How Being Honest Builds Confidence With Dr. Brad Blanton

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 show. I'm Dr. Aziz, and today we have an exciting experience for you. It's going to be an interview with an amazing, hilarious, intelligent, articulate guy who's radically transformed my life and many people's lives with his strong line that he holds about how to stop BSing in your life and start being honest. And that actually is going to bring me to a series of shows I'm doing that starts with interviews with him and then several other authors and people and experts in honesty, like. Like, how do we be more real in our lives? How do we be more authentic, more genuine, more honest? You know, this is something that I see across the board is if you're shy, social anxiety, or you're lacking confidence or you're holding yourself back in some way, there are edges where you're afraid to be honest. You're afraid to be honest about what you're really experiencing in your life. You're afraid to share that with. If you're wanting to date women, you're afraid of just showing up and being yourself. You think you have to hide and pretend and try to present an image to them. You might be anxious at work because you're trying to posture, pretend like you're a certain way and you have the impostor syndrome. You're afraid people are going to find out things about you and think that you're not all that, and then maybe lose respect for you or even, God forbid, fire you. Perhaps it's affecting you in your friendships. Like, you don't really say what's going on. Someone's like, hey, how's it going? You're like, oh, it's pretty good, man. Or maybe you're not really direct with people and someone pisses you off or doesn't show up or doesn't keep their commitments, and you say, oh, that's okay, that's fine. This leads you into the nice guy situation, which is where I spent many years, and I had a horrible lack of authenticity. I thought I was being authentic, but I wasn't being honest because I didn't ever tell anyone when I was irritated or upset. I, for years, literally years, never told one person, friend, family member, relationship, girlfriend that I was upset with them. That sounds pretty extreme, right?

But it's true.

I didn't. Now, was I such a saint and such a model of prophethood that I was just totally. I turned the other cheek and I just didn't, you know, never felt anything like that. No bullshit. I just was terrified to reveal that. I thought if I revealed that I was upset, people would leave me. And I was just restricted and anxious and had horrible stomach and gastrointestinal problems, which comes from holding stuff in and not being able to just be assertive and hold boundaries and say, hey, I didn't like the way you did that, and I expect more of you and just really holding people accountable in their lives. And so I was just such this nice guy, and it was the total lack of honesty in my life, you know, as the guy I'm interviewing. Well, you know, I was being a liar. I was a bullshitter.

And that's what I want to help.

You break free of.

So this is going to be a.

Series of amazing people who have incredible ideas, who are really articulate, and. And I'm going to break down all the key points. How does this work in dating and relationships at work in our lives? How does this improve ourselves? How does this build our confidence? And so you're going to learn how to build your confidence by being more honest, being yourself, and finding the courage to take the risks to do so. So without further ado, let's jump into the first interview in this series, which is with an amazing author named Brad Bland.

Expert interview.

Today's guest is someone I'm incredib excited to speak with. He's been a hero of mine since I've read his book, which one of the ones that I came across first was called Radical honesty, How to transform your life by telling the truth, which was exactly what I needed at that.

Time in my life.

So much of my anxiety and shyness and concern came from, oh, my God, what if people found out this or if I said this? Then that will happen. And so much being stuck in my head, and his was just like a refreshing blast of cold air. It's a fantastic book. He's gone on to write books on parenting about how to apply radical honesty in all different areas of life. He has actually gone on to run as an independent candidate for the Representative House in Virginia and had the highest voting percentage for him. 25% of people voted for him based upon his campaign of radical honesty, his platform. So he really practices what he preaches. His most recent book called the Corporate Cannibal Cookbook, which proposes eating the rich in order to save the world. This guy is absolutely fantastic, as he says, a great example of outstanding and awfulness. So that People can be refreshed by it and inspired by it. This is Brad Blanton. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Brad. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for that introduction.

You're welcome. The first thing that I just want to jump in with is some basic things so people, if they haven't come across your books, can just get a sense of. What do you mean by radical honesty? What does that mean?

