How To Powerfully Influence Anyone with Dr. Hope Hills

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 second, 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. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking more about how to engage with others and specifically, how do we influence others. And what. This is so good. What's so empowering about this episode is it's the second half of my interview with Dr. Hope Hills. And what you're really going to get as you listen to this is seeing just how much power you actually have. Because if you're anything like me and I spent so many years struggling with social anxiety shyness. Last week, we talked a lot about submissive versus dominant. I was definitely on the submissive end of the spectrum. Submissive, friendly. That was like my style, you know, like, hi, this really pleasing, smiley, you know, don't hurt me kind of energy. And I felt powerless as a result.

Right.

And what I didn't realize is how big of a part I was playing in the dynamics, how much I was actually creating the responses I was getting and making people more dominant or, you know, them feeling more powerful. In the case of women, them feeling not attracted to me because I wasn't very powerful with them. Like, I thought, man, I'm this, like, submissive. I probably wouldn't have used that term, but I'm just this kind of undesirable, not cool, loser. That's probably what I. The language I would have used. And then there's all those powerful guys out there. There's all those, you know, attractive women who have their shit together. They're all better than me. What I didn't realize, though, is that in any given interaction, I was creating that perception. And that by simply changing the way that I showed up, all of a sudden, the same people that might have dismissed me would become, you know, respond positively to me or the same woman who might have rejected me all of a sudden might have been interested in me. And that's really fascinating. That's the real power here in what we're going to be talking about. And that's why we talk about how to influence anyone. You're going to listen to some really interesting role play where we actually play out how to do this. So this is going to be very practical. You know, if you'd like to take notes during this show, which I would highly recommend, take notes as you listen to this episode. And without further ado, let's continue with that interview with Dr. Hope Hills, expert interview. That kind of reminded me of something that I'd be curious to get your thoughts on. I was speaking with a client who has been growing in her ability to communicate about all kinds of things. And sometimes she'd be very like wondering the best way to bring up something with her husband and kind of constructing it ahead of time. And it seemed like no matter how she tried certain topics, like they had a young child together, so she was studying a lot about parenting and growing and he was a little bit more like, this is the way I do things. That's how it is, you know. And so any discussion about how are they going to teach the child was like two or something like that. How are they going to work with her when she has a tantrum or this or that. And any sort of bringing it up, he would get very defensive and sort of say stuff that was very extreme and accusatory, as if she was telling him, you know, he was a failure or in such and such, you know, probably from his own childhood and upbringing. From the lens of the interpersonal flexibility circle, what do you think is happening? Is she approaching it in a way that's pulling that or what do you think's going on?

Well, that's the amazing thing that we all need to understand is that whatever we're doing is pulling the other person's behavior. But just as powerfully the other person's behavior is pulling ours. So the more we're aware of where we end up, the more we can tell where the other person is. You see, so if I end up feeling, say I'm sitting in my office at work and I'm feeling just great, you know, beginning of the day, I had a great morning. And so I'm feeling kind of in the center of the circle. And so somebody comes in and says, oh for crying out loud, why did you do that last night? You just. And all of a sudden I'm just feeling all defensive and self effacing and like self conscious and all that stuff. So I know when I'm feeling that way, I know the other person is dominant and hostile. So I need to move to a place where that person, where it'll be on the friendly side. So the most powerful place to move if somebody is dominant and hostile, you know, defensive, out on the edge, the most powerful place to move is dominant, friendly. So if somebody was being dominant, hostile like that, I would move. Once I took a breath and realized I was feeling defensive and submissive, I just take a breath and slow down the conversation. That's a real powerful thing to do too, is just to talk more slowly, take a breath. Just whenever you slow the rhythm, you leave space for better things to happen. So if you slow the rhythm and then say, oh, well, tell me more about what I did, that bothered you, that immediately it just knocks the, the hostility out of what the other person is saying. It pulls them to be submissive, friendly, pulls them to be cooperative. And they might, it might not happen instantly, but if you stay in that dominant, friendly, asking questions and curious and wanting to understand so that your relationship be better, it's amazing. I've done this in workshops for all these years, and I always pick them most dominant, hostile, you know, powerful guy, you know, to demonstrate this with me. And I asked him to be really dominant and hostile and say, hope for crying out loud, why are you doing the workshop this way? You're just messy or something like that. And I just stay in dominant, friendly, and say, well, tell me more. I really want to improve. And the whole class, a whole workshop will start laughing because you can see the bottom just drop out of his hostility. It's almost physical.

