Failure, Hurray!

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 be talking about everyone's favorite subject, which is failure. Hooray. Failure. So why? Why do we want to focus on failure? And why is there a hooray associated with that? Well, let's explore further, because my goal here for this episode is to take things that you might know in your head intellectually. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I get it. I know that. And there's a big difference between knowing something verbally, like we can recite it on a test or something, and actually having something penetrate into your deeper understanding, a deeper knowing and emotional experience, and ultimately in your behavior and how you carry yourself through life. And so many of us might, on an intellectual level, might get that failure as part of life and maybe even get that failure as necessary, but we still have this aversion and this implosion that can occur when we experience it that make it not something that we move towards, something that we actually do think is pretty bad at the end of the day, and try to avoid as much as possible, thus limiting our confidence and our experience of life. So we're going to start at the top, at the head, at the intellect, and work our way deeper and deeper. First things first, though. Failure, can't live without it, right? Like, just take anything that you want to experience in your life. Like, what do you want more of in your life right now? What do you want to shift that you'd like to experience? Maybe you want to feel more confidence at work, more ability to what, speak up for yourself, Steer the course of your career, you know, reach a new level, move to a new company, elevate in some way into a higher level of leadership. And if you run your own business, maybe start your own business, run your own business, grow your own business, expand some capacity in terms of your ability to serve more people and therefore create more space in your life, some growth that you want to experience in your career, or maybe it's in your personal life, maybe it's in your love life. Definitely in your love life. Right. That requires a high level of willing, being able to put ourselves out there. Maybe it's in your physical health. You want to be more energized, free of some disease or illness or chronic problem or health problem or something like that. No matter what area we're talking about, you want to create something. You want to move towards something. And that's going to perhaps be a different place than you are right now. Okay, you got an area that's meaningful for you right now. Maybe it's your social life, maybe you want to have deeper friendships. Now, whatever it is, you're going to be moving in that direction. Now, how do you move in that direction? From what you've heard on this show, or maybe you've gone through one of my courses or something like that in Confidence University. How do we move? How do we steer life in the direction that we want? That's right. Bold action that at the end of the day is probably one of the biggest drivers to create an extraordinary life. To create a life of greater confidence is to take bold action, to do what scares you in the service of something greater. Do what scares you until fear has no power to stop you. And the other side of that, though, is almost being on your own side, no matter what. Because if you're trying to get yourself to do something by attacking yourself and calling yourself a wimp, ugh. Can you feel the tension in that? How long is that gonna last? How sustainable is that? Not very. Okay, so now we're steering the direction that we want. We're being more on our own side. So far, so good. This is how you create positive change in your life. Now, as you do that, what are you going to experience? Well, all kinds of things. Right. You might experience doing something you've never done before. Maybe that's a little freaky. Maybe it's stepping into the unknown. So I don't know how this is going to go. Maybe you experience triumph or victory, you know, Yes, I did that thing. You know, that feeling. In fact, just right now with me, I want you to take your hand into a fist. Make a fist right now. And it doesn't matter where you are. Could be driving in your car, you could be walking down the street, could be on a bus. Take your hand, put it into a fist, and then just give one of the. Like bring your elbow down towards your body and go, yes. All right. You know What I'm talking about, like one of those you just scored the goal kind of gestures. All right, here we go. One, two, three. Yes. Okay, so if you want to know when to make that gesture, you're naturally going to do some version of that. When you stepped into the unknown, you've taken bold action, and you got a breakthrough outcome right now, you might not do the fist pump. Yes. But there's going to be some experience inside of, like, wahoo. Yes. All right, that was awesome. Whether it's, you know, that's. You make the sale, you get the date, you get the promotion, your website is launched, whatever it is, where you did the thing and you're taking the actions, and boom, you get a result. And it feels fucking good. Now, does it feel so good because of all the goodies that are coming your way, you know, the money or the accolades or the sex or whatever. Maybe. Maybe it's purely the pleasure of it. But I think partly what feels so good about it is because you are stepping more into your life. You're getting off the sidelines and you're steering this sucker. And I think at the end of the day, that's really what we really want, is to be fully experiencing life. Not holding back, not hesitating, not waiting, not doubting, not limiting ourselves. But instead, that unlimited feeling that, whoa, I get to play this game. I get to go on the ride. I get to get off the sidelines and get in the field. Like, yeah. And that could be exciting. That could be elating. People