NOT NICE: The Five Pillars Of Anti-Nice

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking more about being less nice, perhaps, and maybe even being not nice. Now, if you're listening to that and there's a little party that's a little, I don't know, uncomfortable, uneasy with that. You know, I don't want to be a jerk. I don't want to be an asshole. Well, I would suggest going back and listening to last maybe a couple episodes we did, which were all about nice. And in fact, we talked about what nice really is. The short version is it's rooted in fear and people pleasing, in approval seeking, in conflict avoidance, and basically authenticity avoidance. We hide who we really are, what we really think and what we really feel because we're afraid of any sort of upset or judgment in other people. This is the core of nice. This is the root of nice. And hence the book is called Not Nice. And speaking of the book, we've been building up to it. It is coming out next week. Yes, it's finally here, November 1st, next Wednesday. And in fact, it'll be. Next week's show is the date that the book comes out. It will be available for one day on Amazon Kindle for 99 cents. Oh, yes. So if you get your copy that day, it'll be under a buck, which is incredible. And also, we're going to be running a raffle. So if you get yourself a copy on that day and then you write a review within, I think we're going to have it. There's seven to 10 days, something like that, maybe even up to two weeks. We're going to give you some time to read the book and you send that review in, then you get put into the running for all kinds of really cool things programs I have, including Confidence Unleashed or the Confidence Code. You might have heard about these through the podcast. Gifts ranging from anywhere from $500 in value up to 2,000. We're going to be giving away a ticket to my next live event, which is the Conversation Mastery Confident Conversation Mastery event in the spring of 2018. So all kinds of cool stuff just for writing some reviews. So once you get the book next week, you'll have about two weeks or so to just show us that you wrote a review and we'll put your name in the running and then we'll pick some winners. So it's a cool way to spread the word because if you get some good reviews on Amazon early on, then it helps the book reach more people. Obviously, we all make our decisions or at least influenced by reviews. So hopefully, of course, write an authentic review and if it's anything less than five stars or four stars, send me an email, let me know and I'll talk you into giving a higher review. In any case, I'm excited to share with you the core of this book. The first part of the book is all helping you really understand in a new way what nice is in a way that starts to set you up to become free of living as a overly restricted, guilty, quiet, holding back nice person. And then the part two of the book is where we talk about, well, how do we break free of this? And in there, I share what I call the five pillars of Anti Nice. And that's what I'd like to share with you today in this episode. So let's dive right in. First pillar of Anti Nice. And this is kind of the sequence in which you need to learn this stuff in order to be truly free. And so, you know, some people are wondering, okay, I see that I'm holding back. I'm people pleasing. I need to stop caring what others think. And I'm gonna start speaking up and saying what I think and sharing my opinion. And you might have tried that at some point, like, I'm just gonna speak up more. But the actual challenge is we almost can't do that. Because the first thing you need to do, and this is the first pillar, is you need to have boundaries. Now, I know when I was writing this book, I was like, okay, I'm focused on what's really gonna liberate people. And that one doesn't sound that sexy, does it? You know, speak up for yourself and be assertive. That sounds badass. But guess what? That's not until pillar three. Because you gotta have the foundation in place and that's to have boundaries. And in the book, I go in extreme depth into what this really means. Let me give you kind of an overview here. In the time that we have. But the issue with being worried about what someone thinks of you and being afraid and feeling guilty, those actually all surprisingly, are boundary problems. And what I mean by boundary is where you end and someone else begins. That gets blurry. Now, I don't mean on a physical level. You know, where your body ends. I mean emotionally, energetically, it's kind of this, like, blur. So someone's upset, and you don't know where you begin and end and who's responsible for what. You just instantly feel like you did something wrong or someone feels sad or disappointed. And it doesn't matter what you did or didn't do or if it was justified or if you had a very good reason, you instantly feel like you're a bad person. Do you see