Stop Caring What They Say And Take Your Power Back Now

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 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 is going to be packed full of useful tools and specific strategies that I've used with clients. I'm gonna share some stories of recent sessions I've done with clients, either one on one, or my mastermind program that have been focused on reclaiming power and pushing away, letting go of challenging the old toxic stuff that you might have heard from others, maybe recently, maybe five years ago, maybe when you were growing up. So really what we're gonna be looking at today is how to be less nice, more you, more powerful, more bold, more confident, more direct. And now what this comes back to is you have some stories, you have an old identity in there about how you are who you are that is really not serving you. And so we're gonna shake that sucker loose today so that you're gonna leave here fresh and free to be you, 100% you, and actually enjoy yourself as you do it. Speaking of becoming 100% boldly you, I invite you to join me for my virtual event. It's a three day online immersion called Not Nice Live. We're doing it in March and you can get your super Early Bird tickets. If you're listening to this episode a couple days after it came out, it's probably onto the Early Bird already, but still an incredible price and it's gonna be a life changing experience. If you read my book Not Nice. If you listen to this show and it's benefited you or you watch my YouTube videos and they benefited you, then you're gonna really like this event, could be a catalyst to really accelerate your growth, to shed all that niceness, that fear of what other people think, that gu to step into you and really enjoy who you are right now as you boldly take that next step forward in your life. So go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and you can look on this episode and click down below to get a link to the event page to get your seat now. Or you can go to draziz.com that'S-R-A z I z.com and look under the events tab where you will see the event and can get your seat that way too. So two ways to get there. And I look forward to seeing you at that event. And now for today, let's look at shedding that old identity. So quick, two minute version recap of this. But just so you know how your identity forms, it's called a reflected sense of self in psychology. And what that means is when you're a little kid, young, a baby under 1 years old, up to toddler age and then of course beyond, but it's really strong at this young age. You are, I mean, you just came into this world like wtf, right? Like, whoa, there's a lot going on here. And your brain is changing like crazy and your consciousness is waking up and it's like, whoa. And so you start, you know, you're trying to make sense and orient to life around you. Literally physically, how do I orient, how do I move? And then also emotionally, how do I orient who's around me? How do I get love? How do I get taken care of? You have to like figure that stuff out. You're kind of hardwired to figure that stuff out as a mammal. And you're looking at the adults around you, also your siblings too, or any other people that you grew up with. And you're looking at them and something is being reflected back to you in what they say, in their voice tone, in their facial expressions and in their emotional energy. That's nonverbal. It's all coming back to you. And you are a wide open receiver to pick up on that. And so you start to learn from those around you, you know, what is good and what is bad. You know, I just, my brother sent me this video just the other day. He's got a little baby who just turned one, little Ruby, my niece. And she, you know, he sent me this little video of her. She's sitting on a box, well, with her mom is holding a couple feet away from her and they're like, wiggle your legs and you know, like pump your legs or whatever. She's pumping her legs and then she stands up, keeps pumping her legs and kind of quickly walks over 2fe towards her mom and falls into her mom's arms. So she's learning how to walk and after she does it, everyone's like, whoa, you can hear my brother who's taking the video he's like, whoa. He's delighted at her progress, right? So what is getting reflected back to little Ruby there by her environment? Well, love, warmth, enthusiasm. You matter. You walking a couple steps is a big deal. Your progress is a big deal. You. You are worthy of attention. You are worthy of praise. You and what you do matters as well as, hey, if you walk, we love it. So she's like, okay, I'm gonna do more of that. But now imagine a kid who's kind of ignored. Total contrast. I used to go to these Gathering tournaments in the Nerd Dungeon here in Portland, Oregon, and it was a game store, but they would wall off the backside of the store and have a hundred sweaty dudes play Magic the Gathering. It's a card game, if you're not familiar with it. And I used to do that when my first son was born. I basically stopped doing those. And although I've taken him to some tournaments as he's gotten a bit older, but just get crushed at them. Those guys are so good. They do it all day long. Those nerds are so powerful. I can't beat them. But anyway, I remember I would go to these every Friday. Sometimes even on a Friday and a Saturday. Sorry, baby. Sorry, Candace. I got a date with