Change Your Predictions, Change Your Life

Before an event, a meeting, a social situation, a date, how are you predicting that it will go? If you're nervous, most likely your prediction is a pretty negative one. Have you ever wondered why you do this? And more importantly, do you want to know how to change that pattern so you start to anticipate good outcomes across all situations? That is exactly what you're going to learn. And in today's show, coming to you.

From the center for social confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the shy guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Welcome to today's episode and welcome to 2015. I hope you had a great New Year's. I hope you listened to the last show, the New Year's show, which is all about new year, new you, how you can reinvent yourself in this new year. Pretty exciting opportunity for you to really grow into the person that you want to be in 2015. So if you haven't listened that episode, it's the previous one, go back and check that one out. And welcome to 2015. I hope it brings you all kinds of confidence, success, happiness, awesomeness, growth, whatever it is that you most want that will light you up. And if you'd like to join in the conversation in this show, call the studio hotline at 206-338-3176. You can also go to facebook.com shrinkforth shrinkforthshyguy after facebook.com there. And of course, shrinkforthshyguy.com is a great way to stay connected. You can look at all the shows there, read the transcripts, subscribe on itunes, all that good stuff. Also, by the way, if you're liking this show, if you've been listening for a while, for a good chunk of 2014, we've been going for almost a year now. Whoa. But if you like it and you're enjoying and you're benefiting from it, this is an entirely free offering that I give to the world as part of my mission, which is operation Mass Liberation, helping as many people break out of the fears and low confidence that's holding them back that I spent many years of my life in. So I want to help in that way. But if you're liking this show, give it a review on itunes or give it a five rating, whatever rating you want, perhaps even a five star rating. And if you can type a review or anything that helps the show reach more people. And I ultimately want to reach as many people as I can so no one spends as long. That's my Mission. I don't want anyone to spend anywhere as long as I did stuck. So if they can. I spent 10 years stuck, so if we can get them at five years, that's great. Two years, even better. Three months would be ideal. They're just starting and we can reach out and grab them. So help support me and everyone else who's maybe further back than you are now by going to that itunes and giving it a great review. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing that. In today's episode, we're going to get into something that. That I think is going to be incredibly valuable to you, because if you're anything like me, you are doing this all the time, and it's frustrating, and sometimes you're aware of it, sometimes you're not. But it's this idea of negative predictions. And I'm fascinated by this, how anytime there's something in the future ahead of us that maybe we don't have 100% control over, you know, how people are going to react to us or a certain outcome, are we going to get that one particular job? Is that one person going to say yes to us or no to us? When you don't have total control over the outcome and it's in the future, we have uncertainty, right. I don't know how it's going to go. It's the future. We can't know. And yet our mind will start to predict these negative outcomes into that unknown. Have you noticed that? So it's really unknown. It could go either way. Yes or no? Yes or no? I could do well, I could do poorly, whatever it is. But our mind will put forth with pretty strong conviction. Nope. This is how it's gonna go. It's gonna go real bad. Do you know what I'm talking about? In fact, think about something that you have coming up here in the early 2015 part of the year. It could be a presentation, an interview, a conversation that you want to have with someone. Maybe you want to ask someone out, something that's on the horizon that you want to do. Maybe it's tomorrow, maybe it's next month, and something you're hoping for, a goal, something you want to create soon. And what do you predict? What is your mind predicting? If you can. If you're not driving, you can close your eyes and even just imagine it. Now, for most people, the prediction is often a negative one. We predict that it will not go. In fact, there's a fantastic quote which I'm going to paraphrase from Mark Twain, which is, I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. And that's what we're doing, right? We're putting ourselves through the wringer where we're just predicting, oh, nothing's going to happen. It's not going to work. No one's going to show up. Oh, you're going to fail. They're going to say no. She's going to grimace at you if you ask her out. And you're playing it again and again and again. And I call it like it's a mental movie. I'll ask people when I'm working with them and they're really nervous about something. I'll say, so what mental movie are you playing? And if they work with me, they know exactly what I'm talking about. If they're new to it, they're like, what do you mean? I was like, well, we often don't know this. It's often unconscious. But we'll run a little quick movie in our mind about how we think something's going to go. Even if you don't think that you're a visual person, we just do it as part of our brain mechanism. It's a form of thought that we have a series of images. Sometimes they're literally a movie, like a moving picture. And sometimes it's just a still image, but it's of that event going poorly. And you might notice that as well for yourself. There's the person frowning at you, or just you in front of a room giving a presentation. And you just see it, but it's. They're not smiling, you know, it's just kind of heavy and tense in the room. That's the tone of the scene, as it were, if it were a movie or a still image. And so we have this really quick prediction that goes through our mind and it says, yeah, stuff's gonna go like this. It's gonna go bad. And we watch this movie and then we're terrified. Like, oh, God, this scariest movie I've ever seen. You know, a teacher of mine, Steve Chandler, tells a story which I love, is imagine you're walking into, you know, the psychiatric ward of a hospital. The whole locked psychiatric ward. And you're going down the rooms and you get to one particular room and you look in and there's a guy. And all he's got in the room is a little table and some crayons and some sheets of paper. And he goes over to the table, grabs some crayons and just starts drawing. And he looks calm and relaxed. He's Just drawing, drawing. And then all of a sudden, he stops and he looks down at his drawing and he freaks out. He gets terrified. He starts grabbing at his shirt and trying to pull it and runs away and runs into the corner of the room screaming. And you're so curious, like, what is that? So, you know, you have one of the attendants in the hospital, when the guys calm down, go into the room and get you the picture, and you look at it, and it's a picture of a monster. So he drew a picture of a monster. He drew it himself. And then he was terrified of it. And of course you think, well, what guy's insane? The guy's ridiculous. But we're doing it all the time in our heads right now. We're creating these predictions, these terrible, horrible, horrible, scary, awful predictions that are most likely never going to happen. Then we're terrified of them. We feel awful most of the time. You do the event and you're like, whew, that didn't go so bad. All right, on to the next thing to be terrified about. So what if we could change this pattern? Would that be valuable to you? Well, first we got to look at what does this give me. Why every time we need to change a pattern, we must ask ourselves, what is the current pattern doing for me? Because it's doing something for you. Otherwise you wouldn't keep doing it. So we're going to explore that. We're going to answer a question from a listener as well when we get back. So stay tuned. We're going to figure out why you're doing this pattern and then most importantly, how to shift it, how to break free. So stay tuned for that.

