How To Overcome Shyness And Social Anxiety

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, everybody. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today is a monumental occasion, and here's why. Because this is the 100th episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. 100 episodes, almost 2 years old. This show is. That's exciting. I had no idea I'd be doing it that long or what my original plan was. I was just like, I got a bunch of stuff to share and it's just kept going and growing and I'm super excited to be with you two years later with no sign of stopping in sight. There was a rough patch in the middle there, maybe around 60 or 70, where I was like, I don't know, why am I doing this? And then I, you know, each time I read someone who writes in who's just like, wow, that was really helpful, or I got something out of that, or even better, this to help me transform my life, that just juices me. It fills me up with more inspiration, more energy to just keep doing this, keep recording, keep sharing. And honestly, when I do sessions with people or a group call or something like that, when there's something really valuable in there, something a major insight they have or a breakthrough, I have this, I have to go share it, whether it's in a video or one of these podcasts. And if I can't, it's painful. We were moving recently and I was also, in addition to moving home, I was also moving my office. And so everything was chaos and I didn't have a place to record stuff. And it was actually really challenging. I was like, oh, this great insight. I'll write it down and then I'll record it later. And of course, I don't know, I don't even know where that sheet of paper is that I wrote it down on. So anyway, it's a long way of saying thanks for being a part of the show. Thanks for listening, thanks for supporting me in putting this out there. And I'm excited to keep doing it, keep rocking it for another hundred episodes, for another 5,000 episodes, who knows? I got some great ideas for the show, ways I want to expand it, little additional episodes. I'm gonna throw in some amazing interviews coming up for this year with just super inspiring, super helpful, super powerful people who can help all of us shed any fear, self doubt, social anxiety, just any sense of I'm not good enough. People don't wanna talk to Me, I can't do this. I can't finish that. I'm not good enough in this way, shedding all of that bullshit and just really stepping into who you are, how awesome you are, and really what an impact you can have on the world. And it doesn't have to be huge, but that you can touch the people's lives around you. You can give and receive even more love. You can be more free to be who you are. And so some of those guests are going to really help shed some light on that. And speaking of that, today we're gonna be getting into a really big topic. I thought it was a great topic to dive into for the hundredth episode, which is how to overcome shyness and social anxiety. Now, in some ways, all of this show is about that, right? And how to increase our confidence and how to be more socially free. But I wanted to address it specifically. The whole process of doing this and what inspired me to do this is a question I had from. So I wanted to answer her question. Ashley is her name. And it's going to help us really make sense of this process. How do we overcome shyness and social anxiety? And this is very powerful. Even if maybe you've already done a lot, there's always another layer. There's always an edge. There's always a place where we're a little nervous about putting ourselves out there or what will people think? And I've talked to people who are very successful in a lot of ways, but then they're afraid of putting their book out there, or they're afraid of just doing that next thing that people might judge or they might fail. So today we're gonna look at how to overcome shyness and social anxiety, because I know that you're already on a path towards greater confidence. If you're listening to this show, you're already on the path, and this is probably not the only thing you're doing for your own development. But of course, you've probably noticed that setbacks happen. And at times we feel discouraged, and at times you might want to give up, and at times you might say, what am I doing? And will this ever work? And how does this work? And I don't know, and I've been there. So let's talk about how this process works. In fact, let's start by reading this question from our listener. And now it's time to ask the shrink. So this question is from Ashley. She says, hello, my name is Ashley. I have a few questions that I would like to be answered. Once you have the time to answer them. My questions that I would like to ask are just very organized. How to overcome shyness. How to overcome the fear of failing. How to think positive so you can say, I am proud of myself. I think that's what she means there. How to believe in yourself so you can do what you want without being embarrassed or afraid. So those are big questions. Those are, like, huge, big, awesome questions. And if you have the answers to those questions, then you're in damn good shape. And I wouldn't say that I have all the answers to everything in life as much as I would pretend to. Like, I think I do. I mean, I think most any person is only going to know the infinitesimally small fraction of what there is out there in the world and the universe and everything like that. But I've been working on myself in this area for maybe 14 years now. And I've helped clients with this for. It's 2005. So what are we, 11 years now? So there's a lot there that I've seen. And so I'm gonna share the best stuff that I got that's gonna help you in this process. The first question, how to overcome shyness. So this is really powerful, and there's three things I distill it down that you must do if you really want to overcome shyness. And when we say here, maybe make a quick distinction, actually, because some people say, like, well, wait a minute. Hey, maybe there's nothing wrong with shyness. Why are you bashing on shyness? Why are you making it sound like some disease? And if you're feeling that way, that's not my intention at all. Here's what I mean. So shyness might be a temporary feeling of hesitating. You know, my son Zaim, who I love, he's amazing. He's a little over two. And someone comes to our house. I mean, he's, like, loud and running around and doing all kinds of crazy stuff that toddlers do. Then someone comes over, and sometimes even if it's someone he loves, like his grandma or a good friend of ours, he'll run over and want to be picked up. And you're holding him, and then the friend will come over and say hi, and he'll kind of smile and then put his head behind my. Maybe behind my shoulder. And it's cute, right? It's him being shy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, that's a beautiful thing. It's funny, it's endearing, it's sweet. And, you know, sometimes Anyone feels shy, we feel a little hesitant, a little worried. That's not the real problem. The real problem is a chronic sense of I don't want to reach out. People aren't going to like me. I'm going to fail. I'm not good enough. People judge me harshly for X, Y and Z because I'm not enough of this and I'm too much of that. And so I don't want to put myself out there. That could be called social anxiety. And the reason I use the word shyness is because that's what Ashley is using. That's what most people say when they say, oh, I'm really shy. That's what they mean is like, I have a lot of social anxiety. So with that big caveat, we're going to dive into the three things you must do to overcome shyness. We're also going to look at how to overcome the fear of failing and answering all of Ashley's questions. In fact, this whole episode is dedicated to that. We're going to take a quick break right now and then we're going to dive into those three things. So stay tuned.

