Earn A New Identity

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 gonna 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 to Shrink for the Shy Guy. And even if you're a gal, you are welcome here. We have our audiences actually quite mixed at this point, and anyone who wants to become more free, more confident, and today I'm going to share some really powerful insights that will help you do exactly that, become a more confident, free, bold version of you. And I mean, if you're listening to this show, you probably on some level know that that's possible or maybe hope that that's possible. Maybe you're not sure yet. But rest, rest assure. Let me transmit my certainty to you that you, anyone, can learn confidence. It's a muscle. You can build it. It's not something that you're born with some magic gene that's activated or not. It truly is something that you can build or create or learn. And that's what today is going to be a lot about. It's about building more confidence. Specifically, though, we're going to be looking at your identity, which plays a huge part in. In your confidence level and how to create a new identity, which might sound maybe dramatic or strange to. You're like, wait, I'm. I'm still my. Am I going to keep my own name? Do I have to adopt a new spiritual name? I used to be called Aziz, but now with my new identity, I am known as Baba Mushy. No, no, no. You get to keep your own name. And you can also probably look pretty similar, although your identity might change your. The way you dress or your physique or something like that, but it doesn't have to. And a lot of these changes are not going to be some dramatic, I don't even know who I am anymore. But they will create a radically different version of you who shows up in a very different way in your life because your identity determines how you show up, what you do or don't do, and also, ultimately, a lot of what happens to you. I mean, there's some Randomness in life, some variability, some. Whether you want to see it as guided or not. Painful moments, pleasurable moments, quote, good or bad things. I mean, we don't control all of that just with your identity, but you can steer your life in a much more significant way depending on your identity. So let me explain more what this is and how to use it today to feel more confident and create better results in your life. Way back when. Way back when. Many moons ago, before I was Baba Mushy. You know, my. I was 20 years old is when I first discovered that you could learn 20, 21 somewhere in there. But before that, my identity was. I thought it was fixed and I didn't even think about my identity. I didn't even know what that meant. No, I didn't use those terms. But your identity, put simply, is how you see yourself. That's what you perceive about yourself, what you believe about yourself. It's like a mental structure that, you know, boxes to check and put yourself in. And those could be, you can think of those as adjectives. Am I smart? Am I funny? Am I dumb? Am I boring? Am I attractive? Am I ugly? Am I capable at what too? Like, I could be capable with machines, or I could be capable at reading or learning or socially capable or not any of those things. Right. So you have this huge list in your subconscious because most people aren't walking around consciously ticking off boxes for their identity. Right. It just, it's just all in there, though, because if you ask someone, hey, are you good at blank, you know, can you, can you fix this machine maybe? Like, no, no, I can't. Why? Because that's, that's their identity. I can't do that. And I'm not saying it's not accurate. Some, a lot of the stuff in your identity might be accurate. I haven't spent much time learning how to fix machines, so no, I can't do that. And also, there's a lot of things in your identity that are not accurate. Not that you don't know how to do something. I mean, maybe you haven't learned it, but that you can't learn how to do it. And I think this becomes particularly relevant when it comes to social confidence, because most people I know with social anxiety, and this was true for myself as well, believe that you can't change that. It's not like, oh, I can learn how to work on a machine, or I can learn an instrument or learn a second language. That's not learnable. And so that's the first thing that we have to look at in changing your identity. Here is an identity of flexibility, of growth being possible, and ultimately growth in this area of social confidence. But you can learn so many different things. A lot of people have what's called a fixed identity. It's regardless of what's in it, whatever the things you think you're good at or capable or what you're like or not like, people will. Will have a unconscious sense, feeling, attitude that this is just how it is, is locked into place. The fantastic news is that's false. Now, you might see this in your life somewhere. Have you ever picked up a new skill? Have you learned anything? And I don't mean official skills that you'd want to list on your resume because they make you look impressive. Well, in my free time, I've learned how to sculpt or something like that. How to video game. I mean, and I don't even mean like you're a hardcore gamer. This some stupid game you downloaded on your phone, and when you first started tinkering with it, you had no idea what was going on. And now it's, you know, a month later and you're addicted and you're using it while you're pooping. And the morning, which is fantastic for your dopamine, by the way. Anyway, you learned. How many things have you learned in your life? Are you continuing to learn? The biggest problem is not that we can't. It's that we believe that we can't and then we don't try. And why do we believe that we can't? Well, because there's certain skills in life that it seems like it creates uncomfortable emotion to learn. Now, I mean, that's all skill