The Antidote To Anxiety

Do you spend more time than you'd like in a state of feeling nervous or anxious or stressed or worried about what might happen, what has happened? If you're doing okay, if you'll be okay, if you live in that reality, in today's episode, you're going to learn something that's going to help you break free of that. Let that go at a level that you maybe never have in your entire life. Because in today's episode, we. We're gonna dive into the antidote to all anxiety, how to break free of that so you can feel more relaxed, more at peace, and happier in all areas of your life.

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.

He welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're gonna be diving into something that's gonna help continue to liberate you, that's gonna help you become more free because. Well, first of all, what. What does that mean when I say that to you? I talk about it a lot in this show. Liberation, freedom, breaking free. What does that mean for you? I mean, for you, it might mean to be able to go do something in the world, like I want to be able to go talk to those people, or I want to be able to break through and make more sales or whatever. There's some sort of fear that's holding you back and you want to be able to go do the thing, speak up in a meeting, whatever it is for you, maybe have a great relationship and share more of yourself with colleagues, friends, wife, partner, whatever. Maybe that's what it is for you, breaking free. And that's what it was for me for a long time is how do I do more in the world? And still is. But there's something else, though, right? Because you might have experienced this if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, or maybe you got my book or one of my programs, and you really started to dive into this process of doing what scares you, of building your confidence. You can experience this expansion, and maybe you already have, which is awesome. And if so, please share it with us@facebook.com social confidence. And that's where people can share their experiences and we can all learn and grow together. But you also might be noticing that while it's possible to be able to do more in the outer world, that's still not fully liberation because we can still be in a state of stress or fear. You could be making More sales and still be more stressed out. You could be making more money and be more stressed out. I've seen that a lot. I've experienced that. Earning more money and then continuing to be worried, is it gonna keep happening? Am I gonna lose it? What's gonna. Right, we can get more stressed out even though we're succeeding or being able to do more. Same thing in dating and relationships. I've seen this in a lot of clients. They're really scared to put themselves out there. They break through that they have the confidence to go approach someone, and then it's like, oh, what if I mess up the date? Or what if maybe they get further than that and it's, well, what if she stops liking me? What if it all falls apart? Can you relate to any of that stuff? So we can be in that state of stress or fear or worry, even though we're breaking free in the outer world. And so that's why today's episode is so important. Because in today's episode, we're going to talk about the antidote to anxiety, the antidote to stress. The thing that's going to help you be truly free, which is to feel relaxed in your body, at peace in yourself. You know, more joy, more happiness. Because to me, that is the ultimate goal. That is the ultimate success. All the outer stuff is an attempt to get more of that inner good feeling. And if we know the antidote to the anxiety, then we can get directly there. And that's what we're going to dive into today. So, been building up for a little while. What is the antidote to anxiety? It's appreciation. Appreciation is the antidote to anxiety. Gratitude. Focusing our attention on the gifts that we have and have already gotten, have already received. How blessed we already are, how abundant we already are, how much stuff and opportunity we already have, when we can bring our attention more and more to that. The less stressed we'll feel, the more relaxed we'll feel, the happier we'll feel. And the reason I'm entirely, you know, the show is not over right now. There you go. See you later. Until next week. May you have the courage to be who you are. Right. No. The reason that there's a whole show around this is because it's not that simple. And it's not just an intellectual process. And I found that oftentimes people have heard this. You might have heard this. This might not be new to you, but there's a skill to doing it. There's an art to doing it, and it can backfire. And we can use it to kind of mess with ourselves and feel worse, actually. And so what I want to do today is to help you learn how to navigate, how to be more appreciative in your life, how to bring that into your life in a way that actually works and produces a shift in how you feel. Because what. The last thing you need is another intellectual rule that says, so you're feeling bad, you're feeling anxious, and then your mind says, you shouldn't feel anxious, you should feel appreciative, you should feel grateful. And then how do you feel? Like crap, right? You feel worse because then you feel like, oh, God, I'm this selfish, terrible person who should be feeling grateful. Right? And I know that. That's how I know that experience, because I've been there too. And you might as well. So today's gonna be how to apply that. How to really dive in and be appreciative and bring more of that into your life. So before we do any of that, we just got to see what is your reaction to what I'm saying right now? The idea to be more appreciative, because that's going to give you a lot of clues as to where to start. Are you intrigued or excited? Are you kind of nodding your head like, yeah, that makes sense to me. Are you kind of rolling your eyes or like, oh, God, what? That's the antidote. I thought it was gonna be something better than that. Or, oh, I've already done that. I already know that. Whatever. Or some other version, whatever it is for you, you gotta see where you're at. Because if there's some resistance there, it's worth looking at and worth pausing for a second and saying, okay, let me see if I can work with that, or put that aside for just a minute to hear what he says and see if I can bring more of that into my life. So we're going to dive into what gets in the way of feeling of appreciation, how to feel more of it, and ultimately a process that I'm going to guide you through that. You can actually feel it together with me in today's episode. So it's not just an intellectual thing. So we're going to dive into all of that. You definitely want to stay to the very end. We're going to do that process, and then, of course, we'll end with a cool action step. So we're going to take a quick break right now, and. And then we're going to dive back into bringing more appreciation into your life, which is going to melt away a lot of the anxiety, the stress, the fear, the dissatisfaction that you might feel on a daily basis as part of being a human here on this planet. So stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this. I want to take one moment to acknowledge a listener who left me a message through the website Shrink for the Shy Guy. It was really touching, really compelling, and he just shared how much he's grown, and it's awesome to hear about his progress. So let's jump into that right now.

