Pillar I. Self-Love - The 3 Pillars of Confidence

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 second, 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 diving into the three pillars of confidence and specifically the first pillar of the three. And I really took a little time to think about what are the key elements, what literally the pillars, something that holds up the structure of a building. What are the three things that have to be in place for people to create, to break out social anxiety and shyness and self doubt and negative self esteem into a place of lasting self confidence. Feeling good about yourself, feeling good about who you are, capable, lovable, worthwhile, and then from that place, being able to attract what you want, relationships, friendships, career opportunities, dating, romantic life, marriage, family, whatever it is that you want to create, coming from that place of you deserve it and you're worth it. I've been working with people on this for many years at this point. And I sat back and thought, what are the elements? What are the big things? It's stuff I like to ask myself now and then just to see if I'm really capturing the essence and really helping people make the biggest gains that they can make. And I said, you know, I think there's, there's not a lot of stuff falls into some just major categories. And these major categories are these pillars. And we're going to be diving into these over the next three episodes. So the first pillar is self love. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. The second pillar, which we'll talk about next week, is action. And the third pillar is patience. And each one has a lot of depth to it. Each one can, you know, in and of itself is powerful and will radically help you in your life. But when you combine all three, you come out with very high confidence. So let's dive in. Let's talk about self love today. Now, this is no stranger to this show or my books or videos or anything else that you've come across. And by the Way, if you don't know that I have a YouTube channel, you should check that out. Go to YouTube and type in, get more confidence. Lots of videos there. And obviously, if you haven't heard of my books, man, you've got to go deeper with those. There's way more that I can cover in those, especially the most recent one, not nice, which is a beast of 500 pages, but a real deep study of how to be less pleasing and fearful of others and more boldly and authentically you. So just go to Amazon or Audible to check those out. You can just type in Dr. Aziz and they should come up. So self love, no stranger to it, and yet it is the hands down most important element. It's the most important thing. And I mean, they're all important. But if I could rank one as the most important, it would be self love. And you know what's so interesting is when I was thinking about what's it called this episode, even self love, I questioned it for a minute. I was like, ah, is that going to like repel people? Should I call it something else? Should I call it self acceptance, self compassion? I was like, no, let's just call it what it is, self love. But isn't that interesting that I even had to think about, like, are people not gonna like this? Because there is a reaction to this idea of loving ourselves. What is that reaction for you? Do you have a reaction? Maybe it's something you want and you're like, yeah, great, tell me more. You know, but a lot of people might have some of that. But also a little bit of aversion or mistrust or something like, I don't know, either they're cynical, like, yeah, self love, that's self love stuff. Lame. Or they're like, oh, I already know that, whatever. Or maybe there's some fear of like, well, self love is indulgent, it's self focused. It means something bad is going to happen if I do it. And we can get into all those, I probably do in previous episodes and other stuff. It just, to me it's surprising that we. It's unfortunate. Surprising and unfortunate that we have such a negative reaction to the idea of loving ourselves. But the good news is we can shift that and we can feel a lot more open to the idea of loving ourselves. So how open are you to loving yourself? And I mean like unconditionally loving yourself on your own side, no matter what. In fact, if you could give yourself a number right now between 1 and 10, 10 being the most loving of yourself. That means you're patient with yourself, you have empathy, you support yourself, you encourage yourself. But just think about someone that you love in your life and how you treat them and then apply that to yourself. How much do you get that? That support, that patience, that love, that. Being with the person through thick and thin, that we extend that gift that we extend to the people that we love? Do you offer that to yourself? How much? 10 being fully and one being well? Almost never. And that means in your words and your actions and your thoughts to yourself when things are going well and when things fall apart and don't go the way that you want, what is that for you? And then. Interesting, huh? What did you put down? Because this is a pillar of confidence, this directly determines how confident you feel. And it's not even a stretch of the imagination to see how if you feel bad about yourself, you feel critical of yourself, you feel like you're not good enough, you don't measure up, you're not capable, you can't do it. Why did you make that mistake that was so awkward? How confident are you going to feel? So how do we get you on your own side? That's what I'm most curious about, talking with you today. Because we could talk about what self