OMOS: How Do You Turn On Yourself?

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about quite possibly one of my favorite topics of all time, which is Omos, being on my own side. Or in this case, on your own side. Because this is the underpinning of not only all the success we can achieve in life, but all the actual receiving and feeling of that success, the fulfillment, the enjoyment that we want, that we're hoping for, whether it's from love or connection or social engagement or business success or more career success and growth, whatever it is that we want to do with more confidence, we also want to feel the results of that and we want to feel good about ourselves day to day. And nothing determines how we feel about ourselves more than how much we're being on our own sides, because there's so many ways that when we're not on our own sides, we suffer. And this topic has absolutely just been such a huge part of my own growth and development and I've been studying it for the longest time. In fact, even way back in graduate school, I, I did my dissertation on self compassion and how to activate more of that. And you might be wondering why I focused on that so much when I was younger and for the last 18 years, because I had such a raging inner critic myself. So much perfectionism and dissatisfaction never was enough and lots of picking at myself and that sort of thing. So I became obsessed with like, how do I work with this? How do I shift this? How do I free myself of this? And I am going to share a ton in the next few episodes leading up to the release of my new book called On My Own Transform Self Criticism and Doubt into Permanent Self worth and confidence. And we're going to be releasing that book on February 25, which is a Tuesday. And we're going to be doing a special, an early release where you get the Kindle version of the book for just 99 cents, which is basically free. And the reason that I'm doing that is because I know you've been following me for a while, you've been listening to this podcast, and I want you to have this book. I know this book will radically increase the quality of your life and anyone who reads it. So I request that you get it on that day on February 25th. Even if you want to get the paperback or the audio version later, which will be coming out just a little bit after the Kindle, I request that you get the kindle on the 25th. Because what that does is that shows to Amazon, hey, hey, this book is popular. People like it. And if Amazon sees that it's popular, then it will share it with more people. And that's my mission, is to share this with as many people as I can. So mark your calendar February 25th, and I'll talk about it more in the next few episodes. And we'll also be sending emails and if you're not on my email list, tons of valuable trainings and good stuff that's always coming out there. And you can get on there by going to shrinkforthshyguy.com, shrinkforthshyguy.com and just click on the button there to get your eBook, 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. You'll be on my list. You'll hear about all these specials and cool stuff we have going on with the book release. And that's really my mission with this book and with anything that I create, is to reach people, to reach more people, to find. I mean, there's millions of people that are struggling with being on their own sides. I mean, hundreds of millions, I would say. And I want this book to find the people that are right for it. And I am sure that if you're listening to this show, then you are one of those people. And so I'd highly encourage you to help me, you know, help yourself by getting the book and then help me carry out this mission, which I call Operation Mass Liberation, which is to help as many millions of people as I can over the course of my life to liberate themselves from this inner tyranny of self criticism, self judgment, self doubt, and to step into being their most free, bold, confident, unlimited selves in every single area of life. And so I'm super passionate about that. And I would love your support in getting this book out there in the biggest possible way. And the best way to do that would be to pre order your copy@omosbook.com o m o s book.com and they'll also have links to, you know, so you click on, you go to that website and then you'll be able to click on Amazon or Audible where you can pre order either or both. And if you wanted the discounted version, the Kindle will be the discounted version for the first few days when it starts. And if you like it, share it with a friend too. So we'll be doing all kinds of fun stuff and some fun giveaways as well as the book is launched, with which I'll be sharing more about. If you're not on my email list, then be sure to get on my email list because what we'll be doing is as the book comes out, when we'll have a certain period of time for people to write reviews. And if you write a review and send it to us, then you will be put into a drawing to win some amazing prizes. Oh yes, good prizes too. Legit, legit prizes with capital link. No Ferraris. But you know, come on, what am I made of money? So, but you know, we'll give you some. We have confidence, university access, live event tickets, signed copies of the book and more. So I cannot wait for this more in the next episode as we get closer to the release. For now, let's talk about how you turn on yourself. Because that's one of the earliest things I want to cover in the book. In fact, it's in chapter two. Chapter two is called Straightforward, sneaky and Savage. These are all the ways that our critic gets us. Straightforward. Like it just tells you that you're, you know, you can't do it, you're not able. Who are you? Blah, blah, blah, or sneaky and man. So that's one of the huge things you're getting out of this book, is there are so many ways we turn on ourselves and we don't even know it. I didn't even know this for many years. Most people, when they think like, oh yeah, I'm my own worst critic or I'm really hard on myself, these