31 Dec 2019 · 42 min
Dr. Aziz explains how to improve your year by releasing past regrets that limit you, then choosing one daily practice that builds the experience you want. He shares how adopting puppies shook his confidence until he reframed the decision, then recommends concrete habits like cold showers or a daily courage challenge.
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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. Today's episode of the show. Today is a special day. It is December 31, first exciting. That means tomorrow is a new year. Do you get excited about the new year? I certainly do. I know a lot of people don't, or a lot of people have a kind of a. Resolutions don't work, so what's the point of those? And there's kind of a negative perspective on that. And that's true. I think New Year's resolutions don't work for most people. And there's stats and surveys, they've done that, that can verify that. But what if you're not most people? What if you defy the odds? Because here's the thing. There are many people who radically transform their lives, who pick a habit and stick with it forever or as long as it serves them to profoundly change their life. And then they upgrade their habit, which we'll talk about today, too. There are people who make a decision on one day. It doesn't have to be New Year's Eve, but they make a decision on one day of their life that they're done with something, they're done with the relationship, that they're going to break up, or that they are done running from their relationship, and they turn it around, they turn towards the person, they move towards them with more courage than they've ever had, whether that's the person they want to meet and they want to date and they ask them out, or that's you're already in a relationship and you dig deep inside of yourself. Every part of you wants to run away, but you dig deep inside of yourself to say, you know, what if I run away from this person in this moment because I'm scared, Because I'm scared to be authentic, scared to be real, scared to have a conversation that I know I need to have. Guess what? I'm gonna hit that wall in my next relationship. And I've definitely been there, too. Had a pattern of being avoidant in relationships. After I overcame my first layer of social anxiety, which was I can't talk to women, then, you know, I started to date women. And I. I realized I had another layer of social anxiety, which is I can't reveal myself to women. I can't really be known deeply. And, you know, it took a lot of years to figure that out because it wasn't that much of a conscious thought. It was just what I consciously felt was aversion. I gotta get out of here. And I did, you know, for many years. And then eventually I met Candace, my wife now, and it was like, wow, I want to go further with you. And then sure enough, as time went on, though, hit that wall of, I gotta get out of here. And I thought, you know, if I run now, like, what am I running to? What am I To what? It's everything I could ever want in a person. She meets me in every way, you know, every time I've been, you know, I left a woman that I was dating before, it's like, wow, she wasn't more of this. She needs to be more like this. Candace was everything I could want. She was the perfect fit for me. She was intelligent, she was powerful, she was beautiful, she was sexy, she was funny, she was fascinating. She was as into or more into growth than me. She was incredibly skillful in communication. She was wise, she was spiritual. I was like, what else am I running? And that's when I realized, like, oh, I'm not running away. I'm not running to anyone else. I'm just running away. And then I made a decision, one clear decision. This is the person for me. I'm not running, no matter what. I'm going to go inward. And then we had a powerful conversation where I actually revealed my insecurities and my fears and the part of me that wanted to run away in a way I never had with a woman before. And instead of her being, I don't know, upset, freaked out, get away from me. You're a weirdo. She was curious. And we talked and we talked and we talked. And that was the beginning of me realizing, like, oh, oh, I can go much, much deeper than I ever realized in revealing who I am and what's going on for me, and people aren't going to run away from me. And that's really when my confidence journey shifted from how do I look confident? How do I say the right thing? How do I have the good social skills? Because I was building all that stuff, and those are very useful And I teach those and probably learn some of those things from this podcast. But I think the deepest confidence journey comes from. From when we are able to reveal ourselves in forging those deep relationships. People don't think of that as the most confident move, perhaps, because to watch that person suavely walk into the room or give a presentation in a composed way, it's very public. We see that. Oh, wow. Wow, that's so confident. That person's so poised. But walking beside someone who's your lover or your best friend, no one notices that. No one cares. But to create that, to forge that, and you can't fake that. You