How To Stay Continually Motivated And Energized

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to talk about motivation, how to stay on that track, to building your confidence, to doing what it takes to grow, expand, face your fear, lean into discomfort, to grow in your capacities. And you know what they are for you at this point in the game. Maybe it's something in your dating life. Maybe you want to be more outgoing, more willing to approach or be real or be vulnerable with those you're attracted to. Maybe it's more high level around the dating experience, like how do you be more authentic on dates? Or bring in less people pleasing and more of yourself. Whatever it is, maybe it's in your dating life. Maybe it's a work thing. Maybe you want to be more assertive at work. Speak up, face the challenges that arise that day. I mean, it could be in any area of your life, but to you know, a lot of the premise of this show and what I'm teaching is that to create the life that you want, to build the confidence that you want, it's like a muscle. And we must practice this regularly. We must lean into discomfort regularly, we must challenge ourselves regularly or else the anxiety will encroach. It will feel more and more trapped, more and more weakened, and we start to lose belief that it's possible. And so when we're on offense, when we're challenging the anxiety, when we're stepping into our lives or we're stepping up, we're saying bring it on, then everything's better. Just like when you're exercising regularly, you feel better, you have better, more energy and your mood is better. Just like when you're connecting with friends regularly and spending time with loved ones, you feel more resourced, you feel more nourished. Just like when you're putting your efforts into your work and doing the things that you need to do, you feel more on top of it in your career and you feel more, whether it's a financial side of it or the contribution side of it, or the things that drive you, you're feeling good. So, like anything else, we need to stay consistent in our growth of our confidence muscle. And I think you know that, and that's why you listen to this show and maybe you've attended one of my online events or other things and you've practiced this stuff. So the key question, though, is, yeah, but how do I stay consistent with it? And that's what we're going to look at in this episode. And I have a couple ideas. But first, let me ask you, how do you or is there something that you do stay consistent with? Maybe like a diet, a certain healthy way that you have of eating? Maybe it's an exercise routine or a certain activity you do regularly. Maybe it is a certain morning routine, a certain way you handle things at work, a certain way that you parent, the way that you show up with your kids. What's something that you already are consistent with? Because I could share some ideas and I will in this episode, but the most effective thing we can do for ourselves is to look at what strategies and mindsets that we already have that are working and then apply them to the areas that we're struggling in or not staying consistent in. It's you. When we're looking for some new trick or the code and the code is already within, just look at what you do, what works for you. So do you have an area where you're consistent with it? For me, I'm on it with, well, a lot of things because I'm amazing. But I'd say one thing that I've been consistently on, it almost feels effortless is eating just a super healthy smoothie every morning that's got vegetables in it, tons of greens, fruit, other things that just nuts, just charges me for the whole morning. It's fantastic. I love it. I crave it. So how, you know, for some people, they struggle with eating healthier, finding time to eat breakfast or whatever it is. So why. How did I create that? And I want to study that and I want you to be thinking about yours as well. So one thing is I make it easy to win by having everything ready. I have all the ingredients. We never don't have frozen blueberries or I freeze the bananas ahead of time. Or we have the. I like cashews in it. So I got cashews in there. The other version has peanut butter. So we got the right peanut butter. We got all those things. So that's one part of having it. It's like it's easily accessible. Another component is, and this is a big one I've linked. This equals something that I want. Now, in this case, what it equals is a couple things. One is it equals energy. That's the first and foremost. This equals energy. When I drink this, I'm going to have high sustained energy in the morning. I don't need caffeine, I don't need some sort of any other stimulant to get me going. And I'm just focused. It gives me the energy I need to stay focused all morning and into the early afternoon. And that's something that I really, truly want. And you might be noticing this as well. When you study your own pattern. Is that the thing that you're doing consistently, you've linked it up in your mind. This equals what I want. Even if it's something that's uncomfortable, even if it's something that other, other people find