How to Stop Worrying about Messing Up

Are you afraid of messing something up? Whether it's approaching that attractive woman and starting a conversation? Maybe you're. You're worried of messing it up when you do that, messing it up on the first date, maybe it's speaking up or speaking in front of a group of people, maybe even just telling a story or a joke around other people. And you're afraid of messing it up, doing it wrong, making a fool of yourself. If that fear is happening for you and it's holding you back. Stay tuned for today's episode because I'm going to share some powerful ways for you to be free of that and to feel way more free to just mess up and not have it be that big of a deal.

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about messing up. Yeah, making a mess, making a fool of yourself, just smashing the egg and getting it everywhere and how you can become a lot more relaxed about that, a lot more comfortable with that. And I'm going to share some great stories from my own life about how I was not that comfortable with that and what that was like. And then also maybe some more recent stories of where I noticed that cropping up again. So if you want to go deeper in the show, go to facebook.com SocialConfidence facebook.com SocialConfidence you can like the page there and get updates about new episodes and other things. Also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com, shrinkforthshyguy.com there you can get yourself my free eBook, Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. Super powerful stuff there, including a video training series that I'll send you. So I'm here to help you in any way that I can to maximize your confidence. That ebook is a powerful way to get started. And it's for free. Oh, yes. So do what you will with it. Hopefully you will unleash your confidence and then look out. So today let's talk about a fear of messing up. Is this something now for some people, you might not notice it as that right away. That might be what's underneath at the top level, what you might just be aware of. You know, you can kind of think of our awareness as like a picture of an iceberg where there's the tip of the iceberg that's above the water and that's like what we're aware of at first, but then the huge body, the large majority of the iceberg is underwater. That's like what we're maybe not quite aware of yet. So you might be aware of just feeling nervous about, say, talking to an attractive woman or approaching someone that you think is powerful or has connections or is in a position of authority or maybe just a stranger, a group of people speaking up, doing some sort of public presentation. You might just feel scared, might feel nervous, might feel tense, might worry about it. But if you slow down and really start to look at it, what you might find is that the fear, like, in fact, think about what's one of those things that I mentioned that you're nervous about, tend to avoid or are uncomfortable doing? Just pick one. And if it's not something that I listed, then maybe it's something else. But find something in your life that you tend to be a little, like, you're a little anxious to do. Maybe you get yourself to do it, but you kind of. It has to. You have to sort of white knuckle through it. Now the question I have for you is, well, what are. What is the fear? What are you afraid of? And maybe then it's obvious. Well, I'm afraid of messing up. Maybe it's still not obvious. Maybe it's like, well, I'm afraid they're not going to like me. I'm afraid they're going to reject me. Well, why would they not like you? Why would they reject you? Well, because in some way, either I messed up or I'm not good enough. Those are usually our main things, right? So somewhere in there is this fear of messing it up. Now, sometimes it shows up as like really wanting to do it perfectly. Have you ever noticed that? It's like, what is the exact thing that I need to say? Or you have a presentation and you rehearse it like 4,000 times. You over rehearse it. You're rehearsing it so many times, but you can't stop because you're scared and you're worried about. That's right. Messing it up. So sometimes over preparing is messing it up. Overstudying, worrying and thinking about what's the perfect thing to say. That's all fear of messing up. Fear of messing it up, messing the situation up. And then fear of the response we're going to get from other people. And then fear of what it means about us. Well, if I messed it up, then you know, to use more crude language, which you'll be shocked to hear me use, right? The fear of, well, I'm gonna fuck it up means I'm a fuck up. And that's what we're really scared of. In fact, that's what held me back massively in my life, particularly in my dating life. I had a terrible fear of messing it up. In fact, we're gonna take a quick break right now and then I'm gonna share with you a great story about messing it up in my dating life. Also where I'm noticing it cropping up in my life most recently. And then what I'm super excited about is we're talking about how to let all that go, how to mess up like crazy, possibly even enjoy it, and how to really be a lot more free. So stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this.

