How To Be More Decisive Now

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. Welcome to today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. And. And today we're gonna talk about you becoming more decisive and how this will help you with your confidence. It will actually help you with social anxiety and niceness. A lot of the fear in those patterns can create extreme overthinking, overanalyzing, indecisiveness, questioning, second guessing, hesitation, which then perpetuates this mushy feeling of I don't know and I'm not sure. And in this episode, you're gonna discover what's really going on underneath that undecisiveness, why you indecisive, and then how to change it. And the good news is, is it's not that complicated. It's just a little uncomfortable. But like everything we talk about in this show, if you do the things that make you uncomfortable in the short term, you can create an extraordinary level of freedom and confidence in your life. And in fact, if you. The only way to free yourself from social anxiety and debilitating shyness or niceness is to be willing to do the uncomfortable things bit by bit. Probably not sharing anything new with you if you've listened to any other episodes of this show, but it's worth saying again and again and again, because we all have that perpetually reforming desire to avoid discomfort, to do the comfortable thing, to do the easy thing, to squeamishly squirm away from the thing that makes us, well, feel uncomfortable, feel painful. And that avoidance ultimately leads to much greater pain. You might even say the ultimate pain, which is a life not fully lived. So I'm really excited to share this information in this episode. If you're benefiting from this show and you've appreciated these free episodes, please, I'd love for you to contribute in a way to others, and the best way that you could do that would be to go to Shrink for the Shy Guy on Apple Podcasts. Or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and give it a review. And the benefit of that is when I want to approach a guest for this show, I have a lot of experts that I interview for this show. If they look at my show and it's got a lot of reviews, that's how people judge if the show is legit, how long has it been going and how many reviews does it have? So that helps also. It helps because there's people that are looking for this stuff, then they find it and they see, oh, wow, this is helping other people. And so it helps find those people out there who are just like you and me, who are stuck in a place of doubting themselves, judging themselves, believing that they're not enough, and really finding hope and freedom. That's my goal. That's my mission here. So please support in the mission and take a moment right now maybe even to go give it a review on itunes or Apple podcasts or Spotify or whichever platform you're using for this. Awesome. Thank you so much in advance for that. Being decisive. So why are you not decisive? What causes indecisiveness? Well, there's a couple of things here. One is you're afraid. I mean, that's probably the core reason to be indecisive is I'm afraid. Well, what are you afraid of? Think about that. Can you think about something that you might be indecisive about? It could be something big in your life. You know, should I change my job or not? Should I end this relationship or not? Or it could be something real small. What should I order at the restaurant? What clothes should I wear? What should I do today? Should I go to this thing or not? Should I go to the party or not? Should I say yes to that friend's request or not? Right. So big or small, pick something and bring your attention to it and notice. Are you questioning what to do? How are you questioning what to do? How are you even assessing how you decide? This is something that most people don't even reflect on. They just decide or don't decide and live with the consequences of their indecisiveness. And that's just how it is. That's just how I am. But if you really observe it, you'll start to see some patterns. And one of the most key patterns is that when we're deciding something, we're future projecting. We're using the brilliance of our mind to time travel into the future to see where does this decision lead me. So what's it going to be like if I say yes to that friend's request, what's it going to be like at that party? What's it going to be like at that new job? And we're trying to guess, we're trying to, you know, predict the future, which is one of the functions of our, of our minds. It has a capacity to simulate what might happen. So instead of having to put two things together in 75 different attempts until they click you, you can actually study it, look at it, and maybe make a few attempts and have it click. Why? Cause you can simulate in your mind what's going to happen if I try this, what's gonna happen if I try that. So that's actually a power of the human brain. It's amazing. It's allowed us to invent all kinds of things and be the dominant species on the planet. But it has its downsides in that you start to assess the future, simulate the future. But we already have some bugs in the code. Bug number one is what if your predictions of the future are inaccurate based upon bad data? So you have information from the past