Failure As Fuel

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 to today's episode of the show. Today, we're going to talk about you failing. Oh, yes. Everyone's favorite topic and probably a reoccurring theme in this show for a reason. Because we're all so afraid of it, and it's so bound up in our identity, and I don't want to experience it. I don't want to be a failure, and I don't want to try things because I don't want to fail. And yet, at the same time, you might feel like you're failing often. I see this with clients all the time. We can have a perfectionistic expectation of ourselves. I should show up in this way, I should feel this way, I should be that way and not this way. And then, you know, lo and behold, we aren't that perfect version of ourselves. We do get scared, we do get upset, we do retreat, we do react. And then we're like, ugh, I failed. I failed as a person. I failed as a. Whatever, a salesperson, an employee, as a nurse, as a doctor, as a friend, as a husband, as a kid, as a parent, as whatever. I failed. I suck. And there's this kind of imploding, contracting around ourselves. Yuck. And then we're like, okay, all right, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna be even better tomorrow, but I'm not gonna fail. I'm not gonna fail tomorrow. And maybe you do, maybe you don't. I don't know. Probably all depends on how you define failure and how you treat yourself and what your goals are and what you're moving towards in your life. So my goal here today is to first have a conversation that can illuminate things for you so things become a little bit more spacious, things open up a little bit more, and you're not in this. You're not on that tightrope of like, am I going to be a failure today or a success? And if I hope, I'M not a failure today. I hope I don't fail today. Like, how do we just shift that whole thing? In fact, the first place to start is probably with a full, deep breath. You might be breathing right now. Mindfully. I don't know. Most of us aren't most of the time. Unless that's a common practice of yours. So let's start with just a couple of full, deep breaths. That's right. Take a few more as you listen. Especially when we talk about failure. So when I say that failing, Failure, fail. Is there anything that comes to mind for you? Could be something from the past. It could be something recent. It could be something long ago. I failed to do that thing 10 years ago. I failed at my marriage seven years ago. Or it could be more recent, like, I failed over this weekend. Or I failed at this thing to get this project done right. I set up my day. I was gonna do A, B, C, D, and E, and I only got through A. I failed. Maybe it's a certain way that you expect yourself to show up and you didn't. Whatever it is, what comes, just think of. Pick one thing right now. Ah. And then just bring attention to it. We're often so reactive. Like, I gotta get away from this. No, I'm not. No, I'm not a failure. Or, yes, I am. I suck. And we kind of implode or retreat or try to run away. What if we just slowed down, brought more awareness to it? Okay, what's this experience? And then we want to start to separate the facts from the label. So what are the facts? And then there's this label failure. If you were to describe it without that label, what happened? Oh, I didn't get B, C, D, and E done on my list. I didn't complete my to do list. I didn't speak up in that situation where I wanted to. I am feeling angry with someone that I love. And to me, that's a failure, which is something we want to talk about because that's setting you up for a life of suffering. But it doesn't matter if it's realistic or not or if it's reasonable or not. That's just the label that we give it. So what is the thing that we're labeling as a failure? Okay. And then can you just breathe in a little more space around the facts without needing to label it, without needing to change it, without needing to make it wrong, without needing to make yourself wrong or someone else wrong or something's wrong. We got to get tense inside. If I get all Tense inside, then I'll be motivated to change it. No, not really. At best, you might like try to run from self hatred by trying a little harder the next day, but you're not really gonna fundamentally change anything. You probably know the truth of what I'm saying because you've probably done that 500 times before. I have. We all have. So what can we do differently? Well, we start by doing this, bringing more mindfulness, more attention, more awareness to this thing that I'm calling a failure. And breathing and just being really curious, wow, what's the thing? What's the thing that happened? What's the thing that didn't happen? And just that, I mean, if you did just that, you'd already start to create more ease, more freedom, more possibility, more choice, more confidence. Because I'll guarantee if someone's struggling with confidence and I say, where have you failed? Or maybe people don't use that word. You know, they say fall short or didn't make it or didn't hit my goal or whatever, it's all kind of pointing towards the same thing. And I'll say, where have you failed? And they can tell me 10 things in an instant, oh, this. And I'm failing at that. I'm not doing enough of that. And that's not working out. Or it might be flipped out where like these people are failing me and that person's not enough. And this person sucks. And my wife's kid sucks, my employees suck and my boss