Being Scared In Life Is Good

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 second, 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. Good to be with you today. Today we're going to be talking about how being scared is good. Why is that good for you in life? And why on earth would you want to do that now? You know, you've been listening to this podcast at any length of time, you know, and you know that you're wanting to build more confidence, overcome social anxiety, change patterns of excessive niceness and people pleasing, and really create the life that you want, whether it's in your dating life, your career, or your social life, or just being the kind of person you want to be in the world. You know, on some level that action is required that we have to get outside of our comfort zone. None of this is new, and I'm sharing, you know that either from this podcast or my books, or just anything that you've heard about growth and development. So we need to do what's uncomfortable to get what we want. That's nothing new there. What we don't really get, and I think this is a continual learning for me, is that being scared in life is not only a necessary evil, something you have to do, it's actually good. And that's the fundamental shift. And I feel like it takes a long time for people to really get this one because buy into, you gotta get outside your comfort zone. You know, people might resist it or not like it or look for another way, but then eventually like, all right, fine, fine. But then it's kind of that attitude like, fine. And then it's easy for us to intentionally do something outside of our comfort zone for a while, get a level of result that's better, because it will be better if you continually put yourself out there beyond your comfort zone. And dating, your dating life will improve if the same thing in your social life, in your career, in your work life, if you just keep consistently doing the things that are uncomfortable, that are hard, that are challenging that scare you those areas of your life will get better. It's formulaic. It might not be in the exact way that you want or as fast as you want, but it does happen. But what often happens is we push in that way we activate this courage in ourselves. Like, fine, I'm going to do this for a while, but then we don't sustain it. And the reason is because we still have this underlying attitude and belief that, well, being afraid is bad, it's uncomfortable, it's not right. So it's like, okay, I'm going to be uncomfortable until I can make everything better and then I can be comfortable again. And it's not actually, it's not how it works. You can improve your life, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's comfortable. And in fact, if you want your life to keep getting better and better and better and enjoy it more, you almost. It's not about getting comfortable again and then sustaining that new plateau. It's about getting more able to handle and tolerate in a way, getting more comfortable with ongoing discomfort or fear. Does that make sense? So there is a client that was speaking about this in the Mastermind and he has ended a long term relationship. He's changed his workplace experience in his workplace dramatically by being a lot more assertive. And he's like, things are going, things are going now. I mean, he felt stagnant for years before he joined the Mastermind and now things are going and he's like, it's, you know, some days I feel excited and I'm bold and I'm powerful and other days I'm just like hanging on. I feel like I'm freaking out inside and I'm like, eh, sounds about right. Welcome to the Mastermind. You know, because the image that I like to use is there's mud on the side of the river and we can just be in that mud, not going anywhere and it's safe and secure, sort of. At least it feels that way. But life is stagnant. Life is boring. You feel frustrated, held back, resentful, stuck dead inside, depressed, anxious. It's not great. What we want to do is want to get a little closer to the edge of the river. You start to move out of the mud and into where the water's flowing. And on the edge of the river, water is kind of flowing along, it's a little slower, can kind of pool up here and there, pause, and then it moves again. That's when things start to be happening in your life. But then eventually, the more you take risks, the More you go outside your comfort zone, the more you go after what you want in life, the more you trust in self, the more confidence you have, the more your capacity to get into the center of the river, where water is flowing and it's flowing fast, and there's maybe no ground under your feet that you can stand on, because who knows how deep it is at times. You might not even know how deep it is. You might not even know what's around the next corner in the river. What if there's a rock that I gotta dodge? What if there's a little waterfall that I gotta fall over? What's gonna happen? Ah. And yet this is where you want to be. If you truly want an extraordinary life, if you want a life of confidence, power, freedom, boldness, liberation. You want to be in the center of the river. And so sometimes they're like, okay, I'm gonna go in the center of the river for a little while, and then I'll go back to the side. And you can do that. You can go back to the side when you're, like, overwhelmed or you need a break. Whew. This is a lot. But when you pump the brakes like that, it might feel good for a little while to be on the side, but then pretty soon you're back