Are you tired of worrying about other people's judgments? Tired of being held back by fear and self doubt? Do you want to make rapid shifts in your level of confidence? The truth is, challenges with confidence were created with others. You learned them from parents, teachers, peers. You learned them in groups. And the fastest way to unlearn them, to completely transform them, is through groups as well. That is why Dr. Aziz has created the Core Confidence group program. It allows you to work directly with Dr. Aziz and five others who are overcoming the same challenges you are. Together, you set goals, break through old patterns of shyness, and support each other to creating outstanding lives. To find out more about upcoming group opportunities, go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com and click on confidence coaching.

So why do we do it? Why do we predict these negative outcomes and run them through their minds and terrify ourselves and be uncomfortable so much of the time leading up to event that we're uncertain about. And I'm going to answer that. In fact, I'm going to start by answering a question though, which points, I believe, to directly to this. And you're gonna see how this negative prediction mechanism is underneath so much of our social fear. And now it's time to ask the shrink. This is a question from Andrew. He wrote and he emailed me. Hey, Dr. Aziz, thanks so much for the show. I've gained tremendous confidence just from listening. Awesome. You're most welcome, Andrew. But the main thing that destroys my confidence now is when I struggle with things to say while starting conversations. I can usually get the courage to go talk to people. But the problem is I don't have much to say. I'm not that much of a shy guy when I'm in a really energetic and good mood. I tried my best to avoid awkward silences, but they seem to happen half of the time. I talk to people. People. This happens the most when I try to talk to girls in my high school. And I think it's holding me back from meeting a girl that could be my girlfriend. You probably run into this problem all the time. So do you have any advice that has been proven to work? So first off, Andrew, listening to this in high school, that is awesome. You are ahead of many people your age. Who. God, if only, if only I'd been working on my self development when I was in high school. Actually, no, I wish I. I'm glad I haven't because I wouldn't be here talking to you if I'd overcome this problem in a short period of time. So let's jump into it. But you might be wondering, why am I putting this question in this episode? And that's because. Did you hear where his challenge is the strongest? Did you hear where he gets the most uncomfortable in conversations? Who is he talking to when he's the most uncomfortable? That's right. Women his own age. Women that he's attracted to that he wants to maybe ask out or have one of them be his girlfriend. Now why do you think he's most worried or tense or uncomfortable or has those silences the most often with women that he's attracted to? You might say, well, duh, Z's. Because they're attractive and he's attracted to them. That just happens. That's what happens when you're attracted to someone. Like, really? But why? Why? Well, what happens is there is more potential for negative predictions. My guess is that he in his mind somewhere, Andrew, in your mind Somewhere you have negative predictions about what's going to happen if you just share as freely with a woman that you're attracted to as with a good friend that you hang out with. There's some mental movie in there of her grimacing, of her laughing at you, of her stepping away kind of with the I'm scared look on my face. You're not as cool as I thought you were. There's some negative prediction, oh, maybe she's going to tell her friends, and then no one's going to want to date me. So we have a series of negative predictions that are in our mind, whether we're aware of them or not. They're in there and they're holding you back. I was just speaking with a client earlier this week about this, where he was, again, uncomfortable around women. And I asked him how he was around his friends, and he was describing a particular situation where he had nothing to say to a woman. And I was like, what would you have said to a friend? And he had like 10 things he could have said. He said, I would have said this, I would have said that. So what's