Social Fitness 101

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 Dr. Azeez, and today's show is great because in this show we're going to talk about how to get into shape before you turn it off. I don't necessarily mean getting into physical shape, although I do think that if that's an area that you struggle in, if you're not satisfied with your weight, with your physical ability, with your body, with your health, then that's going to have an extreme impact on all areas of your life, including your social confidence and how you feel about yourself. I can't tell you how many guys will feel uncomfortable or reluctant to put themselves out there to meet women, to develop their social network because of fears around their physical appearance and their body. And I know I fell into this camp for many years, so that's a whole other issue and one worth talking about in a later episode. But in this episode, I'm not talking about physical fitness. I'm talking about social fitness. So social fitness is a concept that's really been pioneered by a psychologist named Lynn Henderson. She is a big force in the field of shyness and shyness research. She's worked with Phil Zimbardo from Stanford on shyness research for decades. She created a place called the Shyness Clinic in Palo Alto, California, which is actually where I did some of my training. So she is an amazing thought leader in this area, and she's really pioneered and put forth this idea of social fitness. And that's what I want to talk with you today about. Because if you can get this idea, if you can see your social ability, your social confidence, your capacity to go meet people, talk to people, feel comfortable with people as a type of fitness, it changes the whole thing because if you can see your capacity to go talk to someone, your ability to feel comfortable in yourself, your social confidence, your social abilities as a form of fitness, it changes everything because it takes it out of the realm of, well, you either have it or you don't. Some people are just confident and naturally good at talking to people. And I'm not that way. So that's just my lot in life and puts it into the realm of something that you can develop, something you can do something about. And that's absolutely the case. It is not true that some people are just really good at talking to people and that they never had to work at it. And it just came to them naturally, and it's a piece of cake. And they never feel nervous. And then there's some people who are just horribly awkward and stuck and doomed, and there's nothing they can do about it. That is a load of BS belief systems. And they also happen to be bullshit. And you can realize that this is very shiftable if you start to see it as a type of fitness. So let's look at that metaphor for a minute. And if you think about actual physical fitness, let's say you wanted to run. Maybe you wanted to run a marathon. Maybe you wanted to get buff, wanted to get swole, wanted to lift some weights, get strong in your body. How would you go about that? Now, you might already be doing that in your life, so you might have a good map for that, or there might be an area of your life that you've neglected, and so you don't have a good map for that. But even if you don't have a good map for that and you don't follow through, you probably have a general idea about how you would get into shape. Let's think about that for a minute. How would you get into physical shape if you wanted to. Let's say you wanted to start running. Let's say you had a goal to run a marathon. What would you do? Well, you'd probably have to start by running, maybe not even that. Maybe you'd start by walking. I don't know what shape you're in. Maybe you'd say, you know what? I got to get into a routine of using my body. So I'm going to get out there and I'm going to walk a mile around the block. I mean, the start will start wherever you're at, but you have to start somewhere and you have to take action, don't you? You have to make a tangible effort to create the time in your life and then go do something. Walk around the block, jog around the track for four laps to get a mile in, and you keep working on that, and eventually what happens? Let's say you jogged a mile every day for a week. Notice that aspect of it. Every day, right? So let's say you wanted to train for a marathon, but you said, you know what? Okay, I'm gonna jog a mile on Sunday, and then in a month I'm gonna jog another mile, and then in another month I'll jog another mile. How prepared do you think you would be for that marathon? How in shape do you think you'd Be. Well, not very right, but we have to do it consistently. So every day or close to it. And then let's say you did that. Let's say you invested the time and the effort and you jogged a mile every day. Where would you be after a week? Well, a week or even less, you might start to notice that, wow, I'm not as tired as I was at the end of this mile. Maybe I can jog a mile and a half. Maybe I can throw an extra lap in there. Maybe I can jog two miles and so on and so forth. And you build it up over time, and that's how people can run incredible distances. It also