How To Soar Through Life

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. Yo, welcome today's episode. Today I'm going to share something with you that I think is going to help you many times throughout your day. And the reason why it's gonna be so helpful is because it's a little acronym, a word that where each, the first letter of each word stands for something. So it's very easy to remember and it will help you access this many times throughout the day and it will help you approach challenges in your life, approach things with less anxiety, less fear, more confidence, more belief in yourself, more self trust. And it's a fun thing I've been playing with recently and I wanna share it with you because my goal here is, is to take the most current, cutting edge stuff that I'm discovering, whether it's from my own journey or clients or groups or live weekends, whatever I'm doing, to just smash it all together in useful chunks and deliver it as soon as I can so that you can benefit in your life. Whether you choose to come hang out with me at a live event or read one of my books, or just want to do it this way. That works for me too, because it helps me live out my purpose. So we're going to talk about how to soar in today's episode and talk more about that word specifically. But just take a moment to actually think about that. Imagine sore when you hear the word soar. And I don't mean like, oh, my muscles are sore. I mean to like soar like an eagle soaring across the sky. What do you imagine? What's the sense you get? What are the associations you get to soaring? Maybe it's grace, ease, long distances, effortlessness. And that's really what I think we can experience more of in life. Now here's another word that I want you to contrast that with you ready? Thrash. Imagine a fish thrashing around in the water. What do you associate to that? Perhaps effort, exhaustion, not getting anywhere, fear or anger. Thrash so those are the distinctions. That's what we're going to look at today. Soaring versus thrashing in life. The reason this is so important is because a fundamental thing that we have to get if we want to break out of increasing levels of shyness and social anxiety into higher and higher levels of confidence, self mastery, creating the life that you want, living life on your terms, boldness, directness, self expression, power. All of that comes from a fundamental realization that you are not the victim of circumstances. That life doesn't just do things to you and then you're stuck and that you're helpless. But you can affect change, you can be different. You can change not only what's going on inside of you, but also ultimately your circumstances by changing how you show up and what you do. So it's a fundamental realization. I call it being the owner of your life versus the victim. In my book the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. But you may have heard that elsewhere. I'm not the first one to teach that. But this will help us realize that and come back to a place of being more empowered. Because it's not just what's going on around you, what's going on around you doesn't make you unable to be how you want to be in life, but it's also a trap that people fall into. It's not just what you do either. Because I see this a lot in clients. Like they are motivated to make changes, they are willing to do new things, and so they go out in the world and they start doing new stuff. Guy, I'm thinking of a client in my mastermind starts approaching a lot of women and trying to get more dates or another person. I'm thinking of this woman also in the mastermind is tired of hiding her vulnerability and not being expressive with people in her life. And so she's doing it more, she's speaking up and sharing more. So they're doing it and it's still limited, still not quite clicking for them. And that's because it's not, you know what around you doesn't determine your reality for you because you're not a victim of circumstance. But it's not what you do. Ultimately. Isn't the end all be all. Because there's something that's even more impactful, which is where you come from, how you are, how you're being in the world. Your internal state and how you show up is going to determine more than just the actions. And so if you take action from a place of thrashing, it's going to have a very different effect than if you take action from a place of soaring. Does that make sense? You know, so in the example of the dating scenario, that guy, you know, he's, if he is tense and self critical and attached to an outcome and I got to get her number to prove that there's something worthy about me and if she says no, then I'm going to hate myself and she's a bitch and there's all this tension going on inside. Even if he tries to hide it and be charming. Hey, how's it going? Underneath there's going to be something energetically going on and he's going to get less positive outcomes, less positive responses from the women that he's approaching, but also less feelings of positivity and enjoyment in himself, no matter how it goes. So it's more likely to bring about negative responses, but it's also even, you know, and then he's going to feel worse about those negative responses or even if it goes well, he's going to not be satisfied or be anxious or attached