Fear Is An Invitation

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 second, 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. Hey, welcome to today's episode. Today we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite topic. Just fear. It's probably your favorite topic. Who doesn't love fear? It's my favorite topic too, in a lot of ways. I mean, in confidence and such. But confidence and fear go hand in hand. Peanut butter and jelly. And it's actually fitting because I'm scared right now in this moment as we're speaking, terrified inside, all quivery shaky. So very good time to be talking about fear. I'll get into that in just a moment. I want to let you know as well if you hear any screams during this episode, don't be alarmed. Just ignore them. Listen to my voice. Don't worry about the screams. They're just the screams of children. My children are outside playing in the yard, and I'm in a fortress. Basically, this thing is soundproofed sound studio. Although there is one window in it, which when we were building it, a friend of mine, mentor Al, was consulting with me, and he'd actually been involved in music for many years and actually designed several sound studios, including his own. And so I moved into this house a couple years back and it's a very small house built in the 20s. The biggest bedroom in the house could barely even fit a king bed. And we're. We're hippies. So we do the family co sleeping thing. So we need a big room of bed for all four of us to sleep in. And so for that and a few other factors, we're like, we need to expand on this house. This house is too small. So we're gonna build a little addition expansion to that house. All seemed very easy talking to the contractor. Fantasy envisioning. Yeah, well, you just blow out that wall and do this and put up a new roof there. And we're like, yeah, that sounds great. That sounds fast, cheap, efficient and easy. And at the same time, I was like, well, to cut Costs, because this was a number of years back and business was still. It was doing, it was going, but it wasn't just like, you know, thriving, let's say. And so the idea of spending all this money on the remodel and all that stuff was scary. Speaking of fear. Terrifying for me as the provider of the family, the monetary provider. But I was like, oh, I want to have a. I'm able to work from home, but I don't want to work in home. In the house is just terrible with like little kids banging on the door. Daddy. You know, trying to. Trying to hide that from a client. Sound all professional, like, yes. No, that was. Go on, tell me more about your concerns. Wouldn't work, right? So I needed a separate place. But I don't want to drive and commute. And honestly, everywhere I worked before then to record videos, I do a ton of recording. Audio, video, professional quality. I want total control of that environment. And I couldn't have that in the offices that I worked in. There'd be trucks backing up and people slamming doors and loud stuff up above me and below me. And so we wanted to have my own space. So I was like, I got it. Save money, have my own space. I'll simply have a building in the backyard and we'll just get one of those pre made sheds. I'll just work in like a tool shed in the backyard. And I was telling my friend Al, and he said, sounds like a terrible idea. I said, very well. I'm open to counter proposals. And he said, well, we can just build a building. I'm like, ah, good lord, that sounds like a lot of money. But he convinced me that it was an investment for many years, which it was. And we've paid it off. And we're. Well, we're paying off the house still, but whatever building is well worth it and can afford everything. The building, though, is soundproofed. But when we were building it, I was like, well, to make it ultimate soundproof, you have no windows. And I was like, eh, you don't want to work in a windowless building. I was like, yeah, I think you're right. So we have one window. So if you hear children, that's why it's that one window. That cursed window. Anyway, it's silent, silent right now. They must have gone, fluttered inside with their mother. So enough of that. Just give you a little window into my world. We're gonna talk about fear. Let's get to fear. Some of you are like, dude, Aziz, stop talking about random shit from your life and get to fear. How do I deal with this? How do I make it go away? Well, here's the thing. You can't. I mean, you can over time, but if anytime there's fear, if there's fear of any sort in you, and we have different words for it, anxiety, nervous, tense, insecure. Those are all flavors of fear. Even things like inadequate, inferior, not enough. They're not going to like me. Imagine others are judging you, self conscious. All fear, right? Just different flavors of it, different subtle differences, nuances to it. We, when any of that's happening and you say, I don't want this to happen, and you approach that fear with a no and you try to stop it, you're screwed. It's just gonna lock in your body, it's gonna get more intense. Cause if you think about it, fear is just an energy, right? It's just like any other emotion. It's literally energy on so many levels. It is biochemical information and energy. It is neurotransmitters in your brain. It is neuropeptides flowing throughout your body. It is hormones flushing through your whole system, interacting with all your organs and your cells. So there's a lot going on. It's like a train