Overcoming Fear (Part 1)

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey, welcome to another episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence here in Portland, Oregon. Today's show is exciting and monumental because it's the first time we have a guest. Oh, yes. And we have all kinds of crazy wires hooked up here that are going to allow for the integration of this microphone and Skype and everything's going to link together perfectly and all will go well. Or so is the plan. We shall see. But before we get into the interview, it's actually with someone who I highly respect and think offers such a powerful key insight into the theme of this show, which is do what scares you. Oh, yes, I do what scares you. You heard me right. That is something that actually makes many people cringe, but particularly my shy friends out there, because as you know, we have a habit, a pattern might say, of avoiding what scares us. That's a place that I lived for many years in my life. If there was something that scared me, say, going over and introducing myself to a pretty, young, attractive co ed when I was in college, I wouldn't do that. That sounds like a terrible idea. Or maybe going and applying for a job or offering to speak up in a group of people, raising your hand in a class or taking on a project at work that involves leadership responsibilities, or signing up to do a presentation at work or at school or anywhere else in your life. Really finding a way to put yourself out there, you know, in the professional life, in your personal life, when it comes to dating and relationships or most recently, I was at a wedding which happened to be my own. Oh, yes, yes. Married. Hooray. The success story for the shy guy. I'll get more into that in a future episode. But a good friend of mine who was one of my groomsmen told me this was after the wedding that he had a major regret and it was really bothering him. And that was that during the toast section of the wedding, which was one of the most awesome toast sections that I've ever been to, perhaps because they were all about me and my wife. But he had an idea about something he wanted to say, but he didn't do it. He talked himself out of it. And he's not a guy that you would think is overly shy. So it just goes to show that there are so many things in life that we want to do, but we don't do because we're scared. And then, like my friend there, we feel some regret, or sometimes we don't even feel regret because we're just so used to living that way that it's just the way things are. That's just how we're going to be in the world. And that's its own sort of pain, its own sort of hell. And when we avoid what scares us for so long that our life just becomes limited, that we don't even feel the pain of regret anymore. We just feel the pain of numbness, of life not feeling full of color. It feels kind of gray and dull and repetitive and predictable. And that is a clear sign, my friend, that we need to shift something. And that thing that I'm suggesting you shift is to move toward what scares you, to do what scares you, to break that pattern of avoidance and find something in yourself, find a well of courage that will give you the endurance, the stamina, the resilience to give it a shot and see what happens. I remember a fellow named Dr. Paul who has a lot of products out there for helping men develop their confidence, among other things. I remember hearing an interview with him long time ago, maybe eight years ago now at this point. But he said something that stuck with me to this day, and there was a formula he had. I don't really remember the exact specifics, of the formula, so bear with me if I butcher it. But it was something like, if you are scared, but you do the right thing, being scared plus doing the right thing equals confidence. That is a formula. He probably voiced it in a much better way than that, but he found a formula that if there was something that you're scared, but you find a way in yourself to do it, then you will develop confidence in yourself. And there is a formula for that. And. And it's actually called exposure therapy. In cognitive behavioral therapy, that if someone wants to overcome a phobia like a fear of spiders, you systematically expose yourself to the thing that you're scared of, and you find a way to manage the fear, overcome the fears that are often really over the top. You know, I know one client of mine, we were doing this, and he has a hard time interacting with people terrified to start conversations with people, which was holding him back, and for friendships and relationships and all areas of his life. And so we were starting small, and we were doing a social experiment, which I really love to do, which is you go out and you ask five people or 10 people, what time is it? You just go into a supermarket and see someone there and say, excuse me, can I ask you a quick question? What time is it? Or you do that to someone on the street or wherever. And I remember the first time we were doing that, he was terrified. And so we were talking about it, I was like, well, what are you worried is going to happen? And he said, wow, they're going to give me this look of disgust, they're going to shake their head, they're going to think I'm some kind of weirdo and they're going to walk off. Wow, that's pretty extreme. And you know what? As long as he didn't do it, which had been his whole life, that was true. Why? There's no other evidence to the contrary. So he was stuck in that belief. He believed that that was going to happen. And so that was his reality. Well, with enough convincing and controlling and playing and even actually watching me do it a number of times, he realized, maybe my fears aren't accurate, maybe that won't happen. And that is actually the case. And he ended up doing it in that day that I was working with him, he ended up doing it with five or six people. And that might seem like, I don't know where you're at in your growth from shyness to social confidence and you might think that's easy, or you might be listening to that and being like, wow, maybe I'll try that experiment. But for him, it was a big deal. And what was most exciting is he actually came to me the next week. We were doing one on one coaching. He came to me the next week and said, I asked maybe 15, 20 people over the course of the week and I never got a negative response. One time some elderly person did not respond to him in a store, but he questioned if she didn't hear him. But he didn't take it personally because he had 19 other times that went well. So that's just one example of how this is going to work. And I'm going to get more into this in future episodes. We're going to talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of exposure therapy and how to use that to overcome your fears. And it's going to be a consistent theme in the questions and answer sections that I do when I take questions from folks. And you're really going to hear this throughout this radio show over time. And so I wanted to just introduce you to the topic, but I feel like there's no better way to really understand this topic than to talk to someone who really gets it. So in just a Moment, we're going to be back, and we're going to be talking to Josh Sabra, who is a guy who I think gets this on a fundamental level. He doesn't just understand it intellectually. He actually lives this. And so what I have a philosophy is if you see someone who's doing something you want to do, like, for example, I've seen Josh walk up to a group of four women and just casually start a conversation with them.

