This is the third video (Step 3) in Dr. Aziz's "Five Steps to Unleash Your Inner Confidence" series. The video teaches a single, central technique: build confidence by deliberately approaching fears and expanding your comfort zone rather than avoiding discomfort. Dr. Aziz explains why avoidance shrinks opportunity, recommends repeatedly pushing the "edge" of the comfort zone, and gives a concrete, repeated practice: go to a busy street or mall and say a friendly greeting to 20 strangers (recommended three days in a row) to burn out embarrassment and build tolerance for rejection. The clip ends with an invitation to report results and a preview of the next video.
Chapters
Hey, Dr. Aziz here. Welcome to the third video in the Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence video training series. This one is the most important, powerful video of them all. Because it's going to teach you the single step that you can take to free yourself from shyness, to build your confidence. I mean, this is. If you did nothing else, this can transform your life. And that is to do what scares you, to move towards what scares you, to change your relationship, to fear. So that instead of when there's something you fear, your impulse. What's your impulse? Well, it's just like my impulse. It's like everyone's impulse. The impulse to respond to something that's scary is to turn and run away. I mean, it's like an evolutionary thing. It makes sense on some level. If there's a threat, you run away from it. You remain safe, you remain alive, you can procreate, it's all good. But here's the thing is, in our modern world, we're not threatened by tigers and four legged beasts and, you know, treacherous climbs and waterfalls and foraging and whatever else we were, you know, designed through evolution to face. We're faced with weird, ambiguous threats. That person might not like me. What if I get rejected? What if I experience failure? And there are these big things, these abstract concepts, you know, what is failure? What is rejection? But it doesn't matter because we know that, that that's terrible and we perceive that as an intense threat. And it's something that we don't want to experience. We want to do anything we can to avoid it. But what does avoidance lead to? Well, you don't need to be answered that question because you're probably living that right now. For me, avoidance led to a more and more shrinking space that I could operate in. I was being more and more confined by my own fear fears, and my comfort zone was shrinking. You know, the concept of the comfort zone. Comfort zone is all the things that you can do that you feel comfortable in. So it's a way of dressing. The way you talk, the activities that you do, the people that you hang out with, where you go, everything where it's not that big of a deal and you feel comfortable doing that, that's your comfort zone. But your life begins outside of your comfort zone, doesn't it? So what is it that you want to do right now in your life that you're held back from doing? Do you want to have better relationships with women? Do you want to be able to date women? Do you want to have an amazing girlfriend? That's outside your comfort zone. Do you want to create your own business and really make a lot of money by doing what you love and helping people? That's outside your comfort zone. Do you want to give talks? Do you want to inspire people? That's outside your comfort zone. On and on. Anything that is really inspiring and make you feel alive, that's outside of that comfort zone. And the only way to get there is by doing what scares us. Because what's outside of your comfort zone is uncomfortable and it scares you. And the only way to expand that is to continually push the edge and do what scares you. Challenge the edge of your comfort zone again and again and again and again. And this is where I lose a lot of people. In fact, I might have already lost you. You might be watching this and thinking, oh, wait, can't I just do like a written exercise or something? Do I really have to do this stuff? And I've met a lot of guys who are in a place of avoidance. It's very creative avoidance. You know, like, I'm going to learn more, I'm going to read more, I'm going to do more exercises, and then I'll do what scares me. But the. And then just keeps getting pushed out farther and farther and farther, doesn't it? So my challenge to you is to do it, but not only do it, just do it today, do it right now, right at the end of this video. Do something that scares you. Find something that's going to make you a little uncomfortable, and do it, find it in yourself to say, okay, this is growth, this is expansion. So whether it's embarrassment, doing something that's going to make you a little potentially embarrassed, something that's going to risk getting a rejection or a no, just finding the courage in yourself to go do it, to give it a shot, and knowing that getting a no, getting rejected, having a bad outcome is actually the best possible thing for you because it strengthens you and it builds you up. And each time you can tolerate that and keep going. Then you have a superpower, eventually of being able to go towards what you want and nothing gets in your way. And you also have the added benefit of burning out your embarrassment circuit so that you don't get as embarrassed much just by doing it again and again and again. So I have one challenge for you, one activity that I'm going to encourage you to do that's going to help you do what scares you. I mean, you can pick your own, you can come up with whatever you want, but here's A really good one that's tried and true. That I've done, geez, hundred times more, I don't know, hundreds of times, and that I've always encouraged clients to do. And that is to go to a busy street area in your neighborhood or in your city where there's a lot of foot traffic. This can be an outdoor area where there's a lot of shops, or it can be like an indoor mall or something along those lines. And you're going to get to that area and you're going to take the number 20 and you're going to walk down that side of the street and you're going to say hi or hello or how's it going? Or what's up? Or some sort of friendly greeting to 20 people. 20. And there's a reason for that number. But you're going to say. You're going to say hi or hello to 20 people. They could not say hi back. That's not the goal. The goal is not to get 20 highs back. The goal is to try 20 times and get no response. Get some response, get a high back, get a strange look back, whatever. How. When you think about doing this, how nervous do you feel? Do you feel a little scared? A little uncomfortable? That's good. And maybe not. Maybe you're like, pfft. That would be a piece of cake. It's so easy. I'm not even scared. Do it anyway. Because I was working with a guy and just we talked about this just two weeks ago. We were getting into this and he's like, oh, that's no problem for me. That's a piece of cake. I'm not even scared, really. And I was like, oh, okay, good. We'll just do it anyway and see what happens. And then I talked to him the next week and he's like, wow. When I was about to actually go do it, I felt like a huge spike of fear. I was totally surprised. I had no idea. I didn't even know what I was scared of. But it comes when you're about to do it. And that's the beauty of when we really challenge our comfort zone. We feel that fear. That's when we're alive. And that's when you grow, that's when you expand. That's when you have more power and options in your life. So go ahead and do this. Commit to doing 20 people, I'd say, three days in a row, if you can, because repetition is powerful here. And here's the thing. The first person that you do it with is going to be the hardest. In fact, if you've never done something like this before, here's how it's going to go. You're going to get out there, you're going to be like, I'm going to do it. You start walking and there's a perfect opportunity. There's a person coming the other way and you'll say, that wasn't the right person. They had sunglasses on. It wouldn't have worked. Okay, I'm going to do it with the next person. No, I couldn't do it with them because they have headphones in. That's right. That's what it is. I couldn't do it with the next person because that was an attractive woman. She was going to think I was hitting on her and I couldn't do with the next person because they were a guy my age and they were going to think I was weird. And I couldn't do it with the next people because they were in a group, you know, and you're going to find all these excuses, but that's part of the process because maybe after five or ten excuses you're going to realize, hey, I'm not going to get my 20 here, so I better get to it. And then you start doing it. The first one's going to be hardest. The fifth one is going to be easier. The tenth one is going to be easier. The twentieth one is going to be easier. And if you do it three days in a row, you're going to notice a profound shift not only in your confidence in that moment, but it's going to teach you some lessons that are going to last for your entire life. So that's my challenge to you, is to go do the friendly greeting practice. Send me an email, let me know how it goes. And I look forward to talking to you in the next five steps training video. We're going to get into some really powerful stuff that's going to keep building on what you're learning here and about how to really increase your self esteem so you feel good about yourself. So thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon.
