Heroes

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 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 show. How are you today? I'm excited to be with you today. I wanted to talk about something that I think is going to help you to identify what's already there for you and. And if you don't have any, then to find it. And the it that I'm talking about is a hero. Or heroes, I'd say plural. We want to have multiple mini heroes. And this actually came about during a conversation with a client I was having and I asked him out of the blue, like, do you have any heroes? And he's like, uh, er. And that might be your experience as well. So we're going to dig into all of this. If you're enjoying this show and you want to go further, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com you'll be able to find show notes, transcript of the show. You'll also be able to get a copy of my ebook for free. Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence, which is really in depth. And it goes through five core steps that I do with anyone that I work with. And you can have that for free if you go to shrinkforthshyguy.com so lots of good stuff there. And you know, if you want to go to itunes and give this show a five star review, that would be much appreciated. And let's talk about heroes. So do you have a hero? Do you have. So when I say that, do you have a hero? Does someone come to mind? Think about that just for a second who might be one of your heroes. I'll share a few more thoughts about this. Maybe you have someone instantly that comes to mind. But sometimes people are like, I don't know what my client did. He's like, I don't. And here are some thoughts to help you flesh that out. So the dictionary definition of a hero is a person who is admired or idealized for Courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. And, you know, that's sort of okay of a definition, I guess. It's not exactly how I hold it. I mean, maybe admired for qualities that you want to have. That's how I think of a hero. There's someone that I want to be like them. So maybe they're noble qualities, although I don't use that word. I want to think about it. But they show up in the world, they behave in the world, they do something in the world in the way that you want to be able to do that. They show you the way. They're a leader for you. They're like a beacon or a lighthouse. This is the way to go. You can be like this. That's what a hero is. And heroes can come from anywhere. They can be people that you know personally, like your mom or your dad can be one of your heroes, or it could be a family friend or a teacher you had when you were young. Or it can be someone you don't know, someone that you saw in the media, or an author. You read their book, or some celebrity or something like that, or an actor or. It doesn't have to be a real person. It can be a character from a movie can be a hero. But at the end of the day, it's someone real or fictional that you admire, you look up to, because they're doing things that you want to do. They're being how you want to be in the world now. They don't have to be. You don't have to want to be them in every single area of life. Maybe they're your hero in business, or they're your hero when it comes to social interactions, or they're your hero when it comes to being strong and powerful in your body. So you admire them for that quality. Now, maybe you don't want to copy or model every aspect of their life. Who knows, Maybe their personal life's a flaming failure or something like that. And if so, maybe you want to pick a hero who's not just amazing at work. Well, who knows? Some people have Steve Jobs as a hero, and there was a lot of unknowns about his personal life or questionable things that people might not want to emulate. And yet a certain aspect of him can be something that you want to model, right? Like this incredible creativity. So that flushes it out a little bit. So I want to re. Ask this question. Do you have heroes who. Who would be some of your heroes thinking back the course of your life? So. And sometimes people think of mentors, maybe that's a word that people use. I've had some mentors in my life, and I've used that word too. But in a way, isn't a mentor just kind of like a hero? Like a mentor has done something that you want to do or lives in the way that you want to live. And it's a pretty cool relationship in the sense that you actually have access to talk to them. And I've been blessed with that many times in my life, and it's helped me rapidly grow and accelerate. In fact, I'm at the point now where I actually seek out mentors. So whether you think of them as a mentor or not, whether you know them or not, do you have a hero now, as we've talked about it for a few minutes. Good. And if not, well, keep listening. Someone will come, I'm sure. And if not, maybe you'll start to think about how you can find a hero, someone to model, someone to emulate. I'm gonna share a number of mine