Discomfort When??

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. Welcome today's episode of the show. Today I'm going to be asking you one simple question that has one simple answer. And if you don't know that answer, then by the end of this episode, you will for sure know the answer. But my guess is you already kind of know the answer right now. In fact, you might know the answer intellectually, but if you're not living it, you don't know it. Right. And I think we make that mistake all the time in our lives. We hear some information about health and we're like, oh, if I know that, I. I know to eat vegetables and fruits and stuff. Yeah. Are you doing it? No. Well, you don't really know it because it's not part of your life. Right. It's just like you could get a multiple choice answer on a test and get the right bubble filled out, but you don't actually have that as part of your experience, which means you don't get the results in this metaphor. Eating fruits and vegetables. But the focus of today is not fruits and vegetables. Well, maybe it is the fruits and vegetables of your confidence, but not literal fruits and vegetables. Today the question is discomfort. When. When are you going to go in to the discomfort? And you might say, well, what do you mean? Or what kind of discomfort? Or I am, I am. Dude, get off my back. And look, I'm not here to pressure you or make you feel bad in any way. What I'm going to highlight is that the vast majority of people that I interact with and observe are not actually leaning into discomfort in any way that's going to produce meaningful results in their life. And I'll talk to people all the time. Oh, I've read your book. It was great. I learned this. I learned that I'm like, awesome. And. And what's changed? Well, I, you know, I'm a little better than I was a year ago, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to talk in A slightly higher voice tone, though, because I don't really feel congruent with what I'm saying. Right. And what they're really hungering for is a radical transformation. They want to say, man, I feel so different. My life is completely different. I'm able to talk to people, I'm able to speak up for myself. I'm able to say no. I'm able to be fully myself without just giving so much fear to what other people think of me. Oh, it's amazing. That's what they want to say, but they can't say that. And it's not because there's something fundamentally wrong with them, or they're messed up, or they lack willpower, or they don't get it, they're not smart enough, there's some horrible flaw in their personality that makes them unlikable. It's none of that. Although those are the stories that might tell themselves. It really comes down to one thing, which is an unwillingness to truly step into discomfort consistently. What kind of discomfort? Well, the discomfort of several. One of the unknown, the action that feels like a risk. I don't know what's going to happen when I do blank, when I approach that person, when I ask this person for something, when I put myself out there, when I share about this business idea I have with other people or put some posts together and share it online. I don't know what's going to happen. That's one discomfort. Stepping into uncertainty, there's another discomfort of somebody might not like it or me. Someone might reject me, someone might criticize me, someone might make a negative comment about me, someone might talk behind my back and I don't want to feel that discomfort. And whatever I go for, I might not get it right away. I might fail. I might fail to get the result. I might fail to be liked. I might fail to have that person sign me up or hire me or whatever it is. And then I'm going to feel really bad and ashamed. And I should feel bad and ashamed because failure is not okay. Rejection is not okay. Not knowing and being uncertain is not okay. And so I'm not going to do any of it. And that unwillingness to feel those discomforts is what keeps most people suffering. Spending most of their lives in a cage of niceness, people pleasing or social anxiety. Now, a lot of people maybe listen to this show. What do we end every show with? It's an action step, right? Maybe you've read my books, maybe you've watched my stuff online or even got my program confidence, University and so you've heard, okay, yeah, he's saying you gotta take the action. So I'm not saying people do nothing. Maybe you've done nothing and if, in which case this will really kick you into gear. But people don't do absolutely nothing. It's just not really enough to make the change that they really want. And the best metaphor for this is fitness. Because in many ways, confidence is a muscle, it's a skill. It's something you build over time. And if you try to build muscle or get stronger in some sort of athletic endeavor, and it's really few and far between that you're doing anything. It's weeks or months between training or if you do go train, it's very minimal. Like, imagine going into a gym, getting out one dumbbell and doing one curl, putting it back, leaving the gym and driving home. I mean, you