sucks and everyone else is failing, right? Someone's wrong, me or them. And at the same time they're struggling with confidence. Because if we're blaming everybody else, then we're not taking total ownership. And that's a key element of confidence. I am responsible for my experience of life. I steer the ship, I'm the captain. And if we're blaming ourselves, we're still not taking responsibility. It might seem like we are, but we're not. Because when you blame yourself, you tend like just notice in your experience, do you tend to be energized, do you tend to be more motivated, you tend to take better action? Or do you implode? Do you contract, do you shrivel? Do you tense up? So ultimately we're not taking responsibility and saying, hey, I'm going to steer this thing. We just say it sucks and I suck and it's hopeless and I can't. And we settle back down into the hopeless victim. So there's kind of like the blaming victim and then there's the hopeless victim. Both feel terrible, both are Not a life of confidence. So you just want to name the facts what happened? Okay, great. Now, how can this failure fuel me? How can it inform me? How can it teach me? How can it guide me? Because here's the belief I have around failure is that we are looking at way too narrow of a timeline. Right. Let's say someone says, I want to be a great golfer. I'd say, what's wrong with you? No, I'd say, okay, great. Sounds like fun. Why do you want to be a great golfer? Well, it sounds fun. I love being outdoors, and I want to golf with friends and business contacts and be out on a golf course. Sounds like fun. Great. Okay. And they say, yeah, okay, here's my plan. I'm going to go to the driving range every day. I'm going to get lessons, and then within a month, I want to, you know, hit this target. And I don't know that much about golf. Let's say their target is within a month. They're going to, you know, go to a golf course and hit par now. And they never golf much before at all. So I know enough about golf to know that's, like a ridiculous goal. Okay. I mean, I got a client, actually. Amazing guy. He's been golfed off and on in his life for many years. And in the last. I think it's the last year, maybe even two years, he's been like, I am committed. I'm gonna freaking make this happen. He's getting lessons. He's using, like, there's these cool apps and other things that help you assess your golf swing. He's practicing like crazy, and he's getting close to getting par. Par is when you, like, on any given hole, you know, it says it's a par of four. That means you're supposed to get the ball into the hole in four. You get it in four. You know, you're on par with what you're supposed to do in the course, which is extremely hard to consistently do across the whole course. So, I mean, he's been. He's motivated, driven, intelligent, athletic guy, practicing solidly for a year, maybe more, and he's getting close to that goal. Okay? So if you told me, hey, Aziz, I wanna get there in a year, in a month. And then a month goes by and you're like, ah, I didn't do it. I suck. I failed. Can you see the problem? There is the problem. Your approach is the problem. Your skills is the problem. Your commitment is the problem. Your intelligence is the problem. Your motivation is the problem. Your physical Abilities is the problem. Your coach is the problem. Your training is the problem. Any of those things. I don't know. It could be none of those things. You might need to tweak those things. But the problem, the main one that we see is your timeline is way too freaking short. It's unrealistic, it's unreasonable. And across the board, I see this with everybody. This is not just clients that I work with. This is with myself. This is with family and friends. I just see this everywhere. It's rampant in the world. Impatience. I want it now. And it makes sense, right? When we're suffering, we don't like the thing, we don't like the behavior. We don't like the lack of the result that we want. We don't like the restriction or whatever we feel because we don't have the thing that we think we want. We don't like it. And so we want the, you know, we want the goodies, we want the results, we want the goal, we want the achievement, we want the breakthrough, we want the freedom, we want the confidence, and we want it faster. And I think that's beautiful. I think that can motivate you, that can drive you. But if your expectation is that it happens now or it's, you know, should instantly happen, then we suffer because we label the. We label it as a failure, and we label ourselves as failures. Even if we don't consciously walk around saying, like, I'm a failure. I'm a failure. It is an automatic thought. It just goes right through your subconscious. Unless you start to raise your awareness and pay attention to your thoughts, you'll see it in there. Some version, I'm a failure or I suck. And sometimes it's that verbal mental chatter. And sometimes it's just that implosion feeling, that heaviness, that pain, that, ugh. I'm known for my sound effects to describe feelings. Doesn't that describe it, though? And however you experience it, I tend to experience my life through sound effects. Apparently, it sucks and it's painful, and we want to change that, and we can change that. And the first place to start is by expanding your time frame. And there's a part of us that's like, no, no, I'm not going to expand. I will not surrender to that. I will not submit to that lame