Well, radical honesty is radical simply because it's different from the norm. The norm is to politely lie your way through the day. And we're taught that systematically as we grow up. We're systematically taught an incorrect identity. We're taught from the beginning that we are the grades we make and what the teacher thinks of us and what our peers think of us. And it goes on and on. In adolescence, it's what all of our peers think of us, and that's how we succeed and what degrees we get and. And that who we are is. Our reputation is ingrained into, like, most of Western Judeo Christian tradition culture and actually in the Abrahamic traditions as well. It's like moralism is the disease that we all share, and moralism is a disease that same at being right. Looking right is more important than being alive. That being being right and righteously correct and proving that you're better than the other person is what you're supposed to do. And your identity is your reputation. And unfortunately, that's not true. Who we are right now are noticing beings. We're people who are. We're engaged in a conversation right now and speaking and listening, responding, noticing what's going on. It's raining outside my yard. I'm listening to the rain. And there are two other guys that work with me. They're in here working, working away on their computers and swatting flies. And my identity is my current noticing being, and my reputation and my performance is secondary. It's still a part of who I am, but it's not my main identity. So radical honesty is about telling the truth about what you think, what you feel and what you've done, and living out loud and particularly in personal relationships. Now, I don't advocate total honesty across the board. If you have Anne Frank in the attic and a Nazi knocks on the door and says, there any Jews in this house? Lie. If you're in court in America, you want to lie, hire a lawyer is what they're for. But in terms of all your personal relationships with everyone that you know personally, it's very vital to your own well being and to theirs, and to the possibility of some kind of intimacy and some kind of powerful connection is there only if you identify yourself as a noticing, sharing being, not if you're performing some kind of pretense in order to arrange what you imagine they think about you. In their minds, that is a trail of working on that false identity that just simply doesn't work. So Radical Honesty is about living out loud, telling the truth, let the Jews fall where they may. And it's based on a very compassionate belief, which is screw them if they can't take a joke. And that's pretty much the way I live.

I love it. I love it. And so I'm sure you've been teaching this for years. You lead workshops, you ran a platform on it. I'm sure you get a lot of people who say yes, that sounds great, but. And then they have all sorts of objections. And so I'm going to voice some of those that I think might be what some of my listeners are immediately responding with. And you actually address this in your book. I have a little quote I love to read from Radical Honesty, which is we conceal ourselves because we fear that the pain accompanying the act of self disclosure will literally destroy us or fundamentally damage our being in some horrible way, rendering us maimed and dysfunctional. In addition, we fear we may destroy others with our truth telling. And I love that I highlighted that when I read this book a number of years ago. And that was definitely a fear that I had was two bad things are going to come from this. Bad things are going to happen to me or I'm going to destroy others. And then of course bad things will happen to me as a result of that. So what are your thoughts on that kind of hyper fear that people have of hurting people's feelings and, you know, looking bad and all that stuff? How would you guide someone through those fears?

Well, first of all, what I'd like to say bad things are going to happen anyway, regardless of your best performance or intent.

We're going to pause here and take.

A brief break and then we're going.

To jump back into our interview with Brad Bland.

Dr. Aziza's most popular training program, Confidence Unleashed, is helping men from all over the world transform their confidence levels. Here's an email from a recent thanks so much for your program, Dr. Aziz. Here is a story about a recent job interview I had before going through Confidence Unleashed. I had a long history of avoiding social events I thought of as threatening. I have this internal coach that tells me. I'm not good enough to pull it off. You'll step into a fearful situation that is beyond your capability. You'll make a complete fool of yourself. Just accept it, my friend. You're where you are now because you're not meant to be any higher. I became visibly smaller physically, shrinking in my seat over breakfast. So I applied what you teach and distanced myself from this internal voice. I said to myself, I, Anthony, will now get farther down the road than I would if I took the advice of that BS coach. As my job interview drew closer, I grew increasingly more petrified as my negative coach came back and fed on my doubts. Images from Confidence Unleashed reminded me that my future self will be more confident so long as I do something now to make it so. Forget the end result. Just do what the person I really want to be would do if he was now facing the situation. I made the negative coach sound ridiculous and feel ridiculous. I viewed my negative coach as a whiny imposter and owned myself for the good person I really am. The journey was tough and seemingly immense, but I faced my fear instead of running away and completed the day by experiencing pure euphoria. Warmest regards, Anthony. Go to www.confidenceunleashednow.com to learn more.