in some other way. Does that make sense? Do you see how where you come from is more important than just the actions? Action's still important, you still gotta take it. But how can we come from a more empowered place? And that's where soar versus Thrash come in. So I want you to be thinking about as you're listening to this, where you can apply this. Where are the places that you come from? Maybe a disempowered place. And this acronym is going to be really helpful because it's going to give you a sense of, a much deeper sense of what these states are, these two different ways of approaching life really. So let's start with soar. So soar is S O A R and that stands for soft, open, allowing and relaxed. Just play with those words. Let them sit in your mind and feel in your body. When you imagine, just say, maybe say them one after another slowly to yourself. Soft, open, allowing, relaxed and maybe just even inviting that into your awareness, into your body. What would it be like in this moment to be more soft, open, allowing and relaxed in your body? Can you move towards more of that? Can you feel more of that right now? And how could you be a little more relaxed? What could you allow a little more of right now? What could you be more open to? And what could you just soften a little bit around? Because when we're able to do these things, when we're able to approach life with soar with these things, soft, open, allowing and relaxed, you're going to be way more fluid. You're going to flow with life so much better. And when we're relaxed in our body, I mean all the martial arts teach this basically like you know, the fighter is relaxed but ready and then when needed they punch into action, do the thing and then go back to a relaxed state. And the person who's tense all the time is burning up their energy and same thing with that. So it's like that softening of the body, opening, opening to whatever's happening, allowing whatever is happening, not fighting and constricting and running from and attacking and shouldn't be this way. It shouldn't be this way. All this energy that's wasted when we thrash. In fact, let's get into thrash right now so you can contrast the two. Thrash is spelled T H R A S H and that stands for tight, hard, resistant, angry, self pitying and helpless. Tight, hard, resistant, angry, self pitying and helpless is what makes up thrash. So first and foremost our body is tight and you may or may not feel it depending upon your level of body awareness. But as you tune into your body, you'll feel some tension. There could be in your jaw or your neck or your back or your shoulders or behind your eyes, your head hurts or your stomach is tight or you feel tension in your chest or just your muscles are tight. Something is tight. And then there's a hardness to a, to us. It's like an emotional hardness. We're harder, you know, we're less loving. We're like, I don't like people. We're more judgmental or critical or just less patient. There's a hardness there and there's a resistance too. We're resistant to something. Resistance to that we have to do this work or that life is demanding this of us or this person or that person or that situation. Fuck those people. Oh, that person did this to me. Or resistant. I don't wanna, I don't like it. No, no, no, no. Is sort of the summation of resistance. Maybe resistant to internal experiences too, to feelings. Why am I feeling this way again? Ah, we're resistant. And then angry. Angry at others, angry at ourself, angry at life, angry at God, angry at the circumstances. It's not fair, it's not right. And then there's like a self pitying quality to it. Oh, why do I have to do this? Why do I have to go through this? Why me? Ah, why am I the one who has to work on this stuff? Why can't I ever just feel happy just for who I am? Or why don't people just want to date me for me? Why did so and so get it so easy? They don't have to deal with this. They have more connections, they have more freedom, they have more love, they have better looks. Why me? And then helpless. There's like a helpless quality too. Like I can't stuck in this place, I gotta be in this place. I can't do anything about it. It's always gonna be this way. And I'm kind of being a little bit teasing that state a little bit. But hey look, I go there too. We can all go there. It can happen in an instant that we shift into thrash. Of course, at the same time, once we're aware of this, it can happen an instant that we shift back to soaring. So tight, hard, resistant, angry, self pitying, helpless. Now comes the fun part. Where do we do these? Where do you do these things? Where do you tend to thrash? Like right now in your life, where are you thrashing? Maybe you're in a state of thrash right now and there's something specific or you don't even know. You just. Have you ever had one of those days? I sure have. You're just kind of thrashing against everything. I don't want to get up today, I don't want to go to work today, I don't want to hang out with my kids today. I don't want to do that. I just want to be alone. Then I get alone. I'm like, I don't feel good alone. Thrashing all day long. Just thrash against everything. So maybe you're on one of those days. I don't know. Or maybe not. You know, sometimes we feel okay and then there's