How To Step Into The Unknown With Confidence

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 be talking about something I find really fascinating and fun and can really open up your life in beautiful ways, which is how to step into the unknown with confidence, with enjoyment, with fascination, with curiosity, with positive anticipation as opposed to stepping into the unknown with fear, negative predictions, pessimism, bracing panic, misery, and all the rest. So we're gonna be talking about that. And to remind you right now, we're in the smack dab in the middle of the super early bird for my event, the ultimate confidence breakthrough. It's gonna be an online event that's happening in July 2021. So this, if you benefit from this show and from being with me in this way, you are going to absolutely love being together for three days. And again, it's virtual, so you can attend from anywhere in the world. All you need is an Internet connection, which I'm assuming you have if you're listening to this. And I would really invite you to take that next step. If you've been with me for a little while and you're wondering what else could be possible for you, I just say that when you take the leap to immerse yourself, that's what we're going to be doing together for three days is full immersion. Magical things can happen. And that's kind of what we're going to be looking at today is magical. In fact, stepping into the unknown, that's what today's episode is about. So maybe it's stepping into the unknown for you to sign up for this thing. What's going to happen there? Is it going to work? Am I going to feel weird? I don't know. Leaping into the unknown, that's one of the tips on becoming better at stepping into the unknown, is to practice stepping into the unknown regularly. If you go to shrinkforthshyguy.com under this episode, you can get a link to it to the event page. You can also go to draziz.coM-R-A z I z.com and right there at the top you'll see a thing that says events and then you click on that and you'll see the ultimate confidence breakthrough. And that should take you right there to be able to register and sign up. So we're in between the Super Early Bird or the Early Bird, depending upon if the Super Early Bird has sold out. But either one is a significant discount on the full event ticket. So I highly recommend that you do that and you can check that out. And if you have any questions, just email us@supportocialconfidencecenter.com so, stepping into the unknown, what is that like for you currently? Is it scary? Is it unpleasant? Let me take a step back further. Are you even doing it? Because sometimes if it's scary or unpleasant or activates fear, then we just don't even do it at all. Then we keep our lives pretty stagnant, pretty similar, pretty familiar. A lot of people that come into my world that want to make changes have been doing this for a long time, especially in their social life, their dating and relationships, their career. They've sort of been a certain way, a pattern of how they've been. I've been the nice person, I've been the quiet person, I've been the pleaser. I'm the socially anxious person. So I don't speak up and I don't draw much attention to myself. I'm not the expressive one, I'm the quiet one. There's a role that they're playing. And then that role starts to limit their life, all areas, their social life, their dating life, their work life. And it's not working. That's when people come into my world, it's not working. And they want to make a change. Maybe that's what you want to make a change around. And then as we start to, there's the change of kind of breaking out of that Persona that we've been in, the quiet one or the nice one or whatever. And it's being more real, more direct, more assertive, more of a leader. There's that change, which can be freaky, and then there's also the changes in your life that might occur. Maybe as more of a leader, you start to speak up more and then you get into a more leadership position or you get hired in a new job, or you even take the risk to go apply for something else and then you get hired or you're going to move somewhere or you start to date somebody, you start to put yourself out there more. You're not being quiet, scared of people and avoiding them. Right. Role anymore. You're saying, I'm going to face my fear, I'm going to challenge myself, I'm going to grow. And then you do. And then all of a sudden they're dating and now, oh my God. It's going well. Oh, my God, right? It's funny, in my Mastermind program, there's a woman who just made tons of amazing progress in her career in the last couple months especially. And she went through a really, did a deep dive on her beliefs about herself and her career and challenged them and started speaking up more and networking and taking action. And all of a sudden she got this interview and then she had this long history of being super anxious in interviews. But through the Mastermind, she learned how to be more comfortable and confident in not only the skills, but also the mindsets. She came in and she went through four rounds of interviews for this company, very thorough. And then she gets the job and then she accepts it and it doubles her salary on the spot to take this job. And then she's reporting in a group where we like to share wins and she's sharing her wins and everyone's celebrating and she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but oh my God, now I gotta start this job in two weeks. I'm freaking out, you know, and I laugh and I say, this is a high quality problem. Here we go. Right? But that's the case. It's like things going well can freak us out. Why? Because it's going into the unknown. How do we go into the unknown? With confidence. That's the million dollar question. Because if you can do that, not