How To Be Comfortable Talking With Anyone

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 gonna 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 gonna be talking about you being comfortable talking with anybody. Now, I know that might sound like a stretch, especially if you feel nervous or very anxious around certain people, around a lot of people. That might sound like wishful fantasy, but it's absolutely possible. And does that mean you'll never feel anxious about. Around anyone again? No. No. You. You can be anxious or you could be comfortable. And there is something that you can change in your own experience. A few things we're gonna talk about in this episode that can really allow you to be more at ease and relaxed around people. You might say, yeah, but what if the conversation doesn't go well? What if that person's really hard to talk to? What if that person's really closed off? What if, what if, what if, what if? Well, actually, yeah. No. With the right mindset and the right capacities and skills, you can be comfortable talking with anyone. I'm so excited to share these with you. This is fitting timing because right now I'm running the early bird special for, for my next event, which is gonna be an in person immersion in person human form in Portland, Oregon, that's gonna be in November, November 3rd through 5th. It's called supremely Confident Conversation Master, where we're gonna be taking what you're learning in this episode and taking that to the next level, expanding for three days together and not just learning about it, but practicing it. And that's the thing about practicing this stuff in person is so powerful in the room. Action steps outside of the room. So if you' listening to this podcast for quite some time, you resonate with me. You feel inspired, you feel like, hey, this. This actually feel better when I listen to these. That is a fraction of what's possible. When you come together and really commit yourself and immerse in this environment. We have people that come there who are uncomfortable talking to others, uncomfortable making eye contact leave there looking and acting like a completely different person, different version of themselves who's able to confidently talk to strangers and new people and they come back to their workplaces, their family, their friends. And I remember there's one gentleman who that any right after the event, he came home and went to a family barbecue the very next day and he said people were surprised and kept multiple people ask him like extended family people who didn't know that well, like what's, what's going on with you? You seem really, you know, like you're good and excited, you know, as like some aunt or cousin removed aunt or whatever that he barely talks to. Just went on and on about how handsome he was and how he must have all these girlfriends and, and you know, it's funny because this is not the kind of stuff that people would say to him before this kind of thing. So you can really shift this and you can shift it fast. So if you're interested in that, go to below this episode@drinkforthshyguy.com there's a link. You can also go to draziz.coM-R-A z I z.com and right there on the homepage we'll have a banner that's linking to the conversation Master event. So check that out. This is the last event I'm doing for the year in 2023. So now is the time to check that out and let's about how you could be more comfortable. You're going to learn some things in this episode that will be immediately applicable. And again, if you want to go further, check out the event. So what makes you comfortable or uncomfortable talking to somebody? That's a very important question. If you want to be more comfortable talking to people, then what's creating the comfort or its opposite, being uncomfortable. And there's a few key patterns that create that. You might say, well, when it's awkward, when I don't know what to say, when they don't seem interested. Right. Those are some of the big symptoms that we point to, but actually those are manifestations of something else that's already happening. So there's two sides to this equation that are important. One is your conversation abilities, your conversational skill. How do you start a conversation? What do you say? What kind of questions do you ask? How do you keep a conversation going? How do you share about yourself in a way that's interesting and engaging? And how do you draw somebody out? Those are, those are all skills very much like how do you play a guitar? And it might not seem like skills, because you just watch someone in a conversation, it just flows. Or maybe you've been in a conversation, it's just flowed, and you're like, well, I don't know if I was doing any skills. Well, if you watch someone play the guitar, that's an instrument that I learned when I was younger. I played it a lot in my twenties, and now I don't really play much at all, but I played enough to. To be able to observe someone playing the guitar and see what they're doing and know some basics. And when you watch someone who's good at the guitar play, you might not know what the hell's going on, right? They're just. Their fingers are moving up and down the neck of that thing and wiggling all over the place, and you don't know what notes