Becoming Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable With Dr. Robert Glover

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 the show. Today we're going to do a very brief introduction and we're going to dive into an extended interview with someone who I find incredibly amazing. And I'm so glad that he was able to do the show and that you get to learn from him. His name is Dr. Robert Glover, and he is an internationally recognized authority on the Nice Guy syndrome. In fact, one of his most prominent books is called no more Mr. Nice Guy, a Proven Plan for Getting what yout Want in Love, Sex and Life. He is a frequent guest on radio talk shows and has been featured in numerous local and national publications. And he has an online book and then online classes, workshops, podcasts, blogs, consultation, therapy groups, all dedicated to helping people grow, particularly men, particularly around being nice people. Pleasing, not knowing who they are, not knowing what they want. A lot of the stuff that I cover in Not Nice. So it's so good to be able to talk with someone who can keep adding to my understanding of this. And as you'll hear in the interview, actually, he was one of the first introductions I had to this whole idea of being too nice. I didn't even know that was a thing until I was in a men's therapy group and the facilitator handed me a copy of the book and said, you need to read this. So Dr. Glover is just a wealth of knowledge around this topic as well as many other things as you'll discover in this interview. So I encourage you to take some notes, get out your phone, be able to jot some things down, and just really absorb what he has to teach, because I just love this man and everything that he shares. So without further ado, let's dive into that interview. Welcome, Dr. Glover. Thank you for joining us here on Shrink for the shy guy.

Dr. Aziz, thanks for the invitation. It's good to be here.

I am very excited to talk with you because I don't know if people listening to the show know this. But I was telling you earlier, Dr. Glover, that I joined a men's group when I was 27 and had struggled to find any sort of lasting ability to sustain a romantic relationship. And I joined a men's group to work on that. And not even in the first group session, in the meeting with the facilitator where he was determining if I was a good fit for the group. At the end of that meeting, he said, great, here's what you need to read. And he handed me a book, which was no more Mr. Nice Guy. A proven plan for getting what you want in life and love, sex and life. And of course, that was your book. And that was a major turning point for me and my growth to really understand myself and really why I was having all these challenges. So I'm so excited because not only do you know so much, it's going to help everyone listening today, but you've also been a personal mentor and inspiration for me in my life.

Thank you. I like hearing those kinds of stories, and I hear them frequently, and it makes me feel good. Yeah.

And because it's such a common struggle and it's surprisingly invisible until you know about it. So today we will get into niceness. And I didn't want to limit us to that because the theme for today really is about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is something that was emerging in our conversation just before this interview. And so let's start with that and then see where it takes us. Rather niceness, relationships, anything else. But so first of all, that idea, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, someone listening might. Might be open to that and might be like, wait a minute, that sounds not possible or bad. So maybe you could share a little more about your thoughts on that.

It's kind of something that, you know, I've been a mindset, I've been really kind of easing into just, you know, in recent months or year or two. And I mentioned to you, I've got a friend who's a psychologist. His main approach to doing therapy is not help people get rid of anything, that is get rid of their anxiety or their fear or their childhood trauma, but to actually help them get uncomfortable with their uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and fear and whatever may be generated. Because the truth is, we're human beings. We're always going to have emotional states. Our goal is not to wipe those out to where we don't feel anything. Those feeling states are amazingly informative. They're amazingly helpful. They can give us direction. They can tell us turn around and go back. They can tell us, keep moving forward. They tell us, don't eat that, or don't talk to that person or get away from that person. But if we want to get rid of all those feeling states, which is what, as, you know, really culturally, what a lot of that's what we're encouraged to do, just go watch more tv, go surf the Internet more, go eat more, go smoke more pot, go drink more alcohol, go, you know, whatever. Because we just don't want to feel. And if we're gonna have the kind of lives that I think most of us want, we gotta get comfortable feeling our feelings.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's a really good point, which is that there's. We want the. Because people want to feel the good, quote, good feelings, right? We want to feel pleasure and love and gratitude and purpose and passion and meaning, but we don't want any of the, quote, bad ones. And what I hear you pointing towards is expanding our capacity to feel in general.

