How To Be Less Insecure And Self-Conscious

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 be talking about insecurity and feeling self conscious. Well, actually how to feel a lot less insecure and less self conscious. And this is a sticky place for a lot of people. You might think that insecurity or self consciousness comes when someone is real low or they're, you know, they're really lacking in something, they're not good, they're clearly undesirable. And then of course, they feel very insecure. And maybe that's how you feel about yourself. And I've talked to people who are highly successful, attractive, capable, loved, valued by other people and they feel extremely insecure and self conscious. So that really challenges the idea that the self consciousness, the insecurity, is coming from some major external or internal lack that everyone else can see. In fact, it's much more of an internal, invisible experience that others may or may not even know is happening inside of you. And it could be totally disconnected from actual value. What you're really bringing, how other people really see you or feel about you. And I think that's the first liberating insight here, is to realize that your insecurity or your self consciousness doesn't equal other people looking down on you or disliking you or thinking whatever it is you imagine they're thinking about you. And so to make this episode even more relevant to you, I'm going to invite you to think about a place in your life where you might feel insecurity or self consciousness. Maybe it's a social situations that you find certain social situations you find yourself in. Maybe it's dating environments or with certain types of people. Maybe it's at work, maybe when you're in the role of career or you're doing a specific presentation or presenting in a certain way or showing up with a certain type of client or colleague or customer or something, then it comes out. So I understand that it might not be all the time. Although if you have a lot of social anxiety like I did, then it's kind of all the time, at least whenever you're around people. But it might be situation specific as well. But what is happening here when we feel insecure or self conscious? Well, there is one universal focus for anyone who's feeling insecure. Who do you become very focused on when you are feeling self conscious or insecure? That's right. You. Me. I focus on myself when I'm feeling insecure or self conscious. Am I doing it right? Am I okay? Am I doing a good job? Is that good or bad? Is it right or wrong? Do they like me or do they not like me? What do they think about me? What are they going to tell other people about me? What are they going to secretly feel about me when they go home? And of course, it's all loaded with bad stuff, right? You know, it seems like it's a question like, I wonder what they're thinking about me, but really it's. They're probably thinking bad things about me. And I'm worried about how that's going to impact me. Or I'm just going to instantly feel bad about it right now, even though I don't know exactly what they're thinking. But I'm sure it's bad, so I'm going to feel bad, right? So then maybe it's framed as questions, but it's not really questions. And it is a feeling that you are not doing something right, that you're not right, that you're bad, something's failing, you're failing, it's wrong, and people see it and people don't like you as a result of it. And maybe they're gonna tell other people and they're not gonna like you too, right? And that's a very scary slippery slope to go down. And all of it is focused on me and how I'm coming across. And then the response to that sometimes is like, okay, well, let me make sure that I look good. Let me overcompensate. Let me try extra hard. Let me try to be perfect so I don't have any insecurities or reveal any flaws. But then how well does that work? Usually not very well. Because despite wanting to be perfect, despite putting the demand on yourself to be perfect, shockingly, it doesn't actually make you perfect. I know. Crazy, huh? It also actually doesn't improve your performance either. It creates performance anxiety and stress and pressure, all of which tend to make you maybe objectively even less effective at what it is you want to do, whether it's presenting something at work or sharing your ideas or even just talking with somebody in a social situation. So our performance goes down. So self consciousness, insecurity doesn't make us better. The demand upon ourselves doesn't make us do better. And we go deeper and deeper into this illusion that we're really terrible and unlikable and we're failing. And this is where I've come across people who are at very high levels in their career, you know, lawyers or doctors or professionals who are. They've obviously done good work to get to where they are. They're obviously capable, they know way more about their field than I ever would. Right. And yet in their mind, they're just this bumbling con man who somehow got their way there and they're pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and they're grossly incompetent. And that's not what's happening. And if you tell yourself that as well, that that's not really what's happening at all. Here's what's happening is you are going into this vortex of self absorption. That's what self consciousness and insecurities are. We go into this vortex of, of self absorption and we lose sight of what is real and what is true and what actually works. And the problem here is not your flaws or your perceived flaws. Because you might say, no, Aziz, I do get nervous and talk too much, or I do not know what to say and say strange things, or I do make mistakes when I'm giving a presentation. Okay? I mean, perhaps that does happen, right? I'm not, I'm not saying you are perfect. And the good news is you don't need to be. But the problem there is not even any of those. The problem is the. Where your consciousness and focus