How To Put Yourself Out There Fully with Lori Cash Richards

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. Azeez.

Yep. Hey, what's up? It's Dr. Aziz, and we're going to be looking at you and confidence. That's what we do every Wednesday, right? As we dive in and we look inward, what's blocking me? What's stopping me? And how do I have more confidence in my life? How do I break through? Shyness, social anxiety, self doubt, fear, whatever's getting in your way. And with that confidence, you can go out and do the things that really matter to you, that you really want to create in your life, whether it's finding some awesome women to date and have great fun experiences and sexual experiences, and then finding women that you really want to connect with, go deep with, have as a girlfriend, have as a wife. Also, how do you show up more boldly, more powerfully in work? And that's a huge area of confidence challenge that I work with people day in and day out, one on one, and in my masterminds to help them activate more and more power and confidence in their career. That's how you show up, how you talk in meetings, how you step into leadership, how you create your own business, how you grow your own business. So wherever you want to use your confidence, this show can help you do that. And I love being with you in this way, and I'd love to connect with you more. You can go to facebook.com SocialConfidence to continue the conversation there, as well as shrinkforthshyguy.com you can send me a message there, a text or even an audio message, and we can stay in touch that way, too. So today we're gonna be looking at how to put yourself out there fully, because let's face it, whether it's for dating or for business or for your social life, the more you can put yourself out there, the more success you're going to have. I mean, if you can go talk to people, if you can start conversations, you can say what you really think, you can share your ideas at work, you're just putting yourself and your ideas and your feelings and your thoughts out there more, as opposed to holding everything tight and terrified, you're going to have a lot more success, a lot more confidence, a lot more responses from others. But it can be scary, right? And so today we're going to be diving into an interview I did with a coach named Laurie Cash Richards, who I met her, I was at some training event on how to take your coaching skills and practice to the next level. Because I'm always looking at how to grow and improve myself. I'm always growing and investing in that way. I met her there and there was something about her that stood out different than anyone else in the room. She exuded something, some level of confidence that allowed her to put herself out there in a really striking way. And as I'll describe as I introduce her here in a moment, that's been my philosophy all along. You see someone that's doing something amazing that you want to do, go talk to them, go pick their brains. That's exactly what we're going to do today. And you're going to learn how to put yourself out there, how to deal with those fears and overthinking and being in your head too much and how to just start putting yourself out there in totally new ways. And she is awesome. She's a writer. She has a new book that recently came out and she's very poetic in the way she speaks. So it's really fun and exciting and liberating to talk with her. So without further ado, let's jump into my interview.

Expert interview.

My guest expert today is Lori Cash Richards. She's a graduate of the University of Santa Monica where she earned her master's degree in spiritual psychology with an emphasis on consciousness, health and healing. And she's also a graduate of USM's Soul Centered Professional Coaching program. And she's a writer, a speaker, a life coach, and a workshop facilitator. And she's the author of the critically acclaimed book which has won a number of awards called Letting the Upside Discovering the Code that Grants Us Access to the Extraordinary Treasures Contained Within Our Hearts. And I met Laurie a while back at a training and I knew that I wanted her on this show because she is one of the most warm and loving people that I've ever met. And it was very striking. And what I encourage you to do and everyone I work with to do is when you see someone that's embodying a way of being in the world, very confident, very authentic, very open, very socially skilled, it's great to study them, to understand their world because you can learn from them and you can model them. And so the ability to be so loving and warm and, and authentic is a very powerful skill. And I thought the best thing to do would be to do some modeling. And let's all learn from Lori. So thank you so much for joining us on the show. Lori.

Oh, it's my pleasure, Aziz. Thank you for having me.

So I'm curious, that last part about just being a really warm, loving person, I really mean it. Do other people say that to you? Is that feedback that you get somewhat regularly?