learning can be a little uncomfortable. Right? You know, maybe there's an initial excitement when you try to learn an instrument or something, but maybe not. You pick it up and you're like, whoa, it looks so much easier when they're playing that guitar and I play it and I just. I can't even make a note. And some instruments have a much higher learning curve than the guitar or steeper learning curve. Right? Like the clarinet. You have to spend a long time to just know how to blow on the instrument. And then, man, violins, stringed instruments, cellos, that sort of thing. I feel like I've never tried to play those, but I feel like those have a crazy learning curve. I'll watch people who've played, not practiced the violin for a year more, and they still like getting all the notes to sound smooth and not have that kind of sort of Cringy sound to it. It's still hard to do. Like, dang, that's a. And then, and then getting multiple stringed instruments to play in total unison with each other without any dissonance. I mean, that's, that's, you know, years of training and practice. So these, there's some discomfort with that. Right. You know, if you've ever listened to or read Cal Newport's book Be so Good, they Can't Ignore youe, which I highly recommend. Then there, you know, there's a. They call it, he calls it deliberate practice, where the way we get better at something is we do the thing that we're not as good at. Right. So if you sit down and play an instrument and bang out your favorite Van Halen song every day, I mean, you might get good at that one song, but you're not going to be improving your guitar. And so we have to do the stuff that we're not that good at. And that's emotionally uncomfortable. That's true for any skill. However, there are certain things that, that are not in your identity because when you sit down to practice them or do the thing, it creates more emotion and you just want it to stop. And it's fun to see this in, in different areas because I see it all the time in social confidence with clients that I work with. And I know from my own experience it's something that I avoided. Right, you avoid it because it, it evokes uncomfortable emotion to try to go learn this thing. Well, maybe you're sensitive to rejection. I certainly was. I felt awful. You have a lot of shame. So when someone says no to you, you imagine or make it mean that you're awful and you're unlovable. You are highly self critical. You have very negative perceptions of your attractiveness or your worthiness. This can make going and learning and practicing social things very uncomfortable. And I've seen this in my family members. So my older son, he's 10, has a difficult time with reading. Math comes much easier to him, but reading is, is harder. Right. So we actually had to help him get some tutoring because some of the basic building blocks just don't stick in the same way. Right. So it's not full on dyslexia, but it is sort of sometimes flipping letters and adding in letters that aren't there and stuff like that. So my wife and I were trying to help him. He was learning at school, but our help in school was just not enough. So we got some tutoring and now he's, you know, he's building those. Those basic building blocks. But when we would sit down and do reading practice with him, oh, man, he was. And if you're a parent and. Or you've been around kids, maybe you have something with in your life where you try to work with them on something. And he's just, like, instantly almost in tears. His face is getting red. We haven't even started yet. It's almost like, don't make me do it. And then when we're hanging out and we're trying to sit and have him read something, sometimes he'll just, like, get up and just sort of start to, like, slink away, like, try to just leave the room as if we wouldn't notice. Right. What's happening? There's some part of. It's like, this is so uncomfortable. Make it stop. Right. So we've seen that for a while with our son. And just this last weekend we were in our kitchen kind of extends into this, like, I don't know, dining area that has all these drawers and stuff like that. And we kind of have some system set up in there for mail. And, you know, whatever happens, you accumulate things in life. Like, oh, those medical papers from this thing, we got to put them somewhere. Stuff to be filed. I'm sure you have places like that in your house. And I have set up some systems for Candice, my wife, around that several times because she has some challenges with. With organization. And so I'm, you know, pretty good with organization. So, like, okay, we can set this up and have this filing thing here, or use this drawer and put this bo. This is for the unopened mail and this and that. And then, you know, come back like a month later and, like, the system is totally not used. And she's like, started a new drawer to keep track of stuff. But then that drawer just becomes like a total. Everything is just sort of like, I'm going to put this here and deal with it later. And so there's like three places in the. In that little area that Three different drawers. And everything's confusing. So I was, like, trying to find something in there. I'm like, dude, what is going on? And so we were, like, clearing it out. And, you know, it's like making decisions around where does this go and how do we file this? And she was just like our older son with reading. It was kind of like, oh, my God, I'm so uncomfortable. I gotta get out of here. And I'm trying to help come. Because systems are about making decisions. So it's like, okay, where is this gonna go? Do we want to store this kind of stuff? Do we want to store it digitally? And so I'm asking her these questions, and she's just, like, grimacing. And at one point I was like, well, where do you think this could do? Where do you want to store this kind of thing? And she's like, on my desk downstairs, which would