How Bold Action Radically Improves 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 bold action radically improves your life. Now, if you've listened to this show for any length of time or read any of my books or anything, that's not a new concept for you that you know that. Confidence is the byproduct of action. The more bold action you can take, the more your confidence will grow. And action is the best way to. To upgrade our identity, to change how we see ourselves, to see that something new is possible for ourselves. And I have a statement, which is that in life, action, well, boldness and bold action is rewarded. Cowardice or hesitating or holding back or not doing it is ignored. And this isn't a value statement or a moral thing like you're a good or a bad person. It's just about what produces results in life and what leads to what. And bold action is what leads to the results in our lives. But there's some things I want to clarify in this episode that will help you see bold action, perhaps differently, more comprehensively, in a way that inspires you more to actually do it. Because hearing about it, reading about it, nodding your head about it, doesn't actually necessarily mean that it becomes a part of your life and who you are and what you practice. And that is my goal, not. Not just for this episode, not just for this podcast, but for the purpose of my life, is to help people to build that confidence. And I know action is the biggest factor. In fact, that's one of the first things that I changed. I actually just recently recorded some content for my YouTube channel, one of which was about social anxiety and how to address it, how to treat it. And, you know, when I first started in my graduate school training, you know, I was taught a variety of different techniques, and. And as I was learning them, I was like, I don't think this is gonna work. Not for what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to help people manage their social anxiety so they can get through their life a little bit better. I wanna help people radically transform this stuff. And the way that we're gonna do that is we're gonna, you know, one component is going to be consistent bold action. So how do we bake that into whatever it is that we're doing? And what I realized is that most people will do a little bit or do some, or maybe even a fair amount while they're actively being pushed to do it. But if you really want to make these changes, it's not just a passing like, oh, that would be nice. But if you fundamentally want a better quality of life, you really do want to become more confident, you really do want to be free from that cage of social anxiety and excessive niceness, then you must transform your relationship to action, because bold action will improve the quality of your life. Here's how. There's kind of two ways, and they're gonna be very broad categories. The more bold action you take, the more you can experience good stuff in your life, right? So let's give some really basic examples. Say you're single and you want to meet somebody. If you're able to take bold action, which involves asking people out, being more expressive, sharing more of your interest, being, being more you making the move, whatever it is, then you can experience more good things, more things that you want, more connection, more love, more touch, more sex, more adventures. If you want to experience a better quality of life in your career, that's going to involve bold actions, speaking up, taking things on, saying, yes, I'll try that. Yes, I'm going to do that. Taking risks, bringing yourself forward. So it's going to give you more of what you want. Maybe it's more recognition, more income, more achievement of significant results, more of doing what you want to do, making the changes that you want to make in your career and in your life. So bold action will help you experience good stuff. But guess what? Bold action will also help you remove bad stuff. That's right. I'm using good and bad here and kind of air quotes. But bad stuff is the stuff that you don't want, stuff that you don't like. And bold action helps you remove that or avoid that. So, for example, there's a client that is one of my group programs right now who is going through a divorce. And this is not the first time. You know, people in my group programs, you know, build their confidence so they can date or get married. And then we also have People that are building their confidence so they can leave a relationship that doesn't serve them. And that's not the first approach that I'll have with people. Sometimes we look at how they can improve their communication, their assertiveness, their what do they really want. But sometimes it becomes clear for people after some time as their confidence grows up. You know, I entered into this relationship from a very different place. I entered this relationship from a place of not knowing who I was, not knowing what I wanted, tolerating, honestly, pretty bad treatment. And this is not what I want to do anymore. I want something else. But you know, in some of these cases, it's not so easy. It's complex, right? They have kids together, they own property together. It's like a. It's a thing. And so, man, that's scary. It's a lot easier just to stay in it, isn't it? But they're ready for bold action. And bold action is a small thing day to day, but bold action is a big thing, changing the course of your life in some ways. And so taking that bold action now, as unpleasant as it is, as overwhelming as it might feel, all of a sudden they're setting themselves up to remove something that is going to be a major drain on the quality of their life for years to come, right? Being in a toxic relationship, being in a relationship that's not aligned, congruent, feeling good, that's just a dead weight that feels awful, full of conflict, full of