The Life Transforming Power of Consistency

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 today's episode of the show. Let's talk about consistency, the life changing power of consistency. Because I'm gonna suggest in this episode that in order to have what you want, create more of what you want, become more of who you want to be, be more free, be more expressive, be more confident, and then create those things in your life that you want from that confident place that all of that is gonna be is gonna come out of more consistency. Consistency is your friend. Consistency is gonna serve you, it's gonna benefit you. It's a skill or quality that is worth cultivating, worth building. It's a habit that's worth investing in and creating. And so my goal in you listening to this and us being here together today is for you to leave here with an inspiration to be more consistent in one or more key areas of your life and then to actually carry that out through action and be consistent in these areas because that's gonna be what gets the results. We have this fantasy of quick results, of instant results. We have this fantasy of inborn talent that makes people magic and special. And generally we view ourselves as not having those magical qualities. And then we have a story and a reason and excuse as to why we don't have the results that we want and why it's not fair and why we can't. And maybe some self pity in there or some frustration or, or jealousy or envy or anger or upset, whatever it is, it's not pleasant, it's an unpleasant cocktail. And none of that's true. And so whatever you put upon someone else that maybe has what you want or is able to act in a way that you want to be or able to create something in their life that you want to create and you say, ah, man, it must be their, must be their nice hair, their wavy hair, My hair is stringy. They have wavy hair. Ah, you know, it's their whatever. They got connections. They were born into a Family with money and connections. It's not right. Or some vague sense of like, they're just better than me. I'm just not that kind of caliber of human right. And none of that is true. Like, let's look at what's in your control. Let's look at what you can work on. Let's look at consistency, because I would suggest that anything that you consistently do over time can produce tremendous results. And we all know this from the metaphor of, say, compound interest and investing, where if you put money in and it builds interest over time, you get more and more money over time. That's really how consistency works. So where are you consistent right now? Is there an area of your life that you tend to be generally pretty consistent in how you show up and what you do? Is an area coming to mind for you? And maybe it's totally unrelated to social confidence or any of the curious you're coming to this show for? Maybe it's something else. Maybe you're consistent. Maybe you're consistent in the way that you show up to your workplace and the work that you do and the technical work that you do. Maybe it's something else. But what kind of results are you getting? What is the overall effect of that consistency? And then where's an area in your life where you're not as consistent, where you're kind of spits and starts, you sputter, start. You're, ah, no, no, I want it. No, no, no. But it's hard. And you're kind of on that fence around it and struggling with it and notice what the effects are or the results are in that area of your life. So the question I have for you is where would it benefit you to be more consistent? What's your sense? What's your guess? And I think people often underestimate the duration of the consistency. So at my lab events, we will have people have opportunities to be able to go out into the world and practice interacting with people and depending on the theme or the focus of the event, like at our Supremely Confident Conversation Master event, where it's all about helping people become very confident in conversations, as deep conversationalists, superficial conversationalists, connecting authentic conversationalists, whatever is needed in the situation, how to bring all of you to that and do it skillfully as well as being yourself and really removing the fears and the walls that we put up around connection. And as part of that event, people go out into the world and interact with people and practice having conversations and maybe even start conversations with strangers, that sort of thing. And at other events, we do other things. Dating, relationship, event. We go out there and experiment with that side of things. So what happens is people come to an event and there's a lot of things that we do there in addition to this. But we're just going to focus on this one aspect. And they go out in the world and they usually have a significant experience. They learn a lot in a very short period of time. And sometimes it's very exciting, sometimes it's challenging, sometimes it's liberating, whatever it is. And they say, that was amazing. Wow. I did things I'd never done before. We hear that all the time. Like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I didn't talk to that person. I went approach those people. I was, ah, it was so crazy. It was great. And then they go home. Yeah, that was amazing. That was so cool how they felt there. Yeah. And then a couple weeks go by and a month goes by, and they haven't gone out and approached anyone anymore. And they're like, wow, geez. See, that didn't work. I am really messed up. You know, contrast that with someone. So we also have an ongoing group program that. It's called the Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind. And people in that program were continually meeting over phone calls and zoom calls and support in each other's lives, in addition to going to the weekends and other things, too, the live events. So there was a. I'll just give you one example from that group. There's a man in that group named John who came to an event, and it was the Conversation Master event. And after he left, he said, you know, Mazeez teaches this thing called Friendly Greetings, where you walk down a street, there's people on the sidewalk, and you say hi