Confidence Kick Start (3 of 4) - How To Care Less About What Others Think Of You

Welcome to the third video in Kickstart. Your confidence in this video, we're going to get into seeing yourself through the eyes of others. You know, how we imagine others see us and how we imagine other people are going to relate to us is a fundamental piece of social anxiety. And it's also a fundamental piece of social confidence. In fact, the determining factor is, is it really negative or is it positive? And if it's really negative, we imagine people are going to respond negatively to us and reject us and harshly criticize us, then naturally we're going to feel shy, anxious, inhibited, nervous, uncomfortable. And if we assume that people are going to respond positively to us, then we're going to feel more outgoing, more confident, more comfortable. So how do we identify how we imagine others are seeing us? And how do we shift this? How do we work with this? But this is pervasive. This permeates everything, every aspect of our social lives. This can even be happening when no one is around us. That sort of observing presence that we have, the capacity we have as humans, which is fascinating, to observe ourselves as we're doing something. It's almost like we can literally project outside of ourselves and see ourselves doing something. And I have three experiences I want to share that really highlight how powerful this is. And I think that you can relate to them because they are fundamental to shyness. One is I found, like sometimes I'd be walking down the street and there'd be some people sitting on some steps of their house, and I'd be listening to headphones or not just walking down the street. And if those people were young and attractive, particularly women, but it could be an attractive guy, a couple of guys, or women, or people my own age, I would feel very self conscious. I would start to imagine that they're judging me. They're thinking I'm walking weird. They're thinking that I should make eye contact with them. They're thinking if I do and smile or something, they're going to think that I look timid or weird or weak. They're going to think that I'm a freak or a weirdo. I would have all of these thoughts that just made me so uncomfortable that when I walked by them, I was just like, just don't look at them. They're going to see that you're freaking out. And this is all just from people sitting there on the steps may or may not have even noticed me. I remember sometimes someone might say hi to me, like, hey, how's it going? You know, And I'd respond, hi, or whatever. And then afterwards, I'd be like, oh, that was stupid. That sounded too weird. I was too eager, I was too distant. I sounded standoffish. And I'd have all this fear about what they would think of me. That's one powerful experience I know a lot of people can relate to, and I imagine you can relate to as well. Another one in the realm of dancing. Oh, my God. Dancing was out of the question for me for many years, for probably a decade of my life during that shyness. It wasn't until I started to break out of it that I was able to let myself be able to dance. Because dancing is all about, how are other people seeing me? I look weird, I look strange. I look too stiff, I look too awkward. I'm doing the same thing too. Repetitively. There's something wrong with me, right? That's built into the. That fear around dancing. That's another area. And here's the third one, which I think you can relate to as well, which blew my mind when I started to notice this. And that was I could be alone in my house or apartment looking in the mirror and saying something or making a certain weird gesture, or dancing alone would feel very uncomfortable. It's like my observing part would observe and imagine what other people would think if they saw me, as if there'd be a camera in my house, and then everyone would be laughing at it because it'd be put up on YouTube or whatever. And it sounds crazy, but we have that level of inhibition, that fear that others are going to think negatively of us. And as long as we're stuck in that, then we're going to be trapped in shyness forever. So let me help you learn how to break out of that, starting with this video. Now, the first thing we have to do is what's happening there when we feel uncomfortable and tense. And all the examples that I listed and all the examples you can think of from your own life is we are doing one thing. We are assuming disapproval. That means we're assuming that someone is looking at us and judging us negatively. They're not approving of what we're doing. They're saying, I don't like what he's doing. He's. What he's doing is wrong or weird or strange. And as a result, I think poorly of him, and I don't like him. That's what we're assuming. So the fundamental shift we have to start making is we have to start assuming. Assuming approval. Now, you might say, well, that's delusional, right? How Do I know everyone's approving of me? Well, it's equally delusional to assume that everyone's disapproving of you. And you're already doing that, so why not flip it? It gives you a much greater experience of freedom in your life. And I started to do that. So I remember one time I was dancing at Burning man at a festival. It was a great place to start me challenging and learning some of these new things. And I was dancing, I was having all those fears. Someone's judging me, thinking I'm weird. And I had this moment. I was like, wait a minute. What if they're looking at me with, like, approval? What if they're thinking like, damn, that guy looks cool when he's dancing? What if they're thinking, I wish I was dancing out