[MASTERCLASS] 3 Signs You're Too Nice...And How To Change It Forever with Dr. Aziz

Like this. Good to see you. Let's get down to business. Welcome. Welcome to your master class called. Let me pull it up here with my fancy tech. Three signs, you're too nice and how to change it forever. I think that second sentence is much more important. Well, much more desired, let's say. I think knowing the signs is very important because it helps you shift. But I really want to highlight that today is not just going to be a laundry list of, here's all the things that you do that are messed up. And then we leave with like, well, knock it off. Right? That doesn't help you. But then. Then you're just like, well, now I have other things to beat myself. I shouldn't do that thing. Oh, I'm doing that thing again. I suck. So I want to highlight the signs and I really want to go deeper. A lot of this stuff out there, I think, is very surface level, and so it'll point to the symptoms. Like a sign that you're too nice is you have a hard time saying no. Okay, that's. That's definitely a sign that you're too nice. But that is the surface layer. And I think one of the benefits of being here today is that you're going to discover what's underneath that surface layer. Because I've been obsessed with this. I. Someone's trying to record, we are going to deny send out a recording. So if you want to record this, don't worry, we're sending out a recording after this. But I've been obsessed with this for niceness, specifically for 14 years. I would say confidence for 20. I'm 41 now. I got obsessed when I was 21 years old. I started helping people when I was 23 years old, 22, even early on. And niceness, though, I didn't even know niceness was a thing. I knew confidence was a thing. Actually, I didn't know that at one point. I just thought I was broken. Why does no one want to be my friend? Why does no one to date me? Why is that person able to just walk over and talk to people? What's wrong with me? That's what I lived in. And then at some point I discovered, wait a minute, I have low confidence. And it might seem kind of obvious that you know that if. If you struggle with that or are healing that. But I didn't. I literally didn't know that. And similarly, with niceness, you might have not known that at a point in your life. And I'll never forget, I remember I joined a men's Group. Like, I have a little lint right there. There we go. Getting polished up. I joined a men's group, and Elliot was his name, who led the group. And after the first meeting with me, he said, you know, you should read this book. I was like, okay, what is it? He's like, well, you strike me as a nice guy. And I was like, oh, thank you. And he's like, well, read the book first before you. Before you thank me. And then I learned. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. All of the problems. And at that point, I'd been having lots of problems in relationships. And I don't just mean romantic relationships, all relationships, including romantic relationships, where I built up enough confidence where I could go approach someone I was attracted to. I could even date them. That was a whole phase of discovery for me. And then I would start to get close to people, and I'd be freaking crazy. I'd be weird. I wouldn't know. I'd want to get away, and then I'd want to move close, and I want to get away. I felt like at work and other places, even though I built up this sort of initial social confidence, I just felt this chronic insecurity and inadequacy and. And a fear of people being upset with me. And it felt like, wait a minute. The tools that I learned to build basic confidence don't apply here. And so I need to learn something else. And that is what I want to share with you today. There's something else to learn. And one key. Powerful. By the way, if you're not taking notes for this, I highly recommend you take notes. I see Fayez had his notebook out when he first came in. Well done, sir. And if you're. Maybe it's a note file, your iPad, sheet of paper, it doesn't matter. Because when you write things down, even if you never go read it again, you will remember it way better. There's all kinds of research about this where it's like four times or six times the recall, just from writing things down, even if you never looked at it again. So one thing that I want you to start by writing down is a belief. I believe this. You can choose to adopt this belief. If you do, I think it will serve you in your life, which is every problem has a solution. Every problem has a solution. And that's a very important thing to remind ourselves of, because we, you know, let's say you have a problem in your plumbing, in your house. You kind of know that as this, it might be more an expensive solution than you want but, you know, there's probably a solution to that. But when it comes to a personal way of being in the world, feels like our personality is this way or I've tried so many things and it hasn't worked, we tend to forget that and we tend to start to believe there is no solution. And then it's really hard to make a change because why bother? Why try? Obviously, if you're here, some part of you knows that there is a solution. You wouldn't be seeking answers. And so I want to acknowledge you for being here. I respect the hell out of you for showing up, taking time out of your day to really invest in your own life. So I'm going to deliver as much as I can in the time that we have. I'm going to have some questions too, that we'll get to and then I'll also, you know, hopefully this is the beginning of our journey together and not the end. There's so many opportunities in 2024 for you to keep learning about this stuff, including one of which is the brand new book that just came out called Less Nice, More You. So a lot of stuff I'll be teaching you want the deeper dive, it's in this book. The benefit of this one is the deeper dive is not as deep as not nice. So you don't have to spend 18 hours listening to it. You can get through it in like seven in audible and it will give you this, the lightning bolt that you need to make these changes. And I'll share more of the ways that we can can support you moving forward. And I know this though. I mean, I don't know what time of day it is for you right now in Pacific time, it's 11:30. It's kind of the middle of the day. You might be on like a break from work, you know, and you're just like, okay, I'm gonna. And we're like in our stuff, we're like, oh, the kids over there and work and this and the problem. Okay. And we want to take a moment though, to create a little bit of space of possibility for radical transformation. Because when does that occur? Sometimes we think, well, it's going to occur after a really big process. It's going to occur when something huge happens in my life. And I would say maybe, but maybe not. People have big experiences and think they're changed forever and they go back home and do the same shit. So what I'm. I believe the radical transformation comes when we make a decision now. There's usually something following up that Decision, a practice of some sort, a habit, a you carry it out afterwards. But the transformation occurs in this moment of decision. A classic example that many people might relate to is there might be a time in your life when you were less fit, less healthy. And if you've taken charge of your health, there's a moment where you decided, like, I'm going to do something about this, whether it's cutting out something unhealthy like smoking or drinking, or committing to a workout routine, and then you follow it up, obviously for months or years with these practices. But there is a moment, and that's what's possible today. Even though it's 11:45 or, you know, the afternoon for you, it doesn't matter what time it is, but you can decide right now that something big is going to happen. You're going to learn something and it's not going to be just another thing that I attended. And it's all, it's all the same, Nothing works for me. And no, remember, every problem has a solution and you are, you are in the right place. There are lots of solutions. So I wanted to start with that so that we can create the possibility and the potency for something big and exciting to happen. Because if you are living in what I would call the cage of niceness, you have no idea how amazing life can become. You really don't. I mean, you might have got a taste of it in some sweet moments, or you had a moment of connection or a moment of love or a moment of breakthrough in your career or something, but the sustained freedom. I'm not talking about achieving a big goal. I'm talking about your day to day, moment to moment experience of being you when you're no longer in the cage of niceness is indescribably superior. Like you can feel good for no reason. You can feel good without having to prove yourself every damn day. You can feel good without even if someone is upset with you, you don't have to chronically be worried that someone might be upset with you. You don't have to compare yourself to this super ideal perfectionistic standard that you didn't hit again today and you actually get to enjoy being who you are now. Of course there's better relationships, better romantic relationships, better connections, a better experience in your career. You'll also attract better relationships, better experiences. And those are all great. Those are all part of feeling better each day. But nothing beats waking up and feeling like you're enough without having to work at it, without having to force it or prove it. And that is the promise of life outside of the cage. And I want to start with that because it's like, why do all this stuff unless we know what it's going to bring to our lives? Because as you'll see in part of the transformation, how to change it forever, there are practices, there are disciplines, there are habits that might be a little uncomfortable at times. Just like going to the gym, just like working out, just like changing your diet. If you're addicted to sugars and junk foods and stuff, it's a little uncomfortable. But, man, is it worth it. So let's dive into the signs. If you have questions as we're going along, make a note of them. And then later in the class, I'll open it up and you can put them in the chat. But if you throw them in the chat now, I, I, I'm not going to be reading the chat too much as we're going, because then I'm, I'm trying to do that right now. I'm trying to just open up the chat. There we go. But make a note of them, and then we'll have a chance for you to put them in the chat later. It's so good to be with you. I'm so glad that you're here. Okay, first of all, first things first. And it's the first chapter in this book, less nice, more you. It's kind versus nice, because I can't even get into three signs of niceness, because there's a part of you that's gonna put the brakes on changing or even discovering it and stuff. Because it's like, wait a minute, Nice is good, nice is kind. You know, you don't want to be a jerk. I don't want to be a bad person. I want to be nice. And people use the word nice not in a derogatory way. People in my world who've read my books and stuff, they kind of share with me, and they're like, oh, man, someone said you're so nice. And inside I was like, screw you. They take it as an insult. How dare you. Right? Like, they might not have met it that way. People use that word in a lot of different ways. But I want to clarify that when I'm using it, I'm actually referring to a specific pattern, and it's different than kindness. So how is niceness different than kindness, generosity, love, Being a good person? Well, it might look like you're being a good person. You might do something kind, you might do something generous. You might give of your time, you might say, yes. And really support someone and be selfless or self sacrificing. Right. Maybe that's a noble virtue. Maybe that's a spiritual capacity. What's the difference? It's not the behavior, it's where it's coming from. People may or may not even be aware of it, but you know it. You know it. Niceness is come. The way I'm defining it is coming from fear. It's a fear based survival strategy. And it goes something like this. I'm not okay as I am. I call this the fundamental mistake. You learn somewhere along the way that you're not okay. Maybe other words are inadequate, insufficient, unlovable. Not enough people have a lot of different words for it. They're all pointing towards the same perception, the same emotional experience of lacking. And so at the same time, I need connection to live. That's a human quality, right? Love is the ultimate currency. We need it. Children without it will suffer greatly. So we need it. So we have this problem though. It's like, okay, I need love, but I'm not lovable. What do I do? Well, you hustle, you try hard. You. If I give, if someone wants to be my friend, and I'm like, forget about me. Tell me about you. What do you want? What do you need? Okay. And they say, what about you? No, no, don't worry about me. What about you? A friend says, hey, I need some help. You're like, I'm there. Your partner says, I'm hoping to do this this weekend. You say, yes, 100%, honey. People at work say, hey, we need to take on more work. And you say, yes, I can do it. Why? Because I, I am under threat. If I were to say no, there's gonna be a rug pull. Person's like, whoa, turns out you're this unlovable wretch. Should have seen that sooner. Like, that's what I've been trying to tell you, right? So we're hustling, we're afraid. And it's a self protection strategy to try to maintain connection with people. And so it's not a choice. That's the big difference. Kindness is a choice. Kindness, you can in that moment decide, am I going to give? What would that look like? What are my level of resources? There is a love for self and other in kindness. So if you're like, wow, I feel really, I need something right now. I need to take care of myself. I value that. So when I'm talking with my spouse, like, hey, you do this thing on Saturday, you say, you know, I Want to do that thing on Saturday for you? I really do. And I'm feeling like really compressed on the weekend. Feels like there's so much going on. There's like, some things I really want to take care of that I've been putting off. And now you can have a discussion about it now you can explore it. And the way I describe that is so simple. And you can have these conversations that are so skillful and they don't look like this big deal of like, honey, I'm going to set a boundary with you now, okay? And my boundary is that you are not going to ask me to do things