the difference? A negative prediction. So how do we break free of that? In fact, this is such a big thing that I actually created an audio program specifically for it. It's called the Approval Assumption. And it's a simple trick that I use to double my confidence, really shift everything in my relationship life, in my business life. It's called the Approval Assumption. And you can actually get. That's a bonus program that comes with a new version of Confidence Unleashed, which is coming out in just a few weeks here. But this is so important that we have to shift the assumptions, the predictions in our mind, whether it's this kind of conversation example that Andrea's talking about, or a work presentation or a sales conversation, and specifically imagining that it will go the way that you want it to. We have to start changing these predictions. And then once you've changed the prediction, you imagine it going well. And I'm going to guide you through exactly how to do that in a moment. But then once you've done that, just to answer Andrew's question, some specific things that you can do is saying something, something is better than nothing, doing something that I call loose associations. So you are able to just say whatever comes to mind. Sometimes people are like, well, I don't know what to say. She mentioned that, you know, she's gonna go to the gym later to work out. And then I was like, oh, cool, cool. Okay, I'll see you later, you know, and it's like, ah, damn it, why didn't I say something better than that? So what I will often do is say, well, how about loose associations? So she says, I'm gonna go to the gym to work out. What's the first thing you think of when you think of the gym? First thing, say it right now in your mind. First thing that you think of when someone says, I'm gonna go to the gym. And whatever that is for you, that's your loose association. So for me, I imagine a 24 hour fitness in the Bay Area where I used to live. I imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger. I imagine Waits. I imagine a bunch of people watching TVs while they're on their treadmills trying to zone out. So those are the first images that come to my mind. So I might bring one of those into the conversation. Like, oh, what kind of gym is it? Like a 24 Hour Fitness or something, right? Because that's the first association I had. Or I might say, what do you do at the gym? And she's like, I do the elliptical. I'm like, oh, great. So do you have a TV right in front of your face to distract you from the physical discomfort of being on the elliptical? It's a joke, right? So I'm using one of my loose associations. That allows me to just bring more into the conversation. Of course, asking her questions is great. What kind of workout do you do? Do you like it? How often do you do it? That kind of stuff. Now you want to mix that in with some play as well. Not just kind of ordinary conversation, some sort of flirting as well. So you can go really deep with this. But the key here is to do loose associations. Something is better than nothing. Blurt something out. It's better to just say something, even if it's not the most fitting thing in the conversation. Sometimes you're trying to find the best right thing to say to avoid that negative prediction, but really just saying something because that negative prediction is not going to happen. And the essence of assume approval, if you want to know what it is, the essence of it is think about, focus on how you are with one of your best friends, one of the people you're just the most comfortable with in the world, and then showing up with new people, with attractive women, with anyone with that exact same energy. And if you're hearing that and saying that's awesome, then I think you're right. It can really change things. And if you're thinking, wow, that sounds easy, I can't do that that's easier said than done, Aziz. Then you gotta listen to that program because I really guide you through how to do that. And. But how do we change what we predict? Because that's what I'm suggesting that Andrew do. And then I gave him some specific tips, but that's incredibly important. How do we change the prediction in our mind? Let's get into that right after this break. You're gonna learn some really valuable stuff that people are doing in sessions with me right now. I just did this stuff last week. So stay tuned for how to change these negative predictions.