challenging. Like, who knows, maybe you get up at certain time and go crush it in the gym in the morning. I don't know. It's just another example. And someone else might look at that and be like, oh, my gosh, how do you get out of bed? How do you not hit your snooze? That's so hard. And you say, are you kidding, man? When I get to the gym and I get to do those, whatever it is you like to do there, I just feel strong, I feel energized. My mood is good, I got my music going. I feel great. So you've linked that in your mind to feeling good, giving you what you want. And that could be a feeling in the short term, like, oh, it feels great to do it after I'm out there and doing it. Or it could be like, this is putting me in the direction that I want to go. This is progress towards where I want to be. And that feels pleasurable to me. So what is it for you? How have you set yourself up to win with this? Okay, great. So let's look at where you want to build your confidence. Pick one of the areas that right now, if you were to consistently do this, and this is a great question I have for people when I talk to them, what's one thing that you could consistently do daily, small thing that you know would support you in growing the confidence that you need and building the results that you want in your life. I was talking to one person recently, he's in real estate, and he's like, you know, I gotta make those cold calls. I gotta reach out to people and Keep growing my network, keep connecting, keep staying top of mind in people. Because referral is huge in the real estate business. And you know, he'd had this list of people he needs to call every day and he hadn't been doing it. I said, great, how about just two calls a day, Monday through Friday? Just two? What's that gonna do? Well, two is more than you're doing. Even though your list is to call 15 or 20, you're not doing it. So two over the course of a week, that's 10, that's already more than you're doing. Secondly, that's gonna start getting the momentum going. So what is it? The thing you could do consistently for him was making those two calls. For another person who was just recently telling me this, we were working on feeling more free, not so worried about what other people think. And one area that he struggles is any type of dancing or moving his body. He feels extremely self conscious. And so what he started doing is doing a little bit of dancing in the morning when he's making breakfast for his kid. Just a little bit, Just a minute or two. Right. Simple little thing. You might say, that's pointless. What's the point of that? Well, first of all, I think that's a huge thing because if you're extremely restricted about something like that, you're gonna send that message to your kid and a kid who's like, hey, daddy, let's dance. And you're like, no, I can't. That's stupid. Like, that sucks. You know, it's like there's a part of you that wants to be free and just let go. But then also, yeah, you're more free and silly and whatever with your kid and be able to dance or make silly voices or whatever. Guess what? You're gonna be more free and more expressive at work, public speaking, all these other places. And you might say those are more valuable. Depends on your value system. I think being connected and fully alive and fully free with everyone, including with your family, especially with your kids, is arguably even more important than being able to do in your career. But everyone's got their own what they value. So what is that thing for you? What's one thing that comes to mind? Maybe you're already doing it. So how do we juice that and make it more consistent? Well, I think there's two things that at the end of the day motivate us most. The first one is pain. I think pain is the biggest motivator. Pain is when it's like, I can't take this anymore. I gotta do something about this. This is awful. I gotta fix this. Problems, broken stuff, issues, whatever your words are for it, it's pain. And pain motivates us. Pain will make us do stuff to resolve the pain. We will do way more to get out of pain than anything else. And that could be financial pain, physical pain, relationship pain, social pain, isolation, mood issues, anxiety, depression, all that stuff. Those are all just forms of pain. And at the end of the day, it's really all emotional pain because all of our fears are fears of feeling. And even if your circumstances suck or you get fired or you're financially strapped, the pain around it is actually the emotion you feel, the fear you feel, the instability you feel, the anxiety you might feel, the shame you might feel. So it's all about feelings. And to resolve those feelings, to stop feeling one way and to feel another way, is what the primary motivator is for us. So let's use it. Let's say, okay, what happens if you don't consistently work on this? What's going to be the end result of this six weeks from now, six months from now? You know what's going to be the effect in your career if you don't consistently speak up for yourself? Is it going to lead to you sort of stagnating? Is it going to be another six months or six years of you kind of being