timeline. I'm gonna become a master golfer in a month. It's like, okay, you could hold onto that and then suffer a lot. So one of the things that I see this with, you know, outside of golfing, when it comes to confidence with clients and stuff. It's like, well, someone's like, I gotta become more assertive. Great. That's a fantastic goal. That's a common goal in my Mastermind program for people. It's like, I want to become more assertive, more direct. Whether it's family members or colleagues or co workers or employees or clients or anyone in their lives, dates, relationships. And then they are actively studying it in the program, they're working on it, they're learning techniques, they're building their confidence. And they'll come into a call and say, okay, I had this conversation with my so and so or this person in my life. And it can go a lot of different ways. One, it's like, well, I did it. I spoke up for the first time, like, ever in my life for this person. But I felt really nervous, and I don't think it went super smoothly. I failed. Or I was gonna. And I didn't. But I just couldn't speak up in the way that I wanted to. I failed, or I did speak up in these work situations a couple of times over a couple weeks. And then I kind of stopped doing it. I failed. It's like, okay, again, is the problem here that they're not doing enough? The problem is they're not studying enough, they're not practicing enough? Or is the problem that they're expecting this lifelong habit of staying silent and suppressing themselves to be radically shifted in a couple of weeks of working on or a month? What if. And this is not gonna be appealing. It's not gonna be appealing to that part of you that wants stuff fast. But I'm just saying, just putting it out there. This is just a question. What if change takes a lot longer than you think? What if to truly have a different experience of life is not measured in weeks or even months, but in years? Oh, I know, that's an icky one. We don't like that one. We don't like that one. Especially in the United States. I don't know where you're listening from, but United States is about fast. And now, I mean, I was just reflecting on this the other day. I mean, the rate of speed of which we get things is insane now, right? Like at the click of a button, Amazon can deliver something to our house sometimes the same day, because they got it in some locker in your city or something, somewhere. But, you know, if not within, God forbid, two days. I mean, what is this, the Middle Ages? Two days to get my thing from whatever created somewhere in the world. I want it now. I'll wait for two days. You know, think about, like, before that. Just think back to a couple years ago. It wasn't two days. A couple years before that, a decade before that, you'd be driving somewhere, you'd be looking around. You don't see it. A couple decades before that, you know, I was just reflecting on this. I was driving home from the Rock gym with my wife and kids, and it's 2020, and I'm thinking about 100 years ago. I was like, 1920. I was just musing on that on my drive home. I was like, okay, were cars in total mass production? When was Henry Ford and the. Whatever they call it, the T Ford or something? I don't even know. I mean, it was right around there, right now, if you're a history nut around this stuff, you might know, but I don't know when. I think it was in the 20s that cars got into mass production. So in 1920, not that many cars. Are people still going around on horses? Are they going around trains? Are most people still not living in cities? Like, is the distribution still a lot more rural? I was just thinking about, like, wow, how different life would be a hundred years ago. Just 100 years ago. Just a couple of generations, three, four generations. It's nothing in the span. And it's not like, oh, ancient history. I'm just talking about, like, your grandpa's grandpa or something, right? A radically different experience of life. And even just think about your own life depends on how old you are. But just think about, like, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, you know, no cell phones, rudimentary cell phones. It's just. It's amazing how we're in this soup of environment that becomes. Everything becomes normal because you're familiar. There it is the next day. There it is the next day. There is the next day. It only takes a couple of days, and it becomes pretty normal. You know, if anything this year has taught us, with COVID and everything, it's like we can adapt to a lot. It's kind of like, you know, you might not like what's happening. You might not like the restrictions or whatever, but it's like most people are just like, all right, well, I guess that's how it is now. And there's definitely an impact of it. We can feel it. But, you know, there's just, like, heavy level of adaption that humans can do. So we just adapt to something that's normal because it's there each day. And so we've adapted to things being so fast and so we take this unconsciously. We don't. You know, let's say you just get used to something. You don't necessarily consciously take it to different areas of your life, but you do. You bring it over and you say, I should be able to change really quick because everything else happens really fast. My tech happens really fast. You know, changes in my life happen really fast. I should be able to change my psychology and my patterns and my emotions, like, really fast. I worked on