helps to have good strategies, how to run, posture, how to breathe, all that stuff. And those are things you can learn as well as a part of fitness. What about weights? Let's say you wanted to get strong and tough in your body. You never picked up a weight or hadn't done it in a decade or two. What would you do? Well, hopefully you wouldn't do what a lot of guys do, which is you go in there and you grab the big heavyweights because you don't want to look like a wuss. You don't want to be throwing around the five pounders. That looks lame. You want to throw around the 30, 40, 50 pounders. Yeah. And then you injure yourself and you don't come back to the gym for six months. That's not what you want to do here. You want to start small and you want to say, okay, what can I do reasonably consistently without blowing my body out? And I'm going to just push my edge a little bit. And maybe you are starting with 5 pound weights, but who cares, because you're starting. And so you work on that for several days or several weeks, and then eventually what happens? Well, if you're pushing your edge, always what happens is that your capacity expands and grows. And it's very easy to see that when it comes to our physical fitness, because that process is like a formula. If someone pushes their edge consistently for long enough, that edge will expand out further, their limits will expand, and they'll be able to lift more weight. Now you can do the £10, then you can do the £15 you start. Take push ups, for example. If you only want to do weights, I'm a huge fan of pushups. So you start out, maybe you can do like five. And if you did that consistently, though, if you said, you know what, I want to learn how to do 50 pushups in a row or be able to do that. How would you get there? Well, it's the same process, right? So I don't need to get redundant here. You get what I'm pointing towards when it comes to physical fitness. So how does that map on to social fitness? Exactly? Identically. It's a perfect match. That's why Lynn Henderson's ideas are so brilliant, is because when it comes to developing your social abilities, it's the exact same way. What if you applied those same principles? So in this case, what is your goal? What is the marathon or the level of weight that you want to lift? When it comes to social fitness, what do you want? You have to have a goal in mind. So perhaps you want to be able to start a conversation with a stranger anywhere, wherever you are, in a restaurant or at a bar, or walking down the street, or in a store, in a supermarket, in a Target, wherever you want. Let's say you want to be able to start a conversation with someone. Maybe that's your goal. Maybe you want that someone to be a woman that you're attracted to, you want to date. Maybe you want to be able to speak up in front of a group of people, or if there's not necessarily a public talk, but let's say there's just a group of eight, nine people interacting, you can put your voice forward and have it be heard in a meeting or elsewhere. So you gotta find what your goal is. And then maybe for you, that's like a 50 pound weight, that's like a marathon. And so getting out there and trying to just run as far as you can in the first day, or going in there and grabbing the two 50 pound weights and trying to lift them over your shoulders is going to blow you out. It's too much. So it's exactly the same when it comes to social fitness. You got to start small, you got to start where is my exact edge. And then what am I going to do daily to work towards that? And that is a big piece of this, the daily piece. And this is the most common pitfall I see in guys that I'm working with or people that reach out to me through the Internet and want to know how to get over this quickly is, well, I tried once or twice and it didn't feel any better. So this doesn't work. And I really want to keep bringing it back to that fitness model. Because if you think about that, let's say someone said I want to run a marathon. I tried jogging twice last week and I don't think I could do 26 miles all this training stuff is a load of BS. It doesn't work. I mean, it's absurd, right? And if you are able to put in that time and make that commitment, it will work. So the question is, what could you do on a daily basis that would start to build that level of social fitness? And we're gonna get more into that in the later part of this episode. We're even gonna help you design a routine or a plan or a map of how you can systematically push your edge and gain courage. Stay tuned. We'll get to that right after this. 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 happened? 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 change. Checking out. Confidence unleashed. This program systematically guides you through 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 confidenceunleashednow.com to learn more. Welcome back. As I was putting things together for this episode, I was looking through some emails, and I found a question where the answer is exactly what we're talking about, which is social fitness. So let me take a moment to read that question now.

And now it's time to ask the shrink.

