It's Hard...And It's Worth It

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about you becoming more confident, more assertive, more bold, more free, more expansive, more adaptable, more creative, more successful, whatever it is, the more that you're growing towards as you're listening to this show. For that you're. The term is a little overused, but working on yourself. I'm not a big fan of that term. But you are attempting to grow and to learn and to expand, to have more, create more, do more, experience more, give more. And really, if we were to sum it up into a sentence, to live your life more fully on your terms. Right. Just want to make sure we're on the same page. I'd imagine that when it comes to this show, you might want to break through shyness or social anxiety, but what are you breaking through to what's on the other side? Well, it's a more free version of you, A more alive version of you. More expansive version of you. Right. Well, I'm here to tell you that that's hard. I know that's not what we want to hear in this day and age, but what's the silver bullet? What's the magic? Is there a meme? Is there a meme I could look at on my phone that would make it easy? No, unfortunately not. And that's the challenge. And I think my goal here is not to discourage you, actually. There can be moments of ease. There can be a moment of victory. There can be a moment where it just feels flows. And you probably felt those moments, too. And there's moments where it's hard and there's moments where you feel lost or hopeless or overwhelmed, like it's not going to work, like you're stuck this way. And I'm here to be real with you. I mean, I've seen thousands of people through the Internet, through emails, we get through video comments, through live events, through smaller group programs that I run for a year or two or three and my own journey. And I've seen that, oh, this is possible. It's possible for you to become a more bold, confident version of you. I have no doubt in my mind of that. Even if we haven't met yet, even if we haven't talked yet, I know this is possible for you. I've seen people who were mildly shy become a lot more outgoing. I've seen people who've never dated virgin think there's something wrong with me to not have had sex at this age, not have kissed a woman at this age who are married now. Actually, clients of mine I can think of and in phenomenal relationships had a number of dating experiences before that. I know people who were agoraphobic who had a hard time literally leaving their house, who are now thriving. One of them's running a company. I mean, if that's not total transformation, I don't know what is. So what do you do when it gets hard? That's what this episode is about. What do you do when it gets hard? It's not always hard, but sometimes it is, right? When does it become hard? Well, maybe you have a setback. Maybe you put yourself out there and you get rejected and it hurts. Maybe you notice some pattern you're doing again. Oh, man. I brought this person, this kind of person to my life again or created this kind of dynamic where I'm pleasing them and they're taking advantage of me again. Or I was timid and I wanted to speak up in that meeting or wherever, and I didn't. Again. You know, whatever your again is. For me, it was a lot of like, I'm gonna go talk to that person. I'm gonna go speak up in this, you know, larger group environment, or I'm gonna talk to that woman, or I'm gonna put myself out there. And then I would hesitate, I would talk myself out of it, and then I'd be really critical of myself afterwards, which, you know, what does that do to your self esteem and your confidence? Improve it or not. Right. So that was the pattern I did again. And whatever it might be, when you bump up against that frustration, that pain, that rejection, that hurt, that is a key moment. That's a hard moment. What makes it hard? The emotion makes it hard. Right. It's just painful. It's painful to see someone in a relationship laughing. And you feel not only single, but like the people that you want are not interested in you. That's painful to see something that you want that you don't have. What makes it more painful is the story or the thoughts you have as well, right? This is never going to happen. I'm never going to be able to do this. I'm never going to find anybody because there's something wrong with me. Which means it's not just, oh, I have to look for a while until I find someone. It's that I'll never find anybody. I don't have what it takes to succeed in career or work or business at the highest level or the level that I really want. I don't have what it takes to pursue the kind of meaningful work that feels like it's my purpose, or at least more engaging to me. I have to stay here in this job where I don't really feel engaged. But this is it. Because this is as good as I get, as good as I can do, because this is as good as I am. This is who I am. This is how it is. And all those stories, they make it even harder. And then when it's hard, what do you do? Do you give up now? I don't mean give up as in you unsubscribe from this podcast and take all the books of mine or other people's that you've bought and throw them in a barrel, bin, a burn barrel and just burn them. I don't mean that kind of dramatic giving up. It's more of like an internal deflating of a balloon. Like, and you just let that critic inside take another foot, another yard, another mile in your mental space and your terrain inside of your psyche and it says, now I own you and I tell you how it is. And the voice of doubt gets stronger and you get more hopeless about the future. That's what a lot of people do when it gets hard. Another thing we do when it gets hard is self pity blaming. We're upset, right? We're just like, it's the tantrum. That's really how you can best sum it up. No, it's not. Who are we tantrum to? I don't know, God, life, the universe, anyone else who will listen. We blame it on your spouse, your boss, your co workers, your kids, your pets, the traffic they out there, the politicians, the bankers, the geopolitical things, the economy, yourself, blame and blame and blame. And then