The Biggest Hidden Obstacle To Confidence

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, today you're going to be learning something that's going to be incredibly valuable for you when it comes to breaking free of social anxiety, increasing your confidence in every area of life and therefore being the most bold, free, expressed, authentic version of you. Because as your confidence goes up, the more you can do that and the biggest block and the hidden obstacle that's stopping most people is what you're going to discover today. And it's actually extremely liberating to see this because we have a lot of ideas and you might have a lot of ideas about why you aren't the way you want to be, why you don't have the confidence that you want to have. And it turns out none of that's true and that it's really, for most people, this one obstacle. So when you see that, not only is that going to be relieving because you're going to learn that it's not all these other things, but it's also incredibly empowering because you're going to learn how to work with this obstacle as well. So before we start, I wanted to remind you that we are, we have registration, early bird registration open for my next live event, Unlimited dating and relationship confidence. That's in Portland in October. And if you go to Shrink for the shy Guy, Shrink for the shy guy on the side, there's a link right to the events. You can learn more about it. And you can also go to my main website, socialconfidencecenter.com to find out about that event as well as my YouTube channel books. Everything is on there as well. The reason I'm mentioning it is because if you've been listening to this show for a while, you've been benefiting from it, then I absolutely guarantee you will benefit just 10x or 100x more from being together for three days. Because it's not just like sitting there for three days listening to a podcast of me talking at you. It's super interactive. It's designed to be a transformational experience. So you leave there different than when you showed up. That's my goal. And then that's what the feedback we get from the events. So I would love to see you there. I'd love to experience that with you. So go to shrinkforthshyguy.com now to check that out while we're doing some of the early bird promo and the discounts before the event. So let's look at what this hidden obstacle is. Let's first look at what do you think is getting in the way for most people, if they don't have confidence in their dating life or their work life or whatever, they have a story, they have a reason. So think of an area that you don't feel fully confident in yet. What is your story? What's your reason? What's your it's because and what comes to mind. Don't try to pick the right one, don't try to make it look better than it is or say, oh, I shouldn't believe that. So I don't. Just be honest with yourself. What do I really think and see and believe about all this? Because that will show you what's true and what's really holding you back. So is it that you're not good looking enough? You're too whatever, too short, too fat, too thin, too tall, teeth are too big, nose is too big, eyeballs are too big, something too much or too little? I'm too short, I'm too something. I don't have enough of this. I don't have enough money, I don't have enough education, I don't have enough career status, I'm not smart enough, I'm not intelligent enough, I'm not loud enough, I'm not outgoing enough, I'm just generally not enough. Maybe it's a vague thing. So there's all these different stories, right? And maybe it's something out there, you know, oh, I didn't get this when I was younger or my parents didn't do this, right? Or you know, school didn't teach me this and sort of a blame thing. Whether it's blame of others, blame of ourself, judgment of ourselves, stories about ourselves. That's why. And this can be so disempowering because it's, that's how it is and you're toast. And if you've listened to this podcast at all or know anything about my work that I believe something fundamentally different which is that anyone, no matter what their upbringing or history or how long they've been stuck in shyness and social anxiety and self judgment and whatever the cage is, niceness, no matter how long they've been in it, it's possible to break free. It's possible to break free fast and to become liberated from these things. And what liberated means is it doesn't mean that you never feel anxious or that you never judge yourself or doubt ever again. It means that you know that that's not ultimately true. You have more and more experiences of feeling fundamental worthiness, your lovability, your capability. And you live from that more and more and more and more. And so sometimes you fall back, sometimes you get stuck in the story, the illusion that you can't or you're not enough or it won't go well, so don't try. But that no longer keeps stuck in the cage. It's like you realize you're in the cage and you're like, oh, I'm back in the cage, let me find my way out. And so maybe it takes you a day or a week or something, but then you find your way out. And this is exactly what happens with people that go through my mastermind program, which is a year long training program. Sometimes people get to stay in it for two years because they really are benefiting so much. They want to keep growing. But what's happening is they describe how it becomes like the. It doesn't mean they're never anxious again. It's like when I get anxious, I know how to get out. And I find my way out much faster. I find my way back to being on my own side and back to confidence way, way, way faster than I used to. And that's really the ultimate goal, is to get there faster and faster and faster. So what's getting in the way? What's really stopping you? You know, it's not something that you're born with, you know, it's not some tragic flaw in your past that's keeping you stuck. What? What is it? Here's the big reveal. You ready? The biggest hidden obstacle to confidence is impatience. That's it, impatience. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by that. Because you might say, wait a minute, I don't feel impatient, I'm not impatient. Maybe you think of impatience as like someone who's waiting for their two minute microwave meal to microwave. And they're like two minutes. I don't have that kind of time. Or being in traffic and being impatient, or waiting in a line and it's kind of like that, but it's bigger. It's more drawn out, but maybe more the impatience of you're wanting someone's pregnant and they're impatient for the baby to come seven months from now. And it's like, yeah, that's a long way off. But they're like wanting it now, wanting it now, wanting it now. Or you're in a job and you're going to in a year or, or two, you'll be eligible for some change or shift or promotion or whatever. And you're impatient for that to happen. And here's how impatience works with confidence. There's something that you want to be able to do, a particular ability. Like you want to be able to talk to someone, you want to be able to walk in front of a group of people, you want to be more socially charming, you want to be able to date more freely, you want to be able to speak in front of a group, whatever it is. And now you feel like you can't do that and you feel impatient because you're like, I want to be able to do that now. Or there's like feelings that you have, anxiety, nervousness, self doubt, self judgment, fear. And you want to be rid of those feelings and you want to be rid of those feelings now. So here's where the obstacle stops us is whatever you want to be able to do, you can do that, you can get there, you can learn. If you want to be able to be more assertive, you can figure that out. If you want to be able to speak in front of a group, you can do that. If you want to be more charming and date more people, you can do that. You can learn those things. Those are just abilities, they're just skills. And our impatience is what stops us. Because here's how impatience shoots us in the foot. We say, I want to be able to do X and I want to feel confident doing it. That's sort of the ultimate goal. And then we take our first step towards it. Because maybe you're listening to this podcast and maybe for many years we don't even take that first step. Our stories in our head say that's not possible, so don't even try. And we're like, yeah, shit, that's true. And then we just do nothing and we wallow in despair and self pity and impossibility and resentment and judgment and life passing us by the cage, right? But then you're listening to this podcast, or maybe you're going through my program, Confidence University, or you're just Reading my books or something, whatever, someone else's teachings. And you're like, yeah, here I go. And that's good, that's good. That's an essential first step to be open to the possibility that you can break out of that cage. And then you take that first step towards X. You know, I'm gonna go speak up a little more. I'm gonna say something at work. And how does the first step go generally? Now you could have beginner's luck, it could go amazing. But oftentimes it's pretty freaking scary, right? Because we've avoided it for 20 years and we're like, I'm gonna die. So we're anxious, we're nervous. Our self judgment, does it go down before you go do that scary thing or does it go way, way up? For most people it goes way, way up. And they're like, oh God. Whether it's I'm going to speak up and then these people are going to laugh at me and judge me or I'm going to speak my mind and this person's going to yell at me and hate me or I'm going to ask this person out and they're going to laugh and I'm going to be humiliated. So the doubt gets really loud, we feel really uncomfortable. And then when we're in that state, maybe you pull it off and you still do it even though you're really anxious. Maybe you don't, maybe you just retreat. But either way, even if you pull it off, it probably doesn't go the way you want. You're not all suave and smooth. Maybe you're bumbly, maybe you're nervous, maybe you're making mistakes, maybe, maybe you don't give the best presentation in the world. Or maybe it's not even very good at all. We experience a setback. We experience what we would call failure. And failure means you don't get the outcome that you want in the timeframe that you want it. That's all failure means. And we're like, oh, that was a. That tasted. That didn't taste good, that didn't taste like liberation. Tasted like a poop sandwich and you'll like it. So what happens then? Well, here's where impatience is the determining factor. Because nothing has gone wrong. Might feel bad, you might not like what's happening, but nothing has gone wrong. In fact, everything is going exactly as it should because this is the process of learning. That's exactly think about anything that anyone human or animal has ever learned that's funny. Humans are animals. But you Know human or other animal, Anything that we've learned. Do you get it easily and without any training at all on the first try or the first couple tries? Absolutely not. Think about an instrument. Did someone just hand you a guitar or put you into sound, Sits you down at a piano and say, play this. And you're like, but of course, no. You don't even know how to play the keys or hold the instrument or one of those instruments with a bow, right? A violin or something. You don't even know how to run the bow across the strings. Even that is some training. Have you ever tried that? It just sounds like a screechy dying cat if you don't know what you're doing. So you have to learn. You have to make a lot of screechy dying cat sounds for a while until you figure that out. You have to make a lot of chords that don't sound good. Same thing with a sport. Someone tosses you a basketball and says, hey, throw this into the hoop. If you've done that a lot when you were a little kid, then maybe you can start to do it. You've learned. You trained then. But if you haven't, you barely know how to hold the thing. You don't even know how to throw it. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you see? I'm likening this to any other skill? And so we might know that with certain skills, although people can bring impatience to anything, any skill, learning something new, a new software on a computer, meaning you learn something for your business or your work or your company, and it's like, oh, God, I don't have to figure this thing out. Oh, this is terrible. Oh, it's so hard. And if you have a lot of doubt or fears, you won't do it. So we can bring this to anything, and we especially bring it to confidence. And so what happens is, after that first attempt, or first couple attempts that don't go the way we want, we say, oh, man. And this is where your safety police loves, loves, loves to come in. Because you got a little bit of motivation, a little bit of inspiration earlier from some of my materials or someone else's, and then you're like, I'm gonna do it. And you start to try. And then your safety police, which is the party that doesn't want you to grow, doesn't want you to take any risks, doesn't want you to leave the cage. Because as miserable as the cage is, it's safe. You're alive, at least you might die if you go into Uncertainty is what the safety police thinks. So you've taken some steps to move out of that cage, and your safety police is like, what the hell is this guy doing? Get back in the cage. You know? And now. So now you've had your first couple bad outcomes, unwanted outcomes, failures, rejections, and your safety police just, like, swoops in. And then what you'll feel is a combination of discouraged despair or hopeless discouragement. Despair or hopelessness. These are the things that you're going to start to feel. And so discourage is kind of like, oh, man, I wanted that person to say yes. Or, oh, I wanted that to go, well. Ah, man, it's like kind of a deflated, you know, kick the dirt kind of frustrated down feeling. Then there's despair or hopelessness, which is like a deep sense of, this is never gonna get better. It's not just like, oh, man, shucks, that didn't work, man. I wonder how the next time's gonna go. It's like, oh, shit, nothing's gonna work out now. And it's heavy. Can you feel the heaviness of hopelessness and despair? And it doesn't. It feel so true, Doesn't. It just feels like you feel it in your body. It's like, I'm so heavy, I lost all my energy. And your mind's like, yeah, just listen. That's how things are. You know, some people are born to do it and some people aren't. You just got to accept the fact that you're not. And it sounds like it's true, but it's just your safety police talking. But at that point, you're kind of hurting, demoralized. So you're just like, all right. And it shuffles you back into the cage, and then you don't try for months or years. Do you recognize this pattern? And this is why, my goodness, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. But if you're considering coming to live event. Ah, you got it. That's how we help shatter this whole thing once and for all. Because what I'm describing here is something that's extremely common and what I call lone wolfing it, which is when someone tries to do this all by themselves with no other human support or accountability. Now, of course, you can say, well, you're listening to my podcast or read one of my books. So there's some. There's a human. I'm here with you in a way. But I mean, like, real, live humans. That's why all my programs involve other people, live events, the mastermind program, even Confidence University involves a community of people going through the program with you and acceleration calls with the coach, group coaching calls. So it's like in this together, because lone wolfing it is hard when we're lone wolfing it. Despair and discouragement and all that kicks in. And so we can work through that with a group of people. But what you want to do is, as you're working through this, even if you're on your own here, you want to take a step back and say, what's causing all that in the first place? And it's just impatience. That's really all that it is. Because if you knew, oh, yeah, I'm going to get this, but it's going to take a while and I'm going to do this a lot. In fact, take a moment now to think about some area that you want to develop more confidence in and imagine it like learning an instrument. Just take a moment to really think about that. How long does it take to learn an instrument? How much practice you need to put in to learn an instrument? What do you think, like an hour a day for a couple of months to even get some basic proficiency with the instrument? You're not amazing at that point, but you're decent. And look, the beauty of the confidence work is you don't need to be amazing at everything. You don't need to be the best, most suave, coolest social person in the world. You don't need to be a pickup artist master. You don't need to be the greatest public speaking toastmaster champion, world, whatever titles they have for the National Speaking association or something. You just have to be like, oh, I got to be able to do this presentation. I got to be able to go over there and talk to that person to get the ball rolling. So then you know, because maybe once you know someone and are in a conversation, you can talk fine. It's just that initial dropping in is uncomfortable for you. Whatever it is, you don't need to be the best. And if some part of you is telling you you need to be the best at that, that's just perfectionism. That's just another way of fearing failure and saying, well, if I'm perfect at it, then I'll never get rejected. Just bs. You don't got to be perfect. And even if you were, people would still reject you. So you just got to be good enough. And so some basic proficiency is all you need in these key areas of social confidence, dating and relationships, career confidence. So what if you were to hold it like an instrument and imagine it like that, what kind of time frame would you give yourself? What opens up for you or expands for you if you hold it in that way, in a less immediate, demanding way and just like an instrument, what if you were willing to experience making bad sounds, mistakes, failures, messy interactions? What if instead of trying to get to your end result