Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Life

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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to talk about how you can get out of your head and more into your life. And won't that be an enjoyable experience? More of a relief to get out of that. Overthinking, overanalyzing, worrying, planning, judging, assessing, determining if it's okay, determining if that was bad or if someone didn't like it, and then worrying some more and then inhibiting yourself and then saying in your mind, I should have said that and I should have done this. But then, oh, but, oh, and lamenting and beating yourself up and oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, that whole noise, all that noisy noise in your head, that hive of bees. Imagine if you could step out of that and into your life, into this moment, into the colors around you, into the smells, into the air, into that connection, into intimacy, into love, into purpose, into fun. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're talking about today. You excited? I'm excited. I'm ready. So if you're benefiting from the show, please head over to theshrinkfortheshyguy.com and you can go there, and then there should be a link from there to go to itunes, or you can just go to itunes directly, the podcast app or whatever, and give the show a review. I'd much appreciate it. It might be a few steps to figure out how to do it, but that would benefit not only everyone here, but because I would learn from the feedback and how to make the show even better, but also everyone who hasn't found the show yet. You know, my goal is to reach more people who are out there feeling alone, feeling unworthy, feeling shy, feeling anxious, feeling down on themselves to create a radical transformation in their lives, knowing it's possible. It's possible for all of us to become more confident than ever before, ever. Increasing confidence. And you don't have to, you know, be special. You don't have to be smarter or better, you don't have to be deserving of it. It's just a muscle, baby. And we can all build it, and we build it best together. Awesome. Thank you. So let's talk about getting out of your head and into your life. So I gave a little taste of it there in the intro about being in your head. And I probably don't need to go on and on about that because you know what that's like, right? But I'm just going to give a quick description so we know we're on the same page here. Being in your head means being fully absorbed in a lot of thinking. And there's kind of different types of thinking though, right? There's what you might kind of think of as like higher level thinking and then lower level thinking. Higher level thinking is when you're solving a problem. Maybe you are, you know, using some creativity, some reasoning to figure something out, to assess if something's the right choice or, you know, how it could be done better, how to optimize this scenario. Or maybe you are taking in some new information, some concepts, some theories, some philosophies, kind of stretching your mind to understand something new, a new skill. That's kind of your higher thinking, right? And we could all probably agree that that's a useful tool of our minds, helps you grasp new information that can benefit your life. So that's higher thinking and there's lower thinking. And lower thinking is really concerned with what's right here. What's wrong here? Is this okay? What do other people think? Is this allowed? Am I okay? Am I good? Am I bad? Worry would fall into this. There's a repetitive quality to like, is this okay? Is this okay? Am I okay? Is this okay? Am I okay? Rumination, obsession, that's kind of all in that lower mind. It's kind of more of our animal brain, right? That's just like on hyperdrive. And that really is what's fueling that part of us often is our animal survival instincts. That's like trying to assess. And the main thing that it's trying to do is figure out if we're okay. That's the part of mind that we want to get out of and into our lives. You know, I'm not saying you don't want to think at work and solve problems or understand new things. I'm not saying all thought is bad and the mind is bad. I'm just saying, hey, there's a certain kind of thinking, there's a certain habitual way that our minds kind of just run nonstop. That can really limit us in our lives. So let's take a look at that. That's the kind of thinking that I want to look at today. And let's take a look at what typically fuels that. So usually what's happening is there's a sense of fear inside, and then we start to think a lot. Now, there could be other emotions too that lead to hyper thinking, but fear is probably the biggest one and the most common one. That's why I'm gonna start with that. So there's fear. And where's that fear coming from? Well, usually fear is coming from a perception of our environment as dangerous. There's something around here that could be dangerous to us. Now, in response to that danger, my lower thinking kind of obsessive mind starts to activate, and I go bonkers. And it's hard to turn it off. It's hard to stop it. Can you relate to this, by the way, for social anxiety? This is huge. Because if it's social anxiety, then being in a social situation around other people or interacting with other people, or about to interact with other people, or giving a presentation or blah, blah, blah, all of that is a threat. And so I'm going to overthink and overanalyze. And I'm sure you've experienced this not only before the moment, maybe you're hyper thinking about it ahead of time, but then even in the moment, it can be hard to be present because you're, oh, I should say this. Oh, don't say that. Or what do they think of this? Or what do they think of that? And kind of that mind can be so active that it overrides even the very moment of possible interaction or performance or connection. That's when you know you're really out of control and the mind is really just running the show. And then we suffer a lot. And that's what we need to do, is we need to get out of that and into our lives. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm not describing anything new, but hopefully I'm highlighting a way of being that might have been so dominant for so long that it just feels like this is how it is. It feels like this is just who you are. This is all. This is what you got. Sorry, Got some malfunctioning hardware, but it's not. It's really not. It's actually not even hardware. It's software. It's a way of being in the world. So let's talk about how you can shift that. Sound good? Do you want to shift that what would it bring to your life if you did shift that? Why is it a must for you to learn how to shift this overthinking, overanalyzing pattern? Because if you're not clear on that, that you really want that, that you're willing to do that, that you need that change, that you want that change, that you must make that change, then this episode's gonna be kind of interesting. But it's probably not gonna do much because that overthinking pattern can be so familiar that we just keep doing it, even if, oh, yeah, that was a good idea to change that. Meh, whatever. Keep the momentum going here. So you really got to take a moment to reflect on why this is important to you. What will it bring to your life? How will things be different for you, for your family, for loved ones? And also, what's going to be the cost if you live in your head for another 10 years? Forget about 10. How about just one year, two years? So hopefully that's activating some sense of like, whoa, whoa, this is important. I want to shift this now because then we can share about how to do that. Because there's many ways to do that. So one way to do that a lot of people try is like meditation. Like, oh, I'm thinking too much. I'm going to meditate. Okay. Because that's the promise of meditation, right? It's like, oh, calm the mind. Get control of the mind. Identify with the observer, not the thoughts. And that does work for some people. And I've had periods of more in depth meditation practice. And what I often see, though, is it's like, maybe it works while the person is meditating and they're able to calm their minds. Maybe not. We just sit there for 30 minutes and kind of feel agitated thinking all the time what I found. And again, great. You could do that. You could do that for weeks or months or years. And I think there's tons of benefits to meditation. So I'm not saying don't do that, but the challenge I've seen with that is it's sort of a perpetual, okay, I gotta keep doing this, and then I'm gonna keep meditating, and then meditation is gonna become my way of life, and I'm gonna. And it becomes like the solution is sort of like an absorbing process in and of itself. Does that make sense? And if you're a big meditator, then, you know, don't listen to me. Keep doing your thing. It's working for you. But just sometimes I'm saying this because so many people I work with have this idea of like, I should meditate because that's, you know, what's the best thing to do? Maybe, maybe, maybe not. So let's look at it from a different angle. What is the goal? Meditate. So what will be that? If you did meditate a lot, then what? Well, then I would be, you know, different somehow. Okay, different how? Well, would you think less? What if that's not true? That's the part that I don't buy of meditation. It's like I don't think people's thoughts slow down. They might, but maybe they're doing like meditation all day long. But I've done a lot of meditation. I've been to meditation retreats 3 days, 10 days. Have periods of my life where I meditate an hour a day. I don't, eh, I don't see. I didn't see that much change in it. Again, while I'm meditating. Sure, there could be a shift, but I'm talking about your day to day life because how long are you going to spend meditating? Two hours a day, five hours a day, nine hours a day? All day? Are you going to live in a monastery? I mean, we got lives, we got families, we got businesses or jobs or whatever. So what do we do? Well, what you can get from meditation is not that the mind necessarily permanently slows down, it's that you become less fused with the thinking. So there's an observer that you're cultivating when you're meditating, right, the observer. You're watching the thoughts as they arise and go down. And then often we're just like fully in our experience, like boom, immersive 3D movie all around you. You forget that you're observing the characters on the screen. You're observing your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences. You are not them. And you can observe that. And meditation helps you build that capacity. So that's one benefit. But what if we were able to cultivate that observing awareness, like right now, not after 10 years of meditation, like right