like, why isn't it so hard for me? This is the self pity part, by the way, in case you're not familiar with that. Maybe you're a real stand up kind of pull yourself up by the bootstraps person. You never have done this But I think most of us, when no one's around maybe, and maybe when people are around, we go into self pity. It's so, it's like the martyr, right? It's so hard for me. Why is it harder for me? Why does other people. I used to do this all the time. I used to live in this. Like, look at him, he's so attractive and women love him. It's not fair. Oh, look at him. He's, you know, he's really, you know, he had a lot of, he could play sports. I had a lot of body pain, right? Like, oh, look at him, he could play sports and I can't. That's why he's happier and more successful. And I'm laughing now because I find it sort of humorous when I do go into that state. And yes, I do still go into all of these states, whether it's self pity or hopelessness or anything. And if you're listening to this show thinking I'm gonna get so confident, so confident that I never feel bad again and I never get hopeless again and doubt never beats me down, well, I'm not your man. If you're looking at that. You gotta find a different show where they promise that kind of stuff. Maybe some NLP show. NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. There's a lot of cool tools in that and I use it with clients and I infuse it. There's a lot of conversational hypnosis. Really, really good stuff. But NLP has got a bit of a egomaniacal marketing department. Now it doesn't have a marketing department. I'm saying that kind of tongue in cheek here because NLP is a change modality and it's, you know, anyone can learn it and then share about it. So it's not like one person marketing it. But traditionally NLP was a lot of like we will fix anything in five seconds. You know, bring me a person with a phobia and I will cure their phobia in two seconds. And you know, some of the techniques are useful. That one I found I took a little bit of like resistance to because you know, it's cure a social phobia in one session. That's what I would question. Now I can, through working with people and using not only NLP but a bunch of other tools and just honestly just being who I am, really. I don't even know how I do it. I can help people get into a very confident state for sure. Is their social phobia gone forever? I don't see it that way I see it as more of a process. They have to retrain their whole nervous system. How long have they been practicing that old way? 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. You can get someone in a different state and it's going to reformulate. So they got to do it again and they got to do it again and they got to be empowered to take it on themselves to go pursue that again and again and again and be curious about their own growth. And then they're going to take action just like you are. And then guess what? It's going to get hard. It's going to get hard and they're going to fail and they're going to feel stuck and they're going to feel hopeless. And I do too. And when I go into that tantrum self pity state, sometimes I get totally sucked into it. For the most part I'm kind of aware as well. I'll even name it like I'm having a tantrum right now and that's okay. And then afterwards I find it humorous. There's self love there, hopefully you can hear it, right? It's being on your own side and so hopefully you can be humorously amused and loving with that. And perhaps that's increased for me. Having young children, right, and seeing all their tantrums and being with them, you know, over eight years now with little kids and just kind of guiding them through it like, okay. And it is kind of, you know, amusing their tantrums, it's. There's a sweetness to it, right? Like I don't take it super seriously. I'm not like he hit his brother and now he wants to hit him back. And this is a tragic event. I'm just kind of like, no boys doing their thing. My wife calls that the circle of pain. When one hurts the other and the other hurts the other and there's the blame back and forth and they want to keep it going. Humans do the circle of pain, man. Adults do it. National leaders of countries, nation states do it. It's a human thing. In any case, there's the self pity, there's the tantruming, blaming, there's the discouraged, hopeless. And then when we're in that state, especially the self pity, we beg, we plead, we implore the universe or the powers that be to make things easier. Come on, why does this have to be so hard for me? And that right there is the moment, right now is a moment where you can change everything. Because you're going to have hard moments, you're going to have regression, you're Going to have things not go the way that you want. And when they do, you have a choice. Even before they do, you have a choice. You have a choice right now. You can choose to remember this when you go into one of those states. And the thing to remember is it's not about wanting it to be easier. It's about you becoming greater and more and stronger and the next version of you who can handle this much better. And then it does become easier. Right? Do you see the distinction there? It might sound like I'm saying the same thing, but it's a world of different. And it changes your whole physiology, your whole psychology, how you feel, how you think, how you approach the challenge. So, for example, right now, at the time of recording this, we have a second puppy. Now, any of you, I don't know how much I've talked about our first dog, probably when we got him about a year ago, but puppy sagas. I'm not going to bore you with my whole puppy. My puppy sagas, but they're actually fascinating tales. They're not boring, they're amazing. But anyway, we have a dog, he's about a year right now, and we just got a new puppy, like four days ago, five days ago. And we have a plan. There's a reason. I'll get into my reasoning in a future episode, but there's a reason why we wanted one. We wanted this particular dog. We wanted this kind of dog now for our life plan and all that stuff. It's the optimal time if we want a second