12 Feb 2025 · 21 min
Dr. Aziz explores how self-doubt keeps you stuck and what actually works to break free from it. He covers the mental tricks that make social anxiety feel real, and how to stop believing them.
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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. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today I'm going to reveal something to you that I think can be quite profound. If you're ready. How do you know if you're ready and what are you going to reveal? Well, stay tuned. I'll share. But you'll know you're ready if the result of listening to this is a change in your behavior in your life. Otherwise you'll get something intellectually, you'll get an insight which will be very valuable. It'll be like a seed that's planted. So either way, you're going to benefit from listening to this episode. But I'm hoping that you are at the place where you'll take this and you'll have this aha insight. And then, boom, things start to become different in your life. And speaking of making things different in your life, if you really want to take control of the reins, we have a little bit of time left here on our super early bird for Not Nice Live 2025. It's an online virtual experience. I'm teaching it live. I'll be there at the full event. I'm teaching every segment. We have a few breakout rooms led by some of my coaches on my team. But other than 95% of the event is me there with you, teaching, guiding, leading, answering questions, sharing everything. I got the most cutting edge strategies on how to become free from the cage of niceness and ultimately free from the fear of what other people think of you, which is the root source of niceness. This fear based strategy, survival strategy that you know isn't working, never really worked. Maybe it got you through some tough times when you were young. Head down, play small, be pleasing so you don't get hurt. You know, maybe that was necessary then, but that was then and this is now and it ain't working now. So if you know that and you're with me and you want to make a change, you know the fastest Way to do that is going to be immersing yourself, investing in yourself, taking the time and the energy and the focus and saying, I'm going to do this and being around a supportive group of people and the inspiration that comes from being with me at these events live. So you can join from anywhere in the world. I'd love to be there with you. Just go to draziz.com,/a z I z.com right there on the homepage we have a link to the event and it's. You'll go straight to the. Where it's. You can learn more about it when it is. It's in March and the super early bird rate will be available right there, which is just $97. So we want to make this as accessible as possible. And you can join from anywhere in the world as long as you got Internet, which you must, if you're listening to me here. And I'm gonna be revealing what I'm talking about here in this episode at the event and making it crystal clear. But I wanna start now with you. Why wait, right? The event's like a month away. That's another month of your life that you could be tricking yourself, deceiving yourself. And that's what I wanted to highlight today in this episode is the greatest conversation deception trick that you are playing on yourself and have been playing on yourself for years, probably decades. I'm going to reveal what it is and why you've been doing it and that will help you do something different. What's the con? What's the trick? Well, there is a perception of yourself that you might have as less than not enough. Right. You know, and that could be in a variety of areas that could be, I'm not attractive enough romantically, physically, sexually. I'm not successful enough. I'm not respectable enough. Maybe I'm not magnetic, not just romantically, but in terms of friendships. Like, why would people want to talk to me or be my friend or hang out with me? Who am I? You know, I mean, I'm not the kind of person that people would want to listen to or hear stories from or pay attention to if I were giving a talk. Maybe you see yourself as like, oh, I'm a. Who am I to make something happen in the world, in my career? I'm not that kind of person. I'm just a. I can't write a book, I can't go impact this. I can't create my own business. I can't reach this level. I can't do that. Kind of work, Right. I could go on and on, but you get the feeling and the flavor of that. And I'm sure you've had that perception of yourself at times, maybe chronically in one or more areas of your life, and it. It feels true, right? And that's kind of. Yeah, that's. That's low confidence, man. That's what I'm here to fix. Tell me how to fix it. Let's go. And so people start to learn about confidence, and they come to Dr. Aziz, right? Whatever. Read about their books. There's tons of people writing about this stuff and sharing ideas and psychologists and therapists and coaches and authors and your neighbor next door and your mom. Everyone's got ideas on confidence, right? And you might come across like, ooh, I got. I got bad self talk, which I'll be talking about in our very next episode. I want to share a very powerful tool around that. Right? But bad self talk? Oh, I talk badly to myself. And, yeah, I mean, that's a huge thing. In fact, I have a mini course I give away on my website called 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. And the first step is to fire your toxic coach inside, which is what I want to get into next episode and how to coach yourself optimally. But that's huge, right? I talk to myself really poorly. And so people try to start to shift that. You know, maybe they read my book almost being on your own side, and they're like, oh, yeah, I got to stop this inner critic. And I'm talking to myself better. I'm gonna treat myself better. I'm gonna get on my own side. And they find that it's hard. Maybe you found that it's hard. It's really hard. His critical voice just wants to keep going. We're still. I kind of want to keep believing the voice. Like, I don't want to believe it, but then I do believe it, and it says, oh, it's not going to work out. And we're like, no, I shouldn't listen to you. You're the bad coach. I'm going to tell myself positive things. It is going to work out as these. You got this. No, it's not. Right? And we just believe the crappy voice in our head. And when we're trying to not believe it, but we really believe that we're kind of this incapable or unlikable or unattractive person that's a very