Claim Confidence In 2025

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 Shrink for the Shy guy. And welcome to 2025. I don't exactly know why I'm welcoming you to that as if I'm the creator. Welcome to my year. But you know what? Maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe you should be telling me, welcome to my year. Aziz, is 2025 gonna be your year? What do you think? Right? And you might say, how do I know? I don't know. Well, maybe. And that's probably a true on one level, right? In the greater mystery sense of this life, on a spiritual level, and even in the practical day to day of our lives, we really don't know exactly what the future holds. You can make your best guess, you can set yourself up to win, you can have healthy habits and take action and prepare for the future and all that, but you know, you don't know what's going to happen, good or bad. I think that's an important thing to remember because sometimes when we have a know more of a nervous, anxious creature, like my nervous system tends to be wanna wired. That's my default. If I'm not practicing all the tools that we talk about in this show, then we hear the future is uncertain, you don't know what's gonna happen next. And instead of a, ooh, that's exciting, we get a what's gonna happen? What are you saying? Is my family dead when I get home? Right. So we can imagine it's all bad, but it's actually everything amazing comes out of the next moment comes out of that. What I call in the new book Doubtless, which is coming out in 2025, here Q1 is the plan, but there's a section called a flower of uncertainty, and we don't know what's going to emerge from that. And having said that, let's say we acknowledge that I don't know exactly what's going to happen this year. There's going to be all kinds of surprises and delights. The surprises that I. The things that I'm not expecting, that I like, I'll call surprises. And the things that I don't like, I'll call problems or sucky or bad, good or bad. Let's label it in different ways, but it's still unknown what's going to occur. And having said that, it's not like you are a rudderless buoy on the ocean at the whim of the winds and everyone else and fate, and you're just this helpless duckling in the water. And if you see yourself that way, then you become that way. And life is a lot harder than it is and needs to be. We're adding a layer of difficulty on top of life, which may have its own challenges already at times, but we make it a lot harder, right? It's like someone who is, say, a drug addict, right? In the normal challenges of life, you gotta make money and pay your rent and handle your paperwork and deal with relationship issues and your physical health, right? All the normal stuff of life that can be fun and easy or challenging and hard. It depends upon the season of your life and all that. But then if you add in, you know, crazy addiction, you know, a craving, okay, I gotta get my drug, I gotta get my heroin or whatever it is, and then now I'm coming off of it and I feel awful, and now I'm so compelled that I gotta go steal to make the money. I mean, that's making your life a lot harder than it needs to be, right? And we can do that not in such an extreme example way, like drug addiction, but by adopting a more passive or victim mindset to life and that we don't necessarily see that as a problem. We see that as the way it is when we're in the victim mindset. That's the way it is. And so that question, is 2025 going to be your year? You can definitively say yes to that, even if you don't know everything that's gonna happen this year or even what's gonna happen tomorrow. And so how is that a contradiction? How can you claim that it's gonna be my year, whatever that means for you, we'll flush that out in a second. And even though you don't know what's gonna happen next? Well, because if you are limited only to I can feel good if good things happen, and I have to feel bad if bad things happen, if my life circumstances go up, then I'm good and worthy and lovable. And happy. And if there's an adversity or challenge or struggle, then I suck and I have to hate myself and my life's awful. Well, as long as you are that pegged to your circumstances, well, then, yeah, I mean, how can you predict anything? It's just going to be the roll of the dice, whim of the fate, whim of the gods. Well, what if instead you say it's going to be my year? Because what would you fill in that? 2025 is going to be my year. Because in fact, I want you to say that out loud. In fact, let's start off the year by doing something a little different. Let's actually have you use your voice in your body. Now, maybe you're in the gym, maybe there's other people around, maybe you're walking somewhere. You don't want to look like a freak. Well, that's good. Maybe this could be some embarrassment inoculation for you. But let's just. We'll give you the benefit of the doubt here. We're not going to make you look like a freak on day, day one of the new year. We'll save that for next week. But then, then say it firmly in your own mind. But if no one is around, you're in your car or whatever, say it, say it. Say 2025. In fact, shake your body out a little bit, move around. And if you are in the gym, just, you know, walk. Don't get your headphones on, no one's gonna know. Just walk between, you know where you're standing to the water fountain or something, but stand fully upright. Move your bit of certainty and power and strength. This is you as the captain of your ship cultivating your choice right now. And then say out loud, ideally in your mind, if you have to, 2025 is going to be my year because. And then just say something. What