Dear Dr. Azee, I've been reading your stuff online for a while now, and it's really helped me be more confident. But I still don't know how to talk to women. When I see them, I can't seem to get myself to do it. When I go out, I see beautiful women everywhere, but I can't break through and go talk to them. What would you recommend? Thanks, Adam. Well, this is a great question because I think. I mean, who can't relate to this, right? I know I absolutely spent my life in a place where I saw women everywhere, opportunities everywhere, not just for dating, but just for my life. And it felt like there was this invisible barrier between me and whatever I wanted, especially when it came to meeting women. It's like, there she is, she's standing six feet away from me. She's not doing anything. I know that in some alternate reality, people start conversations in this way, and that's how relationships start. And it's normal. And I've seen it in movies, and I've even seen other people do it, but I don't know how to do that. I can't do that. And then you just hit up against that invisible barrier again and again, and it's incredibly frustrating. So I get where you're at, Adam. And I think so many guys listening right now can relate to that. And that's why the answer to this question is so important. And the answer is not a specific pickup line or thing that you can just say that's going to work in every situation, or the three words you can use in the right order with the right tone and inflection that will avoid rejection in all instances, or whatever else you can find on the Internet. The answer is social fitness. And here's why. Because going over and starting a conversation with a woman that you don't know that's attractive is difficult. It's intense, it's anxiety provoking. It is that way for everyone. Whether or not you think you're shy or have social anxiety or any of that doesn't matter. Even for confident people who are very secure in themselves, that's very difficult to do. In fact, most people, most guys will avoid that. Even highly successful, they're successful in their career and relationships, and they're feeling confident in themselves. They still will wait to get hooked up by a friend of a friend, or maybe do some online dating, which is a little less risky. Going over and starting a conversation with that stranger and not knowing if she's interested in you and not getting any signal first. That is ballsy, that is bold, and it's also empowering. And it opens up your world in a way that you can't imagine. So it's highly worth developing that goal as, you know, as your marathon, as it were, for social fitness. So it's absolutely worth it. But I first want to normalize that. It's actually really. It can be challenging and it's scary for everyone. And so it is like running a marathon. It is. You have to be at a high level of fitness, social fitness, to be able to do that. And so what Adam is asking of himself is like saying, you know, I haven't really run in a while. I haven't really, you know, I kind of have a pretty sedentary lifestyle and, and then some friends came to me last weekend and said, hey Adam, we're going to go on a three day mountain trek together where we're going to hike up and down hills with packs on for 12, 15 miles a day. Are you in? And he's like, ah, I couldn't do it. I wasn't in good enough shape. I just couldn't do it. And I said, of course you couldn't because you hadn't developed that. And so it's the exact same thing when it comes to talking to a beautiful woman and just being able to start a conversation off the cuff spontaneously is that if you're not practicing, if you're not in social fitness mode, I don't think you're going to do it. I don't think it's a matter of willpower or if you're good enough or if you can just push yourself to do it enough. It just doesn't work. I mean, you can't just push yourself to walk 36 miles with a pack on if you don't have the physical capacity in your muscles. So the answer to that question is, is you have to develop your social fitness. The question is, what do you do? Well, we're going to get to that in the next segment. We're going to talk about exactly how to build social fitness. But if you are at a high enough level of social fitness, then starting a conversation is just spontaneous because you've been doing it all the time. Imagine if you'd been talking to people several times during that day. She's not the first person you're going to try to talk to. Imagine if on the way to wherever you saw her, Adam, you were making eye contact with people, you were smiling at people, you were saying hi to strangers, you were looking at people in the eye and then you come into the restaurant and you're next to her, then something will just spontaneously come out of you. If you're in that level of fitness, in that level of social mode, if you're standing in line at a burrito shop and you're both waiting for your order, you could say, what did you order? Or you could say, can I ask you a question? Yeah. What's your favorite thing on the menu? I mean, this stuff is not incredible. It's not like devious, crafty, pick up lines. These are just authentic, natural, organic ways to break the arsons and start a conversation. There's nothing devious here. These are not shady nlp Pickup lines that are going to quickly seduce her. These are just natural, organic ways to break the ice and start a conversation. And in fact, if you're interested in learning way more about that, specifically how to start conversations with women, I highly suggest I have a free report you can get online right now by going to 30 days to Dating Mastery. That's 30 days to dating mastery.com and if you enter your email, I'll send you a free report. It's called 7 Ways to Start conversations with women Anywhere, anytime. And it goes way in depth and into just that kind of casual way of breaking the ice. And it's amazing when you develop this ability because then you literally can talk to women anywhere and you don't have to wait six months to get a date. You can actually just go create that in a matter of weeks or even days, depending upon your level of social fitness. I keep harping on the importance of developing social fitness. So let's get to that. You might be thinking, yeah, that sounds great. How do I do it? Okay, I can see that I jog for a mile a day to work on a marathon, but what is that exercise? What is the jogging that I would do? Or as Will Ferrell and anchorman says, the so called yogging? What is this yogging that I need to do for social fitness? And the answer to that will be right after this. Stay tuned. Don't go anywhere. We're going to teach you how to develop your social fitness. And just one minute.