what I'm saying? So there's this problem with boundaries where you can say, oh, I'm over here, and I think and I feel and I believe this, and you're over there and you think and you feel and you believe that. Hmm. Let's dialogue about it. Let's talk about it. I'm not sure if I agree with that. We can't do any of that. We're just kind of in the soup, and so we're looking to other people to see how we should feel. Another issue is because we don't have boundaries. We don't really even know what's inside of us, so that we don't even know what we want. And the example that I use in the book is, let's say you were in your backyard, and you had a peach tree in the backyard and a lawn, and you're sitting out in your backyard enjoying some sun. Your peach tree is growing some fresh, juicy peaches. Say it's summertime. They're about ready to eat. You haven't picked one yet. And then your neighbor pops out. They're in their backyard as well, and they start walking over towards you like, hey, how's it going? And as they come towards you, they step on your flowers on the way to you, they swing by your peach tree, grab the ripest peach off the tree, and start to eat it. Hey, Aziz, how's it going? Now, in that scenario, what do you do? It's a very interesting question. You can take it literally. What would you do in that scenario? But you could also make this a metaphor for how you deal with someone who interrupts you in a conversation or speaks over you in a meeting, or how you're. When your. When your mom says something critical about you or your girlfriend or something like, you could take this and make it a metaphor for anything in life, but let's just keep it real literal. What would you do in that situation? Now, when we don't have boundaries, then we don't do anything. They walk on the flowers, they eat the peach, do whatever they want, and we just stuff it. We just take it. Now, here's the thing. We all know we all have some inner reaction though, right? And that's trying to tell you what your boundaries are. Your reaction's probably like, what the fuck? Don't step on my flowers and don't eat my peach. I haven't even eaten my peaches yet. Right? But when we are too nice, we don't even know what our. I mean, we kind of have an inkling from our internal reactions, but then we tell ourselves we shouldn't feel that way. You ever done that? Try to talk yourself out of it? I should be more patient. I should be more generous. Hey, he didn't know about the flowers. Hey, you know what? He doesn't even have a peach tree. I have all those peaches. I'll just give him a few. It's fine. You ever talk yourself out of your inner boundaries? And in the first pillar, I help you really identify what they are, what you really want, what you're really about, who you really are in the world, in yourself, and then how to start to really see that. And that's the required step because how on earth. The strategy on how to speak up is irrelevant if you don't even know when and if you think you don't have a right to. This is a key point. Another aspect of boundaries which is super important is being able to not take in other people's emotion and energy. Now, look, I mean, we're extremely social creatures. We're affected by people's emotions. So I'm not talking about being some weird islander robot, but I'm just talking about bringing it back a little bit to your center so that if someone is upset, you're able to be more curious about what's going on with them, as opposed to instantly feeling like you are terrible and you just freak out inside. Again, that's poor boundaries. So I share some techniques in the book about how to strengthen those boundaries. That's absolutely essential. So that's the first pillar of Anti Nice. We're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, we're gonna the second, third, fourth, and fifth pillars of Anti Nice. How to be your most bold, free, expressive, authentic version of. Of you. Stay tuned. Does working with Dr. Aziz actually work, can you really break free from social anxiety and live a life of confidence, success and happiness? Here is what one client had to say about his People are a lot.

More open to me now. Since I've been working with Dr. Aziz, I feel much more confident talking to people because I have the skills to talk to people and even people that I don't know, I can talk to. Now there are people at my pool hall where I go to for pool league. I've been there every weekend for a couple of years now, and half of them I didn't know because I didn't have the social skills. And now I'm talking two, three hours a night every time I go to pool league with them. And when I'm in the bar, when I'm in a coffee shop, I could start conversations with random strangers. And it's really improved my quality of life. So I think Dr. Aziz is an investment in yourself and he can teach you a lot of things on how to develop some good skills and improve your life.

