Do It Scared with Scott Allan

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.

Yo. Welcome to today's episode of the show.

Today is a firework, a firebrand, firecracker.

I don't know. It's something big because it's the second half of my interview with author and expert on rejection, Scott Allen. If you didn't listen to the first half of the interview, it's in the previous episode, how to desensitize your fear of rejection. You're gonna want to start with that because you're gonna need to understand what he's talking about with desensitization, how we do it, stories and examples of doing it.

And if you already did, you're ready to rock.

Because this episode is all about Do It Scared, which is actually the name of his latest book. But I love that Do It Scared. Cause that's his point. Do it anyway. Focus on your future. Focus on what you really want to create and move towards that. And of course, fear is going to be there. Of course fear of rejection is going to happen inside of your body and rejection outside of you is going to happen. People are going to say no, but we keep going. And there's one thing that we can keep this in our mind. We can know it intellectually. And it's very different when you hear his stories and his experiences and his insights, it actually calls something up inside of you that makes you want to go do it. Because most of us aren't walking around during the day being like, geez, I sure hope I can find a place to get rejected today. But after listening to this, you actually might. And it won't feel crazy.

It'll feel good.

You'll start to see, wow, this is how I'm going to create the life that I want. So my intention for you is to. To leave this episode feeling energized and inspired to go, get out there and crush it. So let's dive in. If you want to find out more about Scott Allen or this show in General, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com his interview is in there. Below in the show notes, you'll be able to find a link to his books and all that stuff. Also on that site, you can get a copy of my eBook, Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. That is a powerhouse. And that is also free too. So just go there and enter your email and you can get A copy of that. That's all@drinkforthshyguy.com.

So let's continue with my interview with.

Confidence expert Scott Allen.

Expert interview.

Yeah.

So the.

It seems like in the stories that you're sharing, though, there is. It's about feeling the fear and doing it. Hence maybe the name of your. Your book, Do It Scared. Feel the Fear and Do It. Is it possible to completely eliminate that fear?

Oh, that's a good question. And, you know, I've seen a lot of other books out there where it's like, you know, eliminate your fear with these 20 steps or whatever. And, you know, I really don't think that, like, fear is just part of us. It's part of who we are. Right. You're always going to be scared of something. And like I said, it's all about jumping to new plateaus. Right. So let's say, for example, you know, I'm afraid of heights. I don't, you know, I've never bungee jumped, for example. Terrified of it. And I'm sure that if I bungee jump today, I'd be absolutely terrified of jumping off a cliff or something. But if I did it once, I know I could do it again and again. So it's basically like, you know, doing what you're afraid of. You did it, you're successful. What's next? You know, what's the next challenge? So it's all about, like, every time you. You approach a new challenge, something that you haven't done before, you're always going to be afraid. Right.

Why do you think that is?

Yeah, it's just, again, I think it goes back to the desensitizing ourself to. I think we've conditioned ourselves. We've gotten to a point in our lives where we've conditioned ourselves to live within our, I guess, was it the little protective bubble? Right. So we know what we can do without experiencing fear. Okay. I can get on my bike every day and I can bike to work, American bike home, and I won't have any fear. Right. But now if, you know, if I suddenly, let's say, put on a scuba diving suit and somebody said, you're going to dive today to about 60 meters. There's the ocean. Good luck. I'd be like, whoa. You know, like, you know, I'm quite, you know, actually I've scuba dived before, but I'm actually quite afraid of water and sharks. So. But the first time I did it, I was terrified. They had to keep bringing me up, actually. You know, but the more I Did it. Every time I did, I went down a little bit more, I went down a few more meters until eventually I never. I didn't go down to 60 meters, but I had been down to 40 meters scuba diving. But before I did it, I could not have conceived ever doing that. And again, it's all about the conditioning, you know, like, if you condition yourself to just going a little bit further every time, you know, you're going to overcome your fear, but you'll always have fear, but it's going to be at a different level. And that's a good thing because that's what you know, personal growth is all about. You know, it's like pushing your boundaries, you know, and talking to a lot of people and myself included, we build this protective little cocoon. And in our day to day, I guess you can call it your daily routine, we live within that little bubble. And then occasionally we might jump out to try something new, but in many cases, it's because somebody is telling you you have to do it. So maybe say your boss tells you you have to go deliver this presentation in front of 500 people. You're like, whoa, I've never done that before. He's like, yeah, well, it starts this afternoo. You know, suddenly you've been taken out of your little bubble into a situation where you have to react, where you have to, you have to perform, you have to take action. And you may not want to do it, but it's happening, right? And again, like, you know, if you can, if you do it, you get through it. You've just conditioned yourself to take on a new responsibility, a new challenge. And then you're like, you know, it's just a natural inclination where like, okay, I did this thing, it felt good, you know, I was really afraid. Now I feel like I just leveled myself up. What's next?