And, you know, that can take us in so many, so many down so many roads and so many directions. You and I were chatting before that you'd asked me what, what I'm working on now in terms of a book. And I was telling you about the concept that I call positive emotional tension. And just kind of the core theory of that is. And I discovered this when, when I was. After I got divorced in 2002, single for the first time as an adult and, you know, started interacting with women and as your listeners probably could understand, you know, prior to that, I'd been a nice guy. I thought, well, you know, why would any woman really want me? I, you know, I had these negative self beliefs. And I thought, but if I'm a nice guy, if I treat her differently than other bad men, if I listen to her talk about her problems, if I help her do things, you know, if, you know, whatever, then she'll like me. And unfortunately, all that really ever did was attract women with problems to me. It didn't really ever take me where I wanted to go. So when I became single in my late 40s, I decided I really need to learn how to date. I need to learn how to interact with women. Probably you went through this phase. A lot of your listeners were. We said, wait a minute, I got to learn how to do this. And I did. And I had this revelation. And to this day, I don't really know where it came from, but I was actually just finished a run on a beach in Puerto Vallarta. I live here now, but I Was on vacation here then, and I just finished a run. And at the end of that run, I had this like, aha. This said women need to experience emotional tension. And I kind of just thought, wait a minute, what's that? And I really just kind of asked myself, and kind of within a moment is that women have to feel emotional tension with a man to be attracted to him. I thought, wait a minute, this is important. And I, like, ran back to the bed and breakfast I was staying at and wrote 12 kind of, like, legal pages of what it means for women needing emotional tension. And then I started kind of refining that and looking at it and practicing it and experimenting and then teaching it to men. And I've been teaching that concept as an online class for a number of years now. It's my most popular class because it seems to resonate with men about what isn't working both as single guys in terms of attracting women and married guys or guys and relationship in terms of their wives staying, like, interested in them and wanting to have sex with them over time. But the core theory is, is that women have to experience emotional tension. It's how they're evolutionarily wired. It's in their DNA. They have to experience this emotional tension, that buzz, the vibration, you know something, the warmth inside with a man, to be attracted to him and to stay attached to him over time and to feel sexually aroused by him. Now, here's the crisis. We men tend to hate emotional tension, especially in our relationships. It's just kind of what we're wired to do. We're wired if we feel tension, it activates that part in us. Well, let's go solve whatever problem's causing the tension and get it over with and get everything back to good so we can, like, kick back and surf the Internet some more or watch Sports center or have a beer, right? We want to solve everything that might be creating tension. And so what happens is, as nice guys, we go out and instead of doing things that might create an organic emotional tension for a woman to attract her, we do the opposite. We try to be nice to her, which creates absolutely no emotional tension. Because that's really what we're trying to do by being nice is to avoid emotional tension. Or if the woman creates emotional tension, like through a shit test or by being a little bit unavailable or. Or by being a little bit critical, you know, we'll try to fix that as quickly as possible rather than recognizing she's just doing. I call that negative emotional tension. She's just creating whatever she needs to Feel connected to us and to feel something. So the point that you and I were talking about kind of got us to this. Getting comfortable with uncomfortable. I've had guys who've taken my class and they'll like, write me or ask questions on the class forum and say, you know, Robert, I think I get this. I think I understand, you know, the women need emotional tension for attraction, arousal, attachment and all that. And they'll go, but I hate the word tension. I hate tension. Can we change the name of this? Can we change it from positive emotional tension to positive emotional blah, blah, blah? And, you know, it's like they're so uncomfortable with tension, they want to get rid of the word tension. And I go, I know you don't like tension. That's the point. That's the thesis of what I'm teaching you. And we have to. I'm not going to change the word because it tension we're talking about. And I'm not going to change the word because I want you to get comfortable with experiencing tension. And it's like, you know, you just see them, you know, shaking and their knees knocking. So that's kind of, you know, what you and I were kind of, you know, bouncing around is that unless we can experience these uncomfortable feelings, we're not going to ever get to where we want to go in life. We're just going to kind of. I call it staying in the nursery. We're just going to hang out where everything's kind of nice and easy and soft and we get some external validation and nothing's too challenging and nothing's too unsettling or too uncomfortable. And then we. Then we can't figure out why we're not succeeding in work or career or why women aren't attracted to us or why our girlfriend left us. But we just want everything nice and easy and comfortable.

Yeah.

And that's not serving us.

Absolutely. And there's one thing I'm thinking in response to what you're saying, and then I have to go back to explore what some of those positive emotional tension qualities are, because my own curiosity is pique. But before we do that, what I was reflecting on when you were speaking was it's almost like the success, however you define that in your relationship, in your career, in any endeavor that you want to do, your success is in direct proportion to how much discomfort you're willing to experience, tolerate, expose yourself to, and not in some. That's the thing about. I found a discomfort. You can't just, like, pack it all into one day. And say, okay, I'll make this one day terrible. And then I'm going to get all the results and all the goodies. It's actually like, are you able to go into discomfort consistently, daily, as needed, in order to create whatever the relationship you want, the business that you want, the life that you want?

And that will be a lifetime of going into areas that are, you know, that this kind of your specialty, areas that are unknown, that, you know, we have our doubts about and uncertainty about, and that makes us uncomfortable. But unless we're willing to feel the discomfort of going into new and unknown areas, nothing really ever changes in our life. And yeah, it's not like this thing, like you said, we just get it done and get it out of the way. I'll tell you a quick example, and I shared a little bit of this story with you while you and I were chatting. But as I shared with you, about a year and a half ago, I had a medical experience where. Get to the end of the story quickly. I had a tumor that was blocking my small intestine. But for over a period of three months, I went to doctors in the US And Mexico, where I live here, and nobody could find the problem, and people were misdiagnosing it or undiagnosing it. And I got to the place of, you know, I was having these stomach spasms so, so strong, so painful, they'd be keeping me awake at night. And as. And, you know, I could, you know, I could take some medications that kind of helped a little bit. But here's the thing, the thing, the thing, the most powerful thing I learned, I took away from that experience. And I did luckily found a doctor, or the doctor found me, or my wife found the doctor who found the problem and did surgery. And that was a year and a half ago. I'm alive and happy and life's good, but during, you know, you're having muscle spasms that are so strong you can't sleep, that you're just in pain. And the only thing that helped me get through those was just surrendering to them and. And breathing into them. It didn't, you know, make them go away, but by breathing into it, surrendering to the fact that they were there and just kind of just an acceptance or surrender, that even a surrender that I might be dying. And I didn't know why. All I knew is that this was painful, it was coming and going. And ironically, as I learned to surrender into the discomfort and breathe into it, accept it as being there, over time, people would ask, well, how you Feeling today. And after a while, I feel better some days than others. My answer was, well, I don't know if I'm actually getting better or just doing better at feeling badly. Come to find out, I'd gotten better at feeling bad because I was still sick and the tumor was getting worse. But at times I was actually, I'd feel better. I was in a better mood, I had more energy, mainly because I had surrendered in to the feeling bad and the not knowing what was happening to me. That was really hard to not know what was going on. And by surrendering into it, accepting it, breathing into it, being with it, in many ways, it made it bearable and livable. That was such a powerful lesson for me that we can really do a lot more than we think if we will accept it as what's. What is, and surrender into it. Yeah.

And that's such a powerful lesson for all of us, you know, and thank you for sharing that and going through that and giving us the wisdom of that without us necessarily having to go through that, the pain of it. And so there's so much. There's such a gift in that for everyone. And as you're sharing, what I'm hearing is, okay, the pathway is to let go, to surrender, to allow it, to accept it so that you can start to be with it and not fight it. And I think what can get in the way is mental resistance, fear stories. Like, we almost think that, or our mind thinks that we do need to fight it and that somehow surrendering and trusting in whatever is really bad or dangerous. And so I think that's often what you know. So if you started to think of the metaphor of like, putting down the sword and the shield, it's almost like we put it down for a second. And I'll notice this in my life too. And then I'll wait, you know, five, 10 minutes or a day or two, and then it's like, I gotta pick up the side. You know, even. Even if nothing's happened, it's just. It can feel so, you know, it feels like you're not doing anything, but in reality, you're probably doing the very thing that is the most healing or the most effective.

