Crushing Your Comfort Zone with Tim Gross Part 2

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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show Today that is part two in comfort zone Crushing. Last week we talked about the hammer. We got it set up and we were all prepped. And this week we're going to bring that sucker down and just smash the shit out of your comfort zone. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to be getting into very specific techniques and strategies with my guest expert, Till H. Gross, who, if you haven't listened to the first half of the interview, do that. The action step in the end of last episode is really going to prime you to get the most out out of today's episode. So if you haven't listened to that, go back and do that now because today we're gonna be diving in, we're gonna jump hit the ground running, and it's gonna be all about how to break free, how to challenge the edge of your comfort zone, how to become really fearless as a result. And by fearless, we don't mean, like, you don't experience any uncomfortable emotions. It's as Till said, you experience uncomfortable emotions like fear, but then you're ableyou have this ability to act, to. To do no matter what you're feeling. And that is power. In my book, if we can just take action even though we're scared, I mean, that's like the root of courage and power and confidence and freedom. So let's do it. Grab yourself a sheet of paper or a place to take notes. Get ready to think about how you're going to apply this stuff in your life and get ready to have your mind blown. So without further ado, let's get back in that interview with Til H. Grove.

Expert interview.

This muscle of willpower, this muscle of getting outside their comfort zone, maybe they're inspired by you and what you're doing in the world and they want to do this more in all areas. Their work life, their dating life, their social life. How can we start doing this? How can we, you know, overcome that resistance inside of us and just start getting out there and challenging our comfort zone daily?

Yeah. So, you know, obviously there are a lot of different ways, right? But I think if you look at the research and, and probably, you know, the studies as well. Right. So if you really look at the research, one of the best ways to train your willpower and to train this, you know, as you said before this going against this resistance is similar to like, you know, working out in the gym when you want to like your strengthen your physical muscles, you do resistance training, right? So same with like your cognitive or mental muscles, like willpower, you need to train against resistance. So you consciously, over and over again have to overcome your inner emotions, whether it's fear, whether it's discomfort. And one of the ways that we started to develop is doing things like comfort zone challenges where you consciously put yourself in uncomfortable social situations and consciously do those things that scare you the most. And for a lot of people this is like, oh my God, what other people might, you know, what other people might be thinking about me? So this means constantly do something that embarrasses you and then you notice on the one hand most people won't look or most people won't even care what you do. And on the other hand, some people, you know, will look at you and think like you're crazy and you can learn how to withstand this and you can learn how to put yourself in those situations. And just to clarify this once again, because you know, we're like on a very abstract meta level pretty often. So these are things like you said before, you know, laying down the street for 30 seconds. And actually I found this, you know, I want to give credit where credit is due. So at the beginning I found this in Tim Ferriss for one week and linked it back to all the like the evidence based psychology. So like exposure therapy and these kind of things. So if you do things like you lay down on the floor for 30 seconds, what happens is most of us, we have to like overcome or interfere. What might the other people think? Like, will I think I'm crazy? Will they judge me? Maybe even people address me because like, dude, what are you doing there on the floor? And by doing this, by going against all this, going against all this internal resistance, we learn to get better at this. And additionally, here's like a little bonus. Most of the time we also learn it's not as uncomfortable as we expect. You know what I mean? So most people, and we have thousands and thousands of people from all over the world having done those challenges. And what happens most of the time is you're terrified. Oh my God, what are the other people gonna think? Then you do it. And as soon as you start, for example, as soon as your back touches the floor, if you do the lay down challenge, for example, most people notice it is not as uncomfortable as expected because most of the time we think, oh, this is gonna be so hard. This is gonna be so uncomfortable. It's gonna be so embarrassing. But as soon as we start to do things, it's actually not that bad. And you know, because you talked about dating before, most guys probably can relate to this. Walking up to a girl is the scariest part. As soon as you talk to her, most of the time, not always, but most of the time it's actually not that scary. And it's often this overcoming ourselves and this going against fear that's really the hard part. And then we have a ton of different challenges, like being on the floor for 30 seconds or walking up to a stranger, paying them a compliment, smiling at five people, or then harder stuff like stretching your arms in the air and jumping up and down the street and making noises like a bird or howling like a wolf in public transportation, or trying to get rejected 10. That's a big one. Trying to get rejected 10 times as fast as possible. And when people do this over and over again, on the one hand, most of the time, I'm terrified by things that never will happen. You know, there's a quote by Mark Twain, he said. What did he say? I had like many troubles in my life, but most of them never really happened. So that most of my worries just had. And as soon as we start to put ourselves out there, most of the things that we worry about don't even happen. And on the other hand, while you do this over and over again, you put yourself out there and you go against your fears, you simply become better at doing the uncomfortable thing. And this will bleed into other areas of your life and you will feel the effect and notice the effect in other areas of your life.

