Overcome Shyness: Break Free From Your Own Prison

Hey, Dr. Aziz here. And today I want to talk with you about how you can break free from your own prison. Now, if you're listening to this, you might be thinking, well, I'm not. I'm not really in a prison, but actually you are, and we all are to some degree. And the prison isn't a brick and mortar, actual physical cage, but it's. It might as well be, because it's a really intense barrier that we all come up against. And the question is, what's on the other side of that? Well, what's on the other side of your prison are all the things that you want to do but you don't let yourself do out of fear, self doubt, self criticism. And I don't know what it is for you, but it could be, you know, going over and starting a conversation with that beautiful woman, putting yourself out there at a higher level in your work. Maybe it's something being more expressive, making music, singing, dancing, creating art, doing something like that. Maybe it's having the courage to go leave a career that you're just sick and tired of and doesn't fulfill you and doesn't serve you, and you're not even sharing your gifts with the world. You're just stuck doing the same job, and you want to do something else. You know, you have a calling. You know, you have a purpose and a mission. Maybe you want to create your own business, maybe you want to find a new job, but you don't. That is the prison. And so what is keeping us stuck? And I want to use this metaphor of a prison to help you realize how the process of how to break free. So take for a moment and imagine an actual prison yard. You know, that big open concrete space with the walls around it and the turrets in the corners. Take a moment and imagine that, and imagine that you're one of the prisoners inside of there, and you're just kind of shuffling along, you know, doing whatever you do in the prison yard, not a whole lot, looking tough. And then you have the thought, the idea, I wonder what's on the other side of that wall, right? And that's the desire, that's the passion, that's the hunger to do something more, to go talk to that person, all the stuff I just mentioned. And then you look at it, and then what do most people do? They say, I wonder what's on the other side of that wall? Eh, probably nothing. It's not worth it. Ah, it's not going to happen. And we just immediately discount it. But let's just say Today you were feeling a little more curious, a little more exploratory discovery. You want to find out what's there, so you kind of turn towards it and you start looking. I wonder what's on the other side of that wall. And maybe you even take a few steps closer to the wall, thinking to yourself, I wonder what's on the other side. Now, what would happen in this instance if you were in a prison? Well, one of the guards in the turrets, you'd get his attention, he'd say, what is this guy doing? And he'd turn towards you and maybe he'd start with a stern glare, maybe he'd flick down his aviator glasses and just look at you. And inside us, we all have a prison guard, don't we? That's the invisible force that keeps you from doing the things that you want to do. And what does that guard say? Well, maybe when you just start to barely step out of line, you know, you think about going and talking to that person. You think about leaving your job, you think about creating your own business. The guard says, who do you think you are? Come on now, let's just both be reasonable. You don't have what it takes. You're not intelligent enough, you're not smart enough, you're not attractive enough. Just stay where you are. Come on now. Right, it's kind of reasonable. It just kind of tries to talk you down. But let's say you were a little more determined today and so you started to walk towards the wall, maybe with a good pace, like, no, I want to see what's on the other side. What's on the other side of this wall? What would the guard start to do then? He might start giving you a stern warning. He might pull out his megaphone, his bullhorn and say, hey, you, you better stop what you're doing right now. And if you continued, he might even take his gun and point it towards you and cock it and say, if you take one more step. Going to drop you. Now what is that? Like in with your own internal prison guard? That's like you're about to go do the thing. You're starting to move towards it. You're going to go talk to that person. You're about to give that talk, you're about to speak up in a meeting, and then that voice in your head gets louder and it says, who do you think you are? Stop doing this right now. That's going to sound stupid. They're going to think you're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about, you can't do that. And it gets, like, freaked out, right? And it gets more intense. And at that point, what do most of us do? Okay, all right, I'll shuffle back into line. Who am I to try to do that? And we fall back into place. But what if you were determined today and you kept on moving towards the wall and you just started running at it and you jumped up and you got to the top of the wall. What do you feel then? That is a sense. If you've never experienced this, hopefully you have some point in your life where you've done something that's at the edge of your comfort zone. And you can feel excited, expanded, elated, alive, maybe scared. But you're alive in that moment and you're on top of the wall. That's when you're singing in front of the group. Maybe you're terrified to sing, but you go to a karaoke bar and you get into it and you sing a song and you're freaked out at the time, but you're also alive at that time. Or you share your opinions and work, and all of a sudden you're