Yes. And I have my whole life. But I will tell you not to the degree that I'm getting it now. And I think what you said kind of hits the nail on the head. I'm more willing and ready and able to embody that warmth and to embody that loving now. You know, halfway through my life, I turned 50 in July than I ever have been in prior decades. And so with the book out and with everything happening for me as it is, I'm getting that feedback more and more and I love that feedback and I've always received it, but it's like I'm owning it now in a way I haven't in earlier decades, really claiming that authentic self version of me. I think studying at the University of Santa Monica was a huge help in encouraging me to own the best within me. Because as I talk about in my book, for me, in 2009, when I started at the University of Santa Monica, or usm, I knew who I was, but I didn't embody who I was. It's like I knew it in my mind, but I didn't feel it in my body. And so going through that master's degree program, which is primarily focused on becoming reidentified with the truth of who we are, so we become misidentified over many years on the planet. We think we're a mom, we think we're a CEO, we think we're a daughter, we think we're a sister, we think we're a wife. And we think that that's our primary identity. And it isn't. It never is. And what really helped me was becoming primarily identified with myself as a soul, having a human experience. And as a soul, my primary way of being in the world is one of warmth and one of loving.

That's powerful and it's really shedding a lot of the ideas about how we're supposed to be and who we're supposed to be. And you said something in there which I really liked, which is own. I received the feedback, but I didn't start. At some point, I started to own the best within me. And that's a really powerful phrase. Can you talk a little more about that? How can we own the best within us? What does that mean?

Well, it's such a good question. And it's, you know, the way I did. It is. I really looked back and I wondered, I got very curious, like, what did I dream of when I was young? What was it that I wanted before the world or the ways of the world kind of took over? And, you know, I think we all have this dream or this vision that we hold in our hearts that gets kind of covered over. And it's meant to. It's designed this way. There's nothing wrong with this process of our dream kind of becoming. Oh, I talk about it in the book, like, kind of surrounded by a safe that we don't think we have the combination to anymore, but we actually always hold the combination to this safe that unlocks the treasures that are in our hearts. And it's like returning to the possibility of being a divine, loving being or a soul, having a human experience. It made everything in my life different, better. So, you know, it's like, even the things I was doing, like being a mother, being a writer, being a coach, got better when I brought more of the soul me, or more of the authentic self or more of the real me into those areas. And when I say more of. I just need more of those soul essence qualities, like joy, grace, beauty, abundance, loving, peace, sweetness. It's why wrote my book, because I went on like a. You know, as Joseph Campbell talks about, like a hero's journey, where I left the interpreted path and I started to interpret my life for myself. There's an extraordinary TED Talk I listened to a couple of weeks ago by a guy named Andrew Solomon. And he grew up gay. He's my age. And, you know, when we were growing up, we didn't recognize gay as gay. We didn't really know what it was. And he suffered a lot as a result. And he talks about this suffering, but his whole book is about not finding meaning, but forging meaning. Or. Sorry, his whole TED talk. He should write a book. I'd love it if he wrote a book. I'd read that book. But he talks about forging meaning. And he said the most extraordinary thing. He said, when we forge meaning, what was wrong, it doesn't make what was wrong in the past right. It makes what was wrong precious.

Hmm. So the idea that we can draw value, I mean, I think of precious. I think of something that's valuable. And the idea is that we can draw value from those experiences through coming up with meanings.

Even those layers that kind of COVID over our dream, it's not a bad thing. But to reawaken that dream that really resides in our hearts, whatever it is, it varies I work with a lot of people who have a lot of different dreams. But to uncover that layer by layer and not make that layering wrong, make it precious, see how we had to protect ourselves, see the belief system or the belief structure we bought into, that became like an encasement, a protection, a misunderstanding that we couldn't be fully ourselves, it was too dangerous or we weren't allowed or whatever the misunderstanding was. But to remove those layers, those layers are there intentionally and purposefully, and at some point in our lives, we just get to start removing them and make our way back to the essence of who we are, which I think in every case, no exceptions, is love.