That is great. There's a ton of good stuff in there. And I mean, this is a huge. This is a life changing insight.

If.

If you can take what till is sharing, which is the things that we're so scared of, all this fear that we can build up all this anticipation and oh my God, this is going to happen, it's going to be unbearable. Is really completely fabricated in our minds. And then when we go do the thing, we find out what actually happens. We find it's not so bad. We find that if someone does come up to us when we're lying on the street, that we can talk to them and it's not a big deal. In fact, I remember I was introducing this idea to a friend many years ago when I was studying about exposure work and we were in Los Angeles and I told him about this lying on the street and he Said, really? Well, I want to try it. So I said, let's do it. So it was like, I think 3rd Avenue, I'm not exactly sure somewhere in LA where it was like there was no cars. It was just huge sidewalks, lots of pedestrians, kind of like an outdoor shopping sort of area. And it was evening time and there's a fair amount of people walking around. And so I said, okay, you do it. And I'm gonna stand far away so people don't know that I'm with you. And I'm just gonna observe what happens. Now, this is in the days before cell phones that had video cameras. Otherwise I probably would have videoed it. So he's laying on the ground and he did not do what you suggest, which I love, your little tweaks. And by the way, at the end, we'll have you introduce your comfort zone. Crushing challenge, because there's some great stuff in there. But one of the tweaks you recommend in that is to put your hands behind your head so you don't look like you just got knocked out or something like that. But he didn't do that. So he looks like he passed out on the ground, like someone just punched him or something. So what was fascinating, though, is how, I mean, we're talking about dozens of people going by all. I mean, I don't know how many per minute, but just like tons of people going by. And my loose memory of the stats, I didn't really keep track, but I'd say like 70% of people don't even freaking notice. They don't even look, they don't even care. And they're not like, you know, hundreds of feet away from him. They're like walking right by him and they don't even notice. And the fascinating thing was adults didn't notice, but kids noticed. So I saw a number of times a little kid would be like, staring at him as they walked by. In one instance, I actually saw the kid kind of pulling on his dad's arm, trying to get his dad's attention.

And.

And his dad kind of hastily looks over and then is like, eh, whatever. And then they keep walking and no one cared. And then all of a sudden, actually, I think one person came up to him and asked him, like, are you okay? And he said, yeah, I'm just taking a break. And then these like, three high school kids came up and I couldn't hear what was going on, but the next thing I know, they're sitting down on the ground next to him and having a conversation with him. And I came up and I said what was going on? And he said they were just curious about what I was doing. So, I mean, not only did he get no one noticed, but then people that do go talk to him are either concerned, like they want to make sure he's okay, or they're interested in what he's doing. So it's just a fascinating. I'm sure you've had experiences like that with you and the people that you've taught this to as well. We're going to pause for one moment right now and jump back into that interview with confidence expert till H. Gross. Hey, what's up, J dawg? Sup, Wizzy? Nothing. Hey, man, I just saw this video on YouTube from this pickup artist dude. He says he slept with 40,000 women. Damn. I know. He said, if you want to hook up, you have to make fun of women so they want you. I can dig it. Word. I'm going to try it now with her. Check this out. Hey, how you doing?

I'm doing okay.

Cool, cool. Your shirt is really big. It doesn't fit you very well.

What a mean thing to say.

Jerk. Uh, yeah. It looks like the kind of shirt a woman who is much fatter than you are would wear. Ugh.

Get away from me.

Okay. How'd it go, man? Pretty good. She talked with me for, like, 30 seconds.

Damn.