on Saturdays forever. And then, you know, okay, that's better than maybe just being a doormat. But we'll work our way up the skill hierarchy there. In any case, you have a choice. When you're being kind, you matter in the equation. You are part of the equation. And in niceness, it's a compulsion. I have to or else. And the metaphor I use, I don't think I have one in my office. I was just recently somewhere where we had these. I might have one. Give me one second. I do have one. Yes. Okay. I did not. I did not pre plan, pre plan this, but I'm gonna do it. You ever seen one of those old westerns, those old western movies, how do they go? Rob a bank? Here we go, right? I wish I had a cowboy hat right now. But they would like pop into the bank and they put their guns up and they say, put your hands up. And people be like, huh, the bank folk. And that's what a niceness pattern is happening. You are the people in the stick up. And everyone that you interact with, you imagine on some level is the robber who says, give me everything I want or else. And we're like, what do you need? What do you need? Very, very proud that I had that prompt there. That worked out very well. And it's painful and it's scary, and it's a scary way to go through life. And you might be aware of how scared you are and you might not be. The fear might be more covert, more subterranean, and manifesting as background anxiety. Panic attacks that seem to come out of nowhere. If you're anxious long enough, you'll also feel episodes of depression. And you also don't feel that loved and lovable, which is also very painful. It's a big part of depression too. And you're. You're also on edge. Your autonomic nervous system is on overdrive. Because something bad could happen today at Any moment someone can dislike me. That's big threat. So you probably, you might have some symptoms that you think are unrelated and purely biological genetic manifestations, but are actually epigenetic or environment induced, perception induced, emotionally induced conditions, which I go in a lot more in depth into. Not nice in that book. So let's pay attention to what these signs are and how we can change them. Signs that you're living out this kind of compulsion to. To be nice so that people will stay with you, like you, and you'll be a good person who's lovable. The first sign is you avoid direct communication. You avoid direct communication, right? Because you can't let yourself be known because that could be dangerous. So that might look like you. The example, the symptom that people point to is you say yes when you want to say no. You might avoid asking for what you want. You might hint at what you want. Maybe you put it out there tentatively. Hey, you. Maybe you want to go to that thing on Saturday and the person's like. And you say, well, don't worry about it. I, I don't really need to go. It's only fine. It's cool. You retract it real quick. So there's not this direct. This is what I want. This is what I need. This is what I'm hoping for. What are you hoping for? Because all of that is going to reveal something that's going to reveal something terrible about you. You want to know this terrible thing about you that's going to reveal. It's going to reveal that you have needs. This disgusting. Disgusting. How dare you? How dare you have needs? And I'm being playful here to lighten the pattern because it's anything but playful. Inside of our own psychology, it's actually terrorizing. You have a. A brutality with yourself that is attacking you for having needs. And the biggest word that it uses, I'm gonna put in the chat. What's the biggest word? If you think about what you want and what you need, that makes you. What? Put it in the chat. It's the dreaded give you a hint. Starts with S. Selfish. Okay? You. That's terrible. That's awful. And. And we don't even question that. It's like, boom, boom, bam. It happens. You. You have the need, or it might start to emerge. You suppress it. You put a label of it as selfish. You know that selfish is bad. So you're not going to entertain the need. You're not, certainly not going to share that. And so now within half of a second, the Process has reinforced. And you don't even question, like, is it selfish? Is selfish even bad? It's like, of course. What do you mean? That's like saying, is murder bad? Of course it is. Case closed. And I would. I would challenge that. I would say, well, I. I guess if you want to define selfish in a certain way, then sure, you could say there's a type of selfishness that's bad. But I think acknowledging your needs and being able to put yourself into the equation and value them and ask for things and advocate for yourself. If we're calling that selfish, then be selfish. Right? If you want to call it something else, I call it healthy self interest. You can call it that. But I want to really want to challenge this idea that you having needs is selfish. So direct communication. This is the mistake number one or a sign that you're too nice. Number one is, I'm afraid to have direct communication, so I'm going to avoid it. And it's important to see these signs because you might. You just might start to see what some of the solution might be if you're avoiding direct communication. I wonder how you might change this pattern forever. You could think. In fact, take a moment right now and in your notes, jot down what are two or three ways that you've noticed in the past that you've avoided direct communication, maybe even in the last day or week. And it could be at work, it could be in your love life, another label that people put on it besides selfish. So take. Take a few notes, personalize this for yourself here. But another word people use besides selfish is narcissistic. Oh, yeah, that's a. I was gonna say it is an N word, but. No, not that N word. Just calm down. No, not narcissistic. Well, yes, you could label it as narcissistic, too. The one I was thinking of is. Is needy. Yeah, Valentine needy. Ew. These words are so gross. Right? So you have a need like, oh, I'd love to connect with that person. I remember this was a big block in me and my relationship with my wife Candace, where early on I would. We'd be busy, we'd be doing something, and I would want some interaction, some connection. Some of her attention might seem pretty natural, but to me, that was repulsively needy, so I'd have to hint at it. And this is what the problem that comes out of not of avoiding direct communication is. If you can't ask for it skillfully, that doesn't make the need go away. These core needs for connection, attention, Love. These things are food for your nervous system. And so just because you don't eat and tell yourself you don't need to eat doesn't make you a successful Breatharian. Maybe it does. I don't know. I really wanted to go down a YouTube rabbit hole on that to see if, like, do people actually. Has that been measured? People actually do that? Anyway, make a note. So when we cannot directly ask or communicate, we're going to indirectly ask, and it's going to be loaded with what Dr. Robert Glover calls covert contracts. So I'm going to hint at what I want, or I'm going to do this thing for you, and then you'll maybe do it for me, and then maybe they don't do it for you because they didn't know what the hell you were asking for with your weird, convoluted, covert contract. And then you resent them. It's selfish. They're selfish. I think I'm selfish. They're selfish. They're. I cannot tell you how many nice people I've worked with who are certain that someone in their life was a horrible, awful, terrible narcissist. They're a narcissist. My ex husband is a narcissist. My mom is a narcissist. And they say it like they're punching them in the throat. And look, I don't know their ex husband. I don't know their mom. Maybe they are. All I know is that was a very, very narrow, specific clinical diagnosis back in the day, and now I think, based upon people's report, that has ballooned to, like, 75% of the population. So I am slightly skeptical because there is a pattern with a nice person who is like, I cannot ask for what I want. I'm going to defer all my needs and try to take care of you so you'll love me so I can keep love. That's the basic nice pattern. Right. Survival strategy. And then the person that they're with is not. Is receiving that, like, great, you're going to take care of my needs. Cool. Okay. Do what I want. That sounds great. And there's all these covert contracts. And then they're buying into the pattern, and at some point they're like, they're a narcissist. And maybe. But that doesn't liberate you because then the next person you're with might be a narcissist. And the next person and you. And the liberation comes when you say, I wonder what pattern in me allowed that to keep going for all those Years, maybe. Maybe if I'm a different way, either that person would be different or I would attract a very different quality of relationship into my life. And that, that's when we get into the solutions to this stuff. So avoiding direct communication has all these downstream problems. I'm just highlighting a few of them. But this is a sign. So if you're, and hopefully you took notes on a couple of areas that you see that you've been doing this because this is one of the first places you can address. That's the first sign that you're too nice. The second sign that you're too nice is you are avoid. Is another avoid thing like the plague. Disagreement or conflict, Differing opinions moan. Write this one down. There's a perception in the nice world, which is friction is fatal. There's friction between you and me. Someone's dying, probably me, can't handle it. And this can go very mild, you know, differing. What it's going to lead to is you conforming as much as possible to the other person's needs and wishes. So, and this could be real minutia. What do they want to eat? I want to eat the same thing. When do they want to eat? I want to eat the same time. And you don't even necessarily know that you're doing it. You're not consciously saying, hey, I'm going to subvert whatever I want and pretend that I want what they want to align with them so there's never any friction between us. Because friction feels like it's threatening my survival strategy of being nice to, to stay loved. Yeah, we don't consciously think any of that. We just think, well, whatever they want, I don't care. I go with the flow. I'm a flexible person. It's fine. No big deal. Yeah, whatever you want. I don't really care. Whatever, that's fine. And, and we might sell ourselves on that. I sure did, for many years. Yeah, I'm a flexible guy. I don't, I'm just, I'm, I, I, man, I, I packaged it in all kinds of different ways depending upon my level of development and learning at the time. First it was like, I'm a flexible, go with the flow kind of guy. Then I got into Eckhart tolle in my mid-20s and read a lot of, you know, Eastern philosophy and, and it was like, hey, I just don't have a big ego. Like, all those people need to fight for their stuff and they're all big ego guys, but I'm not a big ego person. So I just I don't need anything. It wasn't true at all. It was riddled with body pain and resentments. And it's like, yeah, there's no ego there. Right? But that's what we tell ourselves. Why? Because facing the fundamental root of the. Of the issue feels terrifying. Because we think there's no solution to it. Because we're believing that fundamental error, that fundamental mistake, which is there's something totally wrong with me. So then everything else you have to do based upon that fundamental misconception about yourself and life. This can obviously show up in work situations. It doesn't have to. When people hear conflict, they imagine throwing of plates and yelling and stuff. No, just disagree. Hey, I don't agree with that perspective. I don't think we should do that. I think that's going to be a problematic approach. I'm not throwing anything, I'm not yelling, but I'm just saying what I think. Right. And you could couch it. You could say, hey, I appreciate this and this about your idea, and I have some concerns. I think there's some things that we could run into down the road that are gonna be major problems. I want to talk about them with you. Right. So you notice how sometimes it could be direct. Like, I disagree. I don't think we should do that. Sometimes it could be more like, hey, I appreciate what you're sharing and these are some of my concerns. The, the tactics we can get into later. But the ability to even have a stand requires you to have temporary emotional friction, tension. And, you know, this is really fascinating because when I first started learning how to date, I was the quintessential nice guy. And the theory goes, if I'm really nice to you and I just take you anywhere you want to go, I'm super agreeable. What kind of music do you want to listen to? I'll listen to whatever you want. Where do you want to go? Yeah, yeah, I'm affirming you share your. About your life with me. And I'm positive and approving. I'm just like gushing love and approval at you. Feels very loving. Right? Like, what's wrong with that? Why is that a bad thing? And then the nice people are frustrated. They're like, man, why do women always want the bad boys? Why does. Why do men love the. What's going on here? There's actually a book called that, I think. And it feels like it's wrong. It's like a. Error in the, in the human code. It's a faulty programming. This isn't fair. This isn't right. And it feels that way until you see a more fundamental truth, which is that when you are running, I'm not saying you're not a positive person. I think I would generally consider myself like an affirming person. And I want to support people in their dreams and that's just kind of my makeup. I want to go for things in my life, but the way that I was representing it is false. Right? Because it's not so total incomplete. It's not, it's. It's. There's an occluding, there's a hiding of, of other mixed. There's a hiding of myself. And so especially in the case of a man dating a woman and there's different dynamics between different genders and different masculine and feminine energy between the same gender, all that stuff. But so, but especially with me in dating, she couldn't trust me. That's why when I was being the nice guy, I never got a second date. Maybe I got a second date but not a third date. And nothing like no chemistry. Why? Because she could feel, if not consciously, then emotionally and energetically, there was a dishonesty there. And she's like, this guy is just trying to please me. I don't know what is true and what is not true. And therefore