And what's great about that is the, you know, you can pick up the dominance in that dominant, friendly. Right? Like, tell me more.

Uh huh.

Like there's sort of a. You're commanding in a way, but. But in a very like, connecting way.

Exactly.

Yeah. And it's so interesting because it's. You're not cowering and it's so interesting you brought it to dogs because I can almost see this in us. And it's like, you know, it helps to think, like, am I cowering? Am I putting my head down and covering my face and rolling over on my back and showing my belly, like, because in a way that, that is anything along those lines, even though we don't do it with our bodies, so obviously.

No, we do though. That's what, you know, that's what people should really notice. Okay, so, Aziz, what happens in your body when you get, when you feel like something's wrong with you or you're apologizing and intimidated? Where do you feel that in your body?

Hmm. Probably like in the top of my chest, maybe my throat too, but like, kind of like squeezing, squealing at the top of my chest.

Yeah. So the more we know where in our bodies we feel something, the more, you know, it's just like having a gps. So if we know, oh, I'm starting to feel like I want to disappear, or my shoulders are going down and I'm feeling like. Or my throat feels all tight. If the second we notice that we just need to take a breath and really calm down and then we can move around. But the more we understand the circle, the easier it is for us to see that things are starting to go the way we don't want them to go. And so we can relax. We can do something to relax. And one of the biggest things is to breathe. Just to take a deep breath in and a really slow breath out and just do that for a little bit and it will calm you down and you'll be able to be more assertive or comfortable. Just be in the center of the circle.

We're going to pause for just one moment and then continue on with my interview with confidence expert Dr. Hope Hills. Does working with Dr. Aziz actually work? Can you really break free from social anxiety and live a life of confidence, success and happiness? Here is what one client had to say about his.

If someone is thinking to come to a Weekend intensive with Dr. Aziz, I would say, go do it. Go do it. I know he's in Portland. You're probably somewhere in the east coast or Hawaii, who knows? But I'm telling you, it is worth it. Personally, for myself, I was really skeptical about coming here. You know, flew from Los Angeles, investing all my time, money. I don't know if it's gonna work. There's parties back home waiting for me, you know, friends wanting to hang out with me this weekend. But now that I'm here, now that I'm almost done with this weekend intensive training, I said, wow, you know, I'm not. It's Sunday now and I'm not the same person as I was when I was Friday. I have like this whole settlementality. I just feel like I am unstoppable. I can do anything. The world's mine. It's really, it's awesome.

To get started on your journey towards lifelong confidence with Dr. Aziz, simply go to social confidence center.com coaching. Yeah, I really love that idea about that, that awareness of your emotions and your body being like a GPS and studying your own non verbals. I, I know that I've done that for quite some time when I did a lot of reading and learning about shame. Sometimes I would feel an overt strong sense, but sometimes it would be more subtle. And I've noticed I'm talking to this person or I just shared this with this group. And now I have an urge to look down and not maintain eye contact.

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, am I feeling shame right now? It's a way to start to just have that better understanding of where you're at by studying those. That's great.

And the same thing with the other person. The more we're aware of what's going on with the other person. And don't be so caught up in what's going. Notice what's going on with yourself. But notice if the other person is starting to be fidgety or look away or have kind of cracks in their speech or all the different things that indicate somebody's a little bit uptight and kind of struggling, then the more we can relax and say, ah, just ask a question. Questions are so magical. In fact, I have a handout I could send you on that has a lot of really good questions, different ways to ask questions. And if I. And if you can say, ah, looks like. Looks like that. When I. When I said that to you, it really. It kind of pushed you away. That's kind of neat to be able to use pushed you away or I feel close to you to use those words that are very physical, are real powerful and help the other person to feel like you've seen them. Sure. And so it's really, really powerful to have those simple words that aren't judgmental. But I feel like I kind of pushed you away and I didn't want to do that. That's a little bit submissive. It's being, you know, asking for being modest or asking, you know, letting the other person know you might have made a mistake. And that is so magical.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so one question that I know people listening are having is how do I. You mentioned earlier about just deciding to be somewhere else in the circle. How can someone do that? Let's say someone. This is another client I know from a mastermind program had. Was. Is afraid of his. Sort of the supervisor, boss, I guess you'd call it, person at his company. And he grew up, you know, his experience with his own mother, she was very aggressive and verbally and physically abusive. And so he learned from a young age to be as submissive as possible and just kind of freeze whenever she was upset. So now he Shows up to work and he sees his boss. He knows his boss is not going to yell and hit, but he has this same internal freeze response when she's there. So, like, he's wondering, like, how do I be, you know, how do I just be dominant, friendly? And sometimes people have that around their boss. Sometimes people have it around someone they're attracted to. You know, how do we get to that other side? Because we know it's going to be so much more effective, way more effective than our submissive, you know, frozen hostile look. But how do we get ourselves to that other side when we're afraid or when we have these histories?