the background person who doesn't get the credit? I was talking to someone recently about this where they other people will take credit for their work, not put their name on the presentations. And then they sort of like, okay, well I guess that's how it is. And then now, which is fantastic, she started to confront them a little bit and say, hey, wait a minute, how come I think my name should be on there, blah, blah, blah, and started getting some pushback. People being like, no. And that's uncomfortable. So there's a part that's like, nah, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this. But imagine what happens if you don't. Can you get a sense of this person's pain? Maybe you can relate. I know a lot of people can. To not having the life that you want at work, to being overlooked, to being on the sidelines, to being not seen in any significant way, to not have your ideas heard. What is the pain of that? Every day, every work day for the next six months, six years, 10 years. What's the pain of people getting promoted over you or entering a leadership above you, not because they're smarter or better but just because they were more outspoken, more assertive, and I could go on in any different area of your life. This is especially important when it comes to dating and relationships. For me, that was one of the biggest motivators. I was terrified of getting rejected. I felt so horrible inside. I felt so much emotional pain at even the idea of getting rejected, let alone when it happened. And so I would avoid it at all costs. And then at one point, I saw. I felt. I really got how. Okay, yeah, rejection is this much pain. You know, imagine like your hands a couple inches apart now. But what about never connecting romantically in my entire life? Never having the love and connection that I want, never being able to date, never having thriving relationships, never being able to have a family or meet an amazing woman I want to spend my life with. Oof, man, that pain. Now spread your arms out as wide as you can. That's magnitude, orders of magnitude greater than the pain of a little rejection. So all of a sudden, I was ready. I was like, hey, this pain to get away from this pain is going to motivate me. So really focus on that. That pain can be your biggest ally if it's combined with a willingness to fucking do something about it and the belief that you can. Because if you bought the BS story that you can't, then what's going to happen is you're going to exercise what's called learned helplessness. If you're not familiar with this, I'll give you the quick rundown. This involves psychological research, animal behavioral research that involves shocking puppies, which is what every researcher, I'm sure, aspired to do when they were growing up as a young child. You know what I want to do when I get older? I want to electrocute puppies. But in any case, they electrocuted puppies for this study where they took little puppies because they wanted to see about conditioning. And they put them on a floor where the floor had electric capability, where they could shoot electricity through the floor and zap the puppy and it would yelp and it would hurt. And so they put the puppy on the floor and they'd zap it. And it would run around frantically trying to get away. Zap it again. There's nowhere to go on the floor. The whole floor is electrocuted. No corner of the room is safe. So the puppy runs around, runs around, freaks out, freaks out, freaks out, freaks out. And eventually, what do you think it does? It just lays down on the ground and they just shock away at it and does nothing. Because what's the point, the puppy feels helpless. Then they take that same puppy and they put in another room. And this room has half the floor is shocked and half the floor is free, so there'd be no zap on that part of the floor. They put the puppy in the shocked side and they send a shock through the floor. The puppy sits there, lays down and just takes it. It doesn't even run around anymore. If it ran around, it would feel and sense that the floor, it can get to safety, but it thinks it can't. It's learned helplessness. It brings that mindset to a new environment and creates the same results. Now, is this just animals that do this? Is this just puppies? Or do you and I do it too? The question is not if we're doing it, it's where do we do it? It's a property that we can fall into. It's a certain mindset. It's an emotional state. It's a perspective that we all can fall into. It's not true, but it is what we can fall into. And there's other studies of rats swimming in liquid. They made the liquid, not they made, I think it was milk, so they couldn't see through it. Instead of water, and there's. The rat has to, you know, what's it called, Tread water to stay afloat. And there's nowhere for it to land. And so if the rat goes and there's nowhere for it to land, nowhere for it to land, nowhere for it to land, it'll just keep going right until it thinks it's going to drown. And then what they would do is they would have somewhere in there an opportunity for there to be a platform for the rat to reach safety. And once the