How To Make Confident Eye Contact With Anyone | Dr. Aziz - Confidence Coach

Do you have difficulty with eye contact, with holding eye contact with someone that you're talking to, especially if it's someone that you don't know that well, someone who's in a position of authority or power, someone who you think is attractive or cool or successful. Do you have difficulty just holding relaxed eye contact? Maybe even with strangers, Maybe even with anyone. And if so, watch this episode. This is different than probably anything else you've heard about this, and it's going to help you transform this pattern on the deepest level possible. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. This is the show for you if you want to be confident in every area of life that matters. And today we're going to be talking about something that affects all areas of life, all your relationships, which is eye contact. So click Click below to subscribe. Like this video. Share it if you'd love to, because I'm sure there's someone in your life that you might know that could benefit from this. And we'll keep spreading the word and the message of self love, self compassion, confidence, and boldness. So eye contact, do you struggle with it? I did for many, many years. And here's the thing we look for. I did. Maybe you have to look for tips. What do I do? You know, how do I do it? Under the strategies for eye contact. Maybe you found some of those ones that are like, look right here at someone and it looks like you're looking at them, but you're actually looking in between. And that, you know, helps you sustain the eye contact. Or maybe you have just done sort of like some exposures with it where you're just like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna hold eye contact longer. Here I go. And look. Well, the first one, I don't know if that's like training wheels that can help you. The second one works. Exposure is helpful. But here's the thing, if you really want to solve this, I'm always interested in the source of a problem, because if you just find a way to overcome the symptom, you might not have solved the source. So I was talking to a guy recently, and he said, you know, I got difficulties with eye contact. I've worked on it some over the last couple years. I'm better, but it comes back or it comes back against with people that are really powerful or successful in my company. And as I listened to it, I said, you don't have an eye contact problem. And he kind of paused because he's like, I obviously do it was what his facial expression said. And I said, you don't have an eye contact problem, you have a self esteem problem. And that's what I would say to you. We don't have an eye contact problem, we have a self esteem problem. Here's what I mean. Why are we uncomfortable making eye contact with someone? Have you ever thought about that? The reason is because when you make eye contact with someone, you're seeing them and they're seeing you. And we are afraid of that. We're afraid of that for several reasons. One, we're afraid of being seen. Like when someone looks at you and looks into your eyes and there's a sense of being seen. And what that means is they're not only just like literally seeing your physical face and everything, they're also like seeing you as a person, right? That means they might be able to pick up on how you're feeling in that moment. They might be able to be able to pick up on like, are you upset? Are you sad? Are you scared? Like they'll see you. And we're afraid of that. Now why are we afraid of that? Because we have low self esteem because we don't think much of ourselves. We feel like if they saw whatever they see, they're not going to like because whatever they see is not very good and that has nothing to do with them. That's all in here. That's your relationship with you. That's your relationship with your own emotions, right? Like, I don't like myself because I get anxious. I don't like myself because I feel sad or because whatever. I don't like myself because of something about my appearance. I don't like myself because I'm not motivated enough or because I procrastinate or because I'm overweight or whatever. We got our own shit and we are attacking ourselves for it. And so when someone else is looking at us, we're like, ah, don't look at me, I'm not worthy, I'm a wretch. It's not that dramatic. But it's more just like this. They're talking to you and you're like. And then it's kind of a negative cycle because they're looking at you and then you look away and you look down and you communicate all kinds of messages of submission, of untrustworthiness because you can't look at them in the eyes. And then they're less likely to want to work with you, want to hire you, take you seriously, promote you, see you as a leader, see you as A lover. And then we're like, further. You're like, oh, see, I knew it. Bleh. We get stuck in that cycle. Another reason we're scared to make eye contact is because I've heard this a lot. Like if I'm looking at someone, they're going to be like something bad's gonna happen. Like if it's someone that I'm attracted to, they're going to be offended by me. Or if it's someone that I'm not. But it's just maybe this is mostly for men. If I make eye contact with another man, he's gonna want to fight me. And look, I know