now. Can you notice that you're thinking? Can you also notice that you're breathing? Can you also notice the sounds of my voice and perhaps of the room that you're in right now, or any other ambient noise that's coming to you. Start to expand your awareness beyond just thinking. Most of us, it's like there's a different, you know, imagine a remote that has different channels. You know, simple remote, like 1 through 9 or something right there, like a keypad kind of remote. Channel two is thinking. And we just keep that sucker on channel two. We don't put it on channel one, three, five, seven, eight, nine, whatever, anything. Channel one might be your sense of hearing. Channel two is your thinking. Channel three is your sight. Channel four is body sensations. Channel five is more subtle energy sensations around you. Channel six is whatever. I mean, there's so many different channels and we're just plugged right into that one. And why do we plug into that one? Here's the thing. That obsessive thinking that getting in our heads is a way to try to stop our experience of life and lock it into something. It's a survival strategy because remember, it starts from threatened, I'm in danger. So you're having an experience of the moment of connection, of laughter, of a sunrise, of a sandwich of yourself running whatever you're doing, working at your desk. And then that kind of obsessive mind kicks into gear and what you're doing right in that moment. And we could be doing this so many times a day that we don't realize it's that this is what it's doing, but it's attempting to remove us from the experience of life. And it's like a buffer, it's like a virtual reality. It's like one layer removed from reality, from life. And I'm just going to reside in this instead of life? Why? Why might we do that? So let's just go with that premise. What if all of this kind of obsessive thinking is about stopping experience of life? And if that were the case, why might you want to stop the experience of life or some part of you? Why would some part of you might want to do that? Well, it's an illusion of safety, an illusion of control. If I just think about this enough, maybe I'll get control of things. And so we do this when we feel afraid of being out of control, afraid of uncertainty, afraid of experience. So to get out of our minds and into our lives, maybe the answer is to sit and meditate for many hours a day. But that doesn't necessarily give us courage. The courage to step right here, right now, into this experience with your heart open, say, yeah, show me what you got. Bring it on. There could be feelings right now. This person could like me or not like me. That person could want to date me or not want to date me. That person could think I'm smart and that person could think I'm done. All of these things could be happening simultaneously. And here I am, willing and ready for all of it. So what if the Antidote to overthinking is not meditation. What if it's willingness? Willingness to step fully into right now? Can you feel that? Can you feel this moment right now? And a growing willingness inside to experience it. And then from this place, you know, in this moment, it's not just all about being in your senses, right? I'm smelling and I'm seeing and I don't even think because I'm so in my senses. Like maybe, maybe, I don't know, for a few moments or something, but then our mind's going to think. It's okay, you don't have to stop it from thinking. But it's like, what is it going to focus on? So that survival brain that's going on hyperdrive is focused on your survival. What if you had it focused on something else? What if it wasn't focused on your survival and getting everyone to like you and making sure that everything was safe? What if it was focused on something else? What if it was focused on how can I make this better? What if it was focused on how can I light this person up? How can I make that person smile? How can I produce a better result for this client? How can I do a better job in this report? How can I make this presentation impactful? How can I make my kids smile? How can I delight my beloved today? What if that was fueling you? And again, it can get co opted by survival. How can I make this a great presentation so I don't get fired and die on the street? How can I delight my beloved so she doesn't leave me and abandon me so I die on the street? How can I, you know, delight my children? So I'm not a terrible father who's worthy of dying on the street? There's a lot of momentum to that sucker and it can wanna co opt anything. But it's not about that survival. It's about something else. It's about something bigger. It's about something better. And you might say, well, geez, I don't know, I still feel this like graspy uncertainty inside. Okay, okay, open up to something even bigger. Then let's just zoom, zoom, zoom way out. First things first, you're gonna die. Let's just, let's just. I'm just stating the facts here, all right? You're gonna die, I'm gonna die. Everyone we know is gonna die. That's one thing for certain. Hey, we got some certainty there, okay? You know, fact number two, you were born, otherwise you wouldn't be here listening to this. So there's A period of time you were born. And then you're going to live for a while and you're going to die. There we go. End of episode. No, but that's what we got right. That's the sort of the baseline. Now what are we doing here? What are