to half a dozen people or a dozen people. He's like, you know what? I'm gonna do that. I walk in the evening around my neighborhood, and I can go to a pretty busy street if I want, about 10 minutes from my house. So I'm just gonna walk four or five nights a week, and I'll say hi to 10, 15 people when I do that. And so he did. And he didn't just do it once. He did it pretty much every weekday. Right. Four or five days a week, 10, 15 people every evening. Like clockwork. Again and again and again and again and again and again. And in a relatively short period of time, he said, you know, I lost my fear of interacting with people. And then I started. As I started, I realized, well, it's actually not that hard to approach people and start conversations with them. So he started to do more of that and then he just progressed his way up from there again and again and again and again. And just think about, like, forget, is he worthy? Is he good looking, is he smart, is he witty, Is he any of these things that we try to say is the reason why we're not getting the result that we want, you know, some evaluation of ourselves, and you just look at what he's doing. Do you see the effect of that over time? Right. And sometimes it's helpful to put a metaphor of physical fitness, because we kind of get this with physical fitness, like take the gym. Let's say you had someone who wanted to get stronger, and so you said, okay, great, you're gonna go to the gym four days a week and you're gonna work out these different muscle groups and you're gonna, you know, start small, we're not gonna blow you out of the water. And you're gonna progressively add and strengthen those muscle groups over time. And that person showed up for four days a week, followed the program, slowly increased the load on their muscles over time as they could handle it for six months. Would that person have stronger all the muscles working, stronger legs, stronger back, stronger abs, stronger chest, stronger everything? Yeah, they would, right? It's sort of obvious. Are they worthy of that? Are they a good enough person to have stronger biceps? Are they lovable enough to have stronger glutes? You know, it's absurd. It's just you show up and you do the thing and the result comes in time. And what we don't realize is the same is true for social fitness is the case in John's case. The same is true in dating and relationship confidence. In fact, that was an area that he was wanting to work on, and he wanted to work on it and also avoided it some. And that's the beauty of the group as well, is you can't avoid things for too long. So he kept on bringing it up and saying, hey, weren't you interested in dating? And he's like, yes, but so now what he's doing, I'm proud to announce. And John, if you're listening, you're the man. He said, you know what? I'm going to take the same consistency approach to that. So he works. Where he works is actually near downtown Portland. And he says, you know what, once a day there's this big kind of plaza near where I work, and I'm going to take 10 minutes a day and just walk out on that plaza and Find one woman that I'm attracted to that I can start a conversation with. I don't need to ask her out. I don't need to make anything happen. I'm just gonna start a conversation with a woman I'm attracted to once a day, during every work day, five days a week. And that's what he's doing now. Now, what effect do you think that's gonna have in three weeks? That's 15 conversations. What about in two months? Do you think that that's gonna have an effect when he's at a dinner party and he sees someone he's attracted to or when he's somewhere? I mean, he wants to date online? Like, do you see how it generalizes? So just by putting himself in that practice. And again, consistency is the key. So where do you want to be more consistent? Where would it benefit you to be more consistent in your life? When I want to make major progress on a book that I'm working on. You know, I have a lot of other things going on in this business, so I love writing, but it tends to sometimes get pushed to the side. And when I say, you know what? Enough is enough, I want to make more progress on this book. I feel like I have a lot that I need to put out there into the book, but there's no space for it. What do I do? I say, you know what? The first hour of every workday, I'm gonna be working on that book. We make a clear decision. And so there's this model I learned from Brian Johnson, who has created this amazing resource called Optimize Me, and it's about how to optimize your life. You can look him up online, Brian Johnson, but he talks about this model of that there's two banks of a river, and on one bank is structure, and on one bank is spontaneity. And if we're in this river and we go too far towards either bank of the river, either side of the river, we get run into problems. So if you go too far towards spontaneity, then you don't have any plans. You don't have any accountability. You just do whatever you feel like. And you're like, I don't feel like working today. So you don't work today. And then I don't feel like working the next day, and then you don't work. I feel like getting drunk. And then you do. And then you, you know, maybe you fall short on your responsibilities. You don't follow through. There's some downsides of having no structure, right? And then on the flip side, though, if you get too much structure, you get rigidity. Too much spontaneity is kind of chaos. Too much structure is rigidity. And I definitely know this from my perfectionistic background is like, we're gonna do this every day for 17 minutes. And it becomes actually oppressive to have that. So the key is actually to say, you know what? Because consistency, where does that fall? Is consistency more about spontaneity or about structure? That's right, it's more about structure. So what you want to do is you want to look at an area where maybe you're being a little too spontaneous, a little too loosey goosey, and say, you know what? This one area, I want to become more spontaneous, more structured in not everything, all of my life, all at once, because good luck. I mean, you'll. You'll put up some loose attempt at