Confident at Work: Speaking Up in Meetings Without Freezing

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. The show to help you break free from social anxiety, people pleasing and self doubt so you can speak up, connect and be 100% you. I'm Dr. Aziz, sharing tools that have transformed my life and thousands of others. Let's all liberate ourselves together. Welcome to today's episode of the show. I'm excited to be with you because you're going to learn in this episode how to speak up confidently at work. That means in meetings, whether it's a small, sometimes a meeting is like literally just one other person, right? So a one on one where maybe it feels high stakes, it's an uncomfortable conversation, whether that's someone who's a higher up, you know, some sort of boss, supervisor, and you feel nervous or you freeze up there, or sometimes it can even be with a colleague, an employee if you have to have more direct conversation, especially if you have a history of people pleasing, being too nice. But this goes, you know, just one person to several to larger meetings, you know, 5, 10, 20 people in there. And what I see a lot of my clients, what happens for them is they're, they're very skilled, they're intelligent, they're capable, they do good work and they might even have confidence in their work too. But then when it comes to the social side, presenting, sharing, speaking up, they tend to recede into the background, you know, be the wallflower of the meeting, whether that's in person or virtual. Even easier to recede virtually. I've even had clients who told me, yeah, since our work together, I started actually, as I build my confidence, I actually start to have my camera on in meetings more. And I was like, oh, you had your camera off? And they're like, yeah, it's too uncomfortable, right? And they're living a life of avoidance. So whether it's real strong, you know, obvious avoidance like that, or more just your kind of run of the mill being quiet in meetings, all of that can have a toll not only on your career and your potential because I can't tell you how many people have told me other people get promoted and I don't. Not because they're better at their work, but because they speak up more and they share their ideas more freely. And my ideas might even be better than theirs. Right? You might even know more than them, but they just speak up a lot more, right? So it has a significant impact on your career, but it also has an effect on your own confidence and self esteem and engagement at work and just feeling good, powerful and strong about what you get to do each day when you show up to work. So let's shift all that and I'm gonna share some really powerful tools in today's episode. And exciting announcement in a day or two, depending on when you're listening to this, we're gonna be opening up ticket sales for my next virtual event. This is the last time we did a virtual event was the beginning of this year. Oh my God. So it's been a minute. And this is the only one I'm doing for the rest of this year. It's called Supremely Confident Conversation Master. Three days virtually can attend anywhere. We're gonna be doing it in the beginning of October, October 10th through 12th. And we're gonna be having the Super Early Bird ticket available in just a couple of days here, which makes it $97, which is 80% off of the full retail price. And whether it is social conversations or work conversations or speaking up in meetings and presenting, all of that is about conversation mastery. Because a conversation is not just between two people. It could be between you and a group of people, you and a whole room of people. In fact, we even have a bonus VIP training that's all about telling stories and kind of owning the center of attention. So there's going to be, if you like what we talk about in today's episode, there's going to be so much value and nothing, nothing compares to what happens over three days of immersion, of being there live with other people who are working on it. It's night and day difference between, like listening to something like this versus really throwing yourself in. So it's a fantastic opportunity. If you've been following my work for some time or listening to this and benefiting, I would highly recommend diving in. So if you're not already on my email list, that's how we you'll find out about the Super Early Bird. Just go to draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and you can run that page, enter your email and then you'll get my free mini course called Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence as well as find out about the event. So I would love to share that experience with you and hope that it serves you and becoming more bold to speak up. And so speaking of that, now, what makes you anxious about speaking up? And usually there's just a handful of things. One is that someone is going to judge me for doing. That's the standard, right? The standard go to anxiety of speaking up or sharing is someone's going to Judge me. They're going to think I'm going to sound dumb or I'm going to sound nervous. And that's going to make people think that I am incapable or weak, right? So it's. They're gonna. I'm gonna become more visible, essentially, right? Because there's this pull towards invisibility, hence the wallflower thing. And I'm gonna become more visible. And being visible is dangerous. Bad, wrong, terrible, awful things happen. In fact, you might have already. You might have associated visibility with bad things, being the center of attention with bad things, which is. Which is a major problem. And mostly at work. I mean, I think it's limiting in all areas of life. Like, you'll never give a toast, you'll never share in front of a group. You'll never. So there's a lot of limitations, but you can kind of get through life okay. You know, you have a friend or two, you have a partner, you have a family. You can do all that and never be the center of attention. Avoid it like the plague. And a lot of people do, by the way. But you can't really excel at work. I mean, you might be able to get like a technical position or work alone, remotely or something and do okay enough at that, but you're never going to excel into leadership. You're never going to have all the options available to you if you're avoiding being the center of attention. So we need to change that association. You