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.

So the question on your mind might be, how do I start developing my social fitness? Maybe you're on board with that. Maybe you're like, you know what? I am ready. I'm ready to get into a regimen. And that's the first thing I'd say is you have to have a regimen. You have to commit to doing something just like you would physically five out of seven days every other day, at the very least, three, four times a week. If you do it any less than that, I find it is slower progress. And that could be what's the only time you have right now? Maybe you had a crazy job where you worked from 7am to 10pm five days a week. But even then there's always opportunities because developing a social fitness doesn't necessarily take hours a day like it might for running or working out. You can do an exercise in literally five minutes or less, and you could do that four days a week. So you got a total investment time of 20 to 30 minutes over an entire week. And if you can't find that time in your week, then either you have the most insane employer ever, you're out of control with your own business, or you spend hours and hours on the Internet and video games, and you view that as time that you can't allocate anywhere else. So whatever the case is, you gotta find the time, you gotta make the time. You gotta be willing and ready to say, you know what? I commit to developing my fitness routine. And if you wanna get some accountability, that absolutely helps. Get a friend. You know, a lot of guys that I work with are embarrassed to talk with this about a friend, like, oh, God, tell a friend that I'm trying to develop my social fitness. They're gonna think I'm a freak. But the reality is that every guy can stand to get in better shape physically and socially, right? So if you want to say, hey, I want to get more socially fit. Person's gonna say, wha. You know, then introduce them to this, show them this podcast, help them listen, or just tell them, say, hey, social fitness is like, I want to be able to talk to a woman anywhere, anytime. I want to be able to get in front of a group of people and talk. I want to be more bold in my life. And the way that I do that is through developing my social fitness. And I'm going to start doing that. Are you in? Because if you can get a buddy in this and some accountability and it makes it easier and more fun, then the whole process goes a lot more smoothly. But even if you can't, the steps are, first, you got to commit to a regiment, something you're going to do regularly. And the next thing is you got to find some basic exercises that match where you're at. So one of the most basic ones, which you might have heard earlier in this podcast, is friendly greetings. Friendly greetings is you go to a busy street area where a lot of people are walking. It could be an indoor shopping mall, an outdoor street area where there's a lot of shops, a lot of foot traffic, and you're just going to walk down the street and you're going to make eye contact and say hi to at least 15 people. And, I mean, it's not incredibly complex. That's basically all you do is you walk down the street, you say hi. You have to say it somewhat loudly so the person actually gets popped out of their own bubble of their own thoughts or whatever and responds to you. And they don't have to say hi back. They could even ignore you. But the purpose is to just keep putting yourself out there in that way. And you might find a good way to measure how intense of a workout this is is to say, well, how anxious would that make me? And that makes you like a 7, 8, 9, 10 out of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. That's not the place to start. That's like a 40, 50. It's too much weight, right? So you gotta start with a five pounder. So find something that's a little less. If the walking down the street making eye contact is too much, go out and ask three people what time it is. Just walk up to someone in the store or on the street and say, can I ask you a question? Yes. What time is it? And they'll answer, and hopefully that one's not too low. If you need something even lower, send me an email. Because I have had some guys where we've had to actually go out together do some in field work about the time question because that was so intense for them. And that's fine if that's where you're at. There's no shame here about using a five pound weight or even a one pound weight. Because hey, if you start with a one pound weight, you can still get to a 50 pound weight. You can still be walking up to that group of women and then start a conversation with them. Even if at first you were scared to ask someone what time it is, I've seen that. I've seen that happen with multiple people. So that absolutely can be you. So send me an email at azizrinkfortheshyguy. And you can so send me an email@drazeezrinkfortheshyguy.com and I will give you a list of more exercises that's D R A Z I z@drinkforthshyguy.com so you can build up from there, right? Really look at what are the things that make me scary. And if you want to get a more extensive list, actually, if you check out my book the Solution to Social Anxiety, there's