can feel so inspired and energized and free and expansive, and it's like, well, what else can I do? What else can I create in this playground? That's one set of experiences. Those, obviously are the right ones and the good ones to have. Now, why are they right and good? Because they feel good. And so obviously, the ones that don't feel like that, when you don't get the outcome that you want, where you, quote, fail, those suck. And you don't want those, they feel terrible. Right? So that's where you put yourself out there. You step into the unknown. You're like, I hope it goes this way and it goes some other way. I hope this person says, yes, say yes. Shit. And then what happens? Well, this whole cascade of events occurs. One, we generally feel the opposite of elation. We feel deflation. We feel, oh, it didn't work. We might feel some sort of pain. What is that pain for you when you fail, when you don't get the outcome that you're hoping for? You're taking bold action. You're stepping into the unknown. You're trying something in any area of your life. Remember we talked about health, love, life, your career? You don't get the outcome you want. What is your typical pattern? This is important for you to see and to identify because the pain and suffering is not in the failure. The pain and suffering you experience is in how you relate to that failure. How your pattern, your default pattern that just fires off fast. It's like that's a superhighway. And your neurons, it's just boom, it goes. And you want to study that pattern and bring more awareness to that pattern. But a common one is there's a moment of, oh, man, no, no. And it's kind of like a sinking feeling in your chest, maybe your stomach. There's a heaviness that can occur, maybe a sigh, and there's some sort of deflating energy. For most people when they don't get the outcome that they want. Now, where it steers from there is very particular and unique based upon your stories. For some people, it goes into discouraged. Like, oh, man, I didn't get the outcome that I want. Well, that's not that surprising because I'm never gonna. I mean, I just generally don't get the outcomes that I want. I mean, I've been trying this for a long time and look at all these different things I've done, and nothing's worked. And we start to go down that discouraged path. And if you stay on that discouraged path long enough, you go into hopeless. And then it's like, well, what's the point? You know, the deflation turns into more of a demoralized state where it's like, I don't want to try again. That's one path we can go down that's more of, like the depressed, heavy, you know, hitting the brakes. And the whole thing just kind of slows down. Another path that people go into, though, is same deflation, like, ah, man. And then from that, though, instead of, like, the train slowing down, another fuel system kicks in of terror, you know, anxiety, fear. Just, like, juice the system with cortisol. Oh, my God, I didn't get the outcome that I want. Oh, my gosh, that means I might not get the outcome. I gotta fix this. I gotta figure this out. And then it's like this frantic, anxious, oh, my God, what if I don't get it? What if it's not gonna work? And then we start to amp up the system, and this path might actually lead to a lot of action. A lot of frantic action and relentless sort of pursuit, which, you know, relentless. That sounds good. Sounds effective, but maybe. Depends on what action you're taking. And it depends on the energy you're coming from when you take that action. We all know that desperation is generally not sexy. So if you're trying to date from a place of like, I need you. Oh, my God, the last three people said no to me. You gotta say yes. You gotta. You know, like Gil from. Well, he was Gil and the Simpsons. Oh, man. What were they? They were referencing some play that I had to read in high school. Oh, I'm blanking on it. But he's like this sort of desperate salesman character. Maybe the name of the play will come to me. Maybe they were realtors. I don't remember. But anyway, he's this desperate salesperson. And the Simpsons have a character named Gil who's kind of a caricature of that. And, you know, he's just like the perpetual desperate salesperson, like, come, I need the sale. And we know that doesn't work. And so that frantic action might be a pattern of yours. And maybe, unfortunately, it's kind of the worst of both worlds where you have the anxiety and all this ramped up energy, but then you also have the demoralized, hopeless feeling at the same time. And so it's like, I gotta do something. Oh, but that's not gonna work anyway. Oh, but I have to. But it's not gonna work. And you're trapped in between. And that's where you start to go crazy. Now, there's many other things. You could get angry. You could blame somebody. This is not fair. That person sucks. Fuck them. How dare they deny me. Now, whether you'd ever admit that or not, that's our true internal. There's a part of us that has a reaction that's like, you want to go on a date with me? Then fuck you. And we get angry, we get hurt, we get upset. Those people that didn't hire us, the person who didn't want to buy our product or service or partner with us, and we leave. And on the outside we're like, okay, well, great, have a nice day. And then inside, we're just seething. And then we're not only angry at them, we're angry at the whole thing. We're angry at other people. We're angry at God. We're angry at life. And we're the victim. There are more pathways I could describe. These are some of the common ones. And it's not like you just pick One track, maybe you bounce between all of them. What is it? What are some of the flavors or qualities of your default pattern in response to failure? And whatever it is, let me just ask you this question. Is it pleasurable or painful? Okay, probably know the answer to that. Is it painful or really painful? Interesting, right? Often