goes, which is very on yourself and very almost collapsed inward, where you get hyper focused, you get myopic vision on yourself and on certain flaws. Right? Like, did I say that right? Why did my voice sound shaky there? My voice said you, oh, my voice was shaky. And you zoom in on this one moment where your voice sounded, quote, shaky. And we're not doing what's going to be really effective, which is being with other people. That is the secret. That is the way out, that is your liberation is to stop going inward, inward, inward, me, me, me, and focus outward or at least inclusively on we, we, we, we. It's both of us, right? So you can focus on them and you, or maybe just them. I don't know, but certainly not 100% on you. Because when you focus 100% on you, you're going to experience mostly negative things. You're going to feel self conscious, you're going to feel insecure, you're going to feel inadequate, you're going to feel social anxiety. It doesn't actually create the results that you want. And part of this is when the focus gets so narrow like that your level of capacity and energy drops. And as your energy drops, your thoughts become less accurate, your emotions become less resourceful, and your entire bandwidth is reduced. Whereas if you expand to include others, your system is larger and a lot more energy and life moves through you. So here's a little simple example. I remember I was working with a client one time and he would get very insecure in social situations. You know, all this self focused stuff we've been talking about. Am I doing it right? What's wrong? Oh my gosh. And fixating. And then now he's like six minutes ago in the conversation fixated on something he did and he can't be present with a person. And so I said, well, let's, let's try something different, right? Because he could really get what we're talking about here like this. It obviously isn't working. I need to do something different. He'd spent so much time trying to perfect himself and improve himself, so he didn't have these insecurities. And that wasn't working either. And so I said, okay, let's try this instead. And I want you to start by when you are socializing with people, let's have you get more outside of yourself. And we're gonna do this on a couple of levels. The first thing is I want you to take note of each person's choice of clothing. And he kind of gave me a strange look because he wasn't like a fashion guy. He could kind of care less about his clothes, you know, just wore the basic stuff. And he's like, what do you mean, like what clothes? Like what brands they're wearing. I was like, well, maybe, sure, what brands? What colors? Get a sense of how much does this person value their wardrobe and how they dress and how they put their combinations together of colors and layers and all that stuff. And he kind of just stared at me like, what, is this it? I was like, yeah, well, this is the first. I want you to get really observant of other people, okay? And then I want you to think about how much do you think they care about their clothing and why do you and the people that Seem to care about it a lot. What? Why do you think they do that? What matters about that to them? How do they feel about their clothing, do you think? I was like, I don't know. I said, well, let's just check it out. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to go out in a situation where you're being social, and I want you to focus and study everyone's clothing and their choices and how important it seems to them. And he seemed a little confused and reluctant, but he was willing because, hey, nothing else had been working, right? So he goes out, tries it, and he comes back. And I said, so how did it go? And he started to tell me all these different things he noticed. Well, I noticed this person had this kind of clothing, and they seemed like the kind of person who really wanted to look good. And this person seemed like they didn't care as much. And this one seemed like they, you know, really wanted to. To be fashionable. And he kind of gave me a rundown of all these different people, and I didn't know any of them, right? And I said, oh, great. And so as you were focusing on this person who seemed to really want to be fashionable and that sort of thing, why do you think they did that? And he's like, well, maybe it makes them feel like they're unique or they're special. I said, oh, wonder why they might do that? He's like, I don't know. Maybe they. Maybe they need to feel good about themselves. I said, huh? So let me ask you a question. When you're focused on this person and their wardrobe and them, you know, maybe wanting to feel good about themselves, are you feeling self conscious? He paused for a minute. He's like, no, I wasn't at all. Said, oh, interesting. And we started to unpack that and we started to add to that and say, what else can you focus on in other people? What does this person need? What do they. What are their motives? What are they doing? Why are they doing what they're doing? What's happening here? And then this strange revelation started to happen for him, which he realized that to be valuable socially, to be desired, to be. To bring value at work, I actually don't need to be focused on myself at all. And this might sound kind of strange to like, wait a minute, wait a minute. If I'm not focused on myself at all, then I'm going to become this weird kind of disconnected person who's all socially awkward because I'm doing all this weird stuff. And I got like food hanging out of my mouth. And I'm like, you're not going to become like just completely out there and unaware. You're not going to, you know, reek of unwashed, you know, go to the bathroom and you don't wipe your butt. Kind of just disorientation. I mean, you'd have to be have some sort of brain damage. You know, that's not going to happen. You're going to have some basic self awareness. You just don't need any more than that. You'll get plenty of feedback, you'll