there. What if what I'm doing is actually modeling to them? Hey, you can do this too? And it just shifted everything for me. And it became like, wait a minute, what if I just focus on that? Then I just imagined that the people that were watching me were approving. Like, that guy's cool. I like him. He's a good dancer. He's fun. He's interesting, exciting. When I'm walking down the street now, if that happens to me, I'm walking down the street and there's two people on the step. I just think that they think that I look badass. They think that I'm an attractive guy. They think I am, you know, fit. And I just start imagining what they could be approving of me for. And this relates a lot to the second session from Kickstart yout confidence about the mirror work and the two columns, the double column exercise to help shift how you see yourself. Because really, what's happening here is what's called in psychology, projection. It's coming out of our own mind. And we're imagining other people are thinking of us. We're projecting it onto their minds. And if you haven't heard of this concept, it's very powerful and very liberating. It's that your own self criticisms. I look awkward. I'm not a good dancer. When we imagine someone's thinking about that, about us, that we're actually projecting that it's coming from our own dislike of our own dancing. And if you don't quite get that, that's fine. You'll learn a lot more about that in Confidence Unleashed. But the key here is that it's not necessarily true. In fact, there's a term in cognitive therapy, they call it mind reading, that is that we assume we know what someone is thinking, like that guy looks weird or he's no good. And then we have an action, absolute 100% certainty that that's accurate. We're reading their minds with total conviction when the reality is we don't actually know. And the real reality, as you start to break out of the shyness, you'll find out people don't focus on you as much as you focus on you. In those situations that I described, those people on the step are probably not even noticing me. And if they do, it's for like a blip in their consciousness. It's a second of their lives. It's not like for the next week or two they're saying, hey, remember that guy that walked by? Yeah. His gait was strange or his posture was a little poor. Yeah, I know. I've been thinking about that for the last two weeks. That guy's a freak. You know who is doing that? No one is doing that. It's absurd. And if they are, they got some issues, right? You know, or you think about the person who's dancing and someone's, you know, first of all, no one's really paying that much attention to you. And if they are, they could be thinking positively of you. If they are thinking negatively of you, maybe it's their own inhibition. Maybe they're uncomfortable and they don't want to let themselves dance. And so they look at everyone and they say, no, no, everyone's doing it wrong, but they themselves are too scared to do it. Or if they notice it, and you're like, oh, look at his dancing. Whatever, I'm going to get a drink. No one cares that much. No one is obsessed with us as much as we are obsessed with ourselves. And we start to realize that it can be very liberating. We can let things go. So some things I want to share as well about others and how we perceive others. And this actually became clear to me pretty recently when I was talking to a client. And it actually relates to the news, strangely enough. And this is why I recommend that when you're working on this stuff, you start to pay attention to your patterns of how you watch the news. And that is, I have a client and we were doing some social experiments, which I'm going to get to in the next video, which is all about taking bold action in your life and doing social experiments. But there's a lot of social experiments in Confidence Unleashed. And so he was going through Confidence Unleashed and he was doing some of these experiments. That means trying something new in the world. And he happened to be living at home. There's a trend here. But he happened to be living at home. And he mentioned to his mom one of the things that he was doing. And one of the things, One of the experiments is it's called rejection practice. And you actually go over and ask someone for $100, and the purpose is you're going to get rejected, is to build up your tolerance to get to hear a no. You know, and if it produces a little anxiety in you, that's good. We'll get into that in the next video, too. But it's like walking up to someone saying, excuse me, like, yes, can I have $100? To which they most likely respond, hell, no. And you say, thank you, and you walk away. Very benign, very quick. You're going to get a no. I've never gotten done this dozens of times. I've never gotten anything other than a no. In fact, I've actually gotten a lot of conversations that have started like, no, I wish I had $100. I remember I was walking on the street one time. I was walking with my wife, and I was telling her about this exercise, this rejection practice, and she's like, well, what would you do? I said, well, one of them is you ask people for $100. And she's like, really? I was like, yeah, watch this. And there's a woman, an attractive woman walking the other way. And I said, excuse me? She says, yeah, can I ask you a question? Sure. Can I have $100? And she, like, her whole body language. She was walking the other way, her body language shifted towards me, and she completely stopped. And she grabbed a purse, and she said, I Wish I had $100, man. There's a lot I do with that. And I could tell that she wanted to talk with me. Now, if I'd been