And.

And believe me, he's not some pickup artist where he has scripts and he planned it all out ahead of time and he knows how to number clothes in two minutes. He's just an ordinary guy who believes in himself and is willing to give it a shot and willing to do it even though it scares him. And that's what's most amazing about him. So I've seen him do something like that. And my philosophy is, wow, if someone can do something that I want to do and I can't, there's probably something I can learn from them. So I want to talk to them. I want to understand their mindset, their attitudes, their approach to life, some of the lessons they've learned, and how they've overcome some of the challenges that I'm facing. And so I'm going to ask him all those questions, and you're going to get a huge amount of benefit of really understanding the mindset of someone who's adopted the life philosophy of doing what scares you. So we'll be back in a moment. We're going to talk with Josh and cross my fingers that all our complex wiring of the 21st century will work. And my hope is that it will. And we'll be back in just a moment. Have you ever gotten fed up, I mean, so frustrated with being shy that you just couldn't take it anymore? And you said to yourself, I have to do something about this, and then what happens? Well, if you're like most of us, it might have worked for a few days or even a few weeks, but then you hit a major obstacle. You got rejected. Or maybe you just got exhausted from pushing yourself so hard. The reality is, we are all controlled by our beliefs and patterns. And without changing your patterns and reprogramming your beliefs on a deep level in your body, change is difficult and usually not sustainable. But if you're ready to make that shift in your body and in your programming of your beliefs on a deep level, I strongly suggest checking out Confidence Unleashed. This program systematically guides you through change, changing those beliefs and activates your body in a way that helps you feel an immediate shift in your confidence. And once you make those changes, nothing can stay in your way for too long. So go to confidence unleashed now.com to learn more.

Expert Interview.

Welcome back to our show. In a moment, we're going to be talking with a good friend of mine named Josh Chabra, who is actually a guy who really, as I mentioned before, embodies this way of being in the world where you move towards what scares you, you find some place in you that drives you towards something that you want, even if there's an obstacle in the way, even if you're not sure of the outcome. And he comes from what I would say is humble beginnings in Southern Oregon. And he grew up, and we'll talk a little bit about his background in the interview. But he grew up with some adversity and challenges. And then he went into the military and actually rose through the ranks there and ended up in a position where he was commanding men underneath him, which I think gives a testament to how he takes things on in his life. And that didn't stop when he got out of the military. He started his own fitness business and as a personal trainer and a health coach and has ever since I've known him just been delving into that at a high level and really refining his skill. And I think he's got some interesting insights about how you can use your physical body and improve that to enhance your confidence. So we'll get his thoughts on that as well. And one final thing about Josh is this guy knows how to talk to women and he's not held back by his fears. So hopefully we'll learn some of his tips and secrets and mindsets when it comes to that area. So thanks for joining us, Josh.

I'm happy to be here.

So, as I said before, you really embody the philosophy of doing what scares you. And as long as I've known you, which has maybe been, God, maybe four years now, something like that, that's been how you live in the world. But I'm wondering, have you always done that? Do you remember when you started to do that? Was there a time when you didn't do that?