To get started on your journey towards lifelong confidence with Dr. Aziz, simply go to socialconfidencecenter.com coaching welcome back. So pillar two has got to be tell people to shut up and say what's on my mind, right? No, not quite yet. There's another one that you need, and this second pillar is actually called Own youn Shadow. What? Now, again, this might be familiar to you if you've done some exploration of psychology, this might not be. So I'm going to break it down as simply as possible and as quickly as possible. Your shadow. Every person has what Carl Jung first coined the term, but it existed before him of a shadow. And basically there's the way that you present yourself in society and maybe even the way that you think of yourself. And these are usually our most positive qualities. I'm patient, I'm caring, I'm responsible. I pay my taxes. I treat people with respect. I'm civilized, right? That's our Persona. That's the mask that we put on the world. That's how we behave. What Carl Jung found and Freud found this and other people that were really doing some preliminary work with psychology is they found that, you know, that's what we present. But that's not all of us. We also have a darker side. We also have these impulses that we don't show because we've learned that it's not allowed or we'd get in trouble if we did it. And these are sort of a more primitive or animalistic side of us. And this is like sexual urges, aggressive urges, less responsibility and more f you. I want to get mine. And we have these qualities in us, but we don't live by them. Now, here's the thing, what I'm advocating. When I say own your shadow, I don't mean run out and start, I don't know, kill, rape, pillage and destroy or something like that. I mean, we have to be willing to acknowledge and look at our whole self. Because when we just say, no, I'm just a nice person. I'm just nice, and we don't allow the ability to see that other part of us, then we start to lose power. And here's why. Because that shadow side of you, that's like your most primal life force, man. That's like sex and violence is sort of the core of it, as well as maybe some pleasure and hedonism thrown in there, but it's like the pulse of life. It's what drives us. And when we try to disconnect from that and say, I'm not, that I don't have that, what ends up happening is, well, here's the thing is you do have that. So when someone walking with the example before, someone walks across your yard, steps on your flowers and eats your peach inside, your reaction might not just be, huh, I'm a little peeved. It might be, fuck you. It might be, now, again, if the peach eating is a metaphor for something else, like someone, you know, trampling on your flowers and eating your peach, that's anything. Someone you don't want someone to do and they're doing in their life. That's someone who, you know, bosses you around and doesn't take you into consideration decisions. That's a partner who's criticizing you repeatedly in your relationship. That's a parent who's always talking over you and telling you what you're doing wrong, right? Something you don't like in the world. Now, consciously, you might be like, oh, I don't like that, or I feel sad. But there's another part of you that's like, you know, enraged. That's your shadow. The anger, the rage. Or you see that really attractive person, you're like, hmm, I sure would like to have some tea with them and court her, Right? Sure. That's the civilized part. There's another part of you that wants to fucking have sex, right? It's like this animalistic, primal start. And I'm using this direct language to kind of pop us out of this denial that we don't have this part. And here's why it's powerful, because when you access it, think of that as the raw material that you need in order to be able to speak up for yourself. Because we're so pleasing and ingratiating and we've disconnected from our own power. But when you dig in and you find that and you just allow that part, that's what I advocate in the book, is just getting more and more familiar with it and just saying, oh, yeah, there's that part. That's what that part wants to do. What does that feel like? What does that anger feel like? What does that sexual desire feel like? And you don't make it wrong. You don't judge it. You don't freak out and make it mean you're a bad person. Then. Then that's like the raw fire, the explosion. And then you can learn how to run that through some pipes and some machinery to make it come out as assertiveness or directness or going after what you want. But you need that fire. You need that raw power. So that's why owning your shadow is the second pillar of not nice. The third pillar of not nice is how to speak up for yourself. And this is the core of it. I mean, this chapter is probably the longest one in the book, because that's what we all want it, right? It's like, well, how do I speak up for myself? And in fact, that's such a big topic and so valuable that I wanted to. I'm going to go over it here in an overview, like all the five pillars. But in next week's episode, that's all we're going to talk about. All the scenarios of how to speak up, exactly how to do it, how to be assertive, how to handle someone who's picking on you, how to deal with interruptions, all kinds of good stuff. We're gonna get into that in the next episode. But the core of this pillar is being able to speak up for yourself. And you gotta know the boundary where you're like, I don't like what's happening right now. You gotta have that power that comes from your shadow. And then it's taking the leap, taking the risk. And the reason we typically don't is this story of something bad's gonna happen. I can't handle it. That means the person's gonna retaliate. The person's gonna talk back over me. The person's gonna make a fool of me, or I'll just start to freeze up and make a fool of myself. Or I'll get so angry, I'll Just lose it. And that's embarrassing. We have all these fears about what's gonna happen, and then the problem is when we fear something, we predict something bad is going to happen, then we don't take that