How To Stop Doubting And Start Believing In Yourself

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 today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be helping shed and shred some stories in your mind that have been there probably for a long time that create doubt that in an interesting way give you a sense of certainty that something's not possible. Isn't that funny about doubt? You know, doubt is. We tend to think of doubt as uncertainty, right? Like, I don't know, I don't know, I'm not sure, I don't know. But have you ever thought about what creates that? What creates that doubt is actually there is a voice in your head or a part of you that is very certain that says it's not gonna work out, it's never gonna happen. And then we believe that part to some degree, and then we feel split, hesitant, unsure, uncertain of where to go, what to do. Isn't that fascinating? So in some ways, doubt actually does involve certainty. It involves certainty in that we can't create what we want. So I want to start today's episode with a fantastic quote that I first heard from Tony Robbins that then Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall street, also claims is one of his quotes. Although I question the veracity of anything that man says. But it goes something like this. The only thing that stops you from having what you really want is is the story you keep telling yourself about why you can't have it. What if that were true? I'm gonna say it one more time and I really want you to let this settle in. What if the only thing that stops you from having what you truly want is the story you keep telling yourself about why you can't have it? So that if that were true, then that would lead to two follow up questions. One is, what do you truly want? And two is what is the story or stories you keep telling yourself about why you can't have it? Let's explore that today. Not too long ago, I was talking with a client who Was highly successful in career and very anxious, insecure in her ability to create a romantic relationship with someone that she really desired and loved and that was a really good fit for her. Not just settling in some way. Same day. Talk to a man who is highly successful in the relationship side, has a family, an amazing spouse, great relationship, and is really struggling in his career side of things due to anxiety, due to self doubt. I can't do this, I can't achieve that. I can't pull this off. So it can affect us in many different areas, but the end result is we experience a sense that we can't have what we want in one or more areas. So let's start with, start with this. What do you want in some of the big areas of your life, the key areas of your life? What would you like to be experiencing that's different than what you're experiencing now? Now, that might mean you have to change your circumstances and it might not, right? Because sometimes we think, what do you want? Like, I gotta get something. It's kind of like consumer mentality, right? Well, something's gotta, I gotta, I don't know, do I need a car? I need a car. That's what I need. You know, I was in this, this was a couple years back, but I was in this business development training program and people were talking about their goals and what they want for business and everyone freaking wanted a Tesla. What's your want? My dream, my vision is, you know, success, abundance and Tesla. Why does, who cares? Why does everyone want that? You're just programmed to want that. It's just marketing, man. You didn't want that thing five years ago or ten years ago, right? I mean, whatever. It's just like all of a sudden that's the thing to want. So what do you truly want? It doesn't have to be a thing. And sometimes we think of things, you know, not just as material objects, but I got to have a relationship. And you might truly want a relationship, but how do you want to feel? Right? Because there's many of you, I'm sure you've experienced this where it's like, I want a relationship. And then you start dating someone, you're like, I don't want a relationship, I gotta get out of here. So it's not just a relationship, it's not just a thing. You want a certain kind of experience, don't you? You want to feel something. So what do you want to experience in that relationship? Probably want to experience more love, more connection, more joy, more intimacy, more humor. What else do you really want same thing at work, same thing in your career? Maybe there's certain milestones. I want to hit this, I want to work here, I want to get this thing, I want to achieve that. I want to get this status, I want to get this money. Okay, great. And what do you want? What do you want to feel as you're getting that money, as you're getting that status, as you're growing in those ways? And this is very important because otherwise we're just. When we think about what we want, we automatically remove ourselves. It puts it so far out, right? Because maybe it feels like, well, geez, I want a relationship. And right now I'm single, I'm not even dating anybody, and I've had some struggles with dating. And so it feels really far out. It's not like, yeah, tomorrow I could meet my partner, you never know. Or have you been struggling a lot with social anxiety at work? And it's hard to speak up in meetings and you can't share your ideas and it's just so awkward, uncomfortable. And the idea that, okay, I'm going to go in there and just lead this big meeting, this big keynote thing or whatever it is tomorrow, your mind's gonna be like, there's no way, there's no way. So you push it really far off. But what if we focus more in on what you want to experience? That's what I do all the time with clients. It's like, what do you really want to experience? Because underneath, what the person in the relationship wants to experience is love connection. We already mentioned those things, right? Those are just words that came to me. You can see what comes