Give Yourself The Gift Of Confidence

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey, welcome to today's episode and Merry Christmas Eve, everyone. It is the day before Christmas, and I don't know if you're listening from outside the United States or. I myself am not a Christian. However, Christmas is a huge cultural phenomenon, and many people across the world celebrate it. And in the United States here, we celebrate by buying a crap ton of gifts and consumer electronics and other things to give to each other. And you might be doing that, and kudos to you if you are and you're excited about opening your stockings tomorrow morning. But what I think we all really want and why Christmas and even the sort of traditions that led into Christmas, from pagan rituals and other things, why those things matter to us is because it's about giving gifts. And there's something about giving and receiving gifts that It's a very profound and powerful gesture. And so I thought today it would be fun to teach you how to give yourself some of the most valuable gifts, primarily the gift of confidence. How to give yourself this gift of confidence, because truly, it is you who gives it to yourself. It's not some external thing that you're gonna get. You got that new phone and now you feel confident. That doesn't work. We all know that doesn't work. The real shift is gonna be an internal gift that you give to yourself. And notice the language here is not a gift that someone else gives you. Like someone gives you a compliment or someone thinks you're attractive, or someone thinks you're worth more money, so they pay you more. That is not the true source of confidence. It's actually an internal experience. It's an internal shift. So someone says you're attractive, and then your mind says, oh, that's a rule. That when I receive that positive energy from someone, then I can inside tell myself that I'm worthwhile, that I am lovable, that I am attractive, that I'm desirable. Because this person said it. Now I can tell myself that. Now, of course, if that person didn't say it or if they rejected me, then I can't tell myself that, because those are the rules. What we do is we limit ourselves and we put ourselves at the victim of the world around us, at the mercy of the world around us. If we get positive feedback, we can feel good. And if we don't, then we by default start to feel more bad about ourselves, worse about ourselves. So we have to break that pattern. And if there's one gift that you can give to yourself during the season, the gift of confidence is the most valuable thing. And I've broken it down into three little mini gifts, little things that you can do for yourself that are going to build up the that overarching gift of confidence. So let's jump into the first one right now. The first one. Oh, by the way, you can engage with me in conversation@drinkforthshyguy.com that's shrinkforthshyguy.com Check out the website. It's pretty cool. Got pictures and links, and you can subscribe to itunes on there. You can also leave me a message on the site, which is pretty awesome, and I'll listen to it and respond to you. And you can also give a call to the studio hotline, 206-338-3176. And of course, check us out at facebook.com shrinkforthyguy but what is this first gift that I want to talk about? It is what I call the gift of self compassion. The gift of self compassion. Now, if you listen to any of the episodes preceding this one, you know I'm a big proponent of self compassion. In fact, it's what I teach people to do in all of my programs. There's a whole module on it in Confidence Unleashed. There's a whole chapter or a whole section on it in my book the Solution to Social Anxiety, because I found it is the most important thing that we can do that we can give ourselves that protects us from rejection, from discouragement, from self criticism. It is the antidote to all of that internal negative suffering and pain that we experience. Because what I found is it's not required that we have to be so hard on ourselves. And that's the first gift that I want you to give yourself, is give yourself a break. Give yourself that gift of compassion. You don't need to be so hard on yourself. You don't need to be standing over yourself with a stick ready to beat yourself if you make a mistake. That's not going to teach you to not make mistakes. That's going to teach you to be fearful and restricted and inhibited and just be quiet and hold yourself back and then not have the life you want. And then you beat yourself up even more to go get out there and make it happen. But then you get scared of making a mistake because you're going to beat yourself up. Do you see the cycle that you can get stuck in? That's what happens when we beat ourselves up. So we have to give ourselves the gift of self compassion. People say, what is that? How do I do that? Well, it's not as complicated as we'd like to make it. It's really quite simple. Think about someone that you love. A friend, a parent, a partner, husband, wife, a child. If you have children, a pet, even if you have a pet, someone, anyone that you love. And then think about how you treat them when they made a mistake, when they mess something up. Like just last night, our little guy is 11 months old now almost, and he's got his fourth tooth coming in. And if you have kids, you know anything about that, you know, you never really think about this, but do you realize that for the first couple years of our lives, teeth are erupting from our gums? They're like pushing their way out of our gums and ripping them open and coming out. It's pretty intense. And of course he's hurting and he's crying. It's late at night, and he's thrashing around and just screaming because he's in pain. And there's nothing we can do to alleviate the pain. But fortunately, the chemists at Oragel have come up with a compound that numbs their gums a little bit. So my wife is going to put some of this stuff on his gums. And he's crying and screaming, and she gets a little bit on her finger and she starts to move it towards his mouth.

