How To Change Old Patterns And Get Unstuck

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 how to solve a reoccurring problem in your life. Something that you keep bumping up against that maybe feels like you get a little bit of progress on, and then you lose it. So it's two steps forward, two steps back, and it's like a thorn in your side. And just to give a few examples, it could be something practical in your life, or it could be something emotional or in a relationship. These are reoccurring patterns that you experience again and again and again and again, and it's still with you. And it's frustrating and sometimes you feel helpless and hopeless and you can't change it. And this is just the way that it is. And you feel stuck, and then you feel frustrated and you feel angry, and then sometimes you're like, I am gonna change it. And you try to change it and maybe you do or you don't. Maybe you fail or maybe you do for a little while and then it all falls back and you're like, ah, I did it again. Or even worse, it just happened to me again. I didn't do it. It's them out there that did it to me again. And then we're angry and we're frustrated and we're bitter, and then we're helpless and then we're hopeless. Round and around we go. This could be a little specific thing like someone's weight, maybe your physical health. You lose a certain amount of weight and you gain it back. Lose it, gain it, lose it, gain it. This could be something with your finances. You earn a certain amount of money and then lose a certain amount of money and then earn and then lose. And then it never seems to progress in the way that you want, or there's a certain challenge in career or business, like you're never able to get certain things organized and that causes you problems, or you are unable to speak up in a certain way or be assertive or be seen as a leader. And so you're kind of overlooked, then you're overlooked again, then you're overlooked again. Or in romantic relationships, all the people I'm interested in are never interested in me back. So sure enough, there again, there's another person that I wanted to date, but they didn't want to date me. Or I only attract this kind of person. You know, a woman attracting a man who's very, maybe self absorbed or selfish or in some ways uncaring or unkind, right? Or narcissistic or, you know, a man who attracts a woman where he's, you know, trying to save her or the other way around, it doesn't matter. The gender doesn't matter, the sexual orientation. If there's these patterns in relationships and it happens again, any of this, like, if I'm describing this, like, what might it be for you? And look, there's no first things first. We gotta just like relieve the shame about this. Because if, if you're a human, I guarantee you, you have at least one reoccurring pattern that's challenging for you. And yes, there might be some that were challenging for a long time and now they're not. And you kind of forget about those. You're like, yeah, whatever, who cares? That's old news. But this thing, this thing sucks. Right now we're focused on the problem of the season, of the cycle of our lives. And everyone's got at least one. So let's just start with that. You're okay, there's nothing wrong with you. This is part of being human. And you feel some shame like, well, no one else has this, yeah, BS dude. People just hide it. They just hide it better than you might not know that person's issue with. They drink too many glasses of wine more than they want. Or they have that reoccurring issue in their relationship where they get all reactionary or angry or pouty or defensive or sullen or withdrawn and then their partner gets upset with them and they fight about it and then they come to a, you know, an okay level of peace and then it happens again. And in the relationship, sort of like, it's not terrible, but it's not great. And they're just sort of in this holding pattern of certain level of closeness, certain level of intimacy, certain level of joy. And they can't break out of it. They can't feel closer and happier for long without more fighting. So you don't know that's happening behind Closed doors. So how do you know what's going on in their life? But I do know, and this is from my experience in world working with thousands of people at this point, especially with group environments, and then just all the studying I've done in clinical psychology and coaching. You put me in a room with somebody and if they're willing to be somewhat open with me, we'll discover there's something there. So start with that. Take a full deep breath in and let it out. So you're breathing in acceptance and breathing out the shame, breathing in your common humanity and breathing out that isolation or separation. I'm somehow different than others. So here we are. Reoccurring challenge. You got one that comes to your mind? You know, for me in my life there's been one that's. Man, it's been there for a long time, which is the physical pain stuff. You've heard other episodes about this. And while I've made amazing progress, I don't take a medication that I took for 15 years and I've been more active in the last couple years and ever since I was maybe like 14 years old. And so I've done stuff that I