Hi, Dr. Aziz. My name is Will, and I am enrolled in both your programs, confidence unleashed and 30 days to dating Mastery. And I just want to thank you for offering these two programs online. I've been really sticking to them a lot, and I found that I'm able to do a lot more. I'm not as shy as I used to. I am definitely a lot more confident. And the most important thing, I think, is that I feel that I love myself. I love myself a lot more. I'm not beating myself up as much as I'm used to. So I thank you for your time to listen to this and thank you for the amazing. I have pod the streams that you do on Shrink for the Shy Guy. And I hope you have a great weekend.

Thank you. Welcome back. So, appreciation, what gets in the way? Let's remove some of these obstacles first. Let's find out what they are for you. So let's just take a moment and if I were to say, what are some things in your life right now that you could feel appreciation for? Something that you could be grateful for and just let your mind go to it. Bring it into your awareness. Good. What else could you feel grateful for? Could you feel appreciation for in your life if you wanted to? A person, a situation, an opportunity. Good. What else? Great. Okay. So as you bring those into your mind, what's happening for you right now? Is it easy? Is it hard? Do you feel anything? Does it feel like I don't have time? So what you want to do is you want to notice what gets in the way of you acknowledging the things that you feel appreciation for. What stops you? What blocks you from feeling that appreciation? Does it feel like I don't have time for this? There's more pressing things that I need to stress or worry about. Is it something else? Is it I should feel more appreciation for this than I do? I'm bad for not feeling appreciative. So something else. What gets in the way for you for feeling appreciation, feeling gratitude. Because the more you can uncover that, the more you can become aware of that. The more you'll be able to work with that, the more you'll be able to put that aside and just see. Okay, can I really. I mean, so for example, let's say you are saying there's something I should feel more grateful than I do. Well, what if you don't have to make anything happen inside of your body? What if it's just a matter of bringing your focus to it? And besides, if that is one for you, I'm going to guide you through a process in a little bit here that's gonna really help you get in touch with the feelings of appreciation. But what if you didn't have to make anything happen? Just what could I, if I wanted to feel appreciation for? And then maybe it's, I don't have this is. I don't have time for this. You know, actually when I've done this with a lot of people and in myself, it's sort of a vague resistance. It's just like, I don't want to do that. Did you have that experience? I don't want to do that. And it's so interesting. Why don't we want to do that? Do you have a sense if that's happening for you, why you might not want to do that? In my experience, what I've seen is we all have so much momentum towards stress and anxiety and I'm not good enough and I got to prove myself and I got to make shit happen or I'm going to die under a bridge. We have all this stress inside of us that the idea of not living that way of relaxing and just being going through our lives in a more peaceful state, a less stressed state. We're trying to control all the future and all the elements kind of freaks us out. It's the same thing with self compassion. You'd be amazed at how many people that I work with because I teach that in all my programs and this podcast. And so there's people that want to work with me directly to really break through quickly. And of course we're going to get into self compassion because that's one of the biggest elements of breaking free of any sort of social fear, self doubt and achieving incredible stuff in your life. And you'd be amazed at how many people on some level are like, nah, really? Okay, that's what we have to do. Isn't there another way? Okay, maybe we'll put that on the back burner. What's the real way to break free? I'm like, that kind of is one of the parts of the real way. I don't know how you do it otherwise. And there's a resistance to that because it's like, well, if I'm compassionate with myself, then I'm not going to do anything in life. I'm not going to have goals I'm not going to achieve. Same thing, I think, with appreciation. If I truly appreciate what I have right now, if I feel really grateful for what I have, then I'm not going to be motivated to get to the next level or to be able to go talk to those people. I'm going to become complacent and just settle for a limited life. Maybe that's a fear for you on some level underneath then the reality is it's absurd. It is truly absurd. The idea that we need to. It's like the idea that you need to starve someone of love in order to make them want love or something like that. It's like, no, it's just like there's an infinite amount of love that we want to give and receive in our lives. And it's the same thing with appreciation. In fact, the more you give appreciation, the more you feel appreciation. The more you experience that in your life, the more you draw people towards you that are awesome opportunities, all that stuff. So being in a state of stressed out and worried about things not happening actually makes you a lot less resourceful and blocks you from getting what you want. Same thing with the lack of self compassion, right? It's like I'm going to hate myself to be. To go talk to those people or to go sell more. And it doesn't, it doesn't work. People don't want to talk to you back. People say no when you try to sell it to them. So there's something about our energy and how we approach things. So are there any other blocks coming up for you? Because in a moment we're going to do this really powerful process to help you feel appreciation. And I wanted to help clear all the debris out of the way right now so you could just open yourself up and feel it. So we're gonna take a quick break and during that break, I want you to just see if you can put aside or let go or discover for yourself any other things that might get in the way and just put them aside, let them go for just a minute and just think. What? You know, wouldn't it be awesome to really just feel more appreciation? Not for my entire life, but just right now in this moment. So we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back right after this and we'll dive into that appreciation process.

Have you heard about optimal self coaching? It's what Aziz teaches all of his private and group coaching clients. It helps you completely transform the way you talk to yourself in your own mind so you can instantly start feeling more confident, be more comfortable around others, and guide yourself to greater levels of career and relationship success. To learn exactly how to transform your inner Coach, go to YourConfidenceCode.com to get your copy today.

