How Your Mindset Shapes Your Life

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 second, 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 and welcome to 2019. Whoa. You excited? Do you like the new year? I don't know. Maybe you do, maybe not. It doesn't matter because the new year is a fantastic opportunity to create something different in your life. And that's what I want to talk about. In the last episode at the end of 2018, we talked about ways to envision what you want for this year. So you haven't listened to that one. You may want to listen to that one later. But that's all well and good, envisioning what you want, but more importantly is how are you gonna do it? How are you gonna make this year awesome? Make this the year, the year that you want. And there are many. I mean, that's what this show is all about, right? Growth and change. And there's so many things out there, so many resources that can help you with that. But one which I think is extremely valuable is it's almost like an underpinning, it's a foundation, and it determines whether you even use the other resources that are out there in the world. It determines what actions you take. It even determines the results of the actions that you take and whether you have success or not. And it comes down to a fundamental stance that you have towards life. This has gotten a lot of press in the last couple years. There's a well known author named Carol Dweck, who's a psychologist, who wrote about it. And I want to talk about this today because it's going to help you learn something about yourself, help you see others a lot more clearly, and help you feel like you have more power to create the life that you want. So what are we talking about? We're talking about what is your underlying mindset. And the psychologist Carol Dweck breaks it down into simply two categories. Fixed or growth. Fixed or growth. You have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. And this is really interesting. When it comes to kids, when it comes to adults, when it comes to work and business, it comes to your personality and your personal life. And so the top level summary is people that have a fixed mindset see humans as having set characteristics that are trait or set characteristics that are set like traits There. That's what happens when you combine two sentences into one. So for example, intelligence is something that's generally set and that's your intelligence that you have. This is your iq. Maybe you can learn a few things and memorize some things. You're not going to be a whole lot smarter than you are right now. And that's how they tend to see people is fixed. And that's how they tend to see themselves as only a set level of intelligence or same thing with personality, right? Like, hey, are you a shy person? Well, then you're just, that's what you are, you're shy. Are you a socially anxious person? Well, then that's how you are. This is who you are. This is your personality. And you can't really do much to change that. That's a fixed mindset. That is in contrast to a growth mindset, which as you can probably guess, is the idea that people grow, that things, qualities of people grow. So your intelligence grows, the more that you build it, the more you strengthen it, the more you practice it. So by doing something repeatedly, by learning something again and again, you become more intelligent. And the same thing for your personality, for your traits, if you act more boldly, more courageously, and activate that again and again and again, then you become more of that kind of person. You become a bolder person, you become a more confident or courageous person. You could probably guess which mindset I have when it comes to people's growth and their potential, right? My whole life is dedicated to helping people activate more confidence. So I know without a shadow of a doubt that the growth model of what people are actually capable of is more true. But that doesn't matter as much as what you believe. Because if someone believes that it's fixed, then they're going to behave very differently and they're not going to take action, they're not going to get results. And so they are going to be fixed in their lives. It doesn't matter if growth is more true and more accurate for the human potential. If you believe it, it's true. Right? There's like famous Henry Ford quote. Whether you believe you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And so this, as you're listening to it, you might Be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, growth, that's right. I'm all about the growth mindset. And that's actually what I thought too, until I started listening more in depth to her book, which is called the New Psychology of Success, if you want to listen to it on Audible or get it on Amazon. But in there, you know, I'm like, oh, obviously, obviously I have a growth mindset, right, Duh. But then as I started to listen to it more, I realized, you know, maybe it's not just a one mindset. I mean, maybe there is an overall mindset that we might have like a center of gravity that we return to. But I feel like it can be moment to moment based upon our emotional state. We can go in and out of these mindsets. And that's what I became really fascinated with. And the subtle ways that, that we can fall into a fixed mindset, even temporarily or maybe only in certain areas of your life. So maybe you're like, yeah, my intelligence at work. I mean, yeah, give me new projects, I'll take them on. I can learn stuff. I never used to be able to know how to do X, Y and Z, and now I do. So here we go. So you have a growth mindset at work, but then someone's like, hey, you want to learn how to improve your social skills and be a better conversationalist? And you're like, well, I'm not really good at talking to people. And right there in that instance, there's a fixed mindset. Do you see that? So, and speaking of that, talking to people, this is extremely relevant because in a