Quick question for you. Do you think that working with Dr. Aziz directly could help you accelerate your after personally conquering his shyness, he's gone on to help thousands of others do the same. Starting in March of 2015, you now have a chance to work with him directly in a new total confidence group coaching program. Learn how to take charge of your life, generate confidence at will, and eliminate your fears of rejection and failure. Go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching to find out more.

Welcome back. So messing it up or a Fear of Messing it up in Dating So for many years I was uncomfortable and avoided talking to women that I was attracted to. I would be just really avoidant of them if I did happen to be like kind of somehow smushed into a conversation with a woman that I was attracted to, maybe as a group or, I don't know, friend's friend or something like that, I'd kind of ignore her. I wouldn't interact with her much. Maybe if I did chat with her, I'd be kind of more short and held, reserved, I would say. And sometimes maybe I'd like try to be extra nice and pleasing and smiling and that sort of thing. But definitely not bold, authentic, direct. Didn't approach them, didn't ask women out, none of that stuff. And then I started to learn how to do that. Hey, you can work on your confidence. Hey, you can actually go approach a woman and start a conversation with her. And that's when I realized I am really scared of messing it up. And here's the funny thing about the fear of messing it up. It's this fear that underneath that fear is scarcity. There's a sense that if I mess this up, then it's over. Then I messed. That's my shot. That was my one chance. And that's how I really thought of it with women. Because in my experience, for many years, it was, you know, very few and far between that had opportunities with women, not because there weren't women around, but because I severely limited myself by not taking any action that's super important and worth repeating and worth maybe even writing down. When we're feeling scarcity about something, women, friendships, business opportunities, money, time. When we're feeling scarce, like there's not enough of something, I don't want to mess it up because there's not much. I can't. I don't know what. I don't know when the next one's coming. I don't want to mess it up. That is not an accurate reflection that there's scarcity. What it is is a sign that you're not in a position of ownership in your life where you're saying, I create opportunity in my life. I create chances to talk to people. I can continue to do that. I can continue to create business opportunities, opportunities to make money, opportunities to meet women. I can constantly do that. There's an endless amount because I can create that. That's what. When you're. When you have that mindset, you're not in scarcity. But I lived in scarcity. I didn't know anything about that. And so some of the first teachings I got about how to go out and do it, I noticed before I'd go talk to a woman, I get especially nervous about, well, I don't want to try something different because what if I mess it up? You know, these guys are suggesting I was learning some pickup artist stuff at that time. That was when I was first starting out on my journey of confidence. And they were suggesting things like being way more bold than I'd ever been. I remember one guy was suggesting. This was David d' Angelo was suggesting, say to her, well, if nothing else, we can just be friends. And that was his way of kind of like flipping the selector. So it's not like you're selecting me if we're gonna be friends or not. I'm selecting you. And there's all kinds of head games and stuff that I learned from those guys, a lot of which I don't actually teach guys to do now. Teach them how to be just way more confident in themselves so that all that stuff naturally happens. And speaking of that, by the way, if you want to learn all that stuff, check out my program, 30 days to dating Mastery. And I got some emails about this recently. It's a little ways out, but October 14th through 16th, 2016, is the unlimited Dating Confidence boot camp. I am super excited about that one. That's we're gonna take a small group of guys and really dive deep into creating unlimited confidence in your dating life to be able to approach women anywhere, do all this stuff. So I digress. But I was worried about being more bold, trying new things, because I didn't want to mess it up. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever held yourself back from trying something new with a woman or another setting because you're afraid of messing it up? Here's the thing, and I gotta thank David d' Angelo for this as well. He said, you have interactions to burn. And that really stuck with me. You have interactions to burn. And I really started to adopt that. It's like, you know what? There's an endless stream of opportunities for me to practice. And here's the thing, though, you might say, well, no, Aziz, there's not. I work in an office. There's six women in that office. You know, if I try something bold or outrageous or whatever, then you know that's going to get around, and then I'm not gonna have any other opportunities. Let's say you want to date one of those women. Or let's say you go to a particular workout class and there's five women in that workout class, and you're like, ah, I can't try anything bold there because those are the only five women. And here's the thing. Remember what I said about scarcity? That's coming from a limited pool of options because of a lack of bold action, a lack of being a creator in your life. And here's how you become a creator in your dating life. In every area, but especially your dating life. Expand your horizons. Everywhere you see women is an opportunity to meet women. I'll let that one sink in for a second. Everywhere you see women is an opportunity to meet women. Where do you see them? At the store? At a coffee shop? On the sidewalk? In the elevator? On the rooftop? In the subway? On the bus? Pulled up next to you at a stoplight? I mean, come on, everywhere, right? Every single one of those is an opportunity. And when you start to see it that way, scarcity disappears. And guess what else disappears? That's right. Your fear of messing up. Because really, think about that. Let's say you knew that there was going to be another opportunity later that week. And then on the weekend, let's say there's one particular woman that you want to talk to. And you're gonna talk to her on a Monday. And let's say you knew that no matter how that went, you were gonna have another opportunity to talk to another woman on Wednesday and another woman on Friday and two women on Saturday and another one on Sunday and on and on and on. Would you really be so worried about messing up the Monday one? Probably not, right? In fact, would you be willing to just try some stuff out in the Monday conversation? Because, hey, you know, maybe it could work. Well, maybe not. But that's okay. I can try something else different on Wednesday so you can have an abundance of opportunities. And when you really see that, that you have abundance of opportunities, then your fear of messing up can start to dissolve. So this is fascinating. The dating stuff was something I dealt with a lot. And then I, you know, gained a lot more ownership and a lot of abundance. And now I'm married, so I'm not really looking at, you know, my dating life in that same way. But I noticed the same thing happening recently. So over the years I've grown my reach and impact and being able to find more people to help and serve. And one way I do that is through emailing people all kinds of stuff. Mostly a lot of free trainings and ebooks and all these other things. And sometimes though, I email people opportunities to come, say, do a live weekend with me or get one of my life changing programs. And I noticed that when I was sending those emails, I felt very like, ugh. Even just interacting with my email list in general, I noticed more social anxiety coming up. Oh, am I sending too many emails? Are they, you know, are people upset with me? Are people gonna want to unsubscribe? You know, do people not want this product and they're upset with me or they're not interested in my weekends or like, shut up and just give me free stuff? You know, all these fears about how people are going to respond. And then from that I realized the hesitation. I don't know if I want to message as much. And guess what? A fear of messing it up. Oh no, if I send too many, then I've ruined everything. Now here's the thing. Anytime your mind is saying, oh, no, I've ruined everything, or I could ruin everything, hopefully an alarm bell goes off in your mind that says scarcity, Scarcity. Not real. Not real. Because then you want to take a step back and say, okay, I'm not in an ownership position right now. I've forgotten that I'm the creator of my life. And so I had to remind myself of that same thing I said, you know what? There are endless opportunities. Some people might get upset and leave. That's okay. Thousands of more people are gonna come because you're providing an amazing service. You're helping a lot of people. You're providing tons of valuable stuff for free. So of course lots of people are gonna show up. So just have at it. Send too many emails, promote the wrong thing at the wrong time just because here's the thing, and this is the biggest secret. In fact, you know what? I'm gonna share the biggest secret with you in just a moment after we take this next break. Then I'm gonna share the biggest secret I about how to let go of your fear of messing up and why messing up is actually your pathway to unlimited confidence and success. Stay tuned. We'll be back right after this.