did technically work out that day. That's. I'll give you that. Are you going to get any stronger? No. Right. And I feel like that's what I see now. People don't set out to with that intention in mind. I going to dabble a little bit and then quit. No, no. People get fired up, they get motivated, they get inspired. Like, I'm going to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then one of two things happen. One, they get in the environment and the part of them that's saying yeah, yeah, yeah is now nowhere to be found. It like left the building or got, you know, thrown to the back of the bus. And now the other part that's driving the bus is like, no, no, no, no, no. Why, who, who was saying yes earlier? I, I challenged that. We say no, no, no. Let's turn this bus right, a rack around to safety town and avoid all these terrible risks. I think they're going to go awful anyway, so there's just a moment of freeze. Not doing it. Often people don't titrate the experience in my mastermind people with program where I'm really focused on gradual exposure or progressive build. So you're actively facing the challenges that are at your level. Again, to use a weightlifting metaphor, you don't want to walk into the gym and try to curl £100 dumbbells, unless you're a beast that's going to rip your arms off. So what's gonna happen is you're not gonna do it. And that's what happens. It's too much for people's nervous system, for their mindset, for their identity, so they avoid it. It's overwhelming. It's too Scary. So that's one thing that I see. The other thing that I see is people do take on the challenge. Maybe it isn't too much for them or they find a way to get themselves to do it. And maybe they do that a little while, a couple times in a row, they speak up a little bit more, yes, it's happening. Yes, I'm doing it. And. And then something happens. Maybe they have a family member who's like, oh, what I saw you've been doing that thing, you've been putting your ideas out there online, huh? Yeah. How's that going? I mean, probably not great, huh? Brr. It's like a balloon just gets all the deflated, right? Or you, you put yourself out there and dating and you get some connections and then maybe you really get into somebody and then they ghost you and it's like. And so what happens is the safety police was like, okay, all right, all right. I was taking a back seat here for you to go try this get out there and risk live your dreams nonsense. But now I'm coming back in charge. Do you like this pain that you're feeling? Huh? Do you want this much pain? I didn't think so. Put me back in charge. No more pain. Well, you'll still get a lot of pain. Pain of regret, pain of missing out on your life. Pain of dying alone, distant, removed, isolated. But safe. But safe. So I'll remove this short term pain of all these risks and failures and rejections and yuck, yuck, yuck, stick with me. Safety for now. That's our motto. And a lot of people at that point are so are not equipped to deal with the emotional discomfort of rejection or failure. So they crawl back to the loving embrace of the safety police and put it back in charge. And now the safety police regime is locked in for another, I don't know, a year or something before they revolt again. And so a big part of being able to face the discomfort is to have an emotion like a toolkit, to know that you can handle the discomfort and the rejection. One, it doesn't happen as often, doesn't happen every time, but it does happen. There's bumps, there's awkward moments, there's challenges, it's messy, it's. And so building up your capacity to handle that. And there's other episodes that are all about that. But just to give a few pointers, to listen to other episodes of this or check out my other resources or something, one big one is you got to get on your own side. So just look up on My Own side or omos O M O s on on this site, on shrinkforthshy guy.com also check out my book called On My Own side. You can get on Amazon or Audible. That'll give you a deep dive into it. But you got to be able to not turn on yourself when you experience a no or rejection. It's just information and everything else is this horrible burden that we load on ourselves. So it's time to let that go and, and just move with more ease to the next moment. And that might not sound that easy to do. It's like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. It's really, really hard to do that. And the only reason it feels really, really hard to do that is because some part of you believes that you really, really have to beat yourself up somehow. It's going to protect you from the next one or it's going to make you better so you don't ever experience it again. And when you really get that's not how life works, you're just so much more free to take that next step and you don't have to carry that burden of self attack and hatred. You could just let that go and step into the next moment. So the question is, you know, discomfort is the path. You know, leaning into that edge of what scares you is the path. So the main question of this episode is when? When do