couple of months we're doing the first event of the year of 2019, supremely confident conversation Master. And I'll talk more about it in the next episode because we're going to be doing an early bird special for the tickets. So get on my list if you're not already on my list. You can go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com SocialConfidenceCenter.com to sign up for that. You also get an ebook and tons of amazing free videos and training and content. So there'll be an opportunity to get the early bird discount through that as well. And I'll talk more about that next week. But a chunk of the first day of the three day event is all focused on helping people activate more of a growth mindset. Because the biggest obstacle to everyone there, and maybe you'll be there too this year. That would be awesome. I'd love to see you. But the biggest obstacle to your conversation confidence and Any other type of confidence is not a fundamental lack of ability. It's not a, you're not good at talking to people. Oh, you're awkward. Oh, I don't get jokes, or I'm not very funny or whatever the stories are. In fact, what are those stories for you? What are your fixed mindsets? And what's amazing when you think about it is like, again, it can be so nuanced. It's not just like, oh, I have a fixed mindset. It's like, okay, I. Even within conversation confidence, I see some things as fixed as some things as growable and changeable. So perhaps, oh, yeah, I could be a better storyteller and share more dynamically if I were to work on that and train that and so on and so forth. And so maybe you do think that that's a growth potential there. So you have a growth mindset in that aspect. But then at the very same time, you might say, yeah, but I'm not a funny person. Like, I'm just not that funny. And you can't, you know, sure, I can memorize some jokes, I can learn some jokes, but you can't learn to be funny. Right? And these are just examples here. So you might think you can learn to be funny or that you can't learn better storytelling, but even within conversation confidence, there's that we have a fixed oh, that's fixed and that's growth, and that's fixed and that's growth. And we don't walk around saying to ourselves, oh, yes, I have a fixed mindset when it comes to humor, but not when it comes to storytelling. I have a growth mindset there. Like, we don't have that level of awareness. We just don't speak up in that situation because we think our story's boring. We just don't make the joke or take the risk to be funny because we think people aren't going to laugh. So we're just living the consequences of our underlying beliefs. Does that make sense? I'm gonna say that one again, because it's super powerful. You're gonna be you and me and all of us are living the consequences. Our life around us and the way that we behave, the way that we live is a consequence of our. Of these underlying beliefs. So it's helpful to uproot them. Where do you perceive yourself as fixed and where do you see growth as possible? And that's why we spend the whole first half of the first day really activating a growth mindset, because then people are willing to try new things. Do New things, practice new things. And when we have them do a ton of exercises and activities and games and things at the Conversation Mastery or the supremely confident Conversation Master event, then they grow and flourish rapidly because these qualities are in them. Because I know the truth that you can grow and you can grow rapidly if you just put in the right environment and you have the right mindset. And so, yeah, I'll share more next week. But if you are drawn, you've been listening to this podcast for a while. You've grown from listening to this podcast or reading my books, other things. The next level is going to be a live event because the breakthroughs and the progress and the growth that people have at those is. You can't even compare it to a book or a podcast. It's exponentially greater. And it's really fun to watch that. And we've had all kinds of people who are peripherally involved in the event make comments. I'm talking about hotel staff event, you know, people who work in the event crew on the hotel who are bringing chairs in and stuff. We have, you know, in refreshing the water and that sort of thing. We have the guy who shoots some video at the end, who comes in on the Sunday, all kinds of people that are just, you know, they're not there to participate. They're just helping out in some form or other. And they'll comment, they'll be like, wow, what are you doing there? What's happening? And I tell them, and they're like, oh, wow. And they want to be around. They want to find out because of the massive growth that people are experiencing and how open they become over those three days. So I would love to share that experience with you. Come join me. It's going to be awesome. And is one of the things that stops you from coming to these events or doing anything, taking other risks in your life, practicing the stuff that you learned from this podcast is one of the things that stops you. A subtle, fixed mindset. Well, I just knocked. I don't think it would really work for me. Yeah, I don't know. You know, as I was listening to the book, I realized, you know, fixed mindset, what it has as a quality or the result of having a fixed mindset is learned helplessness. Because if you believe something is fixed and you cannot change it, why on earth would you try? And that's a belief that I had for many years around my attractiveness to women for dating and relationships. And there was a physical component to it, but there was also just a vague sense of Inadequacy. There's something about me. I'm not interesting, I'm not charming, I'm not confident, I'm not funny. Well, I thought I was funny, but it still wouldn't matter. It wouldn't offset all of the other inadequacy or lack that I had. And so when I really was in the strongest period of believing that I did not