Sure. Yeah. I talk about with my friends being an introvert in high school and kind of getting lived and kind of not bullied by anybody in particular, but just kind of being intimidated by my peers and kind of being in a shell and kind of being trapped in that. I think the approach mentality that I got, I took on, as you mentioned, in the Army. I joined the army to get out of Roseburg, Oregon, which is where I'm from. And I enlisted as a paratrooper. And to be a paratrooper, you had to jump out of a plane a certain number of times. And I was terrified of that for reasons that I think are obvious. But I was certain. This is. I was 18 years old, and I had ridden in the plane maybe once or twice in my life. And every day over the base, you see people jumping out of planes and their shoots opening up. You know, literally hundreds of people are just parachuting over the space every day. And I'm, like, thinking to myself, certainly my equipment will fail. Like, I have the worst luck in the world. You know, of the 1,000, I'm going to be the point 1% or the 0.01% or whatever, that the equipment fails and I fall to my death, you know, thousand feet above ground over Fort Benning, Georgia. And so, yeah, I have a lot of anxiety about it. And so, unfortunately for me, you get to think about it for weeks. So you spend three weeks in airborne school before jump week. And so you're doing. Practicing falling and using your equipment and loading and unloading in planes and just doing basic parachuted stuff, and you're practicing. You do a ground week, you do a tower week, and then you do a jump week. And so you're, you know, you're seeing planes overhead, you're seeing people fall. You're just, you know, you just get this sense of, this is inevitable, this is what you're doing. And I think it's supposed to reassure you, but I was pretty terrified. And as I was loading onto the plane, they realized there was no escape. There's no way out. There's really, you know, once you kind of strap in and load into the back end of this cargo plane, the only way out is through the jump door. And they will. They will throw you out. They will incentivize you to get out of the plane, because it's a big deal if they have to land the plane with people in the car, Margot Bay. So there's no way out. And furthermore, if you do not hand off your safety strap or the static line that pulls the chute open, if you don't hand that off correctly on your way out the door, the guy behind you could get strangled by it. So there's a measure of presence of mind. You have to have. You can't just be totally terrified. You actually have to, with some smartness, hand your static line to the jump master and then leap clear of the aircraft. And strangle the guy behind you.

That's a particularly interesting piece of it that you're not. Only two things you said stood out to me. One is that a. There's no way out other than the jump door, which I think is a pretty powerful metaphor, and we'll get into that in a second. But the other thing you said was that you had to keep a presence of mind about you. You had to keep your wits about you. And that actually reminds me of the fantastic film 300, in which they talk about these Spartans who were trained to fight from a very young age, that instead of feeling fear, they feel an enhanced awareness and an attunement of their senses. And it sounds like there's a similar aspect to your experience there where you're terrified and yet you're forced by needing to be aware of your surroundings and your peers so as to not cause problems.

Right. I think that having a tactile mission, having a purpose in your hand, literally, in this case in front of you, in a process that you're going through, takes. Takes your mind away from your own personal mortality and into. All I have to do are these objectives. I have to. I have to check my gear, I have to hand it to the jump master, and I have to leave with full force and vigor outside the plane and get clear.

Yeah.

And that. That process, I imagine, was to keep people like me actually moving instead of just crying. So that's what I did. And so I was in the plane and. And, you know, stand up, hook up. And as I was hooking my, you know, my gear up to the plane, I was saying to myself, the only thing I'm going to do is correctly pass off this static line, and then I'm going to leave as hard as I can, get as far away from this plane so nobody behind me gets hurt, and I don't fail. I don't fail my mission. So I didn't ignore or override the fear that, you know, my equipment would fail and I would die. I said, well, then that may be, but what I also do is just fulfill my small objective of getting away from this plane and. And then we'll see what happens after that.

And I think that's another key point, is that you can focus on a purpose or a mission or an objective that allows you to bypass or act in spite of the fear. We're going to take a brief break from the interview with Josh and be back in just a moment to hear more about what he has to say around a variety of topics, including dating and relationships. Are you tired of feeling stuck in shyness? Do fear and self doubt stop you from being social or outgoing? Overcoming social anxiety is possible, but it Requires action. Join Dr. Aziz in an eight week video training program that will teach you exactly how to unleash your confidence. Go to confidenceunleashednow.com welcome back. Let's get back into that interview with Josh and I'm wondering, how do you relate that to something in, say, your personal life? When you go, let's say you're going to go start a conversation with someone, maybe an attractive someone, what would you say your purpose is in that interaction?