And.

And he's perfected this technique that I call the fish on the deck technique, which is, have you ever caught a big fish or been on a fishing boat or anything like that? Or maybe you've seen a show where they haul in this big fish, like a big salmon or something, and does it just lay there when it gets on the boat? No, it thrashes, doesn't it? It's like flailing its whole body. And if they don't do anything, if they don't get it and gaff it, as they say, then it'll flop right off the boat and get away. And so he's perfected this technique where she brings her finger in towards his gum to put the aura gel on the sore spot, and he thrashes his neck around in a way that makes it virtually impossible to get it onto his gums. So she tries that once and she loses the stuff that's on her finger and doesn't get it on there. And then she's like, where did I put the tube of ora gel? And he's crying and screaming and she's like, I don't know where I put the tube. And she's looking around for it. And now in that moment, what did I say to her? God, Candace, why are you so stupid? What the hell is wrong with you? How could you lose the tube? Yeah, that wouldn't go so well for the rest of the night, right? No, it's someone that I love. So I'm like, okay, don't worry about it. I'm sure it's around here somewhere. Of course, she's more frustrated with herself because we always get frustrated with ourselves, right? So she's like, God, Candace, where did you put the. Come on. And I was like, trying to calm her down. Like, it's fine. He's okay. We'll get it. Let's turn the light on. Let's look for it. Sure enough, it was wrapped in some sheet here. But how do you treat someone that you love? Well, I used patience there, right? Because there could have been a part of me that wants to say, what the hell is wrong with you? But I know that I love her. So I just take a deep breath and I'm like, it's okay. And when we're patient with someone that we love, can you bring that patience to yourself? Can you treat yourself with such kindness and patience and respect and love? And anytime you're not, anytime there's a voice in your head that's going, you suck. You're terrible. You're awful. Really, just make a decision that I'm not going to treat myself that way anymore. I'm going to treat myself as if I love myself, as if I was treating someone that I really cared about, that was supportive of, and I want him to be on the same team with the same side with. That's how I'm going to treat myself. Perhaps that can even be a New Year's resolution, which we'll get into next week's show about New Year, new you, and how to really create a new identity for yourself. But something to think about. Can you treat yourself? Why not treat yourself with that more kindness, that more compassion. We're going to take a little break right now, and when we get back, we're going to jump into the next two gifts that you can give yourself for this holiday season.

Are you tired of worrying about other people's judgments? Tired of being held back by fear and self doubt? Do you want to make rapid shifts in your level of confidence? The truth is, challenges with confidence were created with others. You learned them from parents, teachers, peers. You learn them in groups and the fastest way to unlearn them, to completely transform them, is through groups as well. That is why Dr. Aziz has created the core confidence group program. It allows you to work directly with Dr. Aziz and five others who are overcoming the same challenges you are. Together, you set goals, break through old patterns of shyness, and support each other to creating outstanding lives. To find out more about upcoming group opportunities, to go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com and click on Confidence Coaching.