If you can't affirm life enough to welcome bad things and even be the cause of some of them, you're in trouble because you spend your whole life dancing on eggshells. So regardless of all your hard work, you're still going to make mistakes. You're still going to screw up. People are still going to get mad at you. People are still going to say their feelings are hurt or they resent you or they're offended by you. And the the way to get over it is to be completely honest so that you can get hurt and then get over it. You can get over being hurt in a minute or two. You can get over being angry in a minute or two. You can get over all these things if you confirm them, admit them, and stick with each other. See if if you think about who your real friends are, there are people you've had disagreements with before, you've been in arguments before, cut each other off before, been mad at each other before, but you stuck with each other and you got over it. And on the other side of it, you were a little bit deeper friends, you're a little bit better friends because you felt like you could trust each other to not just go along with whatever you were pretending. And it's okay. I love pretend games and My favorite people in the world are little kids between about, I don't know, less than a year old to about 10 years old. Because we play pretend games. We play like Star wars or Yoda or anything on video or on TV or anything like that. It's fun to run around, play outside and play King of the Mountain. All these pretend games, they're just wonderful fun. And I think it's a fun thing to do, but it's the most fun whenever people is in. What I was about to say was that we start playing another game on top of our usual pretend games. When we're 11 or 12 or 13 or 14 or so, we start pretending that we're not pretending when we are. And radical honesty is about confessing that saying, oh, no, never mind. That was my performance to con you into doing something for me. I was playing like I was angry when I wasn't, or I was actually hurt. I was playing like it hurt when I was happy, when I was unhappy, or I was pretending, acting, putting on a show. I take it back. I was wrong. I'm really mad at you. I'm not just, like, happy that you're doing that. I don't like it. And then you tell the truth about it. And what happens is they say, well, I wasn't sure you were telling truth the first place. You liar, and I resent you for it. And you say, okay, good. I resent you for this thing he said in the first place. And you all have your argument, and then in five minutes you put your arm around each other and go get a beer. And your friends, better friends than you were before. Radical honesty is about telling the truth and knowing that even most of the time, you're telling truth about what you think. Most of what you think is bullshit anyway. You know, your mind is not your best friend. I don't trust any man, including my own, but I'm sure they'll not want to trust somebody else's. So what we do is we can work things out so that we can discover a deeper truth only if we share and reveal all the bullshit we've got going on in the first place. And then it's. There's this thing called cohorted co. Intelligence, where. Where people are together and their. Their intention is to be open and honest with each other. And they can come up with brilliant solutions to problems more than any of them can on their own. So it's a way of, like operating on a sort of a distrust of mind itself. You need to distrust your own mind as well. As the minds of others and say, well, given these faulty instruments we have, what can we figure out here about what to do and about what works best for us and stuff like that. That's what's called cohorted. Co. Intelligent cooperation. And that's what I work at and teach people in groups and write about and about to launch an online course about here in the next month or so.

Oh, cool. And what I like about that is that we can get really identified with, okay, I'm angry at this person. That means all the angry thoughts I'm having are justified or right or mean something. They're thoughts that are in response to me, maybe, oh, someone's upset with me. Those thoughts mean that I'm bad or that I'm an unlovable person. And what I hear you saying is they're just thoughts. You know, just let it, let it go and share them and you'll realize that they're not the reality of us.

Yeah, right. And it's a great relief when it happens to you from the other side. When the Bible says, oh, well, never mind what I just said. That was all bullshit. You say thank you because you appreciate not having to deal with. Go through it all, you know.

Yeah. And one thing you said in your book, which I'm really curious about, is that sometimes, you know, people think they're being honest and they're saying stuff, but at the same time they're trying to maintain their image or, you know, not say something that's too, too direct, potentially too hurtful. And so they leave having, quote, been honest, but then are still not satisfied.

