How To Lose Badly (And Still Love Yourself)

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 today's episode of the show. Yes, let's do this. I want to share something with you today that I think can really help you on your path and to greater confidence and really help you let go of fear, self doubt, social anxiety, and also see just how inwardly pathetic I really am. I say that in jest. I'm not pathetic. I'm awesome. And so are you. And I love myself and I sure hope you do too. And if you don't, don't worry, there's still hope. You can. It's possible for you to get completely on your own side. In fact, that's what this episode is really about. It's called how to Lose Badly. And I'm going to share a story of me losing quite badly, but how we can stay on our own side no matter what. And if you listen to any of these other episodes of this show or seen my YouTube videos or read any of my books or anything, you know what a big believer I am in being on our own side. And self acceptance, self compassion, these are different ways of saying or pointing to a similar thing, which is changing your relationship with yourself. And when our relationship with ourselves is toxic, critical, we're on our own side, sort of. But then we flip and we turn on ourselves and then we start to attack ourselves or berate ourselves. And it could be really obvious, like you're just, you know, we've all had those experiences where you're just like, idiot, stupid. But then it's also more subtle, like just looking over at that person who seems really like they got it all together. You know, they're really good looking and in shape and popular bastards. Anyway, you look at them and it's not this intense attack of yourself, but it's just this really subtle. You look at them and there's this sense of, yeah, he's just better than you are. You're just nothing like totally in a different class. You're just nothing like him. Right? And it's just subtle, but you leave feeling shitty. Basically. That's another form of attack. So it can happen in many different ways. And one of the most important ways to overcome social anxiety, break out of shyness, massively, increase your confidence in any area of life, is to get on your own side, is to break those habits of self criticism, of comparison, of thinking you're less than others, because that doesn't stop. We think that if we obtain something or we get something, or we, you know, earn a certain amount of money or get a girlfriend or get a nice job or whatever it is, that all of a sudden that's all gonna stop. But it doesn't. It just takes a new form. You just start comparing yourself to different people who are more successful, or you start criticizing yourself for not being a good enough boyfriend instead of for being single. Whatever it is, see, it just shifts. So we got to get on our own side. And today I want to share a fun and funny story with you about losing badly. Because that's one of those instances where we really turn on ourselves. We might stay on our own side more and more. Been working on this for a little while. You might find that you are a lot better to yourself. But man, when something goes down, when you lose badly, when you mess something up, when someone's upset with you, those are the times where it's hardest to stay on our own side. So I'm going to share a story all about that with you right now. By the way, if you're enjoying this show and you're benefiting from it, I would love if you could do me a favor and go to itunes or the podcast app, or even go to shrinkforthshyguy.com wherever you're listening to this. But find a way to get to itunes where you can give it a review and preferably a a good review if you think it deserves that. But that would be really helpful because that would help me reach more people and that's my purpose. That's my mission. Operation Mass Liberation. How do we help as many people as we can who are stuck in the same place of fear and self doubt to let go of that? Because it's total BS and I don't think anyone should have to be stuck in that. So that would be a way to help me if this show is helping you. Now, let's talk about me losing badly. So not too long ago, just last weekend, I ran in a 10k race. Oh yes, that's right. And I've. I'm not a. I'm not a. I wouldn't say I'm a runner in the sense that I'm not a avid runner, where running is my thing. I'm more of a amateur, I like to go out and do some runs kind of guy. And I probably run about three times a week and there was this 10k coming up and maybe I'll do more. Actually, there's more to the story After I lost badly. But that was my current experience three times a week. And I saw this 10K coming up and it happened to be literally down the street from my house in this park called Fernhill Park. It's about a 10 minute walk from my house. And I thought, oh, that's perfect. It's a Saturday morning. I'll just hang out with the boys and my wife and then I'll dash over, do this run, come back. And it's not, you know, a half day affair. I can just be gone for a little bit. And so I sign up for it and it's called the Stumptown Cross Country Run. And apparently it's a series of five cross country races and they're all. I don't know if