Welcome back. The next gift that you can give yourself, the overarching gift of giving yourself the confidence that you need in your life, is what I call the gift of strengths. The gift of strengths. And that is really being able to know and own and deeply internalize, deeply take in and bring into your core a knowledge of your strengths. Not just an intellectual knowledge, but in your gut, really knowing and feeling on a deep level that you have a lot to offer, that you are really aware of what it is that you have to offer. Because so much of the time, so many of us are not seeing those strengths. We're discounting them. We're thinking, oh, they're not that great. Oh, other people, everyone can do this. And it's amazing to what extent we can be blind to our own strengths. My guess is that you are at least partially blind to your own strengths. I know I am unless I continually turn around and focus on it and really bring it to my awareness. Otherwise, it's easy to just look past it. For example, I was working with a client, and this guy is attractive. Got a lot going for him. He's very intelligent. He's actually a resident at a hospital. He's a doctor. And so we were talking, the subject of strengths came up, and I started asking him about what strengths he had or what he saw in himself. And he's kind of like, meh, I don't know, not much. I can't really think of any. That's the most common response I get. It's like, meh. And I'm like, really? Because from the outside, I'm like, look at this guy. He's got so much going for him. And he was wanting to become more confident in work and in dating and relationships. And I'm like, this guy's going to have no problem with dating once he starts to see how much he brings to the table. And so I started to ask him about that, like, what kind of strengths do you think? What does it take to get through medical school to become a doctor? And he's like, well. And then he started to Be able to list them off because it wasn't about him anymore. Right. It was about generally someone who went through medical school. So it kind of opened up a doorway. And of course, you know, you imagine there's a bunch of strengths, right? Intelligence, persistence, determination, patience, all kinds of stuff. Being able to operate on little sleep, being really motivated, being dedicated to studying and willing to sacrifice. I mean, there's all kinds of strengths that come from, that require, that are sculpted in you to become a doctor. And once he was able to see that about the training and what it takes to get through it, then he was able to start applying it to himself and he was able to give himself the gift of seeing his strength. Can you give yourself the same gift? It's really helpful when someone from the outside can highlight those for you, because then we can take it in a little better. But right now, as you're listening to my voice, can you give yourself that gift? What gets in the way? What's stopping you from really just acknowledging and thinking of your strengths? I find the biggest force as an internal one is a dismissing or cynical voice that says, meh, yeah, you're not that great. Oh, come on, don't get a big head. Don't think too much of yourself. Or, yeah, but you're not that way all the time, 100% of the time, so it doesn't count. You're not patient all the time. Remember that one time when you weren't patient? So I'm sorry, that's not a strength. And that's just a critic. That's just the inner propaganda campaign that wants to keep you feeling small and stuck. And if you know anything about, check out my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety, because I talk in there about why we have the propaganda campaign of that critic, and it actually is a result of the critic is trying to keep us safe. Safe from going out in the world and doing things and maybe feeling emotional pain and rejection and that sort of thing. So don't buy into that voice. If you get anything from this episode, don't buy into that voice. Don't have that voice. Be your guiding, directing force in your life. My God, you're going to live a restricted life. If that voice is your inner counsel, your inner coach, you got to fire that guy, kick his ass to the curb and find the one that says, you know what? There's nothing egotistical about owning my strengths. In fact, quite the opposite. That braggart person, that egotistical person that needs to be telling everyone all the time about everything they're doing that is coming from a place of really not internalizing and owning their strengths. That's what makes them need that continual external validation. But you don't need that if you own your strengths. So think of one or two or even three right now as I'm talking. Don't wait to do this in some mythical future. One day I'll do that. Right now, what's your top strength? What's one thing about you that's awesome? Are you funny? Can you make people laugh? Are you kind? Are you patient? Are you a good listener? Are you intelligent? Do you give yourself credit for the intelligence that you have? That could be intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, physical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence with your body, artistic intelligence, creativity, something, anything. Can you find it right now and just claim it and own it? Because that is giving yourself a deeply profound gift. Can you really feel what comes from seeing and knowing that strength? Can you feel it in your chest? You can also add evidence to it. I know that I'm funny because. And then think of some of the things that are evidence that help you know that you're funny because I make people laugh. Because just the other day I was talking to so and so and we were having a good time and we were joking around. So you find the evidence to build up that strength and you own it. You take it in and you make it part of who you are. And that will give your confidence the biggest boost. Because you don't fix yourself. You don't get confident by focusing on your flaws and trying to get rid of them. You get confident by building on your strengths, by moving forward and saying, yeah, I have some flaws, but I'm still awesome. Look at all these things I have going for me. And they don't have to be in order for it to be a strength. You don't have to be the best in the world. That's another fallacy. Well, it's not a strength because I'm not the best or the most. No, no, no. This isn't about comparison to other people. This is about you and a quality in yourself that you feel good about or that you could feel good about if you let yourself. So think on those strengths. We're going to take a quick break, and when you get back, we're going to get into the final gift that you can give yourself to boost your confidence in your life. I want to take one moment to acknowledge a listener who left me a message through the website shrink. For the shy guy, it was really touching, really compelling, and he just shared how much he's grown, and it's awesome to hear about his progress. So let's jump into that right now.