are things that you might have said before that is just the tip of the iceberg, my friend. Because that stuff's the obvious stuff. And sometimes it's not even that obvious. Sometimes we're so habituated to that poor self treatment that that negative voice in our head that tells us that we're ugly or a loser and we're gonna fail or we're not enough or someone hates us or whatever's going on, we just believe it. And it's not even obvious. We're just oblivious to it. It's just invisible to us. But as we become more aware, we're like, whoa, I'm really hard on myself. And so we start to become aware of the straightforward attacks, what I call direct self criticism. But then there's indirect, there's sneaky stuff, and that we gotta become really aware of. And that's what this episode is really gonna help you with. And then I also put Savage in there because the way our critic goes after us can be absolutely brutal, as I'm sure you know. So let's uncover some of the ways that we can turn on ourselves. And I want you, as you're listening, to treat this as like. It's like shining a light of self awareness on what might be happening in your own psychology, in your own mind. And the more aware you can become of the ways you turn on yourself, the more control you can have of this entire process. And that's what this book is entirely designed to do, to help you get control of this inner process. So it's not the critic driving you or determining what choices you can make in your life. It's not the critic determining your destiny. It's you deciding. Because so many of us have this part inside of us that wants to do something, create something, experience something. From the small stuff, like getting to the gym, or the big stuff, like creating a relationship that's beautiful, that's more healthy than anything we've ever seen in our lives, or growing in our careers, or up leveling in our businesses and. Or starting our own business, like these big dreams we might have. But who's determining whether we do that or not? Well, you might say I am. You know, I'm determining what I do. Well, which part of you is the question I have for you. Are you determining it or is your critic determining it? And for most of us, if you haven't got the results that you want, you're not taking the actions that you want, then most likely the critic is having a lot more control than you want and that you ultimately are destined for. So let's get aware of that. Let's get control of the process. And the first part of the process is awareness. And then in the book, I guide you through more of the decision process, how we decide and claim ownership inside of ourselves and then regain control of the ship and then tame our criticism and on and on from there. But let's talk about the ways you might turn on yourself. The most obvious one, which you touched on, which is called direct self attack. So direct Self attack is. I'm such an idiot. Oh, why did I do that? That was so stupid. Oh, look at my body, you know, some body part, you know, look at my stomach, it's so fat and gross. Oh, look at my face, it's so ugly. Look at my hair, it's so stringy. Whatever. You have your specific areas that you judge and the specific words that you use to judge them again and again and again. Or you judge your character, right? Or emotions you might have. I'm so lazy. I'm such a. Oh man, I was so nervous and submissive in the way I talk to that person. It's just so pathetic. And we criticize ourselves again and again and again. This is direct self attack. This obviously is not being on your own side. This is obviously turning on yourself. And this is obviously hemorrhaging self esteem and confidence, right? I mean, this one doesn't take any sort of leap of faith or deep understanding of psychology. It's clear. You tell yourself you're a loser and no one's going to like you. Then how's it going to affect your social confidence when you go to work or meet out with people for a dinner party? So we got to become aware of this direct self attack and we need to label it for what it is and say, wow, that's direct self attack. Or I'm attacking myself right now. Wow, that's not helpful. What I describe in the book, which I think is absolutely true, is let's call it what it is, this is abuse. If you were in a relationship with somebody and they were talking to you that way, or you saw someone, a parent, talking to their kid that way, you'd be like, oh my God, that's terrible, that's abusive. And yet we don't say this about our own self talk because it's silence in our own minds. So you gotta become aware of direct self attack. Now if you're wondering like, yeah, I'm aware of it, how do I turn that shit off? Well, we can get into that some in the next episode and I'm looking at the ones we have coming up. But the real answer is, get the book. I go in extreme detail. That's the whole purpose of the book, is to help you get control. But first you got to become aware of that. Here's a few more direct or kind of obvious forms of self criticism or ways we turn on ourselves. The next one is diminishing. Diminishing means to make something less impressive or valuable, to kind of take it down a notch to Disparage it. The message of who do you think you are? That's a very disparage or diminishing message, right? Like, I'm gonna go out there and share my services with the world. I'm gonna go start my own practice. You know, I've worked with many people in the medical field or lawyers or other people who worked for someone else for many years. And they're like, no, I'm gonna go out there and do my own thing. And there's a voice in their head that's like, psst, you. Yeah. Who do you think you are? And you might literally say this to yourself, or it might just be a feeling. I mean, sometimes we. When we're not that aware of the critic, what happens is we're just aware of the emotional impact of believing the critic. So the critic says, psh, who do you think you are? You're a loser. You can't do that. We're not even aware that that happened. But