Oh, that's great. I mean, that's a great question. My purpose is to make somebody's day. And I got there through thinking about how when friends of mine who are women, people I know talk about a stranger approaching them in a park or at a coffee shop or wherever they're at and start talking to them or flirting with them, how it makes their day and it gives them a story to tell. So I framed it up as my purpose is to make somebody's day. I'm going to give them an experience.

That's a very different purpose than I think a lot of the guys listening have. And I know a very different purpose than I had when I was really stuck in shyness. And that I think oftentimes a common purpose is I hope I don't mess this up. I hope that she likes me. I hope that I make a good impression so she'll want to go out with me. What would you say about the fear? That's really common, which is, aren't you worried that she might dislike you?

Yeah, well, you know, lots of people dislike her. That could happen. The truth of the matter is you've got to give somebody opportunity to see who you are and they can make their own decisions. And I found through practice that people are generally pleased to meet people regardless of their personal style or circumstance. And whether or not you're going to have sex with this person that you just met or have a great conversation or have absolutely nothing at all, that's up to both of you in the moment. I think you never get off the starting line if you think about the opportunity to miss a basket.

Yeah. It reminds me of something I think I heard Brian Tracy say recently, which is you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take.

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think that's also a sniper.

Motto, which actually, that reminds me, bringing it back to the military and the only way out is through the jump door, you know, all other options are off the table. You have to go out in this way. How do you bring that to your life now? In the fact that you were just telling me before we started this interview that you're moving your whole business to a different location. It's a big deal. And that of course there's unknown, there's fear there, but you're doing it anyway, as you do. But how do you bring that philosophy to your daily life as a civilian? You can not go talk to the woman. You can back out of this deal to move. So how do you keep that, say, focus or drive and really convince yourself that the only way out is through?

Yeah, well, I think experience. I talked to other trainers, I had a lot of friends who are trainers here in Portland, and we talked about approach and avoid being the two choices to any decision or any obstacle. Like, you don't necessarily know that you are going to be able to go over it or around it or under it or through it. If you don't approach it, you're never going to figure it out. You're never going to move on. And the idea is just to grow. If you avoid it, you escape the pain and tension of whatever you're dealing with, but you don't get the reward. And I think the first time I climbed a tree and felt higher up and exhilarated and a little scared, but that was the first approach mentality signal that I got when I was a young kid and it was easy to climb up and reap the benefit. So now I just think that having that exhilaration, that fear is natural, but the benefit and the growth and the reward is in the approach.

I think that there's a key distinction there that can be really difficult, is that a lot of guys say, well, what if I'm climbing the tree and I fall? And as you said, well, the only way to find out is to do it. But I think a lot of guys experience a sense of deflation and, and demoralizing effect from, say, trying to start a conversation with someone and it being awkward or asking a woman for her number and her saying no. So how do you deal with it? Or what advice would you have for someone who's saying, if it goes bad, I can't be able to handle it. It's too much. It's too painful.

Wow. I want to share an experience that I have to have shared with you before because we talk about our experiences with dating, but my first girl I had a crush on, I walked up to her in junior high school, so I'm in eighth grade at this point. I didn't know what to say. I was just completely overwhelmed by fear. And I said, hi, my name is Josh. And the woman who. The girl that I was talking to, she was one of the popular kids, one of the untouchables, or maybe I was an untouchable, Whichever one means that everyone wants to be. And nobody. Nobody can approach without permission. But I approached. She had an Australian accent. She was hot. Yeah. Oh, man. And her response to my outstretched hand and my name was, why are you talking to me? You're so ugly. Get away from me. Brutal, brutal smackdown. And I shrugged it off. And then I went home, of course. Cried for, like, 30 minutes about my. I was just, like, never gonna. I was destined to be, you know, single and alone and a virgin, of course. And I was gonna die alone. And I was. It was the worst feel in the world. And that lasted, I don't know, a few weeks. But that was pretty much the worst burn I'd ever had. And probably also instantly in my Most vulnerable stage 1. Most vulnerable stages in life. But falling out of the tree or getting rejected is kind of the inoculation of pain or getting into the approach mindset. The worst. I've fallen out of lots of trees, and I've got a little scraped up, but you walk away. God forbid anyone die from falling out of the tree after this conversation. But you're going to survive. And if you kind of let your fear, if you never experienced true rejection or true interaction that maybe doesn't go well, then your imagination will always be so much more powerful than real life.