Welcome back. So appreciation, let's let it in. Let's just have a moment of really experiencing this and you might discover some things as we do this process of how you can feel more appreciative, how you can actually bring that experience into your life, what you can focus on things that you could look at that you might not have looked at in the same way for much of your life or ever. So this could be really powerful. I encourage you to actually close your eyes during this process if you can. If you're driving, understand, people listen to this all over the place, potentially driving or working out or whatever, and that's okay too. It's better to do it now than to say I'll do it later, because later often means never for us. We have so much going on in life. But you can always come back and listen to this again when you, you know, like in bed at night before you go to sleep. But for now, just let's roll with it wherever you're at. What I'd like you to do is I'm going to assume that you can close your eyes. So I'm going to tell you to do that. But don't. If you're driving or whatever, just close your eyes and take a deep breath in and then just let it out. Put your right hand right on your heart. Or if you're left handed, put your left hand on your heart. Or if you want, put both hands right there on your heart in the center of your chest and just breathe into your hand, focusing your attention right there on your hand and feeling the pressure of your hand on your chest and the warmth of your hand on your chest and feeling you might even feel your heartbeat underneath your hand. And as you breathe, breathe right into your chest, almost as if you're breathing directly into your heart. And when you breathe out, breathe out almost as if you're breathing directly out from your heart and just keep doing this through this process, breathing right into your heart with your hands right there. And we're going to start broad what could you be thankful for in your life. What could you feel appreciation for if you wanted to? What's the first thing that pops into your mind? Is it a person, someone in your life, person who's given you a tremendous amount of love, taken care of you, changed your diapers when you were a baby, loved you, held you, took care of you, could be your mom, your dad, a grandpa, grandma, an aunt, an uncle, anyone. Someone took care of you in an incredible way and gave you so much love. And that love that they gave you set the foundation in your. In your brain and your nervous system to be able to give and receive love like you do now. Breathing into your heart and feeling. Is there any appreciation you can feel for the amount that you received? And let's just take a moment to feel appreciation for the fact that you have ears that you can. You. You can hear me right now. There are people that cannot hear, that you can see with your eyes. There are people that cannot see that you have all your fingers and your hands and your arms. There are people that have none of those legs, feet. Can you just take a moment and feel into your body? Can you feel appreciation right now, if you wanted to, for the incredible system and magical machine that your body is with its trillions of operations happening simultaneously? I cross cells that are communicating in ways that we don't even begin to understand. The power inside of our bodies, the energy there that allows you to get up in the morning and move and do whatever you want with your body, with your focus, with your mind, breathing in deep and feeling a sense of powerful appreciation for this body, for your heart that your hands are on right now that's been beating hundreds of thousands of times per day, keeping you alive. It started beating long before you ever came out into this world. When you were in the womb of your mother, it was beating and beating and beating, and it beats consistently, rapidly for the rest of your life, all through the night. Your breath, the oxygen, the air, everything that you can take in. Can you just feel the system that's supporting you right now, keeping you alive and breathing and feeling a sense of appreciation and gratitude for being alive, for your body doing this? What else could you feel grateful for in your life? Did you feel grateful for the abundance that you have, the comfort that you have? I mean, if