Are you sure about this, J dawg? This line to get in is so long. I know, man. I already told you we don't need to get in. All the ladies we could ever want are. Are here outside of the club. Check it. Hey, ladies, what's up?

Ew, don't talk to us.

See what I'm talking about, man? They're everywhere and looking to hook up. Look over there. You see that girl standing all by herself? Go talk to her, man. Oh, come on, Wizzy. You got this.

All right. Hey, what's up?

Uh, hey there.

You want to come back into the corner and hang out with me and my friend?

No. I mean, no, thanks. I'm waiting for a friend. I have to go stand somewhere else now.

What happened, man?

She didn't want to hang out?

Forget about it, man.

We got all night. Tired of struggling to meet women and go on dates? Are you ready to get this part of your life really handled? If you go to 30days to datingmastery.com you can get a free ebook I've written called 7 Ways to Start conversations with women Anywhere, anytime. It'll give you guidance on how to build your confidence, how to connect with women in a variety of settings, and to do that all by being yourself without weird pickup lines or game tactics. To go to 30daystodatingmastery.com now to to get your ebook and find out how to transform this area of your life. Welcome back. So here is why messing up is super important and super valuable, actually. Because the faster you can mess up and make mistakes, the faster you're going to master whatever it is that you're doing. Again, that one might seem kind of simple and obvious. And like, I'm not saying Anything that, I don't know, profound or something like that. But if you really live that, if you really get that in your core, in your body, and then take action from that place, as a result, your whole world will open up, your confidence will explode. The results that you get, the responses that you get, the business opportunities you have, the income that you can make, the relationships that you can have, all of that will transform when you realize that the faster I can mess up, the faster I can get what I want. And here's why. Because the faster you're messing up means the more action you're taking, the more action you're taking, the more quickly you're gonna get results. So let's take the dating example. If, let's say you want to be able to meet women and talk to them, connect with them, and then go on a date, you know, get a number or an email or Facebook or whatever, you know, whatever you crazy kids are exchanging these days, and then go hang out with her if you wanted to be able to do that. And maybe right now, you're not very good at that. Maybe you're not that great at starting a conversation with a woman. That's why you need to get 30 days to dating mastery. But maybe you're not that good at starting a conversation with a woman. Or you can talk to women, but then you're afraid to ask them out, or you ask them out, but then they never seem to respond to your. You know, you ask for their number or whatever, but they never seem to follow up to your texts or responses, and you kind of get the runaround. I mean, who knows? Maybe somewhere it's breaking down and you are not having the dating success that you want. So then you realize that maybe I need to try something different. I need to do something different. And the way to get really good at connecting with women and getting dates and finding to be able to create an amazing relationship that you want with a girlfriend or a partner or wife, whatever it is that you want. The way to get there. Well, let me ask you this. Let's say you talk to one woman a month, and you were sure not to mess up. How long before you had an amazing relationship with your new girlfriend? You're talking to one woman a month, and you're very cautious about messing up. How long? I don't know. This is not an exact science. I don't have an actual number, but I don't know. A year, maybe 12 women over, you know, I don't know how many of those you get dates with. If you're especially worried about getting messing up, but maybe a year, maybe longer, I don't know. Okay, now, what if you talk to three women a week? So you went from one a month to three a week. That is 12 conversations a month with women. Even if you're still afraid of messing up and doing exactly what you were doing before that was sort of working or not working that well, you'd still be getting a lot better. And then, and here's the power of messing up. Let's say you said, I'm gonna have three conversations with three different women each week, and I'm gonna do all kinds of different stuff and mess up a lot. So I'm gonna try being more outspoken. I'm gonna try making more jokes. I'm gonna try teasing her. I'm gonna try making different kinds of eye contact. I'm gonna try, you know, doing different stuff with my body language. I'm gonna try maybe not being so worried about offending her. I'm gonna, you know, you just keep trying all kinds of stuff. And you did that three times a week, every week. How quickly would you get good at talking to women and getting dates? It could be a matter of weeks, a couple months tops. And so that's the power of messing up. And I saw that in my own life and my own experience when it came to dating and relationships. So then as soon as I noticed that fear, that was at the beginning of 20. I really noticed it at the beginning of, let's see, here's the end of 2014. So then I said, okay, 2015, guess what I'm going to do? Interact with everyone on my email list, a shit ton. So I started sending out a lot more messages, sending a lot more