Self-Talk Secrets For High 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 and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're gonna 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. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're gonna be talking about the secrets for self talk that will generate high confidence. And this is a really simple tool in some ways that many, many people don't use or people know about, but then, and they have used it, but then they kind of forget about it, right? And this can happen so often in life. Like we're doing something, you make a change, make a habit change, you're sleeping better, you're eating better, you know, you're exercising, like, dang, I'm just feeling good throughout the day, I'm having more energy, my mood's just feeling more up. And then you stop eating, exercising and sleeping those ways and you feel worse. And then the funny thing about us humans is we don't say immediately like, wow, I'm not doing A, B and C. I should start doing it right again, I'll feel great. We kind of forget, we're like, oh man, I feel worse. I don't know what's going on. Maybe I got should get my blood tested. Oh man, have a condition. And you know, and then if you look at the basics, we're like, oh, I'm not even sleeping that well and I'm eating like crap. Oh, okay, I'm sitting at my desk all day, right? And so if we just look at some of the basics, we can make some major, major shifts. And self talk is one of those basics. I mean for life, including for confidence. But we're going to focus really specifically how it helps you with your confidence confidence. And speaking of that, if you really want to boost your confidence, I think we have a little bit of time left, just a little bit for the super early bird for not nice live three day virtual event. I mentioned it on some previous episodes, so I'm not going to go on and on about it. But if you want to spend three life changing days with me virtually, I would love to share that experience. With you, share everything. I got to help you break out of the cage of niceness and stop caring what other people think. It's gonna be a very powerful experience. And every time, every time I do a virtual event, there'll be someone who messages me afterwards, and it's like, oh, is it over? I wanted to do it, but I didn't. And when are you gonna offer it again? I'm like, next year maybe. You know, no plans for that one for now. So I don't think that far ahead. And so that might be you. There's a little FOMO for you, but. But really, ultimately it's just a powerful environment that is way. So if you like these podcast episodes, it's so much more, more, more impactful and ultimately in getting you to practice and do more, much more in your life. So if you want to check that out, go to drz.coM-R-A z I z.com and let's talk about you self talk. So most people know that term, and if you don't, it's pretty straightforward, right? Talk. What do you say to yourself in your head? It might be out loud, but most people self talk is internal. It's quiet. If no one's around, you might say it out loud. If people. The only time there's some. We kind of get conditioned to that. Talking to yourself is weird, right? That's the kind of. Most cultures that's considered odd, and maybe those who do it are those who cannot contain it due to perhaps a psychiatric condition. And so we view them as unpredictable and scary. And maybe people are concerned, right? But everyone is talking to themselves in their head pretty much constantly. Unless you practice a fair amount of mindfulness to really curtail that. Otherwise, it's a continuous stream. And the only time that calms down is maybe when you're listening or watching something, right? And then whatever is you're getting absorbed in the movie, the show, the podcast, the audiobook, it will kind of take over your internal talk so you don't have to talk in your head. You get to hear what's happening. Which fun side note is that one of the fascinating tools for mindfulness that's very powerful is actually your hearing. Because if you really tune into your hearing and what you're listening to in the moment, and I don't mean talking like right now in this podcast, but if you were to turn this off and just be in silence and listen really intently, your internal talk would go down significantly because you're, you're. It's almost like you're like, what? What am I listening for? Do I supposed to hear something? What? And then eventually your mind's like, oh, it's nothing, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's a little fun note. And there's a lot that can be done there to reduce the kind of constant compulsive thinking. But that's not what this episode is about. This is about turning the constant compulsive thinking in your favor. Hooray. Because both are beneficial. And that talk usually only erupts out loud for people. When. When do you think? When does people's self talk become audible? When is it for you? When have you noticed? For most people, the only time they do it is when they're really upset with themselves. Have you heard that? Have you done that? Ah, they use their own name, right? Oh, come on, Aziz. Ah, I can't. So stupid. Can't believe I did that. Oh, right. And that's culturally acceptable, which is sad that that's like, oh, yeah, well, he's just abusing himself. We all do it, right? No one's no cause for alarm there. Totally normal, but that's the only time. But if you were to tell yourself out loud, aziz, I love you, you got this. Everyone would think you're freaking crazy. They'd make fun of you. Look at this nut job over here. I'm smart and I can do it. What are you, stupid? Idiot. Now back to my own internal self