The Ease And Freedom Of Authentic Relating

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 we're going to be talking about you relating authentically with others and how easy and free it can actually be. I'm really excited to share this with you. If you've experienced a lot of fear or restriction about being yourself around others, or a lot of performance anxiety and pressure to be a certain way, this is going to be extremely valuable for you and a very powerful boost in your path to becoming more confident, more socially confident, and more connected in your life. I'll be describing some very powerful ways to increase that capacity for authenticity. And first and foremost, the one I want to mention, which is not going to be for everybody, but if you're listening and it's for you, you'll know it, which is that I'm having my one and only in person event this year. It's going to be in the Portland area, Portland, Oregon, May 9th through 12th. It's called Liberate Yourself. And in that we're going to be doing a variety of practices that are all designed to help you break out of the cages of social anxiety and niceness and being who you think you're supposed to be, to really liberate yourself, to be who you fully are in the world. And one of those things is the ability to relate authentically with others. And I'm going to guide you through some practices today and how to free you up to that. But man, being immersed in an environment where you're actually going to practice this stuff is profound. It's hard for me to describe it as much as the experience transforms you. Maybe I'll give you one snippet is my last in person event. We had one experience that went kind of late into the evening where I had people in pairs and I gave them a list of profoundly deepening questions to ask each other. And it started out with people just going back and forth with some basic stuff. And about 15, 20 minutes into it. I mean, it looked like people were having conversations with, you know, that they wouldn't even have with their intimate partners. Like people were leaning in on their chairs. There was just this deep engrossment in these interactions. Why? Because you are hardwired to do this. And we're creating an environment where it becomes more and more easy to do this. So if this appeals to you, I would love to share this experience with you again. I said it's not for everybody. You got to fly out here or drive out here, depending where you are. But for those of you who are ready, nothing compares to that level of intensity of immersion in these environments. It's like visiting a different society, a different culture. The energy of the room is so different than the normal cultural field of you got to fit in, you got to look a certain way. It's truly a beautifully free space. And then that inspires you and strengthens you to go out and do it yourself in the world. So if you're drawn to that, go to my website, drazeez.coM-R-A z I z dot com. We have early bird tickets going right now for it and I highly recommend coming to that. And looking forward to meeting you perhaps in May. In the meantime, let's talk about the ease and freedom of authentic relating. First things first, what does that mean, authentic relating? And does that mean having a conversation with someone or what? Well, you might be talking to people and not necessarily authentically relating. In fact, a lot of people are talking and not authentically relating. In fact, most people, most of their interactions are not authentically relating. They're doing something else. But what are they doing? Well, you are impression managing. You're basically having an agenda in your interaction. What's the agenda? It depends upon who and what, what's going on. So you have a situation at work and you're like, well, I want this person to do that on this time. So I'm going to act in this way to get this result. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe you don't need to be authentically relating at work. You're not there to authentically relate. You're there to get a job done. Okay. You spend time with a friend and are you impression managing there? Well, maybe not in the same level of at work, but yeah, right. They ask how you're doing, what do you share? Do you represent yourself in a certain way? Who do you have to be with that friend? You gotta be the upbeat guy, the funny guy, the one you know, she's got it all together. No problems over here, right? Can you let your guard down? Can you unveil yourself? What about on a date with a romantic interest with your partner? Ooh, what's your agenda there? Maybe I don't want to know your agenda, but whatever it is, we are in sometimes many or even all of our reactions, we're not authentically relating. We're controlling. How dare I call you controlling without even knowing you? Shame on me. How presumptuous. Well, I don't know about you, but many people are controlling. Even the nicest people you would meet. In fact, nice people are. Some of the most controlling people might say, no, no, controlling people are bossy and yelling at people and telling them what to do and threatening them. I don't do that. I'm very nice. Yeah, you're just controlling them in a more subtle way. What does that mean? Well, I don't want to upset you. I don't want you to feel bad. So I'm not going to bring up this topic because I know you get upset. I'm controlling you. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. That's. That's being kind. That's being nice. Is it? Is it. Is it an issue that's important for me to bring up? I was just talking about this with someone in the relationship, and she was having a conflict with her. There's a couple things in her relationship that aren't working for her. And she stopped talking about them, though, because they would just get into a fight. Her partner, he'd get all upset, so she just stuff it. And that's being kind, right? No, it's controlling. Well, she's not controlling him. In fact, he quote one. Because she's no longer bringing up the issues. No, she's trying to control his feelings by not bringing it up. Right. She doesn't want him to get upset, so she doesn't bring it up. So she's controlling his feelings by not bringing it up. Now, is that kind. And what is that doing to her? Well, she starts to feel more resentful. She's blaming in her head, she's upset about those things, even if she tries to put it out of her mind. So she's not actively mad about it. When he comes towards her to be intimate or to connect, she's a little bit more standoffish. A little bit. I'm busy. I