My Favorite Confidence Tool

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Good to be with you today and I'm excited because we're going to be doing something like little bit different than we typically do in the show. Usually it's me sharing ideas, information, concepts, tools, strategies, things that you can use. And yet that's a little different than when I'm working with somebody, either in a group or one on one or leading experience, a live event. Because in those instances, I don't want to just talk about things, I want to do them with people. And I thought it'd be interesting to do that with you here today. So it might be a little different than typical episodes in this show or even podcasts in general. And that's going to be to guide you through an experience where you can actually be doing it with me. And this is. So I'm teaching you a tool, probably the most valuable tool that I know and the one that I use on a daily basis and has been very influential in enhancing my life and my confidence and my growth. So I'm excited to share it with you, but I don't want to just talk about it. I want to do it with you. So to that end, I encourage you to listen to this episode from start to finish. And if you can be not doing something else while you do it, you'll get even more out of it. I understand that generally with podcasts we're trying to net no extra time, so maybe you listen to while you drive or do dishes or make food and that's all okay. You can still do that. And if it's possible to just pause for the next 20 minutes here, you'll get even more. But life's got to happen, so do what you got to do. So what are we going to do? Well, I was sharing this with a friend the other day and I was talking about how when I work with people, I have had so much growth and experience all these things. And I want to give that to everyone that I know and everyone that I work with. I want everyone to be liberated and feel free and confident and alive. And I realize that there's one thing that I'm committed to doing on a very regular basis that feels like a bit of a hard sell. I don't know if everyone does it, but I know that the degree that you practice this will radically determine your growth, your success, your confidence in life. And so what's the this? Well, the tool is basically a body focused process. One of my teachers calls it the peace process. Other people might call it a somatic meditation. But it is learning to work with what's happening for you, not in your head. Not with like cognitive therapy and reframes and changing the story and asking Byron Katie's four questions and so on and so forth. And not even like straight mindfulness where you just let go of whatever the thought is and focus back to your breath. But actually to become more and more familiar with the inner body sensations of whatever, of anxiety, of grief, of anger, of upset. You know, those are the negative emotions. But you could also become more familiar with what positive feelings feel like in your body. Excitement, anticipation, enjoyment, happiness, pleasure. But really it's a way of coming more and more into yourself. And I learned this more than three years ago now and have been practicing it daily since in some form or another, sometimes in a formal practice and sometimes just as I go about my day. And the shift has been remarkable. Even in those three years. I would say I was already, I'd already grown so much, but the growth accelerated even more. And my capacity to do more, take on bigger risks, be bolder in the world has only grown as a result of this. So it's an extremely grounding practice and it's something that will greatly serve you, I think, in your life. So I want to share it with you and I want to do it with you. And so the best way to do that is going to be to practice it now. So you might be in a particular emotional state right now. Maybe you're nervous or anxious or stressed or tense. Maybe there's this background stress, you know, I don't have enough time, I need more money. Things need to be happening faster. Or background resistance to something in your life. I don't like this person, I don't like this situation. I don't want to go to work today. My kids are this or this person is that. And there's this kind of pushing or resisting and maybe there's anxiety or dissatisfaction there. And maybe not. Maybe you're in a more neutral state. You just feel kind of open and curious. You're feeling good, feeling open to what's going to happen today. And maybe you're in a very happy state. You're just open and joyful and grateful. So whatever is happening for you, you don't need to make something else happen. We're just going to work with what's there. And at first I only started using this practice when shit hit the fan and I was feeling bad and stressed or something was challenging. But as time went on, I realized, oh, you can just be doing this all the time. So what is the this? Well, let's do it right now. Just bring your attention, starting with, with your breath. We are going to start there. So it brings the attention out of your mind and into your body. So as you're doing whatever you're doing, driving, walking, chopping vegetables, cleaning up your house, or just sitting there or lying there, whatever you're doing, bring more attention to the inside of your body, starting with your breath. And notice what it feels like to breathe from the inside of your body. So it's not just your head analyzing from afar what it's like to breathe down there. It's like you are in your body. You are in your lungs, in your belly, in your