How Do I Stop Thinking I’m Unattractive?

And now it's time to Ask the Shrink. Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of Ask the Shrink. This is a bonus episode. If you would like to get a better sense of the show, this is your first time listening. You might want to start with a full length episode where we go much more in depth. These are just ways for me to answer your questions. Things that are coming up as you're listening to this show, as you're taking action, as you're transforming your life. Stuff happens, right? And I'm here from you. I want to answer your questions. So if you would like to ask me questions, go to shrinkfor the shy guy.com that's shrinkforthshyguy.com youm can send me a voice question or also send me an email or message through the site that I will get a chance to read and answer possibly in an upcoming episode. You can also get my ebook there Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. Which is an extremely focused, simple set of five steps that you can use right now to start increasing your confidence and building the muscle, building the skill of confidence. So today's question is from Ishmael. He says, hey Dr. Aziz, it's your sincere follower and supporter, Ishmael. Hope you are doing good. Thank you. I've got your book the Art of Extraordinary Confidence and it is truly life changing. Awesome. I love that book by the way. It's my favorite thing that I've created to date. The best part is how to handle my emotions. My question is that even though I've become more confident and I know I have good qualities, whenever I go in public or socialize, there is a constant pressure in my head that I'm not good looking. How do I anchor and enforce good belief? These new good beliefs? Thanks a lot and I'm very grateful for your reply. Awesome. This is a great question. So I am glad that you're benefiting from that book. Let's see what we can do to help you let go of this constant pressure in your head that you're not good looking. So constant pressure in my head that I'm not good looking sounds to me like a critic in your mind and your voice in your head saying you're not good looking. And it probably picks at specific characteristics about you that you know, therefore you're not good looking. Your hair, your height, your eyes, your weight, your face, your nose, whatever. Right. Picks multiple things and judges you for them and it sounds like it's uncomfortable and it's also distracting you. It's also taking and it's absorbing a lot of your attention. And that's actually by design, right? Because as you remember, in the book, we talk about the safety police. For those of you who don't know this, the safety police is the collection of voices in your head that distracts you, challenges you, tells you you suck, criticizes you. Whatever it needs to do scares you. Whatever it needs to do to prevent you from taking action. It wants to keep you safe. And specifically, what actions? Oh, risks. So my first question for you, Ishmael, is what if you, if you knew you were good looking or highly desirable? Because sometimes we focus on our appearance, but what we really want is to be highly attractive, right? Highly desirable. And part of that is looks, but a much bigger part of that is our energy. But if you knew that you were totally good looking, let's say you could just, you got enough feedback from other people telling you that you started to believe that. Let's just say you knew you were totally good looking, what would you do when you're in public or socializing, specifically, how would you show up? Who would you talk to? How would you talk to people? Would it be different? Would you talk to people that you're attracted to? Would you approach them? Would you flirt? Would you ask them out? What would you do differently? That's what we want to know. Because this whole thing about not being, I mean, I get it. I told myself the same thing for so many years and I picked specific things, I did it all the time. But that was all designed because if I'm not good looking, then women are going to reject me. Guys who are cool and popular are not going to be my friend. So guess what? I'm not going to approach those women. I'm not going to talk to guys that are cool and popular and confident and successful. I'm just going to hang back, I'm going to hide. And that's what buying into that voice does. It stops us from taking that action. So we want to find out, okay, if I didn't believe that story, what would I do? So hopefully you figured that out, got some, at least one or two specific ideas. Then the key is to go do those things even though you're not good looking or you tell yourself you're not good looking. I don't know, maybe you are, maybe you're not. Maybe you're like Igor from Frankenstein, at least the cartoony versions of Frankenstein. If so, you really got to work on, you know, the confidence and the personality. But you know what, it's so much of it is about our energy. So I was able to, when I started to take those risks, do the things that you would do even if, you know, if you were good looking, you get amazingly different results, different responses. Hmm. And I noticed that when I started approaching women and being more bold, flirting, taking more risks, I mean, scared the shit out of me. I started to do it more and more. All of a sudden, women seemed more interested in talking to me. And my face hadn't changed, my height hadn't changed, my weight hadn't changed. Nothing had changed in my physical body. Hmm. So the key here is to not get focused in, because the safety police wants you to get super focused in. Like, no, I am good looking. I am good looking. I have to reinforce this belief that I am good looking. And I have to convince myself of it first for the next six to 12 months. And then I'll go talk to her, and then I'll go approach those people and then I'll do whatever it is that you would do. It's gotta be now. The belief. Change is not something we do first. It is a result. The confidence is a result of the action that you take. It's the outcome. It's not a prerequisite. It's not like it happens first. So go out there and take those actions, uncover what it is that you would be doing, and then just start doing it. And if you're not sure, you know, if you're scared, great. There's a whole chapter in there about fear, right? Five ways to blast through fear and overcome it. And they're different than what you might think if you've never read that book. If it's about taking bold, massive, powerful action, man, there's a whole chapter on that. I'm sure you've read that, Ishmael. That one's a beast. It's like twice as long as the other chapters. Because I. I'm a big fan of action. So you have the tools in that book, but the key is to get into that action, to take that. Those steps even before you're ready and get ready. You might have some awkward interactions. You might be scared. That's okay. Because I got some great stories of bumbling my way through a lot of interactions at first. That's how we get to where we want to be. So you got this, man, you're awesome. Thanks for listening, you and everyone else, 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. I'll talk to you soon, Sam.