Magic. But I go to these tournaments, and I remember there was a guy there who was a regular, and I don't know the whole story of his life, his relationship. I don't know if his wife was out or he was a single dad or what, but he was obviously in charge of. I assume it was his kid as a little kid. I mean, like, year and a half, maybe. Maybe. Maybe two, but probably less. And he would bring a. He would bring, like, a playpen or I don't know what you call it. Like, a mobile baby cage. And it. You know, it's like four walls with, like, mesh so the baby can't get out. And he would set it up, and he would sit and play Magic. And he'd play for six hours at one of these tournaments, and the kid would just be in the little baby cage. And sometimes the kid would be crying, and sometimes the kid would want to get out. And he, like, gave it minimal attention. Like, you know, it was such contrast to what we did with our kids. Like, we got the. What do you call it? The Man. I'm blanking on the name of it now. It's been so many years. The Ergo, I think it was called, where it's like this baby carrier, and you can hold them face in. And we did like, we want a lot of skin contact when they're young because it's good for their nervous system. And so I would be like shirtless with a jacket around me and have a little baby in there touching my chest. And, you know, Candace is breastfeeding. And it's like we're doing all this, like, we're trying to send a lot of different messages. But just imagine that kid who gets the message. It's very different than when my brother and his wife were giving their little baby. Right. You know, it's kind of like, I don't know, your feelings don't really matter. You don't really matter. No, I don't know. This guy is not a bad person. It's just maybe not aware of what he's sending to the kid. Maybe not. Maybe that's what he received. And so he's kind of like, it's fine, whatever, it's fine. So babies took him. Babies don't need anything, right? So. And this goes on and you know, you get a look of disgust when you make a joke that they don't like. Do you get harshly rejected for, you know, I know clients who, like, if they made art and showed their dad, the reaction would be like, what is this garbage? You know, so what do you think that's gonna do for your reflected sense of self? So anyway, you take in over the months and years of your childhood, and even as you get older from other kids and other peers, more and more and more data about what is accept acceptable, what is worthy, and all these messages and now flash forward to whatever age you are now, and you think about something you want to go do, I want to go talk to that person. And maybe there's a hesitation inside, you're a little afraid. And if you investigate, what is that fear? It's some story in your mind that says, oh, you're a bother to people. People aren't going to like you. Where did that come from? And why does it feel so damn true? Well, it came from your reflected sense of self because that's the message you got. It could have been delivered directly, harshly, politely, quietly, non verbally, energetically. Intentionally or not intentionally. Despite parents best intentions, sometimes they're communicating stuff they don't want. I know this. I'm a parent. I have two little kids, and I've communicated stuff I sure don't want. Impatience about making a mistake or spilling something in the kitchen. And I do my best to become aware of it and shift that and communicate like, hey, it's okay to spill some Water on the ground, it's not a big deal. But my first reaction might be like, oh, Jesus. And what is that sending? And I'm aware of that. So I try to curtail it, but it still slips out sometimes, right? And so we get these messages and then we have this sense of identity. And this identity is usually very limited. It's very negative, it's very self preservation focused. And it will not just go away on its own. And so we talked about niceness in the last episode. I'm talking about this nice, not nice, live event I'm doing very soon. And one of the things we're going to be looking at and working on is your identity. And there is a strong kind of lasting, pervasive story I see in clients of my feelings don't matter, I'm a burden. People won't like me if I speak up. I'm gonna be just too much to handle. It's too high maintenance. People aren't gonna want to deal with me. There's just a lot of these negative predictions and negative stories. And here's the problem that will not change on its own. The identity persists. The identity creates a closed loop where I imagine, you're not gonna like me. Instead, I don't go talk to you to find out if you're not gonna like me. And even if I do go talk to you and you do seem to like me, my identity can sort of spin doctor that and to say, well, they like me that time, but they won't like me next time. And so you can still remain in that identity. That identity is almost like an organism that wants to survive and it just stays and keeps its clutches over you. And so it's essential if you want to be free. Like, don't just wait this thing out. This identity is not going to change on its own. You must change it. You must decide and say, you know what? Enough of this, enough of this. And it sounds so obvious when you hear me. You're like, yeah, no duzzies. Of course you got to challenge that old garbage. But what I see again and again is when the