Hi, Dr. Aziz. My name is Will, and I am enrolled in both your programs, confidence unleashed and 30 days to dating Mastery. And I just want to thank you for offering these two programs online. I've been really sticking to them a lot, and I found that I'm able to do a lot more. I'm not as shy as I used to. I am definitely a lot more confident. And the most important thing, I think, is that I feel. But I love myself. I love myself a lot more. I'm not beating myself up as much as I'm used to. So I thank you for your time listening to this and thank you for the amazing ipod, the streams that you do on shrink for the shy guy, and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you. Now we're going to get into the final gift, which is the gift of significance. Giving yourself the gift of significance. Significance means important. It's a basic human need. And we all need to feel important, special, worthwhile, unique, valuable in some way. And I learned these six human needs from Anthony Robbins. I find them to be one of the simplest and most useful needs theories that are out there. There's many out there. Maslow's hierarchy of needs was one. There's a lot that are out there, but this one I find to be the most simple, direct, and valuable. And one of those basic human needs is the gift or the need of significance. And most people don't give themselves that gift. In fact, a lot of people think it's bad. I shouldn't want to feel significant. That makes me egotistical or arrogant. I shouldn't want to feel that way at all. But the reality is, we all do. We all need to feel that way. And the question is, how are you going to meet that need? And most of us have it set up, the game set up so that we can't win. It's all feel. When will you let yourself feel significant? When will you let yourself feel proud of who you are? For most people, especially if you're an achiever, it's when I reach my goal. When I reach my big goal. Oh, yeah. No, no, not the small goals along the way, Aziz. The big goal. When I'm making 250,000 in a year, then I can feel proud of myself. And right now I'm making 150. So sucks. I need to get better. Or when I have that amazing woman in my bed, then I can feel proud of myself. Significant, worthwhile, special, valuable. But until then, nah, I'm a loser. I'm not good enough. I got to drive myself to get there. And that's what most of us are doing. We have it set up that we only get significance when we achieve something great. When we go to the moon, when we're the best in the world, when we win the race or something like that. And the rest of the time, it's not like we feel mostly significant, but we get that boost when we achieve that goal. No, the rest of the time, most of us are walking around feeling totally insignificant. It's not like, oh yeah, I'm a great guy. Oh, sweet, I got the girl. Oh, I feel even better. It's, I don't have the girl yet. I suck. I'm not good enough. What's wrong with me? I don't have anything to offer. Why would she want to be with me? Yada yada, so on and so forth, and we're completely starving ourselves of significance. And again, what is the external or. Sorry, I just gave it away. I was going to say what is the trigger or the significance in this old way of being? It's external, right? I get the thing out there, I get the validation from her. She says hi, she smiles back at me, or I get the raise, I get the promotion, some external thing, then I'll feel significant. Now, why are we all running around with this super high bar trying to be the best in order to be significant? Because most many of us learned growing up that in order to be lovable, in order to be cherished by others, valued by others, wanted by others, loved and appreciated by others, we got to be significant. We got to be the best. We learned that. We learned that growing up in school. We learned that from the media, we learned that from sports. We learned that from everything. It's like, well, look at the quarterback. He's got the most beautiful woman in school. Geez, it must be because he's so significant. And in some aspects of life, in some periods of our life, people are more drawn to significance. The reality is now in your life, you don't need to go around that big loop through significance ville in order to get love. You can just go directly there by giving and receiving more love directly. The real obstacle, talking to that woman, it's like, well, I'm not significant enough yet. Just go talk to her and be yourself and give and receive love and share a connection, and you don't even need to be the most significant. Women don't care if you're the richest or the best. I mean, a few of them do, but they're wrapped up in significance themselves. And you probably don't want to date a woman like that anyway. In fact, I was just