it could be really painful, whatever the pain is, right? Depressed, anxious, angry. Now, if something is really painful, how often are you gonna want to do it? Right? Generally, as humans, as animals, we're like, never. Is that an option? And so we then start to try to craft our life to never fail. You know what I'm talking about? Is this a game that you're playing right now or somewhat. Maybe in some area of your life. Maybe in one area of your life, you're like, ah, I'll eat failure for breakfast. Like in your career, maybe you're involved in sales or something, or whatever it is, you put yourself out there in some way, but in your love life, you're like, new, new, new, new, new. No, thank you. Can't fail here. And maybe it's vice versa for you. Whatever it is, we have one or more areas where we. The failure feels so painful that we want to just avoid the whole thing. Now rewind to where we were in the beginning of the episode, right? And we're talking about. In order to create the life that you want and steer the life in the direction that you want, you got to take bold action, right? Do what scares you in the service of something greater. So now you're going to take bold action to the unknown. Do you know your outcome for sure when you take that action? Absolutely not. Right? That's the whole point of growth. You're doing something you've never done before. The future is not set. We don't know. We're just steering this thing and seeing where we end up. We're playing the game, we're in it. Do you know how the game's going to end before you start? And if you did, would that be that interesting of a game? You know how engaging is a movie the second time you see it or the fifth time you see it? I mean, it might have some weird nostalgia factor. You could have that sucker on all day long and it gives you a warm feeling in your heart. But for most of us, the first time is the most engaging time. Because why? Because we don't know what's going to happen. And the same is true for your life. You don't know what's going to happen when you ask that person out. You don't know what's going to happen when you step up and say, yeah, I'll take that project on at work. Or even on a smaller scale, you don't know what's going to happen when you open up your mouth to say something in a meeting that's different than what you normally say, or asking a question that you normally wouldn't ask, or you're with your partner and you're having a date night and you turn off the TV and you turn towards him or her and you say, hey, there's something I want to talk with you about. And you bring up something that's more authentic, more deep, more raw, more uncomfortable, more scary. But you know it's going to bring you closer together if you have the courage to go there and be vulnerable and be real. Whatever it is, you don't know the outcome. And the outcome could be what you want and it could be not what you want. Right? I mean, that's just true. And so you could call one thing success, and you could call one thing failure. You could call one thing good, you can call the other thing bad. But whatever labels you put on it, whatever judgments you have of it, whatever emotional reactions you have to, it doesn't change anything. It's still there. It's just reality. It's like saying it should be sunny and it should never rain. It should only be Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. It should never be Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those suck. And it's like, well, you're gonna experience them. So what do we want to do? Given that this is a reality, what do you want to do? The way I like to look at it is we have one fundamental choice. It's not whether I'm gonna succeed and not fail. It's am I going to play full out? Am I gonna hold nothing back? Am I just gonna fucking go for it in all areas of my life? And can I embrace. Can I say yes to whatever happens? The perfect metaphor I love for this is going into the ocean. You ever been to the ocean? I don't know where you live. That might seem like a basic question if you live near a coast, but heck, you could be in the middle of the continent and get into the ocean's a big ordeal. It's a pilgrimage. So you get out to the ocean. Now, I don't know where you are, but most, I mean, I grew up in the west coast of the United States, so California, and now in Oregon, especially in Oregon, the water is cold. Most places, the water is cold. Even in the middle of summer, the water can be really cold. So you're going to go out into the ocean, and whether the water is kind of cold or cold, just imagine it's colder water and there's waves. Now, how are you going to step out into those waves? That's how I like to think about this. Are you not going to go out in the water? Are you going to stand on the shore and let those little waves dinkle up to you and go around your ankles and be like, ooh, it's cold. And that's your life. You wait for things to come to you, and then you have a little bit of a zing when it touches your toes. You're basically dipping your toe into the waters of life. Or do you walk out into the ocean? Now when you walk out of the ocean, all of a sudden, whoa, it's getting a little higher. Now it's on my knees. It's pretty cold. But you haven't. You barely started right now because the waves aren't really hitting you. You go a little further out. All of a sudden, like, boom. That wave, you know? And I don't know if it's the same for the ladies. I don't know. I don't know what it feels like to have female parts. But as a man, as you're walking out into the water, there's a. You're kind of like. There's this threshold. It's like the water's hitting up around your thighs. It's okay. But all of a sudden, there's gonna be that one little wave that's just gonna smash right into the. The jewels there. And if you watch a lot of men, as they walk out, they'll kind of do this thing where as the water, you