that says, I don't like being at parties, they're awkward and terrible. And so you take the past and plug it into the future and you say, ah, the future is the past. The past equals the future. Now that's a bug that's an error in. It's a certainty based thinking, I know how to predict the future. It's just the same as the past. And that's not true. It might feel true, but it's not true. It's not accurate. It just feels accurate. And there's a big difference. If you've ever seen someone who's certain or you've ever been certain about something like, no, I'm sure that that actor was in that movie. I'll bet you $1,000. And then you look it up and you're like, oh, yeah, terrible. I know, I wasn't really betting. It was a statement of passion. No, I'm not going to give you $1,000. Get away from me. Right. So we've all been there. And so certainty does not correlate with accuracy. So you can be certain that the future is going to go a certain way, but you don't actually know. It just feels that way. So that's one potential bug in the program. Another bug in the program is an error about what your decisions will bring. And so you simulate what it's going to be like to make the change or make the decision. And then you try to assess well, how good is that going to be? Is it going to be good to go to the party or not? Is it going to be good to try to go for that new job or not? Is it going to be good to enter the end of the relationship or not? And this is where it starts to break down. Because nothing in life is all good and no bad, all pleasure and no pain. And so it's mixed. It's going to be mixed to end a relationship. You might feel a lot of grief and pain and loneliness, but you also might feel a lot of relief and a sense of this is a healthy thing to do. It opens me up to new and better relationships in my life. Same thing with a job change. There's going to be insecurity or uncertainty or discomfort or fear. But you know, you let go of the old familiar that's stagnant, boring and stuck and understimulating to create something that is exciting and engaging and growthful and potentially better results, better income, better opportunities in your life. But it's mixed. It's not all good or all bad. And the same thing for the dinner party or whatever it is, right? You know, there's moments you're going to like. All this is fun and connecting and moments are going to be uncomfortable. So we're looking for the best option. There's a great book about this called the Paradox of Choice. I forget the name of the psychologist that wrote it, but he talks about this comes about, this problem's amplified when we have a lot of choices, which we have a ton of choices in this day and age, right? So the example he gives is like ketchups at the store. So you go to the supermarket, how many freaking ketchups are there? I mean, Heinz alone, which is like the dominant brand here in the United States, Heinz alone has like, I don't know, 15 different types of ketchup. There's Heinz Regular, Heinz Low Sugar, Heinz Honey Sweetened, Heinz, I don't know, Heinz Jalapeno, I don't even know all the types, right? And then there's all the other brands and then there are all the other offshoots, right? So you have like 50 different choices of ketchup in the United States. It's insane. It's insane. And so the problem is there's a part of us that's like. And this is like a, a thinking error that just occurs from having too many choices, which is, we think, well, geez, I mean, if there's 50 varieties of ketchup, one of them has to be the best. And the best is gonna bring all pleasure and no pain. Or at least tip the scales to like 97% pleasure, 3% pain. Just gotta find what it is. And then so if you're one of those desperate poor souls that you ever seen in the supermarket who's holding like two boxes of cereal, two ketchups, and they're reading the labels and they're like low sugar, that's pretty good. But is that gonna taste good? I don't know about this one. I don't know about those tomatoes. Are they organic? And then your shopping trip takes 75 years. And he has a term for this, he calls it maximizing. You're trying to assess the pros and cons of the decision and determine what's going to be best. And that generally when we're maximizing, we're suffering, we're stuck, we're in analysis paralysis. And that we need to practice something called satisficing. Looking at it for a minute, I mean, you may want to look at something, maybe something does matter to you about the ketchup. Maybe you're going to assess. I mean obviously the ketchup choice is going to be faster than the job change choice. But regardless whether it's the ketchup or the job, you analyze some, probably a lot less for the ketchup, probably more for your job. And then at some point sufficient data satisfied, make a decision and it's good enough. And the only way to move forward with the good enough is to know that it's going to have good and bad, which I'm going to talk about in just a minute. Susan Jeffers, who wrote a fantastic book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. If you haven't read it, check it out. It's one of the first, if not the first self development book that I read and was powerfully life transformative for me. Up until that point, I'd been running from fear in my