I'm not going to let him get close to me. And so I had this powerful shift when I started to be learned to, to allow there to be friction in dating. Oh. And then it can lead to some other kind of friction that we definitely don't think is fatal. But you know, initial, initial contact, initial dating and doing things that might challenge her, you know, so for example, I'm simple, trivial example. It's like a 21 year old kid, right? So this is where my mind was at, but driving somewhere with a woman that I just started dating. And I'll. Instead of saying, what do you want to listen to? I'll put on a song that I like. How selfish and mean. You narcissist. Right? And then, and then if she, if she commented like, what is this? Or you know, there's like an onion, like, oh, this is great, I love this. Or even better if they're like, oh, I don't know about this. You're like, really? You sure? Turn it up. You're like, oh, come on, you don't like that chorus? You poke them a little bit, a little bit of friction, right? It's playful, but there's a. Or they share something, an idea. And you're like, oh, do you think that's always true. Is there times where it's not true? Do you always believe that? I don't know if I believe that. This is what not nice looks like. In practice, people think not nice means you're, you're taking swings at people. You're being this asshole. No, it is just authentic. It is real. And, and that's a dating example. But this applies to work. So many people are not perceived as leadership material. I hear this all the time. It's like, hey, I'm smart. I've been work there longer, I know more, I'm better. I'm sure I'm just like, you're technically probably superior to the people that are getting promoted. So what's missing? You're not taking a stand. I remember there's a gentleman I worked with who would hold back in meetings all the time and feel this. And the way that we do it in the moment is this chronic sense of like, I'm an imposter, I'm an imposter, I'm an imposter. Which is not true. It's a self hypnosis you do to prevent you from speaking up. It's the nice pattern heading you off with the past. Because if you didn't believe that, you might start speaking up. And it's like, that's dangerous. So tell them. Tell her she's an imposter. She doesn't know anything. She's not smart. She doesn't know anything. She's not smart. Just say it again and again and again and again. It's like, okay, fine, fine, fine, whatever you say. But when I worked with this gentleman, he started to be able to share more. And at first it came out a little clunky. It was a little bit like in the workplace sometimes being a little overly hot and emotional, like a little clunky. But we worked through it and he was able to just. He realized that at first when we, we start to speak up, we're more clunky because we feel we don't have permission still. We're still doing something bad. And we're treating everyone like they're the headmaster of our school and we were children or the parent who's like, young lady, young man, you will shut up and stay in your place. And then we're defying them. But eventually you get to it and you're like, no, I, of course I can speak up for myself. Of course I haven't. My, my opinion is valid here. Matters here. Okay, so that's mistake number two. Avoid disagreement or conflict. And then Mistake or sign of niceness. Third sign that you might be too nice is you feel guilty anytime someone's upset. The simple way of writing. You might want to write this one down. The simple way of perceiving this one is the default is, it's my fault. So someone walks in the room, they seem a little irritated. Well, I wonder what it was. Is. It Is something I said to him earlier was the thing I said yesterday. I don't know. I'm nervous inside. I gotta fix it. You know what I'm talking about? It's someone close to you. You certainly gotta fix it. If it's a friend or a partner, you go, oh, God. Right? And then if it's colleague, client, even a stranger, like, oh, no, I gotta. What's up with them? What did I do? You're driving down the road and someone is crazy in their car, and they're angry for some reason. Oh, no, what have I done? What does it mean? Is it me? I don't. I tried my best. Leave me alone. Right? Why is that so painful? It's because. Not they're being a jerk or they're upset for no reason or whatever. They're upset for a reason but has nothing to do with you. It's because you feel responsible. This is called over responsibility, and it leads to chronic guilt. I am responsible for everybody's emotions. And this goes back to the, like, the core of the niceness pattern, which is, I gotta keep you happy so that you wanna be around me, because I'm not lovable by myself as it is. So I gotta make you feel really good. And look, if you're upset, I don't know why, but you're upset about your. You're nervous about your family problems. Okay, well, let me help you with that. And it might seem loving and generous, but really underneath it is like, are you fixed yet? Do you feel better now? Okay. I remember I dated a woman, and she said to me, aziz, you're really good at smoothing things over. And I think at the time, I took it as a compliment. And now I look back, and I was like, yeah, I was good at smoothing things over, because if there's a conflict between us, I would just take a thousand percent of it on, yeah, I got to work on that. And I'm this and I'm too much that. And then I would break up with her because it was not true. And I was absorbing all this stuff that wasn't mine, and it felt awful. So I'd feel this, you know, negative association to her, like, I gotta get away. And then I would miss her. So we get back together. We did, like, five times. It was great. It was. It was a. It's a. Good times, good times. And then, interestingly enough, she got back to me, like, a couple years after we dated out of the blue. I think it was the only time I'd ever heard of her. And she sent me this sweet message, and I was like, hey, you know, I just want to say I really love and appreciate you. And when we were together, I was actually depressed a lot and not really aware of that and was very critical of you and just want to let you know that whatever things I might have said to you might not have been true or about you and just hope you're doing well. I was like, wow. Well, that's very sweet, you know, but it's very sweet. And ideally you'd see that in the moment and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. What's going on here? Is this my responsibility to fix? And then you can start to choose differently. So, quick review of the top three signs that you're too nice is one, avoiding direct communication. Number two is avoiding disagreement or conflict. And number three is feeling guilty when someone else is upset. We call it over. Responsibility. So why. Why are these a problem? Well, I've already given a few examples, but a couple more, and I'd say the biggest one, there's all the. The challenge, right? Like holding back in work and not being able to speak up and the relationship problems. But I'd say the biggest pain, the biggest problem with all this is. And there's a chapter in this book called where is It? I don't know what chapter it is, but it's called your inauthenticity tolerance. And what this is is how much you can tolerate not being you. Because the biggest problem with all this is, aside from all the relationship and other issues and in the background anxiety, all that, the biggest problem is that you ultimately are carrying out your precious gift of this life, which goes for an unknown amount of time. You might think you're partway through it, halfway through it, three quarters of the way through it, one quarter of the way through it. Maybe you are. Maybe you're two weeks away from the end. I don't know. But all I know is that it's finite and it's. To me, life is a gift. And so I'm ticking away the days of this gift, of. Of this. Like, this is who you are. This person right now, this body, this heart, this. This is you. And the Clock is ticking on that. And as it goes by, day after day, you can be living a life that is not you. That is these patterns. Think of it like software. You're running a nice, ultra nice software. That's not who you are. And maybe you've been running it for 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, and you're going to get to some point in your life where you'll look back and you'll come across this dreadful feeling of regret. Oh, my God, this is. This was it. This wasn't the dress rehearsal. This was it. And now all those years of time and relationships or not being able to love or not being able to have what I wanted, or not be able to move towards the things were meaningful, not even letting myself be me. Like, wow, that's painful. And my wish, my hope for you is that because you're here, or maybe you're watching the recording of this, you don't have to wait until your deathbed. That's what I talk about in the very beginning of the book is Bronnie War's work in hospice. Where the number one regret of the dying is, Do I have in the beginning? I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This is an interviewing hundreds of people as they were dying. The. The essence of their regret was, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. And when I distill it into my words, it's. I lived a life that was not my own. I was trying to be somebody else for somebody else. Wow. Better to find that out now than. Than when you're on your deathbed. Because there's not much time to change then, but there's a. There's plenty of time now. Like today, right now. Now. Now is the time. Now is the time to change. And if you're wondering, okay, yeah, I see all these patterns. How. How do I change that? What do. Do you remember what I said the very beginning of this call? And if you weren't here, I'll say it again, that what can happen in just an hour in the middle of a day here, like, what's going to change? What's going to change is you can reach a threshold moment where you look at all these patterns and I'm describing them and I'm telling stories about them, and hopefully you're reflecting on your own life and you're like. And hopefully evokes some. You know, it can. Two things. If the. If the desire to stay safe is uber alles means over everything. Then you will take what I'm saying here and feel depressed about it. Ah, it's so big. It's been going on for so long, it's high. I can't change. I. I've tried, I've tried. I can't change it. And it will reinforce that this is just how it is and this is just who you are, which is totally false. It's not about truth, it's about you're more committed to carrying out a defended life. We all bump up against some of the core fundamentals of life, which is that this life is a gift and we don't know how long it lasts. And everything changes at some point, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. People change, relationships change, you change, your body changes, the world changes. It's impermanence in Buddhism, right? Nothing is the same. People will die, people will leave you and you'll leave other people. You'll find new people, be new beginnings. But there'll be endings too. And people are not always generous and loving and kind. Sometimes people might be mean or hurtful. These are like the fundamental observables of life and humans, right? And each of us has a decision that we make in the face of that one fundamental decision that you've already made. Now you can remake it and choose something else, but you've already made a choice. Start meeting summary with AI Companion. Okay, that seems like a random time to tell me that. Thank you, Zoom. AI Companion is here, folks. Right in the middle of my passionate delivery. That's the AI AI did not serve me well there. So to continue, the decision that you made at some point in your life was either in the face of these inevitables, to approach life with an open heart, or live a defended life, to prioritize, trying to minimize pain. So to. To live with an open heart might be to like, I'm going to focus on creation, on authenticity, on living fully. And you might not have sat there as a four year old saying, like, I'm going to focus on living fully. No, but you decided it. Or as an eight year old, sometime back in there, maybe when you're a little bit older, maybe as a teenager, you shut down, I don't know. But there's a time where all of a sudden you say, you know what? I'm going to live a defended life becomes more cynical, becomes there's an armor and there's a safety, there's a sense of solidity. It's like your shield. I got my shield up over My heart. And now no one can hurt me. Never mind that you're starving inside, you're dying inside, but no one out there is going to hurt me. And it doesn't really work. You still. You're hurt all the time by people giving you dirty looks, by people being upset with you. You're still hurt all the time. But it's like, it gives me some sense of solidity and ground. So I'm going to hold on to this thing. If you hear what I'm saying and you're not committed to keeping that shield on forever, and you truly do want to live a more free life, you truly do want to come out of the cage of social anxiety, then you might start to feel, instead of collapsing, you start to feel a sense of awakening inside. That's like, enough of that. Ew, I don't want to do that anymore. In fact, just try saying that out loud right now. You're muted. No one's gonna hear you. But you hear you, which is focusing on those signs of niceness, not just theoretically and abstractly as this list that you wrote down on a sheet of paper. I'm talking about in your life, ways that you've avoided direct communication, where you said yes when you want to say no, when you sold yourself out, when you've pretended, when you've hided, when you've pleased, when you've groveled, when you bent over backwards so much that your spine snapped, when you were disgusted by your own compulsion to please other people, even when they treated you poorly, when you didn't stand up for yourself when you didn't say that no. And hopefully starting to build a mounting sense of revulsion. And that is good. You want. You want your inauthenticity tolerance to be low. You don't be able to tolerate that for a fortune five decades, for 20, for the whole life, you want to have something inside you. It's like, ew, no, no, no. Just like if you're about to eat some rotten food, you have some. And then something inside you is like, enough of that. And so try saying this out loud as you focus on all those old patterns. Say, enough of that. All right? Say it more. Say it like you mean