only can you, I mean, it takes confidence to make a change, right? To do something different than you've done in the past. And we can build up the confidence to like go do it. Yeah. But there might be effort in it and there might be a lot of fear in it. Now you're facing the fear, so you're developing courage too. And that's all good. But there might not be much enjoyment, there might not be much fun. And it's better than being stuck and stagnant and not expressing yourself, not going for things, not living your life. That's on one end of the spectrum. But then in the middle of the spectrum is like, you are taking action, you are taking risks, you are speaking up, you are being you. But it's so damn uncomfortable. You're freaked out all the time. Then the upper end of the spectrum is that you're able to be you and you're able to express yourself, and you're able to step into new opportunities and new experiences in life and actually be open and actually be curious and actually enjoy it. So let's talk about how to do that. Well, the first thing is you got to get into motion. You got to get into action. You got to be willing to face your fear. You got to be willing to be uncomfortable. So if we're going from like, I'm avoiding to like, I want to feel bliss and just take easy action into everything, it's like, well, maybe, maybe, but it's kind of like, how do I get better at doing a certain activity? It's like, well, you got to start doing the activity more, whether it's stretching or playing an instrument or running or something. You know, you got to get into a rhythm of doing it, and then you can start to refine your technique and get better. Does that make sense? So look for little opportunities to challenge yourself. Look for little opportunities to grow. What can I do each day that scares me a little bit. That's the kind of question you want to be asking yourself. And then, of course, you want to take action on what the answer is to that question for you that day. Okay, great. Now we're in motion. Now we get to start to course correct and refine. Because now that you're in motion, you get to start to see something. And this is very important. Your discomfort with going into the unknown is not in the circumstances. It is in your psychology. Another way to say that is it's not in what's happening. It's in how you're steering, how you're perceiving it, your perception. And so what we want to do is we want to look at how do I make stepping into the unknown terrible? What am I doing? You want to discover your recipe for making stepping into the unknown awful or scary. Now, I can help you out here because I am a master at this. I spent many years fearing the unknown so much that I didn't take any risks. And then another large amount of years stepping into the unknown, gritting my teeth, being uncomfortable, being freaked out, predicting failure, but continuing anyway. Because I level five, do whatever it takes. But it was painful. A lot of stress, a lot of tension in my body, and a lot of fear. What if it doesn't work out? But I'm going to keep going. So I know the recipe very well. Now, your recipe might be a little different than mine, but I'LL share mine. I think mine's a pretty common one. So first things first. Now imagine I'm teaching you a cookie recipe. Step number one, you're going to. This is when you're stepping into the unknown here, right? Step number one is to imagine the worst case scenario going terribly and then focus on that and tell yourself that that's going to happen with total certainty. 10 out of 10 certainty it's for sure going to happen. Focus on the worst case scenario. Alternatively, you might not have to get that specific. So instead of focusing on an exact horrible outcome, just focus on a vague terrible things are going to happen. I don't even know what terrible things, but horrible things are going to happen and just leave it pretty vague. Kind of like a murky, misty dark woods or something. I don't know what's in there, but I don't want to go in there. It's going to be terrible. Just something that's gonna bring you a lot of pain and loss and irrecoverable ruin. Yeah, that's right. So focus on that. Tell yourself with certainty that that's gonna happen and that nothing you do is gonna prevent that, so you're destined for it. And create a sense of panic inside or pressure or urgency to try to do something to desperately change your fate, which is probably not gonna work anyway, but you might as well try because you're doing it anyway, and then feel a tension inside of your body and a need to control everything to make sure that horrible outcome doesn't happen. You gotta control you. You gotta control everyone else. You gotta control people that are beyond those people that are beyond those other people three layers out. You gotta control everybody and everything all the time in order to ensure that you're safe and that you don't die from taking this change or risk in your life. Don't breathe very much. And also tell yourself that you're not really good enough to pull it off. And other people could pull it off better than you, but there's something wrong with you or lacking in you so that you're not going to be able to succeed. Whereas other people could succeed at this, not you. And not for any specific reason that you could actually fix. Just a vague inadequacy. Can you taste those cookies? How do those cookies taste? These cookies taste like shit, right? Well, those are the cookies that I've been baking for years, baby. So I don't know if you're making similar cookies, but not a very pleasant flavor. It's like using salt instead of sugar or Something, it's like this terrible inedible thing. But that's what I did for a long time. And then at some point in my life and just being a little playful here. But see, if you