Yeah, that is a key point. And I really like so much about what you're saying, but the fear, the fantasy of how it's going to go badly is 9 times out of 10, way worse than reality. And all the men that I've been working with and all the experiences I've had, I've never had a woman or anyone that I'm trying to start a conversation with and be friendly with, say something as harsh as what you described there in your middle school experience. And that's what I think a lot of guys are expecting, is some sort of like, get away from me, you creep. I hate you. And the reality is, is that the falls or the rejections are much more like little scrapes. You know, she. She politely says, oh, I'm sorry, I don't give out my number. Or she kind of turns away or doesn't want to engage. So they're Much more minor slights. But the power of our imagination to create these shadows and demons in the closet never ceases to amaze me. And so I think what you're saying about, well, you have to, at some level, just do it, realize that you can survive it. And I love that you said that. It inoculates you to future rejection, future pain.

Yeah, it's huge. It's a big confidence boost. And just being somebody who can tell the story of trying and maybe falling short. Way, way more character building. People really respect you for taking a shot. You know, whether you're Wayne basically trying to shoot a goal in this, or you're trying to start a business, or you're just trying to get, you know, start a conversation with an attractive girl. Like being the person who takes action speaks way louder than any blog or any reminiscent, any fantasy, because a lot of people have things they want to do, and very few people actually do them.

That's all the time that we have for the interview with Josh today. I want to have just a little bit of time at the end of this episode to get into the action step. So we're going to cover the rest of the interview with him in the next episode. And that's actually a very fascinating discussion we get into about his experiences with online dating, as well as his approach with women in general, which you learned a little bit about today. But he goes a lot more in depth into it next week. And just as a teaser, he does very well with women. He's got some interesting stories, and I think there's a tremendous amount that we all can learn from his approach, his philosophy, how he handles rejection, and how he goes after what he wants. And it works out very well for him and his relationships with women. So we'll get into that next week, but for now, we need to go into the action step.

Time for action.

This week's action step. I think it would be fitting to have it related to what Josh was saying, which is when he was in that airplane and he was gonna parachute, and he was terrified, as we all would be, and he knew that. He said there was no way out. But the jump door. And what I heard when he said that was there was complete leverage that. That he had on himself. There is no option. There is no other way out. And the question is, your action step is this week, how can you get that kind of leverage on yourself? Leverage from physics is if you can get things set up just right with the appropriate lever and the appropriate distance that with a small amount of, like, the jack and you're lifting up your car with a small amount of effort, you can do an incredible amount of work, in this case, raising your car with a jack. That's what the power of leverage is. And we can harness that power with ourselves, but we have to know what is the lever? What is the thing that we have to push on in order to get ourselves to take action? For some people, leverage is going after the thing they really want. You ache so much that you want that you want to be able to connect with a woman. You want to be able to have a girlfriend. That is powerful leverage to get you to take action for other folks. I know I fall into this camp a lot myself. It's what you don't want. Oh, man, that would be really painful if that happened or if I couldn't get that. And so that drives you, that motivates you. For some people, it's their kids. For some people, it's desire for a connection or relationship. For some people, it's achieving that dream or going after that goal. But if you really focus on it, what is the leverage that you can get on yourself? What is the thing that you can focus on that you can tell yourself that makes it feel like there's no way out, but the jump door that makes it feel like, I have to do this. This is a must for me. That's your action step for this week. Join us next week. We're going to get more in depth in this interview with Josh. We're going to go into his philosophy on dating and relationships, and he's got some really interesting things to share there. And we're also going to cover some interesting stories of what's happening in the world around social anxiety and potentially, if there's time, a segment of Ask the Shrink where I got some email questions. They're always coming in my inbox and I want to start responding to them in this podcast. And if you have any questions you'd like me to answer in the podcast or otherwise, email them to me at drazeezocialconfidencecenter.com that's D R A Z I Z@socialconfidencecenter.com and I will look forward to speaking with you in the next episode until we do talk again. May you have the courage to be who you are.

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.

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