How To Change Your Story

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, coming to you from the center for Social Confidence here in Portland, Oregon. And I'm particularly excited about today's show because I get to share with you the idea of your story. And if you haven't heard this before, this is something that totally changed my life. Not to be dramatic, but literally changed my life when I was 19 years old, 20 years old, when I discovered it, somewhere in that age range. And it really started to shift things for me. It was a number of years before I really started to break free from shyness because I still had a lot of work to do. But you can say that was the starting point. That was the turning point for me. And so I'm hoping that by sharing this with you today, it can be your turning point. It can start to shift things for you. So let me describe what I mean by the idea of your story. And this idea is so powerful that it is an integral part of a number of the therapies that have been shown to be effective for shyness, including cognitive behavioral therapy and narrative therapy and a variety of others. And what I mean by story is, if you remember back to the last episode, we talked about what the source of shyness is, what the cause of social anxiety is, and that it is the belief that there is something wrong with you and that therefore people aren't going to like you. They're going to reject you, and you're not worthy of love, acceptance, belonging, approval for the person that you are. So what happens is we have a story. That's a story too, isn't it? People aren't going to like me. I'm not good enough. But a story is something we tell ourselves about the world around us, about ourselves, that predicts how things are going to go, that explains what's happened before or explains what's going on right now. Because if you think about it, there is so much information coming to us all the time that we have to process it, right? I mean, as you're listening to this, I don't know where you are, but you could be in your car, and. And if you are, you're processing thousands of bits of information, right? You're looking at the windshield, you're paying attention to other cars, you're taking care of the tasks of driving. You're feeling your hand on the Wheel. There could be air conditioning, there could be other things you're dealing with. There could be predicting what's going to happen at the stoplight. All this stuff is happening. But you could be focused on sound of my voice or any environment you're in. There's so much information that we have to do is we have to cut it out and simplify it. And we do this no more frequently than in interpersonal interactions and predictions about ourselves. We really tend to simplify ourselves. So we can have a story about am I attractive or not attractive? Well, we have an idea about that, right? We have a collection of ideas and stories often have evidence. So we'll say, let's say I say, are you attractive? And you might say, well, what do you mean? You mean as a friend or sexually to people that I'm interested in creating relationships with? Let's just go with sexually. So are you attractive to women? Or if you're interested in men, you're a gay man. Are you attractive to men? And I want you to think about that question for a second. And if you, regardless of what you say, yes or no, how do you know? Where do you come up with that answer? Well, whether you know it or not, you go into some database in your mind of references that verify if that story checks out. So if you were to say, yes, I am attractive, then you might have some references. You might have, well, when I was 7, my mom told me I was attractive and when I was 12, Tina gave me a kiss under the bleachers and then this and then that. And so you have evidence of positive responses from other people or people directly telling you that, and you concluded I am attractive. Now, unfortunately, many people, not just shy people, but many people in our society have concluded that they are not attractive. It might have something to do with bombardment, with the freakishly beautiful people that are in movies and media and just seeing them again and again and again and never really seeing that many other people that are normal looking on the big screen and that sort of thing. So we tend to conclude, eh, I'm not attractive enough. I'm not good enough in some way. And so you might have the story I'm not attractive. And if I were to ask you, how do you know? Well, you can have all kinds of evidence. You could say, well, you know, no one ever kissed me under the bleachers and no woman has ever come and talked to me. And when I did try to ask that woman out one time, she said no and no one ever told me I was attractive. And When I was in middle school, kids used to say I had big ears and was a weirdo. So those are your references. Now, I'm not here to challenge anything right now. I'm just highlighting the idea of a story or your narrative or back in the days of est, which was a personal development community, they said, what's your racket? I believe, what's your racket? What's your story? What do you tell yourself? What do you believe about yourself? Because what you believe about yourself determines what you do, what actions you can take, how you relate to people, the level of status and success you'll let yourself achieve, the kinds of people you approach to create relationships with the women that you're going to move towards, or men. If you're interested in creating relationships with other men for friendships or romantically, if you're a gay man, doesn't matter. If you believe that you are unattractive, you're going to live that out. You're going to act that out. And so remember, the cause of shyness is this belief that not only are you unattractive, that you are totally unlikable and unlovable and unworthy, and people are going to really dislike you or when they get to know the real you. So can you see how, as a story, how crippling that can be, how restricting that can be, how much that can hold you back in your life and keep you stuck in a place of not moving forward? And just think about that for a minute. It does really keep you stuck. Let's say you believed that you were not attractive, that women were not interested in you, that people wouldn't want to