OMOS: How To Achieve At The Highest Levels AND Be On Your Own Side

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. Have you got yourself a copy of Omos yet? On my own side. The book was released yesterday. We did a bonus episode about it. Oh, yeah. We're gonna go more into that book today, especially about a topic that is near and dear to my heart and something that I think many people don't realize, which is that it's possible to be on Your own side 100% no matter what, and still achieve at the highest level, have optimal motivation to get what you want done to create the life that you want. In fact, I don't see those as separate things. And for some reason, we have this crazy idea that they are. That somehow hating yourself or being really hard on yourself is the pathway to success and achievement. Barf. Let's upgrade that today. We're gonna be diving deep into that in today's episode. And before we go any further, though, make sure you go to omosbook.com, o m o s book.com to order yourself a copy of the book. You can do that today. It's still during the promotional window where it is. You can get a cheaper Kindle version. And I would support me in getting this book out to as many people as possible, because if you dive in during this opening three days on Amazon. I've been told I am no expert on the Amazon algorithm. It's one of those things where I love writing the books. I love talking to you here. And then, like, the deep, you know, nitty gritty study of, like, the release of the book and how to maximize the algorithm and all that stuff. And I'm just like, I know enough. I know enough. I'm working on learning more. But I know that in the first couple days, if it has a lot of sales, then that really helps the book become more visible to. To other people who might not already be listening to my show and on my email list. And that's My goal with this is this book is transformative, and the world needs this. People need to know how to be on their own sides. In fact, so many people who don't even know that their problems are coming from how they're treating themselves, they think that there's some issues with their work or with their family or with their friends or they're dating or worse. They just believe I'm stuck this way, there's something wrong with me. I deserve to feel bad. I mean, that's what we think on some level. And my mission is to eradicate that, to liberate as many of us as possible in my life so that we can be our free, bold, authentic selves. So I request that you support me in that mission and just think about the other people who might benefit just simply from you getting a book that you probably want to get anyway, if you're listening to my show, but just doing it in this little window. So I encourage you to go out there and get that today. You can even pause this episode right now to go to omosbook.com and you click on that and. And then it'll link you to Amazon, where you can get yourself a copy of that book. And as you're doing that, please share with people that you know through email, through text messaging, on social media about the book and how they can get it for 99 cents. And if maybe you've been a fan of my work, my other books, Not Nice. The Art of Extraordinary Confidence, Solution to Social Anxiety, or this podcast or anything, and you know, this is valuable for people, then let them know, like, hey, there's this awesome book by this author, and I think it's great stuff, and it's available for just 99 cents. And that'll help us spread the word. That'll be super exciting. I would love that. And if you benefited from the show and the work that I'm doing and you want to contribute to this mission with me, that's the best way to say thank you, is to support me in reaching more people, because that's what I'm here to do. And honestly, that's what fulfills me most. And that's why we're basically giving this book away. We're not going to make any money on this release of the book. And the purpose is because if it's priced low enough, then a lot of people will just dive and go for it, and that will rise through the ranks on Amazon. And. And that's really my purpose here, is to reach as many people as I Can and the money is secondary. The business, for me, the business is a vehicle. I need to understand and master business to be able to carry out this mission at the highest levels that I want. So thank you for your support in that. And remember, there's awesome. Benny's in it for you too. The book itself is life changing. It's the best one I've written. So dive right in and then also, as you're diving in, write that review. If you go to Amazon.com I want to share your review as you're reading it. You don't have to finish the whole thing, just even some chapters that you've read. And it could be a short review, it could be a long review, how it's impacting you, what you're learning, what the benefits are. And then snap a screenshot of that, send it to supportocialconfidencecenter.com that's supportocialconfidencecenter.com and we will enter you into the raffle. We're giving away over $5,000 worth of prizes, which I mentioned in yesterday's episode, but all kinds of cool stuff. So dive into that and let's talk more about how you can achieve at the highest levels and still be on your own side. We have learned that we motivate ourselves