talk. I suck and I'm a loser, and that's what self talk should be. And I'm being kind of playful about it, but it's absolutely true. The vast majority of people self talk is compulsive, as in they cannot stop it. And it is negative, self critical, evaluative, judgmental, limiting. And if you have any challenges with confidence, social anxiety, people pleasing, or niceness, magnify that by 2x5x10x. For me, when I was deep in those cages of social anxiety and niceness, it was constant, chronic self criticism. I mean, to the point where I would. I would call it self hatred. Really, really toxic. But it's invisible and no one else hears it unless you get really upset. And for some people, it never comes out. I don't know if I ever said stuff out loud, maybe on rare occasions, but for the most part, it's very internal. So it's invisible. No one sees it. But hey, some of the most toxic things in the world are invisible, aren't they? Right. Invisible gases that you can't see can kill you. There's particles that are microscopic, you know, infection, eboli and other things, bacteria that can cause significant injury or death. The invisible thing. So just because it's invisible does not mean it's doing nothing. Your thoughts are extremely impactful on your entire nervous system. Your entire body responds to your thoughts. And you know what else? Other people also respond to your thoughts. This is where it gets really trippy. I've had many experiences in my own life, and I've observed this with clients and talked about this with clients, where when they're being critical of themselves about a certain thing, other people can tend to be more critical of them about that thing, even if they don't bring it up, like, hey, don't you think my presentation sucked? Right? But they're in their mind like, oh, that was so awful. I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck. And they tend to get more criticism or judgment about a certain aspect of their appearance or it's. I can tell you some really fascinating stories. I don't want to take a bunch of this episode to convey that. But just know that your thoughts are very impactful. And so it is in your best interest to steer that flow as much as possible. And I'm not saying you have total control over every thought that goes through your mind. It's much more like a river. It's just going to keep going and going and going. There's some quote I heard a long time ago in a meditation class that was, you know, the. The mind secretes thoughts like the gallbladder secretes bile, right? So it's just. It's going to just keep going. And you're not going to control every thought, but you can start to direct it and you can infuse new thoughts, new thought streams into the current stream and start to steer it. And that has an extremely powerful effect on you and ultimately on how others treat you and view you. So how do we do this? Well, we got to make a distinction between what I would call your toxic thought stream. I personify it, call it a toxic coach. Because I think a lot of our thought stream, if you observe it, is kind of narrating the world to you. You know, if you ever put someone in front of something that they have to figure out, right? Like, hey, you need to solve this problem or this, you gotta. This thing in your house is broken. You gotta figure it out. And people look at it and they're like, okay, what are we gonna do here? Okay, right? We're kind of navigating through the situation. So I say Well, a coach, A coach helps guide us, navigate us. It's often a, an authority that might know more than us or can bring about behavior in us. Right. And the question is, do you have a toxic coach? Most people do. That's hence all that harsh self criticism we've been talking about in this episode. And so you got to get good at noticing that and then consciously choosing something else. And a lot of people, when I introduce this to them, they can pretty quickly pick up the noticing the bad thing. They're like, oh yeah, that's happening all it's happening right now. Or they go, you know, do this assignment for a week and they come back and they're like, oh, yeah. Yep, pretty, pretty terrible in there. So that part's the easier part. The next step is changing it. And sometimes people think that positive self talk means the absence of the toxic coach. And that is kind of like it's an endless pursuit, right? You're just constantly swatting at an infinite amount of flies. It does not, it's not going to stop. There's a cloud of them. So you start challenge one thought, challenge another thought, challenge another thought. And guess what you're doing? You're being reactive, you're on defense. So you just let it keep talking. You might even just give a blanket statement of like, I don't know about all that. And then, and then what you wanna do is you want to kind of shock and awe, overwhelm with an inspiring, supportive, uplifting, encouraging internal stream of self talk. Or a coach, you got this, let's go. Let's give it a shot. It's okay to miss shots, like whatever you might say. And I mean, I'm taking kind of a sporting metaphor for coaching, but obviously you might not be literally taking a shot in terms of a basketball or something, but you're taking a shot socially, aren't you? Walking over those people like, hey, it's okay to miss. It's okay if they don't like this. Let's give it a shot and see what happens. And what I found is everyone can do this. Whether you had a good coach in your life or your parent did that with you at one point, or you watched a movie that had a good coach, right? And if you haven't, then check out the Mighty Ducks. I just watched that with my kids. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid. It's really held up. They remastered it and everything. It looked great on a high definition tv. And there's a bad coach, toxic coach, and there's A good coach. And if you've never had a experience with coaches in your life or not much guidance with parents, then go check out that movie. Or just probably a more modern version you could find of, you know, movie with a good coach kind of story. There's a lot of them out there. People love to watch that in a movie to counteract all the crap in their own head. And also, though, I've found that people know how to do this instantly. When I say, well, what would you say to a friend? Let's say your friend was moving to that new job or was going to go approach that person. What would you say to your friend? And what comes out of them is brilliant? Well, I tell them, hey, you know, you're awesome. It's okay. This person doesn't like you. You have so much to offer you. There's. There's tons of people out there. They're gonna really appreciate. You just gotta give it a shot, right? I'm like, yeah, okay, so let's say that to yourself. Yeah, I don't know about all that. I mean, that's. And then we resist it and we fight it and we say no, and we say, I don't know. But I don't believe that. That's true for my friend, but it's not true for me. Why is it not true for you? Because you've been listening to the crappy, toxic coach whose style of motivation is, I'm gonna make you feel awful about yourself and put tons of pressure on you, and that's gonna make you perform better. And it doesn't work. Watch the Mighty Ducks first scene in the movie. It's exactly what the coach does. We're all counting on you. Don't mess this up. Doesn't work. You know how Emilio Estevez, the Mighty Duck man himself, Emilio, what movie is that from that's also dating me? I think that was in the early 2000s. Not at the Roxbury. Fantastic. Mwah. Finest cinema. I'm a classy gent. What can I say? But it's the main. Like, one of the main characters as a kid, Emilio Estevez, is the coach. He was the hockey player when he was young, and his coach put all this intense pressure on him, right? So now he gets to be a coach. He gets to have this corrective healing experience where he's coaching all these kids, and he first starts out all gruff and upset, and then eventually, like, his heart opens up and he heals. And it's a beautiful movie. It's so good. But stand the Test of time, I tell you. But anyway, at the end, there's a kid who's in a very similar situation, gets to take a penalty shot. And they're at this big game, and instead of doing what his coach did to him, putting all this pressure on, I'm like, you better not miss this kid. Don't mess this up for me. He says, hey, no matter what happens out there, just look at where we are. We made it to the finals. What a cool experience, huh? And then the kid gets out there and he's like, you got this right? So that. That is the pressure method does not work. It truly doesn't. And that's not my opinion. There's tons of research on that psychology about how to motivate people, how to guide, how to train, even how to train animals. It's so much more effective when we are continuously giving positive reinforcement for what we want. Okay, do this. Oh, that was great. Let's try this. Okay. And it doesn't mean that you say, everything was great and you don't need to learn anything. You might say, okay, yeah, you missed that one, huh? That's all right. What can we learn from it? That's what a healthy coach would do. It's like we ignore mistakes and failures and pretend like they didn't happen. No, you call it out like, oh, you missed that one, or whatever, but you also give enough time to learn. You don't after every shot, be like, you missed that one. You gotta learn what you missed that one. You missed that one. They know they missed that one. Let them take ten in a row and say, oh, hey, okay, here's what I see you doing well, and if you want a little bit of framework for this, what's one thing or two things they did well, and what's one thing they could do different? And you want to give enough time before you give all this feedback. So. And I'm using sports because it's a clear metaphor, but this is for everything in your life. So someone's taking free throws, and they. You're giving them a certain technique, and you watch, and as a coach, you might see instantly what they're doing. You're like, well, it's not going to work. But if you let them take the 10 shots and you say, hey, you know, your arc is really good. You see how the ball is going, like, way up above. It's not going straight at the hoop. It's going up. It's got this really nice arc. That's great. Also, I can see that you're when you're shooting it, you're jumping towards the hoop. This is for my kids, right? They're small, so they have to kind of, you know, leverage their body. Like you're getting a lot of power out of each throw. It's awesome. Like you're getting enough strength and your arc is really good. One thing I'm noticing is you see how the ball is often like falling to the right. Every time you do it, it kind of bounces off to the side. And you see how you're holding it like this? What if you held it like that? Okay, why don't you give that a shot? Give me 10 more of that right now. Again, everything I'm saying here might just be like, yeah, sounds pretty obvious. Duh. Of course that would be effective more than berating somebody. Duh. Yeah. Well then what are you doing? What are you doing? Man, Woman, like, we gotta shift this, we gotta change this. This is where it comes down to personal responsibility. Sometimes you're like, yeah, but the critic, you know, I've discovered it, it's in there and they think it's just gonna go away. It's