to you. Love connection, intimacy, shared experiences, humor, joy. So what do you really want? What do you really want? It's probably going to be some feeling states, isn't it? Isn't that what you really want? You might say, well, no, I have to be in a relationship to feel that. Is that true? And maybe what you want to feel in the work situation, you want to feel more confident, you want to feel more relaxed, you want to feel more capable. So what do you truly want? I'm not saying you can't want anything external or things to change or to move towards a goal specifically. But just notice we're looking at what do you truly want? And what is the story you keep telling yourself about why you can't have it? Because that is the genesis of all self doubt and that prevents you from believing in yourself. What does that even mean, to believe in yourself? Well, it means to Believe that you can create what you want, that you can experience what you want in life, what you're drawn to, what you're called to, what you hope for, what you dream for. You, on some level believe that it's possible versus believing that it's not. And when you believe that it's not, how does that feel? Because that's another potential pitfall along the path is you do know what you want. You have discovered what you want. I'm asking these questions and you're like, yeah, no, I want this, I want that. Yes, it's this external thing, but I want to feel this, this and that. I want it. Great. Then the second pitfall is a strong story that says, you're never gonna have that, though. And that's painful, that's discouraging, that's depressing. I know for me, there's many times I've told myself that story. I definitely told myself that story. In many ways, the summary of different stages of my life has just been me telling myself that story and believing it. Until one day it turned out it was false. I could go on and on with different stories, but one was a story that I would never date. I would never have connection with a woman so anxious, so shy, so uncomfortable, so unsuccessful. Never happened. And then, sure enough, that was false. And then later on, though, as I was able to date and connect, I had this pattern I was running that I didn't understand at all. But it was a pattern of anxiety, another level of social anxiety. It was a result of excessive niceness. And what it led to is it was a fear of actually getting into a relationship. I was afraid of getting hurt, afraid of loss, afraid of that pain, afraid of losing myself. Because I didn't have strong boundaries, so I couldn't say yes or no in the right ways. I just kind of settle into whatever that other person wanted. And so I would date someone. And then we start to get close. And after whether it was two weeks to two months, bam, I had to get out of there, feel this creepy crawly anxiety. And. Or I'm just not interested anymore. But. But underneath that was this, like, creepy crawly dread. Oh, God, I gotta get out of here. I remember towards the end, I started to try to like, white knuckle it through. Cause I was like, this is crazy. I am crazy right now. Like, I was really into this woman. She's really awesome. We're having a great time, and now I gotta end it all. Like, I am crazy. And so I remember one time I tried to white knuckle it. I talk about this in not nice, but I think I made it to like. I mean, we're gonna generously call it six months, but that's probably some fudge factors. Probably like four months in. You know, the first couple months didn't count because we were just casually dating, right? Anyway, we're together and we're at this park in San Francisco. This beautiful sunny day. This beautiful woman, so sexy, so sweet, so intelligent. And she's laying there and we're just both. This is a hot day, we're both in the sun and she's just laying there with her shirt lifted up as her belly's exposed to get more sun on. Just really sexy woman. And. And instead of feeling like, wow, look at this beautiful woman I'm with. This beautiful day. Does it get any better than this? Guess what I'm doing inside. I gotta get outta here, but I can't. I gotta white knuckle it through. I'm freaking out. And I literally did freak out. I was like, I have to go to the bathroom. And there was a park, so you'd, like, walk over this, you know, cross the whole field over this hill, blah, blah, blah, to get to this little concrete bathroom. And I go there, and on the way to the bathroom, I get there and I'm about to get out of the bathroom and head back to her, and I head out and I'm just like, I can't go back. I can't, I can't. It was like this intense anxiety and I kind of just like paced back and forth and some part of me was like, I could just get in my car and leave. And I was like, whoa, that's fucked up. I mean, this isn't like your first date. You've been dating for almost six months, quote unquote on paper, right? But a long time. And we were connected and she really was trusting in me. So it was pretty awful place. My stomach just feels tight just thinking about it. And that pacing back and forth reminded me of something that I would do when I was a little kid. When I was a little kid, I didn't know what it was called, but I would wake up with panic. When I was a little kid, I would sleepwalk all the time. And sometimes I would sleepwalk and then just come back to my bed. Sometimes I'd sleepwalk and wake up in weird places. I would sleep talk, I would do all kinds of stuff. And one, I mean, one common occurrence is I would sleepwalk somewhere and then wake up and then be really, really Scared and really scared to go back to my bed. And I had a little bedroom that was. My brother and I were in the same bedroom. We had our own little twin beds in there. And then my parents had a bedroom across the hall and they slept in a. Whatever queen sized bed over there. And I would walk, I was too scared to go back to my bed. And I want to go into their bedroom and like wake