How To Stop Feeling Self-Conscious

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 talking about self consciousness. I think it's going to be something you're going to find extremely valuable, especially if you felt social anxiety, self doubt, low confidence, there's things you hesitate to do, or maybe you do make yourself do them, and maybe you even make yourself look confident while you do them. But on the inside, you feel that tension, that embarrassment, that concern, that self consciousness, you're going to find this episode extremely valuable. And I can't wait to share this with you. So thank you for being with me. I want to acknowledge you and your time and your focus and your energy. I know there's a thousand other places you could put it right now, and the fact that you're here with me, I want to acknowledge and appreciate you for. Thank you. Thank you for being with me. And I hope that this isn't your first episode. If it is, I'm so excited. Congratulations for finding this show. And perhaps it's not, though perhaps you've been listening for many episodes, weeks, months, or even years, and I want to acknowledge you even more for that. Thank you for being on this journey with me and this journey where we're all growing together, we're all learning together, and, you know, I think you'll hear from this show, these episodes, that while I have a lot to share and a lot of gifts to give because I've grown a lot, that I am far from perfect. In fact, my goal in this show and anything that I, you know, any event I teach or groups that I run or whatever, I'm always consciously and intentionally sharing my own shortcomings, my own edge of confidence, my own doubts, to dismell any myth or any sort of, you know, we can put that on some sort of person like, oh, they're a guru. They have it all figured out. You know, I'm just gonna absorb all of their wisdom and then I'll be perfect like them. And sometimes people play on that, you know, they only present their confident and their perfect side. And my goal is to not do that, is to be real with you. And hopefully that realness can inspire you to be more real with others and to know that you don't have to be perfect in order to be loved, in order to succeed or have the achievements or career connections or relationships that you want. So let's all just be on this journey together and thank you for being with me. And if you're benefiting, I'm gonna request that you give this show a review on itunes. I know it's a couple of clicks and you gotta figure out where to go do it, but if you just go to the podcast app on your phone or even go search for this podcast in itunes online, it could take just a handful of minutes and just give it a review. And what that's going to do is that allows more people to find this and there are millions of people that need this. And that is my purpose here, is to bring that light to as many places as I can while I'm here, that journey that we're all on. So thank you. I appreciate you in advance for doing that. And let's talk about self consciousness. So that might have been an example. I used to be self conscious, asking for something like that. I used to be self conscious for asking anyone for anything. I used to be self conscious dancing, being seen, speaking on a camera, recording my voice around any woman that I found attractive, around guys that I thought were more better looking, more fit, better dressed, wealthier, giving a public talk or presentation, speaking up in a group, sharing a story. These are just a handful of the things that come to my mind in this moment of where I used to feel extremely self conscious. Where do you feel self conscious? And if you're maybe not quite sure what that term means, self conscious means you are observing yourself and imagining that others are judging you, or you're observing yourself. And even if there's no others around you kind of imagine a collective or they. And they're observing in a disapproving way. So you can feel self conscious alone. In fact, that surprised me. I remember one time I was singing in the shower and enjoying myself and I got out and I continued to sing and I looked at myself in the mirror as I sang and I felt this imploding sense of self consciousness, like, oh my God, this sounds so terrible. I'm so bad. Oh me poor little guy. I love that guy. I remember where I Was that was. I don't know how many years that was 15 years ago or something. I love that guy. I want to give him a big hug, be like, dude, you're awesome. Sing your heart out. Sing away. I actually don't feel self conscious singing at this point. I mean, I think if it's like something that I've never sung before in front of a group of people, I might be. But if it was just like singing, singing around friends, definitely around my kids, wife, I sing to them to sleep every night still. And there's a reason for that, and it's not because I'm like a master singer now. And there's a reason why I'm also not self conscious for the most part, while dancing. And it's not, believe me, it's not because I'm a master dancer. I'm not self conscious on video camera. I'm not self conscious talking to a group of people. I actually love that shit now. So how did I get there? Well, step one, I was born. Awesome. Now I'm gonna share in this episode, but first, I want you to take a moment to look at some of the places that you're self conscious, because that will make it less of, oh, this is about other people, Aziz, and clients and other things. This is about you. This is about us. This is about how we as humans become less afraid and more free to be ourselves. Because you can't really be free if you're self conscious because technically, you could do anything you want. You could dance, you could move, you could express yourself in all these ways. But if you're self conscious, then you're restricted, you're limited. And then your option is to either not do the thing and kind of inhibit yourself or to push through and to do it. But then you got this kind of uncomfortable headwind that's stopping you, and you're like, ugh, this is so uncomfortable. But I'm going to keep doing it. And then you got all this inner tension and you're burning a lot of excess energy, which drains you and helps you not bring out your best. Our best comes out when we're not self conscious, when we're free. So how do we do that? Well, the reason I had you reflect on what makes you self conscious is so often we want to hide this from ourselves. We're just like, oh, it's uncomfortable. I don't want to think about it. I don't want. And we certainly don't want anyone else to