structure and it'll just all crumble like a house of cards. What we need to do is just create one thing and start to build on that. So one example from my own life recently was I had a period of hyper structure on the gym for a couple years. I was working with a personal trainer and doing these semi private training sessions. And it was, you know, I committed to be at the gym this many days a week at this time. And for the most part, I was very consistent with it. And then I got to a point where I was like, too much structure. I need freedom. So I found a gym closer to my house, stopped the training. I was like, I learned how to do everything, all the different exercises with good form and everything, which I love. It was an amazing education and how to use my body and lift weights. And then I really was loving the freedom of it. And then what ended up happening, though, is when I got to the gym, I would work out hard and I'd do a variety of things. And I really liked that kind of spontaneous aspect of it. But the problem was my consistency in getting to the gym, especially as we got puppies. And then there was more up at night and it was like, ah, I just want to sleep in this morning. Ah, I don't want to. I don't feel like. I feel tired. I don't feel like going to the gym today. And then I wouldn't. So then it was down from, you know, four, five days a week to three days a week. And then sometimes I go once in a week. And I was like, you know, I know where this heads, and this is not towards strength and sustaining strength and growing strength. So I made A decision. I said, you know what, for this month, I'm going to go to the gym Monday through Friday, every day, every weekday for the four weeks of this month, no matter what, no matter if I didn't get as much sleep or I stayed up late talking to Candice or whatever, it doesn't matter, I'm going to do that. And I might be a little more tired on some days and I set the structure in place and then when I get there I can have a little more spontaneity because I still love to. I don't want to do like the thing where you have your clipboard and this is exactly what I'm going to work out. I'm going to record all the weights. I did that for two years and I'm like, bleh, I still need to just get in there and just fucking use my body and it feels really good. So just get me in there and I'll do my thing. But getting to the gym was where I needed the structure and that's the consistency, right? So just for fun, I said, you know what, let's look at a before and after from the beginning of this month to the end of this month. Just for me to see the power of consistency. And that's one of the things I learned from my trainer Josh, which was it's not about getting in there and just pushing it really hard and trying to always, you know, do better and lift more and max out and all this shit, which I always try to do. Perfectionism, baby. And it was more like just get into the gym and if you have less energy that day, don't push it, you know. And one of his things, he'd always tell me was like, leave gas in the tank. You don't need to leave the gym every day feeling like just blasted, like just, you know. And I honestly don't know if I fully got it until I stopped going there. Isn't that how it works sometimes with a teacher? They keep trying to tell you something, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally shut up, I'm do it my way, you know, and then I left there and I was like, wait a minute, he had some good ideas. They really start to sink in. I've seen that a lot with different teachers of mine. Maybe it's my own thick headedness or something, I don't know. But in any case, going to the gym and not pushing it so hard, but really focusing on just getting in there consistently, that's where the changes are going to occur. Same thing for a Social fitness. It's not like you got to get out on a weekend and talk to 20 people or you got to make 75 cold calls. You go to this networking event, just crush it. You know, that's so much pressure and so intense. Why not? Instead of trying to crush it at this networking event, why not consistently go to one or two networking events in your town every week like clockwork, for the next six weeks or more? Right. Why not? Send. I was doing this too, actually. I was, like, wanting to reach out and network more via email and connect with people and talk with them on the phone and stuff. And I had this, like, block on my calendar to do that. And I just kept on avoiding it. I didn't want to do it. And then someone on my team was like, hey, Aziza, what if you just did, like, one email a day and it wasn't such a big thing? You just reached out to one person a day that you liked or wanted to connect with or inspired by? I was like, yeah, I like that. So do you see how it's, like, a small thing, but it's consistent? And look at that. By the end of a couple weeks, I got 14, well doing every workday. Then, you know, 10 to two weeks, I got 10 people that I've started contact with, and it took a couple minutes a day. So where do you want more consistency? Where could you benefit from more consistency in your own life? That's the question I have for you. That's the question that we started with, and that's the question I want to come back to. What's coming to mind for you, and then what gets in the way? Right? So maybe you have the thing that you want to focus on and be more consistent with, but then, ooh, right, Something comes up or it's hard or it's uncomfortable, or you don't like it or you fight it or something. So what is it for you, this thing that you want to be more consistent on? What do you anticipate? Some of the best things we can do for ourselves when we're setting a trajectory or a direction is to anticipate the problems that are going to happen down that path and plan in advance how you might deal with them. And this prevents you from getting stopped up. When I was training in addiction therapy back in my clinical psychology days, that was one of the things you do is, like, you know, when somebody was working in a rehab facility, and, like, you kind of put people in different situations, like, okay, you're back home out of this contained