today? What if I got home and I was 5% more real with my partner? What would I do? And if what comes to your mind feels like freakishly out of character, and then it's probably not 5%, you're probably jumping to, I got to do 180 degree shift right now and turn it all around today. And you don't, you don't. And that's not sustainable. And it's destabilizing and overwhelming. So just do the 5%. This is like building a strength, building a muscle, and you'll discover that over time, you can stabilize at that level and grow a little bit more and do that. And there's no rush here, but in a relatively short period of time, I mean, even a 3 or 5% shift will start to feel different, even just that amount, because while it's a small change, it is a. A step in a direction that is like drinking a glass of cold water when you're thirsty. Like, ah, this is what I need. This is what my soul needs to be more real. So thanks for being with me today. I look forward to hearing about how this goes for you 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 the 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.