need to realize that being the center of attention is not automatically a bad thing. And that what's happening is you're projecting, which means going out of your mind and projecting into the mind of others. And if you haven't listened to my previous episode of this show, it just came out last week called the Rejection fantasy, How your mind destroys confidence. Then check that one out after this episode because it's a deep dive on the exact pattern that has you imagining people are disliking you. So that's gonna be the biggest initial obstacle. So you gotta shift that and really see that that's just uncertainty. You don't know. And mostly the vast majority of the time, people are not. That's our own fabrication. But as long as we're living in that reality where we're certain that that's happening, we're going to suffer and we're going to hold back. So you have to expand your possibility and say, you know what? It's very possible that people are going to approve of what I say, they're going to love what I say, what I'm going to say is going to bring a lot of value here. And that's the second point is to really connect with the value that you bring. Because what happens is what we focus on in life tends to magnify and become more and more real. Right. In the world of gestalt therapy, they call it the figure in the ground. So what you focus on, just like look around wherever you are right now. You're in a bedroom, you're in a gym, you're in your car, I don't care, wherever. And you look around. There's a lot of stuff around you right now, no matter where you are, and yet you're not looking at everything equally. There's certain things. So scan around the environment right now as you listen to me and certain things are going to stand out to you, right? Maybe a poster on a wall. That's what I'm looking at right now. I look down on my desk, I see a crystal there because I'm a hippie at heart, right? There's other things on my desk. There's a laptop, there's a computer monitor, there's a microphone, there's my watch, There's a bunch of stuff. But what I saw was the crystal. So something comes out of the background or the ground and becomes figure becomes central. And when you are focusing, usually what people are focusing on to create the anxiety is on the risk and the potential downside. I can make a fool of myself or a common one. Especially if you have niceness and people pleasing. There is someone's going to say something back to me and I won't know what to say then, right? Oh God, oh God, that would be awful. And so we hold back because we're afraid of that. And when we focus on that, that becomes the figure, the central point of our focus and what fades into the background is how much value you bring. I remember I was talking to a client about this and he was like, oh, but I could say this. And then they're gonna, oh, what if they say that? Or what if this? And he was so in his fear, in his story. And I just put him on a whole different track. And I said, you know, I'm curious what was the topic of the meeting? And he almost paused, like, what? Right. Because I didn't know his industry. I was like, what was the topic of the meeting? And he started to tell me and of course I didn't totally understand it all. I was like, okay, yeah, do you think what you would have shared would have been useful there? And he's like, well, yeah, you know, a little hesitant to acknowledge it. And I'm like, wait, just set aside any humbleness or whether people would react or not. Was there something that would have been useful to add to the conversation? And he's like, well, yeah, I was like, like what? And he started to tell me, and when he was just telling me in the room with no one else around, it sounded very matter of fact, very confident. Well, we could do this and that. There's a problem with that. And da, da, da, da, da, right? I said, okay, what are you focused on right now? He's like, well, I'm focused on the topic. I'm focused on what we need to fix to make this thing better. I'm like, exactly. You're focused on the issue at hand and your insights, your solution and knowing the value that you. And when you focus on that, how anxious do you feel? And he's like, I don't feel anxious at all right now, but I'm just talking to you, Aziz. Right? So you think that it's the environment. That's what, that's the most common fallacy is my environment determines how I feel. Which if you're an amoeba, to whatever degree amoebas feel, is true, right? Single cell organism. The environment does something and they respond. And that's, you know, that works its way up quite a bit, all the way to insects and everything. So there is a default control that the environment has over lesser life forms, I guess you might call them. But when it comes to you and me, my friend, we are greater. We are greater life forms. We're greater than our circumstance. That doesn't mean the circumstance has no impact on you, right? There's like poison in the air. You better go run and get some better ventilation. But when someone says I disagree during a meeting, that doesn't automatically determine how you feel and what you do and what you think and how you react. That's determined by your perspective, what it means, what you focus on. So if someone says, I disagree and I'm focused on, oh my God, if people disagree with me, that means what does it mean? Right? That means that I'm awful and that I'm a fool and that they think I don't know what I'm talking, talking about now, I'm going to just stumble and fall over and retreat. But if it means to me, oh, they need more clarification, there's something that they're not getting. I remember I was working with a coach on in learning more about sales. This was A number of years ago. And, you know, I'd always heard when it came to sales that when people have questions or objections or challenges, that that's a good sign. It means that they're actually considering it, but they need to talk some things through. And I'd heard that. I'd read that and stuff. But every time I was in a conversation with somebody and they had some concern or objection or I'm not sure about this or whatever, inside, I'd feel like, oh, man, they're not gonna wanna do it. Say no, right? And I remember I was working with this sales coach and he's like, we'd watch these recordings I did with people, and he was going through them with me, and he'd