tension or distance that you can't improve. That's gonna be hard to feel great and have a high quality of life if that's your experience every time you go home. So the bold action helps you remove that and change that in your life. So what experiences do you want to have more of? And what experiences do you want to remove what comes to your mind right now? And then what old action is gonna do that? It's gonna produce those results. And here's something else to really get about action. Because if there's one outcome I want for you here, it's to not just nod your head and say, yeah, bold action is great, but it's to go out and be really living it and doing it. And I think that becomes more possible when we really get this stuff. And I love working with people in these group programs that I run. I run a shorter group program, it's about three months, and then a mastermind program, that's a year. And I love really watching people get these shifts over the time that I'm working with them. Where all of a sudden they're kind of getting it. They read some of my books when they first meet me, and then it's like four months in or six months in, they're like, oh, and then they really get it and then they're really doing it. And here's one of the things that people get on a deeper level is that bold action is not always. It doesn't have to be, but it is generally often uncomfortable. Something that you kind of don't want to do, that you might feel some dread about or some desire to avoid. And they really get this. And I mean, that's not obvious listening. It is obvious intellectually. Lots of things are obvious intellectually. But emotionally, human animals are driven by very not rational or intellectual things, right? And you know, it's the same thing. Like if you want to get stronger physically, you're going to need to use your body more than you are now. Whether that's running or weightlifting or activities you enjoy sport, tennis, rock climbing, whatever it is. If you want to get stronger or better at that thing, you need to do it, you need to practice it. And you probably also need to do the stuff that's even more uncomfortable. They call it deliberate practice when it comes to skill learning. So when someone sits down to play the guitar and they bang out their three favorite tunes, for me, when I learned the guitar back in college, it was Weezer, like, yeah, got some Weezer, got some punk rock. This is great. I'm not getting that much better though. What you gotta do is you gotta do something called deliberate practice where you sit down and you do the thing like the scales or chord progressions, you know, for another thing, let's say you want to get better at rock climbing or something like that. You know, you might just go bang out your favorite routes or whatever, but you probably need to also, you know, practice grip strength or do some sort of pull up routines or other things to strengthen your body. Now maybe that's not as fun, maybe the pull up routine is not as fun. Certainly if you ever played an instrument. Deliberate practice going up and down in scales, not as fun as banging out a Weezer tune and thinking you're a rock star. So. But that's what makes us better. But it's uncomfortable. There's resistance inside. There's some part of you is like, I don't wanna. And you gotta anticipate that that is how bold action is gonna show up in your life. Most of the time I don't wanna, but that's just a part of you Cause there's another part of you that does want to. It's all about what you connect to, what you associate to, what you link your awareness and your focus onto, what you hitch that onto. And if you hit your confidence or your focus onto why you want to do it, you can access that more. And what you got to think about with this stuff in order to get through that discomfort, that dread, that not wanting to, is you got to think about the long game. Think about the quality of your life and the long game. Another example, there's a client in one of my group programs. He's actually been in there for a couple years. Amazing man. Made tons of progress, overcame a lot of fear about relationships and was in a relationship. And over the time I've known him, has actually stepped up in a big way, decided this is what he wanted for his life. And they're married now. It's like one of the best things in his life. He says he's made some major changes. He moved to a new city and got a better job. All kinds of positive changes from bold action in his life. But most recently, he took a bold action that surprisingly scared him way more than some people might think. But guess what? It was to actually not work for a period of time. He's in the medical field and has been working for, you know, hard with the studies and then fellowship or whatever, internships, residencies, fellowship, working in clinics. Just a lot, lot, a lot of crazy hours. And he's like, you know what? My whole adult life, I've never, like, taken any significant length of time off. I'm gonna leave this current job that I'm in. I'm gonna get a new one. But in between, I wanna take three, three, maybe even six months of my life just to. Just to be. Just to not be so focused in work. And he had a lot of fear about that. A lot of fear. And it wasn't just financial, just a little bit of that. But he'd saved up a fair amount of money. It was more like, what would my parents think? That's a bad thing to do? I'm not working. I'm not a man. It says roles. A lot of our fears are about not necessarily bad stuff happening to us for our survival as much as our ego is afraid. I'm not going to live up to the role. I'm not going to follow the rules of the role, whatever it is. To be a doctor, in his case, to be a man. As a man, I have to earn money. He had all these fears and he Took bold action to face them. He explored them in the group, and then decided to take this