without having any of those, you prepared yourself mentally and emotionally to experience all those, to face all those, to say, yep, that's going to happen. I'm going to make some bad sounding chords, some notes that buzz or make a weird sound when I try to play them. It's not going to come off perfectly. And that's okay. That's not only okay. If that happens, that is a requirement of me learning this. Can you feel the shift there? Can you get a sense of how it's different for you? And what would that open up for you? Does that create more of a sense of permission to try, permission to fail, permission to learn? I think that's one of the biggest disservices that we get from our education system growing up, which is to equate failure with shame, badness, lack of intelligence, lack of effort, lack of capability, wrongness. And then we're criticized by teachers or parents, you're bad, you're lazy, you're not trying hard enough, do better. And as opposed to seeing failure as part of the learning process of actually trying to accelerate. So that's where, I mean, the whole, man, don't get me started on the school system. There's so many things that are backwards about it in terms of human development and learning. But if you think about people who are very successful in, outside of academia, outside of school and sort of bureaucratic organizations, but you look at people who are very successful in the world of say, business, they rapidly attempt things and fail and then make better iterations and fail and make better ones and fail and make better ones. You know, one of the best examples of this right now is SpaceX. You should go to YouTube and like find a documentary about space, the SpaceX program. If you haven't studied that at all, it is fascinating. And I don't know what Falcon they're on right now, they call them Falcon, Falcon Heavy, I think, is the one they're launching or just launched. Is it the 14th one? 14th or 16th? Maybe the 14th one. That means there's been 13 rockets before and not all of them have blown up. But it's amazing. The first couple rockets, they just blow up. And this isn't just like, hey, throw some baking soda and whatever Make a little rocket in your driveway with a two liter bottle. This is like the smartest people, scientists getting together with the best resources, building the best rocket they can, thinking the whole thing through, setting up the thing for months, building it in a factory, high level facility, putting this rocket together, getting it on the launch pad, setting everything up, getting all the conditions right, waiting for the wind to be everything's perfect, launch, it blows up. Like, that's just, I love the metaphor of that. What a failure, right? What a spectacular flaming wreckage of a failure, literally. And what do they do? Well, sure, they probably feel discouragement. Discouragement's okay. Discouragement is that moment of like, ugh, I didn't get the outcome I wanted. Right? What's the outcome? They want. They want that sucker to go however high up that first rocket was supposed to go. They wanted whatever their version of success was in that level one iteration, and it didn't. And I'm sure all the people involved and Elon Musk and all the engineers and all the thousands of people that are involved in that business are disappointed in that moment. They're like, ugh. And that's so natural. Like, so that person doesn't want to talk to you or you have that awkward presentation, they say no or whatever inside. It's okay to feel discouraged, like, ugh, it's a little deflating. But then be very mindful of what you do next. Do you say, oh man, our first lot rocket didn't work. Well, let's shut this whole thing down? Yep. No, just burn it. Burn the whole building. Fuck it, right? No, they know. Like, yeah, that's how it's going to work. This is how we're going to learn. So what broke it? Let's figure it out. And that's learning and failing as quickly as possible from those. Learning from those failures as quickly as possible is how we learn how we grow, not just in SpaceX, but in our own lives too. So if you want to go out and learn really quickly after that first interaction that doesn't go well, you feel a little deflated or a little discouraged. Great, go have another one that same day. Great, go have another one that same day. You can learn so much so quickly when you're willing to practice, when you're willing to play, just like any instrument. So let's turn this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step for today is a. It's a natural extension of this episode, but it's to whatever you are wanting to feel more confident in right now, in yourself and in your life, hold it as a process and imagine it's like an instrument. And maybe if you've never really done instruments, maybe a sport or something that you had to learn over time, make it personally relevant to you, but hold it like that, think of it like that. Take time to think about what your mindset is and was with that thing that you learned over time, that instrument, that sport, that whatever, what is the mindset you had? How did you bring that? How did you see setbacks, how did you see mistakes and failures and how did you respond to them? The more you can mentally become aware of that, map that out, the more you can transfer it over to this confidence developing process. So use that to focus in on what it is you want to grow and move towards. From a place of more patience, more inevitability, thinking which is like this is going to happen, it's just a matter of time. You don't need to force or jam that idea in. Just hold it, hold it lightly and just keep taking those steps, keep taking those actions and keep just watching. If you go into hopelessness and despair and just call it out, say, nope, nope, nope. That's just my safety police trying to put me back in the cage and I'm going to stay on this path and this is inevitable. This is like learning any other skill. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today and 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. 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.