Well, you know, and really what you know, there's so many different ways the subject you and I are talking about probably, you know, different people from different backgrounds or perspectives might talk about it in various different ways with different language, but in a lot of ways, maybe one way of saying what we're talking about is that we're consciously learning to Rewire our nervous systems. You know, our nervous systems were built into us over, you know, millions of years for our survival. But for example, you know, rarely do we have a saber toothed tiger about to jump out of a tree, you know, and eat us. But yet we're having a lot of those same reactions daily, just with little things like we're in traffic and somebody cuts us off and like, you know, we have this reaction like, you know, hey, we're ready to go to war. You know, our adrenaline's up and, you know, the cortisol and everything's ready to go and then nothing happens to it. And so we're kind of used to having all of these emotional reactions. And the truth is we don't need to go to war. So maybe the truth is we do need to learn to just notice them, kind of breathe into them, soothe ourselves and just notice that it's there. And that starts kind of like rewiring these nervous systems to where we can go put ourselves in challenging situations that at one time might have frightened us. I think a lot of your listeners, listeners, based on the title of the podcast, are probably have some degree of shyness or introversion or social anxiety. And for most of us, for example, walking up to a woman or having a conversation with a woman or a woman starts a conversation with us and it just immediately triggers the anxiety, like a saber toothed tigers in the tree about to jump down on us and kill us. If we can't learn to rewire those reactions, typically by letting ourselves go all the way into them, renaming the context, breathing into it, eliminating the story that we create to go with it, unless we can do that, nothing really changes in our life.

Yeah, I'd love to hear more about ways that you do that. I think one of the most effective that I've seen for my life, and so I do it with a lot of clients as well, is a process where you go into the sensation with your awareness. So if there's a, you know, that fear of approaching that person, whether it's for dating or business or whatever, fear of reaching out in some way, you go in, you imagine this situation, or maybe you're even there and you can pause and start to bring your attention and feel that squeezing in your chest or that tightness in your stomach, and stay out of the story of it and just go, keep going right in the sensation and meeting it with allowance, surrender, just, okay, here it is, here it is. And then eventually what I find is it will, things will calm down. I'll have More capacity, more resources. So that's one of the main tools that I found really helpful and I'm curious what we can add to that or what else. What are the things you found from a nuts and bolts perspective have been really helpful for people getting more tolerance or comfort with that discomfort.