rat had a sense that there was a platform somewhere in there, that rat, if they put it into a new bucket of milk, would swim way longer than the ones where there was no safety to be found. So we will, if we think there's a way out, if we think it's possible we will give our all way longer. I think it was like five times longer or something like that than the rats that thought there was no way out. And if we think there is no way out, we give up way sooner. Hence the puppy laying on the ground. So if you got all this pain of this problem and you think there's no way out, you've bought that story, then you're screwed. That's where depression sets in. That's where you lay down on the ground and say, eh, fucking you settle in your life and you're upset, you're depressed. And so what you want to do is you want to take that pain and say, combine it and say, you know what? If you start to feel frustrated, if you feel fed up, if you're like, I'm not going to fucking live like this, that's a good thing. That pain, that frustration, that's your drive. That's a motivator. Use it. So that's one part of it that gets the motor going. But that's not all of it. Because if we're just trying to get out of pain, we'll just do enough to get out of pain, and that's usually not enough to create a thriving life. We'll settle. So you. I'm single. It sucks. It's so bad. Okay? I just want to be able to date someone. And, yeah, there you go. You got just someone. And it's not the best fit, but it's a, hey, I'm not lonely. I got a companion now. And you're not thriving. It's not an amazing relationship. It's not opening your heart up more than ever. It's not the person you're excited to spend the rest of your life with, but at least it's somebody. It's better than being single. So that's where we need a vision. So, to get away from pain, but you also need a compelling future. A future that intrigues you, that excites you, that inspires you, that energizes you when you focus on it. And look, I don't care what that future is for you. And here's the thing. Let it be what comes to you. You don't have to create it or concoct it. You can receive it. You can just open yourself and say, show me a compelling future. Maybe it'll come to you in a dream. Maybe that will be when you're sleeping or maybe one of those waking daydreams. You're walking along and just get an image. It'll just be a thought or an image or a sense or an idea. And you're like, oh, that. And let it be dreamlike. Let it be a symbol. It might not have to be literal. So maybe you get the image of you. I was sharing this recently with somebody. Let's say you've been kind of socially anxious. You're not able to be yourself. You've been kind of uncomfortable in your own skin. And for some reason, you think of your compelling future. You just imagine being at this super bowl party where you're just connecting and laughing, having Fun. And you don't even watch football. You don't even care about the Super Bowl. But for some reason, you're like a Super bowl party where I'm laughing and connecting and having fun and feeling totally free and comfortable in my own skin. If that's the image that comes to you and you think of that and you feel energized, that's the thing you want to add to your compelling future. You don't need to understand it. You don't need to literally make it happen. But if you focus on that and you feel energized to go out there tomorrow and take bold action, take a risk, put yourself out there, ask someone for something, reveal something, be more authentic. Whatever it is, it's in your growth path right now. For more confidence. If you feel more inspired from that image, good, use it. And don't get too hung up on like, I have to make this happen. I have to make this happen by X date. Oh, if it doesn't happen, then I suck. That's not how we use a compelling future. A compelling future has one purpose, and that's to energize us. Otherwise, you can set up a list of goals and targets. I personally am not a huge fan of rigid goals and targets. They tend to stir up a lot more stress and grasping and tension in me than energy and enjoyment. And I find for me, focusing on a compelling future that's way out there, that I have no idea how it's gonna happen. And honestly, it doesn't even have to happen. I just feel like, yes, when I think about it. And then I focus on the next little actions for today that are just in that direction. And we'll see. All I know is cool shit's gonna happen along that way. So for me, one thing that I'm really excited about right now is seeing what my body can do and seeing how far I can move, how far I can run, how far I can walk. It's something that I got really passionate about maybe about two years ago when I was getting off of 16, 15 years of medication to suppress my immune system because I believe they had an autoimmune condition and I believe my body was broken. And you might have heard some of that in my previous episodes here. But this is about two years ago. I got obsessed. I was like, oh, my God, I can do anything. This is amazing. So I started to push the envelope. Then I started to get really locked into trying