through frustration, through criticism, through even harsh attack. And somehow we equate that with getting stuff done. Discipline. That's how we're gonna do it. So we say, oh, come on, you gotta do this. Oh, what's wrong with you? Oh, come on, you gotta try harder. Oh, this is unacceptable. And sometimes it's literally we're like attacking ourselves in our head verbally. But oftentimes it's just a feeling. It's like a feeling of disgust or anger or revulsion or impatience if we don't do something that we are imagining we're supposed to do. And what I and people think like, yeah, this is how you succeed. This is how people at sports succeed at the highest level. This is how performers and business succeed at the highest level is like to them, failure is not an option. Not doing the thing is not an option, and they're gonna get it done. Now, that might be true, but having failure not be an option in the sense that I don't know if someone controls their immediate outcomes. So if you're going for something, you might fail along the way. But with when people talk about succeeding at the highest level in sports or in business or in any area of their lives, what they mean is that they don't give up after their short term failures and their ultimate success is inevitable and they're just totally determined, totally dedicated to that. And I would argue that not only can you achieve that while being on your own side, that being on your own side will actually help you achieve that more and better. Because here's the thing, most of what we learned to motivate ourselves is what I would call dirty fuel. So dirty fuel is, you know, you might get yourself moving, but it has a cost on you. So there's certain kinds of dirty fuel that I notice people use psychologically and I've used these too. One is fear. So we use this fear of failure, catastrophic outcomes. We imagine humiliation, we imagine judgment. We think like, oh my God, everyone in the room is gonna look at me like I'm a fool. Oh my gosh, it's gonna be so awful if I don't get this done. Oh, I'm gonna fail that. And that jolts our body. We're like, ah, okay, okay, I'll study, I'll do the work, I'll do whatever it takes. You know what I'm talking about. This one is probably of all my fallbacks, this one is probably one that still lingers the most, is I'll just juice my system with fear as a long standing habit. Another low quality or dirty fuel is conditional worthiness. And the way that works is here's the game, you don't feel worthy yet, but when you achieve X, you'll finally become good enough, worthy of love and respect and finally, quote, be somebody. So now whether it's getting into that relationship or getting that job or whatever it is you are imagining that, okay, when I get that, I'm going to be somebody, which means until I get that, I suck. It's conditional worth. In fact, we were just talking about this last night. There's a client in my Mastermind program who has a number of job opportunities. He's in tech and he has interviews with some of the best companies in the world like Amazon and Google. So he's already achieving at the highest level to be eligible for that stuff. And he's even getting offers. And yet his next interview, his neighbor, he's got a couple more that he's gonna do and he's like on edge about like, ah, but what if this one doesn't go well? Ah, ah. And the fear underneath is, you know, maybe one job is better than another. One's got a better reputation or one's got better perks or whatever. So, you know, there's a part of him that maybe wants the thing that he imagines will bring him the most enjoyment in his work. But what's really underneath it is if I get accepted by company A, B and C, then I'm worthy. And it's pride, right? I'll be good enough, I'll be respected, my peers will look up to me and if I don't get it, then I'll be shit. I'll be looked down upon, I'll be nothing. I know, it's crazy, right? We forget all that we've done, we forget where we are, we forget who we are, and we just have it all focused on this next outcome. That's conditional worthiness. There's a whole chapter about your value equivalence and where your self worth comes from in Omos. So you want to deep dive in that, then that's the place to go. Another form of dirty fuel is future relief happiness. So you just have to get through this and get to X. And then everything will be different. You'll be relaxed, spacious, confident and happy. But now, now you can't be, now you gotta feel like shit until you get to X. And then the last one is what I like to call good old fashioned self hatred. Your critic disparages and berates you, shaming you into action like your body is disgusting. Get to the gym, you fat slob. Or you're so lazy. What's wrong with you? You have to be way more productive at work today. So it's just like the critical, angry, kind of inner parent voice that we might have internalized. So those are some of the forms of dirty fuel. What do you relate to here? What do you use? What are some of your go to dirty fuels? So what's interesting is I was thinking about, we're making this metaphor of dirty fuel. And so I thought about like, okay, what happens if you put dirty fuel into a car? What does it do to the car? Because sometimes we think like, yeah, okay, those are not great forms of fuel, but this shit works. That's