in mud, and it may be better to find a way to get some respite, some relief, just like leaning against a rock in the middle of the river or something like that, like. Or maybe having someone else you can kind of be swimming with, hold on to each other, support each other, but staying in the center of the river. And what made me think of this is just last night I woke up with a feeling that I haven't had in a long time. So it's a little insight into my insanity. Ever since I was a kid, I had nightmares, and I would wake up with intense nightmares. And sometimes I'd be sleepwalking and then have a nightmare and then wake up somewhere random part of my house. That was always freaky. One time I went into the bathroom. This is when I was like, I don't know. This is our first house. We lived there until I was about 10. So I could have been, I don't know, maybe six, seven, something like that. And I slept, walked into this bathroom that we had in the house. And then I closed the door behind me, and it was pitch black. And then I woke up. And I woke up, I was in this pitch black room. Actually, it wasn't pitch black. There was a thin strip of light because the Door was one of those sliding doors that kind of goes into the wall. Just a standard door size, but it goes like a wood door that slides. And so I'd slid in it, slid it closed, except for there was like this tiny less than 1 inch opening and there's light coming through from somewhere else in the house. And so I was in this dark, pitch black room and I wake up and I don't know where I am. And when I woke up from these sleepwalking, I was often scared there was some nightmare or something that was happening. I woke up. So I wake up scared. I'm in this pitch black room and all I see is this one strip of light. And I have this memory of just like spinning around, like screaming. And I just saw that one strip of light like spin around me, spin around me, spin around. Because I didn't even know what it was. It was a total disorientation. So I would wake up scared and my parents would comfort me. One of my parents would help soothe me. And while my intense nightmares and sleepwalking all faded away. Not all my parasomnias though. I do weird shit. I. When I shared a bedroom with my brother, as I got older, I apparently would talk in my sleep. My college roommate said I would talk in my sleep and he'd like talk to me and have interactions with me. So there's some insanity oozing out there. But as I got older, that kind of subsided a lot. And one thing that still happened though is I would have this very unique, weird experience where as I was falling asleep and this would happen only once in a long while, like a couple times a year as I'm falling asleep, I would have. I guess it's a dream or maybe it's called hypnagogic imagery. When you start having the imagery right as you fall asleep. So I'm in between the waking slate, maybe going into a dream, but not from deep sleep, from falling asleep. My body's relaxed. And then I will see real as fuck, like some sort of scary creature, usually a gigantic spider or, or an alligator or something. And it's coming right at me. And then I open my eyes and I wake up and I will see that thing in real life. Like I'll see a gigantic spider in my bed, some sort of weird carryover hallucination from the dream world. And then I freak the fuck out. I jump out of bed and I'm like, you know, terrifying whoever's in the room with me, if someone's in the room with me. And Then I'm convinced that it was real for a little while, you know, and then I kind of, oh, wait, no, that was a dream. That was a dream. Oh my God. Whoa. But then I'll be filled with this sense of utter dread of going back into the bed, even if I know it wasn't real. Just like utter skin crawling dread. And that usually would last about 20, 30 minutes, maybe shorter, I don't know, 10, 20 minutes. And I just kinda have to walk around, hang out, get a snack or whatever before I go back into bed. So, you know, this was. This fascinated my college roommate when this would happen. And similarly with Candice, she soon discovered that this would happen to me and it would often happen in times of stress. Like there was some stress going on in my life. That's when the fucking spiders would attack me at night just when I'm trying to get to sleep. And what's interesting though is that's happened less and less and less and it hasn't happened for years, so I completely forgot about it. Sleep like a baby now, for the most part. And just last night I woke up and I didn't have the crazy spider alligator attack hallucination, but I did wake up with that sense of dread and I just woke up and then I had to go pee and I was going pee and I just felt that creepy crawly dread. And I thought about going back into the bedroom and I was like, but it wasn't that, it wasn't so intense. I was like, I can't do it. And I just, I just wanted to keep sleeping. It was the middle of the night and so I just laid back into bed and it was so freaking uncomfortable. It was like primal panic, I'm going to die dread. I was like, wow, this is intense. I was kind of fascinated by it too though, and I had this ability to just like be with it, but it was very uncomfortable and I sat with it and I was like, okay, there's nothing wrong, I'm safe, I'm okay. And then about, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes had passed and I was back asleep. Now, what was going on in my life, though, that might lead that to happen? Well, just earlier that day, my wife and I had put an