You know, you and I do a lot of the same kind of work with a lot of the same kind of tools. And you and I are also have a lot of commonality that the things that we're teaching and writing about is the stuff we've had to learn to deal with. And you know, again, I was always relatively uncomfortable around women. I was comfortable enough to be their friend. You know, the whole, the nice guy, you know, I call it now a girlfriend with a penis is just be their friend. But to actually, you know, like, you know, move that further, you know, escalate it, create polarity to where maybe they'd want to be my girlfriend, you know, that was scary to me, create a lot of anxiety and I know. And if I did ever get a girlfriend, which I did, I didn't want like keep them around forever, you know. So I give the example. I was married to my first two wives for 25 years and probably should not have gone on more than three dates with either one of those women. But yet once I had a woman, I just kept her for good or for bad. And because of my anxieties is really what it was. And then during my second marriage, I got into some therapy. Mainly I went to therapy trying to figure out why me being a nice guy didn't make my wife treat me better. Luckily I got into some good therapy, started learning about boundaries and honesty and self care and things like that. And I already had a PhD in marriage and family therapy at this time. I'd never even heard of boundaries before. And so I started learning, you know, good skills. And out of that is, you know, how I ended up writing a book. But when I wrote no more Mr. Nice Guy, kind of a core, core premise of it, it was that nice guy syndrome was primarily a shame based disorder. The toxic shame that we internalized as small children due to basically mislabeling our life experiences as being our fault or that there's something wrong with me that caused mom to be sad or dad to get angry or our parents to divorce or whatever. And so as I wrote the book, a lot of I talked about is the main things nice guys do is to manage their shame, to try not to have to feel their shame. So we hide things about ourselves or we try to become what we think other people want us to be. By the time I'd finished writing the book, and then my book did come out in like 2002, 2003, right around the time I was going through my second divorce. And what I was beginning to also see was how much anxiety that nice guys have. And I would now say probably pretty much equally that I consider nice guy syndrome to be pretty equal. A shame based disorder and an anxiety based disorder that pretty much everything nice guys do is meant to not have anxiety, to manage their anxiety. And it's that management of anxiety, you know, the avoidance of anything that makes us uncomfortable, you know, always smiling, the pleasing behavior, the avoiding conflict, the giving to get, those are the things that keep us stuck. So around this time, you know, as I started to do a lot more men's groups, this is about 15, 16, 17 years ago, you know, I was starting to talk more about self soothing strategies rather than managing anxiety. And my definition of managing anxiety is when you try to control people and situations outside of you so you don't feel the anxiety inside of you. Whereas soothing anxiety is to where you soothe what you're feeling on the inside so you can actually go deal with the things that are happening on the outside, the people and the situations. And for me, kind of like what you teach, breathing is number one for me. When we're anxious, we tend to quit breathing. It gets shallow, it disrupts the balance of oxygen, CO2 in our blood. It makes us more uptight. So just breathing is everything. It's interesting. I'm in a men's program, I think, you know, the coach that leads it, John Weinland. And he kind of calls him, he calls himself, I think different things. But like basically he says I'm a breath coach because almost all the work we do always begins with some different type of breathing exercise. And that's been amazingly powerful. Me even as an adult as working on this stuff for years, just learning deeper techniques for breathing has been really helpful. So that's my number one go to tool for soothing anxiety. Another is from a book I read 30 plus years ago when I went through my first divorce called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And kind of the mantra from that is she says that all fear is based on an internal belief that I can't handle the outcomes of what I'm afraid of. And she says, let's just reverse that and say, no matter what happens, I'll handle it. We've handled every other thing. We didn't think we Could. So we'll probably handle this as well. So I've been repeating that mantra for 30 plus years and I've done a lot of things that scared me. And I just keep repeating, I'll handle it. No matter what happens, I'll handle it. And then probably another piece. And this is. You used a real similar terminology, is I've also really, for me, at myself personally, started looking more at my stories that I wrap around the uncomfortable feelings and just give you a quick example. I am married again. And my wife and I, like most couples, have some behaviors that trigger the other person's anxiety. We both bring our own trauma. And she, like a lot of women, has some pretty big abandonment anxieties. Every man that she's ever known has been a serial cheater. So she just assumes, you know, I'm a guy, I'll cheat on her. And, you know, that's kind of wired into her nervous system. She goes to therapy, she works on it. You know, it's a piece we work on together. But I get triggered by feeling like I'm being falsely accused if I haven't done anything wrong, but yet I'm being accused of this. And it activates my nervous system. It's my old story, it's my internalized wounding. So I've gone to work on that. And one of the pieces that has helped me the most is to look at what is the underlying story that spins up in my head when things happen, that triggers my reactions. And I'll give you an example. Just a few months back, I took a trip up to Seattle. My mother had had a stroke a few months ago and she's doing much better living at home. But I just want. She'd gone back into the hospital for some problems. I just wanted to go up and spend a week and just check in on her, see how she's doing. And my wife's supportive of that. It was fine. So I'm leaving our home here in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, flying up to Seattle. And when I left, I could tell my wife was kind of withdrawn and not happy about something. And usually it's because of her fears that I'm going to abandon her, you know, I'm going to go cheat on her. But I didn't get spun up. I was in a place where I just soothed myself, you know, laughed, got on the plane. She was pretty distant, you know, while I was away for a week. Not many text messages, not real warm or loving. And, you know, the old me would have gotten really wound up around all of that and created stories and had different emotional reactions. But I let myself be comfortable with those uncomfortable feelings of my wife being somewhat removed. And instead of spinning up a story, I just repeated, okay, either my wife is not feeling sufficiently loved by me or my wife is feeling afraid. That's all, that's all the story I would let myself tell myself. I wouldn't let myself lie in bed or drive my car spinning up all this or how I was going to, you know, blah, blah, blah. I just calm the story down to either my wife is not feeling sufficiently loved by me or, and, or my wife is feeling afraid. And that allowed me to stay open hearted and not like push to try to make it better while we were away or try to fix it or to get her to quit being that way. And then when I did fly back home about, it was about a week I was away, she was still kind of distant. You know, I got home, we got things settled and went upstairs and I said, let's talk, you know, what, what is, what's up with you? And we resolved it like in less than 20 minutes. We just got through it. She said, well, it hurt my feelings, blah, blah, blah. And it hurt my feelings, blah, blah, blah. And I go, okay, I hear you, I understand you. I will try to do it this way differently in the future. Would that be helpful? And she said, yes, that would be helpful. I said, okay, and in the future, my preference is, is that you not put up a wall, withdraw or close your heart to me. And she said, those are legitimate requests. And we got through it like in 20 minutes where in the past we might have fought, you know, days about that if we were wired up into, you know, our own storytelling about it. So yeah, just if we can break out of those stories and just kind of get it down to whatever just the bare minimum is, you know. You know, whether it's, you know, you're approaching a woman and you have this intense anxiety that, you know, maybe she's going to throw a drink in our face or she has a boyfriend that's going to beat us up. Those are all the stories, right? Or, you know, if I, if I approach and she shoots me down, then I'm going to walk back across the room and everybody's going to stare at me and laugh at me. Those are all the stories that we cook up. And man, how about if we could just tone those stories down and, and then we can go do some things that make us uncomfortable, like approaching a woman we don't know and still holding on to ourselves, even if she has low interest in having an interaction with us. And we don't have to spin up a story about that either. She just had low interest in having an interaction with us. It's nothing more than that. And most of the pain we feel is whatever story we make up about her low interest. So I like that concept that you use about stories, and I use that on myself and I use it with my clients as well.

I love it. I really appreciate your stories that you're sharing and the specific examples. It's so relatable to anyone at any level of relationship. And what I love in what you're saying is the way you distill it down with your wife, which is either she's not feeling sufficiently loved by me or she's feeling afraid. And do you, do you think that that's the crux when anyone's acting, whatever closed, upset, acting out? Do you think that's really the crux of it in any situation?

I'm guessing that would be a really good starting place with those two things, especially talking, you know, relationship. Wise man. We try to figure out everybody else's behavior out. And, you know, you're a trained psychologist, I'm a trained therapist. You know, we listen and work with people the other day, we understand human behavior, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the majority of time when I try to guess why somebody's doing something that seems odd or I don't understand, I'm usually wrong. I still get it wrong, even with people I know. Well, you know, I think, okay, that's why I quit trying. Well, that's why I thought, well, I'm not going to make up the story why my wife's upset at me. And the truth is, whatever I made up, I still would have been wrong. Because when I got home and she told me what bothered her, I go, oh, I hadn't, you know, I hadn't gone down that storyline and I wouldn't have, I would gone a different storyline.

Yes. And something just clicked right in that second as you were talking as to why it's so tempting to not go the route that you went. And it's so easy and so tempting to go into the, ah, she's doing this. And now I'm getting all blustered and upset and, and I, and I realized that the reason for that is the reason we want to go into anger is because if she's upset, that can trigger the shame, that toxic shame that you were talking about. And again, that's a feeling that I don't want to go there, and I don't want to go to that.

So.

So now I'm going to go over to like, putting up my wall and I'm going to get real upset and fight with her in my head. And, you know, but. But if we're willing, and that's what I think allowed you to do what you did, is you're willing to, and you've probably done that for many times over many years to go into that shame and to be with that uncomfortable feeling and see what's there and see how to relax into that so that you're not running from it your whole life.