we going to do in this time? What matters? What's meaningful? What do you want to create? What kind of game do you want to play? What kind of human do you want to be? What kind of impact do you want to make? What do you want people to say about you after you're here? What kind of legacy do you want to leave? What do you want on your tombstone? If there was a sentence about you on a tombstone, here lies whatever your name is, he or she is. Was what? And it can only be a sentence on a tombstone. It's not going to be a paragraph, you know, what were they like? What were you like? Who'd you impact? Who'd be at your funeral? What would they say about you at the funeral? Were you inspiring? Were you loving? Were you generous? Were you caring? Were you kind? Were you determined? Were you relentless? Were you passionate? Did you do something that felt meaningful to someone around you? That's what's going to matter at the end. Are you listening to the whispers, the calling of your soul and having the willingness and the courage to fucking step up and go after it? Are you so disconnected and so absorbed in that moment to Momo made up survival stories. Oh, if they don't like me, I'm dead. I better obsess about this next meeting. And oh my gosh, do I have the little fat wrinkle on my lower back? And oh my gosh, how does that look? And oh, is that noise obsessing, blocking out the bigger calling here? Remember, born and die, something in between, that's all we got. What do you want it to be? And maybe it's not just what you want it to be. Maybe it's going to be a mixture of what do you want, but what you want is coming to you from something. Why are you here? You have a purpose, many purposes for being here. Are you living some of them? None of them, all of them? Are you living them to your full potential? Are you hungry? Are you hungry for more? Are you willing to take risks to create them more? Are you willing to feel fully? Are you willing to have your heart broken? Are you willing to fucking fail and fall flat on your face and get back up? Are you willing to live? Because anyone that I've ever talked to who's stuck in obsessive thought, has one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. Yeah, I'm willing to live. I don't want to go out too, and me included, the same boat. So, you know, my job, my path is to figure out how to keep, you know, keeping that foot on the gas and relax that foot on the brake so we can go a little bit more, so we can live with a little more freedom, a little more joy, a little more expressiveness. Yes, let's do it. And if this sounds kind of abstract or like, whoa, where's he going with this? This is. This translates directly into like, what you do tomorrow, what you do tonight in your conversation with your next person, with your next friend, with a family or with your kids, with your boss, with your co workers, with your clients, with your customers, with anyone. Just you being by yourself. Because your mind's gonna start to focus in a different way. What's meaningful, what's matter for what's important starts to become more clear when you're thinking in this big picture way. And it trickles down to like, okay, it's a, you know, Tuesday night and I'm with my sweetheart or I'm on a date with somebody. What do I got here? I got this moment. What do I want to do? I'm going to be willing, I'm going to say that thing. I'm going to take that risk. I'm going to compliment that person. I'm going to speak up in that meeting, I'm going to share. I'm going to say yes. Sign me up for that project. I'm going to say yes. I'm going to start that business. I'm going to say yes. And if you start to do that, if you start to live that way, then you override that survival obsessive thinking. Instead of trying to calm it down and calm it away. And then it builds up like a fire and you calm it down. You spend your whole life fanning that, trying to dampen that flame. What if you just let that flame still be there? Say it's a little obsessive thing, but now you got something so much bigger to focus on, so much more meaningful, so much life going on because you have so much fucking willingness to put yourself out there in every single way imaginable that all of a sudden that little obsessive part just, you know, becomes so small in comparison. What then? What about that? Chew on that. Alright, let's talk about how you turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Here's your action step. Reflect on this. If I stopped obsessing about whatever the stuff you obsess about is, oh, I overthink interactions or I overthink this thing, or I'm obsessing of that, whatever it is, pick the big one or two that you do. If I stopped doing that and I stepped fully into my life, I would. So if I stopped obsessing about X or Y, whatever it is for you, and I stepped fully into my life, then I would. And you're gonna finish that sentence with whatever comes to your mind. Do that multiple times, because that's gonna show you your next steps. It's gonna show you how to step more fully into your life. And the more you step more fully into your life, the more that obsessive thinking just kind of dwindles down. So I'm excited. I'm excited for you to see what emerges for you. Thank you for being with me in today's episode. 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. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. 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. Sam.