get plenty of input. You don't need to be policing and observing yourself in the same way. In fact, you already know this without me telling you know this in some area of your life. Because there's something, there's something that you know how to do. And when you don't think about it and don't focus on it, you do it better, right? Maybe that's playing an instrument and you just have a song that you've remembered and you just whip it out and you play it and it's fine. But if you try to slow it down or you try to focus on one part, all of a sudden you forget how to play it. Or even simpler example, we have this password manager that we use and I recently got Candace on it. And so you log into your password manager and then you have all your passwords in there. And so I got her set up with that on her phone and then I told her what the password was and then she forgot it and I said, okay, yeah, I'll log in for you. And I told her the password and I told her the wrong thing. Some of the numbers were switched around and then I was like, oh, wait, okay, give me your phone, let me see. And I typed it in and I had to just type it in without thinking about it, the whole thing from start to finish. And then boom, I got it and I was like, oh, it was this way and that way, not that way and that way. Okay, right. It had to be unconscious. It's just, it flows. And guess what? You flow. You flow, my friend. When you're not getting in your own way, when you're not focusing on how am I doing it, you get that that self consciousness comes from a hyper awareness over policing, over observing. And then that creates the stifled, the awkward, the tense. And some people say, yeah, that sounds great. I know that I should just focus on other people in the situation. I just, I can't, I can't, I can't. It's Too strong. It's too. It's too intense. Well, usually what's happening there is. The reason you can't let go and focus on something else is because in your psychology, in your psyche, you've added a tag to the other people's judgment of you as hyper dangerous. So let's say most people. Have you ever smelled, like, propane gas? This is an interesting thing. I don't know if you. Wherever you are, they use propane gas, but. Or natural gas. Different than propane, but similar. They have those in a lot of houses. And they add. So natural gas and propane have no smell. It's not like gasoline you put in your car where it stinks. Propane and natural gas have no smell. And that's really dangerous because if you leave your stove on or there's some situation where, you know, let's say you left your stove on but the sparker didn't go. So you're just releasing gas into your house. That's a potentially fatal, you know, fight club type situation where all it takes is a spark and your whole house blows up because it's full of gas, natural gas, right. So they add a smell to it, and that smell is bad. So you smell it and you're like, oh, shoot, something bad is happening right now. So that your brain has tagged that smell as dangerous. In that case, it's quite useful because then, you know, to, you know, check it out, turn off the gas, maybe get out of the house if you need to. In fact, we had a situation not that long ago, a couple weeks ago, where our. One of our burners was left on just the gas part for hours. And my wife woke up in the middle of the night and, like, she smelled it and she's like, whoa. And she aired out the house. And, you know, so it could have been a serious situation, but that's an important thing. We want a danger signal there. And. And the problem, though, is if we have social anxiety or we're too nice, we have some. Some concern about other people's judgment. We've tagged anyone disapproving of us as that same fatal danger as, you know, gas releasing in your house. And so that would be like, you know, you had this natural gas, it's releasing in your house, and someone's like, hey, don't worry about it. Just focus on the TV show. Have a good time. You're like, I can't focus on the tv. I can't have a good time. We're gonna die in our house. Right? So it's the same kind of thing with the fear of disapproval is like, I can't relax right now. I can not focus on me and heavily police me. I have to hyper watch out for anything that I might do that might be judged. And if that's the case, then we're going to need to decouple the that the idea that people's judgment is super dangerous because people are judging people all the time. People are judging you. I know. Even you. And that's okay. Repeat after me, I'm not for everybody. Yeah, go ahead and say it. Maybe even say it in your mind. If you're around other people, you don't want to sound like a weirdo. Say, I'm not for everybody. And maybe you let yourself have a little laugh there. It's like a laugh of freedom. Like, oh, great, I'm not for everybody. Beautiful. So let's talk about how you can put this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to practice something like what I suggested I did with that client. And I do the same for you. So pick something. Whether it's people's attire, maybe even what people focus on, what they talk about, what they seem interested in, what's important to them, something that you can focus on, ask people questions about, explore with them, have conversations with them about. That's something about them. And outside of you, I mean, you could go even more granular. Like, what is each person's eye color that you talk to? Can you remember? Can you say, oh, that person has brown eyes, that person has green eyes, that person has whatever. Can you focus on that? It's some simple practice to get you outside of yourself. And the more you do this, the more you realize you don't have to police yourself at all. You can focus on others and their experience. And the more that you do that well, the more your self consciousness and your insecurities just. Well, they become irrelevant. Awesome. 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.