We're going to pause for just one moment, and then we're going to dive back into our interview with Laurie Cash Richards. Hey, it's Dr. Aziz here, and I wanted to take just a second to ask you if this is working. If you're listening to this podcast regularly or watching YouTube videos, is it working for you? If it is, awesome, keep doing it. If you're noticing that you're not making the progress that you want, then it might be time to step up and do something more. That's been my experience. If I learn something from free stuff online, I get a certain level of result when I dive in and join a program or get a product or work with someone one on one. Whoa. I get a different level of result, just night and day. And I would love to talk with you more about the second thing, which is working together. So if you're interested in how to do that, how to deepen that, go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching and there you can learn all about how I work with people one on one. That's what I do throughout most of the day, is work with people one on one and in mastermind groups to help them radically shift. And people can make incredible progress. You know, they could have been stuck for 10 years, and in six months their life can have transformed. And I would love to have the opportunity to be with you on that journey, support you on that journey. I know this stuff inside and out more than almost anyone that I know, and that's because I lived it. And now I've been obsessed with studying it for so many years. So I would love to help you on your journey if that feels right for you. So go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching and then you can fill out a little form there. We can get in touch and figure it out from there. All right, I'll talk to you soon and let's explore that more. So I think a lot of people feel fear about putting themselves out there fully. So there's a lot of mental planning and calculation and determining should I say this and how should I enter and what should I look like? And a lot of impression, kind of manage people's impressions of us. And to put ourselves out there fully can be scary. And we can have a lot of self doubt and fear around that. And those are those layers that you're talking about. How do you help people or in your own life, how have you worked with that to move through those layers or kind of peel them back to get to that core that you're talking about?

Well, you know what's so interesting is you're sharing that with me. A memory is coming up for me. Let's see, my book, I think released in November of 2014. So this was right around that same time. I do a meditation every day and I do all kinds of different meditations. And this one I just went quietly into the silence and I had kind of on the blank screen of my mind a scenario unfold during this meditation where I saw this young boy, probably 17, 18 years old, who was a prodigy painter. You know, he just knew how to paint. And he was in a class and a painting class, and he painted a masterpiece. He really created something gorgeous. And his teacher recognized the brilliance in him and invited him to be part of a show. Well, the boy was so. And this is like almost like a lucid dream that I was having. The boy was so scared about showing his genius that literally right before the painting went out onto the floor of the show, he painted with oils, and so they were still wet. And he took his forearm and he just smudged the whole painting. And I really resonated with that feeling of terror before my book came out. Like, oh my gosh, is this too vulnerable? Am I sharing too much? You know, is there, Is this just. Is this somehow not safe for me? And so I took it. I took this experience inside the meditation. I took this real world experience of fear that I was having to my mentor, Mary Halnick, and I shared it with her. And she said the most beautiful thing to me. She said, you are not your book. Your book will have a life of its own once it's out there. But don't identify with yourself as your book because you're not that. You're a divine being having a human experience of a writer, of somebody that's created a book. But don't misunderstand yourself to be the book, or in the boy in the Meditations case, don't misunderstand yourself to be the painting. It's just one expression of you. And I hope to write many, many books and publish many, many books, and they're all just where I am right now, in consciousness. And we're constantly reinventing ourselves, right? I mean, that's what makes life so much fun, is that constant reinvention.

Yeah. And I think what allows for us to really embody that reinvention is. Is putting whatever is wherever we're at, putting that out there. Now, whether in this case you're talking about the form of a book or simply having a conversation with someone or sharing something in front of a group, we just put it out however we are now, and that allows us to keep moving, keep reinventing, keep expressing. You know, one thing I'm curious about, and I'd love to kind of break it down, is that. And I think a lot of people listening, too, might have heard that kind of stuff, but don't really grasp. So when you say we're a divine being having a human experience, can you say more about what that philosophy is?

Well, yeah. It's sort of what showed up in the middle of my life that changed everything for me. I've always had a belief in God, so that wasn't hard for me. That was kind of easy for me. Even organic for me. I always have had a belief that I am a child of God, a child of creation with a purpose that for many years I just didn't know. But sometimes we identify with what happened in our childhood. I had quite a lovely childhood, actually, with wonderful parents, but not all of us did. So we become misidentified with ourselves based on conclusions we made about ourselves many, many years ago that are seeking resolution and are seeking and updating, almost like software inside of a computer. We get these updates all the time on our iPhones, and it's like new versions of the same software has come out. It's like we get to keep updating the software of who and what we think we are. And frankly, for me, the most useful update I've experienced is this update of imagining myself, imagining the possibility of being a soul, a loving being that's existed before I came here and that will exist after I leave here that's come into physical form as a gift whose primary purpose in being in physical form is learning, growth, and healing. So it was like it wasn't hard to shift into this new identity, but it was a different orientation than I was used to. Where, you know, instead of fearing that I might make a mistake, that I might fail, those kind, those two things, mistakes and failure actually became opportunities through the lens of the learning consciousness, through the lens of. My primary orientation here is one of learning, growth and healing. And when I say healing, that didn't make a lot of sense to me when I first heard it. Like, what do you mean healing? What am I healing? Well, all we're healing is the misunderstanding that we're anything other than a beautiful whole being having a human experience. So healing is like, as Ron and Mary Halnick would put it, a return to essence. A return to the essence of who we are.

