Fear vs Intuition, Sustaining High Energy, and Other Confidence Questions (Q&A With Dr. Aziz)

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, Dr. Aziz here. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we have something fun coming your way, which is Q and A. We're getting some great questions coming in, and you can send your questions if you'd like me to answer them. As you can see here, we have a cool new format. We're going to do Q and A, where I'm going to answer a bunch of questions. We have Janae, who's on my team, is going to read me the questions, and I'm going to answer them real time for you here. So that's going to be fun. And some of these questions, I think, are going to relate to everybody, which is why I picked these. And if you want to submit a question, go to shrinkforthyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com and there's a way to send a message to that site that goes directly to us. And then Janae, you know, looks through them and we talk about them, and then she reads them out, and I will answer them. So without further ado, let's get into these questions. Janae, let's take it away with the first one.

Hi, Dr. Aziz. Today we have a great question on someone who's listening to your book, your audiobook, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. They go on to say that in your book, you said you use feelings as a guide and do the opposite. They explain that they're gonna start viewing fear so much differently now because of you and your book. But their question is, how do I know when it's fear trying to paralyze me or when it's my intuition truly warning me?

This is a great question. First of all, I'm really glad that you're reading the book and changing the way you relate to your feelings. I think that's huge, man. That's not just for confidence, but for high quality of life. We want to learn how to relate to our feelings and the Stories in our heads. In terms of fear or intuition, this is a great question. I think that the answer is you have to learn how to access your intuition. And oftentimes fear is getting in the way. And so to find out if it's fear or intuition on something, I think one of the first things that I do is I slow down. So I remember a little while back I was making some changes in the Mastermind program that I run and I was afraid of making changes. I was like, what if people don't like changing? Some of the way the group calls work and some of the structure, it's like, ah, what if people don't like it? And there was a lot of fear? And then so I thought, oh, should I not do it? Is it not what's right for the group? Is it what's good for the group? And I got kind of confused. And so what I did is I sat and I did nothing. So I just literally sat. I have a little. Just a basic kitchen chair in my office that I sit on and meditate because it's got a straight back and I just sit there and I just. When you think about the issue, notice what you feel in your body. And if there's fear, you want to bring your attention right to the energy of the fear. So what's the difference between feelings and energy? Well, the feeling is like there's a lot of thought and then stuff in your body and then more thought and then you go back and forth. The energy of the feeling is you just focus on it fully in your body. And I guide people through this in the book the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. How to really be with it in your body. So be with it until you have done that. Maybe it happens in five minutes. Maybe it happens. Maybe you sit with it for 30 minutes. Maybe you sit with it for 30 minutes a couple of times, get to a place of more calmness, more peace, more clarity. And then what I found is intuition arises when I have not. I'm not so caught up in the frantic buzz and static of fearful and worried thoughts. So the answer to your question is to slow down, to feel the fear fully, not try to stop it or fix it or analyze it or anything, or think your way through it. Feel the energy of it in your body and be with it extremely, patiently, curiously, calmly, noticing it, watching it. And then listen to the voice of intuition that emerges through the noise, from underneath the noise. Awesome. Okay, great. What's the next question?

We have a question from a listener that is taking an acting class and Today was his first day. He was in a room with a teacher, and they were just kind of. All the students were talking a bit. All of a sudden it comes to his turn and his heart starts beating really fast. His question is, how can I prevent this from happening, especially when I'm going to. To an audition?