And you are 100% right. And here's. Here's kind of the interesting or just the amusingly human thing about, like, dealing with the shame is that, you know, in the past, I've done tons of therapy, worked with therapists, been in 12 step groups, been in men's groups, been in programs where I've worked at releasing a lot of shame. That's why. That's why I can tell so many stories and like, you know, I can tell you about every. Every fuck up in my entire life without it getting wrapped in shame. I've just told it enough times and. But here's the thing. I mean, there's so many. There's those layers of it inside. So here I am in my 60s, in my third marriage, and like the same old stuff's getting triggered again. And so, yeah, it's like it comes up again. And it comes up just in a kind of a different way that you didn't see coming. And again. So I had to go back to work again to start noticing what was going on, rewiring my nervous system. So a couple of things that I've done in with my coach and the men's program I'm in, one of the things is to, like, start doing like, shadow work or going into our dark side, you know. And my coach, he'll have us work around, Taboo, around, around just getting into that dark part of ourselves that we don't even let ourselves look at. That has gone a long way to releasing shame and opening me up. And then another piece that helped rewire. My reaction is my coach suggested to find a way to make art to turn this playful. This whole reaction I had. And so I remember after he made that suggestion a few months ago, I had a conversation. I was at a workshop and I was going to be traveling home and again having a phone conversation with my wife. She seemed a little bit, you know, abrupt And I don't want to paint a picture that my wife is like always abrupt or upset. She's actually the most affectionate, loving, open hearted person I've ever known. That's why I'm with her. But she's got her wounding right. And so she seemed a little bit abrupt or withdrawn on a phone conversation. And I was still a day away from being home and I felt like this anxiety come over me and I went and get to get in the shower. I was staying in a hotel in San Francisco and I was about to get a bite to eat before I caught a plane the next day. And it was like I'm in the shower and I'm going, I'm feeling anxious in my body. I mean I actually tuned into it and I just made up a little song right there in the shower, just I'm in trouble. I'm in such big trouble. Oh no, my wife is mad at me. And I just started singing to myself in the shower and I'd actually given myself okay, how big of trouble am I in from 0 to 10. And my first before I started singing to myself is like this isn't huge, maybe it's a five or six. By the time I got done singing this little ditty to myself and got out of the shower, I'm laughing about it. I'm going to, yeah, it's down below one now. And so that was just a little trick to break the story, to break the emotional wiring in my nervous system from childhood to break the shame loop that is so easy to get into. And all I had to do was sing a little song about being in trouble for me to realize how silly it is for a 63 year old man to worry about being in trouble from, from this Mexican woman he's married to. You know, wait a minute, I'm not a little kid, I'm not in trouble. But I didn't think my way out of it. I made art of it. I played my way out of it. So there's these little things we can do to break that, that, that reflexive, you know, reaction in our nervous system. And so you're like, you know, I've never tried this but maybe a guy even in approaching a woman, maybe sing to himself while he's approaching the strange woman and he's going to introduce himself and rather trying of a pickup line, you know, just sing his name over, you know, hi, I'm Robert, I'm coming to meet you, blah, blah, whatever. Just do that to rewire the whole nervous system reaction.

Yeah, I love that. And it's such an under. It's such an effective thing and such an underutilized thing because so much of what's happening in us is these patterns. I mean, we're, we're, we're an animal and animals are so conditionable. And so we have these things, these conditioned habits, brain patterns, nervous system patterns that just fire off someone's upset. Danger, danger. And I love that. One little rewiring that I discovered and I share with all my clients is one exercise that I think is so good for breaking out of social anxiety and starting the process of connecting more is friendly greetings, where you walk down a busy street and you just say hi to people as you walk by them. And it leads to getting out of your shell. Many times it leads to micro rejections which are really good to be able to tolerate. And of course, it also leads to a lot of positive responses, which shows you like, oh, hey, I'm not this wretch that everyone's gonna, you know, reject. And one thing I'll share with people though, is when they're getting started and they say hi to someone and then that person kind of looks them up and down and then looks away or just stonewalls them or just does something that's some form of rejection that when you pass the person so not right in their face, but when you pass them, laugh to yourself, force yourself to laugh and go, and then go and do it again. And that little rewiring can actually change the reaction from shame or embarrassment to being genuinely amused. And I had this work pretty quickly where after one or two of those, I am actually genuinely amused at the, at the ways in which someone might reject me for just saying hi to them.

And yeah, just by. And that's just another great, artful way to rewire the nervous system. And, you know, it makes me think, when I started working with guys around dating is I tried to convince them that rejection doesn't hurt. And. And you know, they would. And I tried to say, you can't use the R word. We're not going to use the R word here. And, you know, they'd find creative ways to not use the R word, but still basically act and argue with me that rejection does hurt. And the point is somebody having low interest in interacting with you doesn't really hurt. And you're kind of laughing about it, kind of reframes that it doesn't hurt. It's the story we make up about a person not wanting to have interaction with us is what hurts us. And usually we make up this pretty horrible story that, oh, they can see that I'm this boring loser of a person. And every other person is going to see that as well.

It's the toxic shame.