That's right. Because it's sort of. They're trying to be too diplomatic. Diplomacy works just like diplomacy works. That's why the world is in such great shape and everybody's taken care of and happy and everybody has medical care and plenty of eat, and there isn't any war. Diplomacy is what causes the world to be the way it is. So I've been psychotherapist in Washington D.C. for over 30 years, and I certainly became an expert in lying just from the environment I was in. And I saw more lawyers than any other single profession over that 30 years. And so I've been thoroughly steeped in all of the professional level bullshit there is in the world. And I'm telling you, all it is, is. And so what we're after is that we rescue each other from our own minds. In a way, if you tell me the best description of what you are feeling and thinking and doing, and I tell you My best description of what I'm feeling and thinking and doing. And then we throw in what our minds think about it. We get a kind of a checking with each other about what is your mind thinking versus what my mind thinks. But it's something we both need. We realize it's not something we're just going to try to convince them again that we're right and they're wrong. That's a kind of a ridiculous game, is to figure out the ways both of us are wrong. And one of us may be more right or not right or less right or, you know, it's. We have to sort it out by sharing honestly with each other in order to get anywhere.

Yeah.

And that was definitely my experience as I applied what I read in your book. I found that I could, as much as I was trying to be a nice guy, and I want to talk with you in a minute about nice guys, but I was really trying to be a nice guy and not be angry and be cordial and friendly and pleasing. And I found that on the outside I would look that way. That was a role I was playing. But inside I'd be angry a lot. I'd be resentful. I'd be stewing on some person or something for days. And I found the more I would just say something even if I didn't get satisfaction, even if they didn't agree with me. But me just saying, I don't like this, or no, I don't know, I.

Don'T think you really know what you're.

Talking about right here. And I would just say stuff like that. I would forget about it after an hour or I wouldn't even. Sometimes I'd leave a conversation and not even think about it again. And so there's some profound relief that can come. I really want to reinforce what you're saying there.

Yeah, let's pause here for one more moment and then we're going to be jumping back into that interview with honesty expert Brad Blenn.

The other day I was at the supermarket and I saw this cute guy in the produce aisle. I was hoping he would come and talk to me. I gave him all the signals. I looked at him for a second to get his attention. I stood nearby pretending to look at some apples and I even smiled at him as I walked by. He just looked nervous, averted his eyes and turned away. It was almost as if he wanted to talk to me, but just didn't know what to say or do. It was a shame, too. I was really hoping to meet him I've been feeling lonely recently.

Are you tired of being that guy? I personally spent many years in that place where there was women everywhere around me that would have dated me if.

I just had the courage to go talk to them. And that is the same that is true for you.

Even if you think you're too short.

Or too fat or not rich enough, that is all just stories in your head.

And if you want to learn how.

To transform that and break through to the next level and create the relationship.

That you really want just by being.

Yourself, then go to www.30daystodatingmastery.com and get started today.

So the question is, I guess we'll jump into that now. Is the role of the nice guy? I think one of the ways of coping with shyness or social anxiety, you know, this fear, people aren't gonna like me, I gotta keep up. This image is, okay, well, I'm just gonna be really nice and friendly and accommodating, and therefore I'll only get love and positive regard back. What are your thoughts on the on the nice guy role and its effectiveness?

Well, it's a good theory. It just doesn't work in practice. One of the problems about being a nice guy is that when you actually do feel nice towards someone or you do appreciate something they do, or you respond warmly, you don't get the benefits. And they don't get the benefits of that because they already know you're being phony about being happy all the time anyway. And so when you are authentically happy, you don't get to communicate that either because they go, yeah, it's just Mr. Nice Guy over there doing his number. And, and so you don't get the nourishment of commonplace experience with other people. It's like having to play a test guy role is the same thing. It's like being locked in some kind of performance modality is the problem. It can be nice guy, bad guy, understanding guy, smart guy, smart ass guy, but if you have to stick in that all the time, if you think about it, the one that's more fun is the smart ass guy. Because at least there's some entertainment there, right? And you don't hesitate to make corrections. You say, no, you're full of shit. And you can say it easily because they kind of give you permission by being such a smart ass in the first place.

Certainly, certainly if one were to lock into a role that would be a more enjoyable role to be locked into.

It's not quite as you don't have to be quite as guarded, you become more of a comedian, you know?