what I got. And it's like, yeah, maybe it does work kind of. But also, does it not work? I mean, you know, does fear sometimes jolt you into action and sometimes lead to massive procrastination or paralysis? Does criticizing yourself with old, good old fashioned self hatred berate you into being frustrated and fed up enough to go get to the gym or whatever? Or does it make you just feel like shit and then just eat more and be like, whatever, I don't care, I suck anyway. And then self hatred attacks you for that. I Mean it can send you into these negative spirals. Does conditional worthiness or future relief, like actually make you perform better? That's what we're looking at on the mastermind call with this client. Like conditional worthiness and the sense of like, I'm not enough until I get this is not going to help him perform better. It's going to spike his anxiety and reduce his performance. He's got to go into that knowing his value, knowing his worth, and knowing he doesn't need them to validate him that those are separate things. So then he's coming in with higher quality fuel. But. So what happens when we put dirty fuel in our engine for a long enough time? Well, I was curious about this, so I looked it up as I was writing the book and like what happens when dirty fuel gets into the engine of a car consistently? And I thought these were interesting metaphors that I wanted to share. You know, one is the car is hard to start. And what that looked like for you and your body is sometimes you get a spike of cortisol and it wakes you up and gets you out of bed, charged up, ready to do whatever it takes. But eventually, after you've done this long enough, it doesn't work that well. So your car is just hard to start. You're like, shoot the fear and shoot the self hatred in and the car's just like, your body's sluggish, you're tired, it just doesn't get you going in the same way. Another symptom of dirty fuel is misfires or hesitations. And I thought that was interesting. It's like, you know, you'll try to use this fuel and then instead of it jolting you into action, you'll just like, okay, I gotta do that thing. Okay, I gotta do that thing. And you just stay in hesitation for a long time. Another one is stalling. And I thought this was hilarious. Like, have you ever just been like sitting at your desk like I'm gonna do that thing and then all of a sudden like five minutes has gone by and you don't even know what happened. You were just like staring at your desk. Or maybe you just got lost in a wormhole on the Internet and you're just like, you're just stalling because we're not charged. We're just, we're pushing ourselves rather than being pulled by or being inspired by something that motivates us. And another one is decrease in power and acceleration. So over time it's going to take a toll on your capacity to progress quickly. It Might seem like it's getting you into action now, but over time it burns things up. So we don't want high quality or we don't want low quality fuel? I'm looking at my notes about high quality fuel. We do want high quality fuel. What we don't want is low quality fuel, dirty fuel. So what is high quality fuel? I'm going to share some in just a moment with you, but what do you think? If you were going to say I am only going to. Maybe you've made a deep commitment. If you've already got a copy of Almost Yesterday and been tearing through it, then you've gotten to part two, which is about making the decision of a lifetime, which is deciding to be on your own side no matter what. I am incredibly passionate about that one decision. I think that one decision is the most transformative thing we can make in our entire lives because it leads to not only outer success and achievement, but it leads to the most important thing of all, which is inner fulfillment and our capacity to give and receive love. To fully be who we are on this planet and grow into that and flex our full potential while being on our own sides. To me, that's fucking awesome. That's what I want for me, that's what I want for everyone else. When I imagine a world where everyone is more on their own sides, that is good, that's good for humanity, that's good for the planet, that's good for other animals. There's a lot more self awareness and a lot more love in that world. So high quality fuel, what do you imagine high quality fuel is? If you made the decision, if you cut off the option to attack yourself and you said, no, I'm only gonna motivate myself with higher quality fuel, what would it be? How would you get yourself to do stuff? How would you approach your goals? How would you wake up early? How would you get to the gym? How would you go to the work meetings that you need to? How would you speak up in the ways? How would you be growing all the time? Maybe there's certain things you already do. And I'm asking you this rather than just telling you a few because I want you to really engage with this and think about it for yourself. Because the more you do that, the more you will activate the awareness and the desire and it will make it much more likely that you'll apply those high quality fuels sources throughout your day. Okay, here's a few that I'd love to share with you. So one is interest or fascination, Interest or Fascination. I share a story in Omos where every morning I get up and I do my morning routine. And at that time when I was writing, I was going to the gym first thing as well. And now I actually go to the gym midday before lunch. But at that time I get back from the gym, I get into bed. It's about 6:45am and my family's waking up and the lights just starting to come in the room and I go in there and I start to snuggle with them. And my son Zaim stretches his body and goes, daddy. I'm like, yeah. And he said that 8. 