with you in this episode just so you get to see the power of having heroes, how they can benefit you in your life. And then we'll also have you reflect on this and figure out how to use this in your own life. So one of my first heroes. Now, I don't remember heroes when I was a kid. Honestly, I don't know. I didn't have, like, I wanted to be Michael Jordan or something like that. Like a lot of kids, a lot of the heroes that I know of and think of are when I got a little bit older. I'd say one of my first heroes is probably kids that I went to school with. Certain kids like Tim Cushing or Chris Calzetta. These are guys that like, I wanted to be like, I wanted to emulate them or copy them. My cousin Kevin was probably one of my first heroes. And I remember he was like five, six years older than me. And. And he's just, I mean, still to this day is so self assured when he talks. But he was like that when, you know, when I was like 8, 6, 7, 8 years old. I looked up to him and so he's what, you know, 11, 12, 13. And even at that age, so self assured in the way that he talked and confident with making jokes and like, just in his own interests, he'd share them. I just really admired him and he just seemed so cool to me. And I remember I admired him so much that not only would I kind of copy his voice, tone or the way that he carried himself, because I wanted to seem you know, back then, I don't know if I was a little kid, I was like, I want to seem self assured. It was just. There was something about that confidence that seemed cool or powerful or badass. You know, that's what I wanted to. I don't know what words I would have used as a seven year old kid, but I wanted it. And I remember I would emulate it, but I was just emulating everything. So even he had these little twitches he'd sometimes do with his face and his nose, and he'd run the palm of his hand up his nose a little bit. I think he had allergies and stuff. So he got. He would use it to kind of clear a little bit of what was in his nose or wipe away something that was dribbling out. But he kind of. It became a habit where he'd just kind of do that a lot, even if his nose wasn't leaking or something. So I would emulate that too. I usually copy. Whatever Kevin did, I would do. And a lot of the mentors that I really consciously remember, how much they impacted me and how I used what they taught me. And the heroes that I've had have come a bit later in my life. And it really began when my personal growth journey began when I was 20 years old. That's when I really started to seek mentors, seek heroes, people that I could emulate, people I could be. And one of the very first ones that came into my life was a man named David d'. Angelo. Oh, yes, some of you know him. And he is a dating coach or a dating advice teacher, maybe what he would peg himself as. And it's a Persona, it's a pen name of a guy named Eben Pagan. And some of you might have heard of him. And he became an early mentor, a teacher of mine. And it wasn't a mentor because I didn't know him, but he was a hero in the sense that I wanted to be like him. I wanted to emulate his ability to walk up and talk to any woman and. And also his ability to like confidently speak and teach in front of a group of people. There was something about that that I found really appealing as well. And so I learned a tremendous amount from him. And at the same time, I had a mentor in my life that I met and knew a guy by the name of Marcelino. And I was working at a counseling crisis hotline, getting some experience before I went to. I knew I wanted to go study psychology. And I met him and he was awesome, man he had like long hair and was just like out of the box, man. He was like in his 30s. He was probably about 15 years older than I was and just super hippie guy, really intelligent hippie guy, well read. Had his own radio show locally that was all about sort of exposing what's behind the scenes of politics and international affairs and, and introduced me to all kinds of things. Introduced me to Burning man, introduced me to psychedelics. I mean all these things that were just so outside of my realm and basically showed me a new way of. I mean, introduced me to Eckhart Tolle, meditation, spirituality, everything came through my experiences with him that kind of opened up this whole other part of me. So these people, here's just two that I mentioned, but these are people that are modeling things that I want to be in the world, ways that I want to be in the world. I wanted to be more awake, more free, more self aware. And that's what I was getting from Marcelino, from David d'. Angelo. I was getting more confidence, more boldness, more directness. And so you might be wondering, okay, there's someone in your life that has something that they're able to do what you want to do. What do you do? The answer is. The answer is you stay tuned because I'm going to tell you what the answer is right after this break. Alright, be right back in one sec.