to train and make things happen and have specific targets. And it felt like shit. Now what I'M focused on is just a vision, just a sense, just a direction. I got this vision of being out on a trail on a hundred mile ultramarathon race. And it's not even necessarily that I'm going to sprint that thing or I'm going to place really well. And it's just like I'm just going to do it. And I could walk and run, I don't care. I'm just going to traverse 100 miles through the woods and whatever the train is. But it's like it's a specific one. I don't even know which race it is, but it's like a vision. It's like, oh, it almost feels like, yeah, that's going to happen at some point, but there's no rush to make it happen. And what does that do? That inspires me now to feel strong in my body, feel energized and take action, get out there and run, do a long walk, whatever it is. And also it sets up many, many exciting things along the way. Like, well, geez, in order to be able to do that, how far can I traverse? And so far the most I've traversed in a, in a one go is 50 miles. I did 50 miles not that long ago. And my next target is to do 62 and a half miles, which is 100K. And I have a route planned out. And it's just fun and energizing and there's no pressure, there's no demand. It's just this is what I wanted to do. Why? Because going in the direction of that vision is so freaking compelling. It's so liberating, it's so empowering. And so what would that be for you? You know, similarly, I have a vision for this mastermind program I run where I imagine 100 people in the mastermind program and continually making the program better and better and better so the results get more and more powerful. And I just have this vision of interacting with these people in these different ways. And again, there's no I gotta make this happen tomorrow. It's just this is where I want to go. And so what does that do? That inspires me to reach out to people, to network with people, to help have enrollment calls where I invite people into the program and they say no to me or I get rejected and I say, well, let me talk to somebody else. To passionately encourage someone to take the leap, even though inside some part of me is like, oh my gosh, don't say that they're going to say no to you. And that's bad. But I step up and say, no, I believe in you. I believe if you want to do this, this can transform your life. And put it out there continuously, repeatedly, despite some people saying no. It inspires me. And then, I mean, I have a vision around books and things I want to do for that. I'm not going to spend the whole episode talking about all these different visions I have. But you can tell, can you hear how energized I am this is by creating compelling futures. So that brings us to a very important question, which is a question we're going to do for your action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step is to come up with one compelling future. When I say a compelling future, it's an image, it's a sense, it's a feeling. It may be verbal, something you say to yourself. Maybe a thought, maybe an idea, maybe an outcome. It may just be a scene or a feeling, you know, like me on the beach. I don't even know what that means for you. And you might not even know what it means, but it's just something. Hold it, build it, flush it out a little bit, and create as a singular, compelling future. And I think you want to have many, many compelling futures, but that's one of them. And create one, receive one would be a better language. Open up to finding what one is for you. That's in the direction of where you want to go with your confidence. So let's say you want to be more free to do public speaking. And right now you're kind of like, oh, I know I could work on it. I could do these various things. I could do toe musters, I could speak at more meetings, I could practice here, but I don't really want to. And so, again, focus on the pain, get some motivation, get some fuel. And then also focus on, like, what's a compelling future vision for that aspect for public speaking. And maybe you see yourself giving a keynote to some people, and maybe you'll never do that. You don't have to do that. It's just that energy, that possibility, that compelling future excites you, energizes you, and drives you. And then let it. And you know it's working because you feel energized when you focus on it. And you have more motivation, you know, today, tomorrow to speak up, to practice, to do what it is you need to do. So I can't wait to hear about your compelling future. If you're not already a member of my private Facebook group called Confidence warriors, go check that out. You should become a member. It's free. It's just a private group on Facebook. So go to Facebook Facebook. Go to Confidence Warriors. Type that in the search and then click I want to join the group and we'll review you, make sure you're good enough, and then we'll let you in and you could share what's your compelling future. So thanks for being with me today and 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. 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 it.