throat, Feeling the air as it goes in and then out as you breathe out. Feeling that letting go, that softening in your body that naturally happens when you exhale. Good. And then notice what sensations you experience in your body. You don't have to make anything happen, just notice where your attention is naturally drawn. It could be to a place where there's physical contact, pressure from sitting on a chair or your back against something, or your feet on the floor. If there's any physical pain or discomfort in a joint or muscle tension or tightness, our attention can easily go there because it's uncomfortable. And also notice what is happening emotionally. So all of our emotions are experiences that we have thoughts that are part of the emotion, but we also have a lot of feeling. We talk about, I have feelings, I'm feeling something. And that feeling is actually a collection of body sensations. That's how we know we're feeling something. And so bring more awareness and attention to what you're feeling in your. The quality of the sensations of the emotions. A common place to be feeling the sensations of your emotions are going to be kind of in the core of your body. So your lower abdomen, below your belly button, in your stomach, your solar plexus which is right between your. And the bottom of your ribs, your sternum, bottom of your sternum there. Your heart, the area of your chest, your whole chest inside of there, upper chest, your collarbones, your throat, your jaw, the area around your eyes as well. So becoming more intimately familiar with what it feels like to be inside of you right now, to be in your own body. That's right. And when you notice that you're thinking a lot or about something else, what you got to do today, analysis of what we're doing here. Random person, random place, random time, however it comes up, because our mind does that all the time. Just note I'm thinking, and then bring your attention right back into your body. And you may need to do this again and again and again. There's no need to become tense or impatient or frustrated about it. It's just a natural process. You can think of your thoughts as like the surface of the water. And sometimes our attention is like one of those fishing buoys that wants to bob back up to the surface and we're consciously bringing it deeper down. And sometimes our attention goes down there and it's easy to keep it there. And sometimes it wants to pop back up, especially if you're newer to this or if the sensations are uncomfortable, the feelings are uncomfortable. But just stay with it. It's a great gift to give yourself this attention and to not avoid your own experience. That's right. Breathing fuller and deeper into your chest and noticing what's there. What do you feel in your chest, around your heart? And can you allow whatever is there to be there? Can you open to it? It's okay to feel. You don't have to fix it. Figure it out, make it go away. We can have such a limited tolerance for this kind of discomfort, we immediately want to escape. Figure it out, get away, distract, eat something, take something, do something to numb that discomfort. Turn it down. And yet, when you're willing to go directly into whatever's happening in your body and face it again and again and again, you gain something incredible. So in other words, it's worth it. Just keep noticing whatever is happening. It could change and move. You have strong sensations in one part of your body, and then maybe several minutes later, it's somewhere else. It's where your focus is drawn. And just tracking it, following whatever the sensations are in your body, moment to moment, it can sometimes help to place your hand on your chest or stomach or wherever the sensations are. And then as you notice the sensation moves, kind of bring your attention right to it and follow Your hand along as a reminder, as a little anchor to keep your focus there. That's right. And as you do this, notice your stance or attitude towards whatever is happening inside of you. Sometimes we can have a subtle or not so subtle impatience with ourselves, with our feelings. Feelings. These feelings. I don't have time for this. This is uncomfortable. When are these going to go away? And I know this pattern well. We can get really in our heads, analyzing when these feelings are going to go away, when they're going to change, and why do they come from and why do I have them? And oh, man, I've been having this one for months or years. Maybe I'm going to have this one forever, blah, blah, blah. And we're in a subtle state of resistance to our own feelings. And we resist them because they're uncomfortable. It's like resisting water because it's cold in a swimming pool or the ocean. And what we resist persists. So there's a feeling, it's welling up inside of us. It's there, it's already here, and it wants to move through you. The feelings are like water. They're just an energy. It's a wave. It's gonna build and crest and then break and then fade away. That's how all feelings work. Nothing is permanent, especially our feelings. And yet when we resist the feeling and we fight it and we say, no, I can't deal with this, how long is it going to be here? Let me get away from it. What we do is we block that feeling from moving. We block that wave and we get this binding of the energy and we get this tension. We squeeze somewhere and try to hold it in, try to brace ourselves against the discomfort. Notice where you might be doing that. Sometimes I'll notice subtle tightening of my jaw, tightening of my belly, my ribs, my upper or lower back. There's like