they're playing, exactly what chords. But, man, does it sound right. Well, it's the same thing with a conversation. If you just watch someone flow in a conversation, you have like, wow, man. What are all the little things they're doing? I don't know. But if you break it down just like the guitar, it looks like, you know, she's all over the neck of the car doing all kinds of things. Turns out she's playing, you know, a C minor and then an A and then. And then there's, like, different positions, right? You can play that A at the base of the. The neck, or you could play it way high up towards the head of the guitar, right? So. And there's notes in between that fit with whatever key that they're in. So those are scales that they've learned. There's chords that they've learned. There's the ability to stretch their fingers. Every single one of those is a learned ability. No one was born learning how to play the guitar knowing how to play the guitar. No one was born knowing how to have conversations with people. We learned those things. Now, the beauty of it is you're hardwired to learn this stuff. It's baked into your human DNA to know how to connect and communicate verbally with each other. So it's a skill that you can learn, and you may or may not be more practiced at it. That's one side of it. We want to build those skills. The other side of it, though, that is 80% of it, I'd say, right? So if skills is 20%, 80%, the majority is nothing to do with the skills. It's your mindset, it's your confidence. It's how you see yourself. It's your Social confidence. Now, competence builds confidence. So if you're good at something, you're more confident with it. So if you know the conversational tools that can help your confidence, but it doesn't matter how many tools you have, if that self confidence, that social confidence is low, then it doesn't matter. You're going to feel uncomfortable, you're going to feel anxious. So we're gonna get into both in this episode, but let's start there because that's the 80%, right? The 80, 20. Let's focus on the thing that's the majority of the challenge, or it's gonna bring the biggest result. So the first thing is that if you're having a hard time connecting with people, you. I can guarantee you that you have beliefs, stories about yourself and others that are making that the case. Here's a few of them. See which ones might resonate with you. Here's ones that I've heard from clients, ones that I told myself, too, for a long time. People don't want to talk with me. I'm not that interesting to talk to, or I'm boring. Boring to speak with. I'm boring to talk to. I don't have anything interesting about me. I don't have any interesting stories. I. You know, all those are all variations on the same. Same general belief, right? I am a bother. That person's gonna be bothered talking to me. I'm an annoyance. Again, those are different ways of saying the same thing. It's like the. The tone I'm gonna get back from that person is like, ugh, like you're an annoying little sibling or something. Like, ugh, what do you need? What do you want? I look down upon you and people will bring this to dating situations, oh, that person's too beautiful for me. Or workplace situations. Oh, that person's so busy and powerful and too high up for me, right? And so we approach them and imagine that we're going to be a bother. That's a huge one that causes all kinds of problems. A pressure of I have to almost like, entertain this person. I got to perform. I got to do a song and dance. I have to really make a great impression by being so awesome, right? So there's this pressure, this performance, this need to do something above and beyond in order to get the attention or interest of the other person. Then a similar one, but it's. It's a different. Is, I better make sure that I don't upset this person. And that might be by doing your little song and dance, but it also might just Be being more reserved that usually this, this I don't want to upset the other person leads to a lot of hesitation, less of a performance and more of like a silent quiet. Maybe you're just asked, just focus it total totally on them. Or, or you're kind of stilted and you don't know what to say. Right. I was working with a young gentleman who noticed a lot. He was very uncomfortable on dates, especially first dates. And he building up his confidence to be able to get dates, which is good. But then on those first dates, he was so uncomfortable. I said, well, tell me about that. And he said, well, you know, I basically feels like I'm really absorbed. My focus is somewhere else. Like 95% of my focus is. Is not there. So it's hard to come up with things to say. So the next natural question I ask him is like, well, if 95% of your focus is somewhere else, where is your focus? You thinking about your laundry? Thinking about. You know, it's kind of teased him a little bit and he's like, no, no, I'm. I'm like thinking about how I should be. He was kind of trying to figure it out in the moment as we were exploring. He's like, I guess I'm. I'm like focusing on how I'm coming across and how I should be and what I shouldn't be. And I'm trying to make sure that I come across in this certain way. And I said, yeah, so if 95% of your focus is focused on hiding