can fake it to the outside. People can look at you and say, oh, what a close couple, or, that's one of my friends. But, you know, inside, if you feel deeply met, deeply seen, deeply loved, just that ease and relaxation of knowing you can be 100% you around this person, then you forge that with courage. And that takes one decision, a singular decision. And then you follow that up many, many times. Of course, that's just an example. So what if you made a powerful decision for this year? And again, it doesn't have to be on New Year's, but I think it's a pretty freaking good time. I love it. In fact, I actually get started with my goals and plans for the next year, probably about a month in advance. My birthday happens to be in November. And so I really start thinking about, okay, this year of my own personal year, what do I want? And then it happens to, you know, I get some momentum by the time New Year's comes around. So we're going to get into some goals and some visions and what you really want for this year, how to make 2020 even better, is what I want to focus on today. But there's something I want to do first that I think most people overlook. And they don't realize that it can majorly interfere with you carrying out whatever habits and disciplines you want to need to do in order to get the goals and life that you want in 2020. And that is letting go of something from the past, specifically from something in 2019. But it could be further back, too, because what happens is we experience something painful in the past, and, you know, maybe the intensity of the moment passes and you have a painful breakup, you get really sick and you lose a job, you have a downturn in your finances, a family member gets ill, something, something that's a painful period of time. I mean, even good things could be a painful period of time. You know, this year I really was scaling up my business, and there was some anxiety in there. Some. There was a lot of anxiety. There's periods of. A lot of anxiety in there. And I'll share another thing that was a good thing that actually led to a major challenge. I needed to really let go of coming into 2020 here. So whether it's a positive or negative event, it's just we get overwhelmed, we get anxious, we have challenging feelings basically during this time. And it could last for, you know, a couple weeks, couple months, could be just one day. Whatever it is, it's something that the immediate pain of it might pass, like, oh, yeah, we broke up in January and now it's December. So I'm over it. Are you? That's the question, right? Time is not necessarily the solution for getting over something. We need to consciously let go. We need to emotionally, mentally, and even physically in our body and energetically let go of that situation, of that person. Because here's the way we hold onto it is what happens is we experience pain sometime in 2019. And as I'm saying this, maybe you can think about, is there anything from this year that you're still holding onto, maybe, that come to you? For me, when I started thinking about this, nothing came at first. I thought of a few little things. But the thing that really impacted me came later that day, actually, as I thought about it. So maybe it'll come to you later today. Maybe it'll come right now. Maybe there's a. Maybe there's a couple things and it's unresolved. It's still there. You're still hurting about it. You're still sad about it. You're still uncertain about it, even though time has passed and you don't maybe think about it every single day, or maybe you do. But in any case, there's this pain, and then we come up with a meaning or a story around the pain that can guide us for 20, 20, or the next 10 years or more. That's why it's so important to identify and let this go. Because even though the immediate pain might be gone, you made a decision that time. So let's say, you know, you had a breakup earlier in the year, and it broke your heart. You might have made a decision, I'm never going to open like that again. And here's the thing and reason we want to examine this stuff is because we sometimes we proclaim that, you know, you say to your friend, man, love hurts. I'm never opening up again. Right? Maybe. But usually those decisions are made non Verbally, partially consciously. It's just like a. It's like a form of resistance and gritting our teeth and inside emotionally like that. And we fight the pain so much, there's some version of like, never again. I don't ever want to feel this way again. And then that sort of formulates into, I'm not opening up again. Or perhaps, you know, there's an illness in your family, or someone got sick. And then, you know, you come up with some decision like, I'm gonna make sure that no one ever gets sick again. And, you know, that might sound. Maybe you're eating healthy now or something. It might have a positive effect, but it also might have a neurotic effect, right? Maybe you get a little hypochondriasis. I gotta go check my medical stats again. Gotta get to the doctor, get my reports again. Beyond the regular checkup, that seems like a wise, prudent move. I'm talking about a little fear in there. Or maybe you injured yourself