couldn't do as a 14 year old. I've done as an adult. Huge treks, hiked around Mount Hood in a day, 43 miles, 10,000 elevation change, 10,000 foot elevation change. Amazing stuff. And I can still have periods where I'll have pain that lasts like five, six, seven days where it's hard to move around and I can't exercise and I can get real frustrated with it. I can feel stuck, like, ah, it's here again. I can have patterns of, I guess you'd call it sort of avoidance, right? Like avoiding feeling. Like the work I do in the world is so like feeling oriented and helping people feel their feelings and let's break through and then, and then I'll have this other part of me that wants to just like it's like the. I learned this when I was like 11, you know, like how to deal with feelings as you numb out. So tv, video games, food, porn, whatever. And as I've gotten older, I've removed a lot of those things. I don't play video games, I don't watch porn, I don't really watch much TV and all these things. But my mind is always looking for some way to kind of numb out. And so sometimes I'll get in patterns usually of like listening to stuff. I'll get absorbed in studying something and then I'll just like study it. And study it and kind of be. It's like the smart person's escape, right? I'm growing. I'm getting something out of this. This isn't just frivolous entertainment. Okay. But anyway, it sort of serves that function. And then there'll be consequences of that. You know, a little bit of distance in my relationship. And I think the intimacy that I have with Candace and my boys is very, very high. It's probably above average, but. But when I'm running one of those patterns, I'm a little bit more withdrawn. So from the outside, I might look like, wow, what an engaged husband and father. But I know that more is possible. And they can feel it. They can feel like, oh, that's not Aziz. We're not getting all of Aziz right now. And then there's other effects. And it leads into challenges with my body too, because I can get too absorbed, too mental, and then I start to feel more pain in my body. And so these are patterns that I noticed, and they're not totally resolved. I'll not have an issue for months, and then all of a sudden, I'll kind of have a little pain cycle or something like that. And it could be other things. I worked with clients where it's certain. Maybe it's cannabis or alcohol or binge watching shows or certain foods people can have issues with. They're eating really healthy, and then they just go off the wagon. And that's an emotional thing. I tend to think of these things as addictions. People might not like the word, you might not like the word and say, no, I'm not addicted. Okay, we'll call it a vice, call it a compulsion, call it whatever, but, you know. So how do we deal with this? Well, here's a very important thing to remember or to know. Maybe you don't, maybe you don't know. This is that. And this comes from the world of investing, actually, which is really interesting. But a very common trend in investing is resistance becomes support. So what that means is if you're looking at something like a stock or even the whole stock market or a cryptocurrency or whatever, you're looking at it. If you're looking at the chart of how much the price is over time, there'll be a certain point where, let's say it's going up in value and it'll hit a certain price, target price per share, price per coin, whatever, and the market cannot stand that. People won't buy Amazon stock at a certain amount or whatever it is. Right? And it'll Hit resistance. So the stock doesn't keep going up because people stop buying it. In fact, people might start selling it. And now it starts to go down in value, and then it goes down, and then sure enough, maybe more people buy it. It's like, oh, it's lower now. Now's the time to get in. And it starts to go up again. And then sure enough, it hits that same resistance. Just in this hypothetical thing, let's say the resistance is at $100. So it hits the resistance again, and then people sell off and it goes down, and then it comes back up, and it's, oh, it's going to be higher this time. No, it hits that resistance and bounces off. And that happens in our own lives, right? Like we're making progress, and then we hit that resistance. We are making progress, then we hit that resistance. And that can be frustrating, and we can start to get demoralized. However, what's really fascinating about stocks is at some point, the more they hit the resistance, the more likely at some point that it's going to break through. And when it breaks through, there's this fascinating phenomenon where that same level, $100, in this case now, it goes past it. It shoots up past it. Let's say it goes up to $118 or something like that. And then if at some point people start to sell it, when it gets back down to that resistance level of 100, all of a sudden people buy it up again, and it's harder for it to drop below that resistance. And so now that they call that, that becomes the support. So what does this have to do with, like, confidence and breaking through old patterns? Well, the key thing to remember is that something that you took a long time to break through actually might become a new norm for you, a