relate to some of these elements of this and just the purpose of me highlighting this is to show you that this isn't inherently necessary. You don't have to feel this way when you're stepping into the unknown. There is a different way. It's just if you do it this way, it's going to always feel bad. And then honestly, you're not going to do it very much. You're either not going to do it, you're going to avoid it, and your life's going to shrink and be stagnant and be downsized, or you're going to do it with so much discomfort that it just kind of ruins the quality of your life. How long are you going to sustainably do that? Okay, there's another way. The other way is going to require something beyond you. It's going to require faith. It's going to require a new way of being, a new philosophy, a new perspective of life. It's going to really require you to upgrade. And what it's going to require you to do is to question your absolute certainty about how things are. And this is getting into the realm of what I would call spiritual confidence, which is something I'm really fascinating in. I'm even dabbling of that being perhaps the next book that I'm in the early stages of playing around with. But what this is, is like. And part of it is not when I say spiritual confidence, it's not just confidence in something bigger, but it also might be confidence in the higher version of yourself or a future version of yourself. But it's having confidence confides with faith, moving with faith into something that you've never done before. So how do we do that? Well, first things first, you gotta choose to do something different. You know what the shitty cookies taste like you've done it for? I did it for many, many years. How many years have you been doing it? So then you say, you know what? I gotta try something different. So here's what I did with myself. I said, okay, the part of me says that if I'm not hyper vigilant and I'm not trying to control everything, and if I'm not always on the outlook for terrible ruin and outcomes, then I'm gonna get broadsided. It's this very like hyper vigilant approach to life. I'm gonna Say, you know what, I'm going to run an experiment. I gave it 90 days. I'm going to run a 90 day experiment where I'm going to let myself flow with life. I'm going to trust that. Some of these philosophies that I've come across over the years. One is from Chris Prentice in his book called Zen and the Art of Happiness. And he talks about a personal philosophy that you can adopt that everything is unfolding for your best benefit, for the benefit of the existence of the universe. He's a daoist dude. So like for the dao. So it's kind of like aligning yourself. Like everything that is happening is unfolding for the greatest good of all. And it's beyond like, oh, that feels pleasurable, or I like that. Or that's good or bad. It's just kind of like, no, this is how life, this is the current of life. Can you flow in with that? So if you don't get an outcome right away, or there's a setback, or you get rejected, or you get fired, or you get dumped, or you lose money or whatever your fears are about taking these risks, then that event is not some horrible end of the road. That event is actually something that is serving you. It's contributing to you in the path of your greater growth. So that breakup actually opens you up and teaches you and seasons you and matures you to open to something else. And that life is this flow. And each flow is sort of additive and cumulative and growing your spirit and your soul to have all these experiences to make you who you're meant to be and experience what you're meant to experience and then contribute what you're meant to contribute. And it's not always pleasurable. Sometimes it's painful. And that's how life is meant to be. And so I said, you know, I really, I love this philosophy. I see the wisdom in it. So I'm going to choose to live that way and operate that way, and then life will verify that. The more you look for that, the more you find that, the more it is. So because the outer is a reflection of the inner right, you don't see life as it is. You see it as you are. So I said, okay, I'm going to choose that for 90 days, I'm going to live that way. And so I'm going to focus on multiple times throughout the day if I'm creating a terrible future or I'm getting tense in my body and feel like I need to control something instead of taking Frantic action to try to control things. I'm going to focus on settling my body and getting into a sense of flow or peace. Now, how do you do that? Well, one of the simplest ways to do this, to notice where you feel that tension in your ribs or your chest, bring your awareness to your physical body and notice where that's happening. And breathe and intentionally soften and surrender and allow and choose to trust, choose to have faith that there is this greater guiding intelligence that is life. You could put sort of a benevolent deity quality to it, or you can view it as just like the way it is, the dao, the universe unfolding. Right. Like, how is life unfolding? It is doing exactly what it has done and what it will continue to do. And you can judge it. You can say, well, that was right and that was wrong. Humans did this and that's good and humans are doing that and that's bad. And this person did this thing to that individual, and I don't like that. And you could comment on it all day and judge it all day, but it is just the unfoldment of it all. And so you can take actions and you can try to steer your life and you can try to get certain results. And there is going to be this unfoldment. So whatever the unfoldment is, I am going to surrender to it. And at the same time, though, it's not this sort of like, well, I'm just a buoy at the current of life and I'll just kind of go wherever