that's left the station. And once that train has left the station, you can't just say no. And then it disappears. Like it's already happening inside of you. And then on top of that, usually your mind's racing or you're feeling, you know, your breathing's all over the place or tight or frozen or shallow. Your different parts of your body are tense, like your chest or your jaw or your stomach. So there's a lot going on and it's this energy moving through you. And what we have to learn to do is work with that energy and let it move through us and move out of us. So it's like, how do I get rid of it? Is the wrong question. Because that is going to lock you into that fear for days, weeks, months, years. So what we want to do is we want to be able to flow with it and let it move through us. So. And yet it's unpleasant, right? Well, how do we, what do we do with this and how do we deal with it? Well, a good friend of mine, and it's funny because later on he's not doing this and so I'm gonna, I'm challenging him on it. That's part of the story in this episode. A good friend of mine said, fear is an invitation. And I love that, I love that. So I Stole it. I took it. His name's Ben, by the way. Ben Allen. He's a publisher of books and helps people write books. Done some stuff with him. You might have seen him on my. I don't know, an email or something I sent out on his behalf. In any case, Ben there, I've given him credit, Said says that fear is an invitation. Now, what if that were the case? Hmm? What are you feeling afraid of right now? Is that an invitation? You know, this came up in the context of. Ben and I were talking about both of our history and our experience of overcoming our fear of ladies. Those ladies, you ladies listening. Terrifying, terrifying creatures to us shy men. You can just rip us to shreds with the slightest disinterest. Ah, I'm worthless, you say? Anyway, Ben had that experience in the past, similar to me. And he had learned through his overcoming of that fear to interpret it differently. So if he saw someone that he was attracted to and there was fear there, he saw that fear as an invitation to go talk with her. Fear is an invitation to go do something, to go do the thing that you're afraid of. And when we hold it that way, it shifts everything. So what you don't want to do is take fear as a signal to stop or to not do something. And that's what most of us instinctually do. Because talking about this, you know, our body and our chemistry and our brain and all that stuff, fear is a danger signal in its most simple form, right? Fear equals danger. So something dangerous in your environment, you're going to feel fear. And that's a good thing. It's a life preserving response. Fight or flight. The problem is a lot of the stuff that we feel afraid of is actually not dangerous. It's a misfiring of that danger signal. Let me give you some examples. I'm going to say some things and you say dangerous. Not dangerous, Right? Dangerous. Not dangerous. Saber tooth tiger. That's right, dangerous, right? Although maybe not because they're extinct. So white tiger in the jungle. Do they even exist in jungles anymore? I think they're mostly in like, cages in Las Vegas. Humans, man, we're gonna get our comeuppance. That's why I love those Planet of the Apes movies. Did you ever see those? The new ones, the reboot Planet of the Apes. Boom. They just. We get it. We get our comeuppance and I love it. I love every minute of it. And I want the apes to win. I want them to just grind us into the earth. I don't. I Don't even know why. Because of stuff like that. Because of us killing the white tigers and putting them in cages. That's why. In any case, white tiger dangerous, right? Okay, how about this? Neighbor is irritated with you because you did something on your side of the lawn that he didn't like. Not dangerous. Getting the hang of it here? Okay, here we go. Stepping out into traffic of a busy road. Dangerous. Someone doesn't want to talk to you. Not dangerous. Right. So we though don't go through this little simple check. And so we assume that everything that we feel fear around is truly dangerous. And if something is dangerous, it might be wise to avoid it, such as stepping into oncoming traffic or something like that. But let's say you want to do something in your yard, you're like, oh, maybe the neighbor won't like it. Okay, well, I better not because I feel afraid. So therefore, that's dangerous. So that's what we're trying to break right here is the fear equals danger link. And I'm starting young with my boys, getting some propaganda in there, some confidence propaganda at age zero. But now they're at age four, four and a half for my older son Zaim. And we go for family bike rides because we're better than you. We're hippies in Portland driving bikes around in the sunshine. But I'm being playful. Today. I'm being punchy. Today I realized that laughter. I wanted to humor and laughter is one of my favorite things to do. And I recently was re looking at my values, my top five values. And I bumped laughter and humor. Laughter slash humor, whatever you want to call it, to the number five slot. It was down below lower, but I pushed it up to number five over things like integrity and truth. No, I don't know where those are. But anyway, laughter is up there. And I just realized, man, I have a lot more fun when I am self amusing, when I'm just being playful with everybody, with clients, with family, with friends, with