Social Anxiety To Social Confidence - My Story (Dr. Aziz)

Hey, Dr. Aziz here. I want to share with you for a moment my story so you get a better sense of where I'm coming from and how I might relate to you in the situation that you're in right now. And that is. I was born as a shy kid. My mom said that when we had people come over to the house when I was little, like three years old, I would run and hide behind her legs, even if they were family, friends, or my uncle. So I was very shy and hibbited around people, and that was with me from a young age. And it really started to become apparent and noticeable and problematic when I got to middle school. And that's where a lot of people start noticing social anxiety and shyness becoming a problem, in that I went to a new school and I was able to make a few friends, but my own internal sense of being a likable guy, being cool, being worthwhile, did not exist. I had a very low opinion of myself. In fact, it started to get worse and worse. And middle school is the age where people start to notice the opposite sex. You start to notice if you're attractive or not. And I don't have any experiences with women. I don't have any women coming and talking to me. And I noticed that the few friends that I had, there seemed to be a sense of, well, I just met her, and this just happened. I remember in Middle School, 12 years old or something, I was hanging out before school with my friend Tim, and we hung out every day. And he was telling me that over the weekend, Robin had come over to his house, and they'd gone into his hot tub together. And I remember thinking, what. What's going on here? A woman, a girl coming to his house, like. And of course, on the outside, I said, cool. You know, I didn't reveal, like, oh, my God, how did you make that happen? I can't talk to any women. So I kept it cool, kept it inside. But then it just deepened the trench. Wow. There's a difference between me and Tim. I started telling myself some stories, and this might be something that you're doing as well. What are the stories that you came up with? So I started telling myself stories. Well, Tim's more attractive. Tim's better at this. I started noticing all the differences in which I was lesser and concluded that is why women don't want to be with me. That is why some of the cooler kids don't want to be my friend. And that continued into high school. In fact, it just deepened. The trends deepened in high school and if you notice this, but as you start to see the world and start to expect, like, oh, people don't like me. Women don't find me attractive. I'm ugly. You start to bring that about. You discount anything positive that happens. And I just started to get really convinced that I was unattractive and didn't have much to offer and start to really get into my appearance to the point where I would look at myself in the mirror every day. And every time I looked through a mirror, I. I would focus in on my flaws. And the flaw that I focused in on the most was around my eyes. And I didn't like the pigmentation around my eyes. And I would look at it and say, ugh. That's the reaction I'd have, not only in mirrors, but I'd be walking down the street and I'd look over at. You know, you get a reflection from a storefront. If there's a windows, you can see your own reflection in it. I had this compulsion where I would have to look at myself in the mirror, any reflection I could, and be like, oh, God, I suck. And it was just a habit. It was just consistent day after day. And I didn't know any better. I didn't know there was anything else. I thought, this is just how life was. This is just who I was. And there's the people that have it and are successful and attractive, and there's the people that don't. And I was one of the people that didn't. And this continued on into my late teens, early 20s, into college. I always had this fantasy when I was in high school. Well, I made a mess of things here because I wasn't cool enough. But when I get to college, there's going to be women everywhere and cool people and experiences, and my life's really going to begin. But guess what? Wherever I go, there I am. I brought me to college and the same shyness. I remember being on the dorms in UC Santa Barbara. And there was one side, you go up to the stairs, you turn right, all the men, 50 men on the one wing of the dorm, you go to the left, 50 women. I remember when I first moved in, I thought, oh, my God, there's 50 women on my floor. This is the closest I've been to that many women. And they're near my bed. Ooh, this can't go wrong. But nothing happened. Why? Because I believed I wasn't attractive. I didn't take action. Do you think I talked to the women? No, no, no, no. I would Recede, you know, again, I could always make a few close friends that was very fortunate and I could make a few close friends. But then if we were going to talk to women or a woman came into this fear, they would talk and I would just recede, just kind of become invisible and all that stuff would just happen. And you know, it's funny, I was reflecting on this before, I was going to share this story. And you see me now and I'm talking to a camera. I do public speaking and sometimes people ask me, it's like, why do you look so composed and confident in front of the groups? And I just kind of smiled because I thought about the very first time in which