It's a toxic shame. And a little thing that I will do in groups and workshops at times. And there's a few different applications I make out of this little exercise, but it's a fun little exercise where I'll get everybody to pair off. Everybody's got a partner, and I tell them, I'm going to give each of you two minutes. And partner A for two minutes is going to repeat I want. And you can ask for anything you want. I want to be happy. I want a million dollars. I want a sexy girlfriend. I want a big dick. I want world peace, you know, I want a new car. I want a Bentley, whatever. Ask for what you want for two minutes. And the other person, partner B, has to tell you no repeatedly for two minutes to everything you asked for. And then after two minutes, we switch. Now, there's several applications for. A lot of times nice guys have a hard time asking for what they want. Can't even think of two minutes worth of what they want. Another application is. It's hard for nice guys to say no. We feel bad. We feel guilty telling somebody no. But I'll do this exercise with guys and, you know, I always have to, like, it gets so noisy in the room. I gotta holler when the two minutes is up. And then I gotta actually make them stop because they're laughing and having a good time, you know, making up all this stuff. I want this. I want this. No, no, you can't have it. And, you know, it's going on and on. And so I, you know, when we stop it and I process it with them, and I said, okay, look at it this way. You believe rejection hurts, and so you do everything in your power to avoid getting rejected. I said, you just spent two minutes getting rejected over and over and over again, and you were having a good time doing it. You were laughing, you were being playful. You didn't want to quit doing it. Then I always say, okay, what's the difference? And the difference only difference is the context and the story that we wrap around the no. And we wrap around the low interest. So again, we're back to story again. That that person that you smiled and said hi at, that kind of just looked away from you. You could make up a story, and the story is probably that you're this schmuck of a loser, but. But who knows what the story is? Maybe they were preoccupied. Maybe they have social anxiety. They don't talk to strangers. Maybe they felt something uncomfortable. Who knows? But whatever story we make up is what's going to cause us our pain. And odds are it's not accurate. And so, yeah, if we can find these artful ways to become aware of our stories and start shifting them in our nervous system, we can. You know, like, I'll give guys the assignment to go out with a buddy. Get a buddy and go out in an evening and try to get five women to reject you in an evening. Make a game of it. Now, don't do anything offensive, you know, to make them reject you, but approach five different women, tell them your name, and just take out your phone and say, give me your number. I'm going to give you a call. I want to hook up with you later. And, you know, do that. Try to get five rejections in a night. And the funny thing is you have anxiety doing that as well. But I found that every guy that will do that assignment, by the time he approaches the second or third woman trying to get rejected, he's having a good time pumping his fist with every rejection he gets, and ends up having a lot of really interesting discussions with these women and actually getting several numbers because he was so bold and. And just direct about it that the women responded positively to that. Why? He created some emotional tension for them. And, you know, positive things came of it. And I found that if guys will go do that just even once, take a buddy and together try to get five rejections in a night, it, like, almost just obliterates. It's kind of like the nuclear bomb to blow away those fears of rejection. Why? Because it blows your story out of the water. You're going to have a night with your buddy that you're going to have stories to tell for years, and none of it hurt. None of it hurt.

Yeah, it just changes the context. I love that. Well, I want to do. That's a great that you referenced the positive emotional intention, because earlier in the interview we were talking about that and I wanted to circle back there. So. But before we do that, I want to share one quick story, and then I want to ask you about positive emotional tension and ways that we can experience that, create that, increase that in our relationships before we conclude for today. But the story I wanted to share is actually something, you know, as I said earlier, that your book really spoke to me, really helped me at a time in my life. But what's so cool about books And I know you are passionate about writing books and you have a goal that you're sharing with me to write many more books, 10 books over the next 10 years. And then I know the next, you know, soon we will find one about all about positive emotional tension, which is great that you're going to spread that. But the cool thing about books is they don't just help us in the moment that we read them, they can help us years later. Because I remember there was a story. And not just any content in the book, but particularly your courage and your willingness to share stories. Because stories are the most memorable thing that humans have, right? They glow, they stick in our brains forever. And I remember you telling a story and not nice about hammering some nails when you were a little kid. And then somehow you were hammering them and they pierced into the table somehow, and then you covered it up with the tablecloth and didn't tell anybody because there was this fear of, if I share this, if I say, hey, I'm sorry I made a mistake, that you would get in trouble and then they would be upset with you. Do you remember that story?

Actually, let me retell the story for you. You're close, but there's somebody else did it. It was my stepson, a son from my second marriage. He had actually. We had a house built, got some new furniture for it, and had this kind of round kitchen table that we sat as wood table. And he'd been poking something that poked through some paper with I think a ballpoint pen or something and poked half a dozen holes in the table. And when he realized what he'd done, he actually came and told his mother and I that he'd done it. And we went back and thought, well, okay, it's kind of a distressed wood table. Anyway, he's got a little more distress. You know, we got kids and nothing bad happened to him. And the context of that story was that if I had done that same thing, because I did things like that as a kid, I would have hidden it. I remember breaking a. Knocking a lamp off and breaking it when I was a kid, and I tried to piece it back together and stick it back on the shelf, you know, hoping nobody would know I was the one that knocked it off and broke it. And the next person to knock it over with, they would get the blame. So the story was about his lack of toxic shame over making a mistake, in contrast to how much toxic shame I would have had and tried to hide that. So I love that. I do remember that story as well.

Thank you for clarifying that. And that stuck with. Obviously, the details fell off. But what stuck with me is I related to you and that I would hide things when I was a kid. And so flash forward, you know, years after I read your book and was working on my own niceness to be able to have relationships, flash forward, years later, I'm in a relationship and we are raising our children. And without, you know, going back to the book, just from what I remember it, that influenced me or as part of what influenced me to, you know, not want to create that experience with my own kids. And so it was funny when you were talking about the story in the shower of singing, I'm in trouble. Just the other day, someone said something about, oh, such and such, they're going to be in trouble. And my son Zaim, who's five and a half, looked at me and said, daddy, what's.

What's trouble?

What's being in trouble mean? And not to say that, you know, not to say that we're perfect. And of course, we've. I'm sure we've communicated upset at things. So. See, it's like he knows if a parent's upset with him, and I'm sure he's got some little things of shame, you know, that's. That's human. But he doesn't have this. You know, I remember how that would be kind of lorded over me in school or home, like, oh, you're in trouble. Wait till your dad gets home. Like a regular technique to create this sense of, like, dread inside. And. And when I heard that, I just laughed. I was like, wow, well, that's a great thing that he doesn't know that. That is.

I do love that story. That. Yeah. You haven't instilled the shame and fear. If you think about it, what a shame it is for a child to fear his parents. I mean, as parents. And I've done like three rounds of parenting. I've got a son who just turned 34. I raised a couple kids in my second marriage, and now I'm raising a couple kids in my third marriage. And I love being a dad. I just really do enjoy it. But as parents, we were put on this planet to help the little kids survive. We're here to protect them and teach them and help them to grow into mature, functioning, happy adults and not to scare the bejeebers out of them and make sure they always do everything our way. That's not what parenting is about. So I think it's such a cool story that your son doesn't even know what it means to be in trouble.