Ever wonder how to start conversations with women? You might see attractive women everywhere. Coffee shops, stores, even walking down the street. So how do you just walk up and start talking to them without seeming weird or desperate? This is such a common challenge for guys that Dr. Aziz created a free ebook to teach you exactly how to do this. It's called 7 Ways to Start Conversations with Women Anytime, Anywhere. Go to 30daystodatingmastery.com to claim your free copy today.

Three things that you must do to overcome shyness. First, do what scares you. Yep, that's the million dollar turnaround, the 180 degree shift. Stop avoiding and start approaching. Do what scares you. If you do that, you will chip away at your fears and doubts like nothing else. You might feel more fear at first though, of course, right? Because you're doing what scares you, you're not avoiding it. So it's more scary. But when you persistently and consistently do it bit by bit by bit, you don't have to be huge, doesn't have to be a crazy leap from a 5,000 foot building. You can just take a small step, go 5% outside your comfort zone. You consistently do that, you will transform. Number two, challenge the ideas in your mind that make you scared. So you gotta start getting better and gaining more awareness at noticing what story am I telling myself? So you're feeling anxious, you're gonna go do it anyway cause you're Facing your fear, but then you're so tense, you're so worried. A mentor of mine I've actually had on the show, Brad Pendergraft, who's an amazing, amazing everything, author, coach, just NLP master. He's a pretty amazing guy. And a question that he taught me, which I love, is to ask yourself, how am I doing this? So when you're feeling tense or nervous, ask yourself, hmm, how am I doing this? And notice, what am I focusing on? What am I saying to myself? How am I creating this? In my experience? And you just might find that you're saying to yourself, no one there will like me. So if you're telling yourself, no one there is going to like me, everyone thinks I'm stupid, then you're probably going to be pretty anxious. You got to learn how to challenge first, identify those ideas and then challenge those stories in your mind. The third thing you must do if you really want to overcome shyness, social anxiety, fear, self doubt is change the way you talk to yourself. You have to challenge your inner critic and replace it with compassion. You gotta commit to being on your own side no matter what. This is a huge piece. You can't just go out and do what scares you, but continually berate and beat yourself in your own mind. And virtually everyone I work with, there's a huge amount of self love that they need to heal. There's a part of them that is just ruthless, Just beats them down again and again and again. If they try to argue with that part, it just steamrolls over them. And so they need to learn very powerful tools and strategies and work over time. It's like training a new habit of changing the way you relate to yourself. That is a huge step in overcoming shyness. So to get to our next question here, how to. Oh, by the way, when I share the answer to these things, if you listen to it and you're like, yeah, I already know that, Jan, what's next? No, I know that one too. God, there's nothing new here. Well, maybe there is something new there for you. But even if there's not, there is knowing with your mind. And sometimes that's actually worse than not knowing, because then we can slot it into, I know that I get certainty, but we're not actually doing it. So you can say, oh, yeah, I know, do what scares you. Yeah, I already know that. But then we gotta look at our lives and say, well, how much am I actually doing that? And what scares you changes, because if you live this practice and you start doing it More then the things that used to scare you won't anymore. And then you can choose to stop and potentially get stagnant, or you can choose to keep growing and find your next edge. I'm always doing that. I'm finding my next edge. And you don't have to go crazy. You can take breaks, but at the same time, to me, we're either growing or we're stagnant. And growth and fear are like two peas in a pod. I don't know if you can get one without the other or some other challenge. Growth comes from challenge. Facing a challenge, learning, expanding, putting something into practice, taking action, facing fear. So the question you want to ask yourself is, am I doing what I already know? Okay, Ashley's next question. How to overcome the fear of failing. Fail a lot, as fast as you can. And then you got to transform the way you see it. Instead of seeing failure as the opposite of success, see that it is a path on the step to success. It's a step on the path, I should say, to success. So we tend to think of it like this. There's like a desired outcome. Like I want to meet someone here and have a great conversation, or I want to ask someone out and get a date, or I want them to hire me, or I want this project to go well, or I want kudos from my boss, or I want to sell a certain amount of whatever in my business and make a certain amount of money. We have these goals, we have these desires, we have these outcomes that we want. And if we get the outcome in the amount of time that we have arbitrarily decided that we should get it, then it's a success. But if we don't get the outcome or we don't get it right away