Failure, Rejection, And Not Enoughness (The Gruesome 3)

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. You are brave. You brave for clicking on it, even though you saw the title, which is called Failure, Rejection and Not Enoughness. The Gruesome three. Hey, we're getting close to Halloween, right? It's a couple weeks away and it's time for some horror that's. I mean, forget about a scary movie with some sort of bat like creature jumping out of the woods to eat your face, which is, which is a staple amongst the horror genre. These are way scarier, way more terrifying, way more avoided. People actually go watch a horror movie, but people will not willingly go into failure, rejection, or feeling not enough because it's awful, it's terrible. So I'm hoping that by listening to this episode, you will breathe some life into it and it doesn't necessarily have to be so awful and terrible or, or at least we can realize we're not alone in those experiences. And those feelings which inherently instantly makes them less awful and terrible. As you'll see when we get into these things, something about the personalizing it and making it just about me makes it even worse. So I'm glad that you're here and you had the courage and curiosity to really look at this because it is what underlies so much of our social anxiety and difficulties with connecting with others and not living the life that we fully want is not that we're not capable or that we're not worthy. It's that we're afraid of these things, these feelings, these. And they're more than feelings. They're like a whole perspective of yourself and feelings that come with it. So I'm excited. Let's dive into it. Failure, Rejection and not enoughness. When is the last time you felt one of these? It might be like right now, dude, right now, or last week or yesterday that it can come and go in our experience quite a bit. And it might be really intense, front and center, like you're floored by it. And it might just be in the background a little, little hit like you took like a punch in a boxing ring, punched your chest or your stomach. And you know, it doesn't mean you have to have gone out there and tried to start your own business and got investor money and then lost it and failed. Like that kind of dramatic failure. People can. You can feel like a failure when nothing really significant has happened that day. You can feel like a failure because you didn't get to your to do list, right? You can feel rejected because someone took a little longer to text you back. You can feel not enough just by looking in the mirror. So these feelings might be really few and far between for you, or they might be real chronic. I know when I lived with a lot of social anxiety, it was. I lived in this. It was like a soup. I lived amongst the gruesome three. It was terrifying and terrible. So what do we do? Yes, they suck. How do I never experience them again? Right. I mean, that's kind of the unconscious, not really thought out plan that most people have is let me avoid failure, rejection and feeling like I'm not enough. And you know, I'm. There are three different things, but really they can all be this sort of the same thing. Like one experience can trigger some feeling. And I'm using these phrases to point to that feeling. And we want to avoid those experiences. Right. So when I have a lot of social anxiety, I'm prone to feeling really, really, really bad. If someone rejects me or I feel rejected, then I'm going to avoid all kinds of social interactions because I don't want to experience that feeling of rejection which instantly leads to the feeling of not enoughness. And you know, problem solved. Right? I don't get to feel that as much. Well, somehow that feeling of not enoughness tends to creep in other ways. Even if I didn't get rejected that day because I didn't talk to anyone that day, maybe I feel like I'm not enough because I look over and I see someone who is talking to people and I'm like, he's so much better than I am. Dang. That not enoughness feeling just crawled in through another window. Failure is beyond rejection might have sort of a social connotation to it. Failure might be any activity, practice, action that you took with the intended result and you did not get the result. So could it involve no other people? You want to learn an instrument, you pick up the instrument and you don't make the sound you want and you can say, I failed. So that could be. It's more broad. It can go to any area of life. But we tend to, if there's any project putting ourselves out there, trying to create something, make something happen, do something, influence other people, all of that, if it doesn't work in the exact way that we want, then it's failure. So let's just take a step back here, because I know we want to avoid it and it's terrible and all that. Right? But what is it that we want to avoid? Okay, so if. If failure is me not getting an outcome that I wanted, I'm going to do something in the world with an. With a hopeful outcome, and I don't get that outcome. Okay, cool. And, you know, there's probably some inner rant lecture that goes on. It's like, well, you should have and if you'd only. And why