it. Enough of this. Enough of this. I am more than this. I was made for more than this. This is not who I am. Right? Can you feel that? This is just some software you've been running, and you can change it. You can update that thing, just like you can update your phone. So how do we do that? Well, the decision is the key. And then we got to address the root of the problem. The very, very root of the problem. And you might say the root of the problem is I'm not assertive enough. The root of the problem is I need to say no more. The root of the problem is I need to stand up for myself. No, those are the symptoms. Remember, the core root of the niceness pattern is you on some level feel like there's something wrong with you. And no amount of love will take that away. No amount of external approval will take that away. No amount of external success will take that away. Trust me, I've tried. It doesn't work. And you just get better at hiding it. But there's always a background fear. Always background. What is someone. What if someone sends me an email today where they don't like me? What if that person at work is a little upset? Oh, what if I. What did. And it might manifest as worry. Oh, man. Did they. Did I say that the wrong way? Oh, did they think my joke was. Do they know I was joking there? They think I was serious. Oh, no, they think I'm like a bad person now. Right. Manifest is all this. But underneath there's this core lovability, the core misperception. And so I'm going to give some other practical strategies, but I would be remiss if I didn't address this one, which is getting in your bones and in your core that you are lovable, that you, you can receive unconditional love right now. I know it's a tough step because you're like, right now. Did you see my love handles? I mean, come on. I. Maybe in like a couple of months. I know it's the holiday season. I've been eating too much cookies. But I've, you know. Or did you see my. I'm not where I should be in life, man. I'm behind. I'm behind on my career. All my friends are married and have kids and I'm this freaking loser love myself. Now, come on. Come on now. Why? How? You can't. I don't deserve it. But do you see how this is perpetuating all the symptoms? So I could give you a tool on how to speak up for yourself and you could use it and it would be successful to a degree if you used it, but it would not clear the fundamental pattern. So we want to start at the root. What you get back in life is a reflection of how much you are on your own side, how much you love yourself. So if you get people that are bullying you at work, subtly or directly, you know, sarcastic comments. You might say, well, how do I stand up for myself? What's the. What's the zinger I gotta give them? Well, we could talk about that. There is something to do in the moment, perhaps, but if you want to resolve that problem, at its root, that's a reflection that's coming back to you. You might say, what are you saying? You say. You say, I love myself and those people are working to stop picking on me. Come on, get real. And I would say, yeah, maybe, very possibly. I've seen it happen all the time with clients. They get all geared up to have this direct conversation, but they've been doing this inner work, and all of a sudden, person just kind of moves on. Or when the person picks on them, they don't feel much. They're like, oh, that guy's so sad. Such a. It's really. It's kind of pathetic, you know, but it's not like, oh, I. What a pathetic loser. I hate him. It's just like, oh, I see what he's doing there. He's trying to feel special, okay? And maybe they have a response, maybe they don't, but they're. They're neutral about it. They feel fine. Or I've seen it happen like this. As you start to love yourself more, be more on your own side, accept the fundamental unconditional lovability of who you are right now. All of a sudden you're like, you know what? I'm not going to work here anymore. This place sucks. And. And you find another. And sometimes it's a fast change, right? They leave and they quit. Sometimes it's a bit of a slope, you know, like, okay, I'm gonna interview at all these places, and then I'm gonna, you know, it takes a couple months or whatever. And. But. But before that, oh, my God, the job market's so tough, I can't find anything else who's going to hire me. Because what comes out of that, that myth of unlovability are. Is insufficiency, right? I'm not enough. Impossibility, which is. It's impossible. And scarcity. There's not enough out there. They're all coming out of that fundamental in. So let me give you a tool that I've actually been experimenting with myself and. And really loving. And it's from Luis Hay and Robert Holden. They have a book called Life loves you that I would highly recommend you get the audible version of it. Obviously, buy my book first, but, you know, they can get theirs and Anyway, the. One of the first tools that they recommend is going and looking in a mirror and looking in your own eyes and saying, life loves you and noticing what happens inside. If you're like, this is creepy and weird and pathetic and stupid. Okay, that's good information because most people that I know that are real tough guys and girls who are like, self love on your. On my own side. Stupid, right? They're in so much pain. So much pain. They might be successful, they might be loved, they might have it all on the outside, but inside they're driven and they're dissatisfied every day at the end of the day with what they didn't do. They could have done more, should have done more. And honestly, they're not nearly as loving as they really could be with people in their lives. And I'm speaking from personal experience here on this one. Oh, there's always more available, always more love for yourself. And. And it's a muscle, it's a skill, it's a capacity. And so you. You want to prioritize. And look, I just gave you one tool. There's tools. I have a whole book called On My Own side, which you can check out, that's got tools. I just mentioned that Louise Hay and Robert Holden book because I'm enjoying that right now. There's no end to tools available, but it starts when you really seek it and you really get on a deep level that this is the core of the issue. So that's the first and most powerful thing that I can share you. Because the root of the problem is that unlovability, which manifests as an overactive inner critic that you defer to. That's the biggest problem. Not the noise in your head. It's that you defer to it. So the critic says, oh, you know, and trust me, pay attention. Write out the shit that it says to you or that you say to yourself. I like to. To create that space and say, the critic is saying this to me. But sometimes people say, I think about this myself, I think this about myself. It's helpful to create that distance. I talk about that almost on my own side. But. Right. If you write down what it's saying, which is one of the practices that people do, it'll be all kinds of things. You didn't do that. Right. You weren't patient enough with this person. You lashed out there. Oh, you didn't get to your workout. Oh, you were procrastinated there. Oh, you're ugly. Oh, no one's gonna like you. Right. All these, you know, seemingly Specific issues. And I bet you you could distill every single one of those criticisms down to insufficiency. Like some version of you're not enough, you're not rich enough, you're not tall enough, you're not funny enough, you're not confident enough, you're not connected enough, you're not disciplined enough. Right. Insufficiency or impossibility, you can't do it. It's impossible. That will never work out. Yeah, right. Your goal, your dreams. Right. That's impossibility. And then number three is scarcity out. There is not. There's not enough money, there's not enough people, there's not enough time, there's not enough love, there's not enough resources, there's not enough relationships, they're not enough jobs. It's the economy. That recession that's coming, there's always recessions. The recession's been coming for two years. I could have made better investment decisions if I didn't need your justice is coming. Okay, watch too much YouTube on that. I could have wrote out a lot longer. Who knew? 0% interest rates up to 5% and everyone's still crushing it. And stock pulled too much out. You know, I'm learning. I'm still a newbie at all that. Just three years, I'd say three to four years of learning, investing. I lost some good chunks of money in the way, but I've also made money. So that's what you're going to be doing with you becoming more boldly yourself is you're going to make some mistakes, you're going to lose some ish conversations, you're going to have some messy moments, but you're also going to grow as you do it. That's the only way. The only way is going to be to get into your life now as you and that critic, that overactive critic is preventing you from doing that. It's not truth. The inadequacy that you're not enough. It's not true. The insufficiency, there's not. You're lacking in some way. It's not true. It's impossible. You know that one's. And the scarcity is also not true. We. Why do we cling to it? Because it's the armor. Because if that's true, then I'm going to wall up. I'm going to live a defended life and I'm going to try to get through life without experiencing the fundamental pains that come from impermanence, from things changing. So we got to be willing. Yeah, I'm going to feel in this life. I'm going to get hurt in this life, but I'm also going to live while I'm here, and I'm going to experience adventure and the extraordinary and more love than I ever thought possible and enjoy to be alive and some pain. If you think that's worth it, then. Then you and I are on the same page. So we have to reclaim our inner authority from that critic. Telling yourself in the mirror life loves you is one of those practices. Another practice is to dialogue with that critic, write it out, and then start to talk with it. And if you want tools for that, that's in that book almost on my own side. You can also go to my podcast, Shrink for the Shy Guy. There's. And just type in critic. There's tons of episodes about that can teach you how to do that. Those are tools. They work. And then you can start to reclaim that authority. So the critic says, you were a fool there. So selfish of you. You say, whoa, whoa, whoa, who put this guy in charge? I don't think that was bad at all. You start to choose more based upon your values, how you perceive things as an adult, not as this fearful software that you installed as a young kid. Another thing that's going to upgrade as you do this is you most likely in the past have had an inaccurate map of human relationships. It goes something like this. If I do this, then this is going to happen. If I say no to this person, they're going to leave me. If there's friction, they're going to be upset forever. If I disagree, they're going to hate me. Right? And those are faulty. It's a faulty map. It gets you to. Does not get you to where you want to go. And it's not accurate. It's not an accurate map of the terrain. I do a lot of hiking out in the mountains and, you know, thank God they have the GPS on this. There's these amazing apps you can get on your phone. So I don't carry a paper map. I remember back in the day I go backpacking with my brother and his friend. And his friend was really good at, like, triangulating on a paper map where you are. And then you'd have to hike a little bit more to make sure you had the right place because you might have thought you were in a certain place and you weren't. And now I don't do any of that. I just. The gps. Well, blue dot tells me where I am. It's idiot proof, right? But. But if the Blue dot told me where I was and the map was wrong, then it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't help me get lost out there in the woods. And that's why you might feel lost in relationships. And what loss might look like is, I want to move close and now I freak out and I want to get away or I want to get close. This when I feel trapped or I just feel so worthless that I can never create a relationship, or I get into a relationship and I get super anxious about when are they going to leave me? Or oh my God, I can't get a relationship because what if I want to leave them? And if I want to leave somebody, then I'm a horrible person. Right? You have all these conflicting, messed up rules about relationships and your map is bonkers. So we're going to have to upgrade that map of human relationships. And one way to do that is to ask yourself the question, not what did I think in the past? But right now as an adult, what seems like healthy rules for a relationship? What am I allowed to do and what is the other person allowed to do? Right? Is it healthy to share our feelings? Is it healthy to have conflict and disagreement? Literally write them out. What is the map? It's, you know, so for me, a big one was like, conflict is actually beneficial. This one took me a long time to rewrite. And I still, sometimes, if conflicts are coming, it's a brew. And I'm like, oh, God, oh no, put it away. And I have to. I just. We had a little. I just had a little small one with my wife. Not that long ago, we were at some seminar, actually at Tony Robbins event, which was awesome, called Date with Destiny. And we were spending a lot of time together. It was so amazing to have like six, seven days together, you know, no kids. Kids are with a babysitter at home. We flew to Florida and we're having this amazing experience and we were sitting together at the seminar every day. And the beginning of day three, I felt this kind of inner tension inside of like, I don't know if I want to sit together every day. And I didn't know why. And of course my initial thought was like, oh my God, this, Come on, you don't get that much time with kid free. And now you have all this time and now you're creating this distance. What's wrong with you? You shouldn't want to do that. What am I doing there? I'm noticing something, a need inside of a desire, feeling something, and I'm suppressing it because I Have a faulty map of relationships, which is if I tell my partner I don't want to spend every second with her, that I'm going to hurt her, and that makes me bad. Now, you might say, as easy as. You don't actually think Candace is going to leave you. I mean, you guys are married. You have a family together. You have a beautiful relationship. Yeah, that programming is not like, real rational. Right. It's an emotional, like danger. Don't do that. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Right. That's what I. I've been doing this long enough that I'm like, okay, conflicts are coming. Let's just say it and let's explore it, because we're going to learn something. That's another thing conflict means. You might want to write this one down. Conflict means we're both going to learn something. And it can really clear the air. If you have cold, ice cold resentments. I have a chapter in the book later and then called Frozen in Time. I talk about the little baby mammoth that was frozen for a couple million years. And that's what your, you know, our emotions and our problems and our resentments can get. Frozen in time. And conflict can warm things up, clear the air. And then you feel. You just naturally feel love. You don't have to effort at it so damn much. And so I told her. I was like, you know, I'm not sure if we want to sit together. I just. I feel like maybe there might be a restriction or maybe I hold things back or there's some exploration I want to do that feels more just kind of in my own space. And she had a mixed reaction. Like, part of her is like, oh, I was kind of feeling that yesterday, too. I'm not sure. So maybe we should not sit together. But also, I picked up that maybe she was a little hurt, but maybe she wasn't. I don't know, you know? And then we separate. I was going to go to the gym before the day started, and I'm at the gym, and all of a sudden I'm like, wow. Not sitting together all day. Like, I miss her. And so I messaged, like, hey, you know what? I feel like whatever that was is cleared up. And do you want to hang out? You want to spend. Do you want to sit together all day? She's like, okay, sounds good, right? So this is. This is something. By the way, earlier in our relationship would have been a big drama for days, you know, like me pulling away and that down around. I'm gonna. I'm not gonna skillfully do It. So then I'm gonna sit next to her and then I'm gonna be kind of weird and resentful about it. And then I'm gonna blow up halfway through the day, like, why do you always make me sit next to you? She's like, what the hell are you talking about, dude? Right? That makes you crazy in relationships. So just a simple noticing it. And then when there's freedom, and I've seen this about myself a thousand times, when there's freedom, all of a sudden, then of course I want to love, right? It's something about the bound and the trapped and the half dues. So this is a small example of how we're upgrading your real time, upgrading your map of relationships. And that's. And it's, it's not like it's one and done, right? You want to get curious about yourself and keep upgrading these maps. And then one other key I want to share with you. And then I'm going to get into some questions. Is your. At. One of the core things that's happening is there's an inability to. This is going to sound a little wordy. I was trying to say it in a simpler way, but I'm just going to say it. It's not too, it's not too fancy sounding, but it might be a little bit. But just write it down. Inability to tolerate discomfort and regulate your nervous system. What does that mean? Well, we humans are. Are we. We. We come together and we go apart. We merge and we separate. You know, we're all one. We're all connected and we feel that when we're in love or we're close with a friend, but we also are our own self. It's all, It's a, it's a paradox, right? Multiple things are true at the same time. And so we have to have this ability to be able to be with somebody and then also regulate ourselves. And one of the biggest things I see that prevents people from becoming less nice and more authentic is that their discomfort tolerance is very low. And they don't realize that it's a muscle that you can build. And the only way to build your discomfort tolerance is to be uncomfortable. And the people that get this, that I work with have a radical change in life because they, they, they really get it and they take it on like, oh, I'm going to seek out discomfort in my life. And that could be physical discomfort. And we have people take cold showers that could be emotional discomfort. Like, okay, I'm gonna say the thing that I've been avoiding I'm gonna make. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Oh, I'm scared to ask. What if they say no? Or, oh, they're gonna think I'm pushy. Ah. Okay. That's discomfort right there. That, ah. And you learn to. That. That you actually increase your tolerance, your capacity for discomfort. People are waiting for the discomfort to go away, and then I'll do it. And it doesn't work that way. The discomfort only reduces over time. And sometimes people say, okay, I've done it a lot. When's the discomfort going to go away? Like, I don't know. It's about increasing your discomfort tolerance. We have a cold plunge at our house. We've had it for about six months now. And I was really. It's funny because I took cold showers before that, and then I invested in a cold plunge because it's more intense and it's awesome. But I really was thinking, like, I did it every day when we got. I was all excited when we got it. I set it up. I'm like, so excited to use it. And then within a couple days, it's like, I'm kind of dreading using it. I'm like. And then I thought, okay, just do it like every day for a month. And then it's going to be, you know, you'll have conquered it and stuff. And a month goes by, and I did it almost every day. And I'm waiting around, I'm like, I still feel dreadful. Shouldn't this, like, go away by now? And then I realized, no, that's the gift of the cold plunge is it doesn't go away. Because when you get. When you submerge yourself in cold water, it actually triggers a fight flight response. You have adrenaline and norepinephrine through your system, but instead of it being toxic or corrosive, like when you know you're jacked up on fear and cortisol, it's actually, it. It is a. Has a resilience boosting effect so that you tolerate. When you tolerate stress, like, you're, you're. You're stressing the body on purpose. And it's like inoculating you for stress for that whole day and increases your dopamine. So you're more energized, you're more driven, all that stuff. So. But I thought that it would be real easy. And it's like, no, it's uncomfortable every freaking day. And now the challenge that my wife and I have with this thing is like, how do you reduce or eliminate the stall time? Right? Because like, okay, I'm not gonna do it this morning. It's been 10 minutes, I'm still puttering around the house, and I'm getting delayed on my morning because, you know, so it's not about the discomfort going away, it's about increasing your tolerance. And I would tell you I do have a radically increased discomfort tolerance now. And that's not just for a cold plunge or some, some macho thing like that, right? It's. It's because then discomfort is, your tolerance is transferable. So if you're uncomfortable with one thing physiologically, you can use that. It's like a currency and something else. So if you're uncomfortable with a cold shower and you go into that discomfort, you're actually training yourself to in the meeting, speak up, it transfers. So you want to increase your discomfort tolerance and you want to learn how to regulate your nervous system because what happens is someone's upset with you and you're like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I, I'm, I'm, I'm not safe. I'm not safe. I gotta, I can't calm down. And so we, we need to build our capacity to calm ourselves. And nothing soothes your nervous system like love. With infants, when they are held and they're in sync with, when, when the mother is able to be in sync with them, she's not all distracted and, but she's able with them. They will instantly calm down. It's like a profound. A par. A dad too can do this too. But they've done a lot of research with, with mothers in their, in the real young infants. Then they've done, you know, brain EKGs, EEGs. EKG is the heart EEGs electroencephalogram on the brain and watching the brain patterns of the mother and the, and the infant and they, and they sink. And so, you know, eye contact really helps with this. There's interesting research that one of the suggestions is like, if the mother when she's breastfeeding can actually look at the infant when it's trying to look at her. And a lot of moms are like, not, they don't know, they're, oh, it doesn't matter. But it does, it does something to the child that they can like really look in their eyes. I did this with a kid and if I was model feeding them or something, I'll try to look, look at them. I was like, I could do the mom thing when it was our little kids. And so it's, it's hence that mirror work I was talking about with Louise, hey, like looking in your eyes, saying, like, life loves you, I love you, you're okay. And finding that way to calm. Obviously, with many of these things, there's more tools. I don't. I'm not gonna turn this into like a seven hour workshop on this stuff, but I wanted to at least point you into some directions. So let's talk about how you can use this in your life. Specific things that you're. You're going to take from this. And then also we'll get into some questions. I'd say one of the first things to do is definitely check out Less Nice, more you. A lot of the content I'm sharing here is going to get right to the core of that and give you some very, very specific, specific tools that you can use now to make these shifts. We're doing a Kindle special right now, which is 3.99 for the Kindle for the next couple of days. Depends on when you're watching, if you're doing the recording. So definitely check that out. We're also gonna be doing a raffle for reviews. So if you want to write a review, I'll let you know. I'll send an email to my list. It'd be about. We'll give people like two weeks. So it's not just a bunch of crappy fake. Like, it was great. I read page one. It was awesome. I'd actually read it and want to do it sooner. But over the two weeks, we'll accumulate all the reviews and then we'll do some awesome raffles for awesome prizes for, for writing reviews. And one of which will be a ticket to not nice virtual event that I'm doing in the, in the spring and I guess late, late winter in 2024. That'll be up on my website very soon. The schedule for some of the events next year, that one's awesome because it's virtual. It's three days of this and practices of this. So stay tuned for that. And also I'm going to be sending something out. But if you're hearing this, you talk about me working with people. I think hands down, the most powerful way to make these shifts is going to be to immerse yourself in an environment of people who are doing this. Nothing else is going to be more powerful than that. It's the wolf pack. We defy doubt, we do the impossible, and together we are unstoppable. I don't think we can do everything on our own. I don't think the Lone wolf works. So if you're drawn to that, what I'm going to do is I'm send an email about it and you can apply. Going to be taking in a few more people here at the beginning of end of this year, beginning of next year to kick things off for 2024. It's a 12 month program called the Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind. You can go to my website and look about it. I'll put it in the chat right here. But I'll send an email where you can apply about it. And it is hands down the where is it coaching fastest way to make these changes. And you can watch. There's dozens of testimonials and we have dozens more that I just haven't posted of people who've made these changes, like for real. And it's a year long program because this is a training process. It's the gym, it's the gym that maybe you've avoided and the one that you know you need. So definitely if you're drawn to check that out, to apply for that. So there's lots of ways to connect, lots of ways to keep this going. As I said in the beginning of this call, I hope this is not the end of our time together, but just the beginning or if you've known me for a little while, like we're just, we're rolling, we're going to keep doing this. I am more fired up than ever before about helping you make these changes in 2024. Because this is a, a phrase that I say that sometimes people think is just a little bit cheesy or something. But I don't think it's cheesy, which is that the more you become you, the more the whole world benefits. Because I know that as you unlock you, as you liberate yourself, you have no idea what's going to come through you. Right? On a, on a small level of your closest relationships, there's like a depth, right? Even say small, a small circle, but there's like a profound depth that you might have on a friend, on a partner, on someone you love, on your kids and your parents. And then there's a broader circle of how you show up in the world and what you put out in the world. Whether it's your career or people I've worked with have like reawakened creative pursuits that don't make money, but they're like, wow, I can actually finally create music or art. That, that is me, you know, that was shut down. And I'd say do not underestimate the effect of that on your mental wealth, mental health and well being and your mental wealth. To feel, to feel rich inside, to be creative and to be you. So, so much more. And I want to take a few minutes here to answer some questions that are arising. So go ahead and put them in the chat now. And I know some people sent in a few questions earlier. So I'm going to do a little mix of some of the live questions and some of the ones. Brandon has a great question. I'll answer this now because it's a logistic one which is will there be an audio version of the book? Great question because I myself also only listen to everything on audio myself. And yes, yes it is. It will be available probably in seven to 10 days. Is my guess that audible won't tell you. In, in Amazon you can have a specific release date, but in Audible they're kind of like, hey, we'll tell you when it comes out. Alrighty then. But I'll, I'll send an email about it and there will be an auto version read by, read by Ethan Hawke, actually the famous actor and Oscar winner. No, no, it's read by me. It's read by me, which is almost as good. Okay, let's get to some questions. Oh, here's one about the book. What's the difference between not nice and less nice? More you. The books. Well, So the size for one. There we go. Junior not nice, I would say is the textbook. It's got everything and all the history and the origins of these problems and, and real in depth examples of like here's the seven step process to speak up in this one situation. And it's very useful. This