take much action. And that's the learned helplessness. You might know this by now. So I'm going to give a very brief overview of what learned helplessness is. So if you do know, this will just be a quick refresher. But basically, learn helplessness is the phenomenon where you put a human or an animal in a circumstance and when they perceive that they can't change things, they stop trying. The classic example is they were shocking dogs, puppies with an electric floor in these experiments where the dog was in a room and it couldn't get out and the floor was shocked and it just kept on getting zapped. And eventually it just laid down on the ground because it's done trying to scramble around and get away. It can't get away. And they take the same dog and they put it in a similar looking room. Only in this room, half the floor is electrocuted and half the floor is not. So if the dog simply just took several steps to the right, it would be fine. But they put it on the floor, it gets zapped, and what does it do? It instantly lays down. It doesn't even search. Why? I've already searched before. There's no way out. So it takes the last circumstances and brings it forward into the future to the next circumstances and then brings it forward to the next one and it becomes a learned behavior. That's the exact same thing that we do as humans. So wow, that woman is not interested in me. No women and the. It's not like I even approached a lot of women and got a lot of rejection and then gave up. Well, the floor's electrocuted. There's no way out of this. It wasn't even that I didn't even try. I remember some of the criteria that taught me that I wasn't attractive was just really, I mean, grabbing at threads here. I remember one, I was at a middle school dance and the very first middle school dance I went to, I was like super outgoing and danced and had a great time and then felt afraid of being made fun of for being so out there and for dancing that I kind of started to shell up, get more quiet, more shy, more Inhibited. And so from then on, every time I went to a dance, I was really shy and inhibited. But anyway, some dance during my seventh and eighth grade year, I don't remember when I'm standing around with a couple of guys and the guys who are scared to dance but trying to look cool, I'm not scared. I just don't wanna. And we're talking, we're hanging out, and all of a sudden, like, a couple of young women, I guess they're girls I don't know what age, 12 years old, are coming over to bring some of these guys to the dance floor. And I remember there was a girl named Cameron and a girl named Abby, and I don't remember the rest of their names. And they all go, and they all grab a guy to bring to the dance floor. And no girl grabs me to bring to the dance floor. So I'm standing there and like, there's maybe one other guy left. And then two or three had been taken. And in that moment, I was like, oh, I guess I'm not attractive. I guess I'm not desirable. So that was one of the equivalent of the floor shocks for the puppy, right? But it only took a couple of those, like, two. And then I was like, well, why even try? Because I know I'm not attractive. So where did you learn, first of all, where do you have a fixed mindset? And then second of all, where did you learn that shit? If you really start to think about it, like I'm describing that in detail to you right there about middle school learnings, it is. It's a house built on cards. It's fragile, it's nothing. It's fabrication. It's made up. And this is one of the biggest insights you can have around fixed versus growth mindset is that the idea that you are fixed is absolutely absurd. I like to call it lazy brain. You're not even letting yourself look for solutions. You're not even willing to take action and try things. It's like, man, won't work anyway, whatever. And it's just like kind of this lethargy, this laziness to it. But the truth is you are growth, you are fluid. Like, why would anything be fixed? Why couldn't. I mean, is there think about how fluid your body is, how fluid your cells are? And so it's like if you were to pick up a heavy weight and lift it over your head and do, I don't do shoulder press or whatever, and you were to consistently do that for several months, would your shoulders be stronger? Yes, there's no debate about that. I mean, you can get into the technique and your diet and all these things to try to maximize gains and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But overall, you strengthen a muscle, you grow. If you ran consistently, say you ran. Say you're not running at all. And you said, okay, I'm gonna run 20 minutes twice this week, just slow jog for 20 minutes twice this week. And the next week you did a slow jog three times. And the next week you ran three times, but you did it for 25 minutes or 30 minutes. And you progressively, over the period of three months, got to where you're running three or four miles, you know, three, four times a week. Would you be stronger at running? Would your cardiovascular system, your lungs, everything be functioning better? Would your legs be stronger? Would everything be stronger in the whatever is used from running after that month period or two month period? Yes. And so why is your boldness or your capacity to be vulnerable or your ability to tell a story or share about what's going on in your life or be funny or all that stuff? Why would any of that be fixed? It's not. It's just uncomfortable. And so we don't lean into that discomfort. Like it's uncomfortable to go running if you haven't been running much. It's uncomfortable to lift a weight over your head if you've never really done that. But we know, oh, yeah, I'll get there. I'll get those superhero shoulders. They work out more. We have something that's driving us. We have a belief in the growth potential, so we do it. But for some reason, people form a story. I don't have that potential. It won't work for me. And so we have a fixed mindset