bold action of, okay, I'm going to leave my work now. He made that decision, and then he's in the medical field. He works in a hospital. And then Covid exploded, right? And so all of a sudden, he's like, look, I can't just, like, leave them. They're understaffed, blah, blah, blah. So he changes his plan, determines he's going to leave in three months, gives them several months notice, so they really have plenty of time. And he carries this out. So flash forward, couple months later, later, he's out of the position. He's been off of work for about four weeks. And I see this guy on a group call on Zoom, and he is grinning from ear to ear. He's like, my life's amazing. I feel so good. He's telling us all these hobbies. He's into the time he has with his wife. He's cooking. He just feels great. He's exercising more. He just feels like, great. And what I wanted to highlight to the group and what I want to highlight to you is the quality of his life right now was set in motion six months ago. I mean, you could go even further back than that, right? But specifically six months ago is when he was addressing the decision. He had this desire to pause on his work life, and he was terrified of that. But he took bold action to even address it. Sometimes bold action is just turning your head to look at something that you've been wanting to avoid. And if you don't turn your head towards that, you suffer more and more and more. You feel more and more and more anxiety. You know what I'm talking about? This happens in any area of life. You have this growing desire. Something needs attention. Some part of you needs you to focus on it, but you don't. You're like, oh, my God, that's destabilizing. That's uncomfortable. I'm just gonna keep going as it is. Status quo, status quo, status quo. You feel more and more anxious, more and more unsettled. You just gotta listen to that part of you. You don't have to act on it. And that's what I was telling him. Like, look, let's just see what this part is saying. Cause he was feeling more and more stressed out and anxious. I was like, let's just see what it says. And sometimes it's dramatic at first. The part's like, I don't ever want to work again. I want to change careers, change fields. I don't want to work in medicine. It's like, okay, well, let's just hear it out. It's not going to grab the wheel of your life. You're still. You're the captain of your ship. You get to decide where you go, but you got to hear all the parts inside of you. Otherwise, if you suppress a part, you stuff a part down, guess what it's going to do? It's going to start throwing bricks through the window. It's going to start banging. It's going to be locked it in the basement. It's going to start smashing on that basement door. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. You got to listen. You still get to decide where you go, but you got to listen. So we listened to that part. And at first it started out like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then it explored, you know what? I just need a break. So it became a little bit more reasonable, a little more manageable. Then he had the decision of, like, am I actually going to do this? So he started that process six months ago, explores it, faces his fears, makes the decision he's going to do it. Then turns out he can't tell them because of COVID And then he alerts them and he has to wait three more months to go. So finally, six months later, plus another month, because now he's off for a month. There he is having a better quality of life. You know the client I mentioned before, this happened to several clients in my program over the years. Someone that goes through a divorce that's not. Doesn't happen in one day. That's a process usually 6 to 12 months long back and forth. You know, one. One was actually fairly cordial. One was contentious and scary and hard and abusive. And all this stuff, man, uncomfortable conversations, man. Fear, self doubt. Oh, this is so hard. Why am I doing this? Am I ruining my family's life? Oh, my God. So much bold action needed. But guess what, man, One of those clients, when he shows up on the calls, yes, he's still got problems in his life. Yes, he's got challenges, but he is night and day. He feels like a lighter person compared to where he was floating. I mean, he had such a heaviness about him because he was like, I don't want to be in this relationship, but I can't. I have to stay in it for my kids. I'm a bad man. Another role, another rule. I'm a bad father. If we get a divorce, I'm abandoning my children. That was his story, that was his fear. I was like, abandoning your children? What, are you gonna go to Antarctica? He's like, no, I'm gonna live down the street in a different house. I'm like, is it possible that life could be better off when you make this change? And certainly it has been. He's become more present, more available, more alive, more fun, more vital, more really their dad, because he's not suffocating his soul inside by staying in this relationship. That's not right for him and he knows it' right for him. So that bold action that he took, to even look at that and then to start taking the action, and you know, it's step by step, step by step. People think a bold action is just one thing. It's a series of things again and again and again. And then only after a period of time do you start to taste the fruits of that bold action. And that's the key thing that you must understand in this episode. People want the results instantly. I took the bold action. It's still uncomfortable. Well, you know, what kind of bold action are we talking about here? Almost everything is going to require effort over time, sustained practice again and again and again before you get the results that you want. And look at these examples I'm giving you for these big changes in life. We're talking months before