Yeah. So I love that, like in our core, we're this amazing human. More than that, you know, this entity in a human body. And that is just magnificent and divine and beautiful. And yet we have. We don't see ourselves that way oftentimes. It's like hyper focus on I made a mistake there or I don't look good or whatever. You know, we can get absorbed in that. And so you're saying that the healing is letting those things go and seeing through them. We're going to pause for just one more moment and then we're going to be diving back into the interview with guest expert Laurie Cash Richards.

Okay, now it's my turn to talk. God, I'm so nervous. What was he saying? Okay, say something. Don't just sit here like an idiot. So what kind of work do you do? Tired of awkward conversations? Ready to master this area once and for all. Get yourself a copy of the Confidence Code, an all new updated version which teaches you how to maximize your self esteem and master all kinds of social interactions, from introductions to engaging conversations, to jumping into groups. Go to YourConfidenceCode.com now to learn more.

And literally, the very first sentence in my book, Aziz, because this is what was so useful for me, was, I'll just read it to you. I've got it right here. It's on the back of the book too. Because this is how we do that, how we get to that inner being. So I wrote, to see the world as it is, we must first see ourselves as we are. To see ourselves as we are, we must look through the eyes of love. When we look through the eyes of love, we see that we, like the world, are extraordinary, gorgeous creations made from through, in and of love. It's like when we look at ourselves through soft eyes, it's a much more accurate view of how the universe sees us. We think that the universe, or God or spirit is judging us. Many of us were taught that through the religions that we came up through. But when we start to identify ourselves as divine beings, having a human experience with the primary purpose being one of learning, why would a Creator be judging us? It doesn't make any sense at all. And so why are we judging ourselves? And so to look at ourselves through soft eyes aligns us. Or at least my experience has been. It aligns me with something much gentler than what I was conditioned into. And it feels much more organic, if you will, much more aligned with the truth of what is than any form of judgment I could bring in.

Yeah. And so how do you think we can do that? So we're in a situation and our mind is just going at it. It's criticizing something we did or is predicting that something we're going to do is not going to be received well or we're not going to be liked. And yet we want to shift to see ourselves through the eyes of love or with soft eyes. How do you go about doing that?

Well, probably the most important thing to remember for me and everybody else is it's a practice. It's not an event. It's a process, not an event. And so, you know, I love the idea of gamifying it, you know, making it so that it's fun, you know, when we move into judgment against ourselves, catching ourselves and saying, wait a minute, if I were to look through soft eyes here, if I were to look through the eyes of love, is there another way of seeing this? And then just consider the possibilities. And, you know, one of the things that really helped me as well is I remember hearing this and it really getting my attention. And it's very simple, and it's just a slight variation on something we all heard when we were kids. But it's talking about when we're talking to ourselves. I mean, what we heard when we were kids is if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all. Right. And so it's like taking that inside of ourselves and using it for our own good. If we don't have anything nice to say about ourselves, then let's not say anything at all. But if we do have something kind to say, let's be kind to ourselves. Let's acknowledge ourselves a lot more than we have in the past. Really look at our day through soft eyes instead of through the harsh eyes of judgment. And look for ways of acknowledging ourselves. Look for ways of being kind to ourselves.

It's such a powerful practice. I'm a big believer in retraining our brain and patterns of focus, which then lead to patterns of feeling and just action in life. And one thing I've been doing for a little while now, not that long, maybe just about a week, but it feels really good. So the commitment was to keep it up for the month of the rest of this month. But here's what it is. I just really, I have a list of 10 for the day and I want to fill in the list, which is what's going right in my life or in this moment, what's going right. And I've tried gratitude practices in the past, but what I like about this one is it gives me room to write something I'm grateful for, something I'm proud of, something I handled well, something that I have no control over. That just was great. Like it was a beautiful sunny day and then I could take the time. And I, as I've been doing that, it's really powerful to shift our focus. And one question I wanted to ask you, Laurie, is what is that resistance? Why do you think? Sometimes I've seen in myself and others, there's almost a resistance to letting that in. And it's like we don't want to see the good in ourselves at first. We kind of have to work around that. What do you think is happening there and how can we work around that or work with that?