a bunch of ideas of things that might make you anxious. So the way to determine what your regiment should be is to think about what makes me anxious. And in fact, in a previous episode, I believe it was the one before or several before we talk about a fear hierarchy. And if you listen to my interview with Robin Zasio, we talk even more about fear hierarchy, how to develop that. And that's basically creating your social fitness regimen, your routine. You got to commit to doing these things. So there's a lot of resources in previous episodes of this podcast and my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety. But the key is to develop the things. Think of the things that scare you and then pick the things that are lesser. Don't pick the 50 pound weight, the 9, 10 things. Pick the 3, 4, 5, 6 range if your heart's pounding and you're a little nervous, but you can do it if it's uncomfortable. But you can. That's the perfect range. So as we reach the end of this episode here, we gotta take all this stuff that you're learning about social fitness and how to develop that ability in your social skills through regular practice and actually put it into action. Time for action. Oh, yes, action. It's time for you to determine your fitness routine. That's for you to decide. What exactly am I going to do? In fact, you don't have to map out your entire routine, although I would suggest generating a few ideas. What you need to do is find out what, what am I going to do this week, in fact, today, and if you're listening to this at like midnight tomorrow, but what are you going to do as soon as you can that's going to be at the bottom of your social fitness hierarchy? The five pound weight. What is your find out five pound weight? And how often are you going to work on this? Can you find the time? Can you look at your week and say, okay, I can do this tomorrow morning, I can do this Thursday after work, I can do this on Saturday, I can get a buddy and go hang out on Saturday night and try some of these things? Just finding. When am I going to schedule this into my life and actually schedule it? Put it on your calendar, put it in your Google calendar, on your paper calendar, your phone, or wherever you schedule stuff, actually put it in and commit to doing that just like you would with a real workout, a physical workout. This is the exact same thing. How often are you going to do it? What specifically are you going to do? And then, of course, the most important part of this action step is to then take the action and do it. And if you do, and if you do that consistently, I guarantee you that your level of social fitness, social confidence, social ability, comfort in yourself, everything will increase. It's formulaic, it has to, and it will. It's never happened. The only thing that gets in the way is we drop out too early or we say, I don't feel like it. It's just like physical fitness, right? You wake up in the morning and it's raining outside and you're like, ugh, that's wet and uncomfortable. I'll pass. But the thing here is to find that motivation in yourself. Find what it is that you truly want. And that could be the goal that excites you or, or the pain and suffering that awaits you if you don't take action. We don't like to think about that, but that's sometimes a very powerful way to get you into action. It's like, hey, if I don't do this, if I don't go out there and make eye contact with people today, I'm never going to find a woman that excites me that I'm choosing. I'm always going to take whatever I can get or be single. Maybe I want to have an awesome relationship, maybe I want to have a family. I'm not going to create that unless I get into shape. Tell yourself that and then take action. And that's your action step for the week. And one final thing is if you want a whole fitness plan, social fitness plan mapped out for you, I highly recommend checking out my program, 30 days to dating Mastery, which has daily missions which are basically social fitness action steps that are actually laid out to be progressively more difficult. So it's like starting with a half a pound weight and by the end of the 30 days you're throwing around 100 pound weights. So if you don't have the time or the know how to put it all together, that's a great place to get it all in one package and have the accountability of the daily emails. And it's like daily coaching for me. So check that out if you really want that additional help. But it doesn't matter. You don't have to do it that way. You can design it yourself. The most important thing is that you take action. So thanks for listening for today and I look forward to hearing from you. Email me with your questions, how it's going, challenges, success stories, questions, everything. And I'll address those things in the podcast and respond to you. I love to hear how it's going. You're not alone as you work on this journey towards greater social confidence. So thanks for listening. Oh, and my email is drazizrinkfortheshyguy.com well, thanks for listening and until we speak again. Know that you're awesome.

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 Social Confidence center dot com.