whatever is there, that's gonna be a big drain on your ability to connect. So he's spending his energy on hiding. I don't want her to see this about me. So we explore what is it you don't want her to see about you? And he didn't really even have a specific, like, oh my God, I got some skeletons in my closet. I don't want her to know about my past. No, it wasn't that. It was almost like a chronic low sense of self worth. Right. It's like I just don't want her to see me. I don't even know what it is. This guy is not enough. So let me do the performance aspect of it. I mean, I could go on and I will at the in person event. I mean, we spend the whole half of the event at least on this stuff. It's intermixed with the skills. But man, you got to address this. You got to learn the beliefs. The. I teach the, the power beliefs for, for conversation masters. What you Believe, because if you perceive yourself differently, all of a sudden you show up differently. So what. What is that way to perceive yourself that's going to make you have much better conversations? Well, it's gonna be the opposite of all the junk you're telling yourself. I am worthy to talk to you. I'm an interesting person. People love talking with me, you might say. But no, they don't. Aziz. They don't. Yeah, they don't. Because you think that you're not worth talking to, and so you behave in that way. Or in the words of Henry Ford, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And I could go deeper into this, but I'm going to share this short version, after studying this for so many years, is that you. You're keeping that story going because you're afraid of connection. At the. At the end of the day, I'm just going to cut to the chase. I could kind of take you through the long road to see that. But that's the short version, right? I'm you. You want connection, but you're afraid of connection. So there's a mix. There's different parts there. There's a push, pull. Of course you want connection. You're a human. You need to connect with others. That's also baked into our DNA. And you have associated connection with pain. And that could be that if someone sees the real me, they're going to reject me, or it's too vulnerable. And I don't want to take the risk that they could reject me because the real me is not okay. And so if you're convinced that the real you is not okay, and to open up is going to be maybe no connection or brief connection followed by a rejection after they see you and know you more, of course you're not going to do that. And so you're going to be more reserved, you're going to be more social anxiety symptoms, more in your head, more guarded, more. I got to perform. Why? It's all blocks. It's roadblocks to connection. And so if you were to tell yourself, I'm a fascinating person, I'm interesting to talk to, I'm engaging, I'm a great listener. I can draw people out, I can talk deeply with others. My presence is beneficial. I'm awesome. If you were to tell yourself that and live as if that were true, what do you think you're going to do? You're going to be you. You're gonna put yourself out there more. You're gonna take more Risks, you're gonna share more and then guess what, you're gonna have more connection. And connection can be scary. We can also be afraid. You know, if you grew up in a household where connection meant something wonky, like you, a nice person syndrome, you gotta take care of everybody else, keep the peace in your family, all of a sudden now connection might feel like a burden or being trapped, so you want to avoid that too. So what we need to do is we need to face that fear of connection and say, okay, I want it and I'm scared of it. And let's gently but persistently move towards what it is that I want and work through the fears along the way. Because it's possible to have new connections where you're not trapped and overburdened and super nice and have no boundaries. And it is a hundred percent possible for someone to see the real you and really like you and love you romantically. Friendships, you might say no, but I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. Well, usually when I dig with people on this, they got a pretty strong message either from their family growing up or commonly enough, it's actually been most recently. It's coming up a lot for me with clients. Clients is bullying, you know, young age or teen, even up through teenage. And it could even be just like a six month period or a one year period. Doesn't have to be for the whole, you know, 20 years of their growing up or something. But it leaves this very strong residue. And what I find is often the clients that I'm working with have identified with the bullies worldview, they've taken it in, it kind of defeated them, you know, and understandably, you know, you're 9 years old or 12 years old and you're getting picked on every freaking day. It's torture. And if that happened to you, I'm sorry. But you have to realize, whoa, the bullies aren't there now. And if they are, what are you doing? Get out of there. You know, but for most people, the bullies aren't there. The nine year old bullies are not following them around, you know, 20 years later, 30 years later. But you've internalized it. You're being the bully to yourself. And we have to shift