you're living in any aspect of the western world, I mean, the abundance that we have is incredible. A bed that you sleep on that's warm and comfortable, you flick on the faucet and water comes out, drinkable water. There's drinkable water in your toilet. Not that you'd necessarily want to drink that, but I mean the abundance that we have of this life force of water, of food, when you go to it, you can go to any restaurant, anywhere down the street from your house and order whatever you want and eat until you're stuffed and you feel the incredible abundance of that. What else could you feel grateful for in your life if you want? I mean, we're just talking about the basics of your day to day life. What about the ability to go do? Can you get on an airplane and go travel somewhere in your life? Can you get into a car and drive wherever you want? Can you take in the appreciation of the freedom and opportunity that you have right now already in your life? In fact, these are just general things that I can know we can all feel appreciative for. But let's find five for you right now. What are five things that are unique to you in your life right now that you could be grateful for? Just letting them pour into your mind? Maybe a person, someone who is incredibly supportive of you, Someone who's given to you with no expectation of getting anything in return. Someone who's loved you, someone who's supported you and encouraged you. You breathing in and feeling a sense of love and appreciation for that person right now. Who else? What else? A job, an opportunity, a breakthrough. What else could you feel appreciation for right now in this moment, if you wanted to? Good. Feeling that sense of breathing deeper and deeper into your heart and then making a gesture with your body, with your arms, with your entire head and neck. Everything. The gesture and the sound of complete and utter appreciation and gratitude. Go ahead and making that right now and either out loud in your body if you're alone or just in your mind, is it thank you. Thank you. Feeling a sense of appreciation and gratitude for everything that you've gotten and everything you continue to receive. Everything that's supporting you, everything that's keeping you alive. What else? What's another thing unique to your life? Maybe even a specific challenge? Maybe something that was hard for you, but now you see the beauty and the power and the gift in it. Something. A relationship that was painful, but now you look back and it was the best thing that ever happened to you because it taught you something or it helped you realize your own self worth or helped you realize what you never stand for again in the future and now you're stronger and better for it. Can you even feel appreciation for the hard times, for the challenges, for the things that got you down at the time, because you know that it was life guiding you and making you stronger and that we're never given more than we can handle. Feeling a sense of appreciation for the challenges, for all the abundance, for the gifts, for your physical health, for all the people in your life, all the opportunities, all the things in your life, all the objects, the technology, the games, the things, the entertainment, the movies, all the things that we just take in on a daily basis that are incredible. Any one thing, if you wanted to focus on it, a phone, a movie. When you think about the people that were involved in creating that, the millions of people, if you expand the network out large enough to every person that might have had something to do with that thing, can you feel a sense of gratitude and appreciation for each of those people who went into making your cell phone or went into making this $200 million movie that you're watching? Good. Good. Breathing in deep now through your nose and letting it out. And making the sound of complete appreciation. What is that? Making the gesture, maybe even raising your hands above your head or bringing your hands together, whatever it is for you. Feeling a sense of profound appreciation and gratitude. What an incredible life. Can you just feel appreciation for your life in general, for this life, for this mysterious thing? No one knows. We don't know why we're here. We don't know how long we're here. But thank you. Thank you that I'm here. What a profound gift. Yes.