That's a long time, man. Did you get her number? Almost, but then she had to go. Damn. Are you tired of pickup artist tactics and approaches that don't feel genuine? 30 days to dating Mastery teaches you proven confidence building principles to increase your confidence with women, all while being yourself. No manipulative tactics needed. Go to 30daystodatingmastery.com to get your copy today.

Oh, yeah. You know, our community is over, like, way over 10,000 people now at this point. And we have dozens and dozens of stories where, you know, people getting terrified. You know, if I do this, like, other people going to judge me and it's going to be weird. I'm going to offend other people maybe. And the end. It always turns out that most of the time, they actually create interesting relationships with other people because people walked up and asked them, what are they doing? And they started the conversation and they started to talk to people they usually don't talk to. And I actually was giving an interview last week to one of the big. It was a funny thing to one of the biggest women's magazines here in Austria. They were very, very skeptical. They were very, very skeptical about the challenges, and they were like, this is kind of funny. This is silly. Like, it's stupid, and people are going to think we're crazy. And then we did a ton of different challenges, and one hour later, like, we were just, you know, like, debriefing the whole thing, and they were like, you know what, Taylor? It's crazy because we thought this is just about ourselves, but also we kind of, like spread so much joy among the people because, like, we interact with so many people, handing out high fives, hugging people and like, and asking people to stroke our head and you know, and kind of like weird, stupid, silly things. Right. But on the one hand, it helped the journalists, you know. You know, they did all the challenges. It helped them to tackle their fears. On the other hand, also, yes, you get into contact with other people, and most of the time this is like a beautiful experience. And most people are very, very positive in this regard.

Yeah. And there's maybe multiple reasons for it, but I often think the skepticism and the dismissing it before doing it is just a tough guy version of fear. Like, oh, I'm not scared, I just am skeptical.

Yeah.

So, okay, so what about people that experience this? Because I'm sure some people listening have felt this. They're like, okay, I'm going to do it. And then they get into the situation and it's sort of like, you know, what you're talking about is like taking a leap. Taking a leap to go face our fear. Jumping in over the sort of the chasm or the abyss to the other side. And some people get right to that edge and they're going to jump. They're telling themselves they're going to jump, and. And then they have this experience that they would describe as freezing. I hear this one a lot. People say, I wanted to say that, but I froze up, or I was gonna do that, and I just froze up and I just couldn't. And I'm curious, what is your experience of that and how do you suggest people can break through that hesitation?

Yeah, I think it's something that. I think the fear. I know a lot of people who have the fear that they will freeze up. So out of my own experience, when I work with people, it does not happen as often as they maybe anticipate will happen. However, when it does happen, I think it's very simple. Just take a step back, start from beginning once again, and maybe just do a little smaller thing. For example, if you want to walk up to a person and pay them a compliment, and then you walk up to a person and you freeze. And Go like. And you can't say anything. All right, that's all right. Let the person walk past, walk a couple of steps, breathe in, deep in and out, really deep in and out. So kind of like autonomous nervous system starts to calm down again and you get out of panicky state and you start to calm down. As you know, breathing is one of the best ways to regulate your internal state. So you breathe very slowly, deep in and out, and then you start to calm down and then you start again. And this time you don't pay the person a compliment. You simply walk up to them and go like, hey, how are you? And then you let them walk past. And then you master this. All right, you didn't freeze. You were able to open your mouth and talk. All right, now let's try again. And then you walk out to a person like, hey, you know what? I think I fucking love your jacket. It's amazing. Where did you get it from? So I think if you have those things where you just freeze and if you have the chance, start over again. Breathe deeply in and out and then start with something smaller and then work your way up. However, if it's in big situations where it really counts and then you freeze, I think that's a lack of preparation. And I think if this happened, let's say you have an interview or, and this is like this do or die interview, like you have to get the job. And then if you walk up there and you freeze, I think most of the time it's a lack of preparation because whenever you have something really, really big and then you freeze or it's too overwhelming, then just, just didn't prepare well enough. And then you should have, let's say this is one big interview and you know, you anticipate you're going to freeze and actually go there, you will freeze. Then what you should have done is you should have gone to like 10 random interviews before. So you practice it before, or let's say you go up on stage and you're going to freeze because, I don't know, you're presenting a master's thesis or you have to deliver like a pitch or whatever beforehand. Practice in situations that are very, very low stakes. So we have the same nervousness, same intensity, but they're at a very, very low state. So then you can practice being in those situations.