they're all 10Ks, but this one was a 10K. And for those of you who don't know, that's 6.2 miles, I think. And I got there and I signed up, I gave him my 20 bucks to be in the race. And, and I looked around and there's like, you could sign up on a team, you could put like, enter your team when you signed up. And I was like, I don't have a team. And I looked around and people are wearing like matching jerseys. It's like guys with their white jerseys and the red jerseys and team this and team that. Some of them say osu, Oregon State University. I was like, oh, hmm. And then I look over and there's like these guys doing these like crazy warm ups, like these. They're raising their knees and jetting them in the air and going. And I was like, hmm, I don't do that. And I started to look around and it was men's only, by the way. The women had their race about an hour earlier. I started to look around and I was like, oh, these guys are runners, like real pro runners. I mean, I don't know if they make a living off of it kind of pro, but they, they seriously do this. And I thought, okay, well, see how it goes. So we all, we all line up on this big patch of grass and you kind of run around this huge park. Each lap is about a mile, so you do about six of these. And I noticed a lot of the guys had cleats on. I was like, cleats, eh? And I got my, you know, my Nike freeze on. And when I signed up, one of the guys is like, yeah, well, it's some pretty muddy spots out there. I said, oh, okay, very good. So I'm lined up with all these guys they got their cleats on. They did their warmups. They're doing their fist bumps before they start, and I'm already being like, whoa, I don't fit in here. But what am I gonna do? I'm just gonna do the race. So they have all of us line up, and they're like, all right, runners, on your mark. Get set. And I'm gonna tell you about what happens when we go right after this break called a cliffhanger. So stay tuned. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back right after this. I want to take one moment to acknowledge a listener who left me a message through the website Shrink for the Shy Guy. It was really touching, really compelling, and he just shared how much he's grown, and it's awesome to hear about his progress. So let's jump into that right now.

Hi, Dr. Aziz. My name is Will, and I am enrolled in both your programs, confidence unleashed and 30 days to dating Mastery. And I just want to thank you for offering these two programs online. I've been really sticking to them a lot, and I found that I'm able to do a lot more. I'm not as shy as I used to. I am definitely a lot more confident. And the most important thing, I think, is that I feel that I love myself. I love myself a lot more. I'm not beating myself up as much as I'm used to. So I thank you for your time listening to this, and thank you for the amazing. I have podcast the streams that you do on Shrink for the Shy Guy, and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you. Hey, welcome back. So we're all lined up. It's an overcast day. It's supposed to rain, but it. It hasn't yet. And the ground's all wet because it had been raining the night before. And we're all lined up on this grassy field, and we're gonna run it to the edge of the park and start running around the whole. The whole loop of the park. And he's like, runners, on your mark. Get set. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, these guys are obviously going to be pretty fast. I'll just run with them for a little while, and then I'll slowly, over time, decrease my pace to something I can sustain a little longer. But, you know, I'll start out, you know, right in the middle of the pack. Why not? He's like, ready, Mark, get set, go. And we all start running, and everyone's running, and I'm running, and it's Even though it's a cold morning, it's like really warm because we're all in this big pack. There's probably like a hundred people in the race, this big pack and like, yeah, here we go. Yeah. Whoa. This is really fast. And it was like of I. It was fast, man. I ran for about 30 to 40 seconds amongst the general speed of the pack. I was like, holy shit. This is the pace they run at this. And so to complicate matters, I have one of those Apple watches and it was the first generation ones where they didn't have the GPS in it. And so when you go running, it tells you obviously your time, you can keep track of that. But when it tries to tell you your distance and your pace, it's guessing based upon how you move your body. And if you've run in the past with your, with your phone on you, then it's kind of calibrated and it's making its best guess now. I don't know if my shit wasn't calibrated right or what, but when I was doing my runs during the week, it showed me that I was running about an eight minute mile. I was like, that was pretty good. Eight minute mile. Yeah. And so I'm getting out there. And by the way, that was wrong. Share more in a little bit. But according to my watch, these guys were running at five and a half minute miles to start. I was just like, I'm not gonna sustain this even for like a half a mile. It's gonna burn me up for the race. So I start to kind of like, all right, just