I love it. Well, let's. I feel like we could talk for hours. We're gonna need to conclude soon. But before we do, as this is one last question I'd love to hear what are some of the. A few different ways that we can create positive emotional tension in romantic. You know, it could be dating, but also in existing. You mentioned existing romantic relationships, and I'm definitely curious. I'll take some notes for my relationship with my wife and see what I'm doing right and see what I could be doing better. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

All right, well, let me give you just a few little snapshots, because, you know, as you get to condense everything I plan on writing in a book into a couple little. Well, here's. Here's a couple of bullet points.

The zingers.

But, yeah, so I approach it kind of at two levels. One level is just how we walk the planet can create the kind of positive emotional tension that draws women. My wife loves telling the story of. The first time she saw me, I was here in Puerto Vallarta. She was a massage therapist standing in front of the spa where she worked. And here in Mexico, especially in a tourist town like this, the therapists stand out front, you know, and invite people to come in and get a massage. And she saw me walking, you know, two blocks away, and she just saw me walking. Didn't even see my face. And she said, she. She tells this story. She tells it to me regularly. She goes, my head just turned like, who is this guy? And said, I've watched thousands of people walk by this busy tourist street. Said, I never had that experience. And she said, and when you got closer and then you crossed the street over to my side, and I could see your face, she goes. She goes, I just. You know, I just felt something that I could help, and, you know, and she said, hola, senor. Do you want a massage? And I smiled and said, no, not today. Said in Spanish, and kept on walking. And I took about four or five steps, and I thought, I like her voice. And I don't even know what it was I liked about her voice. And for the first time in my life, I turned around and went back and said, how much? And we're married now. So there was something energetic about our attraction. And as an adult, you know, dated a number of women, and, you know, they would think they'll try to tell you what it is that they're attracted to. Oh, you know, it was your smile or your dimples or your eyes or you know, your butt or you know, your shaved head or how you walk. And you know that's, that's kind of, they're trying to put into words what. But you know, my shaved head is not what turns them on. You know, my butt or how I walk. They feel something and I'm convinced. So I break the emotional tension down to a couple levels. One is just how you are, how you, that kind of incense, how you walk the planet, the energy you radiate out into the world is either going to attract, and I tend to attract, I attract lots of people and I attract all kinds of feminine. You know, I've, I've had women my mother's age tell me that they wanted to ask me out. I've had like the teenage daughters of my friends, you know, hit on me and I had one friend say, oh, isn't it cute that you know his daughter who I think was 19 at that time, she has a crush on you. And I go, as long as you think it's cute, okay? And she did. Everybody that knew her and knew me says that girl's got a crush on you. So all the way from women my mother's age to 19 year olds, you know, down dogs, cats are attracted to this energy and, and I can't define what it is, but I do, I think I can break some of the pieces down. One of the things I know for sure, and I think your listeners will really relate to this and be a takeaway in pack type animals, herd animals, you know, whether it's, you know, cows, humans, tigers, fish, birds, you know, if we, if our survival is species depended on being part of a group, anxiety is contagious and that's part of our survival mechanism. So for example, if you see a bird on a line get spooked by something and it goes up, all the other birds go as well. Even if they weren't spooked by it. Anxiety gets communicated at non verbal type ways. You know the old western movies where you know, you got a stampede of cows and you know, one gets spooked and then all of a sudden you got a stampede on your hand. They're all being stupid cows running around. We humans are like that as well. Anxiety is contagious. And if you are walking around filled with self doubts, anxiety hunkered down, fearful people experience that energy state, they really do, and it doesn't feel good in their bodies. Women are especially sensitive to energy states like that. My wife says that she can actually sense people's intention. And I've been with enough other women that tell me the same thing that I know. They feel stuff. We men tend to just tune out. So they feel that emotional state. Calm is also contagious. Now, calm doesn't mean the nice guy, I'm pleasing, smiling, trying to make everything good. Calm is more of just that sense of confidence and assuredness and okayness and kind of like living life on your terms, that. That projects a calmness that women are drawn to because women are, you know, they kind of tend to have their own hamster wheels spinning in their heads. And if all of a sudden you kind of come into their field of vision or come into close enough that they feel this kind of energy that's calming to them, they're like, gravitate towards it. They want to experience it. So one piece. And, you know, there's not just like a quick, easy fix to this. And, you know, I've done a lot of work in my own life to get to that place where I do walk the planet and live life on my terms. I'm comfortable in my own skin. I'm happy with who I am. That is amazingly attractive. More so than, you know, how you shave your head or how you dress, or it's just, are you comfortable in your own skin? And what I'll call the feminine. You know, everything that's out there that moves in space and time, it is drawn to that. Whether this is the feminine of money, the feminine of a woman, feminine of a cat or a dog or whatever. And so whatever people can do to get comfortable in their own skin, to live life on their terms, makes them amazingly more attractive to other people. And I teach a lot of things people can do. Especially I work mainly with men. One of the things I talk with men about is what I call creating your great cake of a life. A lot of men don't have much of a cake of a life. I mentioned. They kind of spend all their time in the nursery avoiding challenge. But for me, a great cake of a life has some real key ingredients for me is pursuing your passions, living your life with purpose and passion. It's having good guy friends. And spending time connecting with your guy friends is through leaning into challenge, doing the things that make you uncomfortable. Regular strenuous exercise. All of our ancestors had physically demanding lives. We don't tend to regular strenuous exercise, regular practice. You mentioned spending first 30 minutes of your day in a practice, a centering practice, or some kind of practice, whether it be yoga, meditation, Qigong, prayer, Bible study, whatever. Something that kind of centers you and brings you back to your values and your purpose. And then in some way, whatever your gift is, are you giving your gift to the world? Those, for me, are my key ingredients of a great cake. And what I preach is that a woman, at best, is the icing on a great cake. And when guys start making women the cake, or even one of the key ingredients, we actually lose that sense of fullness and confidence and radiance that actually attracts women. I heard David Data say one time, what woman would be attracted to a man whose greatest passion is her? Women are attracted to a man who's got that great cake. And they can't even tell you why. They'll say, oh, it's your shaved head, or it's your smile, or it's how you walk. It's not. It's just how you walk the planet and how you radiate an energy that they want to get close to. So there's kind of the one level. The other level is things you can just be conscious of when you are having an interaction with a woman, knowing they have to experience emotional tension. Now, I try not to teach guys techniques. I try not to turn guys into geeks with techniques, kind of like what pickup does. But, for example, I'll tell guys, stay conscious of what I call the three T's. Touch, tease, tell touching a woman, teasing her, being playful and telling her what to do in a lovingly dominant way, activate feeling states in them, whereas the opposite. I mean, if you never touch a woman, she might kind of be attracted to you, but if you never actually touch her, after a while she's going to wonder what's wrong with her, why don't you touch her? Or if you have no sense of humor and you can't be playful and can't tease or joke around or have fun with her, they kind of go back into their hamster wheel. And even though I get how politically incorrect it is, but the feminine is wired to feel safest when feeling lovingly dominated. And I get those words are really. They're hot words in our culture. I don't mean controlling a woman. I don't mean telling her, you know, do this, or trying to get your way, but just playfully saying, hey, babe, come on over here. Or, you know, stand up, turn around, let me check out this dress. Or taking your phone out, saying, hey, give me your number. I'm going to call you later this week. We're going to. I got some idea of what to do. It's that confidence that makes her feel safe. And it's the difference between, in a sense, I don't use the terms alpha and beta. Kind of like pick up, do. But, for example, if you're trying to get the woman's approval and trying to get her to like you and trying to get her, you know, to be happy or whatever, you've made her the alpha. You put her up on the pedestal, she's the decider. That does not turn women on. That doesn't make them want to be with the guy. But if you don't give a fuck about if she likes you or wants to be with you, and you can be playful and loving and interactive, that makes her feel, in a sense, a dominance. Not that you're dominating her, but it makes. It creates this polarity that activates something inside of her that she wants more of, that she wants to get close to it. So I tell guys, don't practice the three T's, like a technique. Okay, I gotta touch her now or I gotta tease her now. But to be aware, don't hold back. Because what happens is, you know, a lot of guys just hold back and they won't act on the impulse that they have to say something or do something, and that kills the tension. And, for example, when I talk with women, you know, and they find out that I teach men about relationships, about dating or relationship, you know, they usually want to say, well, tell guys this. And they also want to ask a question or two of me. They'll say, tell guys, you know, trim their ear hair and nose hair. And I go, okay, I'll do that. And trim their fingernails, too, and clean them. Okay, I'll tell guys that. And then the women will say, how come, you know, I'll see a guy across the room? I look at him, I make eye contact, I smile at him. He notices me. And how come he never actually walks over and talks to me? And I'll go, well, because you scare us. And the women will go, why? I go, because you're scary. And they'll go. And the women will say, well, maybe. Maybe he'll even talk to me. And we'll have a conversation. And he'll like, you know, talk about anything and everything, but never actually gets around to asking me out or asking for my phone number. And they go, why do they do that? And I go, because you scare us. And the women will say, well, how come, you know, after I've given him every clue under the sun, I put up a billboard that says, ask me out. He'll like, shake my hand, say, nice to meet you, turn around, walk away, and not get my number. And I go, because you scare us. So women tell me, tell men, you know, be bold, don't hold back, take the risk, walk up, talk to us, you know, ask for our phone number. And again, they don't want to put up the billboard that says, please do this. You know, we've got to be willing to take those risks and be bold and get out of our comfort zone and show a little confidence and show a little dominance and show a little self assuredness that creates those kind of feeling states that women like to feel and make them want to be around the guy that's making them feel that way. Wow.