it takes me. It's like, no, I have a vision and my vision influences the unfoldment. And so what is my vision? What vision energizes me, inspires me, excites me, delights me? And I'm going to focus on that. And I'm not going to focus on that as like, oh, I sure hope that happens and probably won't. It's like, no, I choose that. This is where I'm headed. This is where I am going. And if you want to listen to the last episode about Level 5, whatever it takes, choose it with Level 5, claim it. This is what I want. This is what I want to create. This is where I'm headed. This is where I'm going. And will I get it right away? I don't know. That's the dow. Is it going to be partly one way and then I get rejected three times along the way. I'll do this sometimes with clients who are in dating and relationship scenarios and they're like, oh my gosh, I had this experience. And then we broke up or we dated a little bit, and then they weren't interested. And it's so painful. And I get it. It hurts. And you kind of feel demoralized and like, oh, my gosh, I don't know if I want to try again. And I said, well, let me ask you this. What if you knew that after four near misses, the fifth person that you were going to go on a date with was going to be your soulmate? The person you're gonna spend your whole life with. You're gonna have an extraordinary life with this person beyond what you can even imagine. And it's the fifth person. And this last breakup was just number one. And so you got three more. Three more near misses before you get to that fifth one. What would you do? And they smile and they say, like, I would go through those three as quickly as I could. I said, great. Cause it's out there. It's out there. And you say, well, how do I know? How do I know for certain that I'm going to get it? Because I don't want to try unless I do. And it's like, well, that's not how life works. You can't be that stingy. That's not how love works either. You can't be like, well, I'm not going to tell you I love you until you tell me you love me. And I had for certainty that you're going to love me forever. You're never going to get love that way. You got to give it. You gotta say, I love you. I love you. And I know that by loving you. And if you don't love me back, it'll rip my heart open. But I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm gonna go for what I want in life, and if it doesn't work, I'll fall flat on my face and it will hurt and I will cry. And then I'm gonna get back up because I'm fucking unstoppable. And I'm gonna go for it again because it's meaningful for me. And all the stuff that I'm meant to experience, I will experience. And all the setbacks I will embrace. And ultimately, I will experience the things that I want in life that are meaningful, that I'm meant to experience. And if I don't get that exact thing that I think is exactly what I needed, then something greater is meant for. It's like a level of humbleness and letting go of this arrogance of, like, I know my little plan of exactly how it's supposed to go. And the time frame that I have, it's supposed to go in is how it is. And otherwise it's all wrong. Then you're like writing a memo to the God of the universe, like you're doing it wrong. I'm the manager and I'm telling you, suck at this God. It's like, okay. And we're all clenched in our guts trying to control everything and just like, hey, let it go. And raising to me another way that I do this is instead of getting the outcome that I want in the time frame that I want, or avoiding all discomfort or avoiding all pain being the primary goal, the primary goal is actually to remain in this state of flow. One of my teachers, Christian Michelson, called it a guided state of flow. And I love that. So I'm going to operate. So today, right now, what can I do to help me be in a guided state of flow? Is it a breath? Is it a prayer? Is it focusing on that vision? Is it letting go of the past? Sometimes the reason we feel stuck and we're not being able to see a vision of where we want to go next is because we got some sludge there. It says it's never going to happen because it didn't work before. And for that, you want to remember that growth is iterative. I'll be talking about that in the next episode. Okay, there's a lot here. Let's go to your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step today is going to be an invitation to practice choosing faith, choosing to trust, Just choosing. It's like, well, how do I know? It's like, well, just choose it now. You'd say, but I can't choose that X is going to happen in Y time frame. Well, no, you can claim that that's what you want, that's what your intention. That's where you're heading towards. But then there's this greater bowing or submitting to the way of things, and that is how we can find more peace in the unknown, is that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. It is coming in the time frame that it's meant to. It may be pleasant, it may be unpleasant, but if you're willing to surrender to it and align with it and say yes to it and stop resisting it and just accept it, it's not really that painful. Might even be fun or easeful or curious or interesting. You can just be in the moment and be like, what is happening right now? What is needed right now? And you can trust in your future. Self, the part of you that's going to be the one handling these different things. That version of you can handle it. You can handle it. That version of you can handle it. Together, you're a dynamic duo. You guys are awesome. Okay, I hope this serves you again. Quick reminder, go to drazeez.com and click on the Events tab to get your ticket for the ultimate confidence breakthrough. And thanks for being with me until we speak again. May 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.