a certain instance where we thrash around against it. What is that for you right now? Where are you thrashing in your life? Do you have a place? And maybe it's not all six of these. Maybe you're not tight, hard, resistant, angry self pity and helpless. But maybe there's just, you know, if it's less intense, maybe there's like a quality of resistance and fear and a little bit of helplessness. You're sort of stuck in that scenario. So it's not a 10 out of 10 on all six, it's just a couple of them. So we can be thrashing less intensely, but still thrashing nonetheless. So what's a scenario in your life where you're thrashing? When you focus on it now, holding that scenario in your mind, what would it be like to stop thrashing and really imagine an animal or Yourself or something physically thrashing around. What would it be like to just in that moment, maybe you're still caught in the net or still in the gusts of the current. If it's a bird and you're still flapping and thrashing, but just in that moment, in this moment right now, what would it be like to soften, open, allow, and relax without anything changing externally, the situation's still there. The same people, the same scenario, the same whatever, the same feelings inside of you. Everything is the same. Only difference is instead of thrashing, you're gonna soften, open, allow and relax. And then whatever comes up, maybe more fear comes up, or maybe the scenario is hard or maybe there's some pain about it or something. You don't. I don't want to feel the grief around this person or this scenario, or I don't want to feel afraid of this again. And there's a little more resistance that comes up or fear that comes up. Okay, just soften open to that, allow that and relax. And when I say relax, I really mean physically relax your body as best as you can. Like, what if you just didn't fight the scenario, you didn't thrash at all? What opens up? What might you be able to do? And you don't have to force this. You don't have to be like, be relaxed now. Calm down, damn it. It's not that intense, right? You can just relax. You can just slow down, let it take time, let it run its course. And be. And feel more open. What would that be like, to be more open in this situation? What would it like to be more allowing? And what if you just didn't resist anything and allowed everything? And then from that place, maybe you want to do something or choose something or say no to something, or say yes to something or whatever, but there was nothing, like nothing was wrong. That's the big difference is when something's thrashing, when we're thrashing, it's like fight or flight, man. Right? It's threat in our nervous system. It's danger, danger, danger. Better get out of this or we're going to die. And when we start to soar and we relax in our body, it's like, okay, there's nothing terrible happening here. It's just unpleasant, or it's just new, or it's just different. And then from that place, we get to choose what we're going to do, how we're going to handle it. And our choice is going to be so much better. It's going to be so much more Effective. So much more resourceful. Soar. So let's talk about how you're going to use this in your life. Hopefully you're using it right now. But let's go into specifics here in your action step. Time for action. Action, Action. Your action step for today is to literally think about these acronyms throughout the day. Soar. Now, what does soar stand for? S O, A, R. You want to say it with me? Soar. S O, A, R. So the S stands for. That's right. Soften. You want to say it out loud with me? The O stands for open. The A stands for. That's right. Allowing. And the R is relaxed. Okay. So soft, open. Allowing, relaxed. Your turn. Say the four in a row of sore. Go ahead. Now. Soft, open, allowing, relaxed. Good. And then thrash. Thrash is tight. The T is tight. The H. Remember what the H was? Hard. Hard. In our body. The R is resistant. A. You remember the A. Angry. S, Self. Pity. H, Helpless. Okay. So the T. Remember what the T was for? That's right. Tight. H. First. H. Hard. The R. That's right. Resistant. A, Angry. S, Self. Pity. Remember the H, what that was for? Helpless. And you want to write these down. You can. It will really help you just to look at them and get familiar with them. And so when you're going about your day, noticing when you're in a state, when you're thrashing, and see what you can do in that moment to get you back to a place of soaring, because we want to be operating in a state of soaring as much of the day as we can, everything is going to go better. Your relationship is going to go better, your social interaction is going to go better, you're going to feel better, you're going to make better health choices. You're going to eat better, you're going to sleep better, you're going to laugh more, you're going to have better orgasms. It's going to be the greatest. Just soaring as much as you can. And the best way we do that is we notice when we're in a state of thrashing and we see how to bring ourselves back to soaring. So use that as much as you can. The acronyms will help. And I wish you all the best as you soar throughout this day and your life. So 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.

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