love is and the theory of self love and any research on self esteem or self compassion or other measures that talk about how good it is for you and how much it's going to bring to your life and all this stuff. But what? Why is more mental theory and exploration really going to make the shift? All of a sudden we're like, alright, alright, I'm convinced enough now. I'll do it. Why don't we just do it? I think the problem is we just don't know how. We just don't know how to find our way back to our hearts. We don't know how to be on our own side no matter what. We don't know how to love ourselves. So how do you do it? If you wanted to love yourself unconditionally, how would you do it? What would that look like for you in your life right now? Would it be stopping criticizing yourself so much over so many things? How often do you criticize yourself? Is it obvious too? I mean, sometimes the criticisms are obvious, like ugh, ugly, ugh, gross, ugh, fat, ugh, failure, stupid. And sometimes they're more subtle. You know, something doesn't go your way, someone rejects you, and instead of saying I suck and I hate myself, you say, ah man, I should have done better. Why didn't I do that? Oh, I could have done that. Oh, I should have done that. Oh, did I say that? And you go into what you should have done and could have done, and I guess that's more proactive because maybe you'll apply that in the future and learn. But it's still usually pretty harsh. There's usually not a whole lot of love there. But this is so important, everything that you do. In fact, I talk about this with clients is a lot of time, you know, they're in pursuit of goals. Whether it's relationship goals, they want to be able to date more, or career goals, or social goals, friendships, more social confidence. And while we're working towards those goals, I'll say your capacity to be on your own side, no matter what the outcome, is more important than the outcome. I'm going to say that again because it's so important. Your capacity to be on your own side is more important than whatever outcome you're going for. So if you're going to go approach someone to start a conversation, see if they want to date you and. Don't want to, there's some rejection, whether it's slight or intense or not interested. And then you attack yourself afterwards, which is very, very common. After rejection. Oh, stupid. Oh, failure. Oh, I can't believe I did that. What's wrong with me? Should have been this. If I was more that way, then she would have said yes. And if you do that, that is obviously, is that gonna help you the next time? By the way, so many times people have this thought like, oh, I'm just gonna. If I just beat myself up, I'll get better. Does that really work? In any case, with my clients, I say, okay, you wouldn't. You know, we want to focus on helping you get into action, which is the next pillar, and take these risks. Now, what happens as you do that? And sure enough, maybe the person's not interested in them. And I say, well, the goal is actually not to get her to say yes as much as it is to remain on your own side even when she says no. And when you can do that, many of your problems are solved. People kind of look at me like, okay, where's, like, the ninja technique? Where's the ninja pickup line? Or how do I make sure they hire me? What's the. Come on. Okay, that was a great sidetrack. Now let's get back into what the super secret ninja techniques are. How do I manipulate that person in doing what I want? That's the real confidence. It's like, no, no, no, that's persuasion. You can study persuasion if you want. Robert Cialdini is a great guy for that. There's all kinds of tools and ways to, you know, manipulate people into doing what you want or trying to at least. But I'm not as interested in that. I'm most interested in confidence in you being who you are in the world and free to express who you are and like who you are. And so that's what I'm most interested in. And this came directly from my own life. It started with dating. Many of you know that my confidence journey began with wanting to date and then it expanded into every other area of life. But I realized like, okay, I can approach women and I started to learn that skill and get better at it. But then I realized my mood was like dependent upon a random woman's response to me. So if she, if a woman was interested in talking to me, then I'm great. Or if she wants to date me, then I feel amazing. And if one doesn't want to talk to me, I'm a fuck up, oh, doesn't want to date me. I hate myself. Right. Anytime that your mood is dependent upon an external thing going up or down, that's a precarious place to be. And I would look at that as a lack of self love. So if your mood is dependent upon, she says yes or she says no. Your boss says I like you or doesn't like you, clients happy with you or unhappy with you, your spouse is happy or unhappy with you, the stock market is up or the stock market is down, your favorite team wins or your favorite team loses. You know, all those hooks that we can kind of hang our jacket on, that's these external things and you know, look out if you got like seven or eight things. Well, the stock market's got to be up, my team's got to win, my wife's got to be happy with me, my boss has got to be happy with me, my colleagues have to praise me. I gotta, you know, have made a new achievement in my career that day. And I gotta, you know, lift, you know, have a personal record in my lifting and I have to have, you know, this percent body fat on the scale, then I can feel good. How often does that person feel good? Well, what if, what if you really made self love the top