like if you, let's say you brought someone into your house or apartment and they were a bad roommate and they're leaving crap all over the floor, and they're leaving trash, and then they start coming home drunk and then they start saying mean things to you and criticizing you. And at, at what point do you say, hey, not in my house. And become the frickin authority in your own life. And again, in this metaphor, you might say, well, I kick him out of my house. And I was saying before, I don't know if you can kick the critic out. You can try, but sometimes people spend all their time trying to fight with this thing and instead just like, you know what? I'm not gonna listen to you. Here we go. And so what does that look like? Practically? Let me turn this into an action step for you. Time for action. Action. Action. For your action step, I invite you to pick a situation where maybe you're nervous or want more confidence. Okay? It could be very specific. Situation at work, in this kind of meeting, about to give a presentation, about to share something. It could be socially, in a group, like, oh, I tend to get nervous and get quiet in a group or a date or a difficult conversation with a family member or a colleague. You know, more real, potentially conflict situation, right? All kinds of different examples. Pick one from your own life and then I want you to imagine you're about to go, do that thing you're about to go on, that date, you're about to go to that meeting, you're about to have that difficult conversation and do this one written real quick. You do it on your phone, takes three minutes. And just write out what is the default coaching or self talk. Pay attention to it, write it out. This is not gonna go well. I can't do this. I hope everyone likes me. Whatever is there. Okay, great. And say what would be the optimal self talk here? And if you're drawing a blank, well, what I say to a friend, we're write those things down. Literally write them down. I could do this. I'm capable. I've done this kind of stuff before. And then you literally say that in your mind on purpose. So how I'll apply this in my own life is, you know, I'm finishing up the workday and man, I used to have a pattern of finishing up the workday and just feeling like I didn't get enough done. I. That I didn't do enough, I'm not good enough. Right? What a fantastic way to close out the day. And it was also irrelevant how the day went, right? Could have been great day, but that's just kind of how I dose my pattern. And so I started to consciously bring in the notice of self talk. And then, you know, just yesterday, it's kind of become habit at this point. But just yesterday I'll say things to myself like, dude, that was a great, great day. Like, look at all these people that you helped. Look at that session. Look at that. That was a great group call that you ran. This was really like, well done. You know, you've contributed well. This is a, and check this out. This is just one day in one week you've been doing this. Think about all the people you're positively helping. That's cool, man. Well done. I'm proud of you and I'll say that. And so I work alone in my office, so I might even say that stuff out loud. I can be crazy. I don't care, right? Another example, I was in the gym doing squats and I have a, we have a little gym in our garage, right? So if I was in a, you know, like a, you know, 24 Hour Fitness, I'd probably do it in my head. Probably wouldn't say this out loud, but you know, in my own gym, I could say it out loud or in my head. I'm about to do like my heaviest set of squats and I feel a little bit of dread, right? For something about the leg Day stuff. I can have this dread with other sets too. Like, other body parts, but legs, man, it's kind of like, oh, man, this is gonna be, like, hard. Here we go, right? And I'm noticing some resistance and dread. Then I'm like, okay, here we go. And I put a song on that was, like, beautiful and moved my heart. Got it in my headphones, and I'm about to step underneath the bar, put it on my back, and I look at myself in the eyes in the mirror right there, and I say, aziz, I love you. I love you. Let's do this. Let's get 12 ready? All right, let's go. And then I did it. And guess what? It was easier. I was stronger. So remember I said at the beginning that thoughts affect your physiology, your body, your nervous system. Absolutely. And immediately they do. And so if you want more confidence, if you talk to yourself differently, you will get it. You will feel more empowered. So this is something you can start testing out today. And the key is you got to do it a lot. So if you just say to yourself, you get this stream of garbage in your mind, like that sucking. No, you can do anything you push your mind to. And then everyone's gonna hate me. That's not gonna do anything. You gotta just continuously practice it. And again, you don't need to make yourself crazy by, oh, no, I went back to negative thoughts. Oh, I can't have a negative thought. Oh, that's gonna make you so neurotic. Just let that go right now. Sidestep all that nonsense and just. No, I'm just gonna positively infuse more in. And it doesn't take. I say you do it a lot, but it doesn't take massive amounts. You'd be surprised. Just a couple of sentences here and there, and then say it again. And then, you know, you know your second set. Do it again. Or a few minutes into the meeting, do it again. It doesn't take long. Takes like two seconds. And all of a sudden, you will notice a radical shift. So those are some of my self talk secrets for you. I hope it serves you. And until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

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