Yeah, that's huge. And it is a muscle and we can get momentum. And I found that this stuff is transferable. So if you have that interview, as crazy as it sounds, if you go lay in the street and pay strangers compliments and do a bunch of this other stuff that's seemingly disconnected from an interview or a public talk. I would bet that it would actually help prepare you because in my experience, embarrassment and fear of disapproval and all these other things, those are context independent. We can experience them anywhere. And we just experience a big dose when it comes to public speaking or interviews or whatever that high risk venture is that we're doing. So if you can build up the muscle by doing these other things, then of course also preparing in a situation that's similar. But even just out on the street, I mean, I think this stuff is like a muscle. And the more we work it out, the more bold you become, the more easy these kinds of things be to get into action.

Yeah, I totally agree. And we have so many examples from people from our community who said they just started doing some comfort zone challenges and then what happened is they start to get the courage to literally. I talked to a girl last week who was running our local community. We have local communities all over the world right now. And who's running the local community in Vienna, in Austria. And I talked to her last week and she told me that she actually quit her past job and got a new job, which is way better than her old job, simply because now she had the courage to to the better job. And she got because she had so many comfort zone challenges that she was not that afraid anymore of rejection or people might think. And she was more comfortable and she was more secure in situations where she might get very stressed or very anxious because she now knows how to deal with those situations. Not specifically this situation of an interview, but she knows how to deal with moments where she gets anxious and nervous because she's so used to being uncomfortable. She's so used to being anxious. At this point, we're going to take.

One more quick break and then get back into the conclusion of my interview with Till. Does working with Dr. Aziz actually work? Can you really break free from social anxiety and live a life of confidence, success, and happiness? Here is what one client had to say about his experience.

What would I say to somebody considering coming to see Dr. Disease for a live weekend? Do it. I mean, don't stop it. It's what you need. If you're doubting it, just do it.

I would definitely recommend Dr. Aziz to.

Anyone who wants to improve their confidence and social skills. He's. I don't think anyone else out there is offering anything like what he does, especially something that's so geared towards people who you Know who kind of lack in the social confidence area. To get started on your journey towards.

Lifelong confidence with Dr. Aziz, simply go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching. Yeah, it's a power that it sounds like she's developed. And would you say in your experience what you've seen with people in your community just by doing the comfort zone challenges, just by getting outside, does that handle the ongoing fear or persistent worry about other people might be judging me. Other people might not like this is just doing the embarrassing things enough to help us break free, or is there more that we need to do?

So here's the thing, right? You know, we all hope there would be a magic pill and the comfort zone challenges sound to many people like a magic pill, but obviously they're not so comfortable. Challenges help you tremendously to make big leaps forward in a short period of time. And for many people, they really break free from, like, a lot of past fears that they had. However, I think in the long run, there always will be a certain worry of what others might think about us. That's okay because we are very social beings. And part of that our society can function like it does function is because we are concerned what other people might think about us. And if we wouldn't have this little warrior, this little voice in our head that sometimes tells us, oh my God, what is the other person thinking about me right now, then we probably often become assholes or we'd act in a way that's not very sociable. So I think the goal shouldn't even be to completely stop caring what other people think about us. However, I think the goal should always be to be able at any point to do what you really want to do in this moment, no matter how you feel. And that's a lot of commitment therapy involved there as well. The idea of learning how to accept your uncomfortable thoughts and emotions and being able to move ahead and do what you value most in your life. So, yes, to answer your question, confident challenges help you over many, many fears and also reduce the worry what others might think. But I think the most important part is learning to act despite all those things. Not having to rely on the oh, yeah, now my fear is gone, or now I don't worry anymore. But you can worry, you can be anxious, but you're going to do it anyway. And I think that's really the important.