things, all kinds of stuff. I don't know, maybe some people were upset and, I don't know, everything seemed to be going great as well, right? So I started getting better and better and learning more. And I'm still, and it's at this point now, it's 2016, I'm still messing up all the time. I'm still, I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, I don't know how you know exactly, ever exactly what you're doing because there's so many different people, right? But I know that I'm going to keep interacting, keep putting things forward, keep trying, keep doing things, keep learning, keep messing up. Because I'm in the camp of, well, instead of talking to a woman three times a week, what if you talk to one woman a day? I Mean, it gets fascinating if you think about how you can accelerate this stuff by just taking more action and messing up more. I mean, little kids learn that know this implicitly. Anything if you watch how a kid learns language. I have a two and a half year old son right now, and our little guy is about almost five to six months somewhere in that. About five and a half months. And they're both still messing up a lot with language. The older guy, Zaim, he'll mess up with tense, verb tense. He'll say, like, it broke. And you say, oh, you mean did it break, Right? So he's made, but he says it all the time. He's just making mistakes. Our young guy, little Monty, he'll just like, you know, his version of talking is right? And that sound coming out of his mouth, he's quote, messing up whatever, you know, word he's eventually going to say. But he does it all the time. He's vocalizing all the time. And so you kind of think of it this way. Like you have this huge range of options. Hold your hands up right now look at your. And wiggle your fingers. Look at your fingers and wiggle your fingers. And you see there's 10 fingers right there, right? Those are 10 different ways that you could do something, that you could talk to a woman, that you could try this project, that you could take a risk, that you could just do something in a different way. Now, some of those ways are not gonna get the result that you want. And some of them are. So here's what you want to do. Do 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5, then 6, then 7, then 8, then 9, then 10. You want to experiment, you want to try them out, you want to learn. You want to do it as fast as possible and learn as you're going. So you're not just doing, you know, number six, number six, number six, number six. This approach is bound to work sometimes, you know, notice the feedback you're getting and then take new action, Take new action, keep messing up. Because here's the thing, if you have those 10 fingers right, 10 different approaches, four of them are gonna be totally messing up, not gonna get you what you want. One of them is gonna be a big mess up. Two of them are gonna be like, meh, okay, something happened. And three are gonna be fucking home runs. Three are gonna be your big score, your big opportunity, your big interview, your big upgrade, your new business, your bigger sales, your breakthrough experience, your breakthrough moment. Three of those are gonna be the amazing conversation that leads to an amazing Date that leads to an amazing relationship that leads to the love of your life right there. One of those 10. And the only way to find out. And you're not gonna know which one ahead of time. That's an illusion. Let that go. You're not gonna know which one ahead of time. You just gotta do it. You got to stumble your way through it. And you can learn, you can model, you can get specific guidance from other people who've done it before. But at the end of the day, you're gonna mess up yourself. That's how you're gonna learn. That's how you're gonna grow. That's how you're gonna do it. Let's talk about how you're gonna do it right now with today's action step.

Time for action.

Your action step for today is to mess up. Find an opportunity this week to mess up. Now here's how you're gonna do that. In order to mess up, you have to take action. And you might have to take action multiple times because the first time you try something, you might not mess up. Maybe it goes all accordingly to plan, in which case you failed. You have to do another one. You gotta mess up. And I don't know what a mess up is for you. Maybe it's you say something and and someone gives you a strange look because they don't get it. Or you make a joke and no one laughs. That could be your mess up. Maybe it's trying something in your business or in your company and it not going well. Maybe it's approaching someone that you find attractive and starting a conversation and asking them out and them saying no. Maybe that's messing up whatever it is for you, you know, and you'll know when you do it. And it might not feel. You might be like, oh, that felt bad. Just remember, go back and listen to this episode if you need to. But you want to really start to instill in your mind that yes to messing up, the more I mess up, the better. How fast can I do it? So that's your action step for today. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're enjoying the show, if you're getting a kick out of it, if it's benefiting you in your life, please go to itunes and give it a five star rating. And also go to Shrink for the shy guy to go deeper. And get yourself a copy of that eBook, Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. Thank you for joining me today. You are awesome. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are.

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.