you start to see the quality improvement. Now you might start to see confidence improvements much sooner than that. Because when you go from avoidance to approach, when you go from suppressing parts of you to actually listening to parts of you and then taking action upon that, even before you get the long term quality improvement in your life, you'll start to have a confidence increase. Because remember, confidence is the byproduct of action. So if you're taking more bold action, you'll get more confidence. But you got to listen, you got to be willing, you got to be curious. And that's another key, important takeaway from this, is sometimes the start to these bold actions is just to listen to the parts inside of you. Because they're giving you messages all the time. And we suppress them out of fear. Fear of change. Fear of, I gotta stay in this role and be this person or else I'm bad. Fear of guilt, Fear of being judged. Fear of not conforming, Fear of instability. Here's an example, personal example from my own life. So over the summer, I spent more time outdoors than I ever had in my life, more active than I ever been. More time in the woods, in the mountains, camping, backpacking, all kinds of amazing stuff. And as the summer went on. I thought, man, I need more of this. Like, there was a part inside of me that was. That was hunger, that was activated, that was a bit wild. It was like, we gotta move. That's how it was manifesting. It was like, I gotta. I can't be in a city. I gotta live out. I gotta live way, way out. I gotta live out in the woods. I gotta live in a mountain. I gotta get out of here. And it was strong. And I was first, I was like, whoa, that's crazy. Suppress, suppress, suppress. And it got louder and louder and louder. And then finally I was like, okay, let's listen to that part. And it's like, we gotta move now. And so I just did a little bit of research, looked around a little bit, and then talked more with Candace, my wife. And we sort of explored it and said, you know what? Maybe. And there's a lot that keeps us here in Portland that's good in our lives. And so let's maybe plan on being very active. That was my plan. Let me be very active. Let me spend at least one full day is my plan. A week outdoors. Fridays is my freedom day. It's dedicated. Being outdoors, basically. Morning to night, as much as I can, no matter what the season. Rain, I got rain gear. Snow, I get snow gear. Just I'm outside. And then more time outside with family and doing other things. So let's be really active and see if that scratches that itch without having to, you know, up and leave. Because that's pretty uprooting. I mean, you know, we've lived here for. I lived in Portland for 10 years. I lived in this house for three or four. You know, our kids have friends. We have friends and family around. It's a lot, right? So I'm like, you know what? Okay, let's just play it cool. Let's just be reasonable. And then later, that, you know, about a week later, I'm just crazy. I'm anxious. I'm irritated. I'm like, it's like from one unpleasant motion to another. And then, you know, if you ever had that, you kind of, you know, you're being crazy. So I'm like, I'm getting irritated about something in the house. I'm like, I know it's not about this thing. And then I'm anxious about this thing. I'm like, I know it's not about, you know, this thing. And so I go for this run, and I'm just like, negative. I'm like, everything sucks. There's nothing to look forward to my life sucks. And I'm like, all right, all right, let's listen. Let's listen to this part. You know what's going on. And if you have not read my book on my own side, I really teach you exactly how to do this in a powerful way. It's life changing. And to really, man, relieve yourself of a lot of social anxiety, increase your boldness and truly enjoy the quality of your life more. So I'm listening to this part of me and soon enough it starts to say, I don't want to live in a city. I want to be outdoors. Your fricking slow plan of spending one day a week outdoors, that ain't enough. I got a, like, the vision that that part has is like I roll out of my house and there's trails nearby. Like, it wants to be out, out. Another part of me was like, dude, am I going to get hardcore Internet out there? Because of the work I do, I got to be plugged into the mainframe with high speed Internet for everything to work, to be able to run all the group calls. I run, run the online live events, record all this content and upload it. I need a lot of bandwidth. Am I going to get that out in the mountains? You know, it's like, I don't care. Just go to the mountains. And I just had to hear that part. And it went on for about 10 minutes. Just what it wanted, what it didn't. Like it went beyond my life and into like society and how trapped we are and how disconnected from nature everything is rant and raving and I just heard it. It's like, tell me more, tell me more. Show me everything you got. And of course, I had another part of me that's running interference. Oh, my God. Don't listen to him. Danger, destabilizing. He's crazy. Calm down. Shut up. That'll often happen when you start to listen to these different parts of you. But bold action, that is bold. Bold is not always that. You know, you kick down the boardroom door and say, shut up, everybody. Here's how it's gonna go. Or whatever vision we have for being assertive or more bold. It's like it's man, the greatest. Our greatest fears are fears of feelings. We're afraid of the parts inside of us. We're afraid of our desires. We're afraid of feeling sad. We're afraid of feeling anxious. We're afraid of failing. We gotta face all this stuff and we gotta face it inside of ourselves. Face the parts of you and you develop a Sense of strong confidence to know I can hear any part of me. I can listen to any part of me. Yes, bring it