Part, and that is truly liberating. Because if we're waiting for our fear to go away magically, then we could be waiting for a long time. And I Love that. Taking, you know, being able to tolerate or witness the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and then taking action consistently based upon what we value. And that is super inspiring and liberating and I really appreciate you sharing all these insights. I know we're just scratching the surface here and you've referenced a few times this community and the Comfort Zone Challenge. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that is and how people can find it and learn about these exercises that you've guided people through?

Oh yeah, of course. So Comfort Zone Crusher started probably like one and a half, two years now. And at the beginning was just me, I'm crushing my own comfort zone. And I also studied psychology. So I have a, you know, background in psychology. As you do not just like as educated as you are. I still don't have a PhD or anything like this. We talked about this before and you know, so then I started to put this up online, you know, started to put up conference on challenges online videos of me doing conference on challenges and also all the different techniques and approaches that are based in a ton of different evidence based studies. And then I put this all up and around this, step by step formed this community of people who do the comfort zone challenges and who support each other of stepping outside the comfort zone. And now as of this point, there's this online part which is also like an online business. So I also sell online courses. There's a ton of stuff for free, but we also sell online courses and for everybody who's interested, we have a free, completely free, seven day Comfort Zone challenge course. We get different comfort zone challenges, you get different techniques so you can tackle your fears and become more confident. And on the other hand, the offline part is we now have in total we have way over 10,000 people in our community and over 45 different countries around the world. And now we started to develop since half a year is in different cities, we have local hubs and local communities where people get together, they do comfort zone challenges, they go out together and they challenge their fears and you become like personal development groups. That's a very thriving community and the people in the community are amazing. I'm very, very grateful for this community and the people, how committed they are. And yes, it's very driven by those people from the community. So if you enter, we also have a private Facebook group. So if you enter there, you're going to see it. The people are just lovely and they support each other and they got each other's back. Because here's the thing going out there and tackling all your fears by yourself. It's great and it's very ambitious. However, I think having a network of support and having a network of people that you can rely on is incredibly valuable and, and very, very helpful in any form of personal growth or whatever endeavor you have. So, yeah, whoever is interested in checking this out, I'm very, very happy if you drop by and connect with some people in the community.

That is great. And we will have a link below in the show notes@shrinkforthyguy.com but also just in case someone's listening on itunes or wherever else. Can you say the URL again one more time?

Yes. Comfort zonecrusher.com love it, love it.

Awesome. Till. Well, thank you again so much for being on the show and sharing your insights and just inspiring us all to continually push that edge. That is the end of the interview. Make sure you go to his website and sign up for his free challenge. There's a ton of super valuable stuff in there. I signed up myself and did all those challenges. It was good fun and some great stories from that. So make sure you sign up for that because you'll get a ton out of that. And it's a great service that he offers. He's an amazing guy. So that brings us to your action step.

Time for action.

Your action step for today is to do the lying in the street exercise. You heard us talk about it. He talks about it in his challenge. Everyone does it that goes through his challenge. It's time for you to do it. And even if you've already done it before, do it again because you can't do this stuff too many times. I've done so many of these kinds of things in my life, and still every time before I go out to do this kind of thing, I'm a little nervous. Like, there's a little bit of that, like, ugh, I do something unusual. And that to me is a sign of just continually needing to push the edge of our comfort zone. Because if we stop, then we start to atrophy. It starts to the pull for comfort starts to get us back into that safe, warm, cozy electric blanket where we don't have to do anything. So break free, put yourself out there, commit to go lie on the street for 30 seconds. A super simple tip that he gives in his challenge is to interlace your hands. Bring your hands behind your head. Like if you were kind of relaxed on a beach or something, you kind of have your hands behind your head so your neck's supported. That makes it look like you're chilling and and not like you got knocked the fuck out. So that's a great way to not have a bunch of people coming up and being like, are you okay? So do that and do it. Like literally do it for 30 seconds. Time yourself. Make sure you stay there on the ground. Notice what happens. Notice the fear beforehand, notice what it feels like during, and notice afterwards how you feel, and pay attention to what your mind predicted would happen and then what actually happened when you did it. So go put that into practice. Let us know how it goes. Go to facebook.com SocialConfidence and share about your experience. You can also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and send messages through that and until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to the shrink for.

The shy guy with Dr. Azeez. 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.

Sam.