you do it? When do you take on that practice of courage, of discomfort? And the answer for many people until they, until you listen to this episode has been later. Now, maybe before you came into my world, it was never, but after listening to enough of my stuff, you're like, okay, fine, fine, I'm gonna do it. I'm, you know, later. And sometimes I'll joke with people. I was like, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely 2025. And right now depends on when you're listening to this episode. This is being released in May of 2024, like seven months from the end of the beginning of 2025. And then sometimes I'll say, but, you know, 2025 is a little close. Maybe 2026, that's going to be my year, right? And I tease people about it because we have this someday, maybe mentality and energy where we just defer and delay. And then what happens is you get this mounting sense of, I'm not living the life that I really want and really can. And that's depressing. And it's even more depressing if you're telling yourself like that, yeah, well, that's just how it has to be, because anytime you take a risk, it's gonna fail anyway. That's an awful. That's like the pincher move. And now you're trapped. And the fantastic news is it's complete and total BS. Every single person that I've worked with, over 20 years of working with people at this point in my life. I'm 42 now. And I was 22 is when I had my first. I was entered my first year in graduate school. Before then, I'd help some friends and people around me with some coaching stuff because I was learning about dating confidence and I was sharing about that when I was about 21 to a handful of people and friends. But 22 is when I firstly entered graduate school. I entered in my first little mini practicum, had a few unwinning victims. I mean clients. I remember one of the very first guys I got assigned to me was this vet in the San Jose VA system, Veterans affairs system. And I walked in the room to call out his name from the waiting room. And it was the first time we were going to meet. I don't know his name, let's call him John. And I'm like, all right, we're going to Maiden Room. And I'm like, nervous as hell. I just talked to my supervisor and he's pumping me up and how much I'm going to be able to, you know, help anybody. And you don't have to be the greatest. You just have to have a compassionate ear. And I'm like, okay, okay. I got my blue button down shirt on. I'm 22 years old and trying to look more like an adult than I feel. And I walk into the room and John or Brad or whatever his name is, and I'm like, you know, Brad, so? And so I got my clipboard, very professional and scientific on the clipboard. It probably just had a sheet of paper that said the dude's name. And I call out his name and there's like three people in the waiting room. So, you know, he's a guy with big. Kind of husky guy with a big. With a baseball hat on. And he looks over at me and his first reaction. Let's see if I can describe it, because I would show it to you if we were in person, but let me describe it to you. It was a look and a gesture of contempt. And it was like. Like an eye roll and a shoulder sag and a head to the side like, are you effing kidding me? That was the gesture. And I was like, this is not going well, so I don't know how much I helped Brad or John, whatever his name was, but there was several other people that were open to me helping them. And I'd say I did, you know, with my new skills, but I'd already learned a lot at that point that I could offer people. And over the, over the years, I've gotten obviously a lot more experience over the last two decades. Now 20 years, my goodness. And in those 20 years of helping people and over the last 15, I've really specialized in social anxiety, niceness, confidence, all this, all this jam that we're talking about here. And there's not been one person in all those years. And we're talking, I mean, face to face and in groups, a couple thousand people, and then way more than that, but through books and things. But let's just talk about the people that I've interacted with through the Internet, like face to face coaching, group coaching, teaching events. I've not seen one person who's been willing to consistently challenge that edge of discomfort over a long enough period of time, who has not had a radical shift that's really important to settle in. So that's why I have absolute certainty that is a pathway to liberation. Does that mean they never feel anxious again? They never feel insecure again? No, I feel anxious sometimes. I feel insecure sometimes. So this is not about perfection, but their lives are radically more free. And that's how I describe my life versus when I was living in the cages. And the way that you do it is you sustain your rate of action. What kind of action? The kinds of action that make you uncomfortable over a long enough period of time. Now, what's a long enough period of time? Well, it's different for everybody. And it also matters what you're going for and where you're starting. So someone says, how much is. How long is it going to take me to