physically, and then you're like, you haven't really push that area anymore. She's like, well, I don't want to break myself again. And you have the story. And I know this one sadly all too well. I'm physically incapable or I'm weak, or I'm prone to injury. And then what does that do? That changes your whole physical life for 2020 and beyond. It limits you. So these decisions, these painful moments that lead to these decisions limit us radically. So what's something that happened for you in 2019? I'll give you another minute to think on that as I share a story about what I discovered, about what was a loose end from 2019 that I needed to clean up. And that was actually a positive event. So about midway through the year in June, we got two puppies, two Cavalier Kings. Oh, my goodness, they're adorable. I don't know if you've ever seen a Cavalier King. They're technically called Cavalier King, Charles Spaniel, and they're these, like, small dogs. They're about 20 pounds when they're full grown, give or take. Ours are 19 right now. And they are usually black and white, sometimes brown and white and black, long ears. They kind of look. Have you ever seen lady and the Tramp? I think she's a spaniel too, but smaller than that and usually multicolored. Very cute. Sweet dogs. They like to curl up and be cuddly with you, but they're active enough that they can run and stuff too. So awesome dogs for a family. And I. It was about two Months before then, because we got him in June. But the, you know, we had to. I mean, it was a month before that, somewhere in there. Maybe it was around May. I was sitting at work, just doing my thing at my computer. And then I have this intense. No, actually it started before that. It was. I was going for a run in the morning and it was the darkness and I was running through this park and there's these lights illuminating the path in the park. And I had this vision, I guess you'd call it. It was a sense, but it was like I could almost see it with my eyes open of a dog running next to me. That's weird. Okay, whatever. And you know, we actually thought about getting a dog two years ago and my son Armand at that time was about almost 2. And the idea of we were really close, we were gonna go pick out a puppy, we even put in a deposit and we were going to pick up the puppy. And my wife and I looked at each other and we were like both having so much anxiety, like, I can't do it. Can you do it? You can't do it. I can't do it. Because, you know, it was just crazy, man. We had a four and a two year old, still two year olds, pooping a diaper, still cleaning up his poop. And we're going to throw in a dog into the mix, especially because we started researching about dogs and studying about training and it just seemed totally overwhelming. So. So we put it on hold, put it on ice. Anyway, so I'm running in the park, I get this image of a dog and I am, you know, I'd already closed off to that idea. I'm like, no, it's too much right now. So I just noticed the thought and said, huh, that was weird. And then I got home and Candice says to me, you know, I had a dream last night. I said, what's that? She said, I had a dream that we had a dog. And somehow that vision that I had and her saying that something happened where it was like this, I need to get a dog, we need to get dogs. And it wasn't even so much of a desire. It was definitely a desire, but it felt like a knowing, it felt like a must, it felt like this is happening. And I don't know if you've ever been guided by intuition or by a higher power of God or if you tune into that or if you look for that. I certainly have. But this is what this was one of those things where I'm like, go, God, what should I do. Hello, Hello. I'm gonna tune. I'm gonna try to get my intuition working here, right? It was more just like, it's happening. Do it. I'm like, okay. So I go to work that day, and instead of working at all, I just spend the whole day on my computer, like, how to find dogs and which breed. And we don't even have a breed. We thought we were gonna get a labradoodle before. Two years ago, we had no breed in mind. So I go online, I look, start to look around for, like, what breeds are good with kids. And that was like, literally the first one that came up. And I looked at it, I was like, that's the dog. And I texted Candace and she's like, yeah, yeah, that's the one. Which is crazy. I mean, we spend so much time, the first time looking through breeds and researching and everything, and we just, like, dropped all that. This is the one. And then so, you know, look around and one lead falls through and relatively quickly by Wednesday of that week, two days later, we have a visit that we can go, you know, look for a puppy. So it happens to fall when we have some childcare. So we go drive down about an hour away to this little town outside of Portland, out in the farm, farm fields, and there's these beautiful little puppies. There's like six of them, and we're holding them. There's the little, like, alpha of the group. And we did a little research, and Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer and others recommend not picking the alpha of the litter of your puppies