The Magic Ingredient For Self-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 gonna 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 Shrink for the Shy Guy. Today we're gonna be talking about the magic ingredient for self confidence and its key counterintuitive. It's not exactly what you think, so I'm excited to share it with you. Reveal the secrets here at the beginning of 2025. Welcome, by the way, to the new year. And if you haven't listened to the last episode, claim confidence in 2025, I would highly recommend that you do both of those things. Listen to the episode and claim confidence in 2025. Claim yourself, claim your life, claim what you want to create. And if you listen to the episode, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you missed it, check it out and then come back to this one. This one is. It's surprising to people. It's so simple. And that's why I think a lot of people overlook it and try for more elaborate approaches. And it's also, even though it's simple to get and honestly, simple to do, it can be uncomfortable to do. It can be different than what you're familiar with, and so you might avoid it. That's why I want to bring your attention to it so you can start practicing it. Because after all, it is the magic ingredient for self confidence. So what is this magic ingredient? Let's not draw it out any longer than that. Let's cut to the chase. It doesn't involve yourself at all. It involves other people. What is that ingredient? It is sharing, specifically being seen and known as you are right now. That's what I mean by sharing. Sometimes people hear the word sharing and they mean, like, where I live and you know what my favorite color is. Nothing wrong with sharing that stuff. But that's not going to be a magic ingredient for your confidence. What's going to be a magic ingredient for your confidence is letting yourself be seen and known as you are right now. Truthfully, another way to say that that I'VE got for my wife in her workshops, she used to teach, she would call it unveiling yourself. And you might say, what does that mean, unveiling myself? I don't know, I just talk to people and stuff. Okay, well, we can probably help you increase your sensory acuity there, your perception of what's going on. Because the more intelligence you have, the more you can see what's going on. So if you have a higher social intelligence, you can see what's happening between groups of people. If you have a higher mechanical intelligence. I was just talking about this in the last episode about some pumps breaking in our water and heating system at home. And I go down to the utility room and there's like bunch of different tanks and this, you know, they got a geothermal system they put in. It's so overly complicated. And I look at it, I'm like, yep, that's some pipes and tubes and stuff. Whereas the previous owner, who is an airline mechanic by the way, by trade, he not only understands the whole system, he freaking worked on it and installed a radiant floor heating himself, right? So he looks at that and he's like, oh yeah, your load flow controller pumps and then this and that. And then look at those valves. And simple to flick that valve and turn this off and you switch the water flow from that water heater to this. And I'm like, what? What's a flow valve? Right? So I don't know what the hell's going on now. So when you say I'm just sharing, man, I don't know what you're talking about. That's like me looking at this big system and not knowing what's going on. But if you get better at it, you can start to study it more. And this is exactly what I do with people at my events, which we have some events, exciting stuff coming up for 2025. If you've not gone to doctoraziz.com you should go there now. In fact, I'm going to go there right now just as the same time as you do to see, I believe we have at least our first event up. Yes. Oh, we got our second one up too. Okay, so we got not nice live coming March 14th through 16th, 2025 at you. That's going to be virtual. We also are going to have supremely confident conversation master. You're going to love that one. Also virtual, that's going to be in June. Specific dates to be announced. So if you want to find out more about that or get on my email list to get special discounts to come to the event. Super early bird price, all that good stuff. Go to drz.com d r a z I z.com and while you're there, if you haven't already signed up for my mini course, it's free. It's called Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. Just go to the homepage and scroll down a tiny bit and you'll see it. And of course, if you want to, you know, check out more on the site, we've got more resources you can apply for My Mastermind. All kinds of good stuff there in any case at the event, specifically all my events. But specifically a conversation master event. You learn a lot more nuance about sharing and I'm going to break some of the key things down for you. Especially in the Mastermind. People are practicing this. We have some in person opportunities for the Mastermind this year and people can go really deep with practicing this. What's the this? Well, without knowing it, most people are not sharing very effectively. They're not unveiling themselves. They're talking, that's true. But they're not creating real connection or deeper connection or true intimacy. And just to clarify, people hear the word intimacy and sometimes they think they mean. You mean sex? No, no. Intimacy is a form of closeness. And you can have intimacy, but with anyone. You could have intimacy with your grandma. Now don't before you get upset with me. I don't mean sex. I mean intimacy is exactly what I'm describing when I say unveiling yourself, being seen and