Yeah. And what I'm hearing in there is instead of waiting for life or something outside of you to push you to go outside of your bubble, sounds like you might be advocating actively looking at what you want and going after it and going outside of the bubble of your own choice and seeking out what might scare you.

Exactly. And that's the thing. Like, I think a lot of people, they wait for it to come. You know, they want, you know, we all want to change. I think, like, deep inside we have this, you know, we want to grow, we want to change. But we know, like, you know, as soon as we start to move towards something, it's like, you know, we've got this fear and we think, oh, that's not right. Like, you know, change is supposed to be good and positive, and this feels really scary. So we pull ourselves back, you know, and. And we just wait for it to happen. But the problem with that is that if you wait for change to happen, you're going to become reactive to everything. You're not going to be taking action. You're going to be given orders or whatever, whoever could be. Maybe you're in a relationship and someone's just guiding you along, but you're not really taking charge of your life when you do it scared, or you take action against rejection. You're the one in charge. You're saying, okay, I want that. I'm going for it, or I'm going to try this thing, maybe I'll fail. Okay, that's fine. But, you know, I think, like, the thing that's worse than failing is actually, you know, not doing at all. Because either way, like, you know, you might try something and there's a. Say there's a 50, 50 chance that you're going to fail at it. You know, you're not going to succeed. But if you don't try it, there's 100% chance you're not going to succeed. You're going to fail anyway. Right? So I look at it that way as like, either you're either going to do it or you're not going to do it. And if you're not going to do it, there's going to be the consequences are you're not going to get what you want. You're going to be reacting to whatever everybody else wants. You know, people will be directing your life, and at the end of it, you know, you're going to look back with regret and say, you know, if only I had, and I don't want to, you know, like, for me, and like a lot of people I've talked to, I don't want to get to, you know, 50, 60, 100 years old and look back with regret and, you know, think to myself, you know, if only I had done this, you know, so that's the thing that I teach to people, is that, you know, just, like, project yourself into the future and just imagine yourself, like, looking back on your life and, you know, you do two versions of it. Look back and see, like, the life you could have had. If you take an action right now, do it again, look back and create the life that you just had because you did these things.

So, yeah. And that can, I imagine, produce a strong desire to step up and do what we need to to because that fear of that. What I love about this is we're very aware of the short term pain of rejection. Oh man, that would feel real bad that week or that day or this month. And we're not aware of the long term pain of avoidance where you avoid it and maybe you avoid that short term rejection pain. But then it, you know, as you said, looking back when we're 60, the pain of regret weighs tons and can really strike us. So really taking the time to actually think about that and make it real can be a powerful motivating force.

We're going to pause right here, take a quick break, and then resume with that interview with guest expert Scott Allen.

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So I'm curious, as I'm hearing this, my mind is already making lists of things that scare me that I can.

Go do, which is damn you, but it's good.