garbage comes up, it's so convincing. And people are just demoralized by that. And they're like, yeah, but I'm just. People aren't gonna. I'm a burden. People aren't going to like me. And I'm. And there is a succumbing to it. There is a sort of falling into its familiar embrace. As painful as it is, it's still what I know. And it's still real, and it still orients me. This is how, as a one and a half year old, I made sense of this crazy planet. I don't know what's going on. I don't think people know what's going on even at any age, really, on a deep level, I know. I know what that is. That's a car and that's a tree. That over there is a computer. I can name objects in my reality, therefore I know what's going on. It's like. It's a lot. It's a lot of craziness. There's a lot of complexity to human society. And then if you zoom out even beyond that to, like, just how matter and energy and time all, you know, sort of the physics realm and then the astrophysics realm, and then stars and planets and galaxies. I mean, this is a. This is. We know. The amount that we know versus when I say we, I mean humanity. The amount that humanity knows versus what is unknown is like. I mean, we're talking a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. It's the great mystery that we're in. And so we're trying to make sense of ourselves. And in spite of it being this mystery that we're never going to figure out, we still got to survive. We still got to live. You still got to connect and pursue things and fill your day and earn money and just have a life, right? You got to live as this individual. And we orient for that. We orient like, where am I? What am I doing? Who am I? And so you keep that comfortable, familiar orientation of I know who I am and who I am is a loser, or who I am as this nice guy, or who I am as this person that no one will like, or who I am as this shy person who doesn't put themselves out there. And so you hold onto it. And to shift this, you have to make a profound, powerful decision to say, enough of that. Enough of this. I'm more than that. That's some old outdated programming right there. No, thank you. None of that for me, please. I'm ready for something new. Go ahead and say that with me right now. Enough of that. I know it's weird. It's weird just to talk out loud to yourself, isn't it? Oh, come on. Who doesn't talk to themselves all the time in their own heads anyway? You're just taking it out loud. Enough of that. I'm ready for something better. I deserve something better. And don't you? Don't you? I mean, imagine those stories I'M telling you about little kids. Like, wouldn't you if you had a kid, maybe you do. I mean, wouldn't you want to be the one who's like cheering them on for taking a step rather than the one who's like, locked him in the closet and doesn't interact with them? I mean, the second one, if you really feel it, almost makes you feel sick. You're like, ugh, that ain't right. Right? So we know it intuitively. Like, it's time, it's time to claim something different and to give yourself this gift now and to say, you know what? I'm gonna consciously improve my identity. And how do you do that? You start to choose what are the stories that you were told when you were young? Directly or indirectly challenge them, come up with new ones. I was just doing this with a client not that long ago, and he had like a lot of toxic messages from his family growing up. And his siblings would ridicule him and they'd call him names and they'd point out where he was stupid or he wasn't capable or no one liked him. And then they'd like intense kind of bullying within the home, which is very intense. And so you flash forward, he's in his 30s, he's an amazing man now. So many skills, but in such a big heart and self aware. And it's just like a really beautiful human. But he doesn't see it. You know, he's still walking around with the identity from his 5, 7, 10 year old self. And so he's struggling. He's struggling especially in creating friendships and dating and relationships. Why? Because it's the social side of things. Why? Because he has the message, I'm a loser, I'm a weirdo, people don't like me, people are going to make fun of me. And that story's been running for decades. So until now, until he claimed something different, he said, I'm gonna challenge that. And so first things first. I had him stand up tall and start to move around his room. And we started to say, what are the messages that you got when you were young? And he shared some of them with me about being a loser, about being a weirdo and this. And I was like, okay, here's how I want you to respond. Like, let's practice responding to those. And doesn't matter what you say as much as your own energy and your defiance of that. So he's walking around the room and he's feeling strong and powerful. And I start voicing these toxic things like, you're a lose. How do you respond to that? And we went through a couple iterations, because the first time, he's kind of like, well, I'm not a loser. And, you know, this or that or I, you know, someone's, like, picking on him about his dating life. Like, you don't have a dating life. And he's like, well, I don't. You know, hey, listen, I'm happy being single and this and that. And I told him, like, listen, okay, you are. You're in the frame of the bully, right? Because if the bully. And look, the bully doesn't have to be some guy out there. The