Yeah. And one of the things we need to realize is if I stay in that submissive place, I am pulling the other person to be dominant. And what I really want to emphasize is being in that submissive, hostile place is just as powerful as the dominant, if you think because you're just as powerful to pull that other person to dominant as they are to pull you to submissive. And I have this model that I've developed called the three magic questions. And so if you're in the presence of somebody and all of a sudden you feel like you're talking about your client feeling, and this is for all of us. We all have those early experiences that define how we see people who are in power. They define what we expect of people who are our colleagues. So that's like our brothers and sisters. They define what we feel about being in a group, a close group. So however we felt in our family is really likely to be what we expect in a small group in our team. And so if we expect to be rejected because we felt rejected in our family, we pull that behavior from other people. And so the more we know that we are likely to have that happen, like, that was something I had to struggle with. And so the more we just take the bull by the horns and be more active in the group or whatever, that starts to change it. But the three magic questions to get back to that are, if all of a sudden I'm feeling, oh, all crunched up, and I came in the presence of this boss, and I felt really submissive and scared and insecure, I would ask the question, okay, who does this person remind me of? And just allow your inner self to answer that question. And. Oh, okay, yeah. Reminds me of my mother. She doesn't really. She really isn't like my mother. But. And then the second one is, what situation does this remind me of? Because what's happening is that especially if it's a real powerful reaction that's old experiences, old deep experiences. So the more we can get aware of it, the better. So the last question to ask is, huh, how old am I? Because if you really just kind of are quiet and allow yourself to answer that question, you'll get some really great hints about what inner child is acting out right now. And then you can start loving that inner child and thanking them for being, for trying to protect you. But then you can talk to that part of yourself and say, but this doesn't work anymore. It may have worked with my mother, it may have kept me safe, but it's not working anymore. I need to find a new way to react with my boss. And so then using the interpersonal circle to say, oh, where do I go? Like I had a client that I was working with that was in charge of all a huge area of this Fortune 50 company and there was something going wrong with one of his products and he just couldn't get it fixed. And he went over, he had a long plane ride with the CEO and, and the CEO was dominant and hostile and really angry and frustrated with him. Why couldn't you get this fixed? And he was submissive and hostile and feeling really like I'm just a failure and just distrustful and self effacing. Well, he was going to have to take another plane ride with this guy and things weren't still perfect. And so he came in for a coaching session and, and we just, I said well, let's figure out where you are where you were on the last plane ride. And he of course was submissive and hostile and self effacing and feeling apologetic and intimidated. Kind of like he wanted to just roll up in a ball and hide in a corner. And of course that made really the CEO of this corporation is a very nice man, but it pulled his, his anger and frustration. So, and my client couldn't really. Our brains don't work when we get down there. And so he couldn't really be all of himself. So this time we helped him figure out almost his script about where how to always be indominant friendly on this next plane ride. So he did, he stayed there in dominant friendly. We practiced that. And so that's what you can do is you can, when you get this, the circle, you can look at all the words that are there and kind of practice scripts that fit your language about how to stay in that dominant friendly place. If the person dominant hostile like you're talking about and just try that and it'll work. When he got Back. He said, we gotta train my whole staff.

Let's just make this even more. I love this example in this story. It's so good. Let's just make it. Let me just do one thing to make it even more practical and tangible and real. I'm gonna just play an upset, hostile, dominant CEO on this plane. Can you. And we'll do a quick role play. Can you be that client? So, you know, being dominant, friendly with me.