offer on a house and we own a house, but this was a second house. This was an investment property. I'd never done anything like that before in my life. It all seems very adult, but I'm not gonna get all the details of why we're doing it. But that was, that was, and it was a big deal, right? Put a bunch of money down and you're gonna, you know, managing a property, all this stuff. And so big deal for me. Something I would have been way too scared to do in my life when I was younger, but seemed like the thing to do. So waking up, terrified. And then as I woke up later that morning, though, to get up to go to the gym and stuff, I thought about it and I was like, you know, in the past, I might have thought this was a bad sign. Oh, my gosh, I'm so scared. I'm taking on too much. Am I afraid? And I thought, you know, this is actually good like this. I. Yeah, I'm scared. Part of me is scared about taking on responsibility if this offer goes through and everything, but okay, that's all right. It's good to be scared. It's good to feel dread sometimes. And I've seen that too in working out. So if I don't before, I've done some long runs. The longest run I've ever done is 26 miles for a marathon, soon to be 31 miles in my first trail running ultra race. Technically an ultra because it's longer than a marathon, but, you know, whatever. 50k, that sounds cooler than 31 miles. But before those long runs, especially if I want to run them as fast as I can, there's definitely a feeling of dread. Like, oh, God, I'm going to feel this feeling for the next three and a half hours or more. And before a hard workout at the gym, like, oh, boy, doing a bunch of deadlifts today, some dread. Actually, I don't feel that much dread about dead lifts. It's more like, I don't know, sprinting and squats, those scare me more. But anyway, do you know what I'm talking about? Have you experienced that? Now, is that dread bad? No, that dread is good. That means you're going to be pushing your edge. You're going to be growing. So what if feeling scared in life is good? That means you're taking something on. And here's the thing, you want to upgrade your fear. You want your fear to be coming from healthy risks. So much of us are bleeding out our capacity. So here's the thing. You have a certain capacity to deal with fear, right? And you have courage, basically, right? You have a certain level of courage. Everyone does. And you could build your courage, you could increase your courage by facing your fear more. But. But there's a limit. And if you're just facing what scares you all day long, your nervous system's gonna get shredded. Right? You need some downtime, you need some relaxation, you need some comfort, you need some safety. Comfort and safety are not bad things. If you hear me talk about go into discomfort and challenge the edge of your comfort zone and don't listen to your safety police. That's all to get us into action and being bold. But that doesn't mean that you want to have no comfort in your life. You want to have no safety and no downtime. That's extreme, right? So we just need to. Many of us are just too addicted to comfort, too much oriented towards safety, and we don't take enough risk. So we're talking about upping that a little bit or a lot, depending on where you are in life. But there's a capacity to that. Right? There's a limit to how much you could take on. And I found as years have gone by and I've consistently done this work, my courage has gone up and up and up and I've been able to take on more my sphere. My capacity has grown, but there's still a limit. So you have a certain amount of courage. You can spend each day based upon your courage, fitness, as it were. And the problem is a lot of us are bleeding out that courage on neurotic fear. So instead of doing what scares us and facing fear from like, okay, how much fear am I going to take on today? Well, I'm going to go do a workout that scares me. And that might not even be every day. I don't think I'm scared every day before I run to the gym. But, you know, maybe that you feel a bit of dread. I felt a little bit of dread when I was going to the gym this morning. And so you got a little bit of that. And then maybe you are gonna, you know, you're gonna speak up at work or, you know, you're doing that presentation that you signed up for like two weeks ago, and it's gonna be to 100 people at your company. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, there we go. So these are healthy risks that you're gonna feel some fear around. And that fear is good. You don't wanna resist that. You don't wanna make that wrong. You don't wanna take that as a sign that you're doing the wrong thing. Like, this is all good. And maybe you feel fear. Cause you're gonna go on that date with that person you find super sexy and you approached them or you reached out to them, or you flirted with them and now they wanna date you. And. Right. But that's healthy risk. Maybe you're making some changes in your career or whatever. Like, these are all great things. You wanna use your fear on that, your courage on that, to face that fear. But you don't want to be bleeding out your courage on his neurotic fears. Like, oh, man, did I wear the right tie with this outfit? Oh, my. This doesn't work. Oh, people that are going to think I'm a loser, right? Like, social anxiety, self consciousness, self judgment, excessive worry about what other people are going to think, fabricating things that are not even happening, that could happen, and then reacting to them. Man, that