Dr. Aziz suggests asking yourself "How can I take care of myself?" every day to rebuild confidence and stop over-giving. The practice helps you avoid self-denial and create healthier relationships where both people matter equally.
Welcome to your weekly confidence boost. Today I want to ask you a very simple question. In fact, I want you to ask yourself a very simple question many times over the course of today, tomorrow, and this week. It's a really basic one, but it will shift how you show up, how you feel. It will increase your sense of confidence. It will bring more power back to you and in ways that you might give your power over to others. I don't want to displease others. I don't want them to be upset with me. I don't want to disappoint others. And you kind of tend to maybe give too much of your own self and your own power away, and then there's not much left for you, and you're not really steering your own life and creating the life that you really want. Is that sounding familiar? So this is a powerful question to help shift that. And it's really simple. So don't let the simplicity of it make you think that it's not significant and worthwhile and very important. Here's what it is. How can I take care of myself? How can I take care of myself? So you can ask that question broadly. Like right now, you can just ask yourself that question, how can I take care of myself? And see what comes to your mind. For right now, maybe it's like today, how can I take care of myself today? See what comes to your mind. Then you'll get answers. Anytime you ask a question in your mind, you'll get answers. See what comes to your mind. And then, of course, in different situations, you could ask that, right? Like, okay, here are the situation at work. How can I take care of myself in this relationship situation that's going on, how can I take care of myself when I'm visiting my family? How can I take care of myself? And even when things arise that are maybe challenging, like someone's upset with you, okay, Normally we're like, okay, how do I make this better? How do I fix this? Oh, my gosh, am I in trouble? And we can also ask ourselves, okay, with all this going on, how can I take care of myself and see what comes to you? See what this is doing? As I told you, it's a simple question, but the profound effect of this is this is bringing, right now, you might be so many people, especially if you've read my book, not nice or familiar with that. We can overextend ourselves. We can become so giving, so loving, so nice that we end, you know, we don't want to be selfish in any way. So we end up swinging our pendulum all the other way which is like, what do you need? What do you want? Whatever it is, I'll give it to you, I'll do it. I don't have any needs, I don't want to upset you, I don't want to bother you, I don't want to create any friction, I don't want to make any waves. So here, just. I'll give, I'll figure out what you want. I became so good at that. I would like be able to read people and figure out what I think that they wanted to hear. And I would tell them that even if I didn't believe it, but just because I knew that it might make them feel good. You ever done that one? Become really good at mind reading and then try to give everyone everything they want even before they ask for it. And guess what question I wasn't asking myself during that time? How can I take care of myself? In fact, that question felt bad, selfish, wrong, selfish, bad, wrong. Multiple combos of that. But it's not bad, it's not wrong, it's healthy. It brings you out of this self. Because if you go too far down that selfish spectrum, I talk about this in not nice. You go too far down that spectrum, you don't become like a better and better person. You become more and more what's called self denying. Where you don't even become a factor in the equation of how you figure out how you're going to navigate your life. And it's just all about others and what they want. And you lose yourself, you become separated from yourself. This is called self alienation. You are an alien to yourself. You don't even know what you think, feel, want, desire, and it doesn't even matter to you anymore. That's not healthy, that's not loving, that's not giving, that is self denying. And so what we want to do is want to swing the pendulum back to something that's healthy in the middle. It's called healthy self interest or healthy mutual interest because it actually creates beneficial relationships for you and others. Because you got to know, how do I take care of myself and how can I contribute to that person? What do they want? What do I want? What do they want? How do we have this relationship serve both of us, not just only them and never you make sense. So that's why this question is so powerful. How can I take care of myself? Ask yourself that question many times throughout the day. Just once a day. Whatever it is, whatever lands right for you, just experiment, just bring it into your mind, bring it into your awareness and see the effect of that. And then, by all means, share. So if you go click down below, we'll have the Confidence Warriors Facebook group. If you're not a part of that, by all means, join up and share. What is your experience of asking this question? How can I take care of myself until we speak again, May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