new bottom, a new standard that you rise above. And so even if you were to drop below that, it's gonna be really short. So, for example, let's say someone is generally healthy, right? And then they have these periods where they're being healthy, they're taking care of themselves, and then they sort of fall off. And whatever form you want to think about it, physical health, mental health, I'm gonna leave it pretty vague here, right? And then they're like, oh, man, I did it again. I ate the thing, or I didn't take care of myself or whatever, and down. And then they grow, and they take care of themselves better. And then they hit the resistance. They're like, ah, man, it didn't work. And they're up and down, up and down. At some point, though, there will be a breakthrough. There will be. If you're persistent, if you keep learning, if you keep growing, there will be a breakthrough. We're talking about how to make that happen. But there will be. And then once that breakthrough occurs, you know, if you can sustain it for a little bit, all of a sudden, there's a new baseline, and you just won't drop down as much. You won't tolerate it as much. There's a standard that you're like, wait a minute. This is it. I'm not gonna go back to that. And so when you start to go down a little bit, all of a sudden something kicks in. You're like, no, no, no, no, no. And you bounce off of that. And all of a sudden, that line that took forever to break through now becomes your new bottom. And you rise up from there. And if you do break through the bottom, know that it's really short. It'll just, like. You'll pop back up in an hour or a day, maybe a week, depending on whatever the thing is. So this is so important, because otherwise the psychology can be like, oh, man, I'm never gonna get out of this. It's always been here. And even if I do make progress, I'm gonna go all the way back down. No, there is a tipping point. There is a tipping point. Does that make sense? Even if you don't understand the whole thing around the support and resistance, just know that if you're persistent and you break through, once you've broken through, everything in your life changes. Now, how do we make that happen? How do we invite that? How do we bring that about? That's a great question. Because it will not happen by default if you run the same pattern and do the same thing again and again and hope for a different result. That's insanity. And many of us will just do that. We're just like, I'm doing it again. Because we're not driven by our rational thinking and planning. We're driven by emotion. So whatever pattern we're running, we run it because it gives us a payoff. Typically, it gives us a sense of comfort or ease. It's easier on some level. There's less. It's, you know, it's like, downhill, as it were. And so it's easier to eat the junky foods. They taste better. They give me an immediate payoff of a dopamine hit. I feel good for a little bit. It numbs out any discomfort. It's easier to just put in headphones and just listen to stuff and not feel my feelings. It's easier to just leave everything disorganized and not set up an organization system and have the discipline to follow through on it. It's easier to spend all the money and not think about it and invest it and learn about all that stuff. So if we just keep doing the easy thing and hoping that somehow it's going to get better, it's not. Or worse, we keep doing the easy thing and then lament how anything else would be too hard and we just can't. And we've tried in the past and it's not possible for me. And we tell ourselves, I don't know. I just don't know. There's nothing I could do about it. Which on one level, you know, is bullshit, right? You know it, right? Of course there's something to do. And if you truly. First of all, when someone says, I don't know, I generally just think that they just said sort of meaningless words. You know, it's like someone's just said potato pancake, right? It's just like the conversation just keeps going. We're just gonna keep going as if they didn't say that. I don't know. Sure. So one fun way to work with this is like, okay, well, if you did know, what would you guess? And then guess what? 9 times out of 10, someone come up with something, they have an answer. And the reason we say I don't know is because we don't wanna change. We don't wanna do the uncomfortable thing. We don't wanna have discomfort. I don't know. If I knew, I would totally do it. I just don't know. In this day and age and I've done this, I mess with people in some of my group programs where someone's like, I don't know. And then I say, well, if you did know, what would you guess? And they're still like, I don't know. I'm like, okay, well, let's look it up. And then we'll just do some. You know, this is like literally during a group call, right? We're all on Zoom and something like that. And I pull up another screen. I share my screen. I'm like, let's look that up. You know, someone may looking at a career change or something like that. And I was like, what would we search here? And I'll do like, you know, 30 to 60 seconds of Google research. I remember this one time with a guy who's kind of like, I don't know what I would do if I Didn't do this career. I've been in this