ease up a bit. Ease up a bit. Yeah. You know, kind of slow it down a little bit. So I slow it down and like the kind of the main pack passes by and then for like the next mile and a half, it just proceeds to be like continually people passing me and I'm not slowing down. I'm keeping, according to the watch, about a seven and a half minute pace, which is wrong. It was apparently about an 8 and a half minute pace. But anyway, these are just passing, passing, passing, passing. I'm like, this is so freaking hard. How are they going so fast? What, are they trained for this or something? And I'm going and they have this portion kind of right near where you checked in for the race where you run kind of right by the, the main area where all the people are hanging out. And then these couple of these hay ba. Hay. Is it a bale of hay or it's just like a brick of hay. And I Don't know why they're there, but you're like, you kind of step over the hail the hay bale. Maybe because it's supposed to be more cross country that way. But anyway, there's a bunch of people cheering and everyone kind of knows each other there, I guess, because they're all in this racing circuit. And so everyone's like cheering like, go, Daniel. Yeah, Jared. And then I run by. It's like silent. I'm like. And then by, like the second lap going around, I'm like, pretty far behind most people. And I notice probably within the first lap, social anxiety kicking in. Like, oh, man, this looks bad. I'm slow. Oh, I suck. I'm not as good as these people. People watching think, man, that guy's slow and he sucks. My mind just started going on it and that didn't. I mean, there's no way I would really significantly increase my pace. I could have, but then I wouldn't have been able to finish the race, I don't think. So I let myself just run at the pace that I knew I could sustain. And then there's another guy passes. And then the passing starts to thin out quite a bit at this point. There's the occasional person passing by. Occasional person. And then. And I was like, wondering, when. When am I gonna stop being passed? When am I gonna be in last place? I know it's coming soon. And sure enough, there's this old guy comes by. I mean, he's not, you know, old is a relative term, but for running, I mean, he's probably like in his 50s. And he comes up and he comes right by me and he's going a little faster than I am. And he's like, you're doing great, buddy. Just keep it up. I was like, thanks, man. And then he passes and I'm like, oh, that's it. And then it's just me. And I'm running at a park and there's no one around, and I'm like, wow, okay, there we go. I'm at the back of the pack. And I noticed a strong sense of self criticism that was emerging. Like, I feel self conscious. I feel like I'm being judged. I feel less than or worse than other people. And a long time ago, I made a commitment to myself to be on my own side no matter what. And I would encourage you to consider making a similar commitment. And what that commitment means is whenever I notice that, whenever I notice myself turning on myself, I slow down and I start to pay attention to it instead of getting on the bandwagon, like, yeah, they think you suck. Yeah, they do think you suck. You do suck. What's wrong with you? You know how we can do that? We can kind of jump on the bandwagon with our self criticism, but we actually want to notice that and start to interrupt that pattern. So I thought, wow, that's unpleasant to be criticizing myself. And I thought, well, this is a great opportunity to completely release something because some button is getting pushed by being last in last place. Losing at something, especially at something that's sports, you know, goes back to being a kid and playing competitive sports and competitive soccer. And, you know, if you were losing badly, then you sucked and you got yelled at and you got shamed. And so I realized, oh, this is something for me to heal. So I just started to feel that self consciousness in my body. I started to see where I felt pain or constriction, and I just kept going. And something interesting happened right around the third mile where I said, okay, I could do this for the whole race. Just kind of be critical of myself and thinking I look bad to people, but what the fuck? Like, I'm not a competitive runner. I'm not in it to win it. I just wanted to get out there and challenge myself and run, you know, six and a half miles or 6.2 miles at a good fast of a pace as I can do. That's great workout for me. How can I enjoy myself here? How can I make this fun? And I just kept on asking myself that question, how can I enjoy this? How can I make this fun? And then something happened where it clicked and I just got kind of giggly and I just found the whole thing extremely amusing. I found it extremely amusing how far behind I was. And I was getting passed by like a guy in his 50s. And then right around the third mile, maybe even before then, because I had no fucking idea what was going on where I was in the race. They had these markers that I thought when it said one mile on this thing, that meant that you'd gone a mile. But it turns out that meant you had, you know, if you went around enough, you'd