when we say, oh, I should get it tonight or I should get it by next week or I should do it this year. And if we don't get it by that timeline, even if we get it later, we still consider it a failure when we didn't reach it within that timeline. So it's the desired outcome in the right time frame is considered a success. So here's the thing. I mean, if you take action, will you always get the desired outcome? Is every step you take going to get you exactly the desired outcome that you made up in exactly the time frame that you came up with, even if it's totally unrealistic? Absolutely not. We're going to get all kinds of outcomes desired, undesired, unknown, random. And so to conclude that, oh, that was a failure or worse, people say, I am a failure. And if you think I am a failure and you take that into your identity, then you're toast because then you don't try anymore. And a phenomenal book about this whole subject is Go for no, written by Andrea Waltz, and I forget her co author, Roger. Anyway, he's awesome too. But that is gonna give you some powerful insight into reframing how you see failure, because it is truly. I mean, the people that are the most successful fail the most. They fail a lot because you're taking a lot of action. Just think about this. You take massive action, you will succeed. You're also gonna fail a lot along the way. So get ready for it and just bring it on, man. Embrace it. All right, how to think positive. So you can say, I'm proud to do that, I'm proud to do that. I'm not sure what she means there, but here is how to think more positive and feel more proud of yourself, if that's what you're asking. Ashley. This one took me many years to learn. Lower the bar. I know, I know, it seems like counterintuitive. Seems wrong, especially in the personal development world, right? Lower the bar. No, raise the bar. As Tony Robbins, the self help stud, would say, raise your standards. That's one of his big talking points. He talks about, you know, the secret to success in life and bajillions of dollars and hordes of fans. Whatever else you want is to raise your standards. And I get his point. It makes a lot of sense. But you know what I think in terms of perfectionism, self criticism, you know, if you don't have all that healed up, if your inner critic is still a raging maniac and you haven't healed that up, then raising your standards is bad news. Your standards are already too high. You have unrealistic standards, they're perfectionistic. And most people that I talk to and work with have unrealistic standards. So I don't think raising them is a good idea unless we totally change how we hold them. I think we want to lower the bar before we give ourselves credit. So this is something really big that comes up in a lot of people's lives. I was actually talking to my brother recently about this. He is a public defender, serves the common good. And, you know, he's got like any public defender, just a crap ton of cases. And he just, he's been working in the field for quite a while. So now he's moved up from misdemeanors to felonies. So it's like, more serious charges, more serious jail time. And of course he's all stressed out because it's way more than he can manage. And he's like, but I gotta do everything for everyone and take care of every case with all of my time or else something bad's gonna happen or I'm gonna fail, or people are gonna judge me and think I'm no good. Clients are gonna be upset with me. And he was just a nervous wreck because he was taking so much on and he didn't give himself any credit for what he was doing. It's like, well, it doesn't matter because I haven't done enough for that person. I haven't done enough for that person. I need to do this next. I need to do that next. And I really talked with him about lowering, like, what can you give yourself credit for right now? What if you don't have to perform so amazingly that you pull off these crazy one in a million long shots for the guy, you win the case? I mean, what if you expect, like, you know, what with the situation the way it's set up. I'm actually set up to lose a lot of the time, but I'm still going to fight for him. What if we lower that bar? Where can you lower the bar in your life? Where can you just start to give yourself credit right now? Not when you reach a certain goal or you achieve something else, but right now for what you're doing, what you've already done? You know, most people only let themselves feel proud when they've done something incredible like going to the moon or earning a billion dollars instead. What if you committed to giving yourself credit daily? Ask yourself on a daily basis, maybe starting right now? What could I be proud of myself for if I wanted to be right now? What could you be proud of yourself for if you let yourself, if you wanted to be? And just breathe in and feel that. I actually like to put my hand on my heart when I do this one. And this one helps. If you slow down. You can't just do it super heady in your brain as you're buzzing from one thing to the next. Just take a moment right now, just right now with me. And breathe. And slow way down. What can you be proud of yourself for? What can you give yourself this gift instead of looking for other people to be proud of you? What if you just gave it to yourself? What are your standards? Oh, I can't give myself credit for that because. Oh, yeah. So I woke up and ate a healthy breakfast.