familiar identity because that's been around for a long time. And then people get kind of trapped in that they try to talk better to themselves and then they don't quite believe it, and then they're trying harder to believe it. And so they go try to take an action in the world and they're like, this is probably not going to work out. I guess, here I go. And it's pretty lackluster. And then it doesn't really work out because we're not bringing our full selves to it. And the cycle continues because then we believe. See, I tried and it didn't work. Told you I was not capable. Told you I wasn't attractive. I could go on and on with my tales of woe from my early dating days where I would occasionally work up the courage to do that, to go ask someone out. Wouldn't work out. Told you I was unattractive, and of course you'll load it with all your insecurities and crap, right? Like I told she rejected me because I have these dark circles around my eyes. That's why it was even though that she didn't even say that. And that's not even why, right? Looking back, it's because I wasn't embodying masculine presence. I was timid. I was approval seeking. I was not boldly letting my intent be known. I was kind of more lurking in the sidelines in a friendy vibe kind of way, in a who do you want me to be pleasing shell of myself kind of way. That's what made me less attractive. Not my eyeball sockets. But I didn't know that at the time. And we don't know this at the time. And we don't know why we keep being so hard on ourselves and we keep trying to shift it. And I've met people who've done this for years. They've been in therapy and they're working on it and it's not shifting. And it's because they haven't realized the big con, the big lie, the big trick. And here's what it is, the big trick is that you are convincing yourself you're buying into this. You're playing a character. You're playing this woe is me, small, bad, incapable. And a lot of people I talk to, they kind of know it's not true, right? Like they're obviously, they've done things in their lives or people love them, but it feels like they're not good enough and not lovable and they're playing that character. And there is a very specific reason why you are and have done so and keep doing so. And part of you wants to keep playing that character all the way until you die. And it will until you change it. So wake up. Call here. Time. And the. The purpose behind this is because. And let me. Instead of telling you, let me ask you. I was just. This just came up on a call last night with someone in my mastermind. She's been doing lots of work around confidence, especially in groups and public speaking. And for the longest time, she had this identity of, like, oh, no one wants to listen to me, and I'm not the kind of person that could speak up, and, oh, I'm so nervous, and people are gonna hate me, and I'm bad, and my talking is gonna be bad, and no one can. I'm not worth it. All that stuff, right? This kind of small woe is me character. And I said, what if? And she'd been really working on it for a period of time. She's been doing more talks. She's been doing Toastmasters. She's getting clearly better at it from the practice. And yet this perception of herself isn't changing. I said, well, what if you really. Well, I cursed on the call. I no longer curse in this podcast because we don't want to mark it as explicit, but really, let's just say you really owned your stuff. You really owned yourself. Like, of course I can reach people. I'm a great speaker. I can share. My stories are fascinating and engaging. I'm an interesting human. I can hold the room. I can own the room. The more I practice, the better I'm getting. I can be really good at this. Maybe I'm really drawn to this. Maybe I'm a natural speaker and I just didn't know it. Like, if you really started to take on that identity of, like, everybody, listen to me. I got something to say. And she had this big smile on her face. Of course she wants that, right? I said, what then? And she said that, well, then I would do it a lot more. And that makes me feel really nervous. Right? And this is not just her. This is you. This is me. This is all of us. So back to lonely Aziz era. Not dating anyone. I'm a loser. No one's gonna want to talk to me because of my bad eyeball sockets. And let's say I believed I'm a deadly handsome man. Of course women want to be around me. Of course I have so much to offer in dating and relationship. Yeah, a woman's gonna be lucky to be with me. I'm funny, I'm interesting, I'm charming. I'm kind of. I'm a great Guy, let's say I really believe that. What would I go do? You could probably fill in the gap, right? I would go talk to women more. I'd ask them out. And I say, well, yeah, that's great. That's confidence. Why wouldn't you go? Why would you not want that? Why would you be afraid of that? Well, now we're getting to the real question, right? Because it's out of control. That's it. It's just uncertainty. You don't know, you know what's gonna happen in your small woe is me. I'm not worth talking to, and no one's gonna like me. Identity, it's safe, quote, unquote. It's not really safe, but it feels safe because it's familiar. There's lack of uncertainty, unpredictability. It feels more stable, which it is, until it isn't. It's stable until you get laid off. It's stable until your partner leaves you because you weren't showing up fully as yourself, right? And then people are like, where did this come from? Oh, my God. It was because they were avoiding for decades in their life. But it has the illusion of stability and permanence and the other path. Walking into the room, this client I was telling you about, and she feels like, hey, I can give a great talk here. And she stands up and she speaks up. Someone might dislike her talk. Whether they tell her or not, someone might dislike you not because you did poorly, but because you did well. There's a thing in humans, it's called envy, right? Or someone's sense of significance or personal importance, or their ego gets challenged, and they don't like that. This person did better than me. This person is more, you know, liked than me. I do not like them. And that will happen whether they tell you or not. If you were to put yourself out there in a bigger way in the world, you will get rejections, you'll get judged, you'll get negative comments, whatever it is. This is the biggest thing that holds people back from sharing that. You know, they want to start a business, they want to put their videos out there. They want to do