that and we have to say, I am open to connection, I am worthy of connection just as I am right now. And then you got to take that risk. And what's the risk? The risk is to go into contact with people. And so at this event What I have people do is I have people go out during the day, we take action step breaks and have people go out and practice things, go out and literally talk to people. And I would encourage you to do the same. And people that are in my Mastermind program are regularly talking about how when they're feeling a little rusty, they feel like they're, you know, needing more connection. What do they do? They go out and do friendly greetings. So you walk down the street and say hi to people, right? So you start to keep practicing, putting yourself out there and testing, look, I am, okay? I can be me. And all those stories that have come from the past are not true. And I need to show myself that again and again and again and again. And then if you get a little rusty or it's been a little while, you get a little more isolated again and again and again and then again. Now, what can be really helpful in this process is having some tools, because if you feel like, okay, just go talk to people, dude, I really don't know what to do. I really don't know what to say. And that's where I. It really felt like that for me, it wasn't just low confidence, but these things kind of feed on each other. Because I didn't have much social confidence. I didn't go talk to people very much when I was younger. When I was a teenager, I didn't date. When I was a teenager, I didn't do any of these things. And so when I would go try to, you know, go walk over and talk to that group of people, that's like saying, go pick up the guitar and play us a little ditty. It's like, I don't even know how to hold this thing. You know, Obviously it's different with conversations because you have conversations as a human growing up with your family and maybe you had some friends and other things. So it's not like you don't know how to play the guitar at all, but you might not know the chords and the keys and the scales and stuff. So what are some of the basic skills? And again, I go in depth. We spent a day plus on this throughout the event, maybe more. And that's pretty much half the event is the skills and practicing them, whether it's joining into groups, speaking up, being able to keep a conversation going. But one key one I want to share with you here is that in a conversation, there's only really two things you're going to do. This really simplifies it because you're like, what do I say. What do I say? I don't know what to say. Okay, there's only two things you're going to say. They're going to come out of your face. Number one is you're going to make a statement. That's the thing that ends in a period or if you're enthusiastic, an exclamation mark, right? So that's a statement. That's another. I just made a statement right there. That's a statement. Did you hear that was. Did you hear that was a statement? What was that second thing? That's a question. So everything that comes out of your face is going to be a statement or a question. That's it. So when I don't know what to say, that means say either a statement or a question. Now, in conversation, if you watch, people just like a guitarist will not just play a chord and sit there. They'll play one chord, strum it a little bit or pluck it or whatever, and then they'll go to another chord. There's a transition, right? So you might say, statement, statement, question. So someone says, hey, how's it going today? What did they just do? They said a question, and now what can you do? And this dovetails into another skill I want to teach you, which is give people more to work with. The biggest mistake I see people making is someone says, hey, how's it going? And what do you say? Come on, what do you say? You say, good, you. Now, that, to be fair, was a statement and a question. Good you. But that's. I mean, that's as monosyllabic as it gets. That's as little sounds that can come out of your mouth to barely carry on a conversation. So you're armored up. Whether you know it or not, you're armored up there. So what do you do? Well, here's another little trick. When someone says, how's it going? I want you to translate that question in your mind, right? Run it through, like, imagine a Google Translate or some futuristic AI that's translating in real time for us all, which is probably coming. So they say, how's it going? What are they saying? They're saying, tell me anything you'd like about whatever's happening in your life, whatever you're interested in, what you did today. What's something that's fun for you or challenging for you? Tell me about that. I'd love to hear it. That's what they're saying. Now, obviously, if you're walking down a hall and it's work and it's a colleague you don't really know. It's just some acquaintance. That's fine. How's it going? Good. How you doing? Good. Right? Because it's not really meant to be a conversation. It's meant to just be a greeting. But let's say it's the lunch break and your colleague's sitting there next to you or you're out with a friend or something. You know, you get home from work and your partner's like, hey, how was your day? Good. How about