Yeah, that's Real Great it is.

75% of people are not doing that. You're in the minority. So give yourself credit. And you don't have to compare yourself to others and say you're better than them, but give yourself the credit that you deserve. And if you want to acknowledge that you are better than people on certain measures, then that's fine, too, right? You know, hey, maybe I am more dedicated to my health than other people are, and that's good. I'm proud of that. I think his health is important to me, or whatever your thing is. So that is how you can think more positive and feel more proud of yourself. We're going to take another quick break, and then we're going to get into another great question of hers, which is how to believe in yourself so you can do what you want without being embarrassed or afraid to do it. Now that. Ooh, that's a good question and something I love. And the answer is a little different than what you might expect. So stay tuned. 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 to listening to this and thank you for the amazing. I have pod the streams that you do on Shrink for the Shy Guy, and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you. Welcome back. So Ashley asked a great question, which is how to believe in yourself so you can do what you want without being embarrassed or afraid to do it. So this is another. It's building on the question of how do we overcome fear? But there's a key element there which is embarrassed, right? So one of the things that's holding her back and probably holding a lot of us back is a fear of feeling embarrassed or judged or humiliated, like something Bad is happening. Something bad is coming towards us because of whatever we just did, where we failed or we didn't, or even not just doing something outside of the ordinary for us, outside of our comfort zone, we assume other people are going to judge us. And so here's the thing. One, the judgment is primarily in your own mind.

Two.