Are you single? Do you want to meet someone but feel completely held back and stuck when it comes to meeting women, flirting, and getting dates? After spending over a decade of his life stuck in the same struggle, Dr. Aziz found the way to freedom and confidence with women. It's what he teaches his private clients how to do every day. Want to get there yourself? Go to 30daystodatingmastery.com to get a free copy of Dr. Aziz's e book, 7 Ways to Start Conversations with Women, Anytime, Anywhere and start meeting women today.

How do we change the negative predictions in your mind to something more positive, more inspiring that fills us with excitement, anticipation rather than fear, dread? Well, the first question to ask yourself is, how would I like it to go? How would I like it to go? Really? Imagine. So pick that thing in your mind that's coming up, could be coming up this week. A sales conversation, a presentation, talking to someone, a social gathering even. It could be meeting some friends of friends for dinner, someone that you're not super comfortable with that you don't know that well, making a certain phone call, asking someone out, having a difficult conversation, whatever it is that you are anticipating negative things about, you have these negative predictions. Ask yourself this question. How would I like it to go? Think about that for a minute. Isn't that amazing how we often don't even ask ourselves that. How would I, if I could just choose, if I was the director of this mental movie, the writer, the author, everything, it was my mental movie. How would I want it to go? Interesting, huh? And what if it goes that way? How would that feel? If it went exactly how you want it to go, how would you feel? Huh? Interesting. Another great question to ask yourself is how can I get this result the way that I want it to go? How can I make it go the way that I want to go? How can I do this? How can I make this an amazing presentation? How can I make this an impactful sales conversation? How can I Confidently ask this person out, how can I do it? Because a how question, that's powerful. Can I? Will I? Is it going to go good or bad versus how can I make this happen? How can I get this done? How can I do this? How can I do this? You ask yourself a how question repeatedly, kind of expecting that your mind's going to give you an answer. Now. It's not about the end result. It's not about how can I get this person to say yes to going out with me? Because that's outside of your control. She's going to say no if she wants to say no and you want her to say no if she wants to say no. You don't want her to say yes if she wants to say no. You want her to have free will, don't you? Well, not if you study some pickup artist stuff. They say use the secret magical technique to bend her will to your own. But no, ultimately you want to just be able to put yourself out there, be confident, Say, hey, you want to go out? She says, no. Say, great, who's next? And how can I do that? How can I ask with complete confidence in myself and be totally relaxed about the outcome? That is in your control, isn't it? But not her response. So you want to ask, how can I make it this? How can I show up to this presentation and just nail it? How can I share clearly and effectively? How can I show up curious and interested in my customer and try to meet their needs at the highest level and be unattached to the outcome for the sales conversation, example. So you ask yourself those questions with expecting a result and you get powerful information. I remember not too long ago, I was wanting to have more time to record video audio. I wanted to record this new version of Confidence Unleashed. And my schedule was so full that I didn't have time during the day to record and I didn't want to take the weekends to record because I wanted that time to be with my wife and my son. He's one year old now, so it's a pretty magical time. But I was getting frustrated because I was like, well, if I can maybe record two hours a week at that rate, I can record the new program in nine or ten weeks. Ugh, God, two months. Ah, jeez. And I was discouraged and frustrated. And then I just did this thing. I was like, okay, how can I make massive progress in recording? Because that's what I love to do and it helps me reach more people. It's part of my mission. How can I make massive Progress in my recording while having plenty of time with my family and getting plenty of sleep. Because my first thought was like, well, just record all night, right? So it was like, I want to, but then I'm going to be fried the next day. So how can I have plenty of time to record and spend a lot of time with my family and have plenty of sleep? And at first, my mind, I remember I was biking to work when I was asking myself this question. My mind was like, pfft, you can't. Stupid. No way. And I just kept on doing it with more force, with more intensity. How can I do this? I just kept on asking the question again and again and again and again. And I got an answer, I created an answer. And you will as well if you ask yourself this question. How can I show up totally unattached to the outcome? How can I be totally confident when I ask this person out? Because your mind is normally saying you can't be confident, it's not going to go well, blah blah, blah blah. And it's so focused on the outcome versus the how. How can I make this particular thing that I want to happen happen? And it brings you back to your power because you have control and influence over what's going on inside of you and your behaviors. You don't for the people outside of you. So. And if you're curious what my solution was is actually to go on what I call the farmer's schedule, where my son goes to bed super early. So we basically put him to bed, and my wife and I have a little bit of time together. And then I go to bed really early and I wake up really early and then I have plenty of time. So I wake up between three and four in the morning and I have a couple hours each morning to record, to do stuff, and the house is totally quiet. I got a recording set up here in the basement area and it allows me to create this stuff and then have plenty of time with my son and my family. It worked out awesomely. So that was the solution. And you will find a solution for yourself if you ask how with enough determination and expectation of getting an answer. And then when you have an idea of how you're going to make it happen, how you want it to go, then I highly encourage doing this process called Theater of the Mind. It comes from psycho cybernetics and neuro linguistic programming and anyone else who's had their own spin on it. But basically it goes something like this. And this one's gonna involve closing your eyes. So if you're driving, you can do it with your eyes open. I suppose it's gonna be much more effective if you do it with your eyes closed. And so I understand that you might. You could do it later if you want. Sometimes you wanna keep the momentum going. But if you can close your eyes, close your eyes and imagine walking into your favorite movie and sitting down in whatever seat you want. It's totally empty. You can pick your favorite seat and imagine what are the color of the seats. Good. And sitting down in your favorite seat after you've chosen it and feeling the soft chair. Does the back kind of recline a little bit? Are there big armrests with drink holders? Do you have a. Perhaps you got a soda and some popcorn on your way in. And just settling into your seat. And then up in front of you is a huge screen, gigantic movie theater screen. And on it, you're going to start to play the movie that you want to happen, the way you want things to go, how you would like it to go. Your preference, your exact desired outcome. Good. Seeing it now, playing it like a movie. You're watching it from the outside. You're watching yourself interacting with those people. Interacting with that person. Giving the talk, asking her out, Walking into the meeting, walking into the room where you don't know anyone and casually starting a conversation with people. People laughing and smiling at what you're saying. Watching the movie and watching it go incredibly well. Exactly how you'd want it to go. Good. And making it brighter and bigger and more vivid in your mind. Yes, that's it. That's exactly what you want to do. Adding any details that you want to add in now, making it more detailed, more vivid. The more details you can add in, the better. Good.