This is a good one. And this could be applying to anyone. Listening about anything. Anytime you're speaking up in a group, it doesn't have to be an audition setting. You could be in a job interview or just at a meeting at work where there's some big wigs there, or speaking up in a group or approaching someone you're attracted to. There's a million and one situations that can cause anxiety. What you're describing, where your heart's beating fast in your chest is fear. You're feeling fear in your body, your nervous system is responding as if it's under threat, and there's fight or flight. So. And you said, how do I stop this from happening? You know what? I don't know. Take a sedative. Some people take Xanax, but I wouldn't advocate for that. I wouldn't suggest that. I think what our goal is is not to make your heart stop beating fast, Although that would be pleasant, right? Because you don't want to feel the uncomfortable sensations. Your goal is, is to have independence of your behavior from your heart and how fast it's beating or how sweaty your palms are. Basically to be able to show up and be bold and act confidently and audition your heart out even when it's beating fast. Because if your goal is to not have your heart beat fast, the reason for that is you're like, well, I can't perform well. I can't be calm. I can't act well if I'm nervous. And that's a story. We want to separate the I'm scared and the action. And I hear this all the time when I work with clients or people in my groups, where it's like, oh, I wanted to do that, but I was too scared. And it's like, no, the fear is not what's stopping you. Your unwillingness to be in that discomfort is what's stopping you. So your goal, I would suggest, is not to not have your heart beat fast. Your goal is to be able to act while your heart is beating fast. And several ways to build that ability. One is to practice doing things that make your heart beat fast, that make you uncomfortable, and they might be outside of the audition setting because maybe you can't go do an audition every day. But if you really want to tackle this problem fast, go find something once a day that makes your heart beat fast and go do it. Maybe it's approaching someone you find attractive. Maybe it's walking up to a stranger and asking them an unusual question. Maybe it's anything. Maybe it's standing up on the bus in public transport and singing a song. We've had people do that sort of thing in the weekend intensives, Right. It's something that's like, oh, my God, that would be so. I'd be so nervous. I couldn't do that. But when you do that, all of a sudden you're training yourself to be able to behave and act in spite of the fear, and then what's gonna happen? And this happens to me all the time. I remember I was at a wedding not too long ago and needed to give a toast. And right before it was my turn to give the best man toast, my heart was just like a jackhammer in my chest. But I was very familiar with that sensation. I know it so well, and it has no power to stop me. So I just breathed and I was like, this is uncomfortable. Took some full, deep breaths, sat there, felt the discomfort. Then it was my turn. And I got up and I crushed it. And it's like I could operate. Doesn't matter. And of course, my heart calmed down quite a bit, maybe after like 10, 15 seconds, and I started to really enjoy myself. But the moment right before heart beats fast. That's okay. That means you're alive, means you're about to do something of value. The key is to develop the independence of your behavior from the feeling. Awesome. What do we got next?

Today we have someone who has been listening to your podcast for a few years. They've listened to every episode, read your book, and says that has changed his life. His question is he would like to know your view on interfaith marriage and what do you think? He gives a little background information, that he's 30 years old and he's been dating his amazing girlfriend for about nine months and just would like to see your perspective on how that would affect their relationship moving forward.

Awesome. Well, I'm so glad you listen to every episode. That's incredible. That's a lot of me talking to you, but it's great. I'm glad to hear from you and I'm just super pleased that it's been a value for you and hopefully helped you achieve more things, be more you in the world. Now, this is a great question. Interfaith marriage well, my short answer would be, it depends on a few factors. One is, how important is your faith, slash religion, spiritual approach to life? How much does it matter for you? Because for some people, they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm a Christian or whatever, and they were just raised that way in their family, but they're not, you know, whatever. It's not even that big of a part of their life or Muslim or whatever faith they grew up as. But it's not that big for them. And whereas for other people, it's like, no, I live and die by this. Like, I go to my. Whatever your. That faith's religious ceremony is, whether it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or any other type. There's so many different kinds. Maybe it's like, that's a big deal. Like, I go to that church or I go to that mosque, and I go to that. I'm part of that community, and I hang out with those people. So obviously, that's gonna make a huge difference, right? So the first thing is, how important is this to each of us? And if it's not that important on either person, then it might not be that big of a deal. A couple things to consider. How important it is to your families and how close are you to your families? And also, do you plan on having kids? Because these things, you might not think they don't matter for you, perhaps, or maybe even your spouse, you're like, oh, both of us don't really care that much, but maybe her parents really, really, really do care. I'm just gonna pick an example here. Let's say they're Catholic, and they're like, yes, the child must be baptized or something. Then you get into an interesting situation where you haven't even thought about it, and then you have a kid, and then their parents are like, so you're getting baptized, right? And then their daughter, who's your wife is like, yeah, sure, okay, whatever. And then you're like, no, no, wait, wait, I don't want to. And now you got this interesting situation where is she gonna side with you, or is she gonna side with the parents? And not that. That stuff is not. You can't navigate all that. You just want to really start to sit down and think about and talk about with each other these kinds of things and see where you're at. And you might not even know where you're at until you start talking about it. Or maybe you talk about it and then you think you're in one place, and then you think about it for a month or two. And you're like, you know what? I wouldn't mind if we did X or I think we should do Y. So you want to just start to have conversations about that. Especially as you get more serious in the relationship and maybe you're looking at marrying each other, you may want to actually have conversations about that. You know, there's a lot of conversations that we would want to have before we get married. I think that people don't, which is really looking at compatibility and interests and ways of approaching life. So for example, if one person is extremely health conscious and loves to eat vegan food and work out and the other person is like, I love red meat and smoking and watching tv, like that's going to get real problematic after the charge has worn off in a couple of months. And so you really want to see how much do we align. And just on faith is one of those things. So those are some of my thoughts about that topic.