one has been my MO for so many years. It's just finally, finally starting to really fade. I mean, I've done a lot of work on it, and it's gone down over the years, but it's radically reduced, I'd say, in the last year. And that's been due to concerted effort of, like, this is. This is unacceptable. I don't want to keep living. I don't want to keep inducing this kind of fear. This drains my courage out of me, and it's exhausting and it's hard on my nervous system. So I would come up with all kinds of things. This could fail in that way. This project's gonna fail. All these people in this group are gonna mutiny and turn on me and hate me, and this event's gonna. You know, something terrible's gonna happen before this live event, and everything's gonna fall apart, like. And I would have those thoughts, and then I would freak out and react to them as if they were happening or could happen or likely to happen. And then my nervous system would tense. I'd get a lot of cortisol. In fact, evidence of this, further evidence of this. I got some blood work done more than two years ago, two and a half years ago. And it was like proactive blood work. I was like, how healthy am I? Let's look at my nutrients and let's look at just how my nervous system is working and all that. And I went to a naturopathic doctor and we did all the blood tests. And one thing that came back is they look at your adrenal glands, and apparently my adrenal axis, adrenal glands, which is responsible for, like, stress, cortisol and adrenaline released there. And so, you know, basically one way to measure how much stress you're dealing with in life. And he said, based upon the numbers, that from his perspective, my taxing of my use of my adrenal glands was 10 times what is an optimal amount. And I was like, well, I tend to be a nervous creature. And that is after all the freaking work that I've done on social confidence and confidence and that sort of thing. And so what was happening is I was able to be more confident socially and in relationships, but what I was not more confident in was, like, trusting in life and growing a business and working with more people and growing my reach and putting myself out there. I was just in this constant state of, like, something bad's gonna happen. I gotta do more to make sure I'm safe and everything that's going well is gonna fall. People are going to turn on me. And so it was this, like, lack of confidence in myself, in life, in trust that things are okay, lack of spiritual confidence, like, trust that life is unfolding as it should and for your best benefit. And so after that, I was like, well, this is not good. This is not good for my nervous system. So I made some very intentional changes. In fact, for the next year, one of my primary goals was unconditional, permanent self worth. That was a fun one. And then the next year, in 2018, I'm trying to remember what my goal was, but it was always to reside in my body and live from my heart. And so these were all about really slowing down and being more in myself and more present. And that's paid off, having those intentions and those goals and just doing lots of work on that. And so it continues. Anyway, I got the blood work done maybe about six months ago now. So it had been two years since I got that first test, and everything had improved. Like, all these deficiencies had gone away in terms of vitamins and nutrients and just a lot more balance in my body. Everything was back on track, except for. This was interesting. Testosterone was up working out. Yeah. But he said, so in terms of the adrenal, he's like a massive improvement in your adrenal system. It's now operating only at two times of what I think is optimal. And I heard that, and I was like, yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, I'm sure I can calm down a little bit, but I don't know, I like to rev the engine a little bit. You know what I'm saying? And then he just looked at me and I said, all right, well, see you later, doc. No, that didn't actually happen, but I did feel okay with the 2X. I was like, that's pretty good. I mean, maybe we'll reduce it over time. But I feel really good in my body and I'm not so stressed out all the time. Okay. But fear is good. So burning a lot on neurotic fear. Let's stop doing that. And here's the thing that I found. If you're wondering how like, well, how do I stop burning on neurotic fear? It just seems like that just keeps happening all the time. Yeah. You know what it is? It's a lack of real fear. Like if you start taking healthier risks and take life on, then you'll start to use your fear on better shit. And I found this was really interesting. One simple method that I discovered that I wasn't even anticipating would have this effect was Wim Hof stuff. And you've heard me talk about him, I'm sure. Wim Hof, the iceman, the Dutch athlete who holds freakish goals such as being in an ice tank for two hours. Like literally just a big gigantic human sized bucket of ice where the average person would die after 30 minutes or even 15 minutes. And they have studies to show this from prison camps actually in World War II. And Nazis did experiments on people, which is pretty dark and twisted. But they found out that humans, this is how quick humans die in ice conditions. But Whim stays in there for two hours. Guy's a beast. Anyway, I took his online course and was doing it. And you take cold showers, you go into cold environments, do cold plunges and do breathing work and stuff too. But when I would take a cold shower, I