unless you want, like, probably a dominant, high energy dog, especially the alpha, if it's high energy. And sure enough, there's this cute one, really cute, who's like, knocking over his brothers and sisters and, like, jumping out of his pen and, like trying to climb on you, which is kind of cute. But then you're like, wait a minute, you're gonna be crazy. You crazy. So we didn't get that one. And we didn't get the runt either, because, you know, you want the runt. What if they. They're weak, sickly. So we got. There's. And then one was a girl, and she's like, no, I'm keeping that one. But there's these two boys, you know, you can have any one of these four boys. We don't want the alpha, we don't want the run. And then there's these two ones in the middle. And so we're like, which one is it? You know, so I'm holding One. And they're tiny, you know, they're like I'm making a gesture with my hands, which you can't see right now. You know, I don't know, like the size of a Coke bottle. You know, it's not that thin, but maybe small. I don't know. They're tiny. And so I'm holding one, and then Candace is holding one. And then, you know, the one I'm holding is kind of like tense on me. And the one she's holding is just like butter on her. She's like, I like this one. And the one I'm holding is a little tense. And then he relaxes onto me and I'm like, I like this one. And I'm like, well, let's trade. So we trade puppies. And I'm holding one, she's holding the other one. And meanwhile, up to this point, Candace has been, I don't know about anti puppy. She's definitely on board, but she was kind of like multiple times in this several day frenzy leading up to this meeting. She's like, are you sure? I mean, what about this? What about that? What about the responsibility? What about the time commitment? What about the training? What about this? What about the cleaning up the poop? I thought you didn't want to do that. What about getting up at night? Because you got to get up at night with them. And everything she said, what about travel? You know, everything she said. I was in such a state of total absolute certainty that this is what we were guided to do. I had an answer to everything. Well, this. I'll just get up with him every night, whatever, you know, no matter what. Do it. No matter what. Anyway, so she was a little more hesitant, but. But willing. She wasn't like, hey, absolutely not. But she's definitely more perhaps realistic about what was to come. Not me realistic. Who needs that? So then we're there with these two puppies in her arms, and then she looks at me and she goes, what about two? No, that's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. But look, at this point, all I needed was a little bit. The door opened just a quarter of an inch and I jammed my foot, my body through, like, okay, let's get. I was like, well, let's just ask her. So I asked the woman, the breeder, right? Hey, do people. What about two? And what do you think the breeder's gonna say? Right? That's like asking a barber if you need a haircut. It's like asking the guy at the restaurant, like, should I get the cheap bottle of wine or the expensive bottle of wine. What are they gonna say? Of course the breeder's like, yeah, yeah, two is great. I mean, people that get two love it, you know. And so I'm like, yeah, we should do two. And Candace is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's do a little research and then decide. And so I'm like, okay, okay, we're not going to commit to two now, but well, how about this? Let's put the deposit on two and then if we will let you know. Well, no, no, Candice was like, we should wait on it. And I was like, no, we're going to, let's do this. Let's put the deposit on two and then we'll tell her that, hey, give us a day or two. And then if we want to just put all that money towards the first one, then it will free up the second one. Just. She's like, okay. I said, great. So sure enough, we're driving home, we're looking it up, and most of the stuff on the Internet's like, don't get to. It's a shit ton of work. They could get littermate syndrome. And I'm like, pshh, I got an answer to all that. I know nothing about two dogs, but I'll tell you what I know anyway. So we decide she really wants two too. So we decide we're gonna get two dogs and then a month goes by and we're gonna go pick them up. And I'm so excited. I'm just feeling so on fire. That month between May and June, like utterly on fire. Lit up, just crushing it at work, Emotionally aware, light, free loving, just beautiful, beautiful month in my life. And I don't think I knew exactly why, but now I do. Because when we got The Dogs on June 24, it was the day after I did a three day live event for they call the ultimate confidence breakthrough. We do it every summer and we go pick up the dogs like the day after and we get them, bring them home. It's like the sweetest. Picking them up, holding them in the car. I got some pictures of me sitting in the backseat with them in the car. So sweet, so adorable. We bring them home, it's the sweetest thing ever. And our kids are at my grandparents house down the street or their grandparents, my parents. And