know about it. Like, oh, my God, I don't Want people to know I'm self conscious. It's so embarrassing. It's going to make look so bad. And what we want to start to do is just name it, face it, say, yeah, I sometimes feel self conscious when I sing. I feel self conscious when I speak up in a group. Great. The next thing would be to name it to someone else. Who in your life could you tell? Close friend, someone that you love, family member, someone who you know is going to be there. They're not going to be like, oh my God, you feel self conscious, you pathetic loser. Someone who you know is gonna be on your own team and reveal it to them. Hey, you know, I notice I feel self conscious sometimes when I share, when I tell a story about myself or anything. Great. Now what we also need to do is we need to practice doing the thing that makes us self conscious. I know. I wish there was another way, but I learned about this. It's called embarrassment inoculation. I learned about this from David Burns and his right hand man, Matthew May, two brilliant psychiatrists who teach a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. And you know, basically if you're embarrassed doing something, whether it's actually embarrassment, inoculation is any exposure to embarrassment, even if it's doing something that you'd never do in your normal life. So the kinds of things that they taught me would be, you know, like you just ask for something strange. You do some behavior that's unusual or strange. So, you know something that Matt might do that I learned from him is like go to like a supermarket and do a snow angel in the aisle or something like that. Right? Something ridiculous like that. And you say, what does that have to do with my life or speaking up at work? Well, here's the thing. That self consciousness that you feel when you're doing that strange thing, you can burn that circuit out. I call it burning out your embarrassment circuit by just doing that repeatedly. And all of a sudden you realize nothing happens. And I can handle it, I'm fine. And so all of a sudden that thing speaking up at work, it stops being such a terrible feeling that you can't experience. You can tolerate it, it's okay, all right, bring it on. And then it can actually be fun. So I actually find some of those embarrassment inoculation things to be quite entertaining at this point. And people can pretty much dare me to do anything. And as long as it's not, you know, hurtful or aggressive, then I'll do it. I'll just walk up to someone and say, whatever. And I think it's just kind of fun and fascinating at this point because I've burnt out that embarrassment circuit. So how do we do that? Well, massive exposure is one of the approaches. And now that first that might sound awful because you're like, but it feels so bad. It won't feel so bad after a number of times. So just know that. And also you can accelerate the progress and remove some of the badness by practicing dialoguing with that imagined judging. They. So I used to be very self conscious dancing. And so I started to practice dancing in many different places. I would go to this and I wanted to do it sober, right? Because I was like, I don't want to be drunk while I dance. I could dance drunk, sure, but I want to feel comfortable in my own skin. So I went to this place, it was when I first moved to Portland and. And it's called Ecstatic Dance. And they have them on all different cities across the us, probably internationally as well. And they might have different names for it, but it's like a free space to dance. It's usually in the morning or evening, no drinking, just kind of like a ballroom that they rent or something and put on some music. They have a DJ that plays a pre made set and it's usually about 90 minutes, 60 to 90 minutes, and people just dance. And it's kind of dance however you want. You want to do your chi gong thing in the corner, you want to do some stretching, who cares? You want to move around, fine. You want to dance, move towards other people and dance with them, great, just do whatever you want. That's sort of the vibe of those places. Perfect place to practice, right? So I would go there and I would dance and I would feel self conscious mostly the whole time. But you're getting exposure, you're getting practice and you're no longer letting that voice that says, ooh, this is uncomfortable, control you. You say, you know what, it's uncomfortable, but I want the results. So I'm going to do it. What's the result in this case? For me, it's liberation. I want to feel free. So I started to do more of it. Then I was like, I can accelerate my progress if I have a conversation with like, who's that? Self consciousness. Remember, in order for there to be self consciousness, you have to imagine that someone is judging you. Even if no one's around, there's a voice in your head that's judging you. What is the they? What are they saying? So I sat down and wrote on a sheet of paper, like I imagine. Okay, there I am, I'm dancing and I'm feeling self conscious. Okay, what am I imagining? Someone's thinking, oh, your moves are stupid. You look bad. You're too stiff. You're repetitive in what you do. Great. Now let's have a dialogue with that part. Oh, you don't like my dance moves? No, I don't. Oh, well, how come? Well, they look repetitive and stiff. Stupid. Okay. All right. So you think I'm repeating myself too much and it's not fluid enough. It's stiff. Yeah, that's right. Okay, well, sounds like you are very focused on me and my dance moves. I'm not. I am maybe stiff. I do definitely repeat myself a lot in my dance moves. Is that not allowed to, like, repeat the same dance move again and again? Well, yeah, I guess you can do that if you want to look stupid. Okay, so doing the dance move again and again, you're saying stupid. You mean like bad or wrong or not worthy of respect or. Well, I don't know. It's just stupid. Okay, well, I guess it's okay if someone thinks I'm stupid. I mean, I like doing the same move again and again. I feel free. I can kind of get out of my head and just get in the moment. Feels good. And it's kind of tiring to have to think of new moves all the time. Why can't I just do what my body wants to do so it feels better to me? Besides, you seem like you got a lot of ideas. Do you have some better ideas on how to dance better? You know, you can flip it on the critic and start to talk with them. That's just a little quick example of a back and forth. You can do this on paper, you know, If I was working with clients, I would do this out loud with them. We'd practice this. But that can start to