Okay. And what happens is we jump around a little bit, you know, to kind of get into that place.

Okay.

And so probably first you're gonna pull the other person to submissive, friendly, and they submissive, hostile, and then. Then you move around.

Okay, great. Well, so, I mean, here we are again, three months later, and I just got the reports in, and it looks like. I mean, maybe a little bit has changed, but what are you even doing? I mean, I. We've been trusting you to handle this problem with this project and this product, and it's no different.

I can understand why you feel that way. It is a long road. But I really am curious to hear more about what you've been hearing and what other people have been saying about the product.

Well, from what I've been hearing, I mean, it's not just what I've been hearing. It's just looking at the numbers. We got the reports from accounting just last week. You got them too. I mean, they came to everyone. And it just showed that despite. I mean, we put even more. At your suggestion, we put even more into the advertising budget for it. And not only is that money all gone, but there's been like. It's like, point. What point? 3% increase. So I'm just looking at the numbers, and I just don't see any major turnaround. And then on top of that, we can see that in general, the perception of the product is not what we would want. So I don't see any indicators of you changing anything.

I appreciate your ideas. And what would you suggest? We have some time on the plane. I really love to hear more about. I can share with you what I've been doing to deal with this problem. But you probably know that, and I'd really like to hear how you would handle it.

Oh, interesting. That was a moment right there where I'm like. I'm wanting to, like, browbeat you and feel powerful and dominate you. And then all of a sudden, though, I could keep doing that, but now I'm. I would start to become ridiculous, huh?

Exactly.

Like, that's your job. You figure it out. Like, I'm like, okay. Then I'm just, you know, but some part of me is like, oh, okay. Because you. You also threw in there the, like, I can share what I'm doing, and we could, you know, so it's just, man, it's like cooperative and. And it makes me. So if I were just to flow with that, I'd be. I'd want to start offering ideas that I have.

Yeah.

And now we're all of a sudden, we're collaborating.

Exactly. So then we end up on the dominant. Friendly and submissive. Friendly. And the most important thing is when you're kind of in the center of the circle, you dance back and forth, and one person will be dominant friendly, and then the other person will be submissive friendly, and then the other person. And then, you know, it depends on what your expertise or. So when you're dancing back and forth, those are the most wonderful times with other people. People have stars around experiences where both people are dancing back and forth and not rigidly playing one role.

Wow. So I think I'm getting a sense of it just from that little role play. That was awesome, by the way. That was like. It's like Jedi mind powers. So the interesting thing, though, is you said it always pulls dominant. Always pulls submissive. Just like submissive. Always pulls dominant. Friendly pulls friendly. Hostile. Pulls hostile. How is it that it's pulled? What does that mean? Like, it forces the other person to do it or what does that mean? It pulls it?

Yeah. Well, I like the idea of pulled because it's not necessarily forcing them to do it, but it's pulling for that response. You know, it's pulling for, you know, all the history of each of those people is there at that one moment in time. So it's pulling for whatever the automatic response is. The automatic response is from mom and dad, you know, it's from those early days where dominance always pulls submission. And so when you feel pulled to be dominant, then, you know, you may not act dominant, but you feel pulled. You kind of want to be dominant. You kind of know that the other person has been submissive that's pulled you to act that way and vice versa. If you feel pulled, maybe you came in the room kind of in charge, but all of a sudden you feel pulled to go along with the other person. You know that that person is being dominant even if they don't act really big and hostile or anything like that. Just that pull. I like that it's a pull rather than a make sure, because pull is just. It's Pulling me to be submissive and, And I'm gonna choose not to be.

Yeah. And I love it because as you demonstrated in that roleplay, it's not instantaneous, but if you just keep finding your way back to wherever it is you want to be dominant, friendly, in this case, then it. So it's like there's many attempts to pull them there and it's like at first it doesn't. You just keep doing it and eventually it pulls it. So that was really cool. Well, there's, you know, it's not easy.

I mean, I've been doing this for so many years and I just want to. It's still hard. You know, those old relationships still just grab you. And in our role play there I was struggling just a little bit to, okay, where am I going to go here? So it's not easy. But the more we understand the circle and the more we really trust that that's true. It begins. You have to practice, you know, work and practice.