then they, so they, they bring him home and then our kids meet our dogs and it turns from like the sweetest, cutest thing to oh my God, what have we done? Because the one factor that I did not anticipate was the Mani factor. So my second son, Arman, also known as Mani, was three and a half at the time that we got them. And if you know much about child development, they don't have that much empathy at that age. And empathy being the understanding of what another creature or human feels and being able to respond with compassion or care and restrain yourself in response to the way someone's feeling. So that boy didn't have empathy. And we knew that. Candace told me. She's like, you know, he terrorized animals at Christmas with our family and stuff. And I was like, ah, whatever. Well, I don't know what my answer was to that, but some form of psh, whatever, anyway, wasn't a great strategy because we got him. And I was like, holy cow, this is intense. This is like a really vulnerable puppy. And he's like, I want to drop the puppy. And you're like, so you gotta be right there on him. And thus began probably one of the most challenging months that I could remember in a really long time. I mean, it effed everything up. Like, I'm getting up in the night with the puppies. First of all, the I'm only gonna get up in the night and you're not gonna do it. Candice was total bs. I just couldn't pull it off. So we split the night duty. She actually did more of the night duty. Now I do more of the night duty, which she did a lot more in those first couple months. I'm like the teenage kid. Like, don't worry, I'll take care of the dog. And then I can't do this. You take care of it. Not that bad, but anyway. She did a lot of the night duty, but, I mean, we couldn't do anything. I had no morning routines anymore because of the schedule of the dogs. I couldn't just get up with them at my normal time, which was 4am and then just do nothing with them. They need to be in their pen, they need to be taken care of. I need to take them out to, you know, it's. Needed to figure all this stuff out. So I mess with my morning routines, messed with my sleep. And then, like, Candace couldn't go to the gym in the morning because he was like, we can't even be literally a foot from them. Because Armand could just like, accidentally majorly injure one or at least just majorly freak them out and do some weird imprinting on them. So we couldn't make a smoothie because it's like, I can't make a Smoothie. Because of kids. I gotta watch my kids. So one person had to be in the little ex pen with them all the time. It was intense, and it sucked. And I was like, I don't like this. Is. I don't like this. You know, and looking up online, I know a lot of people have a challenge when they get puppies, even if they don't have small kids, and they're sort of like, oh, should I bring it back? And then the recommendation on the Internet is like, no, stick it out and it'll be amazing. And so I definitely had a couple spasms in that first few weeks of, like, this was the wrong choice. I don't know about divine guidance and intuition. That sounds like a whole lot of BS to me. All I know is we need to get rid of these puppies fast, you know, before we bond to them while the breeder will still take them back or whatever. And Candace, though, was a bit more like, okay, is that really what you want? And we'd slow down and, you know, my emotional storm would pass, and I'd be like, no, no, I want to do this. So flash forward. It is some slow fricking going. Oh, my God. It was like everything collapsed into the smallest activity space possible and then slowly expanded over many, many, many months. We couldn't even go camping that summer because we, you know, at that young age, we couldn't really leave them with anybody. It was just a. It was a major challenge. We did go camping once, which I love, camping with my family every summer, so we had someone that could watch the dogs eventually. Later in the summer, in any case, made it through the squeeze, the mega squeeze. And there started to be more and more little magic moments, more and more sweet moments of love and connection with a lot of work still. And still some spasms of, why did I do this? But what I didn't realize until I was looking at the end of this year, back into 2019, what is left unresolved? You know, I turned a corner and was like, I don't want to get rid of these dogs. I love them. And now I'm super bond to them. Our family's really bonded to them. They're amazing. Still a challenge still growth, definitely for us to expand to, but I've definitely adapted in a way. But what I didn't realize is that the major residue of that experience that's still impacting me is not the painful emotion, is the story that came into my mind. And the story was this. I can't trust myself. I can't trust in intuition. For years I really cultivated that I'm guided belief and feeling. And it's this mixture of my own intelligence, my own desire, but also that I'm guided by something and I'm gonna listen for that. That intuition, that divine guidance, something like that's a big part of how I've been able to take more risk in the world and grow things. And that really got shaken from puppies, you know? And so it affected me. It was like, oh, maybe that's an illusion. Maybe I can't trust in myself. I don't know. Because if I was guided, then why was it so painful and hard and. And then I would have these thoughts of like, oh, man, I'm traveling a lot more in 2020, and I'll talk more about why in future episodes, but traveling a lot more. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna be traveling more. And I got these dogs like, ugh, that was the wrong choice. And so a lot of doubt, a lot of that was the wrong choice, even though I wasn't gonna get rid of them, just led to more self doubt, doubting of my own choices, which is, you know, let me ask you this. If I think, you know, I can't trust myself, I make the wrong choice, even if I feel certain that it's the right choice, I shouldn't make it because maybe it's wrong. If you got that energy going into 2020, how well is that gonna go? Not very well. So I was like, I gotta clean that shit up. So I'm gonna explain how I did that in just a second. How are you? What do you need to clean up? What's your version of puppies from this year? Something really painful that you made a decision, or maybe it made you doubt yourself. Maybe it made you change your identity in a negative way. Like, I'm an anxious person now because I had a panic attack, or I'm no longer a good husband, or I'm no longer skillful, whatever in my job because I made this mistake, you know? What conclusions did you make about yourself this year that you could really benefit from letting go of? So when I sat to look at it, I actually ended up talking at a wife date with my wife. I had a wife with my date yesterday. I had a date with my wife the other day, which was really fantastic. We hadn't had a date in a of weeks. Couple, couple weeks. And we were both missing that time together. And, man, my favorite thing to do on a date with Candace is just talk, you know? We didn't want to go to a movie. We didn't want to go out anymore. Just like, just be together and talk and touch and share. And so we did that for hours. And in there, I was talking about this puppy thing. It's like, hey, I realize this is something I need to let go of. And through that conversation, what was fascinating is. So she asked me, and I love the way she does this. She's like, okay, tune into where there's that pain and you can't trust yourself in your body. And I'm like, okay, it's right here in my chest. It's like a squeezing in my heart. She's like, okay, now tune into that. Like, I am guided. This was the right thing to do. Where is that in your body? And I instantly sat up taller. And I could, like. It was like right in the center of my. Between my eyes and kind of just in my head, face area, almost like there, but going outward and expanding. And I was like, it's like this. And she's like, okay, stay in that. So I just stayed in that energy. And she's like, what's that about? What's that perspective? And I just started laughing. And I was like, from that divine perspective, it's like, dude, your timeline is so short. You're so short. Like, I'm operating on a different time frame. This is like cosmic time frame. This is like the interweaving of all lives. And then something hit me like a lightning bolt, and I was like, holy shit. These dogs weren't about me and they weren't for me. This is the interweaving of the cosmos. Everything is infecting everyone else. What if I was getting the dogs for them? Then? What if I was getting these dogs mainly for my kids, mainly for Arman, right? And it's not like that. I don't love them, and I'm not gonna take care of them. And they're not a big part of my life, too. But I was like, holy shit. Like, that's. And it just felt so true. And I could see it. I could see how much it's changed him. He's grown rapidly in his. I mean, still working on the empathy sometimes, but, I mean, in the last six months, he's grown just so much more than he would have. And he loves those dogs. I mean, I think he might love them more than anyone in our family, even though he's the hardest on them, too. Just deep bonding with them. So much growth for them, how to take care of animals and more. Right? Ways I can't even explain. That's the point. I don't need to explain it. And that's what I realized. I don't need to be able to explain it. And it doesn't need to always lead to my own immediate personal pleasure. My choices are not that. Divine guidance is not about me getting my own pleasure in the max way and the least amount of pain. It's about doing something that I'm guided to do. And it's right. And it's not just necessarily right for me. It serves and contributes to the greater good. And as soon as I saw that, boom, that feeling in my heart went away. It felt open and expansive, a little bit tender and bruised because I think there's a contraction there for so long. But it just felt open and light. I'm like, ah, I get it now. And then all of a sudden, all that doubt that had been in there for a long time in the background just evaporated. And I came back into a state of certainty in myself, certainty that I'm guided, that everything's unfolding for the