be your friend. That, and you're going to a gathering and there are several people in small groups talking to each other, and you're thinking that to yourself, people don't like me. People don't want to talk to me. If I go talk to someone, they're annoyed and wish they could talk to someone else. Are you going to go talk to people? Maybe. Maybe you'll force yourself to do it. But are you going to do it in a comfortable way, or are you going to be kind of stilted and nervous and awkward the whole time? And if you told yourself and you believed, you really believe this on a deep level? Hey, I'm a pretty likable guy. I got a lot going for me. I'm funny, I'm engaging, I'm attractive, I'm a good catch. And you really believe that. Will that impact how you walked into that gathering and whether you interacted with people and how you interacted with those people. Absolutely. So our belief becomes our behavior. Our story, which is just a bunch of beliefs about ourselves and about the world around us, becomes our behavior. And if you add up all your behaviors over the course of the day and the week and the months, that becomes your destiny, that becomes your life. That becomes where you end up and what you're able to achieve and do and give. And all of that stuff comes from the ideas and the stories that we have in our head. So hopefully you can see how absolutely essential it is that we learn how to identify our old story and start to shift that. Because if we can't shift our story, there's no way that we're going to get more confident in ourselves, let alone succeed more or create better relationships. So we'll be back in just a moment, and we're going to get deeper into helping you identify what your story is and how to shift it, how to dramatically change it using some really powerful techniques. So stay with me for just a moment. We'll be right back. Have you ever gotten fed up? I mean, so frustrated with being shy that you just couldn't take it anymore? And you said to yourself, I have to do something about this. And then what happens? Well, if you're like most of us, it might have worked for a few days or even a few weeks, but then you hit a major obstacle. You got rejected. Or maybe you just got exhausted from pushing yourself so hard. The reality is, we are all controlled by our beliefs and patterns. And without changing your patterns and reprogramming your beliefs on a deep level in your body, change is difficult and usually not sustainable. But if you're ready to make that shift in your body and in your programming of your beliefs on a deep level, I strongly suggest checking out Confidence unleashed. This program systematically guides you through changing those beliefs and activates your body in a way that helps you feel an immediate shift in your confidence. And once you make those changes, nothing can stay in your way for too long. So go to confidence unleashed now to learn more. So what's your story? Have you been thinking about it? Have you thought about what is it that I tell myself on a regular basis? Where is it that I say I'm not enough? Do I tell myself that people wouldn't like me? Do I tell myself, do I sell myself? Sure. Do I talk myself out of it because I'm convinced that I have nothing to offer? Or do I think I am pretty good in some ways and I know what I have to offer? I mean, can you identify and acknowledge your strengths and what's good about you? So maybe your story isn't all bleak, but a lot of the time when we're stuck in shyness and have social anxiety, our story in those moments, maybe you don't believe it all the time, but when you're nervous and you're about to go meet someone, the story can really kick up, can't it? You know, I know for many years I was hypnotized by the story that I was unattractive for a very specific reason. And that was that I. I don't know if you've seen a picture of me on this podcast or elsewhere on the Interwebs, but I am half Pakistani, half Anglo American European heritage. So basically I'm half white, half brown. And I. So I have a kind of a mixed features, like, kind of a lighter brown skin. But what's most significant about that is my dad, it was born in Pakistan. And the people of India and Pakistan, a lot of the men there, have darker pigmentation around their eyes. Just seems to be part of the ethnicity or the characteristics of that race. And so what I inherited was slightly darker pigmentation around my eyes. When I was about 14 or so, freshman in high school, somewhere a comment or a passing comment. I don't know how I heard it, but I locked onto the idea that these are really unattractive. My eyes, around my eyes is very unattractive. And that is the reason why no woman would want to date me, which is what was happening at that time. And that why I'm unattractive. And I was convinced about it. I was obsessed with it. I remember I'd be flipping through a random magazine and I'd see an ad for a woman's product, which is further propagated in the media, that that's unattractive, right? So it says like the ad was, do you have raccoon eyes? Do you want to shift this? I was like, oh my God. See, even the magazines tell me I'm unattractive. What I didn't realize at that time is that is the point of ads and magazines is to tell you you're unattractive so you feel insecure and purchase the product to then try to get increase your likability. So this idea that I'm not enough in some way and I need to do something to try to make up for my flaws and hopefully be lovable, that's not unique to you, that's not unique to shyness and social anxiety that is epidemic in our culture. But it's just worse for shyness and social anxiety because we believe it all the time and so thoroughly that it really inhibits us in our lives. But sure enough, I really believe this. And I wrangled with this for years. I'm talking 10 years, maybe six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years. And I would tell myself that frequently there'd be a woman that I'd want to go talk to. And guess what I would say to myself? Well, I don't know. I look at my. My eyes are so gross. I didn't get enough sleep last night. I bet my eyes are even worse today. There's no way that she could find me attractive. You know, I went even so, so far. I'm just going to admit this here. I went so far as to take. I had. It's. What was it