have one mile left in the race. So I don't know where I was. The information on my watch was inaccurate. I was like, I don't know what's going on. But I think it was around two and a half miles, maybe three miles, is when the front runners of the race lapped me. And I was feeling like kind of light and freer and just kind of laughing at the whole Scene. And then I heard them coming because I heard this, like, heavy breathing. I looked back, and I moved to the side for them, and there's these two guys. They were on the same team wearing these black jerseys, and they just bombed by. And I was like, holy shit. I mean, I've seen, you know, racing on TV or you watch the Olympics or something, but all those people are competing against other people who are equally as fast as. And so it's kind of deceptive. You're just like, oh, yeah, they're all running fast, I guess. But when you're there and then these guys run by, I'm like, they're going, like, double my pace or something like that. I don't know what their pace was, but maybe it was five, five and a half minute miles, more or less, something like that. But it was really fast. And I. Instead of feeling less than or judging myself, I just felt really impressed. I was like, man, the level of, like, discipline and training that those guys must have to be able to, like, go out on a race and do this. And this is not like a huge, prestigious race. It's not like they specifically trained for this race. This is the level of shape that they're already in from whatever else they're training for. And then, of course, you know, a little ways back, actually probably even like half a minute to 45 seconds or a minute behind, was the third place, fourth place, fifth place. And then. And then. And then it just became continuous laughing. But by that time, it had melted, the social anxiety had melted. I stopped criticizing myself, and I started actually having a really good time. And we're gonna take a quick break right now, and then we're talking about how you can use this in your life, starting right now, so you can get on your own side no matter what happens, no matter how badly you're losing or how uncomfortable you feel in a situation or if you feel like you mess something up or you're worse than other people. Let's talk about how to shift all that right after this. Are you ready to take charge of your confidence, your career, your relationships, and your life? In order to experience a true transformation, you must take massive action. That is exactly why Dr. Aziz created confidence Unleashed. Learn exactly how to shift negative thinking, eliminate your fear of rejection, and activate a sense of power and confidence in your body whenever you need it. Go to www.confidenceunleashednow to find out more. Welcome back. So what are you learning from this story? What's standing out to you? What can you take and apply in Your own life. Here's a few of the things that I realized from this one is it was just a reinforcement of how much our self doubt, self consciousness, social anxiety is completely self created. And it was pretty obvious in this situation. I could just see it unfolding. Those people don't care about me. The people on the sidelines aren't judging me. The guys running by are not. You know, no one's even focusing on me. It's all just like this egocentric, oh my God, the world's watching me, but no one cares. And it's extremely liberating to really take that in and see that, that the only person who's judging you is you. And if you don't believe that, then try this experiment. And I have a video on YouTube. You can look it up. It's called, I think it's called Dr. Z's Street Shenanigans. And I had viewers of my YouTube channel dare me to do stuff. And I picked like 10 things off of the list of 30 dares or whatever and I went and did them. And one of them was just lie down on a sidewalk, a busy sidewalk, which is, you know, some of you might have heard of. It's. I interviewed till Gross and it's. He's a big proponent of the comfort zone Crusher challenge. But that's one of their main things, is lie down on the street to kind of break out of social norms. Anyway, I did that. And you'd be amazed at what percentage of people don't even look. It's not like, oh, look, that guy's weird. I'm gonna pretend like I didn't see it and move on. They just don't even register it. It's not even in their word, like, oh. And so people just don't. They're not paying that much attention to us. So if you want to carry out that experiment, lie down on the street for the sidewalk for 30 seconds, do so, you know, put your hands behind your head, kind of fold your hands behind your, behind your, behind your head so it looks like you're kind of lounging or relaxing and just lay on the ground for 30 seconds, see what happens. But people just don't care. Another thing is what triggers us to feel inferior. I find really fascinating. So obviously not being as fast or as strong as the other guys racing this race triggered a sense of feeling inferior and not just like, oh, I wasn't first. It was like, oh, all hundred people here are faster or stronger than I am. And when it's something like that you might say, well, oh, of course you'd