comes to your mind, what comes through your heart. Listen, 2025 is going to be my year because. And then what? And maybe what comes to you is about what you're going to create, what you're committed to creating and doing and achieving and experiencing. Maybe it's about a mindset or an attitude you're gonna bring to the situation, right? What, What? It doesn't have to be because everyone's gonna like me and everything's gonna go my way and it's gonna be easy and fun. Okay, but what about next week when it's not right. But if you bring in something different, like, listen, 2025 is gonna be my year because I'M gonna show up with strength and courage. I'm gonna take bold actions. I'm gonna take risks. I'm gonna double down on being on my own side. And one personally for me is I'm committed to practicing. This is an interesting one. Patience. You might not hear me talk about patience a lot in this show. There's a lot of bold action, being on your own side, maybe specific skills related to confidence, conversation, social connection, all that patience. I don't think we've had one episode. Maybe we have an episode. This is. By the way, this is episode 577. Yeah, that's a lot. So if you're newer to this show, go back and check out the archives. But I haven't done a lot of explicit talking about. I doubt I have a whole episode on patience. Why? Because that wasn't part of my vocabulary. Patience is for losers, man. I want to take bold action and get results now. I want to go fast. And that's been the story of my life. And maybe there is something to. I don't know, it's my. In my makeup or maybe something about living in that cage for so many years and watching my life pass me by, that when I busted out of that cage, it was like, we're gonna get every drop of juice out of this life. And so far, that's worked very well for me. So not knocking the bold action, take risk strategy. I've used that in a lot of areas of my life. And, well, there's been a few downsides, I'd say, in terms of committing to things, jumping into things, taking too much on being impatient, and then if not making a bad choice from that impatience, at least suffering a lot more than I need to because I'm thrashing around, needing something to happen faster than it. Than it makes sense to, whether that's in fitness or investing or business or any other area of life. I can set a course, have a path. Here's the plan. Six months, 12 months, three years, whatever it is, a reasonable start. And then way too much impatience so that I'm thrashing at the bit. Not anymore. 2025 is gonna be my year. Because this is the year that not only am I gonna practice patience, but anything I'm gonna practice, I gotta learn, right? So I'm excited. This is. Man, I must be solidly in my 40s. I'm 42, by the way. Just turned 42 a couple months ago, where now I'm, like, excited about patience. That just sounds so lame when I say it out loud, you know? My kids are like, I'm excited about whatever they're into video games and money and being awesome or whatever they're excited about. And it's like, aziz, what are you excited about? Well, I'm excited about learning about patients. Right. I already got my grandpa voice going. In any case, it truly does excite me, which is I'm excited by that. I'm excited about being excited about patience. And you know what I'm really excited about? It is I see that it's gonna round me out a little bit, Right. And when you just think about that term, round me out, right? If you think of me as a wheel or yourself as a wheel, and you got maxed out on one side and nothing on the other side, how's that wheel gonna roll, Right? Lumpy. And if you can balance it out a little bit, it becomes smooth. And I just see the potential. I feel energized and excited by the smoothness of bringing a bit more patience into my life. Now, that's interesting in itself, and I'm sure I'll have more episodes about patience in 2025. But I was making a point there of why 2025 is going to be my year. Among other things, there's also specific things that I know I feel in my bones or as Eastbound and Down, if you've seen that show. Will Ferrell's character. I forget his name. Ashley Schaefer. Ashley Schaefer, BMW. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then this is totally random. But Ashley Schaefer, BMW. He feels it not just in his bones. He feels a way down in his plums. That's where I feel it. Things that I know I'm gonna create now, how can I know I'm gonna create them? The future hasn't happened yet, right? I don't. The future is uncertain, right? Yes. That's what we started with in this episode. And maybe not. I don't know. I don't know. Let me explain what I mean there. Well, I think there's power in having a sense of certainty. I'm closing my eyes, right? If you're wondering why I'm grunting as I record this is I'm closing my eyes, and I'm tuning into what's there and trying to verbalize it to you, but it's a sense of power, determination, commitment. Let's go. Motivation, positive anticipation, enthusiasm, like, willingness to be flexible. We're gonna get there. In fact, it goes further. It's. It's already done. Now, this is some interesting first of all, that you could just say, oh, that seems like positive anticipation and being determined to create what you want. Those are. Those are great ways to approach things. That's like Tony Robbins 101, right? Get into the right state, as he would say, peak state. And then, you know, take some massive action. And that's great. And then I would add a layer on top of it that I have actually learned from Donnie Epstein, who is the founder. I've talked to him much on this show, about him much on this show. But he's the creator