this. I'm bracing. I don't want to feel so much in my heart. And your next in breath and out breath. Just breathe fully into wherever you're tensing on some subtle level. And with the out breath, just relax and let go. Just surrender. Stop fighting it. Resistance of your feelings is futile. They're not going anywhere. And when you allow it more by softening, by surrendering, maybe it intensifies. Maybe that wave continues to build when you're not blocking it. It's okay. You don't need to be afraid of that. It's just feeling. At the end of the day, all of our fears are just fears of feelings. And so when you can face these fears fully and openly and practice being able to be with them. This is the path to fearlessness, to courage, to bravery, to boldness, to freedom. If you can have your eyes closed, it can help increase your ability to be with and focus on the sensations in your body. And just bring your attention even deeper, right to the center of the place in your body where you feel the most. And just tracking it with your awareness, following the shape of it, the contours of it, the edges of it. Is it sharp or soft? Is it moving or stationary? Does it have a hard edge like a plate or a knife or a wall? Or does it have more of a soft edge like flames or wind or water? And relaxing your face, the area around your eyes, your jaw, your belly, you're just going to go lean in a little further, right into the center of that sensation. And stay out of your mind and stay in your body. You can do this. It's safe to feel. Not only is it safe, it is essential, its sanity. It's the very thing that's going to help you heal the most, is giving this attention to yourself. Good. Sometimes when I'm exploring a feeling, I feel a lot in my chest. I used to have a lot in my solar plexus when I was younger. A lot of feeling there, a lot of tension there too. Always felt like I had a tennis ball right in the center of my body. And as I've gotten older, maybe the last five years or so, I felt more and more and more right in my chest. And as I've grown in my capacity to be with feelings and not feel the results of kind of chronic tension that I used to feel, instead, I can just feel my feelings directly. I feel a lot of them in my heart and my chest. And sometimes I get impatient with this, ah, more feeling. How much do I. I feel so much every day. And sometimes it's beautiful, profound feelings of love and connection with my boys, with my wife, with friends, with clients and people I'm helping and serving. Strangers even sometimes. And then other times it's. It's just achy hurt. And sometimes both are happening simultaneously, which my left brain really doesn't like. It's like, well, is it. Are you happy? You're sad, man, Just pick one. Don't feel all this complexity. But when I do what you're doing, what we're doing right now, and really just slow down and be with the feelings, I get a different sense. I start to explore them with more patience and curiosity. And so when I feel something in my chest and the inside of my ribs feel tight, squeezing hot. There's like a bruised feeling in my heart. What I'll do is I will go into it. And it almost feels like I'm like a person going down this stone stairwell with a torch illuminating the way. I'm like, okay, we're going in. Let's explore the different hallways and caverns and. Oh, okay, we're stepping down the ribs now. And. Oh, wow. It's like squeezing right there. And it has the quality of the energy of being perhaps an explorer or someone who is interested in relics or paleontologist or something who's studying what could be in this cave. And you're coming in with curiosity and openness and wonder and appreciation of what you might find. Good. So in just a minute, we're going to complete this formal kind of focused practice. One way to do that is to take several deeper, fuller breaths in through your nose and then slowly out through your mouth, kind of moving your fingers and toes as you do this, kind of bringing energy back into you. You can stretch if you want, stand up, open your eyes, move around, And then just notice what that was like. I mean, if you've done practices like this or even for more formal meditation on your breath or something, then this was not too difficult. Different. But if you've never done anything like that, that can be a lot to be with ourselves for whatever that was. Fifteen minutes or so, maybe longer, 20. But that could be. That could bring up a lot. It could be very pleasant and soothing and relieving. It could be very unpleasant. Agitating. And if it was unpleasant or agitating, that's not a sign that it's bad. That's probably a sign that you need to do it more. Because to slow down and be with yourself might be very uncomfortable. You might have not done that for years. I know that was the case for me. That's really not having done that for years. And I even did a fair amount of meditation in my 20s and went to meditation retreats and stuff. And this was different. What I'm doing now is different because in those times, it was a lot about, like, getting back to my breath and letting go of the feelings and letting go of the thoughts and just being in the moment and not getting bogged down by the feelings. And in a lot of ways, it was me trying to avoid, using fancier techniques to try to avoid. And this is about avoiding nothing. You're just really going right into the center of your heart and of your feelings. And the benefits of this are endless. I'VE found the more I've been able to do this, the more I've been able to take on in the world out there. Because