just be another pile of stuff to deal with later. So we started laughing about that. And, you know, everyone's got something with this, and I'm not above it. You're not above it. There's nothing wrong with these kinds of things. It's good to see that about ourselves. And if one of those areas that creates a lot of emotion that's very uncomfortable is building social confidence, practicing interacting with people, because that is how you get better at this. I know that's not rocket science. And you might have heard me talk about this before, maybe many times before. And maybe you're doing it, but maybe you're not, or maybe you're not doing enough of it, right? If you wanted to learn that instrument and you diddle around on it, you know, a couple times a week for 15 minutes, I mean, you might learn something. It could be fun. It's a hobby. There's nothing wrong with playing an instrument that way. But you're not going to get any better. You're not going to be, like, playing great songs on that. And that's okay. Maybe you don't want to play an instrument. But when it comes to building social confidence, I don't think it's an optional hobby. I think it's an essential skill for life, for connection, for career growth and advancement, and opportunities for love, for relationship. I mean, these are the key core things that we're doing with our lives, regardless of who you are. And so it's absolutely worth learning. And the good news is you can learn it. But here's the key word, and that's why it's the title of this episode, is to get a new identity, right? Where you see yourself differently than you have. I am capable. I am attractive, I am worthy. I am good at talking to people. I can have conversations. Whatever the new identity might include. How do you get it? You earn it. You have to earn that new identity. So many people think that they can, in therapy, talk about their problems, talk about their parents and why the past made them the way they are. And, you know, my dad wasn't available, and my mom was an alcoholic, and there's nothing wrong with that kind of therapy work. Very helpful for perhaps dismantling some of the shame or helping you see that things were not your fault or other things like that. Great, great stuff. But it's usually not sufficient to create a new identity, because that's not earning it, it's not building it. Then the same thing with people wanting to say affirmations to themselves and talk positively to themselves. Also super important. I mean, I have a whole book called On My Own side, which is about how to treat yourself in a very different way like someone you actually love, rather than being your own worst enemy. So it's super important. Also not enough. We have to earn that new identity. And there's only one way to earn the new identity, which is to build the muscle, is to practice this stuff, right? To get better at reading. My older son has to practice reading. To get better organization. My wife has to dedicate the time and do the organization. And there's certain systems that can maybe help her or make it easier to do that. Right. How you approach it matters. So if you want to go build your social muscle and you try to bludgeon yourself with a thousand exercises that are too hard, you know, there's better ways. Gradual exposure is a better way. And that's why I teach that in all the clients that I work with. And also in Confidence University, which is a program that guides people through basically a fear hierarchy that I rebrand as a ladder to victory because it sounds better than who wants to go work on their fear hierarchy. Right? It's the ladder to victory. And you can check that out, by the way, @theconfidenceuniversity.com and regardless, there's more intelligent ways to learn this stuff, but we got to learn this stuff, and we earn. How do you earn the new identity? Well, you do the things that your old identity says that you cannot, that are outside of your old identity. Essentially, you have to do the things that are uncomfortable. So if you typically don't interact much with people as you are at work and you just stay in your area and you're quiet, you would need to start to interact with people more. If you avoid saying hi and kind of stay in your shell when you're out in the world, you would start to interact with people and say hi to people more. I know this sounds so simple, but it really changes everything because that's how you get the new identity. You know, for many years, my identity was. And again, this is not conscious. This is just what it was, though, is I'm not the guy that talks to people. I'M shy, I'm introverted, I'm anxious, I'm a social weirdo, I'm a loser. These are all things that I thought, believed, felt about myself without ever saying any one of them out loud or even articulating it that way to myself. But you don't need to articulate your identity to anyone for it to have a rock solid hold on you. Everybody's got an identity. The identity is very comprehensive, which means it's got a lot of adjectives, a lot of describers that determine what you do or don't do. And if you just stick with your identity, you don't challenge it, you don't change it, you don't upgrade it in any way, then you have what's called a fixed identity. And that's why you meet someone who's, you know, they're a certain way when they're 20 and you meet them 20 years later, they're 40 years old, they're pretty damn similar. Their life's pretty damn similar. They got the same problems, they're talking about the same people who did this and that to them and why they can't have that and they can't quite get things going. And it's either I suck or the world sucks or my ex did this to me. And it's the same when they're 50 and it's the same when they're 80. They're a victim of their life the whole way through. And that's not some rare tragedy. That's the default. That's what most people are going to do. That's what I