everything with my videos with these recordings. So I'm being more playful. I hope you like it. Or oh, here's one. You liking my humor or not liking you? Not liking my humor. You judging me and disliking me being all silly today. Dangerous. Not dangerous. Hey, see how deep this goes? You see how I flip that back into a teaching point. Still got it. Now where was I? Oh yes, brainwashing my children. So we go on these little bike rides and we have the seat on the back of my bike. He sits kind of like behind my my bike seat in his own little seat. And we get him all strapped up with his helmet and get his almond milk bottle or whatever, get him in there. And then I'm about to start biking. And Zaim, bit more of a nervous child compared to his younger brother Arman. Not that I compare them, judge them, but he's just a little more, you know, kind of like me, actually, a little more shy at first, that kind of thing. So I. I love him big just the way he is. But he gets on the bike and it's leaned against the house for security strength purposes. So he gets on and then we gotta get out into the road and start biking. And I have to walk the bike through the driveway, I have to open a gate, walk the bike through, across some gravel, Boom, we're on the road. And he doesn't like that process. He doesn't like the feeling of not being in motion on the bike. So we're walking towards the gate. I have to stop, back up, pull the gate, go across the gravel. And every time I'm doing any of those motions, he goes. And I freak out. And so I would turn towards him and say, you're no son of mine. No son of mine would be a coward. No, no, I don't do that. That would be. That would be suboptimal parenting. But do you do that to yourself? That's the joke I'm making here. I mean, doesn't it sound awful if I were to do that to my son? And yet perhaps you might be doing that to yourself all the time. I know I was. I still do sometimes. Sometimes I'm like impatient and upset with fear, frustrated by fear. And really think about, like, dealing with a little kid. Like if you're impatient or frustrated or like, it takes a toll, you know, maybe now and then it's okay. But if that's your general attitude towards your own fear, you know it's gonna have a toll on your self esteem, your self love, your self acceptance, and again, it's gonna lock that fear into place so it doesn't work. In any case, we get to the gate and he's gonna freak out as I back up. And I'm just like, oh, are you scared? You, you seem scared. So a little bit of empathy there. And he's like, yeah, I'm scared. I'm like, oh, what are you scared of? I'm scared I'm gonna fall. Oh, okay, so you're scared that you're gonna fall. This is very grounding, by the way, to reflect back where someone's at you can do this with yourself too. It's crazy. Talk about this optimal self coaching in a lot of my programs. But you can do this with yourself, soothing yourself. But just reflect back, oh, you're scared. But then I don't want to just reflect back because I thought maybe okay, once in a few times. And he would see that nothing happens. But like every time he would get scared. And so I started to make a game of it and I said, oh, you're scared. Yeah, I'm scared. I'm like, okay, so what's happening is in your mind you're imagining that you could fall. He's like, yeah. Like, yeah, okay, well, so our mind comes up with stuff, let's test it and see what actually happens. And he's like, okay. So then we go across the gravel and knock on wood, have him just fallen over walking. That would be traumatic if he's just tumbled in the gravel and bloody heap on the ground. No, we just calmly walk across the gravel, get onto the road, get into the bike. And then every time I've done that, I'll say, so what happened? How did it go? And he's like, did we fall? He's like, no. I'm like, yeah, we made it. And I've done that with him maybe five or six times. And now his maybe more than that. I don't know. We did it a lot. I did almost every time I would do that, get on the bike with him. And now he's calmed down quite a bit. And so he'll just do. Sometimes he'll go, but it's not the same, like screaming and freaking out. And then I'll just be like, let's see if we fall. And then I talk about how every time we do something that we're scared, we build our courage muscle. I started with bravery coins, but I think the coin thing fucked with his head because money, money makes us go crazy. So he started getting all into like somehow later the next day he was like telling his brother, like, you're bad, I'm gonna take your bravery coins. And I was like, oh no, something's gone wrong here. My teachings need to work on my lessons with my 4 year old. So anyway, I started calling it Courage Muscle instead. And thus far that hasn't turned into some weird stuff. Threat to his brother. In any case, I'm going to suck out your courage muscle. In any case, now he's more relaxed. So fear is an invitation to test something out, to do something. What are you scared of? And how can you move Toward it. That sounds kind of like an action step. Maybe I'll just repeat that for the action step. We'll see. Maybe by the time I get to the action step, there'll be a more specific action. You might think that I plan those action steps out ahead of time. I generally don't. Just in the moment, feel it, and it's like, boom, here's your action step. Did you know you could come up with your own action steps from these lessons, these