know, there's a wave that comes and it's gonna be about that height. They'll do this thing where they kind of stick their butt back a little bit, as if they're gonna dodge by, like 4 inches, 3 inches, and somehow it's not gonna hit them, but it does. And that's kind of what we do to life, right? It's like, oh, we kind of brace ourselves and back up, sorta, you know, Obviously, a more extreme example would be, like, turning around so that it hits your. Hits your butt instead of your. The front. And then it's gonna hit your belly and your chest, and you're like, oh, and you could stop there. And a lot of people do. Maybe they stop at your knees. Maybe you stop at your waist. But what if you just walked out and kept going. And all of a sudden now, now the waves are like hitting your chest. Some of the water and the salt water splashing up into your face. Maybe you even dive under and feel that exhilaration, that raw energy and life force that when you pop back up, whoa. Especially if that water's cold, you are. One thing is for certain. Maybe you're uncomfortable, maybe you're a little scared, if you're scared of the water, whatever. But one thing is for certain, you are alive and you feel alive. And that's how we want to approach any endeavor in our lives. Well, I guess that's the question I have for you is how do you want to approach. That's how I want to approach my life. That's how I want to play this game, this gift that you and I were given. To be alive right now is mind boggling. And that's why we don't spend too much time thinking about it, because it just kind of fries our circuits, which can be a really good thing to fry your circuits and expand beyond and then take in and observe life from a different place than through your brain and through your left brain, verbal, thinking, mind. And to really just observe around you and say, wow, this is pretty crazy. What do I want to do here? And so from that place, I'm going to take this action. Bring it on. But what if it doesn't go well? Well, let's find out. Bring it on. But what if they say no? Okay, well, then we're going to keep going. And we bring this level of determination and choice to it, and we say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to the success, yes to the failure. Because as one of my teachers told me, Steve Chandler, yes, lives in the land of no. So let me ask you this. You ask someone out, that's a simple example. You go for a sale, you go for a job interview, and they say no. What do you do? Is that the end of it? Now most of us know, well, no, you gotta keep going. But do you feel the energy of that? Jesus Christ. So deflated. Gotta muster the energy. But what if you knew? Let me ask you this. What if you knew that that amazing partner, that amazing job, that success in your business, that thing was four rejections away, four failures away. So you had to go on a date or ask someone out or do the thing or put yourself out there, go for the job interview or go for the promotion, whatever, and you were gonna get a no, but you knew, hey, I just did one. That means I have three left. And if I Do those three more, then I'm gonna get it. How would that change things for you? What would you do differently now? If you're smart about it, you'd say, great, how quickly can I get through those three or four, whatever it is to get to that result? Because if it's just four away, then can I do four dates and four days and just be done with it? Meet that person five days from now? Because I maybe like you, I want to go fast. Can we be efficient about this? But do you see what I'm saying there? Like, if you knew that yes lived in the land of no, how would you approach the no's? How would you approach the failures? And what if they're not? It's not a separate direction. It's not like successes to my right and failures to my left or successes in front of me and failures behind me or, you know, north and south or east or west. It is the same direction. So the question is, which direction do you fucking want to steer your life? I want to steer northeast. I don't know why, but I think there's some islands over there. It looks pretty cool. I'm imagining. We'll see. Okay, great. Now there's going to be failure and success in that direction. Bring it on. Bring it on. And there's something that I brought into this. So that's kind of like the personal determination, this personal will side of it. And if you want to intensify that, then the name of this episode is not just Silly Failure. Hooray. But actually you can improve your experience of failure by not only studying your default pattern when it comes to failure, but then consciously doing something different. And at first it's going to feel strange and forced and silly, but I highly recommend it. So we have a banner at my events that we have that's called Celebrate. And on the banner it says, celebrate, Failure, rejection, mistakes, and no. And when someone shares about a failure that they experienced, a rejection that they got, we all celebrate, we clap, we cheer. And it's funny. It has people laughing all of a sudden. The person, their energy is totally different around it. And it's one thing that naturally happens for you in a group environment. But what I encourage you to do is to actually bring that practice into your life. So you know how I said you pump that fist when you get a yes or when you get a success and you go yes. What if you did the same thing when you got a failure? Right? It's like, hey, to see if this thing worked out, and all of a sudden you get that email where we regret to inform you that we're not gonna be able to give you this opportunity at this time. As soon as you read the email, you get up out of your chair and go, yes. Hooray. Woo. And you dance around and you could even ham it up a little bit, be like, this is absolutely outstanding, fantastic. They don't. They regret to inform me. Yes, yes, yes. Now what are you doing