8. Indestructible creature with flying that makes all your other cards indestructible. I'm like, yeah, remember that card? Yeah, I remember that card. Yeah. And that was the conversation. So Magic the Gathering is what he's talking about, which I'm a huge fan of been since I've been. I think I was 11 years old when I started and I'm 37 now at the time of this recording. So that's 26 years. Oh my goodness. Of the Gathering. I love that game. And I taught it to my son zaim, who's now 6. But I started teaching him right when he turned 5, right before, I think, right around when he turned 5. And it's been a labor of love where I mean, we had to start super simple and I had to be just incredibly patient of like, okay, we're basically not going to play for the first couple months. We're just going to get the cards out, go through the motions. He's going to start to understand the idea of, you know, bringing things out and how to cast things and all that stuff. And I'd made a simplified version. And then step by step, we played more and more and more. And now it's freaking awesome. He knows how to play. He's getting better and better at strategy. It's a delight to watch. But he, from the very beginning, even when he couldn't play it that well, has been obsessed with it. Utter interest and fascination. And so like, literally at that time. And we would do it right now too, if his brother didn't protest. Who's not as into magic. He's four and is like, what are you guys doing? I hate it. But you know, at that time we would be reading books about magic cards before bed. Just like, imagine this like big magazine y kind of book where every page has got like 30 Magic cards on it. He's like, what does that card do? Uh huh. What does that card do, and he can't read, right? So I'm telling him what all the cards do. Anyway, so we're reading about magic before bed and then he wakes up and the very first thought he has is about a magic card. And this is an incredible force inside of us, incredible power. And we all have this. This is our fascination, this is our interest, this is our obsessions. This is like, have you ever had that? There's just something, you just want to know more and more and more about it. You just want to figure it out. You're not going to stop until you do. You just got to unpack it, discover. What is this thing? Maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's a skill. Maybe it's a particular technique you want to learn for, for fitness, for work, for relationships. Maybe you become obsessed with figuring out how to date more confidently. You become obsessed with how to change your style and wardrobe. You become obsessed with how to master some sort of coding or something in your career. This, that obsession, that what I call magnificent or beautiful obsession is one of your best gifts. And that is interest, that's fascination. And that can fuel you like crazy. In fact, what my wife and I are doing with our boys is called self directed education, where think of it like homeschooling plus. And so what we do is we. There's amazing resources in Portland where you can, it's like a home, homeschool classes. So you can take your kid to, you can be part of this school, but you can pick the classes that you want to go to. And parents can be involved, parents can be not involved depending on the age of the kid. And so it's like this kind of wide open, interactive, communal way to learn things. And so you can, instead of saying, okay, you're in school from, you know, whatever, eight to four and you're going to learn all this stuff and you're going to sit in this classroom. It's more like what is it you're most fascinated in? You want to learn about math. Let's go to that math class. You know, Zaim is really interested in reading right now. He wants to learn how to read. You know, one of the reasons why he wants to learn how to read, because he wants to be able to read freaking magic cards. And how much math has he learned from magic? I mean, you're doing all kinds of addition, subtraction, you're figuring out what's stronger than what's something else. He is also learning strategy, thinking one or two steps ahead, and he's learning all this without even knowing he's learning. He's just playing a game. And so when you are most fascinated by something, you're going to learn it like crazy. And that's so different than what we think we're supposed to do to figure something out. So go with your interest, go with your fascination. That's one of the most powerful forms of ongoing motivation. High quality fuel. Another one is inspiration. Inspiration is whatever lights you up, whatever excites you, whatever makes your heart feel brighter, lighter and more open, expansive and alive. And you might not be able to explain in your head what inspires you, and you don't need to. So instead of looking at what you have to do or should