them up and see if I could snuggle with them or something. But I was too scared to do that too. I was just like awash in fear and panic. And so I would pace like down this hallway to their room, stand in front of their door, like kind of wringing my hands. And then I would turn and pace back to my room. And I feel like I couldn't go into either room. So I would just do that for like, I don't know how long, 20, 30 minutes or something and then stand in the hall. Sometimes I'd listen to my parents breathing and if it sounded like one of them was going to wake up or something, because I think I was scared to wake them up. It was like if they were awake, I could ask for help, but I was scared to wake them up, scared of upsetting them, scared of bothering them. And so it felt like that I was like pacing back and forth in front of this bathroom, like, can I go back? No, go back to my car? No, no, can't do that. Go back to her. No, can't do that. Eventually I mustered up the courage or the panic subsided enough, whichever happened, I don't know. And I decided to go back to her. And she'd just been lazy. She was just lazing on the grass. She's like, what's up? Or hey there. I was like, hey, what's up? You know. And you know, what I didn't realize at the time is one of the reasons I was having panic is because there were so many things that in order to create a deep relationship you must be able to talk about. And I had it all bottled up, you know, things between us that I wanted or didn't want, time I'd want to spend together, be able to talk about our sex that we were having and sex life, everything, basic stuff. And being able to talk about what's going on inside of you. Here's how I feel, here's what I want, here's what I like. I think I sort of was able to maintain an image of having it all together and being cool and being light and being fun. But anything else I didn't want to reveal to her. So while I had dating success in a way, in terms of being able to have dates and have a potential girlfriend, I was nowhere near being able to have a relationship. So I had a story at that time, and this experience with her just intensified it that said I'm not capable of an intimate relationship. And it was kind of a vague one, like, there's something wrong with me, something off about me just, I don't know, broken. My intimacy switch is broken. And I wonder if you have a story like that too. Maybe it's about love and relationships. Maybe it's about I'm never going to be able to be confident in front of a group of people or around people. I'm socially anxious forever. I'm broken inside. Maybe it's about a certain career goal. I'm never going to be able to get a job at a place that I want. I'm never going to be able to create my own business. And we could go on for hours about stories I've had about in my own business, about what I could or could not do in my career. I mean, I had a very strong story that it's like, I couldn't earn money in the world. But long before I even started my own business, just even having a job, I was like, yeah, I'm never gonna get one. And then as it came into creating my own business, first a therapy and then a coaching business and teaching business, it was like, yeah, that's never gonna work. No one's gonna buy that stuff. No one's gonna want this thing. No one's gonna want your services. Remember doubt. Remember doubt. It gives you a sense. It tells you with certainty how it's not gonna work out. And then you feel this, like. Because there's a part of you that's like, but maybe it will work out. I want it to work out. And then those things clash. And now you have this inner confusion and hesitancy and fear. It all comes from believing that story, that story that tells you why you can't have it. So what is the story that you're telling yourself about why you can't have what you truly want? And maybe you need to do a little more time and digging with what you truly want. It's a huge component of me. When I work with people or people who go through my Mastermind program, the whole first month of the program is on clarity. What do you really want? What do you want beneath that? What do you want beneath that? And sometimes it's external things, but Just recently, there's a man going through the program and he said, you know, I was going through the first month of. It's called the advanced guidance system that guides people step by step as they go through the mastermind. And he said, you know, I was sitting there and write out some of the goals. I do a goal setting exercise with people. And he's like, I was doing it. But I actually paused because he's a very, very high achieving, ambitious person, had done a lot in his life, and he's like, you know, I was wary of just producing another list of goals because the way that he approaches his goals is so. Anxiety is perfectionism, right? It's like, I got to achieve this or else. And he does achieve a lot, but he's not satisfied. He's just doing so many things. And so for him, getting clarity was whatever I pursue, I want to do that from a place of not needing to do this for my worth. So that's a different kind of clarity, isn't it? So what does he truly want? He doesn't want a more stack of achievements. What he wants is a sense of deeper self worth. So what is it that you truly want? Getting clarity. But then, even then, after the first month, it's not like we're done. Clarity comes up all the time. Every time I'm doing a hot seat or interacting with someone or coaching with someone. It might even come up multiple times in a session or multiple times in a month. Like, what do you want in that situation? What do you truly want here? It's one of the first questions I always start with. What do you truly want? And I don't take I don't know as an answer. I say, okay, what? Well, let's explore. If you don't know, because some part of you knows or has a sense, and whether we get to clarity in that moment or we move the ball