life. And that book helped me basically apply the principle that I teach, which is do what scares you and then, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway. But she has a no lose decision making framework that I want to share with you in today's episode as well. So bug number one, you think the past equals the future. Your predictions are probably false based upon faulty information or negative information about your identity that doesn't serve you. So you see yourself as not being able to succeed in something new. Then there's the paradox of choice. You think that something's going to be the greatest because there's so many choices, and there's other bugs that we could go deeper into. I want to really help you start to be able to make the decisions. But if you can think of anything else or notice anything else, there, there are many different flaws in the way that we think about decisions. And there's one more I'll share. And this is by no means a comprehensive list, but the last one I'm going to share is that we're operating whether we do not have enough meaningful. We don't have enough data to reach a meaningful conclusion. So we're trying to see how is X going to go or is X going to lead to Y to the Z with a job change? Like, am I going to get this or that and the relationship, If I end this relationship, who am I going to date after that? Am I ever going to find someone and what are they going to be like? And you just don't know. That data is, is missing. It's, it's lost in the fog of the future. You know, you don't know the, the deep future. All. You don't even know the future really of today. I mean, today is a little more likely. Your predictions are a little more accurate. It's possible there's going to be a, you know, a catastrophe, calamity, spontaneous, exciting change. And all of a sudden you get a phone call that's like, you won the lottery. I don't know if they call you, but I don't know if you play the lottery but, you know, or you get a phone call. It's like, hey, someone's, you know, got into an accident, right? Who knows what's gonna happen when you pick up that phone. But the likelihood of today not having that calamity is pretty, pretty good. So your, your prediction for days is probably pretty accurate. Yeah, I'm gonna go here. I'm gonna take care of this work task. I'm gonna go to this thing. Your plans are probably going to go sort of according to that plan. Maybe you got a, oh, I gotta pick up the kids, or, oh, that pipe broke and I gotta fix it. But, you know, a lot of the day is gonna go how you think. But if you go out a week, a month, a year, two years, it all breaks down. You don't know. You don't have enough data to reach a meaningful conclusion. So you're sitting there trying to imagine, how am I going to feel, the dinner party, and you don't know. You don't know who you're going to talk to. You don't Know who's going to be there. Even if you know who's going to be there, you know, it's all unclear. And then the last error I'm going to share, I just thought of this one that I really wanted to mention is that one final problem in our decision making is we. We imagine we see everything in the results of our decision in the circumstance, which is, oh, the dinner party is going to have these people, or when I change to this job, I'm going to get this position maybe. And you know, you're making that up. We don't know. But you imagine it and then you're like, no, I don't like that. Or, oh, I'm not going to. What if I get in this position and I'm stuck? Or what if I get new relationship and it's worse? What if I'm at the party and I don't want to be there and we play the movie out as if everything is controlled by the circumstance and we forget that we're a powerful agent who can freaking choose and steer our lives. So if you're at the dinner party and you're bored. Yeah. Then what are you gonna do? Are you gonna talk to people differently? Are you gonna practice new social skills that you can learn if you haven't already checked out? Social Mastery is one of my courses in Confidence University. Go get Confidence University. You can rock any dinner party then. Right? So are you going to practice that stuff? Are you going to learn? Are you going to leave? Are you going to go to your car and regroup and take a few breaths and come back in and have a good time? I mean, there's a thousand things you could do. But when we're decision making, we just sort of see, well, it's all. Is the party good or bad? It's all in the environment, all in the circumstance. So what are you seeing about yourself? And this is just four ones. These are the big ones I've seen in people. But there's many, many more errors in the way that we try to make decisions. So as long as we're running at least one of these patterns, and if you're running all four, you're toast. It's gonna be really hard to live. It's gonna be hard. You might have a hard time picking ketchup at the store. I mean, you might have hard time maybe with bigger things. You probably are prone to a lot more regret. Like, I should have picked the other ketchup. I shouldn't have gone to this dinner party. Right. And you burn A lot of energy on what you should or shouldn't have done, which is completely unhelpful. And you might know it's unhelpful, but I just really