best benefit, and that life is happening for me. That all whooshed back in and I'm just like, ah, now that feels good. Going into 2020. So that would be the main thing that I would suggest you do going into 2020 to make sure it's a better year than 2019, is to really let go of anything that you've been holding onto. And you might have done some. While you're listening to this episode, you might need to do a little bit more, maybe take a little bit of time, go for a walk, reflect on what it might be, or let it just come to you. Maybe it'll come to you in the shower. It doesn't have to be today either. You gotta get it in before 2020 starts or you're screwed. It's not like that. But, you know, giving it some intention, some thought, well, I think really serve you. And then you can go to the place of, what do I really want for 2020? And let's look at that now for just a moment. What do you really want for 2020? What excites you? What lights you up? Is it something you want to do? Something you want to create, something you want to achieve? Certain experiences that you might want to have, maybe certain experiences you want to have with somebody else. Travel, adventure, love, connection, sex. What do you really want? What do you want to turn around in 2020? Maybe it's not terrible in 2019, but you just want to make it Better. You're like, you know, I don't want to settle, I want to keep raising my standards. I want things to keep getting better in my life. So maybe your fitness is okay, you want to take it to the next level. What would that look like? You want to sign up for a race, 10K half marathon, Sparta race? Do you want to have some specific target of days in the gym or a certain strength goal? What about in your relationships? How do you want to take the quality of your friendships, social connections, romantic relationship? How do you want to take that to the next level? And before the exact what you're going to do day to day, just really focus on the what do you really want? What's the end result? What's the vision? What are the experiences? What's the big picture? Don't worry right now about how it's going to get done because as soon as you start to think about how too soon your mind's like, is it really possible? I don't know, just this is what I want. This is the vision. And really go more by feeling and intuition here than by your head. Your head comes in later to help you come up with some strategies. But let the vision come through you and to you. And I think our vision for what we want, not just for this year, but for our lives, is actually an intersection of our desire, what we want and then what life wants of us, what God wants us to do. So it's this mixture. And even if you're not a religious person or a spiritual person, although I think we all are spiritual on some level, we gotta have some connection to something. Even if you have a different name for it, maybe you call it the universe, maybe call it fate, maybe you call it infinite intelligence. Something, right, something insanely beyond us is in this cosmos. Even if you think it's purely mechanical, it's pretty vast, pretty infinitely expansive and mind boggling. So those cosmic forces are at work, right? Everything is unfolding, everything is originated with the Big Bang, we think. And now it's like everything's unfolding, everything's in motion, everything's interweaving. So what's the interweaving of that? And you the dao. So tuning into that. And you could spend more time with this. I absolutely would. I love to get a flavor for the year, like what is the theme? And then I'll share one more thing with you that I think will really serve you. And this is what I ask myself when I turned 37, which was in November. But it's going to be for my 37th year, which is mostly all of 2020. And it was this. To make this year the best year of my life where I could really look back at the end of the year and say, wow, that truly I'm not just saying that because that was my goal and I had to say I achieved it. But honestly, that was the happiest I've ever felt, the most fun I've ever had, the most I've ever grown, the most, the most successes and breakthroughs I felt not just externally but internally. Right? Just the best year of my life. I loved it because you can achieve a lot externally and still feel anxious, empty, stressed out, dissatisfied. Fuck that. That's not success. So I want to have outer goals that I'm working to achieve but also most importantly, I want to feel incredible. I want to be like what an amazing year. So what's the one thing I need to do every day that will bring that about? That's the question I ask myself. What's the daily discipline that I must have that will bring that about? What comes to your mind for that? I came up with two things. Wim HOF training and my courage habit or confidence strength training, whatever you want to call it. So the Wim HOF training is just two things that I learned from him from a couple years ago. And when I was doing them regularly, it felt really good for my body, for my nervous system, strengthening me, clearing emotions, just really good. And it involves doing four rounds of hyperventilating, basically deep