down the field, because sometimes getting clarity is trying something on for a while and being like, no, no, no, that wasn't it. It's through. What's the word? Subtraction. You omit things. You try it on and then you take it out, say, no, that wasn't it. Then you can get more and more clarity of what you truly want. And I believe that's part of the process. We don't necessarily get it all from just meditating and having total clarity and then execute on that and boom, it's all perfect. No, it's messy. It's trial and error. It's exploration. But the question is the most important Thing, what do I truly want? And then the next thing is, what's the story that tells you that you can't have it? And here is what I'm going to tell you right now. It's going to be extremely powerful and liberating if you take it in. Are you ready? The story about why you can't have something is bullshit. It's false, it's erroneous, it's an illusion, it's a fable. You might say, well, hold on. No, no, I'm with you on yours. Yours was a false. Yours was an illusion, and maybe other people's are. But mine, mine's legit. That's true. And I'm not saying that what you're observing is totally made up or something. So maybe you're not having success in dating. Maybe people don't want to have a second date with you. I went through a phase where that happened in my life where women didn't want to have a second date with me sucked. So you don't have to say, well, that's not happening. That's just a story in your head, man. Or maybe you are feeling stuck at work. Maybe you are getting overlooked in job interviews. Maybe things are. I'm not saying these things aren't happening, legitimate things that you want to change. But the story about why that's happening, your understanding, your mental model, your inner explanation as to why that's happening and therefore what to do about it, is probably wrong. So, for example, in that dating experience where I was scared to connect with this woman, or really any woman, on a deeper level, my story was, there's something wrong with me. So first of all, right there. If your story involves there's something wrong with me, that's just. I call that lazy brain. You're just not even. You're not even trying at that point. Right? I don't know. I guess there's just something wrong with me. Like what a lazy. You're just quitting. You're giving up that easy? Get curious. Get curious, like, what's really going on here? Because most likely there's going to be a more nuanced explanation. And here's what it is. I believe that it's always just certain specific things that you need to learn. And there are probably little adjustments that add up to something big, you know, because we tend to think, well, if it's a big problem and it's a big problem, well, what is a big problem? Well, big problem. Big problem is one that's been around forever and has caused a lot of suffering in my life. All right, so, you know, one of those two makes it a big problem, but usually a combo of those two. And we think if it's a big problem, then it's got to have a big solution, which is why people. And this is just like, there's more conditioning around this, why people would think this is generally a good idea. But they have a physical, structural problem. And it's been hurting. It hurts a lot. That makes it a lot of suffering. And maybe it's been going on for a while, you know, six months, a year, or reoccurring for years. Oh, my gosh, long time, big pain. So they go to a doctor. The doctor's like, all right, yeah, here's what we're going. We're going to give you some chemicals, put you under, knock you out. Anesthesia, full body anesthesia. Slice you open, cut this up, slice that, remove this, move around that, put you back together like a mechanic, and you'll be good, probably. We don't know, actually, but, you know, what else are you gonna do? And people are like, mmm, okay, all right, that sounds like a good idea. And I did this. I got an unnecessary surgery on my wrist because I was having tons of pain in my wrist. And they didn't. You know, they did an X ray, they did an mri, and they couldn't actually find anything, but they're like, well, we can do surgery, go in there and, quote, clean up some scar tissue, unquote. Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. Just fix it. Fix this broken thing. My body's broken. Fix it. And if you take a step back and get out of, like, our surgery, happy culture and be like, that's fucking a pretty intense solution. Is there an easier option? But we think that's an easy option because we're asleep. And maybe our insurance covers a lot of it. That is not easy. And it's certainly not easy for your body. And it might very well not bring the health that you want. In fact, a large majority of back surgeries that are done bring about no significant lasting relief, very short period at all. In fact, lots of surgeries they've demonstrated, especially like knee surgeries and other things, don't perform any better than placebo. In fact, sometimes placebo surgeries, sham surgeries, where they take people, split them up into groups, have them, you know, do some arthroscopic surgery on their knee, and then the other one, they just, like, insert. They put little two holes, just like cut a hole, like a little circular hole on either side. So they think they had the surgery, they still put them under. Those people perform equal to, sometimes better than the people they actually did. Whatever they did, quote, cleaning up scar tissue in there or whatever they do. So what if you went to somebody and they're like, you know, there's a way to resolve your back pain by doing this. These subtle tweaks here. We also cut you open. We also give you all these pills forever or injectables. That's what I took. I took a. It's an injectable called Enbrel. Took that for, ooh, I don't know, 15 plus years. So instead of that, and it's interesting potential profile side effect list where you