dog, to get one now. And I know that when you get a puppy, it's chaos, especially if you have two little kids in the house. You have another dog in the house. I'm trying to work from home. It's just chaos, right? So there's a few moments where I haven't eaten. I'm cleaning up diarrhea, poop, dog, diarrhea, poop. You know, trying to break up fights between the two dogs because the second, the older one did not like the. Trying to figure out when I'm gonna record this. Right now, they're both sleeping in crates. It's going phenomenally well. But earlier in this episode, earlier, I had to pause multiple times because one of them was whimpering and go back and rerecord it right now, that might not sound hard to you, but we're doing this while at the same time, like, I'm running a business, we're managing kids, we're trying to help. One of my sons have him struggling with reading. So Helping him learn how to read. We're moving. We're selling a property. We're moving. We're getting ready to move out of this house. It's a lot. It is the most. I have a live event coming up. It is the most that I've ever. And I could just. I'm not gonna list it here and list all my to do lists, but there's more, right? It's just, it's the most I've ever taken on. And I'll have moments where I just wake up in the morning and I'm like, I don't want to go take care of a puppy right now. I want to go to the gym. I want to have silence and space. God damn it. Right? So when I go into that state though, and I notice like, okay, either you, you plead for it to be easier or you get pissed off because you want it to be easier. And I do the latter more. I'm more prone to get like irritated by the demand than I am to like be kind of whiny about it, I guess. You can be irritated, whiny, but I'm more just like pissed off inside, right? Because I'm a man. Because I'm a tough guy. Not really, but anyway, you know, and then I say, okay, how do I want to play this? Do I want. It's not going to get easier. I chose this. And that's one of the first steps I can recommend for you, is to remind yourself, I chose this. Whatever's going on, if you got rejected from trying to ask someone out, you chose that. And that's not a bad thing. That's not a blaming thing. That's a freaking good thing. I chose to be the kind of person who goes after what I want. If you had a business that just failed and tanked, I chose to be the kind of person who would go after and take a risk in life and create a business. If you had a lot of stress or challenge right now, I chose this. You know what? I got a problem with my kid, I got a problem with my spouse. I got a problem with this. I got 99 problems, right? And you're feeling overwhelmed or self pitying or say, hey, look at this. I chose to have a child, I chose to have a spouse. I chose to have this. And that's amazing. Thank God that I have all these things in my life. So some of them could go wrong. Because you have that. You've expanded, you've created, you've bound things and energy and information in place. You could have all these things to live in and experience, whether it's a business or a house or a family or a relationship. And yeah, there's challenges inside of that. And yes, yes, yes, yes. So as you say yes to it, you can get taller, stand taller, breathe more fully, feel the strength in your body. And then you say, you know what? Let me step into the new version of me who can handle this? Because, look, how do you become a stronger you? Let's bring it down to physical exercise, right? You put demand on your muscles through running, through biking, through kayaking, through lifting weights, whatever your jam is, right, you're using those muscles. You use them again later that week or the next day, use them again, use them again, use them again. You got demand on them, and now they grow. And all of a sudden, what was hard two months ago is now easier or easy, right? That's the same way with yourself. You put yourself under demand and there's all kinds of demand because this isn't just physical demand. This is demand on your psyche, your emotions, your life circumstances. So you put yourself into more uncertainty or more exposure to risk or tolerating more rejection. And each time, think of it as a workout. It's strengthening you. And just like physical training doesn't happen overnight, it's like you take on a bunch of challenging circumstances or get rejected, and the next day you're like, ha, ha, I'm a new ver. Done. Well, what if it takes time? What if you grow into that new version and then two months from now, you look back and you're like, whoa. In fact, if you've been growing, I bet you look back and you can see how far you've come. In fact, let's turn that into your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to look back a year from ago, maybe even two or three years ago, and compare that to you now. Can you see how you're a different version of you? If you've been growing now, if you've been kind of stagnant and avoidant of risk, and that's. I'm so glad you found this show. Binge. Listen to this show. Go to theconfidenceuniversity.com theconfidenceuniversity.com or just go to draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and you can get Confidence University through the products tab there. Invest in yourself. Practice this stuff. Grow. Because if you're growing, you look back a year ago, it's going to be like Whoa. That guy couldn't handle nearly what I can handle two, three years ago. Oh man, I'm so much stronger. I'm so much more capable. I am so much more emotionally balanced and fluid or patient or forgiving or confident. And it's only going to continue. And it continues. Why not just because you got older? A lot of people are just getting older, but you're growing. And that because you put demand on your system and you grow. So to sum the title of this episode is it's hard sometimes and it's worth it. So stay in the fight. You're awesome. Until we speak again. We have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are 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 shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to Social Confidence center dot com.