Wow, such a good question. And you know, what it calls forward for me is back in 2005, I chose out of my marriage of 17 years and I probably felt more resistance to choosing out. Like that was like 100 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of resistance. Like, I just really, I really, really, really wanted to stay in the marriage. And it was a process, you know, that the resistance, it's like, as you say that, it's like I don't want to minimize it. I want to go straight to where I felt intense resistance and then think about your question in terms of how did I work through that? And the answer that comes to me is I remember. It's such a strange memory, but I live in California and I live right by the ocean. And so back in 2005, I think it was every Wednesday I was going for a walk with a friend and her two or three year old daughter. And we put our daughter in this stroller and we would just walk right down by the water. Actually we were kind of up on a bluff, so we were as close to the water as we could get. But we were probably 250ft up. So it gave us this beautiful vista. And I was new in California back then. I had been here a couple of years. And we were walking down in a place called Malaga Cove, which is in Palos Verdes. And they have this beautiful church called the Neighborhood church that sits there up on this bluff. And we were standing at this balustrade and her daughter was kind of playing in the grass and my whole world was sort of crumbling around me. I felt like I was just kind of falling through this bottomless abyss. Even Einstein's natural law of gravity felt like it had failed because I couldn't find my footing anywhere that made any sense to me based on what I believed for the first 40 years of my life. And so we're standing at this balustrade looking out over the water and all of a sudden we see this spray come up out of the water. And my friend who I'm walking with has been here for many years. And I looked at her and I said, did you see that? And she said, yes, it's a whale. And so we watch this whale in the bay. It's not really a bay, it connects out into the ocean, but it comes kind of in, so it's kind of calm. And we watched this whale and it seemed like. And I'd never had an experience like this before as I watched that whale. The words that came to me the way through this was slow and steady, slow and steady. Like the slower and the steadier the better. Like I didn't have to do anything fast. And it took me about 18 months before I was really ready to call that marriage complete. And so it's like that whale, watching that whale, this awareness came to me that I don't have to move so fast through life that I could take and I didn't have to know ahead of time what I was going to do. I didn't know then if I was going to stay in or out of the marriage. And like I said, I was feeling this extraordinary resistance of leaving. But ultimately I knew leaving was the most courageous thing I could do. And it was what would serve the highest good of all concerns. And I didn't even know what that meant at the time, but I just kept trusting. I Learned during this 18 month period how to trust my own instincts in a way that had been dormant in me for a long time.

That is all the time we have for today's interview. Next week we're going to be diving into more of that interview with Laurie. And you're going to learn about some really powerful concepts about how to let more good into your life. Opening yourself to receive more from people. More love, more connection, more praise, more recognition. We have so many blocks to that, don't we? We want it on the one hand, and then we kind of cringe and try to keep it away or get the spotlight off of us in another. So you're going to learn how to let more of the good in. You're also going to learn how to really relax out of your mind and get into your body in a way that produces a greater sense of confidence and peace, but also a greater response from others. So we're going to be diving into all of that and more next week. Stay tuned for that. And until we do, though, gotta get you into some action, don't we?

Time for action.

Your action step for today is to take what you learned in the interview and use it to put yourself out there more this week. I don't know where that is for you, but you do. You're gonna put your. Just. Just ask that question. If I were to put myself out 5% more this week, or 10% more, or 3% more, what would I do? What would I say? How would I be? Could be real small. Maybe you wear a different kind of shirt. Maybe you sit in a different place in a meeting. Maybe you open your mouth more in a certain situation. Maybe you make more eye contact with people. Whatever it is, putting yourself out there more, that's your action step for this week. So rock that. And I'd love to speak with you more in the next episode. And of course, before then, you can always reach me@shrinkforthshyguy.com and also if you don't know about my site, SocialConfidenceCenter.com that's got tons of videos and trainings and there's like four ebooks you can get through that site, all for free on different topics. Super valuable stuff. So go there to SocialConfidenceCenter.com if you want to. If you're eager to just start diving into this stuff right away, this podcast is just the beginning of the ways that you can rapidly accelerate your confidence. So rock that this week. And until we speak again next week, 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 send them a link to to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.