certainly would have done had I not started to take ownership and say, okay, I'm going to steer this thing. And so it doesn't have to be really complicated if your mind wants to make it really complicated and know, you know, what exactly what am I going to do on Tuesday of next week? I mean, I don't know what scares you, what makes you uncomfortable, what do you believe that you cannot do? What way are you. Are you drawn to be socially? Do you want to be more outgoing? Do you want to connect with people more easily? Do you want to make jokes more? Do you want to be more playful? Do you want to be more bold? What do you want your identity to be? How do you want other people to see you? How do you want to see yourself and have it be true? Not just some affirmation that you're trying or you're saying every day and hoping it's going to stick? Man, F that I don't Mark my podcasts as it's explicit anymore. So I don't know what happens if I curse. Maybe I get taken down from my platforms. So I'm going to say F that the, the PG version of a curse. But hopefully you feel the energy of this. That's. That's no way to live. Let's create something new, something different. And again, if you want the structure, I mean, you know, I can work with you or we can check out Confidence University or something. But to get started here, you don't need that. What you need is this awakening, this enough of that frustration threshold breakthrough moment where you realize the track that you're on. If you don't like the identity that you have, let's create something new. And the only thing that gets in the way is not fear. That's what people tell me all the time. Oh, it's. I'm scared. It's scary. It's too scary. No, no, no, no, no. You are. You have so much capacity to face fear. I mean, if push came to shove and stuff. See, I didn't say the other S word stuff was going down. I should really start marking these explicit. I want to curse so bad and stuff was going down. You would step the F up. This is a, this is a fully censored curse fest, isn't it? You would, wouldn't you? Let's say something serious was going down or there was a major, you know, emergency or some violence or something like you, something inside of you is activate to defend yourself or your family or you know, get out of there or do something. You'd be, you'd become more bold. Why? Because circumstances would push you, they would force you, but it's too comfortable right now. But things are not that bad. But we're just talking about a social thing. I mean, it's not life or death, although it kind of is. Because people who are isolated and don't have close relationships, which is true for most people with social anxiety, have a much more higher all cause mortality. Especially as I get into the second half of life. We need deep connection in our lives. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. Even though in this modern day of weird pseudo connectivity through the Internet, we're like, I have lots of friends, right? People I don't know and I don't reveal anything to and I can't call up in a pinch, right? But they're friends on a social media site. So isolation is huge. So in the United States, they call it a quote, epidemic. Soon we're going to have a war, probably that's what the government likes to do, right? Is have war on things. The war, it's a war on drugs, war on cancer, a war on the sky, a war on trees, a war on loneliness, right? So we're going to have a war on it. But you don't need to wait for the government to go declare a war on something. You can take charge right now, take ownership of your life, claim a new identity and then take action towards it. In fact, let's talk about how to put this in action. Time for action. Action. Action. For your action step, I'm going to suggest you do something that I have every single person that joins my 12 month mastermind program do as the very first action step of being a part of the program. So I would suggest that you do this and if you really want to, I mean just turn all this around in a year, check out that program. You can go to my website, draze.com d r a z I z.com and click under coaching. And there it is. The mastermind tells you all about it and how to apply and all that stuff. But the first assignment I give people is, okay, 12 months from now, who do you want to be? What's that identity? What internal and external? What are things you want to do, have accomplished, created? Do you want to be dating more? Do you want to have more friends? Do you want to be where in your career and work? What do you want to have different? Are you more assertive? How so? Describe it. And also what's different inside? Do you feel different about yourself? Do you, are you proud of yourself? Do you feel more relaxed? Do you feel more confident? Great. Let's flush all that out. Let's claim this new identity. That's our North Star. And then, then we work backwards, right? We do the actions that will create that identity and everything else. Being on your own side, the affirmations, working through the pains and traumas of the past, all super useful, essential in the service of you, becoming this new version of you. And that's how you upgrade your identity is you earn it. Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. I'd be curious what you cooked up there. And if you have any questions you're curious about any of the stuff that I'm offering, it'll be useful for you. You know, go to the website drz.com there's also a way to message me through there. Ask a question as well as if you have not gotten my free mini course called five steps to unleash your inner confidence should definitely check that out as well. That's absolutely free. It'll guide you through the five things to do to start boosting your confidence now. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that that you're awesome. 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.