had to get blood tests every six to 12 months to make sure that shit wasn't going down in your body, right? These serious things that we do. What if there was a more subtle tweak and you could shift everything? And there was. For the physical pain that I experienced, there is. There's shifts in emotional shifts, in ways that I treated myself, ways that I would stress myself, scare myself, demand too much of myself. Patterns of conditioning, of belief that the pain would come if I did X or Y. I have some episodes. If you want to go back and listen more in depth about that, that's not the point of this episode. But you better believe I had a lot of doubt. Very insanely strong story that said this pain will never go away because I'm broken. And that was true. That true was false. But when it came to the relationship thing, I realized, you know, and this took me a while to realize, it wasn't until years later that I discovered all this stuff. And a lot of the stuff led to the writing of the book. Not nice. But in there I realized one major obstacle for me to having a deep relationship is I'm scared to actually reveal how I'm really thinking and feeling. I'm scared to be transparent, to be real. That's some basic shit. That's just a skill set. That's something you build with self awareness, courage, and enough self love to be able to share it. And that's what I teach people to do now all the time. And people do it. And then all of a sudden they're able to be transparent, vulnerable and real. And the other aspect to being able to create a deep romantic relationship is to have some understanding and use of boundaries. And that's just a fancy way of saying yes or no. Do you want to be able to say yes here? Do you want to be able to say no here? Do you want to negotiate something with your partner? What do you want? Do you want to spend that time together in that way? Do you want to go do that other thing? What do you want in with, you know, not just like day to day, what do you want to do? But also like, you know, you know, what's important to you and how is your experience of sharing life together or doing certain activities together? What do you do if they don't want to connect in certain ways that you want to connect? What if there's something about your sex life you want to explore, talk about change? So this is being able to express what you want, hear what they want, have a disagreement in a productive way that actually brings you both closer as opposed to just a fight where you say a bunch of blaming things and then nobody feels any better afterwards. Although those happen too, sometimes, and then you can grow from those as well. So it was a series of skill sets, little things. And the best way that I could metaphor, that I could use for it is like the guitar. And you watch someone play something on the guitar. I'm a big fan of classical guitar. And you watch someone play something and you're just like, what? And they're just. Their hands are flying up, all over down the neck of the guitar and they're playing crazy fast, and it's seamless. And if you go to study the guitar, it's like, here are these chords, here are these scales, here is this right finger or right hand finger plucking technique that they're using? It's just a series of sub skills components. And when you combine those things, they do the impossible. And if you combine those things, you do your impossible. So let's actually talk about how you're going to apply this and what you're going to put into action right now. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is gonna be to uncover the story you keep telling yourself about what you cannot have or why you can't have what it is that you want. Maybe you already did this during this episode, but really flesh it out. What is the specific story? And so if you wanna know how to do that, well, just think about something that you truly want. And then notice there'll probably be a sense of like, deflation, discouragement, hopelessness, pessimism of some sort. And then you say, why? Why can't I have that? Why can't I have that? Why? And that's going to help you uncover your stories. And then once you got your story or stories about why you can't have it. I want you to start to get really curious and say, I wonder what is more true than this? If getting what I want is just a collection of specific skills or sub skills, then what are those sub skills? What is it? And remember, when you're focusing on what you truly want, don't just focus on the thing out there, but focus on the feeling state. Because you might just find that you can actually start to feel the way that you want to feel even before you get the thing out there. And if you start to feel better, feel more. I mean, this is a classic in relationships, right? Like, I feel empty inside. I need somebody. And then you're trying to, you know, you have an empty cup. You're like, will you fill up my cup? Versus, well, how do I want to feel? I want to feel love. I want to feel connection. I want to feel intimacy. Great. How do I build those skills? How do I practice that? How do I have more love? How do I feel more love right now? How do I develop more connection, intimacy with my friends, with my family, with anyone on my dates? How do I make my dates more real and authentic as opposed to just trying to play a role? And all of a sudden you do that. Now you can experience something different today. And guess what? As you're experiencing more love, more connection, more joy with your friends, what is your experience? What energy are you going to emit on that next date? How much fuller is your cup gonna be? And that's a conversation for a different day. Talking about coming into relationships with a full cup versus an empty one. We'll explore that some other time soon. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are. Thanks for being with me today and know 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.