want to hammer that home. And so if you notice yourself doing that, take a full breath in, roll your shoulders back, and just say, that doesn't serve me. Look, if there's something I want to change here in this decision I've made, this dinner party, this job, whatever, let me focus my energy on that. That energy on what I should have, could have done is completely hemorrhaged. It's not a learning strategy. You're not learning anything. You are resisting it. You're fighting, you're blaming yourself. You're wishing you had more control. And it's not going to make you help you make a better decision in the future. That's the illusion. You think it's going to help you make a better decision in the future, but then actually it's going to make you more anxious because you treat the regret as if it's a real problem, as if it's a bad thing. Look, here's the only regret I think you might want to watch out for, the regret of living in indecisiveness. So your hand is forced by other people's circumstances in life. So you say, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And then the decision is made for you because either the opportunity just passes or you get pushed into something or you end up getting fired from the job that you didn't like anyway because your performance was degrading. And you're like, I don't know, I don't know. And now you're, like, thrust into the change, not on offense, not being prepared, not finding your power and strength, but kind of just being thrown into it. Or the change never occurs and you live in stagnation and you miss out on your life. You don't go to the dinner party, you don't change the job, you don't end the relationship. You don't do any of the things that you really want to do because it's scary. Because I don't know. Because I don't know. I don't know. And then your life passes you by. And now a decade has gone by where you just didn't know. And look, I'm not saying you're bad or that's wrong. It's just. Is that really what you want? And so I made a decision at some point in my life to be More decisive because I did all this stuff. How do you think I know these patterns so well? Because I did them right. And it's just I don't know if I should go do that. I don't know if I should go do that. What was the reason for me is I was scared. I was scared of one thing which was pain. And so I would see that any decision had the potential for pain. Especially proactive, bold decisions like going over and talking to somebody or asking the woman out. Like, oh God, there's so much potential pain there. So you know what? I'm going to be indecisive about it and therefore decide not to do it in a way. So how do we change this? Well, Susan Jeffers, who I mentioned earlier, feel a fear and do it anyway, has a beautiful no lose decision making model. And it goes like this. You think it's, you know, should I do A or B or A, B or C and oh no, A's got some good things and some bad things. Okay, maybe I'll do B. Yeah, B's got some pretty good things. Oh, but it's also got some bad things. Oh no. How about C? Well, C is looking pretty good. I should do C. Okay, I'm gonna do C. And then you wake up later that night, you're like, oh no, C's got some bad things too. Plus I'd miss out on the A. And you could do that indefinitely. You could do that for years or until the opportunity passes. And I was just speaking with someone recently who's gonna make a job change. She's radically increased her boldness after being she's been in my mastermind program and strengthening her boldness and she's gonna make a change in her job and you know how long she's been at the current job that she has that she doesn't really like that much. I think it was 16 years. So you could go around this pattern for a long time and she probably, I mean, could have done it indefinitely if she didn't wasn't part of this program and really building up her boldness. So what we want to do is we want to change the model. And the model goes like this. A and B and C and however many other options you think you got here, A is going to be one path, B is going to be another path. C is going to be another path. If I choose A, that path is going to have gifts and challenges and B is going to have gifts and challenges. And C is going to have gifts and challenges, pleasure and pain things I like and things I don't like. Every single option is going to have that, right? What are we doing here? We're satisficing. We're not maximizing. We realize that every ketchup is going to have a plus side and a downside, right? And maybe the downside is it's. Well, it's. It's agave sweetened. I guess that's better than sugar, right? I don't know. Is that better for my glycine? I don't. Whatever, but it's like twice as much. Oh, geez. That's the downside, right? Oh, this one's sugar, but that's better than the corn syrup. But the sugar is that sugar is not good. You know how many sugar tablespoons per tablespoon a serving, right? And so you can maximize all day, you can say, you know what they're going to have. Some are going to have pleasure, some are going to have pain. Each is going to have a mixture of both. Now, when I choose, I'm going to embrace the gifts of this path and embrace the challenges of this path. And I know that they're all serving me. So what path is exciting? What