all we know is we're like, I'm gonna go start my own private practice. And then I feel like shit, right? I feel low, I feel deflated, I feel scared, I feel helpless, I feel powerless. So what's happening there is the critic is just draining the confidence right out of us. Barf. We need to get control of that. So that's diminishing. Another way that we turn on ourselves is called discounting or dismissing. Discounting or dismissing. So what this means is you basically, and this is where we start to get into a bit more of the subtle stuff. This is dismissing your experience, your perspective, your emotions, your experience of this life, moment to moment. So maybe you're feeling a certain way about something. You're like, whew, I don't like that blank right Small stuff. I don't like that type of movie. I don't like that type of food. Or I don't like what's happening in this relationship, or I don't like the way the person's talking to me, or I don't like this work that I'm doing. Or I don't like something that's our inner feeling, our inner experience. And then the critic's voice comes in really fast and is like, oh, come on, why are you so judgmental? You should like that person. Oh, why are you being so. Whatever. Just go out to eat at that place. Who cares? Just be more flexible. You're such a high maintenance person. Just go out to eat. It doesn't matter if you don't like the food. Come on. You know don't be difficult, don't be a burden, don't be a bother. Come on. That's sort of the, it's like an impatient voice. Or if you get scared, let's say you're scared of something and then it's like, oh God, you're scared again. You're, ugh. You know. And so the dismissing can also work with direct self attack. First you can dismiss that you're scared. Like, what's wrong with you? Why are you always so scared? You know, you shouldn't be scared. And then you go into a launch and a self attack, oh, I'm such a fraidy cat. I'm such a wimp. I've always been scared. I was scared since I was 7. It's never going to get better. And then, you know, you could spend a half a day doing that, feeling great. So that's discounting and dismissing. Then we have, this one is a doozy. This one is one of the most sneaky ones of all. And most people aren't aware that this is even self criticism because they've bought into it so much, they think it's fact. They think it's reality. So I'm so glad you're listening to this because it ain't. It is called projected dislike. Projected dislike. What that is is we imagine someone else is doing the criticizing for us. So you think that someone just thinks you're a loser, thinks you can't do it, thinks you're ugly, thinks you don't know what you're talking about. This is the origin of all imposter syndrome. And so if it's mild, like you imagine someone's judging you because your shirt's a little wrinkled, you might be like, okay, maybe you feel a little nervous. But if you imagine that when you're sharing about yourself, people are thinking, God, this guy's so uninteresting and so not worthy of my attention. Ugh, this guy's a bother. If you're imagining that, if you're projecting that dislike towards you, then you're gonna feel so low, so diminished, so anxious, so inferior, so uncomfortable, it can have a very strong effect on you. So basically the level of the dislike you're imagining has a strong effect on your confidence in how you feel. And all of it, all of it is a form of self determining on yourself. And you might say, no, no, but it's true. What if it's true? I don't know if it's true, but maybe it's true. I mean, yeah, okay, why are you Giving their reality more power than your own. So what if someone is judging you? It's very unlikely. It's as intense as you're imagining. That's projected dislike. I know, it's a strong illusion. We want to cling to it. And you'll learn in the book why we want to cling to these things. Why we actually like our critic, why our critic is actually our best friend, even though it makes us feel like shit. And why we. Why people will fight to defend their inner criticisms, why they'll fight to defend their projected dislike. It's insanity, isn't it? In fact, that's the name of part one of the book, Insanity. Why do we do this? And there's clarity. You'll get exactly by the end of part one, you'll know exactly all the different ways you attack yourself. You'll have radically increased your self awareness. Then you'll also understand where this whole madness comes from in our culture, in your family, we go deep in chapter three, it's called Origins. And you'll learn exactly where it's coming from. Which some people might think like, I don't need to know that shit, Just tell me how to get rid of it. It's like, well, needing to know how it's attacking both the direct and indirect ways and where it's coming from is actually what you really need to dismantle this thing once and for all. Because what I don't want this book to be is like another band aid affirmation treatment where you just tell yourself I'm great, I'm lovable, I'm beautiful. And hopefully if I just tell myself that a billion times, I will believe it and you will not. And there's a place for affirmations. I talk about that in the book and how they can be used valuably. But that's like trying to put you got something festering, you got a wound festering, and you just put a band aid on it and say, well, that'll go away. No, you got to get in there, you got to clean that thing out, you got to apply the right treatments to it. And then when you put the band aid on, it's that much better. It actually serves a purpose. So we need to identify these things. We need to uncover the origins of why we're so hard on ourselves. And you'll also discover the exact purpose of the critic. And when you really get this after reading those sections, it will shift everything for you because you'll see it in a whole different way and its power to make you believe it and its hold over you will be forever altered. And then from there we go on offense and start to regain more