it. I did that therapy session. I mean, I did that thing, I did that exercise. I listened to this podcast, I read that book and didn't do it. I guess I failed. I guess I'm a failure. I guess I can't change. I guess I didn't hit my golf goal within a month. So I guess I'm never gonna be a golfer. Can you see how absurd it is in that example? Well, we're doing the same thing in our lives all the time. I'll still catch myself doing this. So not that long ago, I was at a training development program focused around spirituality. And there's a lot of encouragement to be in the moment and mindfulness and presence and all that good stuff. And when I was there, just some major insights, just a powerful experience, transformative experience. Then I come home and. And you know, I'm in the. I'm in the. It's the real deal there. I got little kids, I got a, you know, chaotic household, messy running a business. All this stuff's happening. And, you know, I find myself, like, not being that peaceful, not being that present. I'm being reactive again. And some part of me is like, man, I spent five days at this thing. Nothing didn't change. Shit, I suck. I failed. I just caught myself and I just laughed. I thought, this is ridiculous. Like, if it were that if all you had to do was go to like some five day retreat or seminar, and then like, you'd be permanently transformed. Like, listen to that mentality. Isn't that insane? And I said, no, no. The truth is, what's needed here is this is showing me that, you know, what I was learning there, you could probably put into the bucket category of mindfulness. What's needed is me to continue to develop my mindfulness muscle. And so instead of thinking of it as this one transformative experience, think of it as getting in shape. So I just did a five day boot camp on mindfulness and I'm in better shape. But it's not like I'm done. It's not like, oh, you did five days of solid Working out. Now you're done working out forever. No, you're possibly in a better level of shape, which I am. But training, daily training is needed, whether it's mindfulness or your confidence or your assertiveness or your expressiveness. And so let's expand those time frames on our goals and then just see, like, if you're not where you want to be, then say, great, what daily practice can I do that will fuel this? That will help with this? What can I do? And so, I mean, I, off and on, had a meditation practice. There was for years where I did it for every day, and then I wasn't in the last maybe year or two. I'm doing other stuff, different practices, but after going to this spirituality training retreat thing, I was like, yeah, that's where it's at. I want to do a short formal practice each day, about 30 minutes of sitting meditation. I do some breath work each day and also what's called informal practice, bringing more mindful attention to my breath and to this moment and to become more aware. In fact, I'll do a podcast, another episode, specifically about bringing mindfulness, super helpful for anxiety, social anxiety, and all this confidence stuff related, as well as just relationships and life in general. So I'll share a little more about that. You might be familiar, but I'll share some unique insights and practical applications as well as an upcoming episode. But it was like, okay, I'm inspired. Let me use this as a practice to fuel me. And so what if those failures, those setbacks, those not getting what you want, like, what can you learn? And if your mind implodes, like, nothing, I failed. Like, catch that. Say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Interrupt that. That's not useful right now. That doesn't help me. And if it still hurts, though, you're like, oh, yeah, but I feel so bad, or, okay, great, how can I use this as fuel? How can this motivate me? Because here's the truth. Pain is the best motivator for us by far. You know, I mean, look at your own life, right? Have you ever had physical pain and then been like, all right, that's it. I'm doing more stretching. That's it. I'm doing this thing. I'm gonna do this thing. I'm change that. I'm gonna do that same thing that maybe led to this podcast. And certainly that's what led me into any sort of coaching work I do or anything of my own personal growth is fueled by some level of dissatisfaction, suffering, or pain. I want to change this thing. I want to improve this thing. This is not going the way that I want. So can you use that failure as fuel to motivate you? And if so, how so for me, you know, after I got back from this retreat, I got back in and then I had a weekend with my kids. We went to work and then I had a weekend with my kids. And it's just like one of the days I was just so irritable and reactive and yelled at my younger son because he tends to, you know, be wild and make messes and defiant and all these things. And I just like, I took the bait, you know, hook, line and sinker. I was like, you want to fight? I'm going to fight. And I'm yelling at him more than I had in a long time. And I was like, oh, man, super failed. Went to this retreat to become all spiritual and shit. Came back, I'm yelling at my five year old. So I woke up the next morning and was just feeling like, pain, guilty, like, oh, thinking of different moments in the day when I could have reacted better. And I was like, okay, I have a choice right now. I can implode. And if you look at your physical posture and your breathing and your head and all that stuff, it