breath work, like full in breaths, 30 of them, and then holding your breath for as long as you can. And it's like a form of a workout in a way. And I would kind of some days do it, some days not be resistant. I was like, nope, I gotta do it every day and do a cold shower two minutes every day, no matter what. And so that's the WIM HOF stuff. And then the other thing was the courage habit which is do one thing per day that scares me or makes me uncomfortable because of its not just physically uncomfortable but like, you know, because like running further or whatever. No, but like it makes me uneasy in some way. And I also call that confidence strength training because it's the same thing. And sometimes that has a. Or the courage muscle. There's different ways of thinking about it. So I said okay, those are the two things I'm going to do every day. And to support me in that I had an app that I was using called Momentum, which you can kind of track your daily habits on There. But then someone told me about. A friend of mine told me about habitshare, which is really awesome. Habitshare is an app you can get for your phone that allows you to track your daily habits. Did you do it or not? Basically. Or if not, why not? You can type it in if you want. And then though, what makes it uniquely awesome is you can share your habits, whichever ones you like. You have some private ones, but you share the ones you want with friends who are also on the app and you can see their habits and you can see who's doing what. And that extra layer of accountability is powerful. Makes a big difference. Of course, you gotta really have your own desire to do it right. That's not gonna do anything if you don't, if you're not internally motivated. But it's just definitely helps. There are definitely times where it's like late at night, I'm like, I don't want to do that thing. But I'd get a red circle. Jonathan would see it. I gotta. Alright, let's do it. And it's sort of an identity thing, like I'm gonna follow through. Cause I said I was gonna follow through and show other people that I said I was gonna do it. So it really helped tip the scales. And I've been consistently doing that every day. And it's not a perfectionism thing. If you miss a day, that's okay. But what is the thing that's gonna get you that result? Because that is the, like the wish and the fantasy and the hope is nothing until you have a daily discipline in place that's gonna move you closer to that. So if you have a fitness desire, what's your daily discipline? I have one of those for the gy. What I started to do is add more and more in different key areas of my life. But start with the one, what's the one thing? I know I came up with two. So if you're an overachiever, you can do that as well. But beware creating 19 habits that you're gonna do every day, because you're not gonna be able to sustain that, at least not at first. There's a different process for that, which I'll probably talk more about in a future episode of how you can start, you know, start small and add to it. But for now, what's the one thing that you're gonna do every day that will. Or maybe it's, you know, you pick Monday through Friday or something, but you're clear ahead of time what days you're not doing it. If you're not doing it on a certain day, that's gonna bring you the best year of your life. Beautiful. So that decision right there that you're gonna make is your action step. In fact, let's pause right now and discuss that. Time for action, action, action. Your action step for this today and into the new year is going to be to ask yourself that question. Well, it's two things, right? One is to find what's the one thing or several things from 2019 that are energetically, emotionally, mentally incomplete, stuck, lodged, that might be affecting your perception, your identity, your belief, your faith in yourself, your confidence in yourself. And focus on that, journal about it, talk about it with a friend, do some work on it to let it go. And then step two of the action step is to decide or ask yourself that question and let it come to you. I found that it's a mixture of you just ask that question and see what comes to your mind and then tune in. Does that feel right for me? But what's the one thing that I'll need to do every day to make 2020 the best year of my life? So do those two things and you are set up for an incredible year. I cannot wait to continue this journey with you. Onward and upward. I personally want 2020 to be the most epic year of my life. And I hope that is the same for you in whatever way epic is for you, of growth, excitement, adventure, becoming the most confident version of you that you've ever experienced and all the joys that come from that. Being able to connect more freely, share your ideas more freely, create what it is you truly want to create, and having an extraordinary level of life for 2020 and beyond. So let's buckle up and step into 2020 and have an incredible journey together. Until next week. May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. 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 blogs, e books and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.
