Dr. Aziz argues that chasing perfection and trying to be the best damages your confidence. Most people will never be the best at anything, and that pressure deflates self-worth. Aiming for reasonable goals and accepting average competence instead builds sustainable confidence and freedom.
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I'm about to share something with you that is very controversial in the self help world. And you might even feel a little uncomfortable as you watch this video. But trust me, it's going to set you free and build your confidence in such beautiful ways. Stop trying to be the best. And there's a cousin of this which is be your best self. And I got a bone to pick with that. Let's get into it in this video. I'm Dr. Aziz. I'm the founder of the center for Social Confidence. Background is in clinical psychology and I've helped thousands of people build their confidence over the years. I've written six best selling books on confidence. I know confidence not just from clients, my own experience too. First of all, trying to be the best is death to your confidence. Because I got news for you, my friend. You're not going to be the best at anything. Except for one thing, which I'll share in a minute. But any skill you're learning in your workplace, in your love life, just everything, you're not going to be the best. There's always going to be someone better than you. Now I might be talking to one of like the nine humans who is objectively the best at something. Like, you're the fastest human alive. Maybe you're watching my videos, but even that, that's like for one Olympics and then you're not the best anymore. And what a fall from grace, right? For the rest of us schlubs, you're not going to be the fastest, you're not going to be the smartest, you're not going to be the richest, you're not going to get the laid, you're not going to get the best house, you're not going to have the best fitness, you're not going to be the best at anything. You're probably not even going to be like extraordinary at anything. No offense. I'm not, right? Because there's just so many humans on the planet now. And needing to be the best is the biggest drain on confidence. Because it's usually subconscious. People aren't walking around saying, if I'm not the best, then I'm going to have low confidence. No, but you just feel it. And you see someone who's good at something or better than you at something, you deflate. It's. You go, you're underground and you are finding creatures underground. I guess you're an exterminator in Dig Dug. This is some Dig Dug lore. And you dig down and you find the creature and you harpoon it. And then you pump air into it until it explodes. It's a very inefficient and brutal form of extermination. And then you do that enough, you go to the next level anyway. If you are inflating a little creature to kill it in this old Atari game, and you stop halfway through because maybe one of their, like, cousins is coming to attack you and you have to run away, then instead of it popping, the creature goes and goes back to normal size and then starts attacking you again. So that's what will happen to your confidence if you want to be the best. Someone's going to be leaner, someone's going to be smarter, someone's going to be prettier, Someone's going to do a better talk than you. Someone's going to get more accolades at work than you. Someone's going to get more recognition, Someone's going to get more done. They're going to be more productive. They're going to have a better business, a bigger business. They're going to advance further, they're going to publish more papers, they're going to get accepted things. Things are going to come easier to them. They're going to be better than you. And you're going to see that, like, everywhere. And not just once in your life, but probably, like, almost daily. Someone's better than you at something, and it's extremely depressing if every time you confront that stimulus, oh, they're better than me at that, there's an internal sense of why. Because underneath that, there's this subconscious pressure to be the best. They might say, look, Aziz, I get it. I'm not going to be the best. Now, most people are living this way where they have an irrational expectation, a perfectionistic expectation to be the best, and they're suffering and their confidence is suffering. But let's say you said no. What? Aziz, I've done my personal growth work. I don't need to be the best anymore. Great. I just want to be my best self. Okay. You know, it's a good rebrand. So tell me about your best self. Well, he's rich and he's lean, and he's sexy, and he has lots of sex, and he's so much sex, and he's disciplined, so productive. I mean, he's amazingly productive. And just give me this huge list of stuff, and I'm like, okay, so you're not better than everybody at those things? Oh, no, no. I'm just my best self. And if you watch. Look at YouTube. Just type in be your best self on YouTube. And what are the thumbnails you're going to get? It's like a dude with his jacket over his shoulder and exp shades on walk into his Rolls Royce from a private jet. What messaging is that? Right? It's like, well, if you're be your best self, who happens to be one of the best in the world, I mean the two go together, right? And so people just go down this crazy rabbit hole of constantly striving and look, I'm not about saying you shouldn't grow. I think that progress towards goals creates a lot of fulfillment and happiness in life and builds confidence and we should definitely do it. But what are those goals? What if those goals are reasonable targets that you progress towards? They're not going to put you in some crazy supreme category. They're just going to be, I'm going to move that piece over here. I'm going to build a little bit over there. I'm going to let go of that thing over here. I'm going to see if I can build this marketing. Let's see if I can grow this business. Maybe it's not going to be the biggest thing in the world, but maybe it'll supplement my income. Let me see if I can be a little bit more social this week. I want to build my conversation skill. I want to be able to talk to some people. Great. What a fantastic goal. Go do that. You will get better at building your conversations. Go talking to people, you'll get, maybe you'll create a business and I'll have some income. That's fantastic. And then you have that. You say, you know what, maybe I can make more with this and that could be my full time thing. Awesome. Do all that stuff. But none of that is about being the best or being your best. It's just like projects and things you're doing. And I know if you have like a life of being inundated in the self development world, if you're not trying to be the best, there's almost a kind of a deflation with that too, isn't there? Like, oh, well then isn't it kind of just all for nothing? No. And in fact that feeling is showing you that you've hooked some sense of happiness to a future you that's the best and that's your going to be perpetual disappointment now. And when you eventually realize that you're never going to get to the best of anything. So instead you could let that all go right now. Just take a full breath in. What a relief to not have to be the best. Can you just feel that sense of freedom and relief to not have to be the best, not have to be better than a lot of people at something. You know, one of my mentors, David Burns, he wrote a lot of great books about cognitive behavioral therapy. Had a chapter in one of his most famous books called Feeling Good, that was teaching cognitive therapy for depression. And one of the chapters was called Dare to be Average. And I remember I read that chapter when I was in my 20s and I was like, yeah, that'll I feel a little bit of relief as I read this. Yeah, that all sounds good, but I'm not gonna do that. That's for losers. And you know, 20 years later I'm 42 and it's kind of like average at most things, everything in life. And that's great. It's so great. What a relief. So I hope that you can feel this and that transmits to you and put down in the comments below what are you average at? What are you just okay at? But maybe you can enjoy it and really relish it along the way because I think ultimately that's what life is about, right? Is connection, love and true presence and relishing what we got not becoming. But maybe you disagree. Share down below in the comments. Let's create an active discussion about this and until we speak again, you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're not the best and you're awesome.