bully doesn't have to be someone in your life. Now, the bully could be when you were 12 years old, when you were 10 years old. When you're 5 years old, it's still in there. It's in your own mind. You have become the bully to yourself. And, yeah, that's disturbing. And, yeah, if you don't change that, you're not gonna have the life that you want. You're gonna end up having the number one regret that people have as they're dying, which is, I wish I had the courage to pursue and do and be who I wanted to be in this life. I felt like I was living for someone else. And I don't want that for you. You don't want that for you. That's what not nice is really being about, right? It's not being about a jerk. It's about being the most authentic version of you to live your life so you don't have that regret when you die. And so he needed to defy that. And I said, step out of his frame, the bully's frame, those old sibling stories. Step into, like, just. You don't even have to go there. Like, if a bully were to come to me at this moment in my life and say, it's easier, you know, you're pathetic and your love life is bad or something, I'd say, like, what does that have to do with anything? Why are you even talking to me like that? Do you see how it's a very different response than, like, hey, I'm gonna go into that topic you brought up and try to defend myself. There. Now you're on their turf. Forget that. Stand up tall and say, no, you don't talk to me that way. That's unacceptable. And so I had to do this again and again and again until he accessed his power. And by, like, the fifth time, I got chills down my neck and down my spine, and I Was like, yeah, that's it. Do you feel it? And he's like, yeah, I feel it. And I'm like, okay, now from this place, who are you really? And what I had him do is I had him focus on a moment that he was proud of. A moment where he was showing up in his life. And for him, it was at his work. He was helping somebody who was in need. And he was wise and he was supportive and he was intelligent. And I was like, okay, imagine that moment from the outside and see this man doing that. That man being you. Do you like this guy? Do you like who this man is? And he's like, yeah, I do. And I'm like, yeah, what are his qualities? And he's like, well, he's compassionate and he's wise and he's smart. I was like, yes, I am compassionate, I am wise, I am smart. Do you feel that now? And he could. And in that moment he was seeing himself clearly. He was no longer seeing through the distorted lens of this old identity. And that is possible for you. And my hope is that by sharing this with you and then sharing these stories and inspiring you in this episode, that you start to do this more and more. Challenge that old inner bully, which is about what they are going to think of me, but it's really about what you are telling yourself inside of your own mind and reclaiming something. And if you feel that energy right now, the passion, which I'm talking about, this is because I believe in it and this is what I do. And if you want to get immersed, imagine if this was the first 20 minutes of three days together. It could be a powerful, life changing experience. If you're not already registered for not nice live, be sure that you do. And if you are already registered, by the way, to register, go to draziz.coM-R-A z I z.com and click on the events tab. And if you already registered, go to the Confidence warriors group. Are you part of the Confidence warriors group? It's on Facebook. If you're not a part of that, go check that out. That's totally free. It's called Confidence Warriors. Go search for it in Facebook. Click to be a part of the group, we'll approve you and then you can share. If you're going to the event in there and you can also just share other stuff in there. It's a great community. If you're wanting more interaction, because this is kind of a one way, right? It's like I'm talking to you, but you want to be able to share back and connect with like thousands of other people who are in that group. That's a phenomenal resource. I should be mentioning that more often, actually. So check that one out. Confidence warriors on Facebook and not nice Live. Lots of opportunities for you to transform in this year to become the most bold, authentic version of you. Speaking of that, let's turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is to go through that process of challenging your old identity, standing up to it in defiance and claiming something new. I described how I guided the client through that, and I invite you to do that yourself. You might have kind of done it just passively as you were listening, but really do it on purpose. Like stand up, challenge some of those stories. Imagine some of those stories from your old negative identity. I am not likable. People don't think this much of me. I'm a bad person when I'm selfish. I'm a burden, whatever it is. And you challenge it out loud and then you start to focus on a moment where you were proud of yourself or you liked yourself and say, who is that person? What are his qualities? What are her qualities? Yes, I am this. I am that. This is an identity upgrade process. And if this is appealing to you and you want to spend like days doing this and just leave, you know, totally transformed, then come join me for that online event. Not nice Live. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com it.