do, look at what you're inspired to do. In fact, let me ask you that question right now. What are you inspired to do in your life right now? What do you feel passionate about doing? Take a moment to reflect on this right now. What are you passionate about? What are you inspired to do? And whatever starts to emerge for you? My next essential question is, are you making time for that every day? Are you charged about that? Are you energized about that? And it could be something that's fun and pleasurable, and that's great. And it could also be something that challenges you. Like, some of the things that I'm most inspired by right now are things that are challenging me because they help me grow. So one thing that I'm inspired, this one, there's some challenge in it, and it's also just this one's a lot of joy and enjoyment. Well, there's inherent challenge in doing it, but I'm actually currently working on another book. I can't stop myself. In fact, I realize that that's what I'm so inspired by, which is not just. I mean, I do all kinds of creation, whether it's creating these podcasts, creating videos, creating content for live events, or mastermind programs. Lots of nonstop creation, which I love about my work. But there's something especially fulfilling and satisfying about the creation of books. It's like my highest, most enjoyable form of. It gets like I can immerse in it more than anything else. And so I realize, you know, what I used to do with books is spend a lot of time writing them, and then we'd release them, and then there's like this long break before I start writing the next one. But I mean, ideas and inspiration and everything is moving through me nonstop. It's not like there's no ideas for books in that time. And it would always Be like, oh, I got to work on other stuff in the business and we'll get back to writing the next book later. And now I'm like, no, no, no, no. We're going to have an hour a day to write Monday through Friday, no matter what, to have time to capture those ideas, to share them, to expand on them, because that's what fuels me, that's what inspires me. There's other stuff too, but that one's one that comes to my mind. So what comes to your mind? What inspires you? Another form of optimal fuel is fun. Fun. I mean, are you noticing a theme here, that this can be enjoyable, this growth? And so there's a great quote which is, if it's not fun, you're not doing it right. And when I looked up this quote on the Internet to see where it came from, it was quoted to Bobo Basso, who? I don't know who that is, Groucho Marx, even jfk. So I was like, I don't know who actually said this, but if it's not fun, you're not doing it right. I love that quote. I think there's so much in there in that sometimes we need to change what we're doing, because what we're doing is just not fun. And sometimes we need to just change how we're approaching something. And if you can't get out of something or you have to do something, then the great question is, how can I enjoy this more? How can I make this more fun? How can I make this even more fun? How can I make this fun? Like, looking for opportunities to have fun as you do these things. I mean, we all know this fun is the best source of fuel. Let's imagine that you're gonna, I don't know, you have an hour or 30 minutes even, and you're gonna say, you know What? I got 30 minutes. I'm gonna play a game of pickup basketball or pickup soccer with my friends, whatever sport you love to play. Or I'm gonna do a 30 minute, high intensity interval training, sprint off and on workout. Now, you might be some sort of weird masochist who loves the sprint workouts. They're great for you and they do have. You can feel some positive, immediate mood boost afterwards. So I'm playing a little bit. Those can be fun too. But I mean, come on, how many times are you gonna be looking at the clock during that high intensity workout, interval training versus when you're playing the pickup basketball or soccer? Most likely you're gonna just love the shit out of the sport, the game aspect, and the other one's gonna be kind of a slog, although it's worth it. But how much running are you gonna do while you're playing soccer or playing basketball? You might do even more running. You might run even harder and faster, like you're chasing someone down, or you. You know, you got the ball and you're making a breakaway for the goal or for the basket. You might just be running as fast as you can and feeling awesome inside, and you're not even looking at a clock or measuring your time or anything like that. So how do we bring this to life? And sometimes people are like, yeah, okay, that makes sense for a sport or something. But I mean, how can other things, such as work tasks and projects and dealing with money and all that stuff and other professional activities, they can't be fun. That's serious work, man. But why does fun have to mean frivolous or careless or not sincere? I mean, can't we have fun as we do something important? In fact, I talk about this in the book. Like, what if you were gonna. You needed a surgery for whatever reason, and you had a choice between two surgeons. They were both highly regarded and very skilled technically at being able to do the work that. Whatever you needed on your body. But one surgeon was, like, all fucking serious