Robert, thank you for. This is like I almost go into, like a hypnotic trance when you talk. It's like, so I just sit here standing and doing this interview with my eyes closed, listening. And I love it because it's a subject that you know clearly so well from teaching it. And I just thought, wow, what, you want to get the best interview ever? Ask someone the book that they're working on, ask them some tips. And you get way more than tips. You get, like, the nuance. And I mean, everything you're saying is just so valuable. I feel like that's a entire interview in itself. So when positive emotional tension in your book on that subject comes out, we will absolutely have you back on the show and go deep into that, because I think this relates to so much. But thank you so much for sharing so freely and so many good ideas. I highly recommend anyone listening to this to come back and listen to it again, you know, maybe with a notebook, take some notes, because there's. This is so much practical. That's what I love about even not. No more Mr. Nice Guy. And just anything about your work is. And it's got a really solid grounding in psychological principles, but it's very tangible and actionable and same thing in this interview. So such a treat to have you on the show and thank you for joining us today.

Aziz, thank you for the invitation and I've had a blast and look forward to doing it again.

That brings us to the end of that interview. Whew. It was a long one, but I just didn't want to stop. There's so much good stuff. I feel like I could talk to him for another five hours and keep loving every moment of it. So let's end with action, as we always do.

Time for action. Action, action.

Your action step is going to be to take one thing. What is one of the most valuable things that you learned in today's interview? There's probably a lot of stuff that's going to settle in over time, but just take one and bring it into awareness now, like verbalize it. Is it a sentence? Is it a new decision? Is it a new belief? Is it a new thing you want to remind yourself of to do during the day? A way of being in the world? A certain mindset? What is like, one thing that you want to take away and actually write it down? Turn it into a sentence, turn it into a statement, turn it into a commitment, turn it into a decision and write it down. Because that way we don't just take this as, you know, intellectually stimulating and interesting information, but we actually turn it into action, which leads to transformation. So do that now as part of your action step for today, and I can't wait to see you in the next week's show until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening. 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.