didn't you. Right. Implying that if you'd only and should have and done the things that that voice inside is telling you, you wouldn't have failed. Which is probably not true. I don't know if that voice actually is the best guide. But in any case, you did it wrong, and you're bad because you didn't get the outcome that you wanted. Okay. All right. So far, so good. So every action I take in the world every day, throughout the entire day and including big goals that might have, like, hundreds or even thousands of cumulative actions that I need to take over weeks or months or years to get there. Okay, all of that should go exactly the way that I want. Okay? Totally reasonable. And then if not, I need to feel awful about myself. Right. Isn't it crazy? It's crazy. It's a crazy setup. And we can take the same thing for rejection. Right? Right. Every single human that I interact with must always want whatever I want to say yes to. Every one of my requests, to be interested in everything I'm saying, to want to spend as much time with me as I want to spend with them at the same time, always. To never like anybody else, to never prefer anybody else. I could go on. I mean, there's a million ways we can feel. Make constant eye contact with me. If they look away for a second, then there must not be interest in what I'm saying. I used to do that one a lot when I had social anxiety. Oh, they're not interested. I better shut it down. Shut it down. I mean, that is insane. It's insane. And then in any of those situations, whether it's rejection or the failure when I'm telling you about, then it's like straight down a slide into not enough. It's like those, you know, kids, playgrounds, they still have those at McDonald's or do they? I think so. I don't know. You know, like the ball pit maybe Chuck E. Cheese. I haven't been to any of those places in quite a while. Is there a ball pit there? Still slimy ball pit where you go down this slide and there's all these multicolored plastic balls and then you fall into the ball pit. I remember liking it as a kid. I think it was fun. You slide down to the ball pit of not enoughness. And it's terrible. It's like shame and so bad about myself. It's like to me when that happens, it feels like it's acid dripping on my heart and soul. It's like, it's like if you ever seen those alien movies. If you haven't, it's like it's a horror film. Hey, bringing it. Bringing it back full circle. But they're not bat like. I guess they are kind of like bat like creatures that jump out and eat your face or implant babies in your intestines. Yeah. In any case, they, their spit is ultra acidic enough to like burn through many layers of metal flooring. So that's kind of what it feels like. That not enough acid just burning through. Ah, I failed. We writhe around on the ground. Burning. It's burning. And that, you know, it just kind of seems like that's how it is. Right? That's just how it happens. You go for things in life and if you get it, you're awesome, you succeed victory. And if you don't, you fail and you suck and you gotta roll around in ball pit of alien acid juice and that's it. And then you'll be better the next time because you got beaten down by the lecture in there somewhere. And it's the same thing. If someone doesn't like you, you have to feel really bad or they don't want to work with you or they want to break up with you or whatever. They want their money back. Those are all like trigger can trigger rejection. Is this. Am I nailing it? Am I describing your experience? It's certainly been my experience for much of my life. And if I'm not aware, if I'm not practicing confidence consciously, then I'll go straight back there because it's the default. It's the slide. The slide. Yay wee. Right? And so. But something else is possible. We don't have to do it that way. And I think start by Seeing the insanity of the setup that it doesn't matter what everyone else is doing. Well, that's what my dad did. That's what my cousin thinks. Okay. They can writhe around in the acid pit if they want, or most people will try to avoid that acid pit because who wants to go? Imagine you took your kid to Chuck E. Cheese and they're like, we've replaced the ball pit with an acid pit. Like, probably not a whole lot of parents letting their kids go in that. What kind of acid? Right? But in any case, those people will just avoid vast majority of their life and their potential. I'm going to avoid all the risks I could take. I'm going to avoid all the people I could connect with. I want to avoid all the love I could experience. I'm going to avoid all the success and the breakthrough in my career and in health and in hobbies and art and creation and everything that I could succeed at. I'm going to avoid all of that because I don't want to feel the failure. And so most people aren't getting that much acid, although they're getting a little drip of not enoughness by comparing themselves to others and maybe feeling the pain of a life not lived. But they're not getting the full dose because they're not getting a strong failure or a clear rejection. And so let's just look at what our options are. There's avoiding life more, you know, to greater or lesser degree to avoid that. Those feelings there is taking the actions, right? Like, no, I'm gonna go after it in life. But then every time you don't get an outcome that you want, or every time someone doesn't like you or doesn't immediately want to do whatever it is you want them to do, AKA rejection, then you feel awful about yourself and you gotta kind of just power through, just wade through that acid pit, come out with your little skeleton legs remaining. And that's. I mean, you know, you can do that. That's a. That's a mustering up a lot of energy every day to just take on life. So is there another way? What? What is that other way? And again, like I often like to do in these. In these episodes and working with people is. You might be listening. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. What's the other way? Just tell me the answer. Give it to me. Give it to me. And I'll share things with you. I'll share things from my experience or client's experience or my studies or things that I've found useful. And at the same Time, though. I really invite you to come with me to this inquiry and get to this point. Like, yeah, that is crazy. Wow. Yeah. I do wanna do something different. What is another way? Right. Because there are so many other ways I haven't discovered them all. And what I've discovered might not be exactly the one point system. Do this and it's bam, done for you. Right, so we're discovering it together and I'll share some ideas. But I really invite you to bring your own curiosity to this, your own taking ownership of your own life and your own growth and the process that you're in so that you can discover things that I haven't discovered. New things that work for you, that don't that work better for you than whatever I share. But what do you think? What might we do instead? I think a challenge people have is they say, yeah, well, I can kind of get it intellectually, like, yes, yes, yes. I've read a lot of motivational posters and memes on the Internet say failure are the stepping stones of success and don't let other people disliking you bother you. Or there's probably a catchier, pithier meme than that. But you know, those kinds of things, like, be you, man, don't care what they think. And you might have a bunch of those and you might even tell someone else that they're like, oh, man, I fail, I suck. No, no, those are stepping stones. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. Yeah. And it all sounds great, but then you don't feel any different. And, but, but maybe you do. Maybe you can access another perspective. Because I think even if you read those things and it's not doing much for you, you're on to something though, right? It's like, it requires a new perspective, a new way of seeing the situation. Truly an upgrade of your interpretation of what's happening in life. And we can think of it as like, we have this like lower level, lower functioning interpretation that just doesn't work that well. And we can have a more sophisticated, more intelligent perception. And when you really adopt that new perspective, when you really fully choose, like, yeah, I do want to see it that way, I do want to live that way, then the emotion might change right away. It might not. But you're starting to steer it. You're massaging it, you're moving it, you're pushing it in a new direction. It's like retraining your body and sometimes might happen real quick, like you get a, you know, a massage or you do some stretching or something. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, I can move my body way better. Whew. It feels great. And other times you're like, man, I got to do this kind of mobility drill every day for, like, right now. I've had some few issues with my rotator cuff from. And some doing some lifting and kind of not balancing out, strengthening some aspects of my rotator cuff and other aspects of my shoulders. Too much benching by man. And it's like, oh, yeah, I got to do these shoulder exercises to kind of strengthen out and balance myself out. And I've done them for. I mean, I've known about it for a month that I wanted to do it, and it's probably been pretty sporadic for three of those weeks. And then last week was like, okay, I'm gonna do it really regularly. And now that I do it regularly, I went and tried to do a bunch of shoulder exercises that I normally used to do in the past and be like, ow, it still hurts. I've been doing these for almost a week, man. It's not better yet. It's like, no, you gotta do that. Like, I don't know how long regularly, three, four times a week for a month maybe to really start to, you know, be able to do the other exercises without the pain. So we'll see. I don't know. But I gotta retrain my body to move in a better way, and we have to retrain our perception of ourselves to move and train in a different way. So how do we do that? Well, one thing that I focus on. Let's say I take an action in business, and I don't get the outcome that I want, which is happening all the time, by the way. If you are, you know, in your own business, in your career and work, not. Not everything you sit down and do is like, I sat down. I solved the problems. I'm awesome, right? It's more. Okay. I tried this thing, and I didn't get the outcome that I wanted to write. And at first, you have my reaction. Acid drip failure. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Okay, let's take a step back. First things first. I'm experiencing an outcome, and I took an action to get this outcome. That's a win. The action is the win. I did something. I'm doing something. Yay. Yes. Yes. I'm doing something. And when I do things, I get results. That's true. You know? Is the result what I wanted? Well, kind of. Okay, do you see how that's already framing it in a different way? And then the next thing I do is I zoom out. Because sometimes we get so fixated on the one thing. Like I tried this one marketing thing and it didn't work. Or I approached that one person and they weren't, they didn't want to be my friend. Yeah. Okay, well, can we view it as a larger process? Because I think if you can find a sense of optimism or faith or belief in a larger, longer term process, it really helps you handle the momentary setback or failure. Right. So if this person said no to you, but then you're like, you know, but overall, here's my plan to build my social confidence. Okay, I'm gonna go to these social events, I'm gonna start interacting. Oh, I'm gonna learn this skill about connecting and conversations. In fact, I was just talking with a woman in my mastermind program. She's in the second year of the program and she was gonna go to this networking thing and she was feeling nervous ahead of time and so I suggested some resources to her from within the mastermind program. And she watched this training about assum. She watched some of the trainings from social mastery, which you can also get access to through confidence University. And she's like, these were really helpful skills. She's like, I don't. I guess I maybe learned some of these things when I first started my beginning first year, but it's been a long time or maybe I never really studied this stuff. It's so much, it's so helpful to go to a networking event and have some very specific questions and conversation starters and ways to go deeper in conversation that I learned in the materials. And, and I just felt way better and more confident. Right. So she's been building her social confidence. And so even if that one networking thing didn't go well, if you know, hey, I'm learning these skills, I'm gonna be applying this. I'm gonna go to multiple things. You can handle it so much better. So we gotta zoom out and have a larger trajectory, a larger plan. Now I know when the failure comes. And if you slide right down to the acid ball pit, then the energy drains out and it's like, oh, I can't. It's. Nothing is gonna work. It's is gonna. There's no way like that learned helplessness and just know that that's a protective strategy. It's like a little membrane that you try to put around yourself to not have it burn. But what if it didn't have to burn in the first place? And that brings me to the next and probably Biggest thing that you can do. In fact, this is so big, we're gonna turn into your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is to ask, who is making me feel not enough? Who. Who's doing that? Right. Because we tend to view it as some property of nature. Like, it's raining, it's just. It's just happening. I don't know, Clouds above my head dripping rain on me. Right. That's not how this is. This is an active process that you are engaged in. Now, what might be engaging it in doing it might be patterns that you're not fully conscious of or aware of or feel like you have influence over yet, but you do. And the first step in having the influence is realizing that you do have the influence. Because it's just something that happens to you and you're screwed. Well, you just got to wait it out. But something so much more is possible when you start to ask, hey, who's doing this? How am I creating this? Not enoughness. What's the recipe for this? And then you start to unwind. It's like untying a knot. So I'm excited for you. I'm really curious how this lands for you because you can really open up doors if you can address some of these things and get into more action, that's when everything starts to take off and building your confidence. And I mentioned the last few episodes, we got just a little bit more time here before my virtual event. It's coming up in the beginning of November, November 1st through 3rd or Friday through a Sunday. You can attend from anywhere in the world. And we are. I mean, there's gonna be a theme throughout the whole event, but especially on the second day, we're just gonna really deconstruct rejection. So, man, just we're gonna pave over that acid pit, maybe replace it with some sort of trampoline. So you slide down the pit and you bounce right back, baby. So I would love to share some of these tools and practices with you in a much more in depth 3 day format. So if you want to check that out, head on over to my website, drize.com, dr.a z I z.com and there's a banner right there on the front homepage to register for the event 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. 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.