Great.

So now letting these images go from your mind, taking a deep breath in, and as you let it out, opening your eyes and returning your attention to wherever you are. That is an incredibly powerful visualization process that you can use daily or before any situation to help influence your mind, to relax you, to get predictions going in the direction that you want. The more you do this, the more you utilize this, your life will change. In fact, that brings us to our action step. Time for action. Your action step is to do this. Exercise this theater of the mind at least once a day. It only takes like a minute. You can do it for longer if you want. You can put on a great song, an inspiring song, close your eyes and relax for four or five minutes and do it. But you want to just imagine things going the way that you want them. To go. And this sends a powerful message to your unconscious mind of this is how I show up. This is who I am in the world. It impacts how you see yourself, your self concept, ultimately your identity. And it's powerful. And you combine that with getting clear on the predictions that you want, what you really want it to go, how you really want it to go, and giving yourself a sense of certainty in the other direction, in the positive direction, that you're going to show up in this way that you can handle whatever happens. And that will get you ultimately a much more confident approach to any situation because you're not going to be filling your mind with these negative predictions. So thanks so much for joining us for today's show. I'd love to hear from you. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com Send me a message. Ask any questions that you have. I'd love to answer them in the show. Don't forget to rate the show on itunes. Thanks so much for being with me. I look forward to talking with you in the next episode. Until we speak, then may you have the courage to be who you are and to know that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've done, just heard. Please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshy guy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.

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