watching a YouTube video. I listened to a lot of music on YouTube and if you know the. The DJ music producer bass Hunter, you're familiar with him. If you're in the nerdy genre, you might. He has a song about Dota, which is the precursor to League of Legends. And I played it many, many years ago. Some guy, a client was just telling me that there was like a tournament for $10 million around Dota. And I was like, holy shit. What? I picked the wrong career, man. Should have gone pro back in college, but I play a lot of that game. And I came across this DJ named Bass Hunter who had a song about playing Dota and a bunch of other like. It's like Euro techno stuff. It's pretty awesome. You should check them out. Check out Bass Hunter and then D O T A. Anyway, he's got this mix on there among many others, and it's a bunch of his music videos. And they're the cheesiest music videos you can imagine. Just like lots of girls dancing in the club, kind of waving their hair back and forth again and again and again. I mean, that's like his whole videos. But there's one video where they're setting it up where he's gonna race this other guy in like a street race with these souped up cars. And there's this beautiful woman there, of course, because it's a Base Hunter video. And she walks, he's walking into the race area and there's another dude that he's racing and she's all over the other dude, like, you know, touching him and laughing. And Base Hunter's kind of like, ugh, I want her. And then he's in his car, he's about to race, and he. And she leans into the window and gives him a kiss on his cheek. And he gets this look of like, oh my God, like I'm gonna get her. And it's very clear in the setup of the video that whoever wins this race is gonna get the girl. And it's a great metaphor, but if that happened in reality, I was watching that video and I was like, why the hell would he want that woman? I mean, she's hot, but she's clearly demonstrating. I only want the most significant guy. The winner gets me. I sell myself. Winner. I'm that wrapped up in significance and image. And I was like, dude, she's going to leave you so fast for the next guy who can get her into something like, watch out, man. Really find a woman who is heart centered like you are. And if you yourself are really wrapped up in significance, you want to don't, you can't get rid of that need, but you want to change the order. You want to put love and connection above significance because otherwise you're going to be chasing it your whole life and, and it's never going to give you what you want. So you need to give yourself that gift right now. Give yourself the gift of putting love and connection first and of significance. Feeling proud of who you are for your achievements and your accomplishments right now. Feeling proud of yourself for something small, maybe just choosing a healthy breakfast option. Feel proud of yourself for that, for taking care of your body. Feel proud of yourself for where you are in your life right now. Feel proud of yourself for listening to this freaking podcast. I mean, who invests in themselves in this way? And you've made it through the end of the episode, so you're obviously dedicated to yourself. Give yourself some credit for where you are in your life and where you've been and who you're going to be and where you're going. Don't wait until you've achieved the biggest thing in the world. Give yourself that gift of significance right now. Great. So we're about the end of the episode. Let's end with a quick action step. We'll make this very short time for action. Your action step for today is to pick one or all three of these and do it. Whether it's self, compassion, your strengths or significance. Pick one of the gifts and decide right now which one you're going to give yourself first. Ideally, you do all three, but pick one and then ask yourself, how can I give myself the gift of X? How can I give myself the gift of self compassion or the gift of significance or the gift of strength? And just ask yourself that question and see what answers come to you and then do it and give yourself that gift. Well, thanks so much for joining me today in this episode. Next week we're going to be jumping into our New Year's show, which I call New Year New you. How to make 2015 your year. You're going to learn some very valuable skills and techniques about creating a new identity for yourself, how to step into that, how to grow your in ways that you've never done in the past. And I mean, the future is incredibly bright. There's so much there for you. I'm excited to be stepping into this new Year with you, and so until we speak again next week, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the Shy Guy with doctor 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. Sam.