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Hey, welcome back. The answer is you hang out with them. You hang out with them as much as possible and if it's a person, then you do that and you want to set up, you want to be able to create a relationship with them as a mentor. So this is how you take a hero and sort of get their abilities and be able to become more like them is to spend time with them and to watch how they operate, watch how they think, watch how they communicate, share your ideas, ask them their questions. I've done this with mentors a lot and you study them, you model them and that's what I had the opportunity to do with Marcelino. And if you're wondering about how to create these relationships, partly it's about being really open to it. So I've had some mentorships that just appear into my life and I'm a seeker of knowledge and of truth and of wisdom. And so if I see someone that's got something or is capable or something, I will move towards them. I had another mentor in graduate school where he was just a. There was David Burns, who's a pretty well known cognitive therapist, was teaching these small group classes at Stanford off hours, like it wasn't an official class. I sought those out because I was like, that guy knows a lot. But instead of him being my mentor, there was a student of his who'd trained with him for years and was like, I'd say almost maybe more skilled in some ways than David Burns because he was just so, such a big heart. And I really loved him and appreciated him. And so I not only went to these group classes, but then kind of hung out and then kind of wanted to hang out with him and started pursuing hanging out with him and asking him if we could go out to dinner after the class. I would take him out to dinner and then just pepper him with questions. So if you kind of move towards these people, sometimes there's a doorway and you might be wondering like, ah, but they're, they're important or they're successful or they're better than me, so why would they want to spend time with me? And the truth is, because mentoring someone is deeply nourishing and rewarding. Because sharing wisdom and, you know, hanging out with someone who like, wants to be like you, wants to soak up your knowledge and your insights, is incredibly flattering. Helps you feel significant and helps you feel like you're contributing, which on a deep level everyone wants. So I want to tell you the story about another hero. And as I'm doing this, I want you to be thinking about who are your heroes? How can you find your heroes? So I'm going to tell you a story about how I found one of the a major hero in my life. And it all begins at Coachella. Oh yes. If you don't know what Coachella is, it's A massive music festival down in Southern California. And it was so massive, like so many tens of thousands of people, that they had to split it up into, Instead of a 13 day weekend, they had to make it 23 day weekends that were exactly the same back to back. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, same lineup, same performers, doing the same set two weeks in a row. Just crazy. In any case, I love that festival. And I would go there and just hang out in like the EDM rave tent for like, you know, nine of the 10 hours that I was there, or however many hours you were there in a day. And I remember there was a DJ playing and there's like a lot of people around, right? And I'm dancing and I look over a little ways away and there's this guy with like kind of disheveled hair and a hat on backwards and tank top and shorts. And I just, all of a sudden my eye is drawn to him and I just want to keep watching him. And there's something about him that I instantly, I want, I want to be like that. And it's not because he's like a super good looking guy or muscular guy or anything like that. It was his energy. He was like beaming, self assuredness, relaxed confidence, playfulness. And he was like interactive in a way. You know, a lot of people are just kind of facing the dj, bumping up and down, bobbing their head. He was like kind of turning to different people and engaging them. And at one point he kind of grabbed this woman's hand and they kind of did this little dance and she seemed to really love it. And then a little bit later, another kind of woman, and I don't think these were women that he knew. Like another woman kind of moved towards him and wanted to engage with him. And it just, there was this way about him that was like, oh, what is that? And here's the thing, if you really want to grow rapidly, you move towards stuff like that, right? Like a little kid who's just like, ooh, what is that? So sure enough, that's what I did. When the set was over and there's kind of a break in between the DJs and stuff, I walked right up to him and I told him all what I just told you. I was like, wow, you're emitting like this race, really strong, confident, positive energy. And basically I didn't have a point to sharing that other than to express love and connection and also maybe see if I could learn something from him. And I was not prepared for how he was going to Share something with me that changed the course of my life. It was amazing. So he said, yeah, oh, thanks, man. I just got back from this seminar. It was totally life changing. It was called Unleash the Power within with Tony Robbins. I was like, I see life changing, you say? And I was like, well, the proof is in the pudding. Look at that, dude. I've been working on self confidence and being more expressive and free for a number of at that point, maybe three years or. Yeah, three years. And so I was like, okay, I want, you know, I want some of that. So I went home and that day looked up, I didn't even know who Tony Robbins was. I looked him up online, looked up a seminar. It turns out they were doing a satellite event in San Francisco, which is where near where I lived at the time. And satellite events, I don't think they do them anymore, but they were basically like they would recreate his four day seminar without him. There's. And they would have just because there's so much footage of him doing this upw Unleash the Power within event