something on social media. They want to write or create something in the world. And it's like, who am I? I'm a nobody. Nothing. My stuff's not good enough. That. The big thing I want you to take from this episode is that whole thing is not even real. It's a drama. It's a character that you play to avoid the risk and the uncertainty of doing the thing in the world that the full, alive, fully authentic version of you would be doing in the world. Does that make sense? Do you follow me on that one? Because when you really see that it's not real, it changes the way that you relate to it. I'm not saying all your insecurities just instantly evaporate. That voice still keeps going and telling you it's not going to work. It's not enough, but it doesn't stop you. In the same way that that voice has been in my head my whole life, at least as, you know, maybe since certain age in childhood, as far back as I can remember. And it still tells me things in my head to this day. And I'm like, okay, yeah, we're going to go create this next thing. We're gonna go off for this event. We're gonna go write this next book. We're gonna go share. We're gonna work with this client. We're gonna help these people. We're gonna do this thing. We're do that. We're gonna do that. And each time it's like, yeah, but you're not enough. You're not good enough to do that. It's not gonna work out. You suck. Like, okay, well. And what I do, what I've done to help myself with that is a little shorthand to remind myself is my sense of worthiness or enoughness is irrelevant. It's irrelevant. So whether I feel like I'm enough today or I don't feel like I'm enough today, I just don't give it much credence. Obviously, it feels better when you feel like I'm the man. Yeah. But I know that stepping into a bigger uncertainty in life, taking things on that I've never done before, I can bump into. I don't know. I don't know if I'll do this. I don't know if I'll pull it off. Maybe I'll make a mistake. Maybe I'll fail. And the way I have to work around that is, well, if I fail the first time, I'll learn something and I'll try again, and I'll learn something, and I'll try again. So there's an inevitability to it. But that all comes from not buying into this big drama character. So I want to make that distinction. It's like you don't ever feel it. It's that it doesn't absorb you. It's like you can have emotions about a sitcom. Well, no. Do people call them sitcoms anymore? You know, a show you're Watching on Netflix, a multimedia experience. You can have feelings about the characters, can't you? Oh, I like him. Oh, why did he do that? Oh, she's this. You know, you're sitting there on your drive to work, and you're emotional, thinking about and feeling about these people, but they're not real. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, it's entertainment. It passes time. It's questionable if that's how you want to pass your time, especially if you're thinking about outside of the show. But that's. I'll leave that up to you in any case, though, you know, on some level, hey, look, this isn't real. I get to work, and who cares what that character said to that character in the show? And you put it aside. Boom. Now you're focused at work, or now you're with your family or whatever, right? You just kind of fill idle time with that nonsense. Well, it's the same thing with enoughness. So you're driving to work and you're like, am I enough to give this presentation today? Oh. Oh, you could be like, oh, yeah, I'm thinking about. You know. And my TV show watching is kind of limited and out of date, but I did watch some of the House of the Dragon show, right? Trying to remember the names of the characters. I don't remember the names of. There's generally Lannisters and Tyrells and whatnots. What was the name of the main house? The dragonfolk tyger. Yeah. DI Darius Daren. I don't even know. It's been a little while anyway. But, you know, like, what did the Princess Targaryen say her to her brother, who she's having sex with. That's weird. This show is crazy, right? And you're into that, and you know it's not real. You can hold the same level of, I don't know, lightness, frivolity, insignificance to am I enough to give this presentation or not? So it's going in the background. You say, oh, yeah, yeah. Am I enough? Yes, I'm enough. No, I'm not enough. Okay, whatever. It's irrelevant. What's relevant is what you do. That's what's relevant. So if you show up and you give the presentation, that's what matters now. The believing in the false story will prevent most people from doing the very thing that's going to set them free, which is to repeatedly take the action. So when you really get this, Remember I said at the beginning of this episode, if you get this, beyond intellect and Actually get it in your core. It will lead you to do something different today because you won't be so sucked into that story. So speaking of that, let's talk about your action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step today is to determine if and pick an area of your life that you maybe believe in. The not enough woe is me, I'm a small, incapable person story. Right. Maybe it's globally, but often for people, it's the most pronounced in a certain area, like at work or in love or socially. And then say, okay, if I believed the opposite, if I believed, you know, let's say you believe I'm unattractive and no one's gonna want to be with you. Let's say I believe I'm awesome and anyone would be lucky to have me as a date or a friend or a partner or whatever. What would I do? Specifically today, this week, what would I do? And right there, well, that's your roadmap. And if you just do those things, not only will you get results in your life, but your confidence will excel because you're. Your belief in that story of I'm not enough is only preserved when you buy into it. And as a result, you never defy it. So when you start defying it, everything changes. So I hope this supports you. If you want to go further, get the energy and juice of being together in a virtual event and experience these changes real time in your life. Accelerate things. I would love to spend that time with you. You can get your ticket@drzeez.com and I regardless whether it's at the event or in these episodes, I appreciate the opportunity to be with you and to share, and I hope this serves you in your life. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I 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 doctor if you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.