this stuff kind of goes maybe to our primal heritage, our animal days. We're still animals, but you know what I mean, where there was like, you know, you have an extended gaze with another male, there's maybe some going to be confrontation there. But you know what, I think that's a self esteem issue as well. Because first of all, let's take the example of looking at someone you're attracted to. Why? You know, so you're demonstrating interest, right? Potentially if you're looking at them, doesn't have to mean that, but it might. Now why would that automatically be offensive to the other person? Why would that automatically be repulsive? Why would your attraction, your interest be repulsive to someone else? The answer is because you don't think much of yourself. Because your self worth is low, because your self esteem is low. You see in the pattern here? That's why. So in my program called the Confidence code, I go in depth into. That program was designed to give people the exact skills they need to make eye contact, to connect with others, to have conversations, to share, to have, to ask questions. Social skills to be really good socially. Social mastery is what I called it. And I was putting all that stuff together and I said, you know what, this program's not going to work. I mean, I have all the tools, I teach people how to do all this stuff. It's not going to work. Because the main problem with conversation skills and confidence, it's partly skill based, but the root of the problem is self esteem based. People don't think they're worth being talked to. We don't think we're worth being listened to. We don't think we're worth our stories are worth much. We don't think our interests are good enough to share. We don't think our attraction or love for someone is a good thing. We think it's like something negative that they're going to Reject. So I said the root of the problem is self esteem. So that's why for that program, the whole first half of the program is rock solid self esteem. It's all about how to build massive self esteem. Because I was like, well you can give them all the tools in the world but no one's going to do it and it's not going to work until your self esteem, the way you talk to yourself is transformed. So by the way, that program, I can't recommend it highly enough. We have so many success stories from people going through that. So you can check that out now if you'd like. It's@yourconfidencecode.com and you can go there and get a free ebook that teaches you some of the two core steps, I believe to creating confidence. And then also go further with that program if you like. It's super powerful. So the third thing though is like I'm going to look at a man and there's going to be like a fight, there's going to be a confrontation. So again, this one's real complex. There's a lot of stuff here. I'm going to share a few ideas about this. If you are relaxed and confident and solid in yourself, then it's not going to lead to a confrontation. The confrontation might come from you being like really tense and anxious and just like, you know, and you're sending out all kinds of like aroused hyper sort of fight or flight signals. But if you're just like looking at someone with a relaxed expression, they're not going to start a fight. Go test this out. Go like casually make eye contact. If you're a man with 10 other men and, and just have a relaxed expression on your face like hey, what's up? It's like look at, make eye contact with them. No one's gonna fight you. Just a story in your head. It's bs. So as you move through that, you'll see that it's absolutely not true. And here's the truth that when you make eye contact with someone, they like nourishes them, it feeds them. Because deep down every human wants love. We all know that. But the form of love that that's so desired is attention. We all want attention. You see it in little kids and it doesn't stop just because we grow up. We all want attention. Now the last thing you want is to be telling your friend about something or your spouse about something from your day and they're like not looking at you and going like this. Uh huh, uh huh. And clearly not listening. Doesn't that feel shitty versus you're telling someone about something and they're looking right at you and they're like oh wow, that's great to hear. Tell me more than what happened, right? Doesn't that like just your heart gets warm, you feel nourished, you feel like it feels so good. And that's what your eye contact is. It's a gift to someone else. So I would say to solve your eye contact problem, address your self esteem. You can start with the confidence code. There are books on the subject. There's dozens of videos in this channel that are all about that. There's my podcast Shrink for the Shy Guy. If you haven't heard of that, you should definitely check that out. I mean there's an abundance. My books talk about this. The Solution to Social Anxiety. There's probably a hundred books on self esteem on Amazon, like just find solutions. Apply them. Heal your self esteem and your eye contact problem will disappear. So share below in your comments what you're seeing about the relationship between self esteem and eye contact strategies you found to be helpful. Let's all rise together 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.