I was being filmed for viewing by others. You know, we used to make some ridiculous sketch comedy stuff when I was younger, but that was just for fun. But my senior year in high school, they had a thing where they filmed you. And then at the 10 year reunion or whatever, they were going to show that film and everyone's going to have a good laugh and be like, oh, I remember you when you were back then. And I remember when they were going to put that camera on me, I felt so, so brutally uncomfortable. And you know why? They hated my appearance. I had pimples and acne on my face and it wasn't that bad. But man, at the time, a vicious critic of myself. And I thought, no one in their right mind is going to have anything but a negative reaction to this. And so if you watch that video, I'm so shut down, so inhibited, I say maybe five words and I giggle or something. I just, I really want it off me. I'm so uncomfortable. And I was just thinking about it the other day before I recorded this video. I said, wow, how far I can come, how far any of us can come when we really make a shift. And that's what I did. That's what I decided to do. One fateful day when I was about 21 years old, almost entering my senior year of college and life had not started. I kept on telling myself it was going to start tomorrow. It's going to start tomorrow. Living in that hope, in that fantasy, in that someday, if you're in that place right now, hoping this is going to break through and help you realize that someday never comes unless you make it happen. As Sarah Connor says from Terminator 2, there's no fate but what we make for ourselves. And so that's what happened for me. And usually what gets us to take that step is it we wake up one morning and we have a burst of hope and insight and confidence, and we just take action. No. What brings us there? Pain, Right? Pain, pain, pain. So many times I've seen my friends meet women, interact with people. Some be able to give a talk, some be able to not even just meeting women, but just go into a room full of people and chat with them and look comfortable or have several, you know, a circle of five people talking and be able to tell a story or make a joke. All that stuff I just watched from the outside. Pain, pain, pain. Right Then eventually, on a few occasions where I was able to, like, get my courage up to try to talk to a woman, just never went that well. Or even on the rare occasions where I got the courage to ask a woman out, never went that well. Either she'd say no, or she would. And she'd go out with me once and then kind of like, oh, this isn't fun. I don't want to hang out with you again. She wouldn't say that, but that's what her behavior would tell me. So. So much pain, pain, pain. So what happened is I worked up the courage to talk to this woman in one of my classes for weeks, months, you know, planning how I was going to do it. And I did. We went on this date. We walked on the beach in Santa Barbara. I had an amazing time. I was in love. And I called her up a couple days later to see if she wanted to hang out. And I remember this conversation for the rest of my life. We're sitting there, and it's just something had shifted. The energy had changed. And I was like, hey, how's it going? It's Aziz. And she's like, hey. I was like, that's not a good sign. And so what I did at that time is I go into my song and dance. I get more energetic, more seeking approval, which, if you watch any of the stuff on my blog or get any of my programs, you learn that there's a way to that. The more we try to get someone's approval, the worse it works. The more anxious we get, the more it repels them. But anyway, I try to get into approval seeking, and I just hear this crunching and a lot of silence. And then at one point, I was like, are you eating an apple? And it's like, she's like, no, I'm eating raw garlic. I was like, what the hell is this? You know, and it's such a random story. It's such a random thing. And then that was the end of the conversation. And I was trying to be a nice guy. And that was it. And it just was so uncomfortable and awkward and weird. I'm like, this girl doesn't even like me. And I felt so low, just so hopeless. But something happened to me. And it might happen for you where you hit that low point and instead of just collapsing into the abyss and some part of you is like, gets angry, right? And is like, no, I'm not gonna take this anymore. I'm gonna do something about this. And it's not even like a confidence thing. It's like a desperation thing. It's like, I'll do whatever. I'll do whatever it takes. I can't live like this anymore. And so I went to the Internet and I found a man named David d' Angelo who created a program called Double youe Dating. And it was an ebook. And so I read through that ebook in one night and I said, I can't apply any of this. This is total bs. Never mind. And it took another six months going through another iteration with another woman who did the exact same thing. Went up to one date and afterwards was like, nah, I don't really want to hang out with you anymore. Gave me the run around. And then I went back to that book and was like, okay, let me see what's in here. And I took all the pieces that felt totally not right for me. But there was a lot of good stuff in there about confidence, about self respect, about not being approval seeking, all this really