of Network Chiropractic, which, you know, I've interviewed a practitioner, Ian Chambers, on this show about that. It's pretty fascinating. I'm involved in it for a number of years now, receiving it, and. And, you know, I don't know what they're doing with my energy system. They're linking me to the forces of creation. Basically, when I go in there, I don't know what's going on, but I just know that the more I do it in my life, the better. Better things are physically, is when I. Why I first went there, to help my body continue to unwind patterns of generating chronic pain. But then also it became like, wow, I feel optimized mentally, emotionally. I feel smarter in some ways. And what do I mean by smarter? Did I learn new information? No, but my ability to comprehend and make sense of things and not get overwhelmed and just manage a bunch of things at once and be clear and take action on them or take on more, whether it's in business or with our house and family or whatever it is, it just felt more accessible. It just made sense easier. So there's an optimization going on. In any case, Donnie's a fascinating dude. And fun side note, his audiobook called the Seeker's Code. Well, his book is called the Seeker's Code, but there's an audio version that's coming out. Should be quite soon, probably this month, January here, 2025. I recommend listening to it for several reasons. One, it's a fascinating book. Number two, yours truly is the narrator. Oh, yes. That's the first audiobook I've ever recorded for anyone else. So that's happening and you should definitely check that out. In any case, he's got some interesting perspectives on time. And if you, you know, when you look at it, there's sort of our practical experience of time. There's now, there's the future, which hasn't happened yet. There's the past, which is already done. And then when you get into physics on a more Just like when you get into the quantum level of physics, everything gets a lot of bizarro wacky. It's the same thing with time. Time gets bizarro wacky. Now I am, you know, despite my brain being optimized, I still don't know what the hell is going on when anyone tries to explain physics to me. And I know it's kind of a thing in like the new age world, which is like according to physics, magic, right? So I'm not, I'm not going to try to claim any knowledge of metaphysical through physics, but I will say that when you really start to study time, you realize that there's our perception of time and that might be slightly different than what's really going on with time. And you know, classic kind of proven examples around that are with Albert Einstein and experiments around this relativity of time, time speeding up or slowing down based upon your speed and that's measurable and it's no longer just a theory. Right? So what is all my point with all this nonsense and rambling on, essentially, what if the future has already occurred? What if time is not linear? What if time is like stacked in a way and all things have already all occurred? Now I know that if you try to grok that, it's like watching Terminator 2 and you're like, but wait a minute, why did they when they went back? You know, it's infinite loop problems. So I'm not here to try to make it all make sense in your brain. And I don't make sense of it all in my brain, but I love playing with the idea of the future already exists. You could think of them as like, you know, optionality or timelines, like they all exist. The future where I have created that thing. So let's say you want to have a beautiful relationship with someone that you love and you're not, you're single right now, right? There's a future where you are with that person and it's not like, oh, that's a future vision and I one day want to create it. That's fine. That's one way to see it. Get yourself in a Tony Robbins state and go make it happen. Great. But what if also that that already exists, right? And even if you don't like, what does that mean? How does that change anything? Well, for me, it changes everything, like emotionally energetically. Then I'm like, oh, well then I'll just. Let's just, then let's just do that one. Let's take that timeline, let's take that fork in the road. And then if you want to get real into Donnie's world, he would say, especially if you're EPI way, which he calls it, check out the book. You find out more would be, you're externally oriented, which I am. Then you're actually, quote, coming from the future. So instead of here I am now, beginning of January 2025. I'm gonna make that happen by October or whatever you say. It's already done. The information about what to do and how to be is coming back to me from that future timeline and future self. And now I'm gonna go take action on it. And again, if you listen to that and you're like, what the hell is this dude talking about? That's what I spent my first, like, two years I've been studying Donnie's stuff. And that's why I ended up recording the book for him, because I reached out to him and was like, hey, you need an audiobook. And I know a fantastic narrator, and I'm interested in learning more about your stuff. So it's been a pretty cool relationship. I've gone a lot deeper with him and done some. He's, you know, shared a lot of ideas with me and done more mentoring with me. It's very cool. But, you know, the first two years of, like, learning his stuff, I'd just be like, what the f is this wacky dude talking about, man? Right. Because my mind didn't get it, and my mind still doesn't get it, but I realized that I can use these things without getting it with my mind. So what does all that have to do with you in 2025? What if you claim what you want to create? 