Do you like yourself when no one else is around? Are you proud of who you are? If your answer is no, then most likely you don't have the confidence you need and want. If you're tired of being your own worst critic, then it's time to change this. Dr. Aziz has a program that is entirely dedicated to transforming how you feel towards yourself. Discover the skill of self esteem, how to accept yourself, build your strengths, and truly love who you are. Go to www.yourconfidencecode.com to learn more. Hi Dr. Aziz. We have a great question today from a listener and someone who's in our programs. He says that he's been in the programs for some time, but he keeps getting stuck in the belief that whenever he's tired, he can't be confident. He goes on to say, I don't know if it makes sense or not, but my confidence makes does get lower when my energy isn't right. However, I think there are people with an energy problem who are really confident. Can you help me get over this?

This is a great question and a fantastic topic. Energy man. I should do a whole podcast about energy. I think I will. But basically we need to have energy to live, let alone be confident just to function in the world. We need to have energy. And the more energy that we can activate inside of ourselves and output, the better life goes. So, for example, even as you're listening to this right now, notice how I'm communicating with a ton of energy. I'm not talking on a very slow monotone. I'd lose you, right? No, instead I'm like, hey, we're gonna talk about this stuff. And I'm energetic and you might say, well, maybe you're just doing that for, you know, podcast, which is an audio medium. The truth is I'm pretty animated and energized generally when I'm talking to people. Now, I'm not always in that state, but I am in that state a lot of the time. And so there's a couple of things here that we want to look at. One, we want to look at how to generate energy and then how to use it and kind of be able to replenish it and use it. So there's kind of a longer term strategy and then short term strategies. Long term strategy is probably stuff that, you know, some of you might not know. But one is I'm always curious, when someone's got energy, they want to have more of it. I always look at a couple things. One is how much are you sleeping, how regular is your sleep? If your sleep schedule is all wackadoo and you're not getting that much, and it's like late one day and early the next day and late, and you're waking up at all different times. I generally try to encourage people to set up pretty. Like you go to bed at generally the same time, wake up generally at the same time. Now that might not work if you go out on a Friday night or whatever, but you can keep it the same the rest of the week. And another thing I wanna look at, and this is where my views because I'm obsessed with energy and I wanna feel abundant and rich in energy. I wanna have an energy rich life. I am like level 5 commitment on this stuff. Like I'm gonna do whatever it takes. So I'm obsessed about it. I studied it like crazy. And a couple of things is I don't do any sort of caffeine at all because caffeine is like cigarettes. Like when you smoke them, then you have a craving for nicotine and if you don't smoke them, you don't have a craving. Now I had a period in my life where I smoked cigarettes and it triggered something in my brain where now on a rare occasion I'll still see someone smoking and be like, oh yeah, that looks great. And I'm like, wait, no, no, I haven't smoked one forever and actually wouldn't feel that great to do. But it's in there, right? So once you've done something, it's in there. And the same thing is with caffeine, the more you use it, the more you need it's A dependence, you become dependent on it and the crazy thing is when you stop using it entirely, you eventually stop needing it at all. So I have high energy throughout the day and I don't drink any caffeine and haven't for years. I mean once in a super long while. This has been a couple years now. I'd have like some green tea or something, but it's been years since I've done that. So I would suggest not doing caffeine. Not drinking any caffeine. Yeah, even doing caffeine. Don't do caffeine, man. I even talk about it like it's a drug, because it is. I don't drink alcohol. You can decide for yourself on that one. But usually the day after you drink alcohol, your energy is going to be pretty shitty maybe for two days after. It depends on how much you drank and how aware you are of the subtle fluctuations in your energy and food. This one's huge. And this is where I get a bit. You know, people may or may not agree with me on this one, but I think the most energy stable diet is for me as a plant foods, whole foods, plant based diet. If you want to learn more about this stuff, check out the book the China Study and also his other book called Whole by t. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. freaking brilliant. Brilliant old dude. Researched this stuff for decades and had the largest scale, full scale study of human populations of nutrition and how it affects their disease outcomes and energy and all this stuff. It's pretty amazing stuff. The China Study is his book. You can get it on audio. Another book called the starch solution by Dr. John McDougall. But there's a lot of resources out there. Basically eating a ton of whole plants. So vegetables, fruits, lots of grains, brown rice, quinoa, oats, lots of that stuff as well as beans. That's a whole other topic. I could maybe do an episode on that. Maybe it'll be the energy episode. Anyway, I found that when I switched to that, my energy has been way, way higher. And before that I was doing a standard sort of weightlifter healthy diet like meat and lots of vegetables and lower carbs. And I've switched. A long time ago I switched to that and it's been going much better. So I found my energy be more sustained regardless though, and maybe you don't want to go full vegan or something, but limiting meat and dairy and also just definitely not eating anything processed. Processed foods fuck up your energy in a lot of ways. So processed foods means anything out of a can. Definitely sodas, but Also, like pastries, donuts, muffins, all that kind of stuff is really going to mess with your energy. So that's the long term kind of things I would look at with someone. This is for optimal health and optimal energy throughout your entire life. But then in the short term, man, it's amazing how we think that rest is what's gonna give us energy, but actually, the more we kind of sloth and laze around, the lower our energy is. So just the other day, this is a perfect example. My whole family is sick. Wife and two kids are all sick. And I've been fighting it off and not getting sick. And I'm like, ah, ha ha. My immune system is strong. It's one of my affirmations. I have a strong immune system that can fight off anything. And sure enough, it's holding up. Although I did feel a little bit of like, lower energy. My throat was a little hot yesterday. It's a little weak in the afternoon. I was like, oh man, must be because I'm fighting off this sickness thing and started to go into that story and I was just real tired. I was like, I don't have the energy to do anything. And I had about two hours on my schedule before my next appointment. So I was like, I was supposed. I wanted to work on all these projects. And I was like, don't have the energy. And so I sat there and I started to watch on YouTube videos of dudes doing calisthenics. Some of my favorite things to watch. I'm super into calisthenics. I think they're fascinating and they look cool and I want to get better at doing a lot more that kind of stuff. So I watched a few of these videos and all of a sudden I'm like, this guy's like, you know, do this five minute calisthenic workout with me along. And I started watching. I was like, yeah, yeah, I do wanna do that. So I started to get up and move around. Even though I was feeling tired in my body, I was feeling ready to just do it. Felt inspired, you could say. So then I just do this like 5 minute calisthenic workout and all of a sudden my energy is in a totally different place. I'm like, let me do another one. So I did like a chest one and I did an AB1. I was like, let me just do another one. I did another one and I felt way more energized. And I did some pull ups and I felt like ready to rock and roll. And I dug in for the next hour on a bunch of projects. So you regenerate energy through action, through motion. And I use this a ton at the live events that I teach where we have people up on their feet and doing stuff a lot because we're having them also face a lot of fears and do things they've never done before. And I know that doing that from a low energy state is virtually impossible. So activate your energy, use your body, sing a loud song in your car as you're driving somewhere, jump up and down when you're alone in your house, or just really use something in your body to bring about more energy. And the main reason we don't is just that it looks strange or we think someone might judge us. So do it in private if you need to. But activating the energy I think will help you. And my final thought on this is sometimes it's also okay to just be in a low energy state. You don't have to be like cracked out on energy all day long. Maybe sometimes you're just tired, let yourself relax, rest a little bit, and then activate and go back at it. So just to know that this is not a total, always forever perfectionist thing, you can also have low energy, and that's fine too, at times. All right, so that brings us to the end of this Q and A episode. As I mentioned in the beginning, if you'd like to hear my thoughts on your questions, send it to go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and ask a question. And no, you don't have to be a guy. You could be a gal. We got some women listeners as well. And by all means, I'd love to answer your questions. And because as a lot of women point out on this show or in the YouTube channel, they're like, hey, this stuff isn't just for guys. And no, it's not. A lot of this, all this underlying confidence stuff applies for women as well. And part of the speaking to men is just, I'm a man and I really work well and resonate with a lot of men. But I have women clients as well, too. And part of that is also when I learned about growing something on the Internet, all the advice I got was, narrow, narrow, narrow, only speak to one population, one person. So I started speaking just to men. And as time has gone on, I work with a lot of women as well. So if you're a woman, glad you're listening. Either way, send me your questions. I love this stuff. We'll do another one of these real soon. And 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. 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 social confidencecenter.com it.