Yeah. So one thing that I think a lot of people that I work with, men that I've worked with, get frustrated by is that they find that when they pursue women and dating and they come from this nice guy place, they typically don't get the responses that they want. She's not interested in a second date or sees them as more of a friend or loses interest after a little while. And they're frustrated because as one client I work with said, I, you know, I, I would do anything for her. I bent over backwards for her. And in my head I was thinking that's, you know, that's part of the problem, let's talk about that. But I'm curious, what do you think's going on there? Why is that not attractive to women? And then how can people shift that?

Well, I don't. I think women appreciate reality and honesty. They better than just being sort of funny. These, there's these two guys working with me right now who've been having a lot of luck dating lately and they start out relatively insulting. So their pickup line is something like, yeah, what makes you think you're so hot? Or something like that. That's a little bit of overstatement of the case, but something in that direction. And they sort of, they have this developed radical honesty as a wonderful pickup line, which is they just say whatever the hell they think and see if something works out. And they're kind of good looking so they can get by with us. They fail, they just go on to the next one. So that's what they're doing. And but the thing is, it is charming because it's outside of the usual mode of operation. You know, some pretty woman in a place you go like a bar or something knows that all the guys in there after, and she's just listening to one, one attempted pickup line after another. And you know, some guy walks in, says, well, you're not so bad, but I've seen hotter. She says, and she sort of peaked a little bit, maybe put off, but at the same time interested because it's not the usual bullshit that she's getting all the time. When people are playing like they just are being charming because they like her when she knows damn good love, they just want to go to bed with her right now. It's like a nice guy's line I think ought to be, I'll bend over backwards for you if you'll bend over forwards for me. That would be a nice opening line.

I suppose he would Be taking a leap into the smart ass realm.

That's right. Anyway, the reason that nice guys come in last is because they come in last because it doesn't take too much to see through a nice guy. If somebody just persistently for 20 minutes, just completely nice and happy, it could be that they're happy. Maybe they did yoga and meditate or something. But generally it's their little pretense, their phoniness that's coming across. And people like authenticity. I mean, we all like it. Even if it scares us or it makes us a little upset or angry or something like that. It's still. We prefer the honesty of someone who just comes out and says whatever in the hell's on their mind or what they want and what they're after, whether they get it or not. They're not trying to sort of dance and manipulate. They're just saying this, what I want, what about you? And it's okay that they want what they want. It's okay that you want what you want. It's okay if you don't want what they want. And then it doesn't have to be match. And then you just keep talking and see what else you have to say. The thing is, it's not as though you have to stay consistent with the role of a nice guy or a smart guy or any kind of guy. If you're sometimes nice and sometimes a jerk, it's probably more believable.

We're going to pause the interview here today and you're going to hear the rest of it in next week's show. Because there's so much good stuff that we didn't even get to in this, in this episode. And he had so many good ideas and I don't want to cut any of them out because everything I found to be really helpful and profound in my own life and my own relationships. And what we're going to do though now is we're going to jump into our action step.

Time for action.

Today's action step is to tell the truth. Tell the truth. Experiment with this stuff that you're hearing. Don't just listen to it and say.

Oh, that sounds kind of crazy.

Give it a shot. I mean, when I first read his book, I was a madman. I was just like walking around and just saying stuff at work.

And I had a good friend of.

Mine that I worked with and he's.

Like, dude, I'm on edge being around you.

I don't know what you're gonna say next. And I'm like, yeah, that's right? And it was totally freaky and it felt like a roller coaster and it was the beginning of me being more.

Free in my life.

So I want you to take action. Find, just look for those opportunities and be more honest. Say what's really going on. You're upset. Say you're upset. You don't like this thing.

Say you don't like it. You're attracted to someone.

Tell them you're attracted to them. Just see what happens. Poke the box and see what responses you get. That's your action step for today. Let me know how it goes again. Check out the show at shrinkforthshyguy.com you can call the hotline there. You can respond to me through there. You can also like the show on facebook@facebook.com shrinkforthshyguy Please share this with anyone you know that could benefit from it. And until we speak again, 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 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 from related to overcoming Shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.