called? Oxy 10 cream for pimples. You know, it was like this brownish color. And what I would do is I would take a thin layer of that and put it underneath my eyes, hoping that it would make them slightly more brown and hide some of the darker pigmentation. So I was really stuck on this, and I believed it. And if you'd asked me at that time, said, hey, Aziz, what's your story? Are you attractive? The answer would be a resounding no. And here's my evidence. And I had evidence. Oh, I remember one time Chris said this to me about my eyes. I remember that one time, you know, Paula asked me at a party why my eyes were so dark or whatever, and I had these little memories that pieced it together. And you might have the exact same thing. You might have a lot of evidence for your story. So how do we break free of it? How do we shift it? How do we make a dentist in this propaganda campaign that has been going for. In my case, it went for eight, nine, ten years. And yours might be the same. You might have had this story for the longest time. So we need to learn how to break free. We need to learn how to shift it. And the first thing I want to do is help you start with an experiment. So what I'd like you to do is. And if you're driving, this is going to be a little harder to pull off. But. But see if you can. But if you're not driving, that's even better. But what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to look around the room that you're in right now and look for everything that you can see that is green. Everything that's green. Look up, down Left, right, behind you in all directions. Look for everything that is green and count it. Count 1, 2, 3, however many items you can find that are green. Now go ahead and take a moment and close your eyes and I want you to think of everything you saw that was brown. Now if you've done this, I've done this with many, many people and the result is often. Well, I thought of, I saw a lot of green things. How many brown things did you see? 1, 0, sometimes 2, tops. How many green things did you see? I don't know, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. So what our mind focuses on finding, we will find. There's a term for this in psychology, they call it confirmation bias. That if we have an idea about something and we're looking for it, that we tend to confirm it, we tend to seek it out and find it. You know, what you seek, you will find. And that's the same thing with our beliefs and our story. And so I had piles of evidence as to why I wasn't attractive because of my eyes. But you know what? I was searching for green, I wasn't searching for brown. What would brown be in that situation? Well, brown is just anything other than what you've been telling yourself. Another story, maybe, like, I am attractive. Notice how I say that. I say that in a very questioning way because that's often how we come up with a new story. It's like I'm possibly attractive to women. No, no, no, no, that couldn't be right. So we immediately discount it. And that's okay. If you immediately discount the new story the first time you come up with it, it's new. And it differs from the propaganda campaign which says you are not good enough, you are not attractive, people won't like you, you're not good enough, you're not attractive, people won't like you. If you've had that playing on loop for five years, the first time you come up with a new story is not going to change anything. But it's still essential that you do that. It's a necessary step to come up with an alternative story. And you know what the strangest thing is? That new story that feels so untrue, that feels so implausible, is actually potentially more true than the story you've been telling yourself. I know that might sound crazy, that might sound so far fetched and you might think it's, well, okay, he doesn't know me and my exact story. Look, my story is very true and I got a lot of evidence for it, trust me, I have had Buckets of evidence. The guys that I work with, like Eric, who I mentioned in the last podcast, had a treasure chest of evidence as to why he was not good enough. And that's because our mind searches for what we look for. So I want to share in the next segment how to start to shake off some of that evidence and how to come up with something that is more true for you, that you can start to adopt, to improve your life, to feel better about yourself, to really be free of this old negative story. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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How do we come up with something that is more true, that is more empowering, that helps us feel better about ourselves and move forward in life in the direction that we want. Well, that's what we're going to talk about. Now what you have to do is you first have to identify what that old story is and then you have to come up with a possible alternative. That's it. Now, that might seem overly simplistic and installing the new alternative can actually be, as you might experience, quite difficult. So the example that I was sharing about difficulty with meeting women because I thought I was unattractive because of the area around my eyes with that an alternative is actually women could find me very attractive. The reason that I'm not meeting women and dating has nothing to do with My eyes, it actually is because I don't talk to women, I avoid them. And if I do end up in a conversation with them, I'm nervous and awkward and exit the conversation as quickly as possible. That was the truth of me in high school. It had nothing to do with my appearance and it didn't matter. That's what I'd said on that was my belief. So what is an alternative? So in that case, the belief is women won't find me attractive because of my eyes. The alternative belief is that the reason I'm not having success with women is because I'm not talking to them. So what I'm doing there is I'm identifying the old belief, the painful belief or sometimes they're referred to as self defeating beliefs. You identify what it is, you write it down and you write out an alternative. So that's what I'm going to have you do in your action step is to identify what your top three beliefs are and write them down. So I'm going to get to specifically the action step at the end here. But what it is, is you're going to identify