And so I'm curious what you mentioned a few from Jia Jing about the, from rejection proof. So I'm curious what other ideas from, from what else you've read, from your own life, from clients, in your books? What are some ways, any, any and all that come to your mind that we can, starting today, you know, this week, this month, do what scares us? Get rejections.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So what I do is like you just mentioned the list and that's a really great practice to do is make a list of the things that you want to do but you haven't done yet because you're afraid of doing it. And I, you know, at the, at the end of every month, actually I'll go, I've got a list of things that I know I'm afraid to do to do. And I'll go through the list and I'll choose, say two or three things that I'm going to do this month. Right. So it could be, for example, giving an interview. Right. You know, like I said, public speaking is not my thing. But the last six months I've been doing quite a lot of it actually. And I'LL tell you, like, the first, you know, say, interview that I tried out, I was like, you know, I was panicking for days. Like, what if I say the wrong thing? What if, you know, what if they pull the plug on me? They realize I suck. What am I? You know? So I just had all these fears going on. And that was one of the things on my list was, you know, I'm doing a lot of writing and coaching people, but if I'm going to take this to the next level, I have to be willing to share my message. So it goes back to. It's kind of like. It's like making a fear bucket list, right? So I would do that. I would make a list and actually, at the end of last year, in December, I take that month to go through my goals, things that I want to achieve in the year, in the following year, the new year. I always base it off of my call it my scaredy cat list, because it's the things that you're afraid of that are actually going to take it to that level. The things that we're used to that we know we can do. It's easy to default and take that path because we know, okay, well, I can do that. I've done it before. But it's the things that we're afraid of that are actually going to take us to the level that we really want to be at. I would make that list, and then I would just be aware that you've got that list. Choose one or two things. It can be like, you can try one new thing a week or one new thing a month, but focus on taking action on it when you have the opportunity. That works for me, When I've got that list, what I'll do is I'll take the one thing that I am afraid of as well. I'll take it and I'll. I'll ask myself this question. Okay, let's say, for example, okay, you know, public speaking. I want to be a keynote speaker, right? For example. That sounds like a really crazy idea. Like, whoa, you know, I mean, me, a keynote speaker? No way. I mean, I just, you know, I've never been up in front of a big audience. I'm terrified of crowds. Da, da, da. But what if I did this thing? Right? And again, that goes to, like, jumping ahead 20, 30 years, looking back in your life. You know, maybe you traveled the world as a keynote speaker and you created a whole new life for yourself. Yourself. And that is the next thing I would do is get into the habit of visualizing yourself as you want to be in the future. It's a bit of visualization technique, but it really works because it makes you feel like I want to jump to that plateau. I want to be there. It's kind of like two you's in the future. There's the you where you didn't take action and this is what happened. You're still doing the same thing, the same boring, whatever. You're not happy. The other you is, I don't know, you're living in Tahiti. You've just spent a lifetime of succeeding because you took action against your fear. And just try to create that vision and work on it. What I'll do is I'll work on that 10 or 15 minutes a day where at the end of the day, I'll take time out to sit down and just visualize the things that I want to visualize where I want to be at. But I also have to recognize what I have to do to get there. One of the important things is like, making a decision. I think every great achievement that you have from now on, you can trace it back to the moment you made a decision. I think it was maybe Tony Robbins said that if you haven't truly decided what you really want, you're not going to take action towards it. It's the decision you make in the moment that's going to define everything. And just to give you one more ex, like, you know, I live in Japan. I've been here for 20 years. Before I came here, I was living in Canada. And I'd never traveled anywhere. I'd never really done anything. I was just, you know, working, hanging out, going to bars every weekend wasn't really creating a life for myself. And I realized one day, like, you know, after I actually bought a book on Anthony Robbins, and it's called Awaken the Giant, and I went through it, it changed everything. It talked about goal setting, and I went through and all the goals and everything and all the activities. And I kept. The one theme that kept coming up was that I wanted to travel the world. And I was terrified because I'd never actually, to be honest, I'd never been on an airplane before. I'd never been to another country before. So I was like, how is this going to happen? But I did it. I followed through on the steps, got an airplane ticket and jumped overseas to Asia. And basically because of that, I had a lifetime of traveling, walking on the Great Wall, scuba diving for old shipwrecks, whatever. I did a lot of things that never would have happened if I hadn't made a decision where I decided one day I was going to change it all. I was going to move to the other side of the world. Anyway. I guess my point is recognize that you have the power to make a decision, and that in itself is enough to push you over the hurdle. You're going to be able to do anything once you, once you can, you know, seize that. My guess, you know, seize the day, seize the moment, but make a decision. And that can be like every day, every morning, you can make a decision to do something, to take some action.