bench press £100? It's like, well, I don't. Depends on, can you bench press £5 right now? You know, where are you at? But I know that if someone's willing to stay in it, they can absolutely do it. But the general rule of thumb is it depends upon your rate of action, your willingness to change your pattern, to get on your own side, in other words, how stubborn you are at being critical of yourself. And the period of time is generally longer than you want it to be because we want it to be done in like a day and radically less than you ultimately, that your safety police thinks when I see it in the mastermind program that I work with because that's where I get to watch people week in and week out. Now, given they're going through an intensive training and immersion in a program and getting all this guidance and advice and input from me and training programs and each other and support. But I see that over a six to eight month period, the program is 12 months. But over six to eight months of consistent practice and effort is where people are having radical changes in their experience, their identity, how they see themselves. And that's not the end of the journey. But that's when like, oh my gosh, you mean I can actually approach people? Wait a minute, I'm not all messed up. Wait a minute. What my safety police is saying, I get it. It's not really true. I can just walk over and talk to that person and I don't have to hate myself if they don't like me. Holy cow. Right? That's the shift that I'm talking about. And it can happen faster. Some people get it within a couple of months, some people takes a little longer. So the question is, well, what kind of input are you going to practice and how much and how often. And if you're hearing this and you're like, wow, that sounds great for those people, but not for me, then just know that you can learn more about the Mastermind program on my website@drz.com Dr. Aziz.com you can also check out Confidence University on that same site under products. And that's an at home study program. It's much more accessible in terms of price in the Mastermind. And you can get access for, I think we're selling it right now for 997 for lifetime access or 197amonth for six months. So you may or may not want to, you know, join into that program or anything else that I'm offering. And that's okay. It's not for everybody. You don't have to buy anything from me or sign up for anything for me. But the result that you want more confidence, more freedom, more boldness, more assertiveness, more you in the world and less nice, pleasing, fearful hiding. That's only going to come when you do discomfort. When? Now. Now. That's the answer to the question of the day and of the episode. It's now, today, this week. And that doesn't mean it's you like a thousand percentage of all the discomfort all at once. Right? You know, where you're overwhelming yourself every day. I mean just a little bit. And the reason we say now is to challenge the later, I'll put it off. I don't know when I'm more comfortable, when I feel more ready, when it feels easier. No. The answer, my friend, is right now. Let's talk about how to put this into action. Time for action. Action. Your action step for today is to think of something that will be leaning into that edge of discomfort a little bit. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is, like, freaking you out and 1 is barely. Is that even a thing? Is that even uncomfortable? I don't think so. Then pick something in the 3 to 5 range and do it when? Now. Right now. That was the whole point of the today's episode. Now you're like, Jesus. 11:00pm I don't know. Could you send a text? Could you send an email? Could you commit to something? Could you take an action literally right now? And if I get it's, you know, midnight and you're lying in bed and you're listening to this, then fine. How about when you first get up in the morning, can you take a cold shower? When you first get up, boom, there's some discomfort for you. You can commit to that right now. You could do it right now, depending on the time of day. And if you hear it, you're like, yeah, totally. I could. I could. I really could. But I'm not gonna then just notice that, because that is the exact pattern that creates all the limitation in the first place. So I hope this serves you. I hope this inspires and challenges you to step into your life more fully. Because I can promise you this, that when you do, you know, to quote the line from a great Mason Jennings song, life has no limit when you're not afraid to get in it. And so if you really step into it, I promise you that the stories of you're not enough. I mean, you're so awkward, and people are gonna like me. If you're willing to go through that discomfort phase, you'll get to the other side. You'll have new conversation skills. You'll feel more confident in your body. You will have a whole new life. And that's absolutely possible. It's inevitable if you're willing to show up and do the work. 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. I'll 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.