episodes? Other than the one that I share? Yeah, I know. What would it be if you had a backup if you were coming up with your action step, like, right now? What scares you? What is the invitation for you that's embedded in that fear? You know, Rich Litvin, a guy I learned a lot from, he's a coach, teaches other coaches how to coach and stuff and lead powerfully. Hell yes. Hell no. I got that distinction from him. Talk about that in my book. Not nice, but I like Rich a lot. He's a very. I don't know, he's grown a lot of the ways that I aspire to grow in his niceness, being less nice, serving instead of pleasing. So a lot of stuff that he worked through I learned from his journey. But one of the things he talks about is that when he's looking for the next step for him in his business or in his life, in his family, whatever he looks for, what excites him and what terrifies him, and he's like, it's that fine line right in between the two. So that's another way of saying the fear is an invitation. So what is the invitation for you and what am I so scared about? Remember I said that in the beginning of the episode that I'm scared? Well, I've gotten so I almost want to say comfortable of the feeling of discomfort, maybe like tolerant, more relaxed in the face of that feeling of discomfort. But because I've just done it so much for the last 15 years, but I still keep going with it and I still need to feel it and work with it. But now I'm actually anxious because just earlier today I was having a conversation with someone who's going to come onto my team to help me talk to more people, to help them get coaching, live events if they want to be part of the mastermind. There's like lots of people that want to talk with me about that stuff about coaching, about how to go further. And I just ran out of time. You know, I was building out programs, confidence, university and then coaching people and doing the mastermind running live events, writing, creating all this stuff, being with my family, taking care of my body and my health. And I just ran out of time for that. And so I need to bring someone else on and also am training and building out and working with people to mentor them and guide them to become powerful confidence coaches so that I'm not the only person that's doing this. In my way, I'm training it. So we're building. So instead of me, I can help 10 people. Maybe one on one coaching or something. What if I had 10 people that could help 10 people? That's 100. According to science and math, it's 100 people that have a radical transformation in their life. Well, maybe not all 100 of them because some of them are going to quit, fail. No, no. I don't know. Some of them might though. You know, not everyone sticks to the process. But let's say out of those 189, you have an amazing ranging from solid progress to like literal, complete, 100% life transformation, which I've seen in my coaching and some of the coaches on my team already. It's incredible. But it's managing people, it's leading people, it's making something way bigger than me. It's getting me getting out of the way and not being the bottleneck and saying, okay, all right, there's the need here in the world and I'm going to grow to be able to serve bigger, which is ultimately what I want and have wanted. It's just scary. I don't even know why it's scary. Like with this situation coming up and looks like maybe we'll have more people at the live event than I originally thought. It's like a. What's wrong with that? That sounds fantastic. More people to teach to, more people to work with, more energy in the room. More. Right. Better. And I get scared. More people in the room. I don't even know why that's scary. I don't even know why. Right. So maybe sometimes you're just scared. You don't even know why you're scared. And I'm sure I could slow down and look at some of the automatic thoughts and stuff, but, you know, one of my primary ways and what I just was doing earlier was, okay, I'm scared. I know that that's an invitation. Like, at this point, it's not even a question of like, oh, I'm scared to do that. I guess I'm not going to do it. It's like, no, you just, just go do it. Although that fear did hold me back. I'm sure I could have done something like this. Like a year ago. I stalled out, came up with excuses, busy work. Happens to me too. But when I'm ready, take the bold action. And I did. And I'm doing that. And so when there's that fear, one of my favorite approaches is the peace process. You might have heard me talk about this. I talk about it in multiple of my books and programs and videos on YouTube. It's just a mind. It's mindfulness, it's meditation, it's body somatic awareness of the fear. Sometimes people call it somatic tracking. There's a million and one names for it, but it's a body focused meditation. So you just find the tension, where is the energy of that fear and just move towards it and be with it. And bit by bit, let go of any resistance to it until you're fully surrendered to it being there, fully okay with it, the energy, the discomfort, and then see what happens. And then of course, go take some action from that place. And speaking of that now, now we're ready for your action step. Time for action, action, action. Okay. All right. Your action step is three. Three steps. One, two, three. It's a. It's a combo move. Did you play Street Fighter? It's a combo move like that. So I didn't actually play Street Fighter that much. I played Mortal