Good.

Good. Staying with it for just one moment longer, really letting that appreciation move from your entire body all the way up to the tip of your head, to the tips of your hair, all the way down through your chest, your stomach, your legs, all the way down to the tips of your toes, down into the earth and just feeling a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude. Good. Yes. Good. And taking a few more breaths in now. Letting all the images you were creating, everything that happened for you, just letting it go. You don't need to control or influence anything. Just bring your attention back to your breathing, back to put your hand back on your heart and feel that for just one more moment. Taking a deep breath in. And good. And as you let it out, opening your eyes, if you'd close them, bringing your attention back to wherever you are. If you've taken your attention away, just noticing, how do you feel? Good. Good. And this brings us into our action step for today. And I'm not going to play that crazy music because we just had this experience and I don't necessarily want to jar you with some offensive skrillex. Ripoff style dubstep. But your action step is just to really write this stuff down. I mean, grab your phone right now or a journal or something and just start making a list of all the things you're appreciative for that you could be appreciative for, even if it's just three things that came to you. But really writing them down and bringing your attention to it, bringing your awareness to it. And then I want to extend this forward for you as an action step is, throughout your day, see if you can bring your attention to it. And the last thing you want to do is, you don't want to say, I should feel appreciation right now, damn it, and then be upset with yourself if you're not. That is the exact opposite of what we want, because that does not work. What you want to do is just gently see if you can bring it into your life. So you know, this is especially good for when you're, I don't know, let's say you go to a restaurant and just see if you could take a moment to really take in when the food comes. Just look at it and be like, wow, let me just take a moment of appreciation for all the people in the kitchen who made this food for me, who do this all day long for people. And then take a moment and look at like, there's lettuce on your plate. Can you give appreciation for the people that picked that lettuce, who busted their ass in a fucking field for not very much money to bring that out of the earth for you, to give you that lettuce? Can you feel a sense of appreciation for the people who. The whole industry of farming? I mean, it's incredible, right? Everything. The millions of dollars in people that are focused on bringing food right there to lettuce to you and the trucking companies and the supermarket and all of the resellers and all the people that are involved in bringing this to your plate? And if you want to go one step further, can you thank the soil and the nutrients that are in that soil and the magical process that we don't understand of photosynthesis, of how the sun shines on this lettuce and this plant grows and we eat it and we are nurtured and we can stay alive? I mean, it is incredible. And you can do all of that in 20 seconds just by taking a two deep breaths, looking at your food and thanking it. And if a prayer is your thing, you can say a quick prayer of gratitude. If praying is not your thing, then you don't have to say a prayer. You can just feel a moment of that appreciation by bringing your awareness to it. That's your action step for this moment, but moving forward for this week and for this month and for the rest of your life. And the more you do this, the more you make a practice of it, the more you make a game of it. Then the more you will feel joy and peace and happiness for what you have and for how incredibly supported you are. The more you'll trust in life and yourself. The more you'll trust in other people, the better you'll feel and then the more cool shit you'll be able to do because you're coming from a place of appreciation and abundance and feeling good in your core. So I appreciate you being with me on this journey today. It might have been a little different than other episodes. This is more like how my programs are, honestly, where we go real deep together. So you got a taste of that and I've enjoyed being with you here today and I look forward to speaking with you again. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.

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 socialconfidencecenter.com it.