2025 is going to be my year because this is going to happen. In fact, this is already done. I'm already there. It's just filling in the gap. It's just the next steps. And I'm going to be guided exactly on what next steps to do by my future self, that future vision, by the forces of creation. I just got to get myself in the optimal state where I'm attuned to it, where I can listen for it, where I'm not in a pouty victim. There's nothing I can do about it. My life is hard, and people are against me, and I'm never going to get what I want. That's not being attuned to the. The future. At least not the future that you want. Make sense. Hey, and if it doesn't make sense, just go back and listen this episode again and check out Donnie's book. You know what? I'm gonna. I'm a level with you though. I don't know if that book's gonna make a lot of sense anyway. Having. Having read it many times to narrate it and go through all the edits with him, it. It's like a transmission more than it is. You know, you're. You're taking notes and getting it all with your brain. I get some things with my brain. And then a lot of it's just like I read this book and I read it a million times to record it, and things are just shifting in my life around me and. Which is his whole premise, right? It's like you're energetic. Who you are and how you show up energetically determines everything. So there's a little surprising, unplanned plug for his book. I'll let you know when it comes out. But in the meantime, let's talk about how you can turn this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. Let's take it one step further. I want you to claim 2025. Well, I, I invite you to. I want you to. But you got to do whatever you want to do, man. Or lady. Do what you want to do. So. But I would suggest though, as you claim 2025, this is going to be my year because. And this because there's going to be plenty of adversity and challenges. Look, stuff's gonna go off plan pretty quick. Let me just tell you. All it takes for me is to plan my day. I got a little daily plan. I got a little paper thing here because I use Google Calendar for everything. But then when it comes down to the granular, right? Cause I'll have a block of time that says recording on my calendar or whatever, right? Then when it comes to that morning or whatever, I'm gonna say, okay, what am I gonna record during that time? For example, here, Shrink for the shy guy episode. I got my plan. I have a plan right here. I'm looking at it. It's 2:30 at the time of this recording. And I am radically derailed from my plan that I just made literally yesterday before the evening of yesterday for today's workday. So, you know, maybe you're better than I am sticking to the plan. But that's just my plan for the day where I had a lot of choice and control today. But there's gonna be bigger things that are not going to go according to plan. And some are going to be fun and exciting and some are gonna suck. I'm not gonna you know, bombard you with the woes of. Over the brick Christmas and New Year holiday where we had a. One of our. Some of our pumps and our. We called the utility room because that thing's crazy. But we got, like, a forced air heater and water heaters down there, and the previous owner put in radiant floor heating. It's like, I'm like, dude, we don't need all this nonsense. But anyway, we got a lot of nonsense down there. And there's some issue. User error on my part. I didn't fill up the right valve with the right amount of water at the right time and freaking blew out some pumps. Had these guys repairing it on New Year's Eve day. Spent like three grand on fixing that. I was like, oh, man. Right. That was not expected. We don't call that one a surprise. We call that one a problem. But, you know, yeah, stuff's gonna happen. Adversity is gonna happen. But if you haven't claimed your year, where you're headed, who you're gonna be, how you're gonna show up, it's gonna be a hell of a lot harder. And so just to put a specific example on that, this thing happens and I'm, like, upset. I feel like, you know, upset about the cost and also that I made it happen. So I'm being a little hard on myself not, you know, not be on my own side. Then I feel kind of anxious, like, what else do I not know about the system that I could be breaking these big bills coming my way? So I did that. I did that for about a day, but that day that it was happening, and then the next morning I woke up, it was New Year's, New Year's Day, January 1st. I was like, wait a minute. How do you know? How are we going to play this, right? What am I committed to doing this year? And one of the things that I'm really committed to, which I'm super excited about talking with you more this year, which is coming from living in a doubtless state. And that's going to make a heck of a lot more sense to you as you listen to more of these episodes and listen to my book, which is coming out, As I said, Q1, 2024 5. 2025 here. So. But yeah, so to me, that means, you know, knowing that I'm guided, believing in myself and trusting in life. And so I just came back to that, and boom, the whole thing shifted. So adversity becomes so much more manageable. You're not held back by it, terrified by it debilitated by it, and you can move forward faster than ever before towards what you really want to create. Which, first and foremost, hopefully, is a more confident version of you, and if so, you're in the right place. I look forward to spending many more hours with you in 2025. So thanks for being with me today and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level now. You're awesome. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.