Stop Trying To Overcome Your Fear

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. And today we're going to be taking another counterintuitive approach and to growth, transformation, and becoming the most confident version of you, in which I'm going to invite you to stop trying to overcome your fear. Now, that might sound strange or different than what you've learned, maybe even different than what you've learned from me on this show or elsewhere. So I'm going to explain exactly what that means, what the pitfalls of trying to overcome your fear are, and what to do instead. That's going to serve you in freeing yourself from social anxiety and becoming the most bold, fear free, confident version of you. Does that sound good? Okay, let's dive right into it. So what's wrong with trying to overcome your fear? Isn't that the whole point? You're supposed to do what scares you? Isn't do what scares you one of the five steps in your 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence video training series, Dr. Aziz? As a matter of fact, it is. And actually you can get that at draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com just go there and you can get access to that video training series. And it's a mini course called five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. It also comes with an ebook version, too, in case you like to read. And me, I like to listen to everything these days. But you have both. And yes, the third step is do what scares you. And so in one place, I'm telling you as one of the key steps to unleash your inner confidence is to do what scares you. And now I'm telling you to stop trying to overcome your fear. What do I mean? Well, here's what I mean. Most people that tell me they want to overcome their fear or that they want to become more confident or that they want to be free of their fear, stop being afraid of things what they're telling me is they don't want to feel the fear anymore. So for them, overcoming fear is a code phrase for not feeling afraid. I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. I just don't want to feel afraid anymore. And it's 100% natural and understandable. And of course you don't. Who wants to be afraid? Fear feels awful. So of course you want to be free of it. And it just doesn't work. Right, because the way that life works is the more you try to get rid of something, the more you have of it, because you're trying to get away from it and you're focused on it a lot. Right? This goes back to the old thought experiments, or not even thought experiments. Experiments on thoughts where there's the white polar bear and the pink elephant. I forget the name of the experimenter that did this stuff. But basically they had people say, they instructed them, okay, for the next 60 seconds or three minutes or whatever, whatever you do, do not think of a white polar bear. Just don't think of a white polar bear. And then they had them count how many times they thought of a white polar bear. And sure enough, they thought about a white polar bear quite a bit. Why? Because they're trying to tell themselves not to do it. Not to do it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Wait, what was I supposed to not be thinking about? Oh, the white polar bear. Dang. I thought about it again. Right? So when we're trying to not do something or get away from something or stop something, then it's just. We just get more of it. That's how life is. And so you're trying to get rid of the fear, trying to get rid of the fear, and then the fear is there. And then what I see is people start to judge their progress or if they're going to get more confident or not, or if this whole process is working on how much fear they have. And so if I feel afraid, then that's not working, and it means bad things and I'm not doing enough and I'm not going to be successful at this, and I'm never going to be confident. I'm never going to have the life that I want. And if I have less fear, then it means I'm doing great and I'm awesome and I'm on the right track. And again, that intuitively might seem like how it goes, but you're evaluating the wrong thing because it's not about whether the fear is there or not. And how much fear is there or not? Because then you're perpetually focused on yourself and your own comfort. And there's this funny, strange thing about life where when you're focused on yourself and your own comfort, you end up suffering and being uncomfortable. And I don't know why it's that way. Maybe because life is calling us to be more and to give more and to grow and to expand our awareness to include others beyond ourselves. Maybe it's calling our souls forward to be our biggest self. I don't know. You can decide your own philosophies there. But in any case, it's. It just seems to be a phenomenon that occurs. And so people are like, I want to feel comfortable going over and doing this thing and speaking in front of this group and talking to this woman. And it becomes more and more about, I want to feel comfortable. And so your definition of success ends up being no fear, which means I'm comfortable as I do it. And if that's the target, you'll never get there because there's not enough energy there. There's not enough power there. There's not enough motive there. There's not enough service there's not. You're not being called forward by anything other than your own comfort, which is not enough. There's not enough juice in that. So what's a better definition? What's a better target? What's a better thing to go for? And I've focused on this a lot. I would say that instead of trying to get overcome your fear or get rid of your fear, focus on mastery. Let me explain what I mean. When people are trying to overcome their fear, what their motive starts to become is how much do I need to do this thing until the fear goes away? How many times do I need to go talk to people? How many times do I need to approach someone I'm attracted to? How many times do I need to speak up in front of a group or with other people until this dang fear goes away? Then you're kind of counting it on it. You're kind of waiting it out, and you're still in resistance to it. And what you resist, persists. Mastery is a completely different focus, right? Mastery is how do I get better at talking to people? How do I discover how to light people up? How do I make these people laugh more and light them up? How do I bring joy here? How do I bring a positive outlook? How do I bring new solutions or creative ideas to this environment? What's optimal for this organization? What's optimal for These people. What's optimal for my friend here? What's optimal for this family system? What's optimal here? And how can I bring myself to contribute to it? Those are the questions of mastery. And those questions bring a whole different version out of you. And here's one of the most powerful things about mastery is trying to overcome