The degree to which someone's judgment bothers you is based upon how much you're judging yourself already. So if you're okay with it, then their judgments don't bother you as much. Three, the only way to get free of embarrassment is to embarrass yourself. Now, I know that's the part that seems counterintuitive. It's like, no, I want to avoid embarrassment. But when you are able to embarrass yourself intentionally and withstand that discomfort and see through it, you gain superpowers. In fact, in my program, 30 days to dating Mastery, which guides people step by step, and there's like a mission each day. A mission's like going out in the world and doing something I think right, or I don't know what day it is, maybe like eight or nine. I talk about this concept called embarrassment inoculation, which is exactly that. It's like an inoculation. It's like you get a shot of mumps or measles or whatever in your arm, and then you become resilient. So you can't get infected by that disease, most likely. And the same thing with embarrassment, you take small doses intentionally, and then you can't be infected by it. It doesn't hurt you, it doesn't make you sick anymore. But I realize that's a hard sell. So in the program, one of the assignments I have people do is write out what I call their embarrassment manifesto, where they write out why it is good for them to be embarrassed, why they want to be embarrassed, and what they're going to do to make that happen in their lives. That's on the tail end of a long strategy session, like a 20 or 30 minute video where I'm really highlighting the power of this liberation that comes from facing our fear and doing stuff that embarrasses us. So we have to do that. We have to do it a lot. And what's amazing is the people that have done it, I've done it, and friends I know have done it. And also clients that I worked with, the ones who were bold and courageous, will do it. And what they all will tell you, what I will tell you is one, when you do stuff that's embarrassing, like go Ask an uncomfortable question at a store or ask someone for a sandwich or for $100, one client of mine would ask people like, can I have a breath mint? You know, anything dancing on a street corner, whatever it is, what you're going to find is a. The vast majority of people don't notice or don't care. That's liberating. Now, me telling you that is not liberating. Doing it is liberating. You gotta do it. You gotta see it for yourself. You gotta face that fear, and then you gotta do it again and again and again and again. And the more you do this stuff, the more you realize you can handle it and it doesn't matter. You become fearless. People's judgments don't bother you. And that. And so here's the thing. When you're able to embarrass yourself in those small little situations like that, then when it comes to asking someone out or speaking up in a meeting or anything that's more serious in your life, that embarrassment is holding you back from. It no longer will, and you become more free in all aspects of your life. So the key feature in overcoming shyness and social anxiety is sticking with the process, doing these things, doing what scares you, learning to work with the negative stories in your mind and challenging what makes you scared in your own head, and then working with your inner critic, getting on your own side and staying in this process, learning, surrounding yourself with information that helps you, that serves you. That's why I create this information, this podcast. I have a book. I have training programs, coaching, weekends, whatever it is. If people want to surround themselves with that information and then experience that transformation, that's what I've seen work, and that's why I share that with the world. And whatever it is for you, even if it's just my book, the solution to Social anxiety, start with that, because you'll be able to get a ton of exercises. But you got to engage in this process. And here's the thing. Don't stop. Most people don't make the progress because they do it for a week or a couple of weeks or maybe a month, and they're like, man, this is hard. Forget that. And they stop. And then they settle into a story that says, well, this is just how I am and it's not going to work. And I tried other stuff before and that didn't work, so don't even try. Which is just the. That's the call sign of a stuck human. I'm not going to do it. It's not going to Work. So I try and I've been there in my life. But here's the thing. Everything that seemed insurmountable, everything that seemed like just who I was was actually just a little shift, a little breakthrough. I mean, I. Man, I went after. I overcame the fear of talking to women and asking them out and getting dates. That was a big hurdle. Then I realized I had an even deeper fear of getting into a relationship. I freaked the fuck out. I would get so weird. I'd get so uncomfortable and anxious, and I didn't know why. And I'd have to break up with her. And then I'd feel guilty and miss her and then want to get back together. And then I'd break up again. It's like this. Yo, yo. I was crazy balls. And I thought, man, after a number of times doing this and trying to white knuckle it through it, but not being able to, I thought, man, I'm really messed up, you know, there's just something deeply wrong with me. I'm not capable of intimacy, of relationships. I'm broken. And you know what? It was just some minor shifts that transformed it all. One of which is I just had no boundaries. I couldn't say no. I felt too guilty to say no. I couldn't talk about anything that was upsetting to me or frustrating to me or anything. I wanted different in the relationship. I was too nice. That was one small thing. Of course, it was a lot of work to overcome those patterns, but it was just patterns. These patterns of niceness, of not having boundaries. And then, boom, everything shifted to create an amazing relationship with the love of my life that had nothing to do with who. My inner core, my character, my good person or a bad person. It's just skills. It's just learning, applying, doing, and doing what scares you again and again. So that brings us to our actions.

Time for action.

Your action step for today is a choose your own adventure. It's a multiple choice. You have option A or option B. Option A is to do that question, Ask that question, that exercise. What could I be proud of myself for if I wanted to be? And ask that once a day. Slow down. Just give yourself, I don't know, two minutes and do it once a day for the rest of the week. That is option A. Option B is to go do some shit that scares you. Maybe some embarrassment, inoculation, maybe something else. Just do something that scares you. Do it. Hey, do it. Do it now, because the more. The faster you start, the faster you go, the more quickly you're gonna get there, the more quickly your life's gonna transform. That's just how it works. And the people that take massive action repeatedly lead extraordinary lives. So choose your own adventure. Option A, Option B. Or shit, there's an option C, A and B, right? They always have those in multiple choice. I always hated that in multiple choice. It was like, you know, A, B, C, D. And then like E was A and B but not D and F was. I'm like, dude, fucking professor, you have too much time on your hands. Mess with us. Anyway, so that brings us to the end of our episode. It's been a pleasure to be with you today and for the last hundred episodes the last two years. I'm excited for much more. And write in if you have any questions. I'd love to answer them. Shrinkforthyguy.com and also go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com if you've never been there. SocialConfidenceCenter.com There's a ton of stuff videos you can get to my YouTube channel from there. So all kinds of resources for free for you to help you overcome anything that's in your way. 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. I'll talk to you soon.

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 shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.

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