don't have the time. I'm stressed. I have a headache. I don't know. I just don't want to. I'm agitated inside. No, no, no. Honey, it's nothing to do with you. It's me. Is that really loving? Is that really kind? Well, this is how most people spend most of their lives and their relationships. But there is another way, and it's authentic relating. What's the difference? The difference is my. I might have an agenda. I might want something in my professional life or in my personal life, but that is secondary to my primary purpose, which is authentic relating, which could be basically summarized as to be seen and known. And when I seen, I mean, I don't mean visually seen. You could do this on the phone, right? I mean, they see into inside of me. They have a greater awareness of what is going on inside of me, underneath the surface. Right? We humans are interesting. We don't have to telegraph a lot. We can have a front. We can look like everything's calm or okay, but inside we're feeling something different. So the essence of connection is when you get to see what's happening inside for the other person. What are they thinking about? What are they feeling? What do they want? What do they not want? What do they believe about this? What's their perspective on that? What's happening inside? And if your goal is to keep the peace, is to make sure everybody's happy, is to be liked, then you cut off large portions of yourself, at least to. You don't let people see large portions of it. You might even cut them off from yourself, but you certainly don't let other people see them. And so authentic relating is not that complex. It's actually extremely. It's very easeful and very relaxing because it's not a chess game where you're trying to think three steps ahead. You just get to simply be right here in this moment. So you aren't ahead in the future. You aren't trying to predict where the conversation goes. You're right here, right now, and there's permission to share what is happening for you, what you're aware of in this moment, and to be curious and find out what the other person is experiencing in this moment. And they also might be sharing something about another moment in your life or their lives. And you might be sharing about another moment in your lives. It doesn't mean you can only talk about what's happening in the present. You might say, oh, yesterday this happened to me. Or I have this ongoing thing in my work or in my personal life. You're sharing that with a friend or someone, that's great. But you're sharing it in this moment, and they're seeing how you feel about it in this moment and what you think about it in this moment, I'd say, but what if I'm upset? What if I'm negative? Aziz, I have to be positive all the time. Okay, so now all of a sudden, you've put an artificial restriction on what is allowed to be seen and known. And look, I get it. You probably got that message when you were younger. That's how it works for most people that are nice and playing the role is, this is how I'm supposed to be, and this is, you know, everything else I cannot reveal. And my question for you is, how long have you been running that pattern? A year? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? How's it working for you? Are you lonely? Are you isolated? Is it painful? Is it frustrating? Because that's hands down what I've seen with every person that I've worked with. On this, is that. Yeah, that's the pattern. I'm running, and it hurts. And we'll keep doing something that hurts until we don't, until we want something else more. There's a lot of people that I know who might want something, but they want this more. Yes, I want to connect with others. Yes, I want a beautiful relationship. Yes, I want to grow. Yes, I want spontaneous interactions and conversations and exciting adventures and friendships and love and passion. Yes, I want all that. But. But I want to have everything be safe and familiar and in control more than I want that. So the question is, what do you really want? Because if you really, really want it, then you make a decision that says, I'm going to start to relate instead of control. And then it becomes so easy. You know, a lot of social anxiety is this is a choice to control versus relate. So there's a lot of policing of yourself of what is seen and known. And look, I'm not saying that you have no filters and you say everything to everybody. You might not share a ton at work about your authentic experience. You know, let's say you're in a meeting with somebody, and inside you're, like, judgmental of them, like, this person's an idiot. And you're feeling, you know, upset and irritation and judgment and anger. And you say, okay, in this moment, I'm imagining and thinking that you're an idiot and I hate you. Well, that's authentic, Aziz. Okay, that's. You get to control the dial. And depending upon the situation, what's your ultimate outcome at work? Is it to work well with this person? You don't have to like, everybody you work with. I mean, you know, you can say, I'm gonna be so freaking raw and real everywhere I go. And that's. And that's a different, interesting life path and phase to choose in your life. It creates its own potential challenges. So you get to choose. I'm not saying that's the best advice for you. What I am saying is you want to be able to turn down those filters in certain places of your life. So maybe based upon your work environment, you have them up, you're playing a role at work. You can't talk much about anything. What's going on. You just do your job. Okay, great. Then you get home. Are you doing the same thing with your spouse and your kids and your family and your friends and everyone that you interact with, in which case you'll know, because it's exhausting and isolating, and you'll feel pain. And you might not be aware that you're feeling pain because you're numbing it out with excessive phone use or drinking or compulsive other patterns, but just assume that those are some sort of suffering when they're happening, or there's some sort of suffering underneath. And for a lot of people, the suffering is a lack of authentic relating. And, man, life gets so beautiful when you can authentically relate with your friends. Say, how's it going? And you get to discover in the moment, how am I? Well, I'm excited about this. I'm sad about that. I'm learning about this new thing that's so cool. And you don't have to make one thing right or wrong or good or bad. It's. I'm all these things. I'm excited about this. I'm frustrated at that. It's not like, oh, oh, no, no, no, no. Don't be frustrated. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't be sad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's you doing that to you, by the way. And the more permission you have to just share both sides of it, the more free you feel, the more free you can be. And the biggest challenge I see for people is not that they're not allowed to do it, that other people don't let me do it. It's that you have so much judgment about all these different parts of you that you don't put them out there. And if you do, you imagine the other person's judging you. I'm not saying that someone. Someone might judge you for putting something out there, and that's okay, too, because my goal isn't to not be judged. That's not My goal in interactions, that's not my freaking purpose in life. To not be judged. What, what a sad purpose. And I had that as a. You can hear some frustration and passion in my voices because I lived with that as my purpose for many years. And, and it is a frickin cage. I'm not here to win your approval. I'm not here to win anyone's approval. And you might hear that and say, oh man, how callous. He must have no relationships. He must have a terrible relationship with wife. I have an extraordinary relationship with my wife and people in my world precisely because I'm not there to win Candace's approval. That's my wife, by the way. I'm there to do so much more than that, to authentically relate to her. And so what we have can be so much more real. We're not just going to play this role of nicey nice husband, nicey nice wife, and then we pretend all the way to where we don't like each other anymore. We pretend all the way until someone cheats on somebody because there's no intimacy there. That's not a win. That's, that's not what I'm here to do. Right, so what are you here to do beyond maintaining the shaky approval of other people's minds? Because that's all it is, right? Is their thinking mind is judging you this or that. What are you really here for? Which is a great transition to our action step. Time for action, action, action. The action step is to consider that question. Are you here to not be judged by others? Is that your purpose on this planet? If so, I'm sorry, I know, I know it. I've lived it. It's. You're in a cage and you may or may not be ready to exit the ca, assuming that your answer to that is no. I don't like that as my priority. I feel like I'm living that pattern, but I don't like it. Well, great, now we want to shift it. And in fact, to tie it back to the beginning when I was talking about Liberate Yourself. We had a participant at Liberate Yourself last year. We did this powerful exercise in the night of the third day. I believe I guided people through this deep process and people are having these huge breakthroughs and some people were crying and some people were laughing and it was just this big, you know, three days of immersion. And now we're on the last, you know, evening of the second to last day at like 9pm people going for 12 hours, they're, they're cracked open, let's just say. And this woman had a profound insight and she realized that her whole life, you know, her whole adult life, she'd been trying to win people's approval and play small and be nice. And she realized that I do not want to die not being known. So what I really ultimately want is not to get people like me. I really want to be known. And it wasn't just words for her. It was a whole shift in her way of being. And she, you know, she took different action as a result. Is that the purpose for you to be known and to know others? One of my purposes is to expand in my capacity to give and receive love. And you cannot receive love if you're not known, at least not by my definition. I'm here to contribute something to the world and people are going to dislike it as well as people are going to like it. You know, this is funny. Just the other day, I don't spend much time looking at reviews of things. I basically just, you know, it's more forward looking. Like I'm gonna find out what's the most valuable thing to create for people and help people. I'm gonna put it out there in the world and then I'll make something else and the book is done right. It's like, I'm not gonna go rewrite a book and some people might like it and some people won't like it. I'm gonna work on the next book. But someone was sharing something with me and I ended up on this Amazon page or Audible page for one of my books. And it was so funny. There was, I think this was for the Solution to Social Anxiety, which is the first book I wrote about 10, 10 years ago now. And there was two reviews back to back. One was a five star and one was a one star. And they were both written one day apart, same year, same month. Just one day, like May 29th and May 28th or something. And the one to five star review, this was so life changing and amazing and I saw so much about myself and I took all this action and my life so much better. Like, thank you. What a great book. And the one star. This is such awful information. It's garbage. It's rehashed stuff that's already out there. The author sucks and he's whiny and I hated it. I wish I didn't spend my credit on it. That person might not know that you can get refunds. You don't waste any money on Audible. You can get a refund. But anyway, didn't know that. And they're written a day apart. Wow. Wow. Well, if I was here to get everyone's approval and not be judged, then I couldn't put any books out there. He could rewind to Aziz from 20 years ago. He was in his room playing video games and smoking pot and watching porn and not dating. Hey, I didn't get any women to disapprove of me or judge me because I didn't talk to them. I didn't have any friends judge me for revealing much about myself because I didn't reveal much about myself. You see what I'm talking about here? What a sad, depressing existence. Something so much more is possible. Let's make it happen. Let's make it happen. So that's your action step is to decide what's really important to you in this life and in relationships. And then if you're called to authentic relating, it's going to be to practice that, to unveiling yourself, to sharing what is so in the moment. There's a lot of guidance in this show on how to do that. And if you're one of the few who's ready to take the leap, come join me in Portland and I'll show you more. We'll practice more in person. You will. You will get it on a deeper level than ever before. Thanks for being with me today. Till we speak again may 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.