feel bad about yourself then, right? I mean, that is, that is embarrassing. That is shameful. That is something to feel insecure or self conscious about. But why? That also is arbitrary. Why do we buy into that? That just comes from some programming, something that you learned probably growing up, maybe even as a little kid, but maybe even in middle school or high school. Like, why do we buy into that? Or if someone's like, oh, if you go try to talk to someone and they harshly reject you, oh, that's. Of course you're gonna feel, you gotta feel ashamed of yourself. You gotta feel less than in that situation. But why? In a sense, it only is. So if we choose it to be, if we take on that meaning, if we say, yeah, it does mean I'm a bad, less than human if I can't run as fast, or yeah, it does mean I'm less than if someone doesn't want to talk to me or if I can't approach someone in a confident and bold manner. So being really curious about what it is that triggers that sense of inferiority in you, that sense of self criticism of I'm not good enough or those people are better than me, and really questioning that trigger, do you really have to buy into that? A really common one, which you might have heard me talk about on the show, is guys in the gym. I feel insecure, I'm self conscious. That guy's bigger. That guy's got more defined muscles. That guy can lift more weight. I feel insecure at the gym. I feel less than, I feel inferior. But that is only because you're buying into the story that someone who is more muscular is better than you. And you might say, well, they're better than me because they're more desirable to women. Well, maybe in theory or in a vacuum, like if you were just to show one, two pictures or something, she'd pick the body type of the guy who's maybe, but maybe not. But that's not even. That doesn't matter. That's not true to real life. Real life is what it's like when you interact with her and how she feels and your energy and how alive you are and how much you love yourself. Because guess what? That guy who's totally ripped at the gym or who can run a five and a half minute mile or whatever, you know, assets and strengths he has if he hates himself, because I guarantee you that there are people at that race who ran fucking fast by my standards and who thought to themselves, ah, that was Shitty. I just. I suck today. And they're critical, they're down, they're upset with themselves. I guarantee it, out of a hundred people, there's no way that's not happening to some of them. You know, they're perfectionistic, they're driving. They wanted more from themselves, and so that they might not even be happier and, you know, they might not even be more attractive to someone else because they hate themselves. They're hard on themselves. They're always critical of themselves. They can't let love in. They're not as joyful and happy to connect. They can't be as present because they're so upset with themselves all the time. So these are illusions that we have that if I just look that way, if I could just do that, I could just do this. No, the only thing you need to shift right now is how you treat yourself. And you might want to start with a commitment. In fact, that brings us to your action step. Time for action. Your action step for today is to decide if you want to make that commitment. Commitment to be on your own side no matter what. And like any commitment, you don't know exactly how it's going to unfold. You can't predict the future six months from now, a year from now. And like any commitment, like, you commit to get in shape or whatever, it doesn't mean you're instantly in shape. It's a process. And it doesn't mean you instantly are always on your own side and the critic stops forever. It's a process. But you have an orienting goal of, I'm going to get on my own side no matter what. And so in each situation, when the criticism arises, you become better identifying it. You focus on, well, how do I release it? And if you don't know how to release it, then you figure it out over time. You read books, you listen to this podcast, you perhaps invest in my program, the Confidence Code, which teaches you exactly how to do that and gives you valuable skills that you might have never learned anywhere else. But you figure it out. You do what it takes when you make a commitment. And there's tons of resources out there and tons of practices, things you can do. Meditation, thought, challenging, from cbt, the awareness log for my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety. Tons and tons of tools at your disposal, but they only emerge and only become valuable once you've made that commitment. And I would encourage you to see if you want to make that commitment right now, and if you don't, that might be a bigger. That's a bigger question. We don't have time to get into that, but I would just say this. What's the cost of not making that commitment? That's something to think about too. So awesome. Thanks for being with me today. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are, to be on your own side no matter what, and to know 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 blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.