one is not a textbook. It's a lightning bolt. That's why there's a lightning bolt on the COVID which is you already know. This is a lot of convincing you that nice is a problem. You already know it's a problem with this one and you want to change it. And it, and it's part of partly strategy and we break it down into really short chapters of like try this, do this. There's strategies about communication. In fact, that's the whole Part 3 of the book is called Conflict, right? Because remember, the sign of too nice is avoiding disagreement or conflict. So you gotta know how to do conflict, right? And there's a lot of specific examples on what to do and how to do it. But most importantly, reading this book will activate that threshold moment in you that's gonna give you a momentum and a power to actually go out there and do this stuff because there's a lot of people that read this that have a lot of theoretical knowledge, and that's cool. I want this to be, like, applied. We actually run out and do do these things. And it will. It will inspire and agitate you like a lightning bolt. Okay, awesome. Thank you, Zoom User. It sounds, like, not nice. It's been a powerful book for you. I'm really glad. I'm glad. I love. I love when people read the book and it radically changes or improves their lives. That's like the best. That's victory right there for all of us. Right? Okay. All right, awesome. Sean, thanks for the comment. Stanford Burns Group. Yes, I do remember that. David Burns. That was awesome. Learned so much in there. Great to. Great to hear from you. Okay, wait, there was a email from. Where can we buy the new book? Yeah, on Amazon. I should put that in the chat right here. It's available on Amazon. This is going to be Amazon us. It should redirect you to. If you're out, if you're in a different country, it should redirect you to the right place. There's a Kindle version, there's a paperback version. Kindle's on Special for 3.99. And then it's going to go up to 9.99. And if for some reason it's not redirecting you and you're in a different country, just go to Amazon and type in Less nice, more you, or Dr. Aziz less nice, or something like that, and you should be able to find it. And as I said, the audible will be coming out soon. Okay, I'm gonna get to some content questions, and then if there's more logistical stuff, I'll get to that. Andrew? Yeah, yeah, he sent an email earlier, which he said, you notice that the phrase you use that says I'm not for everybody, and it's a way of letting go of that need for approval from everybody. Right. Because there's a lack of approval of ourselves, and so we need approval from everybody else. So reminding yourself, like, hey, I'm not for everybody and everybody needs to love me, it's okay. And you said, you know, my challenge with this is that it doesn't just feel like I'm not for everybody, it feels like I'm not for most people. I appear to have a very narrow range of people that I can truly connect with and a similarly narrow range of people that seem to want to connect with me. And I'm not a shut in. I go to. I don't Mind crowds. I don't avoid parties, so I'm around people. I just don't seem to connect beyond surface level to people that haven't looked at themselves deeply in the mirror. I'm not a snob that only looks for deep people. Rather, the fact that they live and examine life comes out after I get to know them. And then it's no surprise to me why we get along so well. So you really like to have those deeper connections with people. And it seems like these, this is the sentence that really stood out to me when I read this, which is these types of people are few and far between, which can be kind of lonely. I don't think there's anything in that first part. It's like, yeah, you're kind of knowing what am I drawn to what really. And this is when I work with people and we're developing their social life, it's like, what are you designing? Your social life is like, what do you. Who do you really resonate with? First of all, what's your natural style? I remember I worked with a woman who was constantly feeling inadequate because she wasn't. Her brother was very loud comedian, life of the party, always having something to say. And she was more quiet and she was her whole life pressuring herself. I should be more, I should be more, I should be more. And finally she just owned her essence. And it's like, I mean she can be funny and playful, but she's often very spacious and. And she told me about this amazing experience where she was working with someone, a colleague, and they were, she was in education and they were cleaning up this, this room and the other person just started sharing with her. She's like, oh yeah, ask. Just started asking her questions, tell me more about that. And then the person just really opened up and this beautiful connection. And I was like, no, no offense against your brother, but do you think him telling loud, funny stories would have brought that other person out? And she knew it. She's like, no. I was like, yeah. So you knowing you and knowing your essence, so I think you're doing that. Andrew, the qu. The line that stands out to me is people are. These types of people are few and far between. So it can be kind of lonely. And my initial gut reaction reading that was. Doesn't feel like that in my world. Feel like there's an abundance of people that are self reflective and curious and deep and energized and exploring their lives. So the question would be, because if we believe that that's a story of scarcity, those People are very few and far. I've seen this. I've worked with a woman recently who's in dating and it's kind of. She wants this too. She wants people who are growth oriented and deeper like her. And it's kind of like, yeah, but those guys are not that available. There's not that many of them. Like, where are you looking, sister? The bar? Tinder? Then maybe, I don't know. But where, where would you find that? And if we question that story of scarcity and instead of saying there's not that many of us say like, well, there's an abundance of them. Where are they? What do I need to be like to attract that? How do I need to approach conversations to deepen them faster and filter people. And I've seen it go both ways. You, you filter people at lint on my shirt this whole time. The good thing is life loves me. I don't need to look a certain way. I, There's a, I've seen that, you know, you either filter like someone feels kind of like you can't really get deeper with them and then you move on to someone else. But I've also seen that there's often like a. If there's a certain kind of boldness and a certain kind of depth that you bring and curiosity you bring, you can evoke things out of people that they might not seem that way, but it all starts with that shifting, questioning that scarcity story. They're everywhere. And if they're not, then it's probably the environments. You're. What parties are you going to? Maybe they're not at parties. Depends on what kind of party. You know, when I, when I moved to Portland, I've been. Now I live outside of Portland, but, you know, I lived in this area for like 15 years now. When I first moved here, I went to a sweat lodge community, went to a Santo Daime church where you drink ayahuasca. It's legal in Oregon. So not. You got nothing on me. It's, you know, a bunch of weirdos like me go to Tony Robbins events, which I hopped up people on personal growth there, right? So I met some amazing people there. This last weekend I met a guy I talked to for an hour about how he healed himself with cancer with his mind. I was like, this dude's cool. Gotta interview him for my podcast. He's freaking turned on in life and now he's wanting to help other people with this. I mean, so you, where, where are you going? Where are they? That's the, that's the real question, is there a scientific name for being too nice? Yes, there is. It's called doormat. Itis. No, you know, scientific. My background is in clinical psychology where it just felt like the whole field had a little bit of an inferiority complex where I was like, we're a science too. We got terms and stuff. Yeah, yeah, let's call that, you know, because they're just trying to describe. They're just. There's no blood markers and for a lot of this stuff. Right. It's just, they're just trying to describe things so they'll give them like puffed up names. So, you know, reactive attachment disorder, you know, you can't just call it I'm feeling depressed. It's like major depressive episode. So there I, you know, one of the terms in this is not clinical psychology, but in pop psychology would be codependency is a term that's kind of got some that was more big in like the 90s or something. But so I guess the short answer is I don't know to think about that if there is a more clinical term. You seem to be the only one to his social anxiety on the spot with all the examples you give. That's Ma. Okay, iPhone, thank you for the comment. I'm not sure I totally get it and I appreciate that you're appreciating what you're learning here. Okay, let me pull up. I see there's more in there. I'm gonna. I'm hanging out. I'll answer a few more here, but there's one that was. I came earlier. How can I be more expressive and at ease? I hold back and am rigid physically and my voice starts to sound like a high pitched child. Also, I'm ashamed that I have not done more with my life and I'm ashamed to share my past. I didn't have a quote regular job until I was 27 and I still haven't dated anyone. So hopefully based on what we covered today, you're starting to in your own mind hear the solutions. Because when you hear the solutions for her, you're gonna start hearing them for yourself. So how can she be more expressive? What's preventing her from being more expressive? Well, the idea is that if I'm fully me expressive. You know what another word for expressive is? Out of control. It's not all pre planned and controlled. It's spontaneous. And the nice pattern is, well, I can't be spontaneous because whatever comes out of me is probably going to be bad because I'm not okay and you can hear that I'm also, by the way, ashamed of that I'm not where I am in life, where I should be. And I haven't dated anybody yet. So I hear there's maybe some specific boldness, strategies she can take. She can practice being more expressive. But honestly, I think that's going to be more forced because one of the first things I'd want to work, it's like, yeah, you and you. You are the one. Maybe someone in her life is following her around, saying, you're not where you should be in life. Maybe, I don't know, her parents or something. Hey, dad, how's it going? You're not where you should be in life. Oh, it's been great talking with you. Right. I know you might have parents like that, but they're not this. They're not the reason you feel that way. I say, yes, it is, because they told me that since I was a little kid. They did. They did the conditioning to me. Look, the point of understanding your nice conditioning from the book, not nice, is not so you can say, they did this to me. It's so that you can liberate yourself. Because if it's conditioning, it can be deconditioned and reconditioned. And yes, someone might have conditioned you when you were 7 or 5, but now you're 27 or 37, and the only one conditioning you truly is you. So I would have Rose sit down and say, life loves me. I love myself. I. I love you, and see what happens. Oof. No, I don't. This is stupid. How can I love myself? Okay, now. Now you're dialoguing with that overactive inner critic, and you're gonna start to heal the fundamental rift, which is when you turned on yourself. It's not about when they turned on you. It's when you turned on yourself. And I'm not saying you say, hey, I don't need to date. I don't need to progress in my career. I don't need anything. I just love myself. And that doesn't matter. Well, on one level, it doesn't matter. You're lovable no matter what. But when you really love somebody, don't you want the best for them? Right? Think about my kids and love them. I was like, well, I don't care if you learn anything or feel good about yourself or have friends, like, whatever, I love you. And it's like, well, yeah, I love you no matter what. And of course I want you to have friends that you feel good around. Of course I want you to feel confident, of course. I want you to pursue things and feel, you know, you can persevere and inspired by whatever it is you're learning and you feel like you have a. You can learn things and you're growing and it's exciting. Of course I want that for you. Right? So that's what you want for yourself. So that's the inner work. And then the outer practice that can help with that too, is going to be. I'm going to take the risk, the discomfort tolerance to be 3% more expressive today. What's 3% more expressive look like? Well, maybe I'd laugh a little more. Maybe I'd let my face be a little more. Maybe I wouldn't hold back. Maybe you don't even, you don't have to know. You should just ask the question and you'll live it. And what you'll find is that as you're more expressive, it might feel good, but you're also going to feel a little bit out of control. And that's where there's going to be this dance of you with that fundamental decision of, am I going to live my life fully authentically or am I going to live a defended life? Because the defended life is about controlling everything and trying not to feel pain. And that's a life that many people unfortunately have chosen and choose all the way to the end until they're on their deathbed. So let's choose differently. So let's go into discomfort. Let's be 3% more expressive. That's kind of the muscle building side of it, the strength training side of it. And then the inner work is to plop yourself down in front of a mirror or with a journal and start to write to yourself letters of compassion, letters of care. Why? And if you're, if you roll your eyes at this stuff and say, oh, this stuff's so stupid, I would just, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are you taking that at face value? Why aren't you, Are you curious about that resistance? Because if you want to have a better life, it comes down to one thing. Your capacity to give and receive love. I don't care how much money you have, I don't care how many people follow you on Instagram. There's people that have all that and kill themselves because they don't have a capacity to give and receive love at a higher level. And my wish for you is that your capacity to give and receive love now is greater than it was a year ago and certainly greater than five years ago. And