defuse some of those thoughts, some of those judgments that can get you so much. And then you can start to declare and define your own reality. In my reality, it's okay to do the same freaking dance move. If you want my reality, it's okay to look a little stiff. And then I would go even further. So I'd be one of these ecstatic dances, and I'd be like, you know what? I'm gonna repeat the same dance move for, like 20 minutes in a row. Now, I usually get bored after 20 minutes. I'd probably end up repeating for five minutes in a row just like, doing that same move, doing that same move, doing that same move. And you Know what? It starts to become freeing. Because I do the same move and I look around. No one gives a shit. Because all that self consciousness is this absorption. Like me, me. Everyone's watching me. How's this gonna go for me? No one cares that much. No one cares if your voice is perfect or not or off key. No one cares if you dance stiffly. No one cares if you stutter. Some in your presentation, you might say, no, people do. And they're gonna judge me. Like, why are you building that case? Why are you constructing that reality where you are such a big deal and your performance matters so much? Usually it's for a sense of significance. It's a pseudo. It's a made up sense of significance. Cause you're not that significant in that way. You're very significant in other ways. You're significant in the love that you can bring and who you can contribute to and the gifts that you have to share in this world. That's significant. But the minutiae of your performance, moment to moment, or you've got a pimple on your face or not, or if your hair looks this way or that way, or if your pants are too baggy or not, dude, no one gives a shit. You're inflating that, making it seem so significant and it's not. And then there's so much freedom on the other side of it. But you got to practice again and again and again. I give you story after story. I was extremely self conscious speaking up in groups. And so I sought out speaking up in groups again and again and again. Every opportunity. I'd speak up in small groups, I'd speak up in meetings. I had a goal every time I was in a work meeting to speak up in that meeting. There's probably about 20 people there. It was once a week. And I'd speak up once a week, like clockwork. I'm gonna share in this meeting. Cause there's a part of me that doesn't want to. Because there's a part of me that's self conscious when I do. I did not want to give public presentations. And so I signed up for that when I got this new job. They're like, what skills can you bring here? I was like, well, I can do this, this and that. Also, I love doing outreach and public talks. Do you have anything for me? And they're like, wow, well, fantastic. Yes, we do. Like, great, sign me up. Oh, shit. But here I go, right? Because I want the result, I want the liberation, and for me, more valuable than the public. I mean, the public speaking is great, the dancing is great. But more valuable than all these things is a sense of freedom. I can do whatever the fuck I want. I'm a free human without that self conscious, that cage stopping me. Another thing, singing. So I took some singing lessons and stuff, but honestly I found that kind of boring. And I don't know if I really want to work on my singing to play my voice like an instrument, but I just wanted to feel free to sing. And actually I found something great. I was part of this church for many years and I would go to these ceremonies where we would sing. It's called Santo Daime, you could look it up. But you sing hymns in Portuguese for like five or six hours. And so you're just singing again and again and again and again and again. So I go to these ceremonies and I would sing for hours and hours and hours and. And I learn all these beautiful songs that were so sweet and I now I sing them to my kids every night before they go to sleep. It's like their lullabies and I feel totally comfortable singing those. But also other stuff. And I'm also okay with like, you know, what song was it? There's some song we were listening to just recently and I was in the house with my kids and I was like trying to hit the note and I'm not like a polished professional singer. I quit on the lesson. So I never really got, you know, so I'm just kind of like, oh, that one's a little out of my range. And I'm okay being off key as I try to hit that range, like, oh, that one's high. Oh, fascinating. Okay, how do I do that? So there's such a level, and I'm just giving these small examples that I think are basic elements of human expression, like dancing and singing and speaking, sharing your voice, sharing you. But whether it's telling stories about yourself or inviting someone into your world, or sharing more about you, you know, the intimate details of your life or whatever, the thing is that makes you self conscious. If you want to be free of it, you got to challenge that inner critic in your head. And then you got to freaking do it. And you got to do it a lot. And if you're looking for another way, if you're looking for the magic bullet, maybe there is one. And there are other techniques. I'll work with people, I'm just sharing a few right now, but I don't think there's any technique that does not also combine with consistently doing the action. So speaking of Action. Let's talk about that now. Time for action. Action. Action. Well, your action step is going to be, well, you could have the dialogue with the critic if you like, but what could you do today that would make you self conscious on purpose? Something powerful happens when you take ownership of this and say, yeah, I'm going to lean into this. Yes, I'm going to make this happen. It's no longer I'm trying to get through life, trying to avoid it. It's like I'm gonna seek this out. All of a sudden it might not feel so bad anymore. All of a sudden you can handle it better because you have shifted. You've entered into a more powerful relationship with life and you're not trying to sneak through and eek through, you're stepping up. And when you do that, your whole body language changes, the responses you get from others change, and your capacity to handle that inner or outer imagined criticism changes too. So what is that thing that makes you self conscious? And today, can you go do it? And then how about the next day? And what about the day after that? What if you consistently did it? What might happen in six weeks or six months? Fantastic. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and so 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.