career so long. And I was like, well, we explored the idea of maybe a career counselor doing some assessment testing to see what your strengths are. He's like, I don't even know how I'd go about that. And I was like, okay, what city are you in? So we looked up career coaches. First of all, it doesn't have to be in your city. You could just do it over zoom. But just for case in point, I looked in his city and we just found a bunch right there. I was like, look at that. I just did 30 seconds of Google research and got some answer. And he laughed and he got it right. Because this, I don't know and it's impossible. And all of that is just total bs. It's just stories. And typically what's needed is this moment that I call it threshold moment of being fed up, frustrated, sick and tired of being sick and tired, where we say, enough of this, enough of this. And there's like a, it's anger or frustration, but it's not that, like whiny victim, entitled, you know, like, that's not fair. You know, I had this last pain episode I had where I've just done so much and listen to this story, right? Like, I've worked on this for so long and I've grown so much. And then this didn't totally work because if it totally works, which means I never have pain again. And then I had this moment and I did that, I did that for maybe like two days, kind of real pouty, self pitying, upset. And then I had this moment where I was laying in bed and it was one of those pain experiences where like getting in and out of bed really hurt. And so I'm like stalling, going to go pee. I'm like, okay, here we go. When I get up, a little gremlin's gonna slice my left butt cheek with a knife. At least what it feels like. So here we go. And I'm just laying there and then I think to myself, like, dude, no one's gonna save you. No one is responsible for your health and your well being but you. No one's gonna save you. Like, if you want this, you gotta claim it. You gotta claim it. You gotta claim, like, I do know what to do, I do know how to take care of my health and other people can support me in that, but I am the one who's going to bring the primary driving fuel to that. And I do believe other people are necessary, which we'll get to in just a minute here. But you have that threshold moment where you're like, dude, no one's gonna save you. It's not anyone's responsibility. It's not anyone's fault. It is you. And you could fight that, you could challenge that, you could come up with another story that says other than that. But the only victim of that is you. Because now you fought for your limitations, you fought for the stuckness. And I'd say, let's just own it. I didn't want to do the uncomfortable thing. And sometimes the consequences we feel now are from the easy road we've taken for the last couple weeks or months or longer. And so, yeah, there's some work to do. It's a process. If someone's been eating terribly for decades, they need to do a process of recalibrating their body and their taste buds and, like, healing their relationship with food and coming to their senses to understand their body cues and all this stuff. It's a process and it's uncomfortable. It's also extremely rewarding and gives life a sense of meaning and builds our sense of self esteem, because that's one of the biggest sources of self esteem. It's not how other people see me and am I popular on social media. Self esteem comes from I do the thing, I live my values. I know what my values are, and I live them even though it's uncomfortable. And I do uncomfortable things to create meaningful results in the world for myself and for others. That's where a key foundation of self esteem comes from. So you have this threshold moment. And then what's necessary, though, is other people. You gotta have other people. I talk about this a lot, which is the lone wolf syndrome. This idea of, like, well, I'm just gonna do it myself. It is totally ineffective, totally ineffective. Especially a pattern that you've had for years. I'm just going to do it myself. I've never seen it happen. Never. There's always someone else. Now, at the very least, it's going to be someone that you don't interact with, but you receive their materials, like book these podcasts, YouTube course, something like that. I found for me, the biggest transformation in my life doesn't come from that. Although I'm definitely a student and always learning from people's books, materials, videos and courses. But it comes from mentorship, from coaching, from working with someone, from guidance. Because so much is unlocked when we do that. And so we. I know then for me, at this point, I've learned enough of that to where I don't. I just. Instead of spending a whole lot of time in the pre contemplation phase of maybe one day, I'm gonna. It's like, oh, if I want to learn that, I'm gonna find someone to teach that for me and start to interact with them and start to learn from them and find. And you know, some of them are formal, like people I pay to teach me or work with me or coach me. And some of them are informal. You know, like I am one form of investing that I don't know much about is investing in real estate for investment properties. And it's something I'm curious about. And so I'm not going to go officially go hire