say, okay, right there. See, when that person was like, oh, I'm not sure. I don't wanna do it, uh, what happens for you? I'm like, I get kind of deflated. He's like, okay, I want you to lean in and rub your hands together. Like, not actually do this with a person, but just here with me right now. Rub your hands together and say, ooh, this is about to get exciting. Right? And I did it because I'm paying the guy. And I'm like, this is stupid. Ooh. But I got. It's. It's like it stuck with me. And I smiled afterwards when I thought about it is like, okay, you want. Like, this is the moment to lean in. This means that they want. There's interest here. Because if someone's totally not interested, they're like, thanks, I gotta go. But if, like, nah, I want to, but I'm not sure about this. And what about that? You know, they're really saying, I want to do it, but I have some questions and some concerns. Great. Let's flush out what those are and help you get clarity. Right? So it's all about the meaning that you give it. And so the meaning of this means I'm a fool. This means they're not going to like me. This means I don't know what I'm talking about. This means blah, blah, blah. Those are all the garbage meanings that, you know what, they've been going there for years, for decades. They probably predate your current workplace, maybe your last five. They might even come from your childhood. So these are the conclusions that are not what they are going to have about you. These are the conclusions that you have about yourself. More specifically, that your critic, your inner critic, continuously, continuously, frequently, chronically has leveled against you over the last, you know, in certain number of decades. Here. So that. That is what must shift. And that starts with grounding yourself more and more in your own value. Because if, you know, I have a lot to offer here. I have a lot to bring to this situation. I'm going to show up, I'm going to deliver. I got tons of ideas, and it's not like I have to have everything scripted out ahead of time, because as soon as you do that, the conversation is going to go off the rails. And anyone who's trying to lead a meeting just reading from a script loses everybody, right? No, I'm adaptive, I'm intelligent. I'm responsive. I know. I know that. I know my stuff in this area. It doesn't mean I know everything. I can ask questions. I can find out more. But of course. Of course. And the biggest challenge I see with people is having that connection with the. Of course. And it's not because they don't know what they're doing. I remember I talked to a gentleman about this, and he had so much imposter syndrome and professional insecurity, and he couldn't make contact with his. Of course. Of course I know what I'm doing here. And I was like, but how long you been working in this industry? He's like, I don't know, 15 years. And before that, he did something that was kind of similar. So you could probably say 20 years. I was like, wow, 20 years? He's like, yeah. I was like, wait a minute. But you don't feel like you know your stuff. And he's like, well, hedging and Heman and Hahn, and look, all it takes is one moment, one conversation, one insight, and everything can change. Because that was a pattern. That wasn't reality. He wasn't incompetent. That's the illusion of imposter syndrome. It's not real. He just told himself that that's what was happening for decades. And so it felt true. I said, wait a minute. Way back when, when you first started, did you get an education for this? And he's like, oh, yeah. I was like, well, did you, like, cheat on all the tests and kind of fake your results and use someone else's resume and con your way into a job? And he started laughing. He's like, no. I was like, okay, I don't want to assume, you know, because that's what someone who's an imposter would do. Okay, so you're not an imposter, but you are telling yourself that you're not capable here. Why? And more importantly, what could you do instead Right. Because at some point we can uncover all the whys and that's, there's value in that. But for the interest of time in today's episode, I would say, but what could you do instead? Can you choose to start doing something different? What would you choose to do if you were doing something different? And instead of just waiting for an answer for me, I want you to reflect on that for yourself. If you were going to focus on something else in a meeting besides what they're going to think of you, what could you focus on? In fact, these are great questions for some sort of step. What step might that be? Ah, yes. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step today is to ask yourself some key life changing questions. Number one is if I were going to focus on something else in a meeting or at work, you know, a situation where you're normally anxious or held back. If I were to focus on something else, what might it be? I gave you a few examples in this episode, so I want you to reflect on that. What might it be? What could I focus on? You'd say, well, my attention gets pulled over here again and again. I understand that. But if you wanted to, where could you redirect your focus to? That's a huge one. And the next one would be if you wanted to give yourself credit, own your value, have a sense of, of course I know what I'm doing or I have a lot to contribute here. If you wanted to give yourself that gift and just frankly that seeing things more clearly or with more truth, what would you focus on there? What do you bring? What experience do you have? Just a grounded sense of reality, of knowing what you do bring. Because the more you, you rest in that, there's less to prove because you just know it and it gives you a base to stand on, to share. Awesome. I hope this serves you. There is so much more we could do with this. I'm excited to share in future episodes about continuing to break free from anxiety so you can become your most bold, free, authentic self. And again, stay tuned to my email. Get on that email list right away so you can get access to that super early bird right when the tickets come out. And I would love, love, love to spend those three days with you and help you become more free and just totally relaxed in conversations at work and beyond. All right, thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

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