that they would basically just take an event, have filmed it, and then just show you all the footage of him there. And then they have a facilitator sometimes like guide an exercise or do this in room stuff. And it was a small event, maybe 200 people, which is very small for a Tony Robbins event. And. And it was incredible. So at the time I was in graduate school. I was there because I wanted to study how to rapidly transform myself and other people. How do we grow from shyness and stuck and low self esteem and hating ourselves and feeling depressed and anxious to feeling bold, powerful, confident, awesome. Yeah, that's what I wanted. That's what I was studying in my life. That's how I was studying David d' Angelo and personal development and reading tons. And I get to graduate school, I'm like, I'm at Stanford. This is gonna be the best training in the world. I wanna learn exactly how to do all this stuff from the greatest teachers. This is gonna be incredible. And then I found out, it's like, now we're gonna talk about the theory of assessment and diagnosis of clinical disorders. And it was so disorder focused and treatment. Not treatment focused, diagnosis focused. And so within the box and you couldn't ask questions about like, well, does this thing even really exist that we're studying? And you know, it really steeped in the medical model because it was a bio kind of based. So even though we were not prescribing meds, we can't prescribe meds as psychologists, at least in California, some states can. But, man, it was just kind of like a little bit soul crushing. And I wasn't learning what I wanted to learn. I was like, man. And I remember I was looking, I found the David Burns thing, you know, the training in the evenings once a week about cognitive behavioral stuff. And he was really awesome. So I was like, kind of seeking out a little bit of what I wanted outside. But, man, the classes were grinding. And yet I go to this Tony Robbins seminar, and within the first minute of him coming out on the stage, I'm hooked. He comes out and he just, you know, you've seen Tony, he walks tall and he's like, you know someone. Steve Ozanachi, guy I know and love, he calls him a self. Tony Robbins is the self help stud. And, you know, he walks out out there and he's all tall and strong, uses strong gesticulation. So instantly I'm like, ooh, what can I learn from this guy? What can I model from this guy? Just from how he's being in the world, how he moves, how he communicates. But then what he said struck me even more. This is within 30 seconds of speaking to an entire room of wherever he was recording it, thousands of people. He says there are two fears beneath all fears that stop people from living the life that they want, that stop them in their tracks. The first fear is the fear that on some level, we're not good enough. And the second fear is that because we're not good enough, we won't be loved. And I remember hearing that and just being like, whoa, that seems really true. That seems very accurate. And then I thought, wow, that was really simple language. There was no psychological jargon there. There was no complex theory. There was just, like, simple truth that leads to freedom. And then I was hooked. And so for four days and nights, the seminars go long. I was jumping around like a maniac. I was doing every activity full out. I broke through so many fears so quickly. And I remember I had someone challenge me not too long ago they didn't like. In one of my materials where I was inviting people to come to a live event with me, I said, you know, we're going to teach you something where you're going to be able to or create an environment where you can 10x your confidence in a weekend. And he emailed me back and he said, you know, you can't make claims like that. No one can 10x their confidence in a weekend. And I just smiled and shook my head when I read that because I was like, dude, that one weekend with Tony Robbins, 100x1000x, I don't know how you measure that stuff, but I'm like the lid being blown off of how I was before to after. And I've had numerous experiences like that at different weekend events. And I've honestly seen that happen for people at my events too, where the shift is just massive. So 100x just massive shift in confidence. Coming out there so strong and having a moment in there where I was watching it and you know, it might have come a little later. When I was there. I signed up for his year long program, what's it called, Mastery University. And I went to an event he does called Date with Destiny. And that's like a six day event. It was live, he was there and it was again, I don't know, a thousand fold increase in my confidence. Utterly just life changing. But I remember having a moment, I think it was during that event, three or four days in, where I'm watching him and I'm like, I want to do this. I want to be like him. I want to be like this. This is the path that I want to follow. So what an incredible hero that is for me, right? It's like, you know, because I was like, okay, I don't want to do what I'm doing in graduate school. I don't want to run assessments on people and diagnose them and then never see them again. I don't even believe in a lot of these diagnoses. I don't believe they're as permanent as people think that they are. And I don't believe that the treatment approaches that we're suggesting are the most effective. And so I was like, I don't want to do any of that. I want to do what he's doing. I want to inspire and help people radically transform and take control of their lives and create extraordinary lives. That's what I want to do. So when I decided that, I started to model him even more, study him even more. And with a hero, you can study how they talk, you can study how they move, you can study how they communicate, you can study the content of what they say, you can study their beliefs and their philosophies and you can emulate that. You can model all of that. So we're getting close to the end. We don't have time for another break. I want to switch into sharing one more thing with you right now, which is who is one of my current heroes. And then we're