priority? What if you just trusted me here said, alright, this guy is ease. He's been studying confidence for a long time. He's obviously relatively smart, which is true, but what if you just trusted like, yeah, building this is the most important thing and everything else follows this. And the more you develop this, the better your life becomes. The more, not only is it the better you feel. Because imagine if you're not attacking yourself every day. Imagine if you're not criticizing yourself after every conversation. Imagine if you don't turn on yourself when someone says no, or a rejection or something doesn't work out. What if you literally felt okay, oh, that's okay, it's no big deal, you're fine, I love you. What if? How much better would you feel on a day to day basis? So that's a huge win right there. Secondly, that directly leads to the unfoldment of what you want. It leads to the unfoldment of what? When you're in that state of okay and acceptance and love of yourself, then things unfold faster than when you're fighting it, tense, negative about it. So you actually bring about more of what you want more quickly. The more you can accept yourself, the situation and really meet yourself with love no matter what. So where could you bring more self love into your life? Where would you like to apply this? What's the most important, you know, what's the biggest way that you turn on yourself right now? What kind of circumstances or situations have to happen? I mean, maybe it's all the time. I had a period in my life where I was just hard on myself all day, every day, for everything. So what is it for you? Is there a specific situation, maybe a specific scenario, a specific person? And what would it be like to just be fully on your own side in that situation with that person in that scenario? Think about that right now. Can you do it? You know what I found is often the way to doing that is not with your head, it's going into your heart, more into your own heart, with your awareness. And less so like needing the justifications and the reasons and the, well, here's why. And I'm not allowed to, or I am allowed to or whatever, just like dropping beneath that and just going right into your heart and just meeting yourself with love. You're okay, it's okay, I love you no matter what. And literally just saying that to ourselves, not so much maybe with words, but also more so with your focus, your intention, your energy on your own chest, on your own heart. You can even put your hand on your heart as you do it. What would it be like to be fully on your own side all the time? And can you make that happen? Can you make that a reality? Not as some goal that you got to achieve or you Suck, I mean, as like an aspiration, as like, this is one of my purposes. It's one of my purposes in life. How do I remain on my own side no matter what, all the time? And sometimes people say, well, you know, that means you're gonna be selfish. That means you're not gonna be considerate of others. That means you're gonna just focus on what you want. Total, complete bullshit right there. Because when you are full of love, what do you have to give, right? And when you're feeling bad about yourself, when you're feeling stressed. So here's how it works. You criticize yourself and then you feel lower self esteem, right? That's not too far of a stretch. That's pretty obvious. But then you also start to feel less capable in the world and less worthwhile in the world. And when someone comes home from work and they feel less capable, like they can't do things and they feel less worthwhile, if you feel less capable, you're gonna start to feel powerless and like, I can't make things happen in the world. And if you feel less worthwhile, you start to feel less lovable. You start to feel not good about yourself as a human now. And I know from personal experience that if those things are activated in me, I am a less loving husband and a less loving father. I don't want to wrestle in the bed right now. Why not? I just don't feel like it. Why? Well, because I'm hurting inside. I feel worthless, I feel incapable. So I'm scared about the future, I'm tense. Whereas if I'm full of love and then I come home, it's like it's just pouring out of me. Want to wrestle on the bed? You want to wrestle on the bed? It's wrestle time. Woo. Boom. Right? Zaim loves to declare what animals we are. He's like, what are you? I usually pick kraken. It's a pretty badass animal, sometimes tiger or lion, but you know, and we just dive in. It's fun. So you have so much more to give when you can love yourself and there's so many ways that we. So many conditions that we have on whether we can love ourselves. You know, no one can be upset with me. Good luck with that one, by the way. Everything's got to go my way. Then I can love myself. No setbacks, no failure, no mistakes, no learning at all. Just fucking perfection from the beginning. Perfect body, perfect health, perfect, perfect career, perfect trajectory. Perfectly winning. Then I can love myself. The list goes on, right? It's Absurd. And then if we don't, it's guilt, it's criticism, it's disappointment, it's frustration with ourselves. It's come on man. And if there's just one core thing that you're taking from our conversation today, it's to ease up and to shift that into self love. How? Well, there's many ways. How? There's so many ways. Once you become clear that this is important to you, perhaps more important than the next pursuit, the next achievement. Because we think I'm going to get the next thing. Whether it's in your career or your dating life or your social life or your material possessions or your health