good stuff. And I started to apply it. And that began a major transformation in my life. When I talk about transformation, I do confidence coaching with guys and I talk about transformation. And we'd like to think that transformation is some dramatic thing where, like Clark Kent, you walk into a room, you're nerdy and shy and self loathing, and you come out and you're strong and confident and Superman, you just walk up to that woman and say, you, I have selected you. And she fonds right? That's what we want from transformation. That's what movies tell us. That's what other things tell us is possible. That's not how transformation works. In my reality, in my world and what I've seen in people, transformation is more like this. Watching. Here's transformation. That's it. And here's why. Because you're going down one path and you're going down a path right now as you watch this video. In your social life, in your income, your financial life and health and well being, your physical health and well being, your relationship health, you're Going down a path in each of those things. And if something happens where you decide, you know, I'm going to do something different, I'm going to try something different, I'm going to make something different, all of a sudden now you're going down a slightly different path. And if you follow that path and keep doing different things, in one month, you'll be this far apart. In one year, you'll be this far apart. And in five years, you'll be a different person. You'll be in a completely different place. So that transformation is just that one step, that one decision, that one action, that one moment where you say, I can make something different, I'm gonna make something different. And so I did. I said, you know what? I'm gonna go out. And this guy says to go out and talk to women. That sounds terrifying. You know, on a scale of 1 to 10, that was a 10. There's no way I can do it. And I've learned since techniques about gradual exposure, how to work your way up to it, how to. How to build that. In my program, 30 days to dating Mastery, we build it slow because the full on approach is difficult. But I did it because I was in so much pain. I'm going to go and talk to three women today, and guess what? It went terribly. But that's not the point, because I said, I'm going to do it again, and I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it. And I kept on doing it, and a lot of the stuff fell into the pickup artist community stuff. And so I did a lot of that. And it worked. Oh, yes. It worked in terms of getting women to give me their number and be attracted to me. It didn't work in terms of internally because I still felt as anxious as ever. I was just playing a new role of this kind of suave pickup artist guy. But I started to at least learn, like, wow, I can do something here. I can make a shift. And then the next phase of my growth was actually to learn. Okay, how do I be authentically me and carry the same traits that attract women? Boldness, assertiveness, directness, vulnerability, being empowered in myself. How do I wrap all that up and be me? And that progressed. It was a number of years, right? I couldn't have relationships because I was too scared to be me. The next level of shyness is how do we really reveal who we are to the world? And then stepping it up, how do I reveal myself in business and the world? And then finally, eventually finding a Woman who's an incredible mass. She was originally my teacher. She teaches. She's an honesty expert, teaches workshops and communication, how to be real and authentic. Perfect fit for me and have created an amazing relationship with her. And we're about to have a son. I'm telling you this not to brag, but to give you a sense that this is possible. Look, this was not possible in my worldview even six, seven years ago and even before that, when I was really stuck in shyness. Absolutely impossible. No way in hell I could do it. And if that's where you're at right now, I hope if you get one thing from listening to this story, is that it's that little shift. That's the transformation that we're looking for. And I hope you can find that transformation in something on this website. That's what this whole website is dedicated to do, is help you see and feel and make that shift. Whether it's a blog or a video or an audio or the podcast. You listen to something, you hear something, you make a distinction and you say, oh, wait, yes, I can. It's possible. And that's my hope for you, is you realize it's possible. And if you want to go deeper, if you want to make that transformation not only possible, but inevitable, go to the confidence coaching section of the page. Look into that. I've had tremendous growth from going through coaching myself, a men's group therapy. I've done a lot, all the books that I've read. That's what it took to have not just a little bit of improvement, but a complete transformation of your life. And if you're ready for that, then you're going to find that on the site and we might be a good fit to make that happen. Maybe someone else is, but I know it's possible for you if you're dedicated to it and you can make that happen. So thanks for listening to my story. Send me an email, share with me your story. I'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear where you're at and see if I can relate. Thanks for listening.