Kombat, which looking back, was some pretty extreme shit for like a nine year old. A nine year old to be playing. Oh, look, look. So Mortal Kombat. Sorry, for those of you who are not video game nerds, I don't even know if that game still exists or what that franchise is doing. But I played number one and number two mostly. And it's like a two characters fighting kind of game like Street Fighter. The only claim to fame, because the combat wasn't even that good. The only claim to fame that game had was its insane brutality. They had what were called fatalities where at the end of the round when the other person's life was all the way, instead of them just dying or passing out or whatever, they stood there in a wobbly stupor and you had like three and a half seconds to jam your buttons into a combo move. And if you did it right, they would gruesomely like eviscerate them. Just do something real nasty to them and you get the pleasure and the satisfaction. And like the reward for doing the combo is that you get to watch a gruesome death. And I found what the combos were. This is Pre Internet days. So I don't even know how I found that. I don't know, from like a Nintendo book or something. And then I would put it on two player mode with nobody there and then just beat the lifeless non opponent down to the edge of his life total until he was in fatality mode. And then practice the fatalities again and again and again. Oh, look at that. Hey, cut him in half, you can see his organs. Anyway, it's a combo move. It's a combo move like that. Here we go, number one. This is like forward B. Number one is whatever. Maybe you're feeling fear right now. Maybe something will happen this week and you will. Or maybe there's something you could think of right now that you're avoiding so you could feel some fear about whatever it is when fear is arising. Step one is to just slow down, don't go do anything. Don't get all frantic on it and try to. And don't get all in your head about it. Like, I'm going to worry about this or I'm just going to go worry about something else. Totally not related. Like, is my nose too big? Should I get calf implants? Whatever weird thing, you know, you obsess on. Just bring it into your body, your attention right into your body. Slow down, breathe and feel that fear. Like get comfortable being with that fear. Even get comfortable being with the discomfort. Like you're getting into a hot tub that's a little too hot. It's like, ooch, ooch, ooch, like that. That's step one. Step two is to just big love, big bear hug, big empathy, that scared energy in you. Like, get rid of any judgment and being like a jerk to it and just be loving. Like, yeah, of course you're nervous, of course you're anxious. Even if you don't know why you're anxious. Of course you're anxious. There's a reason for it. Could be from the past or the present or unconscious or who knows what. But there's a reason for it. Even if you don't know with your left brain. Just, of course you're anxious. It's okay, I love you. You can be here as long as you need to, as long as you like. And man, when you get that step, that can unlock so much peace and freedom even with the discomfort inside of you. And it also can help the discomfort dissolve sometimes just like that. But that's not why you're doing it. It's not some weird trick like, oh, you can be here as long as you like. Do you Want to go now or what? Right. You know, it doesn't work like that. You can't. You can't trick that part. Cause it knows what's going on inside of you. It's in you. So that's step two. Step three. Go do some scary shit. Oh, yeah, right. Go face the thing. Go take the invitation. Go do it, do it, do it. And then all the stories. Cause you have a choice. You can wait, you can stay in. Excuses and stories. And the only thing that you're doing is just slowing your life down. You're taking your life from the potential of like a flowing river just running across those rocks and making left and right turns down the bank and just life moving like a raging river. You can slow it down to a little trickle. You can slow it down into like some mud, some stagnant, stinky mud. You probably don't want to do that. Right? Right. And that's where I lived for many years. My life was just mud. But we want to get into the flow. And the way we do that is just do stuff more quickly. Just face that fear. Okay, there's the invitation. Am I going to take the invitation now or two years from now? I'd say now. Because then life moves. You get in the flow of life and your life gets that much better. So, quick review of the three step process. Step number one is eviscerate your enemy. No. Step number one is to feel the fear in your body. Step number two is to love it. Just imagine a little kid. Imagine someone you love, a good friend, whoever. Imagine yourself and give yourself that acceptance and that love, that fear, specifically that energy, that uncomfortable energy. Settle into it. And number three is go do some stuff. Go take the action. And then repeat, rinse, wash, repeat. And you got this. Thanks for being with me today. May you have the courage to be who you are on a deep. No. How does that go? May you have the courage to be who you are on a deep level. Hmm. That could be a new profound twist. But for now, we'll stick with this 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. 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 over overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.