path is adventurous? What path is engaging? Now, this is. Susan Jeffers just talks about framing it that way. I'm going to add in something else, which is be like. But I still don't know. I mean, sure, they all have pleasure and pain, but I don't know which pleasure and pain I want more than the others. Well, here's another thing to pay attention to. Are you afraid of pain? Are you afraid of pain? And look, if you are, that's human. I'm not saying you shouldn't or something, but just to know that, that, yes, we can be afraid of pain, we can not want pain. But if you try to avoid it, you're only gonna get more pain for you and other people in your life eventually. So you don't wanna make your decisions based upon trying to minimize pain. You wanna choose something else. So what do you. What's something else? I believe you come back to your values. What do you value in life? What do you want your life to be about? What's the kind of person that you wanna be? What do you wanna be remembered for? What would you wish people would say about you at your funeral? He was the kind of guy who did what she was always this. And what is it? So for me, some of the things I value is. Well, I had value. Variety and adventure and exploring. You know, I love that. My favorite, favorite Kind of trail run or hike to go on is a hike or a trail run I've never done before or one that really pushes the limits of what I think I can or can't do. So there's a chance of, like, I might not make it. I might not be able to do what I'm trying to do here. And you combine the two. Ooh, ooh, man, there's a lot of juice there. And guess what? There's pain or fear there, right? Oh, no. How's it gonna go? It's gonna be too hard. I don't know if I'm gonna make it. But it's the variety, it's the adventure. So I value that. I value love and connection. I value not just loving connection with people, but. But I value a greater sense of love and connection that I know that I feel in nature and in solitude. You could call it connection with spirit, connection with God, with universal intelligence, energy, whatever you wanna call it. But I will connect with that there. So that's important for me. That's. I value that. I value boldness, I value decisiveness. So what does that all look like? Well, let's say there's a choice in my life. Should I hire this person or not? Should I make this change in the company? Should I go to this wedding or not? Right. So that's. You can, you can run this through the decision making. Well, do I, do I hire this person or not? Well, one of the things that I value is I value, let's see if find the word for it. But it's putting my full doing what I can to make a difference. There's probably a better impact contribution, let's call that contribution. But it's a specific type of contribution. It's not necessarily like, oh, that means I'm gonna go build toys at Christmas for the orphans or something, which is a beautiful form of contribution. I just don't think that's my thing. But contributing in this way, contributing using my gifts, sharing and teaching and training and helping people. So I value deeply impacting people's lives and contribution. And so when it comes to decisions in business, I'm going to make decisions that do that, even though sometimes those decisions are not the most economical in business. It's not maximizing my profit, it's not minimizing my efforts. You know, some people in business, you know, hardcore entrepreneurial style is like, what's the, you know, how do I generate the maximum result, maximum profit, and minimize my input and time and energy so I can, you know, be running the business, not having the business run me and go start another business, which is beautiful. That's a, I think that's a whole other game. And I have a level of like, I have boundaries and I'm not just going to completely overextend myself and, and burn out by giving everything and not having anything left for my family or my own pursuits. But at the same time, you know, when it comes to like, oh, are we going to make this next event virtual or in person? Well, it's a lot easier to do a virtual event and it's a lot cheaper to do a virtual event. And yet I want to offer both in the world because the virtual events will bring people from maybe other parts of the world or people who wouldn't travel out here. And then the in person experience is a whole nother level of impact. And so I'm going to do both. So look, because I value that, I'm going to make that decision. Now if I sat there and said, oh, but what's do I want to do the in person or the virtual? Is it going to be. But okay, the virtual's got that, but oh, I don't like this. And oh, the in person's got that, I like that, but oh my God, the logistics, oh, it's so uncomfortable. I don't want to deal with all that. I could be indecisive for forever, but because I know myself and I know my values, I'm going to make that choice. And because I value decisiveness, I've practiced making decisions quickly. So I'll make them quickly. I'll decide something, you know, depending on the decision in. I mean, if it's even semi decently big decisions I'll make within a couple of hours. Maybe if it's a big decision, you know, when it came to moving for us, but even that we had an opportunity to move, I think we