How To Feel Proud And Powerfully Motivated

Do you discount your achievements, your strengths, the things that you accomplish in your life? Do you look at something that you did and say, well, it's not so great, or someone else could have done it better or, yeah, but why did it take me so long? If you are discounting your accomplishments, your strengths, your value, then you're in trouble. And you're going to learn in this episode how to shift that, how to release that, how to free yourself from that so you can actually start to feel proud of who you are. Hey, I'm Dr. Aziz, and welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. This is a show for you if you want to not just get a little more confident, but extraordinarily confident, 10x100x. Your confidence in all the areas of your life that matter to you. Your dating life, your love life, your social life, your friendships, work, career, finances. This is the place for you. And I'm excited today because we're going to be diving into discounting and why it sucks. And I described it in the beginning of the episode. Notice if you do this, I see this non stop in clients. I noticed this in myself too. As much as I've done work on this stuff, it'll get in there, it'll sneak in there. And it's called discounting or dismissing. And that means you do something worthwhile, you do something awesome, you do something even just a little bit in the. In the path towards your goals, you're making some progress, whatever it is, big or small, and then you just take a dump on it. You just smash it down. You remove the emotional juice that can come from it. So you are working towards a goal in your career. Maybe a certain position, a certain financial goal. Maybe you're in sales and you want to make a sale and. And you'll do something towards that goal. You'll take a step, and maybe it's not the end result that you want, but it's just a step. And then what you might do after that, instead of saying, hey, that was awesome, look what I did, you'll say, well, that wasn't so great. Or, yeah, but you're not quite there yet. I mean, I was talking with a client about this yesterday and she has been making a ton of progress on being a lot more just real in her life. Not hiding so much, being a lot more authentic, bold, courageous, outspoken. I mean, it's really amazing to watch. And so we were doing this exercise, this activity, this homework about being more transparent. So saying more what's on your mind, saying what needs to be said, not holding back so much. And she did. She had like a couple of really powerful examples. And on the tail end of her sharing, she discounted. So it sounded something like this. Well, I was in this situation and this person was asking me a question about my personal life, my love life. And in the past, I would have just blown a smokescreen or changed the subject. And this time I answered honestly. I said, well, yeah, you know, I am single. It's an area that I'm working on. It's actually been a challenge for me. I'm not very good at dating. She shared a lot and, and was honest and powerful and real. And that is, in my book, that's a sign of increasing confidence. As soon as you finish saying that. She said, eh, but. And that's how, you know you're discounting it's but or eh or whatever. It's some tone of that, right? Whether you say it out loud or you think it, it doesn't matter. Has the same effect. And so she said, yeah, but I mean, it wasn't. I mean, the person was asking me openly. They were really obviously attentive and interested. So I was like, what are you talking about? Right from the outside, maybe you've seen this. When you see someone else discounting, you're like, you know, maybe they did something great. And you're like, hey, that was a great job. And they're like, nah, not really. And inside you're like, what are you talking about? That's right on track. You're doing great, you're awesome. So we can see it from the outside, but sometimes it's hard to see it in ourselves. So here, notice if you're discounting and here's what to do instead. Just first of all, stop discounting. Stop dismissing. Here's why people do it, here's why you do it. Here's why I did it for many years is we think that if we give ourselves credit for the progress that we're making that we're going to stop moving forward. We're going to stop. We're just going to, well, I'll just get complacent and lazy. That was good enough. And it comes from this just really limited, inaccurate, false perception of human motivation, really, of how we motivate ourselves. It's like, well, I have to take this carrot in front of myself that says when you reach here, then you can feel proud, then you can feel worthy, then you can feel like you're enough, then you can feel love, then you can feel all the good stuff. That you're actually doing this shit for. Because whatever your goal is, the fitness goal, the money goal, the relationship goal, you're doing because you want to feel something, you get an amazing relationship, you're going to feel more love is what you think, right? You're going to earn more money, you're going to feel confident, proud, successful, worthy, whatever you imagine, free. All these things that we think we're going to get, emotions, we do everything for emotion and we hold the carrot out in front of us. Like, if I just can do a little more, then I'll be worthy, then I can relax, then I can feel good. But that's not quite yet. Nope, not quite yet. Nope, not quite yet. No, not quite yet. You take this too far and we could just become like endless perfectionism. But we want the feeling, we don't give ourselves the feeling. And we think that's going to keep us motivated. And you know what? It might, it might work. It sort of works. Kind of worked for me for many years. Externally I could achieve more, I could look better, I could get better results externally. But I didn't feel good. I felt nervous, anxious, self critical, attacking myself all the time, not good enough. Worried that people were going to find out that I was not good enough. That's not success, that's failure in a big way. And it's the most depressing kind of failure because it's like private and secret and hidden anyway, it's a mess. So it doesn't work. It's a poor form of motivation. It's a shitty kind of fuel. And so we have to shift that, to shift that energy to something that's actually going to motivate you. So the reason I'm pulling back the hood and highlighting why you're doing it is if we know why we're doing something and we see that it doesn't work, then we can choose differently. So choose differently. Say, I'm not going to discount myself anymore. I'm not going to dismiss my achievements, my strengths, my positive qualities, the progress that I'm making to towards my goals, in fact make them more real, focus on them more. So instead of focusing on the gap, let's say your goal is 100,000 a year. And you're like, yeah, well I only made 7,000 this month. That's not on track for 100,000 this year. Right. Instead of focusing on the gap, focus on, whoa, what did I do to create $7,000 this month? That was awesome. Good job, me. That was great. We focus on our progress and we don't dismiss it. We amplify it. We focus on it. And guess what? That is a thousand times better fuel. I know you know what I'm talking about, right? Because think about that. If you focus on something you did and you feel good about it, doesn't that inspire and energize you to go do more? It doesn't make you give up. It doesn't make you complacent. It makes you energized. And it makes the actions, the next actions you take way more powerful than if you're like, well, I suck, I wasn't good enough. I better try harder. You might keep moving with that, but you're not going to be inspired, you're not going to be energized. You're not going to succeed nearly as much as you could. You're not going to be nearly as attractive to others if that's what you want to do. You want to be magnetic and charming and charismatic. You don't get there by dismissing and discounting and focusing on your flaws and shortcomings and where you're not making it. So just end that habit now and decide right now, in this moment with me, I'm going to stop discounting and then just notice over the next couple days, the next week, notice if it's happening because it's a subconscious pattern. It just keeps going. So just notice. That's how we change patterns. You notice it and say, oh, I'm discounting again, good job, me for noticing that. And I don't want to do that. I'm done with that. Here's what I'm going to do instead. If you just use your conscious attention like that, catch it and change it. Catch it and change it. Pretty soon you stop doing it. And then your life explodes, your confidence explodes, because you're no longer dampening it. You're no longer blocking out all that energy that you could get to move towards your goals. So share below what's standing out to you from this video. What's the most valuable thing you're learning? What are you going to do? Where have you noticed discounting in your life? And what are you going to do differently? Let's all share. Let's all help each other out. I love reading the comments. In fact, in future episodes, I'm going to be answering questions from people in the show. So if you have a question for me, throw it down in the comments below. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.