fear, is what's the least amount I can do to get over this fear? So it's gone. I want to stay as comfortable as possible in this process, but I'm willing to be uncomfortable for a little while until I can get comfortable again. Remember, that process is doom. The energy. Can you feel the energy of that? Make the sound. What's the sound of that energy? To me, the sound is like. It's kind of like it's the bottom of the barrel. It's the sludge at the bottom. Now mastery. Mastery is, I'm going to do this endlessly till I get it. I'm going to do this even once. I think I got it, I'm going to keep doing it so I can get even better at it. That's the energy of optimizing, of enhancing, of doing more. In fact, you're not even measuring how much you're doing unless it's to say, well, what rate? And how much could I do more could I tweak it? You're only measuring for optimization purposes. You're not measuring to say, can I get rid of this fear, of this fear gone is it fear gone is it fear gone. And then, so mastery is like, I want to become better at talking to people. I'll do it if I'm scared, I'll do it if I'm not scared. I'm just going to keep doing it. Let's go. The fear is almost irrelevant now. I didn't know this at the time, but that's an approach that I took when it came to dating and relationships, particularly in the early phase of approaching a woman I was attracted to to start a conversation or connect with her. Because I had felt so incapable and just demoralized in my confidence for so many years that I just leapfrogged into mastery. I was like, I want to become really, really, really good. And it actually expanded, not just with women, just talking to people. I want to feel like I can talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, about anything and be. And just know how to do that. And so I became obsessed. I became obsessed with interacting with people. Now, interestingly enough, I started to overcome my fear quite a bit with that mindset. And that's the cool Thing with mastery, the fear actually diminishes much more quickly because you're not even focused on it. And then sometimes it's there, but who cares? Because I. I do it whether the fear is there or not. The fear has no power to stop me. That is another phrase of mastery. Do what scares you until the fear. Until the fear has no power to stop you. That is another statement of mastery. So a lot of the stuff that I'm teaching and is in the phrases and the language that I use in the books and other things in this podcast, that's the language of mastery. And the goal is to evoke that feeling, that desire, that motive in you. And what you do and how you show up to your life in this process of building your confidence is one of mastery, not of one of, I'm going to seek more comfort. And that's the end game. And the cool thing is, if you're seeking mastery, you do get to enjoy a lot more. You do get to have a lot more comfortable, cool things in your life. And. But that's not the point. That's the byproduct. And so I got really focused on this. And of course, when you're really focused and you are pursuing mastery of something, what do you do? You do whatever it takes. You're motivated, you're driven, you're determined. If something doesn't work, you try something else. If something doesn't work, you try something else. What else are you doing if you're on the path of mastery, Are you just trying to figure it all out through trial and error? No, you're learning. You're taking in new information. Now, you're not just taking information passively, like information entertainment kind of scenario, but you're taking in information to act on it. And your speed of implementation, how long it takes between you, when you take the information, when you act on it, is as short as possible. What's the information? Let me learn it. Where can I learn it? Great. Go for it. Some of the information you take in is going to be great. Some of the information is not going to be great. Some of the information you're going to pay for and you're going to wish you didn't pay for it. Some of the information is going to be great. And you're like, this is a steal. Oh, my God, this is worth 10 times what I paid for it. It's gonna be all over the place and stop evaluating every little thing like, oh, I shouldn't have spent that. I shouldn't have spent that. I bought A bunch of different courses that I didn't think were that great. And sometimes I could get refunds, sometimes I couldn't. That's why I personally have the refunds on all the courses that I sell, like Confidence University and skyrocket your social confidence and stuff. Because I want people to feel like, that was awesome. Not like, heh, heh, heh, I gotcha, right? No. So, but sometimes I, you know, hey, I want a refund on this person's like, sorry, you bought it. I don't have a refund policy. And I'm like, come on, man. And sometimes I've invested in expensive coaching and been like, you know what? This wasn't even right for me. And that's okay because that's just how I show up. That's just who I am. That's what I keep doing. That pattern of behavior brings better and better results. Now, I've also gotten more discerning over time about where to invest, but I still sometimes am like, I don't know if that was a great investment, but I don't. I don't say, oh, I'm not going to invest in the future now. No. It's the path of mastery. It's the price of doing business. It's the price at playing at this level. And as I learn, I implement. And I'm constantly learning, constantly seeking who can teach me. And you try to find the most amazing people that you can to learn from them as rapidly as possible, and you pay for access. That's what I've done for many, many years. And then you get better, faster, and then you take action, you learn more, then you pay for more access, and you can have more success then you get. And what's the end? There is no end. That's the path of mastery. Right? Because if the end was like, cool, I've succeeded enough and I've talked to people. I remember working with a client one time who had a pretty successful online business. Quite successful, actually, by most people standards, extremely successful. He was making great money. It was kind of working pretty well. He had this thing all dialed in, and he had his systems dialed in, but he wasn't growing. The business wasn't growing. He wasn't growing. He was stagnant. He had a lot of social anxiety. He wasn't growing in that area. That's what we were focusing on mostly, is the social anxiety. And sometimes I'd poke around on his business side of things too, ask him some questions there. And over time, he kind of started to open up about that. Too. And he's like, yeah, he lives in a lot of fear. He's not really progressing things because his goal was like, I'm going to achieve all this stuff and then I'm just going to be comfortable and I'm not going to tend to the