or your fitness or whatever the next thing is, I'm going to get there and then I'm going to feel great. Look, you're going to get there and it will not stop. The criticism will not stop. It might temporarily alleviate in that area, but it will move to a different area and it might not even alleviate in that area for that long. Speaking with a client about this, you know he made some massive shifts in his health in the last year. I've only been working with him for about three months but over this last year he's made massive shifts in his health and he said like I've never, I've done, I never thought I could do what I've done over this last year with my health. And he's talking about how just recently he was like looking in the mirror when he's at the gym and noticing that he had the formation of a six pack. Right? That's the coveted gym goal, six pack abs. And I said well so did you feel proud when you saw that? He's like I did and I also kind of noticed where I lacked definition and wanted more. Like isn't that interesting, right? It's either very short lived or non existent. And we want the next thing, the next thing. So achieving that thing is not going to automatically bring a sense of peace and self love. Self love and total unconditional acceptance of yourself no matter what is what creates the peace. And I extend self love even beyond and being on my own side even beyond not criticizing myself. I think that's a first level goal. That's a great man. If you can interrupt the patterns of self criticism. Highly recommend that. So many ways to do that. David Byrne's books are great about this. He's a guy in cognitive therapy. Feeling Good is a good one for that. Tara Brock's got a great book called Radical Acceptance. Obviously I'd recommend my books especially the solution of social anxiety for dealing with criticism. I'm working on a new book as well that's going to be focused entirely on this. That's going to be out in the while, so get started with other stuff. Obviously my program, the Confidence Code, goes deep into this and forthcoming this year is going to be Confidence University, which is going to be a total comprehensive confidence revamp of every area of your life. And one of the biggest focuses is this self love. So there's tons of resources out there, more resources coming out on this. So it's not a matter of lack of resources, it's just deciding that you want to do it and focusing in on it. And then when you've done that, the first goal is to overcome that inner critic, right, Direct attack of yourself. The next level goal is to start to dismantle the more subtle ways that you separate from yourself, that you pull away from yourself and make life harder for yourself. So one example is fear of the future patterns. Worry. You might not think of worry as like a lack of self love, but it really is because it's a part of you saying, hey, bad shit's gonna happen in the future and you're not gonna be able to handle it. It's gonna fuck you up, man. And then we're like, oh, really? And now we're anxious, we're hurting inside. So I see self love as the ability to calm those parts of me, to talk to that worried part and soothe it or to challenge that doubtful part, say, no, we can handle whatever happens. I'll be okay. I mean, whatever it is. Different tools at different times. Maybe it's sweetness and gentleness and maybe it's like the warrior sword that's just like, whoosh. I cut through that bullshit in a way. And you find your, you know, whichever tool is best for you at that time. So let's take this and turn it into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to take note of the ways that you turn on yourself directly. You know, through self attack. Like what circumstances bring on, like this harsh self rejection. And then also, more subtly, one of the things that I do where I'm like creating and, you know, if you're curious about what to look for, anytime you're feeling bad, usually whether it's guilty or scared or negative or depressed or critical or hurt, there's usually some form of not being on your own side. And that doesn't mean you can make all bad feelings go away instantly. It's just, it's a hell of a lot better when you're on your own side and you don't have this part inside you that's just like haranguing you and attacking you so you can deal with the hurt or the upset or, or the person not liking you or whatever, or getting fired or any of the challenges that happen in life. I mean, life has its own challenges. Life is hard in many ways and so we want to be 100% on our own side so that we can work with these challenges which are already uncomfortable enough. And if you add the discomfort of that, plus like self hatred man, let it go. So find the ways that you turn on yourself and then look for solutions. How am I going to be different about this? What do I want to do instead? And then make a study of that. Make a focus of that. Awesome. Well, thanks for being with me today. Let me know about your experience. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com you can also go to our Facebook page, which is just facebook.com DoctorAziz I believe I should really know that sort of stuff. But anyway, DrZ's at Facebook. Just look it up. Doctorzee's gazepora maybe. And in there all the episodes are posted and you can share and comment about those too. Awesome. Thank you for being with me today. Hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you soon. 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. Talk to you soon. 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 shrinkforthy guy.com for free vlogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.