Sure. I mean, but what an empowering philosophy. It's, it shows that we can be different, even if it's maybe uncomfortable. We have to learn more or practice more. But it's, it's empowering that we're not stuck. And it's, it's, it gets a little bit of fire under, under our butts because it's like, wait, if you stay in this submissive role, you're not gonna get the, the whatever the approval that you want or the connection that you want, or the promotion that you want, or the love that, you know, you're not going to pull what you most want. And so it kind of calls people, challenges people to step up and say, okay, let me really move. I have responsibility here, I have power here, and I can influence how my interactions go.

Yeah, I had a person that was up for president and he and two other vice presidents were, I mean, he and two other vice presidents were up to be president. And I do this lifeline process that helps people in three or four hours find out what happened that got them stuck in being a certain way that isn't helping their leadership. And so we did lifelines for everybody that, in that, in that team. And he had never been able to understand what everybody. He really had the best resume, so to speak, to be the president of this company. But he was dominant and hostile to his employees a lot. And the company had values that, that was not okay. So he knew that that one thing, despite being the most kind of prepared skills wise, was not going to get him presidency. So we did the lifeline. And as we did the lifeline, we saw that his father had beat him for the first 11 or 12 years of his life. And at one point he decided, you're never going to get the satisfaction of seeing me cry again. And he just closed up when we were talking about that. All of a sudden you could see his whole body change. And he said, that's exactly what I do to my people. And so what's nice is you can really change quickly because he decided he didn't want to be that way anymore. And he took the interpersonal circle and outlined a place where he wanted to be more often and really get aware of when he was starting to go up into that dominant hostile place. And he put that behind his desk so he could always look at it. And within, you know, just within that week, people were coming to say, what in the world did you do? Because he was able to change that quickly and he got the presidency.

That's awesome. Yeah, I mean that's that willingness to look at the, the, the past pains and then the decisions and patterns that we developed as a result is, is essential. And then, you know, of course with the realization that it's. We have choice now and that we're not only time we're doomed to repeat a pattern is if we don't ever learn or do anything different. So that's that. That's awesome. There's so much here. And I'm so below at shrink for the shy guy, we're going to have just a PDF you can download of this circle so you can look at it. And also though Dr. Hills people, they want to know more about this. They want to know more about what you do or the coaching that you mentioned or anything. What's the best place for people to go to learn more about you?

Well, you can come to circleconsultinggroup.com or you could email me at ccgc.rr.com or even call me at 919-572-2400.

That's fantastic. And we'll have the link to the website below@shrinkforthshyguy.com as well. And thank you. Hope insights are. There's so much there. You have such a depth of, of understanding of human dynamics that this is extremely valuable. I learned a ton and I'm sure that everyone listening, you got something you can apply in your life. So thank you again for being here with us today.

Thank you. I enjoyed it.

That brings us to the end of the interview, but not the end of the episode because we're missing one thing. What? What is it time for? Action.

Action.

Action. Ah, yes. Action. Action. So the key that I would suggest would be to apply this specifically and show. Where can you show up and use this specifically, this stance of being dominant friendly that she so awesomely demonstrated in the roleplay. Where can you use this? Can you use this today? Can you use this this week? Where can you practice using this? And remember when I asked her that question, I did that because I know some part of your mind. The question you can't read my mind. Remember that one question that I asked her? You know the one, right? The question that I asked her where I said, yeah, but you know, I've seen myself this way for so long. I am that submissive person. I'm too scared to. To be different. Your action step for today is to take the risk to be different. Notice how you can just decide, like that guy that she talked about who had in his office, the sticky note or whatever that had the traits of dominant friendly, and then how to express that. And if you're wondering, what are those traits, I want to know them again. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com, look up this episode. Shrinkforthshyguy.com, go to this episode. Below it, there'll be a PDF of the Circle with all the adjectives, and you can just look at the six adjectives about dominant friendly and be like, oh, yeah, I want to embody those today. So that's your action step, is to find a place to apply this. Whether it's your work, life, with your family, in a relationship, just socially, anywhere you can find an opportunity, anytime you interact with any other human. So go ahead and play that out this week, see how it goes, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. 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. 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 soon send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.

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