business that much. I'm just going to enjoy my life. And not really. I'm just going to do whatever I need to. I'm going to do the bare minimum. And the bare minimum put in the effort in order to get to a higher level of comfort and then sustain that at the bare minimum is a recipe of anxiety, suffering, and ultimately not feeling fully alive. Because progress is a Tony Robbins quote. Progress equals happiness. Growth equals a sense of aliveness. And so master is that path of growth. And you know, mastery can not just be about a specific thing, but it can also be a way of life. So the way I pursue a lot of things in my life is mastery. And so, for example, we have two dogs now, and we just. One of them's a pretty young puppy still. And we got another one a couple years ago that's a young dog now. But when I got that first one, I was just studying like crazy and bought online courses and bought dog training and coaching and all these things and just implemented like crazy. And then we're getting. Before we got the second puppy, it could have been like, oh, I know how to do this. I was pretty good at it. I mean, we have a phenomenally trained dog. He's really responsive and respectful and polite most of the time. We're still working on some kinks there, but he's great. He doesn't bite people or jump at people or, you know, he'll respond to commands like leave it and off and all this stuff, right? Great, great. Super well trained dog. And instead of just getting the next dog and being like, great, you know, I could just do what I did again. I was like, no, I want to get even better. Like, what else can I learn? What else can I do? And I was like, well, there's people that train service animals. Service animals are next level training. I'm like, dang, what do they do for service animals? Now I'm not going to get the second dog as a certified service animal and go jump through all those hoops. But I'm like, how can I train the dog to be as well trained as a service animal? And then, boom. I actually started to search for that, found a course where that was kind of their unique selling proposition. We're going to teach you. Like we Actually train service animal dogs. And we're going to teach you what we do to train those service animal dogs so you can train your dog to behave just like a service animal dog. And if you don't know that with service animal dogs, depends on what country you're in. If they have them, at least in the United States, they're like trained to. They're not even considered, quote pets. Like some places, I might say, no pets allow, like this restaurant. You can't have a pet. You can have a service animal on a pet or on an airplane. Because the idea is that that dog is functional for the safety and survival of the adult. They help them. You know, the classic example is the, the dog walking. You know, the person who's blind has a seeing eye dog, but that's just one form. You know, maybe they help people who are elderly or help people who have some sort of challenge or disability to, you know, function in the world. It's a really cool thing. And so I'm like, yeah, I want that. And so invest in this course. And it's like, let's attack it. Let's go on offense. Let's keep growing. Now am I doing it so I can. Let me just get this dog good enough so I can be comfortable. It's like, no. How far can we take it? And then I'm inspired to say, hey, let me actually go back to the first dog and continue his training and can we get him to service level capabilities? Like, why not? Let's go. So I have this. More motivation, more inspiration. This is the path to mastery. And you can bring this same approach to your confidence and being the more bold, free version of you that's not just focused on, well, was I scared or not? It almost becomes irrelevant. It's like you're curious about it, but just because you're curious about your own experience, you want to be on your own side. You want to take care of yourself. So if you're scared, you might want to use a technique to help calm yourself down or send yourself messages of safety, or discover what some of the scary things you're telling yourself are from your inner critic and work with it. So it is useful information to know if you're scared, but it is not the main purpose of your action. Does that make sense? Speaking of action, let's talk about how to put this into action for you in your life. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to shift to a path of mastery in one area. Like, what is one area? Maybe it is Your confidence growth. And if you are focused on mastery, what is it you want to be mastering? What are you passionate about learning? What are you passionate about being able to do? It's a certain skill like public speaking or speaking up in groups. It doesn't have to be formal public speaking, but just sharing your idea in a larger group. You know, a work meeting, a zoom meeting, a group of couple people talking. Maybe it's social mastery, talking to people, connecting with people, sharing. Maybe it's your dating life. Wherever it is, you're going to see where you're most drawn. Don't do what you're supposed to do, but where is the energy? Where are you most drawn? I feel like when it comes to the stuff that we want to master, it's not just what we decide. It's almost like what life decides for you and what you're called towards. You'll feel it. There's a brightness, there's an enthusiasm, there's a willingness, there's a source of energy to go after you're being pulled towards it. Can you feel that? Okay, so great, tune into that. And then, okay, if I'm pursuing this with mastery, how am I going to do that? And then just start looking around. And if you have not already checked out Confidence University, that's going to be one of the best places. In fact, that's why I call. So we have Inside Confidence University. Currently we have four courses. The Ultimate Confidence foundation, which makes you completely solid in yourself and rejection proof. Then we have a course called Social Mastery, Dating Mastery and Career Acceleration. Why do I call those things Mastery? The exact thing that we're focused on here right now. So if you want to learn more about that, just go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and underneath this episode, there'll be a link to Confidence University. You could also just go to draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and click on the Products tab and you can learn more about it. That's just one resource, but the key thing here is it's going to be even beyond that. That's not the only thing you're going to study. You might still listen to this show, you might listen to other teachers and other people, but you're like, I am on a quest of mastery. And when you're on that quest, everything changes. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level 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.