action. We believe the negative prediction. Does that make sense? And this is how any form of shyness or social anxiety works, too. You have a negative prediction about what's going to happen, and then you believe that prediction. And that prediction is just a guess. It's just a theory. And even if it happened in the past, something different can happen in the future. The future doesn't equal the past. Always. Right. If that were the case, then nothing new would ever be invented. You never do anything. Anything else. You never change. You never grow. It's absurd. So the future can be different, but we predict something negative. We're like, ugh, I don't want to do that. And then we don't take the action. And guess what? We never learned that that prediction wasn't true. And worse still, you never build the skill of assertiveness. And assertiveness, like anything else, is a skill, you get better at it the more you do it. But if you never do it, you are gonna be bad at it, most likely. And so then there's this catch 22, because we keep putting it off. Keep putting it off, and then we're putting it off because we're not gonna be very good at it. But the more we put it off, the worse at it we stay. And that's why, you know, sometimes I'm working with someone who's in their 40s, and they've never learned how to do this or their 50s, or I'm actually working with a client who's 80 years old, never learned how to do this. So it doesn't matter. We don't get it automatically by age. We learn it through practice. And so we have to study the skill and the art of how to speak up for yourself. And that's what the third pillar is. That's what I'm gonna get into in much more depth. So stay tuned for next week's episode. We're gonna break it all down, all the different areas that you might speak up for yourself socially, at work, romantically, in relationships, even in sex. So a lot of good stuff there. But in the interest of covering all the pillars, we're gonna move on to the next two pillars in this episode and then tune in next week for that. So we're going to take a quick break right now, and we'll come back to cover the Final two pillars of Anti Nice. Right after this. Are you ready to take charge of your confidence, your career, your relationships, and your life? In order to experience a true transformation, you must take massive action. That is exactly why Dr. Aziz created confidence Unleashed. Learn exactly how to shift negative thinking, eliminate your fear of rejection, and and activate a sense of power and confidence in your body whenever you need it. Go to www.confidenceunleashednow to find out more. Hey, welcome back. We're covering the five pillars of Anti Nice. Start doing these things. If you do these five things, you will become less nice and more of the opposite of nice, which is bold, assertive, direct, authentic, free. It's you. So, so far, the three things to do are to start to have boundaries. Give yourself permission to have boundaries. The second thing would be to own your shadow. And the third thing is to start speaking up for yourself. Now, the fourth pillar of Anti Nice is to say no. To say no. So across the board, nice people will say yes way too often, will say yes instantly, impulsively, compulsively. We feel like we can't say anything else. It just comes out even before you want to. Or you might start with a no, and then the person shows the slightest hint of a grimace or a sad look, and you instantly change it to yes and apologize. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes, I can. Yes, yes. Or you can take it as far as I did. This is my level of nice guy insanity. I would predict what the other person wanted and suggest it as if it was my own idea. So then not only am I not saying no, I'm not even saying yes, because I make it look like it's my idea even though I didn't want to do it in the first place. What insanity. I know. I know. I did that so many times. So instead of that, we got to be able to let them suggest something they want and assess whether you want to do it or not. Giving yourself. In this chapter, this whole section, this pillar, is all about giving yourself permission to say no. It's okay to say no. It's okay to be who you are. And I bust all the fears about, like, if I say no, people aren't gonna like me, I'm gonna lose friends, People are gonna hate me. And you know what? These, like, all this nice guy stuff, it's just so many stories, so many predictions, so much fear. We're living in this fear. We don't even know it. We think it's normal. It's not that intense, but that's just because we're sculpting our lives to play so small. And you only really start to see the cage when you test the edge. And then you're like, wow, my life has been so restricted. I wouldn't say, even say no to people. So what I start to encourage in that chapter is look for opportunities to say no. I even encourage a fun little game, which is what if for X period of time, a month, I forget what I say. In the book, you only did things that were absolute yes for you. So anything other than like, hell, yeah, I want to do that is a no. You just tune in, you check in with yourself. That's another thing I encourage, is just pause a moment before you answer, because the yes can come out so quickly. So habitually want to just pause and say no if you want to. And we talk about how to do it skillfully, how to do it in a way that isn't extremely off putting. But you know what? That's refinement. That's like getting smoother and better. And this is a skill. Being not nice is a skill. Saying no is a skill. Asserting yourself is a skill. So at first, maybe it's a little messy, but if we're waiting for perfection, if we're waiting for it to be the best, you're never going to get there. When you're learning how to serve a ball in tennis, you're going to hit the net a bunch, you're going to hit it over the line a bunch, you're going to hit it outside of the line a bunch, you're going to miss the ball sometimes, and that's okay. It's messy, but that's how you're gonna learn, saying no. So at first you say no. Maybe it's abrupt, maybe it's not as