business, and the operating room was total silence, and he or she was just, like, tense, and they're just like, I'm the best. Or you had another surgeon who was equally skilled, but they had their headphones on and they just, like, got into a groove and they were dancing, and, you know, like, they're just. Or maybe the music's playing in the whole operating room, and the vibe is there for everyone, and they're just, like, in the flow and they're humming to themselves. Who would you want? I would go with number two. Any day of the week, because they're having fun. I think they're gonna be more resourceful, they're gonna be more adaptive, they're gonna be more aware, and really, honestly, when we're having fun, that's life. That's God moving through us. So that's what I would want. In fact, when I got my updates to one of my tattoos recently, the tattoo artist who's an exceptional artist, I noticed that when he would be doing detailed work on my arm and he would do this all the time, just, like, maybe the hardest stuff, he would hum to himself. And I just thought that must be some strategy he unconsciously learned to just get really in the zone. So there is so much more. We're only just getting through a few. There's a whole chapter, a whole section, a big chapter in Omos called Optimal Motivation and the Art of Relaxed Discipline. We didn't even get into the art of relaxed discipline in this episode because we're running out of time. But the art of relaxed discipline is how you can get yourself to do the things that you know you need to do. Because a lot of the stuff we want to achieve, a lot of results that we want, involves consistent effort over time. And so how do we get ourselves to do it? And we must get into this flow of relaxed discipline. Harsh, rigid, tense, brittle. Discipline is temporary at best. You can only hold on for so long. You gotta get more like water. You gotta get more fluid. You gotta find this art of relaxed discipline. There's so much exciting stuff that I can't wait to share with you. In fact, when you go to almostbook.com to order your copy, you'll also see there's a way to sign up there to get the bonus content that's within the book. There's tons of bonus audios where I guide you through certain processes. There's videos where I teach more concepts in depth that we couldn't capture in a book. It needed to be through audio and video. So you can get access to all those for free. When you go to almostbook.com, you can just enter your email and. And you'll get those as well. So I teach more about the art of relaxed discipline in a video on that page as well. In any case, your action step. Let's talk about your action step for today. Time for action, Action, action. Your action step for today. Well, obviously part one is to get the book. That probably goes without saying. But then part two would be reading the book. And then part three would be to look at your way that you're motivating yourself. Just for today, tomorrow, just the next couple days. Do a little self audit and notice how you get yourself to do things, the basic things, the day to day things, the things you don't want to do. And notice what kind of fuel you're using. Just kind of put it into two basic categories like dirty fuel or optimal fuel. Just check in any moment. Am I using dirty fuel right now or optimal fuel? And sometimes it's a mixture of both. And that's okay. I mean, this is, I talk about this in the book. It's unlikely that you're going to make this total about shift 180 degrees instantly from dirty fuel for years to only clean fuel. You got to think about it more like human civilization getting off of fossil fuels. That's a process right now, fortunately, you're going to transition from dirty fuel personally to optimal fuel much faster than humanity can change and hopefully before we all hit calamity. But it's a process. So you're going to notice a mixture of dirty fuel and a mixture of optimal fuel. And that's okay. The more you just want to keep asking yourself, am I using dirty fuel right now or optimal fuel? Great. How can I optimize it? How can I use better fuel? And again, in that chapter, chapter 11, I think it is in the book, or 12, it's called optimal motivation and the Art of Relaxed Discipline. And. And in there, you'll learn a ton of different specific, optimal forms of motivation and exactly how to implement that. So once you have that repertoire in your mind, you'll be able to notice what you're doing and then consciously upgrade. And that's the process. We just catch it and consciously upgrade, Catch it and consciously upgrade. And over time, before you know it, you're operating from way higher fuel, and then you're feeling even better. And then you realize, oh, there's even. I can get even more focused on just optimal fuel I can use. I can just, you know, you can just keep refining to higher and higher levels of octane, if you will. So I'm excited for you. I'm excited for you to read the book. I'd love to hear about your experience and your journey. You can send us an email. Send me an email@azizocialconfidencecenter.com thank you for being with me today. So much good stuff to come. I cannot wait to hear about you being more and more on your own side until we speak again. We 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 socialconfidencecenter.com.