when it comes to our confidence, our conversation abilities, our capacity to be attractive or funny or charming or interesting or flirting, any of that stuff. But it is absolutely 100% just as fluid. So instead of thinking of yourself as a rock that still does change, albeit very slowly, at geological pace, think of yourself as a flame, like a candle flame. It's like, you look at it, you're like, yeah, there's that candle. There's that flame on top of the candle. Is it the same flame as when you looked at it a minute ago? Well, yeah, there it is. It's still there, but it's not right. It's constantly moving. It's constantly in motion. Another beautiful metaphor of this that I learned from Alan Watts is to think of yourself as a whirlpool in a river. It's like, yeah, there's that whirlpool. It'll be there tomorrow. But it's different water. In the whirlpool. You're constantly changing, evolving and growing. You are not fixed. And any story that says that you are, that you tell yourself or that someone else tells you is lazy. It's lazy brains. And it's discomfort avoidance. And that's what I tried to shatter in my book, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I go layer by layer through the excuses that we have about why the world is out there and won't give us what we want and why it's not possible out there in the world. And then beneath that is our stories that we have about ourselves. I'm not enough. I'm not capable. I can't do it. And then beneath that is fear. Always. And fear doesn't necessarily always manifest as, like, terror and panic attacks and shaking in your boots and can't breathe and sweating. Fear often manifests as avoidance and resistance. Like, I just don't feel like it. I don't wanna. And behind that is fear. But we don't even feel the fear because we don't even get close to trying it. So, for example, you wanna go out and interact with those people or try that thing? Nah, I just don't wanna. But if you were to go do it, you would feel more intense fear. Maybe your heart would start beating or you start to feel more nervous. So we avoid it all. We stay in our stories, our fixed stories, and then we don't even try. Of course you don't do that, right? Certainly not. Look, we all do on some level, in some places. That's what I was talking about earlier, that we can get into more of a fixed mindset state, emotional state. And you don't stay there. Maybe you just have that fixed mindset for an hour or two or a day, and then you come back. And that's the ultimate goal, is to keep coming back to a growth mindset. In fact, that's gonna be your action step for today. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to notice what are some of the areas that you have a fixed mindset. Subtle things, maybe. Subtle aspects of confidence building or your conversation skills or your potential for love and romantic connection or your career. Oh, we didn't get into career in this episode too much. But, man, how big of a fixed mindset do people have in their career? What they're capable of, what profession they can have? And this comes up when I help people who really do want to and ultimately need to make a career change in order to basically come alive again because they've been deadened in their soul from doing something that's not right for them. And it takes a ton of confidence. And this comes up in my Mastermind program and other things that we do where we're helping someone to be able to make that big. It's a big shift. It's scary. And in that process, the fixed mindsets really come out where you see like, oh, but how could I do anything else? I'm so good at blank. I've studied and practiced blank for seven years or 15 years. It's like, okay, well before those 15 years, you didn't do that. You weren't a banker or you weren't a software developer or whatever. Like, you don't even know how to do that. And then now look at where you are. Look, you learned that. So the truth is that you're afraid of needing to take the time to relearn something and what that effect might have on your life, on your finances. And that's reasonable. That's okay. We can talk about those fears and how to work with those realities and have the confidence to pursue that and even look at the end game of what you could benefit from doing that. But let's not tell ourselves a lie that it's not possible and you couldn't learn something else because that's just a fixed mindset. So that's. I mean, we could go way deep into career stuff, but where does it show up for you? Find one or two, root out one or two fixed mindsets. And maybe, you know, you're so on it. You're such the owner of your life. It only comes out when you're in a certain emotional state. You're tired or you get rejected or whatever and you feel bad. And then you go into the fixed mindset. So notice when does it come up. And then of course, second part of the action step is to what would the growth mindset version of that be? How can you activate a growth mindset in the place where you thought it was fixed? Challenge that fixed mindset and create the growth mindset. Because it's not just gonna serve you better and get better results in your life. It's actually true. Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. And if you wanna find out more about the conversation master event that I've been talking about in this episode, go to my live events page on the website. So go to socialconfidencecenter.com socialconfidencecenter.com. there's an Events tab at the top of that page and then the Conversation Master Event will be right at the top there. So click that you can find out more information. You should be able to get the early bird that's going to be going up until I think it's about a week or two from now, January 10, January 16, something like that. It'll stay on the webpage, so go check that out. I would love to work with you in person until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. 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.