remember, all of our fears are fears of feelings. So if you can face your feelings and be with them, then you become fearless. And that doesn't mean you don't feel fear. It means you smile at fear. It means fear doesn't have any power to stop you. It means if there's something I want in my life, I will go do it and create it, even if there's fear along the way. And that capacity, we develop that capacity. It's not just a matter of willpower or like, oh, I've got to get more courage. I'm going to just decide to be more courageous. That'll get you somewhere for a little while. But that's like saying, I'm going to decide to be more fit. Okay, well great. Then you use that decision to set up a practice where you develop fitness over months and years. And it's the same thing with this. This is like a form of emotional fitness, of courage fitness. And so when I was talking with my friend and I was sharing with him because he was asking about how I help people and how I see that whole process and I was saying, you know what I don't know is all the people that I work with and I share this tool with them and I don't know if everyone takes it to the degree that I do. And that's okay. Not everyone has to use every tool and different things work for different people. But this one, this one really seems to be the crux of so much and so much addiction and avoidance and obsessive maneuvers that we do come back to not being able to be with our feelings and be with ourselves like this. And so much of the explosiveness in a relationship and starting fights and pushing the other person away and not being vulnerable and then being defended and then being the victim and that whole dance that we can do in relationships. So much of that comes from being unwilling to feel the more raw, tender places in our own heart. And then our patterns of overwork and stress and non stop and then distraction and then food and then more distraction and then our phones and then our watching time and then our this and then that and then that and this kind of incessant go, go, go, go, I can't stop. That's all driven by this unwillingness to slow down and feel. And so the more that I've done this over these last three years, it's unlocked greater and Greater capacity again to go do things in the world that seem of value to me, even though they scare me, and to just have greater and greater choice of how I want to live. So it's like, oh, what do I want to eat? What's the most optimal way to eat? I just decide it, I research it, and then I do it. And there's all that. So much of the food cravings that I used to have and all those things have dissolved because those behind the food cravings, behind the like, oh, I need a burger and fries right now. What's behind that is actually some form of emotional discomfort. And that's true for my habitual use of pot for many years of my life when I was younger. More alcohol, cigarettes, like all these things were coming out of that. And the more I've just been willing to face everything and feel everything, the more it's just easy to. Not even. Doesn't even feel like it's effortful to say no to those things. That's just one of the other benefits. There's so much more freedom and choice. So I really do encourage you to try this out. In fact, that might be a good action step for today, eh? Time for action. Action, action. So your action step for today is gonna be to experiment with this. I mean, you just did it right now with me, so you don't need to double down unless you want to. But you can go to notnicebook.com notnicebook.com and that's the book website for my. For my book. Not nice. But in there at the bottom, there is a guided peace process audio. It's about 22 minutes or something. So you can get that and download it and put it on your phone and have it and just go practice along with it once a day or however often you want to do it for a period of time. And eventually once you've done that, you don't need to keep listening to me forever. It's pretty intuitive at first. The listening can just be helpful to keep you focused in doing it. Then eventually it's just something you do. So when I go for runs, I'll usually spend the first half of the run doing something like this, and then the second half just listening to an audiobook or something like that. Sometimes when I'm driving, I won't listen to anything. I'll just do this while I drive. Sometimes I'll close my eyes and just do this in my office for 5, 10, 15 minutes. Depends upon what's happening that day when I wake up in the nighttime, middle of the night, or as I'm falling asleep, I'll do this. And even sometimes what I find is that when I'm nervous or stressed or tense or something happens and I'm reactive, even if I'm not stopping everything and doing this formally, I am doing it. Even while I'm operating, even while I'm doing something else, even while I'm playing with my kids, even while I'm handling that situation or that crisis or whatever. I'm just more and more and more in my body. And that's the feedback that I've gotten from people who've known me for many years. They'll say, like, wow, you seem we've gotten things like you seem more grounded, more present. Candice, my wife, who's known me for the last seven years, is just regularly will say like, how much more present I am and able to be here without needing to escape or withdraw. So use this in your life. It's the. It's the golden ticket in many ways, and it's one of the most valuable practices that I know. So I hope it serves you on your path until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com. Sa.