Dr. Aziz says your inner critic, not lack of skill, tanks your confidence. He walks through how to write down what that voice says, then write back to it. Reframing those negative predictions rewires how you see yourself.
Do you judge yourself? Do you criticize yourself? Do you often compare yourself to others and find yourself lacking? These are hallmark signs of social anxiety, of low confidence. And it's a common question I get from clients from the Internet, from emails from Facebook, from all over the place. People say, how do I fix this? How do I stop this inner critic? And that's a great question to be asking, because if you're experiencing low confidence, I can guarantee you one thing. 100% of the time seen with every single person I've ever worked with, experienced it myself, it's that in order for you to be experiencing low confidence confidence in a certain area of your life, there has to be one thing happening. You might say, well, maybe that thing is, I'm not very skilled at that area. You know, maybe I'm not very skilled in dating, I don't know how to flirt, maybe I'm not very skilled in public speaking. And so that's why I lack confidence. Actually, it's possibly quite confident. And to be a beginner, so what is the one thing that must be happening in order for you to not have confidence? It's that you must be internally, heavily, harshly, repeatedly judging yourself and believing those judgments. That is the only way that you experience low confidence. Because you could be in a new situation, say, wow, I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to learn, and people are going to be friendly and warm and support me and teach me everything I need to know so I can figure this out. If you have that belief, you might not feel anxious. You might feel confident that you can figure it out. But when you tell yourself, I'm not going to be able to get this, people are going to be really critical of me if they see that I don't know this stuff or that I'm not smart enough, or that I'm an amateur, that I'm a beginner, I don't have enough experience, I'm not experienced enough in love or sex or relationships or dating. Oh my God. People knew that. If people knew my history. If people do this and your critic is going to town either telling you that you're no good or telling you that other people think that you're no good or will think that you're no good when they discover something shameful about you. So that is the source of low confidence right there in a nutshell. So then the next logical question is, well, how do I change that? How do I turn that sucker off? That's obviously a bigger question. If you want a full Deep dive answer, check out on my own side. You can get it on Amazon or audible. But the short answer right now in this confidence boost is that you must decide to take control. Now. Everything else is going to be a technique or a stretch. And there are a thousand of them. I can share some of them in this video, but without you deciding right now, none of them are going to work. So there's like a level of standing up to that critic inside and saying, no, no, enough of that. I'm not going to do that anymore. Because otherwise you are a passive, complicit, subservient doormat to that inner critical voice. And so it speaks up and you say, okay, well, whatever you say. And we need to change that pattern. We need to change that dynamic and say, no, not whatever you say. No, I'm not listening to what you say. I challenge you. I defy you. You're not going to talk to me. In fact, we're gonna find a new way. I'm gonna find a new way to coach myself, a new way to treat myself, a new way to be on my own side. And then from that place, there are many things you can do. One of the first things you can do is start to just write out the garbage that that critic says to you. Get it out literally on paper. Or I have a note file on my phone. I do teach clients to do this as well. Just. You have your phone everywhere you go, right? This is the modern era. Where would we go? I'd sleep next to that thing, just caressing it all night long. You are my new lover, right? So you have that phone there. Just open up an ongoing file on your phone. When you want to take 5min of opening up social media and opening up something random and trying to escape how you're feeling, go towards it and say, what am I telling myself right now? I'm telling myself they aren't gonna like me. I can't figure this out. It's not good enough. Dismal futures, negative predictions, telling yourself you're not okay. And challenge that. Literally write out responses, literally say, you know what? I don't believe that I'm gonna come up with something new. I'm gonna come up with a better story and breathe as you do it. Own yourself, own your life. You decide, you reclaim control from the critic. So thanks for being with me today. Down below in the comments, what you're finding most valuable from this and until we speak again, may 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.