the cool thing about that is, that, that's not dependent upon your age, that's not dependent upon your physical body is going to have a peak. Great book to listen to if you haven't, by the way. It's called Outlive by Peter ati. It's fantastic. But if your, your body's gonna have a peak. I'm still peaking 41, actually. Probably technically, in some ways the peak biologically was in my 20s, but I, because I had all this chronic pain that I'm now free of. I can do cool now, but you know I'm gonna crush it my 40s, but 50s and 60s and 70s, you, you basically want to hold on to your health span. You might not be continually growing in strength forever, but you can maintain that's not true of your capacity to give and receive love because that's not defined by your physical body. There are no bounds on that. And that's why you can feel happier and happier and more and more alive and joyful the older you get. In fact, a lot of research shows that people do generally get happier each, progressively every decade of their lives. People are most unhappy in like their teens. So good news, best is yet to come. Let's see. Yeah, but I'll. Maybe I'll have less or I'll be old or I'll be, you know, limping around. Yeah, but you could feel more love than ever before, but not by default. And you'll see this as people die. I have. Every person is a warning or an example, a warning of how you don't want to be an example of how you want to live. And I've been around people that are dying and as they die, how you die is how you lived, whatever you practiced. And there's people that get angry and they're yelling and they're enraged and they're, and they're closed off or they're terrified. Like, just give me all the drugs. I can't feel all this. And then there's my wife's grandfather, Grandpa Luther, who she went, this is a number five years ago, maybe now. And she drove to the Tri Cities out in Washington where he was, he was dying. He had some growth, something in his stomach where he couldn't process food anymore. He was like 90 something years old. They weren't going to do anything. He was going to, you know, he was going to die. And he knew that people are coming to visit him. And she said, she sat with him in the, in the hospital room and they were holding each other's hands and she's like, he just kept looking at me, and I kept looking at him, and he just kept on saying, I love you, I love you. And she said, I love you. And there was, like, nothing more to say. That was it. And now he's at. He's transitioning from this physical form into whatever's next. And he's dissolving, right? His physical body is literally falling apart. But his spirit, his love, his capacity to give him receive love is the highest it's ever been. And that can happen for people. That can happen for you. And there's a part of you that's like, this is all well and good, but I want success at work, and I want a girlfriend. That's fine. You can have that along the way, too. Because your capacity to give and receive love is going to determine how people treat you at work. Your capacity to love yourself is going to determine if you are in a relationship. You're not. And if you're not in a relationship and you want to be. The first thing I would look at is your relationship with yourself, because that's determining, you might think it's like, there's not enough of them out there. How can I discern for myself when I'm really avoiding conversations versus knowing that the person I would be talking to just doesn't have the capacity to have those conversations? So I just don't try. I say this because sometimes I want to have those hard conversations, but now don't even try to have those hard conversations because the other person doesn't have the capacity. Okay? I feel like that can be a very thin line to discern, and sometimes it's just me giving up instead of pushing forward and saying those things, even if the other person may or may not hear me. This is a great question, and there is a lot of nuance here in, like, what is the difficult conversation and with who. Sometimes it's important to say what needs to be said, even if the other person doesn't receive it the way that you want. Sometimes it's important because you need to. You're at work and you need the. Your goal at work is to not please everybody. Your goal at work is to get the job done. And I'm not saying you, you know, burn bridges and have terrible relationships. You can have good relations with people. You can be respectful of people. But we're not there to please everybody. We're here to get a job done. We're getting. We're getting. We're paid to be here. That's why I'm spending my Thursday with You, you know, so not. Not me with you. I mean, I'm not paid to do this. This is free. And I would do this even if I wasn't paid. But if you were working a job that you're, you know, in your colleagues and you're having a hard time with a colleague, you have a conversation with them, you know, you're there to get a job done. And so I'm going to say what needs to be said. They may or may not be open to it. All right, let me see. I'm going to be as skillful as I can. There's a couple chapters in there in this book about, you know, how to be. So three levels of skillful communication, how to do it better. You know, there's a lot of, like, pitfalls I saw. And this. The cool thing about this book is I'd worked with people. This came out in 2017. This is six years later. So I worked with a lot of people on this. Exactly. So there's a lot of insights and lessons that came from people who are actually working on this. But three levels of skillful communication. So there's ways to get more skillful. And you can't be so perfect and skillful that everybody always responds how you want. That's just not how life works. And. Sometimes the change is internal, and the stories you have about the situation need to upgrade. I might be opening a big can of worms here, so I don't want to go down a big rabbit hole. But, you know, let's say it's not a work situation. It might be a work situation, but let's say it's a situation with a family member. And you're like, this person doesn't, you know, they need to have a. They need to treat me differently, or we need to have a deeper conversation, or they're not able to do this, or they're not capable of that. And we're so in the story of it that we don't really see that. Maybe, just maybe that is my perception of it. And they might actually be a lot more capable than I'm giving them credit for. And the truth is that I've been scared. I've been closed off. I've been unwilling to take the risk to be vulnerable. And that's why I say it's very nuanced. You get to determine this reflection. That's why, you know, the benefit of, like, the mastermind that I run is that we get to. People get to bring these things and we get to get more nuanced exploration and input from, from me and others. But ultimately that story might be what needs to change. So I gave kind of both scenarios there. I've listened to a number of your books and countless other self help books. Good ideas. However, they don't seem to sink into my daily life and especially in high stakes situations. And I need this info the most. I al also find myself shopping for more self help books when I already have a bunch. How can I get these ideas to work? It's like I'm stuck in a cycle of needing to fix myself and see, see little if any improvement. Great question, Lyle. And I personally for myself have observed that when it's something that's fundamentally important, like a key life, this is fundamentally important in my life to change. A book is not enough. And I know we're talking about the release of my new book, so hey now, a book is a part of the process. I can't tell you how many people read this book and they liked it and they didn't make the changes until they really did work. So this isn't a pitch for my, my program. You could be with someone else or something else. But liberation is not solo. Liberation is communal in my experience, which is why I am six months in, I think in working with a good friend of mine who is a trainer, physical trainer. I worked with him for a year and a half, maybe two years, about five years ago. Got in the best shape of my life. After working with him, I still ran a lot because I love running, but everything else, all my physical strength degraded for three years and then I started working with again and it's like, boom. What's going on there? We need other people sometimes, not for everything, you know, small stuff. You want to learn how to frame a door in your house. You could probably watch YouTube videos and figure that out. Probably read a. Well, a book's not gonna be great for that, but you can watch YouTube videos about it. There's a lot of things that you can solve with a book, but when it's like these fundamental problems, I think more is needed. And it's not just the information that we get from working with people and groups and other things. It's. It's the. We get activated. We like access information that we already knew, but we start to do it. There's some level of commitment that happens when we invest in ourselves. And this, you know, I practice this, you know, I'm invested. I just joined a mastermind for this coming year in 2024, and that's because I know that much More is going to get activated in me when I commit and work with other people and learn and be a student on commitment. Let me find this great quote by Van Goethe. Van Go Van Goethe. I don't know. Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is only one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events, issues, from the decision raising to one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come her way. Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. I'll have to check with my wife, but I'm pretty sure that was the lie that she had this necklace when we first met, and maybe she still has it. It's this little tiny silver square, and inscripted on it, it said it either had both lines, whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Or just the second line, boldness has genius, power and magic in it. And then of course, when I saw that, I was like, how can I not be with this woman for the rest of my life? Okay, this is awesome. I want to get to a few more questions, and then we're going to complete for today. And again, it's a little ways out, but mark it on your account. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you the dates right now. They're not even up on the website. So you guys are in the. In the super. No, but not nice. Live. The virtual event is going to be happening March 1st through 3rd in 2024. So that's gonna be three days of this. Imagine instead of this being. The first is like an hour and a half, right? This is the first hour and a half of literally three days together. And we'll have a VIP version where you can go all, you know, leave longer, just a lot more questions answered. So just a heads up, if you're like, ooh, I have a lot of questions I want to get answered then. Then you definitely want to mark that on your calendar. It's virtual, so you can attend from anywhere, too. All right, where's my list of things? Okay, how do you get rid of chronic pain? Give tips. Wow, that's a big one. I mean, Go to my podcast, drink for the shy guy, and type in pain. That's honestly the best answer I can give you because anything I give you now might just be just like a bunch of basic information that's not going to be really life changing because it's too fast. So immerse yourself, really take it in the. To free yourself from chronic pain, it's the battle for belief. So go to shrinkforthshy guy.com and type in pain in the search. And there's interviews, there's episodes about it. I just did one recently with John Thornton about running with pain. Really, you'll just start to go down the rabbit hole. There's so much liberation possible there. But, but know that it's a battle for belief, that the, the reason that we don't is because we believe we're broken. We believe there's something just, it's, it's, it's the analog to there's something emotionally wrong with me. I'm not lovable. It's, there's something physically wrong with me. I'm broken. And it's probably reinforced by a bunch of diagnoses and imaging and other things. And there's all kinds of liberating information that's out there that you can find that says actually if you image people that have no pain, they have just the same symptoms, bulging discs and other things. So your pain is not coming from that, it's coming from something else. And look, I'm speaking broad terms here, obviously. Go check out, work with your own medical professional. I'm not here to give medical advice, blah, blah, blah. And look, there are many. The idea is that if something worked, we would all know about it. And that's a misconception. Liberation. Every problem has a solution. Liberation is available, but you have to seek it out. Because the truth is, especially in the medical industry, there's a lot of money and there's a lot of forces that are conspiring to keep things as they are. And it's not necessarily malevolent. People who are like there might be, but most of the people are doing what they think is right. It's just the incentives. The incentives are to make money doing the same old things. And a lot of the things that liberate people don't make much money. And so unfortunately, the way the system is incentivized, it keeps this information pushed out. But there is a phenomenal book I recommend called the Way out by Alan Gordon. And you can also, they reference something called the Boulder Back Pain Study, which was done in 2021, which is a randomized controlled trial that shows that These pain reprocessing therapy, they call it, radically blew treatment, as usual, out of the water, including surgery. So for back pain and as always, I've read all the books and they got me to a certain degree. And then I worked with people. So the pain cure clinic, Laura and John Thornton were really helpful. And now I'm also, I'm working with a woman. She only works for people in Oregon though, so her name is Gabrielle. I don't know what the name of her clinic is, but it's a pain clinic. So because I'm committed, like, I don't want to just manage pain. I don't fucking liberate myself. I don't want to just feel okay. I want to be able to go run 50 miles, which I just did a month ago. And so I need to, to, to do that. I want to work with people to be at the highest level of what's. Of liberation that's possible. And these patterns, like the patterns of niceness, like the patterns of self turning on yourself, like the patterns of