control, as you can see. I love talking about this, getting all fired up and foaming at the mouth. Take that, critic. Okay, number five. This is another one of the ways that we turn on ourselves. And this one is perfectionism. Perfectionism is a personality habit, a pattern that we can do so often that we can think it's, this is who I am. But it's just a learned pattern like anything else. And it is a way of turning on ourselves and we can be running this. And I know this one well because I have a lot of perfectionistic tendencies in me that I'm constantly watching out for. It's like a eight headed hydra. Is that the beast, the mythical beast, eight headed hydra, where I, you know, chop off perfectionism in one area and then it just grows back in another. I'm like, ah, you again. So you know, you know you're struggling with perfectionism when there's this sense of it's not enough, basically I have to do X or else. And X is often some large, lofty or ambitious goal or unrealistic thing. Whether it's socially, work, projects, time management, how you should be with your kids, your emotional perfectionism. I need to be this way or I have to do X or else. Or else I'm awful, or else I'm a loser, or else I'm horribly unsafe and everyone will leave me. There's like such a high level of pressure in there and this can lead to another form of turning on ourselves, which most people don't even think of as turning on themselves, which is relentless busyness. This is where you're just like, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing. And there's no time to feel, there's no time to breathe, there's no time to pause. And if you do start to experience some emotion or feel, you're like, ah, dismiss, dismiss. I don't have time for that. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. And this takes a toll on us. This takes a toll on our mind, our emotion, our body. And there is a way to be highly engaged, highly productive, but it doesn't have that kind of frantic quality to it. That's what we're talking about here with relentless busyness. It's another way, another subtle way of turning on ourselves. So I want to share a few more, but I want to pause for a second and just check in with you. What are you noticing? Do you relate to Some of these, maybe all of these. Is this how you talk to yourself? Is this how you treat yourself? What are you seeing about your relationship with you? Because that's the thing. That's the main relationship you have in your Life. You're spending 247 with you. You wake up and instantly you're with yourself and your own thoughts, whether that's in the morning or in the middle of the night, because your thoughts woke you up. You know, you're going from thing to thing, activity to activity, interaction to interaction, conversation to conversation. And all the while, there's you. How are you with yourself? Are you on your own side or are you frequently against yourself, frequently doing one more? All of these things that I'm describing, this is important to know, because if you are doing a lot of these things, you will not be happy. It is impossible, impossible to thrive and feel lighthearted and joyful if you're imagining people hate you and that they're right because you're not good enough. And that you shouldn't have the feelings that you're having and you shouldn't have the perspective that you're having. And you need to get more done, but you can't do it anyway because you're a loser. And now you need to be relentlessly busy to try to get as much done as you can, even though it's not going to work out anyway. The recipe for insanity, for suffering. So here's a few more ways that we turn on ourselves. One is what I call should city. And that's where we just live in our own world of shoulds. I should go that way, I shouldn't go. Imagine you're walking down a city and there's all these kind of narrow passageways in between buildings. And it's just, you know, you have to go left and you have to go right and you have to go left. There's not much choice there. And that's what life in should city is like. It's not this wide open expanse. But you have to be a certain way. You need to be this way. You can never be that way. You can always have to do this, you should never do that. And what's happening is you're following this very restricted way of being through the world, this very restricted way of being through your whole life, life pattern, big life choices. And it's not you. Those shoulds are coming from somewhere. And if you've read my previous book, Not Nice, we unpack shoulds in a much deeper way and look at all the shoulds. You tell yourself and have you systematically dismantle them one by one. Because it's not going to lead you to your life. And a big part of being on your own side is discovering who you really are and then living that version of you as fully as you can in this life. Another form of turning on ourselves is catastrophizing. This is one of those things that people might not think of as self criticism or self judgment, but it is turning on yourself, isn't it? To imagine a spooky scenario in the future. I'm going to run out of money, she's going to leave me, he's going to leave me for another younger woman. It's like my kids are going to die. Everything I built, my life is going to fall apart, I'm going to get cancer and God's going to take it all from me. Whatever our catastrophes are, even with smaller ones, right? Like this presentation is going to go terrible. Small stuff, big stuff, we create it. Some scared part of our mind creates it. And then our critic and everything runs with it. It's like, yeah, that's right, you are going to die. And then we keep getting pulled into worry and fear and then more frantic action or more self doubt or we shut down and the catastrophizing thought of something going wrong, you might not have immediate control over that thought. It might just pop into your mind. That's part of our survival programming, is scanning for possible threats in the near or distant future. But whether