So, yeah, I love it, man. It's inspiring. And it's inspiring because it's not just you sharing ideas. It's you sharing ideas that you have lived and, and are living. And it's part of you. So that's. I can feel the, the truth of what you're saying. And I want to ask. You said something really interesting in there about the visualization that you kind of build on it. That's a really interesting idea that it's this, this, like, vision that we keep tweaking and enhancing. And each time you go there, you're strengthening that. And it sounds like you, you said that you were imagining kind of the end result, like being where you wanted.

To be and doing what you wanted to do.

You know, kind of the grand vision, but also imagining the steps, the kinds of things you'd have to do along the way. And I think that's fascinating. I'd love to hear just a little bit more about your visualization process. And I'm also wondering if, even during the visualization, if you sometimes feel fear seeing yourself doing some of those things.

We're going to pause for just one more moment and then return to the rest of the interview with guest expert Scott Allen.

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Oh, for sure. Yeah. Because, you know, I do have a vision of where I want to be, what I want to do, but when you look at it from where we are right now, when I look ahead, the first thing that pops into my mind, well, the first thing I feel actually is self doubt and uncertainty. And I start to question, well, how can I get there? That just seems like such a long jump. But really, I trace it back to I told you the story about when I had to jump across the zip line, which I was afraid of. And I was asking at the moment, I was saying the same thing to myself, like, how can I get to the other side? You know, that's so far away. How is that possible? Yeah, exactly. But with the visualization. Yeah. It all comes down to like, yeah, you got this grand picture of yourself, you know, 10, 20, 30 years in the future, you know, someplace you want to be at. But it all comes back to, like, you have to keep walking back, going through the steps and basically breaking down the goals. Right? And sure, with every, you know, with every say, with every goal, there's a certain level of fear. Like, you know, it could be like, I don't know, I guess writing a book, for example, you know, like when I first started to write and I was writing my first book and publishing my first book just seemed like a daunting task. Like, how is this possible? You know, I see these other authors giving presentations on their books and their New York Times bestsellers and, you know, who am I to. But I knew what I wanted to achieve. I just had to figure out how I was going to get there. And I just started walking back through the steps. And you keep going, right? You keep going back, back, back, until you come back to where you are right now and you recognize, like, you realize, like, what can I do today? And that's what it comes down to is like, every day is an opportunity to work towards that dream. Right. But it has to start with. It has to start with, even if it's just a mini step, like baby steps, for example, right? And you have to realize, like, okay, this is what I want to do. Just walk yourself back through the steps. And then I have a little mini action plan that I follow through on every day. I don't always achieve my goals every day, but the things that I want to achieve, I am getting there gradually because every day I'm doing something and maybe it's just a small thing, but all those things are adding up, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's, it's inspiring and it's exciting and it's definitely stimulating all kinds of ideas in me about how to really orient my life towards what it is that I want, which is also doing what I'm afraid of those two are coupled with. And that seeing that is a liberating insight because then it's not about, well.

Geez, how do I get what I.

Want without being scared or not having.

Any fear along the way?

And it's like, well, what if that's not possible? What if it's one and the same? And it's just about deciding, as you mentioned earlier. And I think that's a powerful and inspiring message and I'm glad that you are stepping up more and more to share it in a bigger way because me and so many other people benefit from what you share and what you teach. And in fact, for those who'd like to go deeper, I know you have variety of different books and new ones coming out. What would you what would be the best place that you'd like to send people to get started to learn more from you?

Well, yeah, I'm working on a blog and a website that's@wotellandsite.com but you can also jump over to Amazon. You can just check out Scott Allen and I've got six books I just published. My recent book is called Do It Scared. It's been out for about five or six weeks right now and getting a lot of positive feedback from this. So check that out if you like the Rejection series. I've got two books on rejection and I'm writing a third one right now. Actually, I'm writing two more because this has proven to be, like I said, it's a real pain point that people are responding to and it's something I'm very passionate about. So I'm building on that even more. And I've got a new book coming out on that called Rejection Rehab that'll be out maybe towards the summer. I've got a few other projects before that. So, you know, check out the books online and you know, my contact information is in there. So you know, if anybody has any questions or anything, they can get in touch with me.