environment where we're doing drug tests on you and stuff, and you're back home. Like, what do you do in this scenario? Where are you gonna go? You know, how are you gonna get from here, this house to that house? Who's gonna be there? And like, put them in the situations so that they can really have a plan. Because otherwise the momentum of that old pattern, that old habit would just kick in. The next thing you know, they're using again and they'll be back in the rehab center again. So what is it for you? What are the things that are gonna come up? And I notice one of the ones for me around, you know, I'm go to the gym, no matter what is the night where I get short sleep. Then there's like, oh, but I need to sleep in. I gotta get my sleep or else I'm gonna, you know. And my solution for that was like, you know what? I'll get more sleep the next night. Or really it's not that short of sleep. And I had a period in my life where I was doing polyphasic sleep for a couple months where I got like four hours a night. So everything's fine if I get a little shorter on sleep a few nights here and there. So just kind of coming up with. And sometimes the obstacles are external, but oftentimes they're internal. So let's say you're like, you know what? I would feel better if I consistently didn't drink caffeine. I know several people in my life right now that are trying to do that. And so it's day four and you've made it through some of the more intense withdrawals, or it's a week in and then you're at that. You walk by that place that you like to get your coffee before. What do you do? You want to anticipate these situations and you really want to not just anticipate the. Literally what do you do? But you actually want to go into the feelings that are going to arise in that moment, that craving that you're going to feel to either get the pleasurable thing, or, you know, the craving you're going to feel to avoid the discomfort. It's all about discomfort, what we're talking about right now, because either, you know, the craving is uncomfortable and you feel like, I need to get the thing or do the thing in order to feel relief. And that's comfort. And to not act on it is discomfort. Or the going to the gym, for example, doing the thing is uncomfortable to get up, going out of your house and saying hi to 10 people on a Thursday at 6pm after you get done with work, maybe is uncomfortable, maybe it's intensely uncomfortable, or maybe you're just mildly uncomfortable. But we'll avoid things whether they're intensely uncomfortable or mildly uncomfortable. It doesn't matter, just like, ah, I just don't feel like it. So get clear on what it is that you do want and what you will do when that resistance and discomfort arises. Because what's on the other side of that if you do stick with it? What happens? What happens if you do go to the gym every day for a month and then you extend that? What happens if you do say hi to 10 people a day for five days a week for a month? What opens up socially? I could go on and on about John's story, about how it changed him at work, how he became more social at work, how he feels like he can talk to anybody. And this is a guy who for much of his life was thought out like, I'm not a people person, I don't interact with others. Like, what could it open up in your life? What could it open up in your business if you consistently did one thing a day? In fact, one of my mentors I was talking with recently had this beautiful hourglass on his table at his house, and it's a five minute hourglass. And he said, you know, I was thinking to myself, what's a habit that I could do for five minutes a day while that hourglass is running that would significantly improve my life? And you know what he picked? His habit was to spend five minutes looking at his financials, bank, credit card, taxes, whatever, something with financials, five minutes a day. And he said, it's been extremely helpful to do that. And he's done it for about three or four months at the time I was talking to him about it. So these small incremental things create greater and greater results, compounding interest, a sense of more and more gains over time. The more you just put that thing in, even if you don't feel like it that day, even if it's hard that day, even if it's uncomfortable that day, put in the time, put in the little drip and watch what flourishes. So that brings us to our action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step for today is to pick that thing that you want to be more consistent in and start, start doing what is, what is the structure that you're gonna set up for yourself. Like, you know, my mentor Brad was like, I'm gonna do five minutes a day on my financials and I have this hourglass timer that I'm used. That's the structure. I said I'm going to go to the gym every weekday no matter what, Monday through Friday for this month. That's the structure. John said, I'm going to go say hi, I'm going to go on a walk and do friendly greetings. I don't know if he had a number of people he was going to talk to or I was just like I'm going to say hi to pretty much everyone for my 20 minute walk or whatever, whatever it is. But you know, this many days a week, every day after work, what is that for you? And I'm just giving a few different examples, but it could be in any area of your life. Business, your health, relationships, dating, social. It could be a thing you want to do around being on your own side and the way you treat yourself and self esteem, it doesn't matter, I don't care what area. But pick one thing and the way you know it's the thing to pick. It's what is it either what inspires you most, where is there the most natural energy, which is great because you can just capitalize that and build on other stuff later, or where is the one where you're like that would benefit me the most, maybe I don't really want to or but man, that would be good for me because then you can start with that too. Because then man, when you get on the other side of that, you get some momentum with that consistency, it'll feel so good. Awesome. So thanks for being with me today. 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 Social Confidence center dot com.