thinking. I'm broken. I know that liberation is not some, like, I did it and now I kick back and it's, I'm done forever. No, it's fitness, it's training, it's discipline. Like, what did you do to get that liberation? Okay, you got to practice it again. You know, you have to have daily practices, you have to have rituals, you have to have things that you do to set you up to prime you to live in this more liberated state. How can I stop believing that expressing my needs to my fiance is needy? Well, I would imagine a couple things. One, I would think about her and I'd say if she was wanting something, would I want to know that truly if she was hungering for something, she was hungering for more touch. Or if she was longing to watch a movie together that weekend or. And I'm not saying you have to do everything she wants, but wouldn't you want to know what she wants? Because if you don't know what they want, and you know, months, years go by and you're like, I don't know, I don't know. I didn't do any of it. I don't know what they wanted. Usually there's trouble a brewing, right? We want to know what they want. So you are giving her the gift of knowing you because your needs are part of who you are. And the story that you're needy is, it's not true. It is a protection strategy because you feel vulnerable about letting that be seen because you're afraid that she's going to reject your need or reject you. And the only way to liberate yourself is going to be maybe starting small is to reveal those, to ask, ask openly, unapologetically, freely, simply, directly. Hey, I would love this and see what happens. There's a gentleman I've been working with for a while in the Mastermind. And you know, he had this beautiful relationship with his spouse. And, you know, he had such a challenge with this. It was like, what do they. What do we want to do on a weekend? And he'd be torn up about it. He's like, well, I kind of want to go for some bike rides and do this thing, and sometimes I want to do them on my own, but I feel like I just need to spend the whole weekend with her. And so it was, for him, it was like, I want to go for a bike ride this morning. I'm, I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to do that. And she's like, okay. And he's like, oh, okay. And in his mind, it was like something huge was going to happen, and that's where. And so as you, as you test these things out, you realize that you're not dealing with right now and this person, you're dealing with something from the past. And the only way you, you experience that upgrade is by taking the risk. And all of the stuff we're talking about is helping you get ready to go do it. The, the shift in your mindset, the giving more love to yourself, these are what let set you up to take these risks. And that's really the key word there is risk. You know, is it, do I want to live a defended life, or do I want to live a life of risk, of going for it, of really being seen and known? Because if you try to avoid all risk in your relationship, it will end. You're trying to preserve it through being safe. But safety, AKA certainty, strangles love in a relationship. Maybe not all at once, but over time. And so really, it's an act of love to you and her to share, to let yourself be known and challenge that. That's a story. That's me being. That's me trying. That's the part of me that wants to live a defended life. And I'm going to choose something different. Beautiful. Okay, there's so many lovely questions here. Let me touch on one that was someone sent in earlier, which is how do you deal with negative feedback? I'm not sure sometimes if there's credence in what the other person is saying. But I'm also very open to criticism. So sometimes I'll like, take it like, okay, tell me more, tell me more. And then I'll leave and be like, wait a minute. That was a very unfair perspective of me. And I, when I read that, I was like, oh, I know that one. And a couple, a couple of tips on feedback. Number one, let's go back to the fundamental root of this problem, which is the belief that I'm not lovable, which is what makes feedback so scary. Because someone has an idea that I thought I could have done something better. And if I feel, remember out of that I'm not okay, I'm not enough. Comes insufficiency. Whatever I did wasn't enough. My contribution at work wasn't enough. My idea wasn't enough, the work I completed wasn't enough. And then someone has a feedback that may be directly saying that, hey, that wasn't good enough. Or it might be just saying, hey, I wonder about this part. You left that out. And you're like, they said I didn't do it good enough. Right? So I'm not sure what's happening there. But let's say they are saying that wasn't good enough. And people do do that sometimes. The number one, we try to protect ourselves by fawning and agreeing with everything or by getting really defensive. But the number one way to really protect yourself, if you like armor is the. Is divine. Armor is the armor of love. Because it's like, if I know that life loves me, if I am on my own side no matter what, then it's okay. And so I noticed this in myself, that for me to become less and less defensive, I might not show the defensiveness. I might be very polished on the outside, but inside I'm like, what the fuck? Shut up. How dare you? Or I'm all insecure afterwards. Like, oh, they say the. Huh? Does everyone else think that? Oh, everyone else is going to think that. The, the, the fundamental protection from that is the armor of love, of the unconditional. Like, hey, hey, it's okay, I don't. And, and these are just words until, and hopefully if you take one thing from this entire master class, it's to commit to solving the root problem of niceness, which is you not being on your own side and fundamentally finding a path to, to love yourself more unconditionally. Because then what happens is someone's like, you didn't do that enough. You're like, oh, what's going on in their world? I wonder why they said that. I wonder what they're upset about. Right? Because when people are upset, it's only for one reason. Always people get upset because they feel like one of their needs was not met. Now they might turn that into an expectation. It should be, you should have done it, but you don't have to take that on. But maybe sometimes you did. Maybe, maybe you did say you're going to do something and you didn't. Maybe you didn't put your best work in, or maybe you did and they still wanted more. Okay, that's all fine. The reason it becomes so terrible and scary and hard is when I am not okay when this happens. And so someone comes at you and let's say you're in a more loving, centered place with yourself, you have choice. Then you can say, oh, I don't think you did this well enough. And they're very critical. This was a waste, this is bad, this is poor work. And you can say, wow, I, okay, I see that there's something here that you think could be done better. And I am curious about what you think could be done better. Also, the way that you're talking feels pretty harsh. Seems like you're upset with me. Are you upset? Are you stressed? Like, what's going on? Do you see how much freedom I have now? And also know this, as a nice person, I'm going to give you some new permissions that are going to really open up your life. You don't have to accept all feedback. You can reject people's feedback. Now you could do it in two ways. You could do it internally. Someone says a bunch of stuff and you're like, nah. And now I used to get hung up on this. Like, no, you gotta be really open to feedback. It's really bad to be, you know, close minded. You got to be open to all feedback. All feedback from everybody. Don't even know where it's coming from. Are they triggered? Are they upset? Are they feeling inferior? Are they feeling bad in their own lives. Now they're vomiting on me. Like, I've taken all feedback. That's a terrible map of relationships. No, thank you. My upgrade is I get to choose if I take in the feedback or not. If my wife, who's in a centered place is saying, hey, is there something that's been bothering me in our relationship? I'm going to be all ears. If it's a rando person from the Internet who says, you know what your problem is? Guy that I've never met who I saw a YouTube video of a short, a 48 second YouTube short. You know what your problem is, guy? Am I going to take that in? Right? So, you know, I, I can reject the feedback and guess what? Depending upon the environment, you can defend yourself. Now sometimes people like, wait a minute, defensiveness is bad. Sure. There's a big difference between defensiveness and defending. So someone's like, you didn't do this and you didn't do that and this and that. They're blamey, blamey face of you blame pants all over the place. And you're. And you're like, well, I can't say anything back because that's defensive. No, say, hold, hold on a second. I see you're upset. There's a lot of focus on me and what I didn't do, which I could look at. And there might be things that I didn't do. And I'm also aware that the way you're framing it, it's like it was all me. It was all my responsibility to do all these things. I'm not sure. I don't buy into that. I think that you might have a part in this too. Right. So see how I'm defending myself there? And that is healthy. That's allowed. You might say, well, I can't do that at work. I can't do that. I just have to take, take it. And this is one of those things where nice people operate with their hands behind their back in, in handcuffs. And they say, it's because I have to, because they made me. Because that's how this environment is. Because that's how my boss is, because that's how my girlfriend is. That's how they are. That's what my parents are. And I'm always like, ah, is that why your old partner was the narcissist and everyone made you and we're sort of. No, because it comes back to the old, the old stick up. It's because you're going, like, I have to. Okay, whatever you say. But when you find your center and find your power, you can stand up for yourself and you can speak back. And all of a sudden you have a whole different world of response to you. There is more. There is always more. And it will be for another day. Thank you so much for your interest, your engagement, your heartfelt questions, your vulnerability, your earnest and sincere desire to grow and to transform. You are on the right path. Read this book. Apply this stuff. If you're like, I think it was Lyo had that question. It's like, okay, I'm doing all this Stuff and it's not making a change then. Honestly, when I reached those plateaus in myself, I reached one not that long ago where I'd done all these amazing breakthroughs with my physical health. I'd gone around, you know, these 40 mile hikes in a day around Mount Hood, and I was still having these episodes of chronic pain. That would come out of nowhere though, and they wouldn't last forever. And I knew they would pass, but they last for like a week and I couldn't run and, and then it would go away for a couple months and it would come back and I just didn't feel like I had. I didn't feel free. I was so frustrated one day I was just like, I've been studying all this for a decade and I worked with all these coaches and I've done all this stuff. How come I'm still not, you know, free to do, you know, Kind of silly when I look at it. Like I want to have, you know, unlimited unfettered physical abilities, which is a beautiful dream. But I. The entitlement kind of amuses me. But anyway, I, I sat down, I was really frustrated one day and I said, okay, you've done a lot. You might have done way more than most people would ever do. You've also been able to unlock some pretty cool abilities. But I see that you're not where you want to be. There's another level of freedom possible in your physical health. I see that. So what do you want to do about it? Are you going to say, well, I did everything that's possible, I did everything I could. I read all the books, I worked with some people, I put hundreds of hours into this and it's still not there. So I guess this is as good as it gets. And knowing if you know me, I'm like, fuck that, That's. I don't know what I'm gonna settle for because I'm about like, what's. Let's push the limit. Let's see what's beyond. So there's something beyond. So what's more? And I said, I, there is more available. So then are you gonna do the work? Are you gonna do what it takes? Are you willing to do whatever it takes? And I was like, yes, I am. So that's why I started working with another person. And it shifted and I went and did this 50 mile ultramarathon. And that's. That's a symbol, you know, it. It's not the only sign of health, but it's like, hey, more is possible. And so if you're at that place with this and you're like, hey, I've done all these things and it's not working, you can get frustrated. Good. Use the frustration though. Then what are you going to do if it's not. If you have not gotten to where you want to go, then more is needed. It might say more. I'm already overwhelmed and I'm pressuring myself and I'm trying to read 7000 Health Belt books and power push myself to do a 70, you know, 70 hour morning routine so I'm better for the day. And well, more of the same might not be what you need. More of something else though. Something more is needed. Something different might be needed and I don't know what that is for you. I'll send an email if you feel like it might be the mastermind. I would love to talk with you about that. I've seen that be a powerful vehicle for people. If it's this virtual event that I'm doing, maybe it's that, maybe it's something else. You find a therapist who knows about this stuff or you say, hey, I'm reading this book. I want you to. Can I work with it on you? Can I work with you on this? I don't know. But something more is needed. And, and, and the only thing that ever stops us from creating the extraordinary is the story that I can't. It's impossible, which is just an illusion. So thanks for being with me today. A true pleasure and an honor. I will be sharing this recording to everyone. If you miss some of it or want to watch or listen to it again and again, you can get the copy of this book for 3.99. I would really appreciate that. Love if you wrote a review. I will be sharing a little about the raffle too for that, to incentivize some of that for positive reviews, which helps the book reach more people, which is my purpose here, one of the core purposes on this planet. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, we have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Have a good rest of your day.