so much more engaged in that meeting than you ever have been. Or you assert yourself with a supervisor and you demand a higher salary or do something, you know it scares you and you feel like, engaged and turned on and alive in that moment. That's what being at the top of the wall is like. But then the question is, is that the end of it? Let's say you leap over the wall, now you're on the other side. Now you've done the thing. Now, in the metaphor of the prison, if someone jumps over a wall and gets out of prison, does the guard in the turret say, well, I guess I lost another one. Back to my day. No high alarms then, right? They turn the turrets the other way, and they're going to start firing bullets at you. They're going to do whatever they can to get you back into prison or prevent you from getting further away. That's the same thing that happens to us after we put ourselves out there and try something new. Then the critic comes in. The internal guard comes in at 10x, right? And starts saying, you were an idiot, you made a fool of yourself. You start replaying the event in your mind in the most distorted fashion that makes you look like a. A fool. And you tell yourself that anyone that says you did a good job is just taking pity on you, and you should never do that again. You're going to get fired. And everyone thinks you're an idiot. And on and on, right? And then what happens? If that is going on in your mind, what happens? So many of us will say, you know what? This is terrible out here. This is not worth it. And we turn back around and we climb back over the wall and we get back into the prison of our own accord, of our own choosing, and we're defeated. You say, yeah, I tried to get across. In fact, I even did. It's no better out there than it is in here, let me tell you what. And then if you're talking to another prisoner and they say, I'm thinking of going over that wall, you say to them, you can if you want, but there's nothing over there. It's not worth it. Can't happen anyway. There's no good out there. Has anyone ever said something like that to you? About your dreams, about your goals, about your passions? You can't do it. There's nothing out there anyway. It's not going to work. It's not possible. So the question is, how do we break free from this internal prison? Hopefully, just by mapping it out, you can start to see what you're doing to yourself to keep yourself stuck in that prison. And the key is to break free. You have to understand that the purpose is not just to get over the wall. The purpose is to change your entire orientation towards that guard. So instead of being kind of a shuffling, submissive subject to the guard, a victim of the guard, you are able to turn your eyes right, look him right in the eye, look up the guard without fear, without submissiveness, without shame, and just look him in the eye. I see what you're doing. And I'm gonna keep going towards that wall. You can say whatever you want to me. You can try to scare the shit out of me, you can take shots at me, but I am not stopping. Then you just turn towards that wall, turns towards whatever it is that you want, and you just take action, decisive action. Step after step, you run towards that wall, you leap over that wall, and then you hit the other side and you don't stop. You just keep going. So if you want to create your own business, you don't just take one action, maybe look up one thing and one website, and then kick back. No, you say, every day I'm going to spend 60 minutes and do this. And you do it again and again and again and again. And then only then will you be able to look back and say, oh, my God, I'm in an entirely different place than I was a year ago. Two years ago, and look at my life now. That's how you break free of that prison. And I want to add one more note to this. When I first recorded this video, this is the second recording of it. I first recorded this video a couple years ago, and I put it up on YouTube. And the first comment I got was from a guy who said, you don't know what you're talking about. If you have social anxiety, you can't do this. You are full of expletive. I remember reading that and just being like, oh, God, the guard. You got me right? But I've been thinking about that a lot as I've been rerecording this. And if that's what you're thinking right now, that he doesn't get it, there's no way you can just do that thing that scares you. That's not possible. Then let me say start small, okay? Because the reality is our prison, our internal prison, is not just one huge wall. It's a lot of little walls. So pick a small wall. Pick a wall that's like knee height or waist height that you can vault over. Maybe that's going over and asking someone that you've been wanting to get help from at work to help you learn how to do something on your computer where it makes you a little uncomfortable. But it's not the most scary thing in the world. Maybe it's walking down the street and doing the friendly greeting practice, which you can learn about in another blog, where you go and you make eye contact and you say hi to people. But it's picking a small wall and saying, you know what? I'm not going to listen to the prison guard. He can still take shots at me, but I'm not stopping. And I'm going to keep going and going and going. And if you do that, I guarantee that the walls that are enclosing you will continue to expand and you'll have more and more space. And eventually, if there is a wall, it's so far out that it doesn't matter because your life is so rich. Everything that you want, it's is already within your walls, and you're able to do it. So go ahead and put this into practice until we speak again. Know that you are awesome.