Dr. Aziz warns about the confidence-killing habit of living in “fantasy results” — imagining desired outcomes (in love, career, moving cities, etc.) without doing the inner work required to achieve them. He illustrates the concept with two anecdotes: a client who expects to "find the right person" without building social confidence, and his son Zaim who pretends to be the hardest workout instructor while doing nothing. Dr. Aziz argues fantasy results prevent honest self-assessment and action; he recommends reading about and practicing social confidence (mentions his book "Not Nice", an ebook on socialconfidencecenter.com, watching videos, and taking consistent action over months) to produce real, lasting change.
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Watch out for this confidence killer, because you might be doing it yourself all the time. Just the other day, I was talking with a client, and he was saying to me his plan, vision for what he wanted in his romantic relationships. He was divorced, he was single and dating, and his vision was to ultimately find someone, create a great relationship, and live happily ever after. And that sounds great, right? You know, and as his coach, you think I'd say, yeah, awesome. You can do it, buddy. You know, that's how we give each other confidence, right? We just affirm everything we say. No, actually, you know what I said to him? I said, I don't know if you're gonna get there. Now, why would I say that to someone that I'm working with who's paying me to coach them on confidence? Isn't that taking away his confidence? Actually, it's serving him because you know what he was doing? He was living in a fantasy. He was getting what I call stuck in fantasy results. And you might be doing this as well. Let me give you a quick story to illustrate what fantasy results are and how we live in them. And so you can catch yourself if you're doing this as well. My wife likes to do these Barre 3 workouts. It's like Pilates and yoga and jump kicks. I don't know. I don't know what they do there, but she sometimes does. She goes to a class to them. Sometimes she does them at home on her laptop. And so she puts her laptop on the table, and she's trying to do her, like, squats and stretches and jumps and moves. And the boys are. My two little boys, 3 and 5 years old, are, like, crowding around her sometimes, trying to do the moves, sometimes watching the screen. And my older son, Zaim, looks at the screen, and there's three instructors on the screen. There's one in the middle and. And two on either side. Think of, like, an old aerobics video or something. And Zaim is watching the screen, not doing anything, just standing there, and he's like, I'd be that instructor. No, no, no. That one's not doing the move, like, hard enough. I'd do it that way. Because the instructors are set to three levels of difficulty for the viewer to follow along. And he picks the hardest instructor that's doing the coolest moves and says, I'm that one. And my wife is like, do you want to try to do the move with me? And he's like, nah, I'm that one. And he's living in a fantasy. He's like, he wants to be that cool instructor who does the hardest moves, but he's not doing anything. That is living in fantasy results. And that is a confidence killer. In some ways it's even worse than saying, yeah, you know what, the way I'm operating is not going to get me what I want. And feeling kind of discouraged or even hopeless, that might sound bad, but that's actually better in some ways because then you're at least being honest with yourself and you're going to go do something to change things. But when we live in fantasy results, we kind of tell ourselves that it's all going to work out somehow. Here are some of the big areas that people have fantasy results. The one that my client was doing, love and relationships. It's all just going to happen. I'm going to meet the right person and we're going to form this fantastic relationship. That's a fantasy. You know why? Because in order to meet that person, you might have to actively work on your social confidence a lot. To be able to go approach people you're attracted to, to be able to date from a place of confidence, you might have to do a lot of inner work to overcome, as I did, niceness, people pleasing, codependency, just doing what other people want so they'll like you. Because even if you can date and you're doing all that stuff, you're not going to create a thriving, happy relationship. That's just a fantasy. Do you catch the drift here? That the mistake is when we like we imagine we're going to get there, but we don't want to do the work and so we just live in this fantasy of it's somehow going to happen. People do this in their jobs and their careers all the time too. Somehow it's just going to get better. I'm just going to all of a sudden start loving my job or maybe I'll just find some other job and it's going to be great and I don't have to work on any of my skills. I don't have to do stuff that's uncomfortable for me. I don't have to look at myself and my own work life habits and how I show up to work and whether I take responsibility for my outcomes, any of that stuff. Just magical job change is gonna solve everything. I'm just gonna move to a different city and everything's gonna be different. Right? We had this fantasy. I had that fantasy too. I'm gonna move. When I was young, I was like, I'm gonna go to a different school and all of a sudden it's gonna be different. And then I got a little older. It's like when I get to college. And then it was gonna be like, well, if I'm gonna move to a different city, it's all gonna be different. And guess what? You bring yourself everywhere. You bring yourself to that new city, to that new relationship, to that new job. And so if you want real results and not fantasy results, you have to be willing to do the work. That means look inward, see what's going on for you. Read books about this stuff. Check out my book. Not nice. If you haven't done that already, you'll learn a ton about yourself and then apply what you learn. Watch these videos. Take action consistently on what you learn. Do things that scare you. I mean, if you want the whole five steps, go to my website, socialconfidencecenter.com you can get my ebook there. Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. And learn those five steps and do those consistently. Not for like a weekend, not for a week, for months. And then you will see radical transformations in your confidence which will lead to real results, not fantasy results. So go act on that now. Share below what you're finding most valuable in this video. I can't wait to hear about what real results you're getting from applying this stuff in your life. And until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are, to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
