Dr. Aziz argues that mindfulness—noticing your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations without believing them—builds confidence without needing to achieve anything. He warns against fusing your thoughts with reality, offers breath and body scan practices, and says the real work happens offline, away from high-stakes moments.
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Hey, welcome to your weekly confidence boost. Today we're talking about how more mindfulness equals more confidence. What don't you have to get like powerful and amped up, be clear and motivated and driven and take action and all that stuff? Isn't that what confidence is all about? Yeah, those things can definitely increase your confidence. You know, if you get into an empowered state or feel more energized or take more action, you can definitely build your confidence. In fact, confidence is a byproduct of that action. And the other side that we don't look at is being more present, which is what mindfulness is, can radically increase your confidence without you having to go do a bunch of stuff. And it doesn't have to be later. I can feel confident once I've achieved this and once I've done that. But I can feel confident right now by being more mindful. So what is mindfulness? You've probably heard it, it's been well publicized in the last 15, 20 years. But basically, mindfulness is being able to be in this moment right now, here, right now, and aware. Aware of what's happening. Aware of what's happening in your environment around you, and aware of what's happening in this environment inside of you. And inside of you consists of a few different things, right? There's thoughts, there's feelings or emotions, there's images that you could see in your mind. There's sense perceptions like your touch and where you're feeling physical pain. And there's also more subtle perceptions, right? You know, like energy, things like intuition and being able to sense emotional tone of a room or other things like that. So that's part of your inner environment. And we're not going to, you know, do an in depth breakdown of everything that's in there and out here. But mindfulness is your ability to be aware of that. You might say, well, yeah, that's what I do all the time, dude, I'm like watching this video. But actually if you pay attention, most of us, unless we're bringing, you know, have a conscious practice of this, are not that aware. We're going from one thing to the next. And we're in this moment, but our mind is somewhere else. Our mind is chewing on thoughts about what did this person say about that and what does this mean thing, what's going to happen there and what about this? And we're in this sort of world of concepts. And a very powerful practice to become more confident is just to be more aware of what's happening inside of you right now. You Want to just practice that with me? Like right now, in this moment, can you become more aware of what's happening inside of you? Can you notice your breath right now? You notice the sounds that are happening around you? I find sounds as one of the simplest and easiest access points I have to this moment. I feel like the two easiest ones for me are breath and sound, and they're different for different people. You can find what helps you become more here now. Do you hear there's a whirring of a fan in this office that I'm in? Maybe you can hear some traffic or a freeway or birds or something, Machinery going on in your house, your fridge, my voice. And you start to listen a bit more intently. You just pay more attention and then pay attention to your breath. Are there any sensations in your body that you're noticing? You know, most common ones are physical sensations, especially if there's discomfort, but also emotional sensations, especially if there's discomfort. You know, any tension in your chest or your stomach or your throat or. And it can be extremely valuable and powerful just to start to bring more attention and more awareness to it. Like, what's happening right now. In my program, Confidence University, and one of the earliest things I talk about is like the master skill. And there's so many different skills for confidence, but one of the master skills is that mindfulness is that meditation, that ability to bring our awareness, because otherwise we're just driven by whatever passes through our minds. In acceptance and commitment therapy, they call this cognitive fusion. This is a fancy way to say you believe all the shit that goes through your head. You know, so you're in a situation and you're like, those people don't like me. And it is so, it is fact. You feel that in your body. You're like. You feel like you got rejected 17 times by all those people watching you. And it's instantaneous. Thought reality, thought reality. I'm not gonna be able to do this. Oh, now I feel the despair and the frustration and the failure. Those people are not, you know, don't take. Those people don't respect me. Oh, I feel angry and upset and defensive and whatever. And it's fused. The thought equals reality. And until we become more aware, more mindful, more conscious, we're just in reactivity city. And a lot of those thoughts, unfortunately, if you've been with for a little while, you know that those thoughts come from your inner critic, from your safety police, from these different parts inside of you that are not there to help you thrive in life. They're There to keep you survive and safe and just get through life. Eek. Through life to procreate and die, you know, and that's one level of goal for life. But we can do a lot better. And you probably want a life that has more thriving in it, more joy in it, more fun in it, more excitement in it, more adventure in it, more contribution. And I'm getting excited. More meaning in it. That's what you probably want if you're here, right? That's what I want. So how do we do that? Well, we start by becoming more aware of this, this moment right now. And then this is the kind of thing that it's hard to implement something new, it's hard to master something during game time, right? So let's say it's a, I don't know, football team or something and they're like, we're doing this new running play and they're like, great. When's the first time you're going to do it? Not in practice, we'll do it in the game, we'll do it in the big game. And it's like, how's that going to go? We dropped the ball, it didn't work. Shit. And it's like, what's going on there? Well, they didn't. You can't just apply something new in game time. So for example, you're in a situation where you feel socially anxious or self judgment or whatever and you're like, okay, I'm being more mindful. No, I feel like shit. I feel it's hard. So we got to build up that muscle and that capacity outside of that moment. Just like they got to practice the football play 30 times during practice before they can do it in the game. And so this moment right now, later today, when you wake up in the morning, can you bring more attention? Can you take some more breaths consciously? Can you observe and allow what is arising in you? And I think one of the biggest pitfalls when it comes to mindfulness and this stuff is people think like something's arising, it's uncomfortable, Let me become mindful and it will go away. I'm not doing it right. If I feel anxious, I gotta be more anxious. Okay, I'm anxious, I gotta be more mindful, gotta meditate, get rid of this shit. And it's easy to take some of the teachings around this and interpret it that way because they'll be like, you know, your suffering comes from your thinking. Do not think and you will not suffer. And you're like, oh, that shit makes sense. Okay, don't think. I'm thinking. I'm still thinking. I'm thinking about not thinking. Fuck, I'm failing. So I love a more spacious definition, which is like, just become more aware, you know? Wow, I'm thinking a lot of anxious thoughts right now. Okay, just watch those. Because if you're watching them, you're not automatically fused with them. So that's my encouragement. And I know one last thing I'll say in this video, you might be like, I already know all this is ease. I've read some books on mindfulness. I saw TED talk about it. That's just more concepts. This is more ideas. Like, are you practicing this how and when and how much? And can you bring just another moment or two of it to your day to right now? In each moment, that's when the shift starts to occur. That's when the liberation starts to occur. That's when you can access a lot more confidence and patience and love for yourself and for others. So let's all practice this together to become more mindful and more confident. Thanks for being with me. Till we speak again. May I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