Going to get into your action step. So there's so many other heroes I could mention, but I don't have time. Elliot, who ran a men's group that I was a part of. Christian Michelson, who was a coach. I was in his mastermind for a year. So some of these people I paid and to invested in sort of learning from them, and some of them were people that I met in my life. I think both are incredibly important. I do both. And currently you want to know who one of my. Of course, Tony Robbins is still here. I have other heroes as well, but currently, like present day, one of my biggest heroes. Do you want to know who it is? It is a character from a movie or series of movies. It's not a real human. In fact, it's not even a human. What. What does he mean? Who is it? What is. Is he is Caesar. Caesar? No, not the Roman emperor Caesar from the Planet of the Apes. The new ones that came out in the last, you know, five, seven years, they made three of them. Have you ever seen those? Whoa. If you haven't, start with the first one. It's Rise of the Planet of the Apes and then dawn of the Planet of the Apes. All of them are so good. And Caesar is a powerful leader. The first one is so good. Just like how he. The self awareness, the intelligence, the kind of stepping into leadership and fighting back against an oppressive force. And to me, my whole mission is Operation Liberation, which is fighting back an oppressive force. Now, often the oppressive force is in our own heads and standing up to Sang and saying no to it. And there's this super powerful scene in the first one, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where it's a long story how they get there, but the apes become hyper intelligent. That's the premise of Planet of the Apes. But there's a scene where there's this guy kind of trying to beat him and abuse him as he'd done for many years. And Caesar stands up and grabs the stick the guy's using and looks him in the eye and says no. And of course the guy's like, totally shocked because he doesn't even know he's hyper intelligent yet. And also, you know, he's never. He's speaking, he's never heard it. He's like, he's shocked. You know, people are like, taken aback. And there's something about that scene that gives me chills, like fighting back against oppression. So for me, at this stage in my life and my development, in order to really serve at a higher level, serve People at a higher level be bigger, reach more people, write books and face the inevitable criticism or backlash that comes from stepping up and being bigger and to really be able to own that. People are going to want to seek me out for knowledge and for my ability to help them to really, deeply own that. Because I think there was a long time where I was doing it, but I felt insecure about it. I felt like I'm not enough for that. And Caesar is teaching me how to really own that role of leadership. I mean, it's not about being enough. It's about stepping into the role and just doing it. And that's what I see in him. There's so much more I could talk about Caesar. Maybe I'll even record a whole episode about Caesar from Planet of the Apes. I love that guy. But before we end for today, there's one thing we must do we must end with, which is we must turn this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is to find your heroes. Think back through your whole life from when you were a kid to now. All these different people that you've come across, people you've read in books, authors, teachers in your field, in your industry, people that you've worked with, people that you know, who are your heroes and what are they modeling for you? Maybe you have a hero who kind of is your hero in your career. Maybe you have another hero who models for you. Elliot Geller, for me, was one of the heroes who modeled for me that you can have an extraordinary relationship for. I mean, he was in his 60s when I met him, and I was in my 20s, and I had so many toxic beliefs that relationships just had to suck. Long term relationships became distant. And he was a hero for me of like, whoa. If you do the inner work and you become like growth oriented and good at communication and in your heart and face your fears, you can have an amazing relationship that lasts a lifetime. And to me, that was amazing. So he was like a hero in that way, among other ways too. So find your heroes and then hang out with them as much. Maybe not all of them, but pick one and just start hanging out with them in whatever way they can listen. And if you don't know them, like, I don't know Tony Robbins, but I went to a bunch of his events and I listened to a bunch of his audios, you know, for a period of a couple years, having some version of his voice either live in an event or in an audio for, like, maybe every day almost for like a period of years. It's less now. I don't listen to him as much now because so much of the teachings are ingrained in me. But, you know, you have this period, this phase where you're with a hero and you just immerse yourself. And so find that, use that, do that. And if you're finding me as a mentor right now, thank you. I'm flattered. That's awesome. And maybe this podcast is part of you immersing yourself in my world. Go further with it. Get an audiobook of mine. Because audio is, I think, better than the written word. Because you can hear me. I read them myself. And so if you get the art of extraordinary confidence, that things like 13 hours, you could be listening to me for 13 hours straight. Good God, make it stop. But just if you are drawn to this, immerse yourself immersed. Of course you want to go further. I have programs, you know about that. The confidence code, confidence unleashed, 30 days dating mastery, or the best way, which is to hang out in person. Come to one of my live events. We'll hang out. That's where it's even more potent and powerful. So if I'm serving you in that way right now, in your life, that's awesome. That makes me super happy and pleased. And if it's someone else, that's great. But you want to find them and you want to immerse yourself. That's your action step for this week. 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.