single or more interested in talking with her, I would have. I was there with my wife, and we were on a walk, and I was like, well, thanks anyway. And we just kept walking. So not only did I get not a negative response, but I got a positive response. That's a big tangent. That's a big digression. You'll learn a lot more about that in confidence unleashed in these social experiments. But anyway, this client was about to do that, and he told his mom about it. And you know what his mom said? Oh, that's really strange. You better be careful not to do that at a bar because someone could pull a gun on you. And I was like, what? We're in Portland, Oregon. Like what? No matter where you are, you're not like robbing someone at knifepoint for $100. Like, what is she talking about? And so we were talking about it, and I was hearing more beliefs from his mom. And I was like, let me ask you a question. Does your mom watch a lot of news? And he said, yeah, actually she does. And come to think of it, she really remembers the most shocking and dramatic stories. And I was like, of course she does. That's what it's designed for. You know, the main TV media outlet news are designed to not necessarily provide an accurate view of the world, but to shock you and to grip you into watching more. And then there's ads in between the news. That's how anything on TV works and how it's funded. So what I would encourage you to do is if you watch a lot of TV news, take a break from it, take a little news fast. If you really want to stay abreast of current events, go to the Internet and be very selective about what stories you read, because you can choose what you're going to take in on the Internet. When you're watching the tv, you're just going to absorb it, maybe even going on TV fast in general, but I don't need to get into that with you. So selecting your sources and making sure you look up interesting, positive things too, like look up what's happening in development of technology, what sort of crops are being grown in places, what humanitarian efforts are taking place, Doctors Without Borders, places where people are doing good, good things in the world. So you're not just absorbing a bunch of negative information. So that's one thing I'm going to suggest that you do is go on a little news fast, change how you absorb information. The second thing is I think that it's important for you to start looking at people differently. So what I'd like you to do is the next time you're out and about at the store or anywhere, when you look at people, just pick one person. Pick the cashier at the supermarket or the server at a restaurant, or you're sitting at a coffee shop and there's someone sitting over there working on the computer. Just take a moment, look at them and think about the fact that this person just like you is born onto the planet. Like, don't know what's going on. And here's how things are. They have to figure it out. They had whatever upbringing they had, there could have been pain and challenges in there, that they have their own fears and concerns about money, about relationships, about their health, about their family, about their loved ones. They hate it when they lose things. It pains them. And they feel grief when they lose relationships and they lose their pets, that they desire to be happy, that they want to make a difference in the world, that they want to feel good about themselves, that they want to feel accomplished and significant, that they want to love people, they want to be connected, they want to feel important and worthwhile in the lives of those around them. And that they sometimes have fears that maybe they're not good enough, maybe they're falling short, maybe they should do more. And they have their own challenges and addictions and they have this whole experience of life just like you. They're a complete person with all the richness and depth and ups and downs and challenges that go along with that. And they're not just some perfect, I have it all together. And I'm going to judge you negatively. You know, slight distortion of a person. But they're a complete person just like you. And the more you can identify that similarity between you and others, the more you can relax and be like, look, no one has got grounds to judge everyone else. We're all just doing the best we can here. So I encourage you to start looking through that lens, through that frame as you go about in your day. And if you really want to learn how to shift this stuff at a deep level, you know what I'm going to say, because this stuff is still, as much as I'm trying to get into it, I only have a limited amount of time here. And in confidence unleashed, we not only have a lot of time, unlimited amount of time, but we also have exercises and workbooks I've designed for you to go through that actually have you make emotional shifts and recondition yourself as you're watching, engaging in the program. And that makes all the difference. So it's not like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll try that. It's like, wow, I feel different now. I'm going to go act differently in my life. So I strongly encourage you, if you want to master this stuff, to get confidence unleashed, click below and order it now. And stay tuned for the next video, the fourth and final video in the Kickstart your Confidence series, which is going to be all about taking bold action in the world. This is where the rubber meets the road, and this is where you're going to be able to see the shifts in your life and how things can accelerate for you. So go ahead and stay tuned, check your email, watch that next video, and I'll talk to you then.