That is fantastic. And we'll have links below the interview at the site shrinkforthshyguy.com well, thank you so much, Scott, for joining us and sharing your wisdom on this topic. It is inspiring and most appreciated.

Well, thank you. Yo.

That brings us to the end of the interview and the end of the episode almost. But we have a fun action stuff. Are you ready?

Time for action.

Here's your action step for today. Make a list. Make a list of what scares you, any and all things Now, I actually talk about this in my book, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. You don't necessarily want to list things like nuclear holocaust. Now, I'm not saying you can't be scared of a nuclear holocaust. You have every right to be scared of that, because that sounds pretty scary. But what I'm talking about is you want to look at the things that you can do. You probably don't. You're probably not going to. You know, there's no control you have over that specific situation, at least not really directly. So you are. That's something that could happen to you, as it were. Like, you know, a hurricane, a nuclear holocaust. That's something that's kind of just going to happen in your life. You could probably make a really long list of all those things. What we're talking about here is you getting empowered, you taking control, you creating a life that you want. And that's going to involve moving towards exactly what you want, even though you're going to have to do things that scare you. So make a list of the things that scare you that would come about from your actions that might be the results or the responses to you taking action. So if you're afraid of getting rejected, that's a concept. That's like a vague statement. I'm afraid of getting rejected. We have a general idea what that means. But if someone were to tell me that, guess what my first question would be? Other than what's wrong with you? No, because we all, you know, I hope you got that from this interview with Scott. This is universal. So we all have this fear of rejection. So my question, if someone said, I'm afraid of getting rejected, my question would be, what specifically in your life, what does rejection mean? Where would it happen? And then they'll be like, ah, well, you know, I'm afraid of asking someone out, or I'm afraid of speaking up and sharing my ideas boldly or with conviction, assertiveness in a meeting. I'm afraid of giving a presentation. I'm afraid of this, I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid of getting rejected. I'm afraid of putting myself out there and people giving my book a negative review. I'm afraid of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and think little and think big. Think related to your social confidence and your dating life and your work life and all the stuff you're really examining in this show and in your life. But also think kind of random. Like when he was talking, I thought of bungee jumping because I've been skydiving and skydiving Was scary. And I will do it again, I'm sure. But just like you said, once you've done something once, it's not so scary. Like, I'm sure when I'm driving to the skydiving place and about to get on the plane, and even more so, like right before, about to jump off and I'm looking down at the ground, I'd probably feel a good old spike of a adrenaline and fear in my body. But when I think about it now, it's kind of like, oh, yeah, right, I've done that before. It's not so unknown, not so scary. But bungee jumping, I've never done that. And I'm like, oh, that's scary. Like, the ground is right there and you're going straight for it. Whoo. So I had a mental thought of bungee jumping. All right, great. Let me do that. And actually, after the interview, I went to the computer and typed in bungee jumping. Portland, Oregon, and apparently on Mount Hood, just about 40 minutes away on a beautiful mountain, you can jump off a platform towards the rocks below. They're bungee jumping. They've had over 10,000 jumps, 100% safety rate. They put that on the website because they know people probably are like, so am I gonna die? Right? But that's the fear. And so bungee jumping, other random things that you might think of, obviously within the realm of safety, don't put, like, driving the opposite way on a freeway might scare you kind of stupid, right? So find the things that are realistic, reasonable. Just push in your edge. Could be an extreme sport or something like that. But so don't just think social life, because here's the thing. Facing your fear in any capacity builds your discomfort tolerance. It builds your power. It builds your confidence. So it's transferable. It's a currency that's transferable. So make that list. And then just like what Scott was saying, pick two, three things a month that you're going to do off that list and then go do those things. But it's going to start with your action step today is to make the list. So do that 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. I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening. Welcome 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 shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence. Go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sa.