smooth, but then over time, you learn. In the book, not only do I give you the encouragement and the permission to say no, but also we talk about refinement and how to get better and better at it so it is smoother. Because that's part of it, too. That's the fourth pillar. Say no. The fifth pillar, probably my favorite one. It's also the most controversial. Does that pique your interest? It's controversial. It is to be more selfish. Oh, yes. Be more selfish. Now, this one was interesting. My editor and I went back and forth on this and he's like, I don't know about that. It's gonna be off putting and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, no, no, it's cool, it's cool. We'll explain it. And so I start out at the beginning of that chapter and I'm like, look, okay, I understand, I'm not crazy. And if you were to ask 100 people in a poll, is it good to be selfish? You'd probably get almost no one saying yes. And it's unfortunate because that word has been so misaligned and such a negative connotation. And in there, what I want to make a distinction is it's not you're selfish or you're not. It's way more nuanced than that, isn't it? So let's say your friend's like, hey, you want to come out to let's go to dinner. And you're like, great, that sounds like fun. And they're like, hey, I want to go to this place, I want to go to the Mexican restaurant. And if you say, no, I don't want to go there, I want to go to this other place, is that selfish? What do you think? Just put that scenario, plug that scenario in your mind. Is that selfish? Maybe you have a yes, maybe you have a no. They say, hey, come on, let's go to this. I'm really excited, I'm really excited about this Mexican place. I really want to go there. And you're like, no, I don't want to, let's go somewhere else. Isn't that selfish of you to not go somewhere your friend really wants to go? Well, the answer is, it depends on the context, doesn't it? What if the last 10 times you've gone out, you've gone where your friend wanted to go? Is it still selfish? What if you really, really, really don't like? It's like a really strong urge and you really don't like it. Does that make it selfish? Are you supposed to override that? And this is just a trivial example, but think about this. In all your relationships, in your romantic life, in your dating life, should you go pick that person up? Should you say yes, should you give that person more time or less time? And what we're doing is we're saying, I don't want to be selfish. And the reality is it's a spectrum. And on one far end of the spectrum you have like f you, I just want mine. Screw everybody else. And yeah, that is unhealthy. It's destructive to relationships and to your own self esteem. But the other side of the spectrum is totally self sacrificing, boundaryless noodle, like whatever you guys want, pleasing, subservient person. And that's not healthy. That Leads to resentment, just not living your own life, feeling overwhelmed because you're done too much for other people, you haven't taken care of yourself. And right in the middle is the sweet spot. And I call it healthy self interest. And that's where you're able to discern what's right for you. And so when I say be more selfish, the reason I'm saying that is because almost all nice people are way on the self sacrificing and on the spectrum and they do need to be more selfish. You need to bring that up to the middle. And at first it feels uncomfortable, at first it feels like you are being this outrageous, demanding asshole. But I give so many examples in there to really flesh out and make it clear, look, here's how we do this. And again, throughout the whole book I keep affirming this, like, look, I want to be a good person too. I'm not just talking about being some, you know, just take what I can get out of the world and kick everyone else down. That's not what this book is about. But it's ironic. It's kind of like a paradox that the nicer you try to be, the more you sacrifice of yourself. You end up not being such a kind, generous, loving person. You might act that way, but inside you start to die, you start to shrivel up, you start to get resentful, angry, and then you just smash that down further because that's not nice. Then you got all these health problems and anxiety problems and self esteem problems and depression problems. Just gets worse and worse. So we got to break free. And I cannot wait for you to find that path and share with me in that journey through the book. And before we go though, for today, take your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is just to notice which of those pillars spoke out to you. Of those five, was it having boundaries, Owning your shadow, Speaking up for yourself, saying no, Being more selfish? Which one do you think? Just intuitively I know we couldn't get into extreme depth just because of the time of the episode. Which one are you like? Oh yeah, I could definitely use more of that. I should do more of that. Which one is it for you? Just pick it right now and just experiment with that this week without any further. Maybe you could do some further training or learning in my YouTube videos or online or any other resources you have before the book comes out. But just experiment with that. Use it, Try it. Just see. What can I do to say no? Where could I say no in my life? What would that even feel like? You might not even do it this week, but just thinking about it is going to start to open some doors. Or you'll start to see where you feel nervous or anxious. And that's a good sign too, right? Means you're pushing the edge of your comfort zone. So Cannot wait for next Wednesday? Get yourself a copy. I'll remind you again in next week's episode. Wednesday, November 1 Get yourself a Kindle copy of the book for 99 cents. Of course, the book itself will also be on sale starting that day. Cannot wait to share that with you and I'll speak to you again next week. Until we speak then. 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 please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.

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