you? Right. Nothing. Nothing to work with. And why do we do this? Because we have this chronic story. This goes back to the first part, the 80% that says, I'm not interesting. No one cares about you. Now, is that true? Yes or no? Come on, is that true? Yes or no? Is that really true? Come on, cut the bullshit. Cut the stories you tell yourself. It's a defense. You're afraid of opening up and being seen and known. And I know I'm being strong here, because if I don't cut through, that story persists. And I talk to people of all different ages, all different spectrums, all different levels of readiness from people who are ready to do whatever it takes to break free, to people who are like, you know what? Actually, I'm just gonna probably settle for the rest of my life now. Of course, they don't say that, but that's probably what they're gonna do now. I don't know if it's for the rest of their life, but it is for that next time period. And hopefully that's not you. Hopefully, that's not you. So when someone says, hey, how's it going? You say, hmm, I am feeling. I'm feeling, man, you know what I love right now? And then just say something that you love and just share something. Oh, man, I know what I love right now. I love. I'm looking at this at my desk right now. I might say, man, I'm doing good. You know what? I just was drinking earlier. Say, what? A lionheart kombucha. It's the greatest. It's the greatest kombucha in the world, you might say. That's a really weird thing to say when someone asks, how's it going? Yeah, give yourself permission to, like, lead the conversation. Step outside of the rails. You want to do the normal thing. How's it going? Good. How you doing? Good. See you later. Bye. Right. That's not what conversation masters do. That's not what people. If you watch people who are skilled at conversation, they'll say things. How you doing? Oh, man, I'm doing good. I just got back from the gym. Gym. Been working out, been consistent with my workouts for the last, you know, three months. It's feeling really good. Look at that. Look at how much you just gave that person to work with. Now they can ask you about the gym or they can share about their own thing. And of course, if they say, oh, cool, cool, and they don't give you anything to work with, well, as a conversation master, you might say, oh, how about you? What you been up to? Right? And if you're a real, you know, skillful conversation master, you. You see how they respond. And if they're like, I'm good, I'm good, and they're doing the same thing, you draw them out. What's been going on in your world recently? What's something you're excited about? If you know anything about them, you can reference that, too. Hey, how's that move going? Right? So, I mean, there is dozens of skills that I could teach you I want to get into. I also have. So one is the conversation Master event. It's the best place to come to look up. There's other podcast episodes. Just type in conversation in the search@drinkforthshyguy.com but the key thing here, I want to give a few skills, but if I give like 20 here, it's just going to be a lot of information, but nothing's going to change. The key thing that I want to put into our action step, which is, well, let's make it right now. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to choose a belief, a story, a perception about yourself that if you were to believe it, you would be open for connection and have all kinds of opportunities to connect, such as people love talking with me. I'm a fascinating human, right? So that's. That's one that I like. But you can pick something like that, any story you want. It doesn't matter if it feels true or not. Remember the truth, how it feels is not a fact. And these are very malleable stories. It's almost like you can think of them as prompts in ChatGPT. I don't know if you ever used a ChatGPT, but it's pretty cool, right? So it's got prompts. And so if you put a prompt in that says, tell me all the presidents of the United States from the beginning of, you know, the country's origin, it will spit out probably, I've never done this one, but probably a list of all the president's names and if you tell it chatgpt what should I buy my wife for our 10 year anniversary? It will spit out a very different thing. And the same thing comes with these stories you tell yourself. They're prompts. And the list of the presidents what to buy for an anniversary. That's not true or false. They're just prompts. So if you put a prompt in that says I'm engaging and interesting to talk with and people love talking with me, you're going to have a very different output. And your output is going to be you're going to move towards people, you're going to connect and then you're going to be able to practice. And if you want to practice one skill, it's give people something to work with and remember what's the other thing we touched on? Everything that comes out of your mouth is what either a that's right statement or a question. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Check out drazziz.com,/a z I z.com to find out more and join me. I would love to give you a high five and a hug in person in Portland in November and until we speak again, may 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. Sam.