a coach for that right now. But my dad has done that a lot. And I have a good friend that I know in town who runs a property management company and knows a lot about real estate and how to invest in it. So I thought, well, let me take that guy out to lunch. Let me talk to my dad on the phone, ask him some questions. So that's kind of more informal. And then of course, if I want to go further with that, I could. But other things in my life, like my physical health, all kinds of coaching when it comes to transforming physical pain into freedom in my body, as you've heard, I've interviewed at least one of the people I've coached with, maybe several on this show. And, you know, so who is that person that can help you? And you don't, you might know right now or you might say, well, it's this kind of person, you know, who can help me do that? Who can help me set that up? Who can help me accelerate that? And if you're focusing on how am I going to do it, that's the wrong question. Who can help me do it? Who can help me do it faster? Who can help me ensure that I'm getting the results? In fact, super exciting. There's a man who's been in my Mastermind program for a number of years who I actually interviewed, and we're going to share that interview in an upcoming episode where he had an amazing transformation in his physical health. Talk about persistence. Same challenge with weight for like 30 years. 30 years of gaining and losing weight, gaining and losing weight, gaining and losing the same pounds right off and on, off. And then finally, finally, after 30 years, complete transformation in his body. And, you know, me and the other people in the group program were like, whoa, who are you? What happened? You know? And I got fascinated. I was like, wait, what? Why Was why was the 30th year different than the other 29 years? And you'll find out in the interview and it covers a lot of these things that we're talking about. So you're getting fired up, I'm getting fired up. What do you want to do? What do you want to change? Let's talk about that in your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is to go do 500 push ups right now. Let's go. No, no, it's not like, I mean it could be massive action, but you want your massive action to be geared towards something that's setting you up for more action, you know? Right. So take that energy. If you're feeling fired up, you're feeling frustrated, you're feeling fed up and you want to make a change. Like start to think about, like take some of that energy for frantic action and use it in thinking about who is going to help me, how do I contact them, how do I set that up, how do I set up a structure or a system or repeated pattern that's going to help me in this. So if you want to run the physical thing, don't just run out and do a bunch of running today from 0 to 60. Like think about who's going to help me coach, what kind of diet am I going to do, what kind of changes am I going to make? And then start to do that research and start to lock those things in place. That is still action, but it's intelligent action that's going to drive you forward. Who is the person that's going to help me? What actions do you want to take? What are you committing to as you listen to this? What are you willing to claim? What must you claim? Or else your life's going to be a reoccurring pattern. Can you imagine whatever the challenge is that you're having right now that it was 20 years from now and you were lamenting the same thing? Oh man, I just haven't gotten my act together with fitness. It's just so hard. I got, you know, bad genes or I'm just so disorganized. I've never been able to get organized. I got a problem. There's some gene for organization. I'm missing that. Oh no, I'm never, you know, take care of my physical health. And I've always had these body pain issues. I've had them for 20 years. Like to me that's like there's a sense of revulsion to that. I'm like, hell no, hell no. I want new problems 20 years from now. I want higher quality problems. I want shit that I don't even know. I don't even know what the problems are of that guy 20 years from now. You know, like, my empire has some issues I gotta deal with. That's a high quality problem right there, right? You know, I've done this. I've played with clients around this. They'll be like, I got this issue in my relationship. I'm like, yeah, that's right. With the person that you married who you know, two years ago you were afraid to talk to people and now you're in a relationship. This is a high quality problem. This is a great problem that you're working on communication in your relationship when before you were afraid to connect. This is great. So those are the kind of problems we want. Not the same problem as now. Let's create better problems, higher quality problems, Ideally problems that are serving more than just myself, but other people too. So that's your actions at for today. Hope this episode's inspire episodes. It's plural. I hope this episode inspires you, energizes you. It's got you ready to take some action. You're awesome. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are indeed 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 blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.