we jump on the bandwagon and really go with it and feed it, and when we try to say, hey, you know what, that's a pretty extreme outcome. That's catastrophizing. I'm not going to engage in that. There's a part in us that's like, but you have to engage. If you don't engage, the bad thing will happen. And that's pulling us back in. That's the part we have control over. That's our self critic. That's us turning on ourselves. So we want to catch that, be aware of that and shift that as well. So there are so many good things in this book. There's other ways we turn on ourselves. I'm not going to get to all of them in here. But there's self sabotage. I talk about that in the book. I talk about critical comparisons, how we compare ourselves to others. I have a funny story in there about my morning ritual in the shower when I was in high school. And it's the worst morning ritual ever. I don't know what I was doing, but that was just where I was at that time. And so that's what I want to end with today, is if you're listening to this, it might be a little daunting. Like, oh, my, I do all these things and more. I mean, he didn't even get to my list. Or it might not be the ways you turn on yourself that's so numerous, but it might just be the intensity. Yeah, I really compare the shit out of myself all the time. And I'm always, like, everywhere I go, every moment of the day, you know, where I'm around anybody. In fact, just recently, I was doing an interview and a woman was asking me about. She's like, so you struggle with social anxiety and confidence, and, you know, how restricted were you? What was your life like? Give us a little story or sense of what life was like when you were really in that space. I took a moment to think back, like, what is there a specific moment or a specific story? And I just got all these images from different years in my life. And I said, you know, it would be everywhere I went. Every time I was around anyone, I'd be looking. I had this pattern of just comparing myself. And so every time I was near another man, I would compare myself on appearance and how they dressed and how they moved and how confident they seemed and how muscular and athletic they were and how popular they were and how desirable they seemed to other people as friends and leaders and how desirable they seem sexually to women. And I would compare myself and like 90 some percent of the time or more, I'd be on the bottom end of that comparison. So I'd feel inferior or inadequate. And the same thing for women. I'd be comparing myself on all those measures as well as how desirable I imagine they thought I was, which was not very. They're better than me. They're out of my league. I can't talk to her. Even just as a. You know, not even necessarily romantically, just to interact with her, I'd compare myself. And it didn't stop there, because even when I was alone, I was at home, and there's no one to compare myself to. My mind would just keep picking at me and criticizing what I didn't do that day and criticizing how I wasn't good enough in a certain way. I lacked discipline or I lacked motivation to criticize my appearance. When I looked in the mirror, there was no escape. The person in your room is like, oh, my, that sounds really bad. It was really bad. It sucked. And so no matter where you Are you might not be that far, rock bottom down. You might be, you know, feel pretty good about yourself a lot of the time. But you get a rejection or you get a failure, you get a no or something that setback in work or your personal life and you just rip yourself to shreds or you make a mistake and it's just like, you know, you got to punish yourself for days or weeks or maybe you're hesitant to take action. You don't want to put yourself out there, you don't want to take risks, you don't want to challenge the edge of your comfort zone because you might get rejected, you might fail, and you're afraid of your own inner critic and show up in many different ways. So no matter where you are, this is a skill. We can grow this. Your life can radically transform in beautiful ways. I cannot wait to share this with you. So mark your calendar for February 25th, get that Kindle version, and let's see if we can spike the sales on Amazon on that first day. Because when that happens, Amazon says this is important. Let's get out to as many people as we can. And that's my mission. Let's carry this out. Because I want to live in a world where we're not living under the thumb of doubt, of self criticism, of unworthiness, and that you and me and every single person knows their inherent worth and feels that on a daily basis. So they can really live and come from that place of wholeness and completeness and they want to contribute something to the world. So let's do this and before then, let's talk about action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is to pick one form of turning on yourself that you heard in this episode that you were internally thinking, oh yeah, I do that one. He nailed me there. So that's the one that you want to pick, the one that you're aware of, the one that you do a lot, the one that you think you need the most attention on, whatever it is, just pick one form of self criticism or turning on yourself and I want you to pay attention to that this week. Notice it, label it when it comes, like, ah, I'm catastrophizing again, or ah, I'm just direct self attack again. Use the name, use the title, use something, just say, or just say turning on myself or criticizing myself or not on my own side, whatever it is, just label it and then go about your day. You might be able to stop it in that moment, you might not. But the key is just to raise your awareness and say, like, basically, I see what's going on here. I'm not going to be a blind victim of this anymore. I see what's happening, and that's only a matter of time until I start to regain control. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. 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 to socialconfidencecenter.com.