is like an imploding of collapsing. And so the first thing I catch is I notice that and I sit upright or stand upright and open my chest and breathe like, hey, I have a right to be here. I don't need to be in physical posture of shame. So I'm going to stand fully upright and then just take ownership. Like, yep, that happened. Yeah, I did that. Yeah, sometimes I do do that. That's a powerful phrase, by the way. Because if you make it always or never. Oh, I always do this. Well, now you're pushing that forward in the future forever. I always get anxious like this. Oh, I always, you know, chicken out or whatever it is, you know, and that's not true. And it doesn't have to be true. You're just claiming it as so. And you also don't need to flip to like, I'm never gonna do that again. And there's all this, like, tension inside and I'm never gonna eat those cookies again. Like, okay, maybe, maybe, you know, you'd be like, sometimes, sometimes I get anxious, sometimes I get reactive. Sometimes I stand up and, you know, speak up or face the challenge. And sometimes I retreat. Yep, that's what I do. That's what I've done. I'd like to face it more. Sure. That's my preference. And that's what I'm working towards. And sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. Do you see how much more realistic, reasonable, compassionate, intelligent, wise and loving that is? That is how we grow. And again, you combine that with change over time. Change over time. And the good news, it's not decades. I mean, you can experience a massive change in a year. Two years can be all. You can feel like a whole new person. But that's through consistent practice. And I see this all the time. I love running a group program. So my main way of working with people is in group programs at this point. And I love watching it because the stimulus for everybody is the same. Like I'm the same coach, we have the same curriculum, the same program, the same everything. And you just get to see the different results of different people. And there's all kinds of patterns of ways that people engage with the program. But I can tell you this, the people that make the biggest progress, the most progress, they're not necessarily the smartest, they're not necessarily the most, they're not even the most motivated. When they come in, they might not even have the most severe challenges or the most mild challenges. And it doesn't matter what country they're from, it doesn't matter their gender, it doesn't matter their age, it doesn't matter their income, it doesn't matter any of those things. The deciding factor that I've seen is the people that make the biggest transformations consistently do shit over a year period or a two year period. Consistent action. It's one of the components of the confidence transformation formula. It's consistent action. Doesn't have to be huge because you can have someone that's all fired up and does a bunch of stuff for a week or two, but how big of a change is that gonna be in the long term? And look, this isn't just about confidence. You know, this is true for health and lifestyle, right? I mean, have you done the crash diet or. I'm gonna do this thing, rah. I'm gonna get this result really fast. I can do this for four weeks. I'm gonna hold on, versus someone who's like, you know what? I've made a significant change to my lifestyle and my diet. I eat more whole foods now. I walk every day, I go to the gym a couple times a week. Now that person, you know, look at them six months, 12 months from now, it's a whole different ball game, It's a whole different beast. So use that pain of that failure to fuel you to make those consistent Daily changes. So that brings us to your action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step is to use that pain from the failure to fuel you. And to do what? What's the thing that you want to funnel that frustration, that pain that you know, first of all, breathe. Stand up tall, sit up tall. Don't collapse or implode on yourself. Say, no, there's a better way. I'm gonna use this. And I'm not gonna buy in any bullshit store. I'm not gonna become a victim and say, well, I guess I can never change this. I guess I'm stuck. It's like, fuck that, I'm the captain of my ship. But now when it comes to steering, you realize it's about a daily something or other. So what are you gonna do? What are you gonna practice regularly? And maybe you already have some things that you are practicing regularly, but maybe wanna reaffirm or re choose those because we can kind of be inconsistent in some of those practices or habits. But what is that? You know, like if you want to speak up more like, how often are you going to do that? Once a week? Are you going to do it three times a week? You got to look for those opportunities. You got to practice it. And if you do that for a week or two, you'll start to experience some result. But if you do that for three or four months, it's going to be life changing. The key is that consistency. How do you get the motivation for that consistency? Feel the pain of the failure, remove the label that self judgment and just say, oh, I'm not doing X. I didn't get to Y. Okay, well what's my practice? Yeah, it hurts. Ow. I want that thing. Great. What's my practice? Let me use that as the fuel. Fantastic. Thank you for being with me. You're awesome. I love and appreciate you. 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 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.