your belief and then come up with an alternative. And at first the alternative might seem not true, might seem like total bs, but you know what it is? It's bs. It's a belief system. It's a new belief system. And the other one, your old one, is also bs. It's also a belief system. So which one's true? Well, whichever one you can find evidence for. So that's the next part. Once you come up with an alternative, you have to look for evidence for the alternative. And there are two places you can find evidence. One is in the past and one is in the future. So if you come up with a new belief, like let's say yours is I'm unattractive because of X. And you have your own thing, it's not your eyes, but it's your nose or it's your belly or it's your hair or something like that. Like one person I was working with not too long ago was going bald and he was convinced that that's why he was not having success with women. He ended a relationship or she ended it actually with him. And he'd been single for a while and was just not really having much success with women. And he was convinced. He's like, look Aziz, no one wants to be with a bald guy. I mean that's just like, sure, if they had a choice between a guy with hair and a guy without hair, who's gonna Pick the guy without hair. So what is he doing right there? Well, he's building a case. Isn't that funny how not only do we have this, like, terrible belief that makes us feel bad about ourselves, but then we defend it? You know, if you'd asked me and said, aziz, actually it's not your eyes. It's you're not really talking to women at that time in high school, I would have been like, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what it's like. You don't have to deal with this same thing with my client there, who is losing his hair. You don't know what it's like. It's because I'm bald. So once you have identified the story, you have to come up with an alternative, and then you have to look for evidence that supports the alternative. So the alternative in that case might be being bald has nothing to do with attracting women. There are many men who are bald who are with beautiful, compelling, funny, intelligent, amazing women. And that could be your alternative. Then you have to find evidence for it. So one is in the past, and, well, in this case, he hasn't been bald before, so he couldn't go back into his past. But in the case of me, I could say, you know what, Actually there was one woman in high school who was attracted to me, and I found out through a friend and was actually able to take a risk and ask her out because I got the mega green light. So there was one woman who was attracted to me. Now, what we often do with the evidence that goes counter to our negative belief is we discount it. We say, yeah, but, yeah, but she was desperate, or, yeah, but she's the exception to the rule. Most other women would find me unattractive, right? So we can maintain that terrible BS belief. So what we need to do is we need to not discount it. We need to find evidence from the past that supports our new idea. And in the case of this client, he didn't have evidence from the past. But what we did is said, well, have you ever seen a bald guy with a woman dating a woman? And he's like, well, I don't know about that. So what we actually did is his homework for that week was to do an Internet search and to spend some time out and about in the city of Portland, where we are. And looking first of all on the Internet, did he find, like, finding bald actors and other people and seeing are they dating women, which they were. And when he was out and about in the street, the streets of Portland, going to places and restaurants and stuff. He just spent about an hour walking around, noticing bald guys and are they with women? And sure enough, yes, of course they were. So he was able to find evidence that discounted his belief. And of course, there's also the category of future evidence, which means you go out and you try things and you see what happens. You see how the world responds. So if you say there's no way a woman would want to be with me because I'm bald, and you say, okay, I'm going to go out and learn how to build up my confidence to go talk to women, and you go talk to 10 women, and four or five of them say, sure, I'll give you my number. Let's go out then. That's great evidence to discount your belief. In fact, that's the most rapid evidence. An accelerated way to break through your old beliefs is to generate that evidence by going out and trying it right away. In fact, that's going to be what your action step is for this week. And as we're getting to the end of our time here, I'll just jump into it now.

Time for action.

Your action step is to write out your top three worst stories. Your bs, your belief systems that are keeping you stuck, that are limiting you. Things like, no one could ever want to be with me. I'm unattractive, I'm incapable, I'm inexperienced. I don't have what it takes to succeed. I'm not smart enough. I'm not blank enough. I'm not, you know, find the thing that you tell yourself frequently that you're not enough, you're not good enough for this reason. Write out an alternative, a different belief, and then find evidence for it. Find evidence in the past for it. And in future episodes, we're going to get into how to find evidence for the future for it. In fact, the next episode is going to be all about taking action in the world. How to do what scares you, approaching what scares you. And I'm really excited because we have an awesome guest for that show who really embodies that way of living, of going towards what scares you. And it's pretty impressive. You know, the Friend network he's developed, the amount that he really works on himself and reads, it's crazy. And. And the response he gets from women. I mean, this guy, there's no shortage of beautiful women who want to date this guy. So I'm particularly excited we'll be interviewing him next week and teaching you how to take action and move towards what scares you, so make sure you catch next week's show until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are. Thanks for listening. I'm Dr. Azeem. Take care.

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 vlogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to Social Confidence center dot com.