when you do that? You are scrambling your whole nervous system and you're breaking the stimulus response conditioning that you got. Because. And you're also upgrading something because in the old psychology, failure is wrong, failure is bad, and it shouldn't happen. But now you know. You know that failure is part of the process. It's all in the same direction. Remember? Northeast? Yes. Lives in the land of no success. Lives in the land of failure. To expand that language. So knowing that if you are failing, are you going in the right direction? Yes. Now you can learn from that. You can improve your. Your angle. Right. You're saying, well, I think. I think I'm. You know, I'm getting a lot of these failures. I think I'm heading more north than northeast. So I can steer, I can change my approach. I can improve something fantastic. I'm not saying don't learn, don't upgrade, don't improve. What I'm saying is don't stop. Don't buy into some story that says this failure is wrong or bad or even worse, that you are bad or you are wrong. Don't. That is the death knell. When we take that and we're like, oh, my God, it didn't work. That was bad. That was a mistake. I'm a mistake. I'm bad. Now what's going to happen is you're going to step right back out of that ocean, go right back out on the shore and let the water tinkle your toes. And that's how most people, unfortunately, live their lives. They live that way. They spend their main part of their prime that way. They age that way, and they die that way. And that's just the sad truth. Confidence is not. Confidence is your birthright. And anyone can claim it. You can claim it, you can build it. But it is not by default. It will not happen by default. The conditioning, the cultural conditioning, the stories of right and wrong, and I'm not good enough, and the failure meant this and all that, that will just, like, overtake you without conscious liberation, without fighting the good fight, without stepping up and saying, I'm going to claim something different. I'm going to claim something better. I want a life of confidence. I want a life of being on my own side. I want to create something extraordinary. It's only from that place that you can actually then go make that happen. And you absolutely can make that happen. But you must claim that. So my question for you is how do you want to approach failure? How do you want to work with that? Now there's another level to this that I'm going to share. It'll be in a follow up episode that's taking it beyond that personal determination into something much bigger. It's going to support you even more. But we're out of time for this one so we're going to have to save it for a second. Part two. Failure. Part two. Yes. Yes. In the meantime, let's talk about how to put this in action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step is a two parter. Are you ready? Part one. Fail. Can you find a way to fail? Can you fail today? Can you fail at will? Can you fail on purpose? Maybe you're already engaged in something and you're gonna have an opportunity to fail today. Maybe you have to go seek something out. Anything that's not the outcome that you want, that's a failure. So how do you set yourself up to fail? It's the same way you set yourself up to succeed. You take action. So go take an action today. And maybe it's not the outcome that you wanted. That's a failure. That's part one. Part two. Celebrate. I mean it like literally get in your body, stand up, move around. How do you celebrate? Let's say something amazing happened. I don't know, you get, what's it, you got some amazing promotion. The person who you're into and you had two dates and you're like, I hope they like me. You text them and you invite them on a third date and they're like, yeah, that sounds great. Mini golf. You're like, yeah, mini golf. Yes, Right. How do you celebrate? And if you're like, I don't, I'm just, I keep it. I'm too cool for that then my friend, that's not cool. You're repressed. In fact, that's what really cool is. That's what we learn when we're young. You're repressed. You don't allow yourself to move, laugh, sing, use your body in a way that's dynamic in what you're meant to do. You kind of have it all smashed into this really narrow band of behavior. That's cool. That's quote. Acceptable is what that is. Coolness is conformity. So let's break out of that. You're gonna celebrate. Even if it's just a simple fist pump. I want you to use your voice, use your body. If you ever attended one of my in person events or my online live events or been in Confidence university or something, you know that that's what I teach people to do. And we practice that all the time. And yes, maybe feel silly, yes, maybe you feel a little self conscious, but good, that's what we're here to do, is to liberate ourselves from that. To not give a fuck at what someone else would think. And if you want to do it in your house alone, great. You don't have to go celebrate in public. Not unless you want to do embarrassment inoculation. But that's another story. So take the action, get the failure. It's part one, part two. Celebrate. And then ideally you'd integrate that into your life all the time. Deal. Sound good? Fantastic. And by the way, if you want to share about your failures, if you're not already a part of my online community, it's called Confidence Warriors. We have a Facebook group, it's free to be a part of it. You just got to request to be a part of it. And we will vet you and then bring you in, make sure you're cool enough, which made them want to make sure that you're going to be supportive, playful out and bring value to the community. Then boom. Share in there. What actions are you taking? What failure? Anything you're learning from this show and beyond. We'd love to see you grow and flourish in that community 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. 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.