noticed when I first started doing this, I would feel a lot of fear ahead of time and dread leading up to it. And then like heart pounding fear before I did it. And then I noticed though that I was a little less anxious throughout the day and I had this sense of like, oh wow, I'm actually like burning up some of the fear and stress in my body facing like a quote, real, a more real threat. I mean it's still not like a major threat, but to your nervous system, your body, it's like, what the fuck is, what are you doing? We're under attack, we're gonna die. And so you use up some of that fear and then you can not spend as much on neurotic anxiety and worry. And I found this especially so after I do like a ice plunge, like I'll get my bathtub and put a ton of ice in it and water and then submerge, you know, everything up to my head basically up to my chin so my neck down is submerged and then stay in it for 10 to 15 minutes. That was that stuff that's intense I still feel fear. I feel afraid of that right now. But I'll do it. I'll do it this weekend. My son Zaim goads me into it because he's like. Because I tell him my plans. I'm like, son, you know, this was earlier in the year when winter was coming. And I was like, winter's coming. I got to do my cold adaptation. I need to do more cold showers and ice baths, you know, to be ready for handle winter. And he, like, a month later, this was in the fall, you know, and it was leading into winter and winter was coming closer. And he's like, daddy, are you doing a cold shower every day? And I was like, mostly every. Mostly every day? And he's like, yeah, you need to do a cold shower for like 10 minutes every day. And I was like, well, last year when I was in the thick of the cold training, I did do a cold shower for 10 minutes every day, but that's a long time. My hands got all numb and I'm doing usually about 3 minute cold showers when I do them. And he's like, yeah, you should do 10 minute showers and ice baths too. You should do more ice baths. And I'm like, damn it. He's right. So that's a fun way to kind of face fear. And then of course, other things like speak up in a meeting. And here, in fact, we're getting into actions right now. So let's talk about your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is do take healthy risks that scare you. Find a small one today. Maybe it's a cold shower, maybe it's an ice plunge, maybe it is speaking up in a meeting at work and that makes your heart beat a little bit faster. Anything that creates a little bit of fear, a little bit of dread, that is a healthy risk. Maybe you approach someone you're attracted to, maybe just make a comment, maybe make a joke. Maybe you lead something. Maybe you say yes to something you normally say no and avoid. Or maybe you say no to something you normally just say yes to because you're afraid of upsetting someone. Maybe you have that conversation you've been avoiding because there's need for conflict or confrontation to solve a problem, to get to the other side of it, you know what it is, you'll find it. But if you move into those fears and you remember that being scared in life is good, then you'll have less and less of the neurotic worry and fear that just drains out and just takes a toll on your nervous System, your adrenal glands, your mood, everything. So find what that is today and do it and consistently do it. And your life will just get better and better and better. And yes, you'll be in the center of the river. Yes, you might not feel grounded under your feet. Yes, you might wake up sometimes with some mild panic. But what if these are all okay? What if these are all good because these are signs that you're fucking alive? Just think back to like a thousand. No, not even that. Like 5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, even longer, back to the, you know, ice age when humans and Neanderthals were interacting with each other. And there's all these different, like just you're surviving out there. Like imagine their life and how were they just like in total placid comfort. Every day is the same stagnation mode. Or was it like, okay, let's find some food today, alright, let's make this happen. We're gonna go freakin hunt this thing. Just wanna gather as a band and hunt this mammoth. Let's do it. Let's hope none of us get stabbed by a gigantic mammoth tusk and so forth. Sabertooth. A sabertooth might jump out and get ya. Right? You know what I'm talking about. Or like different eras in history, like how much more alive we were as organisms, as animals. And so it's like, it's not bad, it's part of life. Especially when you're living fully. So yeah, there's a little, maybe you feel a little ungrounded, there's nothing to hold on to, but you're flowing in life. And at the end of the day, instead of having a most comfortable life, a most safe life, a most secure grounded certainty in life, maybe there's something better. Maybe it allows you to carry out a bigger mission, have more of an impact, have more of a sense of purpose and meaning, have deeper love and relationships and just be fully alive. And if that inspires you, if this excites you and you're nodding your head, or inside you're nodding, even if you're not nodding your head, then remember this. Being scared in life is good. And so go out there and do what scares you in the service of something greater. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. 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 to Shrink 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. Sam.