probably spent seven days making that decision. Right? I mean it was pretty, pretty significant. And so we just quickly. And I might have even been faster on that. Oh, and then when we, you know what? Actually, honestly, I made the decision the second we visited the house that I live in now. We got to the house, we walked into it, the first room we went into was like this. There's like this weird semi completed construction project which has been an ordeal for like, we knew we'd have to spend a bunch of money to fix that thing. So we walked in, that was the first thing we saw. And Candace was like, oh God. And I was like, well, let's just check out the rest of the house. And I turned and walked out and started walk down the stairs. And this house has a big three flights of stairs, and they're all this, like, beautiful oak wood. And they have space in between the stairs so you can see through and see all the way down to the bottom. It's this, like, beautiful big stairwell and, you know, beautiful oak wood everywhere. And I just looked at this and I said, I haven't even seen the rest of the house. This stairwell is extraordinary. Like, if I could live in a house that has a stairwell that's this nice, then I'm a happy man. I've arrived. And you know, of course I saw the rest of the house and really liked it. And Candice did too. She was just really freaked out by the construction liabilities. But so I knew from like those stairs, it was literally like the second or third step. I was like, I want to live here. And then, of course, you know, there was talking it through with her and exploring the logistics. And so, you know, there's some maximizing a little bit of that energy is good on a big decision. But, I mean, I probably could have made that decision in a day. And of course, we had to do all the inspections and everything and make sure that there was not. And that's. That's another part of it is you can decide energetically, like, yes, I'm going to do it. And then give yourself the time, if it's a. If there's enough risk in it to do a little bit more research. That's something I've learned. If you're afraid about being impulsive, which I've definitely, if I error, I err on the side of impulsivity rather than hesitancy just because that's how I want to live. But I've learned I've had a few burns in my life where now what it is, is I'll make a decision like, yeah, I'm going to do that. And I hold it energetically, like, it's going to happen. It's already done. But then I do a little more research. So with the house, I talked it through with Candace. We thought about all the particulars. We thought about the kids school and the changes. And then we did the inspection period. And I was like, look, if we find something in the inspection period that's real problematic, we will walk away. I'm not going to, you know, go down with the ship here. I'm not like, I made the decision and so I'm always right. And so no, but energetically I was moving forward like that was going to happen. Same thing with investment decisions. I made some. One in particular investment decision where I got burned pretty bad. It actually involved fraud and a con man. I made some other investment decisions that worked out really well, but this one was. Was bad. I straight up lost the money. And so since then, when I make a decision around investing, it's like, yes, I want to do it. Then I'll say, okay, great, but I'm not going to execute on it tonight. I'm going to do a little bit more research. I'm going to, you know, and whatever the research is, is different depending on the investment opportunity. But one of the things I'm looking at is what are the risks? What are the things I'm not even considering or don't even know about yet? How could this go wrong? Which might not sound like the most optimistic type of thinking, but I think when it comes to investing in money, that's a great question to ask. Not to the point where you are too scared to ever invest anything, but as you're aware of that, you know, this investing is not a guaranteed like, well, your money makes money while you sleep. It's like maybe it could also be gone while you sleep. So we went long on this episode, but I think it's absolutely worth it. I hope this is serving you. I really wanted to share because there's so much value in just being able to be more decisive. So that brings us to your action step for today. Ready? Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is to go decide something. Make a small decision. Make it boldly. Maybe it's a menu. Choose from your menu within 30 seconds. Within 10 seconds, just instantly pick something from the menu. Choose your clothes for the day. Very quickly. Make a point to be decisive today. Be playful with it. Make it something really small. And then just really start to study all the patterns you've heard about in this episode when it comes to bigger decisions and see if you can find that part of you that's willing to make the decision. Willing to have pain, willing to be uncomfortable, but also willing to create the extraordinary. Thanks for being with me today 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. I'll talk to you soon. 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 vlogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sa.