on. Show me everything you got. So I listened to it and then it kind of worked itself through. And I feel more like, okay, no, I'm still good with the plan of the once a week outdoors. I'll keep you posted if that changes. And I'm looking to uproot. And by the way, if you have any ideas, here's my fantasy. My fantasy is I am able to be roll out of my house and run to trails that are outdoors. Mountains are cool, preferably. It is not. Like my wife told me about this place. She's like, yeah, there's a place like that. It's in Colorado. It's called Telluride. I was like, oh, cool. I looked up Telluride. I was like, oh my God. Houses here are like $5 million. Sweet Jesus. Need to do a lot more business to make that happen, right? So obviously, cost of living being. I mean, I live in Portland, which is for a lot of places, fairly high. You know, kind of a lot of west coast places are so comparable, I guess maybe a little bit more, but not crazy. Crazy expensive and pumped into the Internet. That's what I need. So it can't be like so crazy rural that you're in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. So if you got any ideas, send them my way. Go to send an email to Aziz A z I z@drazizraz.com that'll come. Someone on my team will make sure I get it. You got some intel, you can feed that part of me. We'll see where I go in life. But here's the thing. Here's the thing about that story, why I wanted to share it. It's not only about listening to the parts of you. I have a track record of listening to the parts and taking bold action based upon it. And that's what led me to where I am. That's what led me to be with my wife Candice. That's what led me to have an amazing business and a lifestyle that allows me to be able to teach what I know and do what I love for a living. It's because I listen to those bold action and I took those steps and yes, they were freaky, yes, they were destabilizing. You know, I stopped doing therapy when I had a thriving private practice in therapy and started to move into coaching. I changed when I was in college. I was in computer science. I was two and a half, almost Three years done out of four and I changed completely to psychology, where none of my credits even counted. I had a good friend, Phil, at the time. He was like, what are you gonna do, man? He's like, I don't know. I'm gonna figure something out. Not gonna do this. So you gotta heed that call and you gotta take that bold action. And then over time, it's gonna do what? It's gonna improve the quality of your life. And when you really get that, you start to live this way. No one's pushing you. No one's pushing me. Yes, I'm constantly also though, surrounding myself and putting myself in environments where I am being inspired or challenged. But I'm self directed, baby. I want this for my own life. And then I use the environments and the support to help me make it happen. And if that's something that you want, by the way, I mentioned some of my group programs, I highly recommend that you explore them further. If you're listening to this podcast, if you resonate with what I teach, you can go to my website, draziz.coM-R-A z I z.com and go to the coaching tab at the top. You can learn all about coaching. You can enter your name and email. I'll give you a bunch of info about it. And if you want to see if it works further from you, I'll even. I'm currently offering for people to take action right away when they get there, a complimentary confidence breakthrough session. So you get an experience of what it's like, see if it's actually going to work for you. Man. These groups have been running for years and have produced powerful results. So if you want to be, you know, if you want me to help provide that environment for you, I highly encourage you to check that out. But the key thing here is you got to put yourself in environments. And know though that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what the environment is. You are ready to take that bold action. You are taking that on because you want that for your life. So let's talk about how to turn this into action. Specifically right now, from this episode. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is going to be do a quick audit. I'm talking three, four minutes. Just do it in your head. You can do it in a journal or on paper if you want, but here's what it is. You're going to look at an area of your life and say, where do I want, you know, where can I experience more? What's the good stuff I want to experience more of and remove the stuff that I want to not experience as much of. So pick an area. You know, what are the key areas? Well, there's work and career or business. Right. There's your relationship or love life. There's your social life and your connection to other people. There's maybe even things like your physical health is a part of it too. Right. You know, sometimes people are not thinking about that with confidence, but that's a big contributor, our energy level, how we feel. I mean, you've heard in this show how I have all kinds of stories about my perceptions of physical ability and health and all that stuff. So you pick an area of your life, which area you pick. Well, you pick the one that feels like it needs it the most and you say, okay, what kind of life quality improvement do I want to have? What's the new good stuff I want to experience and the stuff I want to remove. So just do an audit on that. Just even get clarity of what you want to be different. And then the follow up question is going to be, what bold action can I take consistently to make it so? What bold action can I take consistently to make it so to make the changes that I want? Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, we have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. 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 socialconfidencecenter.com.