known as you are. Intimacy, as cheesy as it is, but it's a helpful way to remember it, as Greg Barnes would say. He was an addiction counselor in one of the places I did my training at the Homeless Federation, Homeless Veterans Rehabilitation Project, HVRP in Palo Alto. That was associated with one of the VA Veterans affairs offices there or compounds there where they had a bunch of medical treatment. They had this live in drug facility that I did a year training at during my doctorate training. Anyway, Greg Barnes was an addiction counselor there and his way of describing intimacy was into See Me. Yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good. I mean he's using this with like dudes who've been and out in prison and stuff. Right. So Greg, Greg knows what's up. He could hold his own. Anyway, intimacy into See Me. That's what we're talking about. And most people are not letting people see into them. They're not creating that intimacy even though they're talking at each other. And look, this doesn't I don't mean, hey, how's the weather today? Oh, it's great. How's your golf game going? Oh, it's pretty good, Harold. Right, that's obvious. It's superficial, but people can not have that much intimacy, even with close friends, with family. Honestly, people cannot have that much intimacy, even with their. Their intimate partner, quote, unquote, intimate partner at that point, because then it's just you're some kind of partner, your. Your roommate that you might call your girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, but that's just a label. That's just a title. The intimacy has left the building. Possibly. I'm not saying that's the case for you, but can be. It's very common. So we can be in all these relationships without the intimacy, and that's well, sucky. But it's also safer or more familiar for a lot of people because they didn't grow up with much of it. There wasn't much intimacy in their home growing up. People weren't being authentic. They weren't sharing what was really happening in the moment. And so doing so can feel very scary, out of control, unfamiliar, dangerous even. I don't know what's gonna happen if I do that. And the big boogeyman there is that people aren't gonna like me. They're gonna reject me, they're gonna hate me, they're gonna deceive the real me, and they're not gonna love me anymore. That's the fear underneath that causes us to block, veil, dodge, hide, pretend. Be something that we're not, represent something that's not really true. And on and on. All the different strategies are coming out of that fear that I'm not going to be liked, I'm not going to be loved, I'm going to be abandoned, I'm going to be left out, excluded, hurt. So we avoid intimacy and we say, well, maybe I'll just, you know, stay around and be close and say what you want me to say. And then we'll. We'll keep this thing going. We'll keep this ship sailing, this relationship. And look, that's a. That's a path that many people take, but that's probably not the path that you want to take, not if you're here. In fact, what I found is the people that are gravitate towards me listening to this podcast, come to my events, join the mastermind, work with me. As clients, they hunger for more intimacy, more connection. And so the social anxiety that's blocking the connection, creating the fear is even more painful. And I Think I gravitate people like that towards me because that's what I am all about. That's what I hunger for. That's what I need in my life. And what I discovered is that this is a magic ingredient of confidence is being able to share at that level. And that might seem like that's an interpersonal thing that. That doesn't have much to do with self confidence, but actually it has everything to do with self confidence because it first and foremost starts with you having the courage to share who you really are with people. Right? So that takes confidence, but it also builds confidence. Let me give you some examples so you can really see what I mean here. I struggled with self confidence for many years, and you probably know some of my story. Listen to any of these episodes. But dating was a huge one for me. Dating relationships. And so I didn't date. I had. I was in the cage of social anxiety. Avoided opportunities, avoided approaching, just avoided women basically, and shockingly, didn't have much date opportunities at that time of my life. Then I learned to be bold and to approach and how to do it to be the most attractive man possible. So it was more effective than hiding. And I sort of played a role of this kind of cocky, funny guy a la David d', Angelo, if you know what that phrase means. It's a dude who taught dating advice back in the 2000s, back in the day. And it was very helpful. Got me out of my cage. It had me learn a bit about flirting and playing roles with women where you kind of play different. I talk about this in a course inside of Confidence University. It's called Dating Mastery. There it is still. So it got in my brain and in there. But I talk about, you know, ways to flirt. I didn't know any of that stuff. And so just a quick little teaser example that might be like you. You play like you're a character with her. So she does. You're out and about in public and she does something, she makes a mistake or does something silly or drops something. And instead of being, you know, Mr. Goody Two Shoes, who's like, oh, you dropped your purse. Let me get it for you, m'. Lady. And you hustle down to the ground and pick it up and get on one knee and give it to her, thinking that that's gonna make her say, wow, what a nice guy. Counterintuitive. That much kind of pleasing energy actually repels her. So instead she drops her purse. And you play a character of being like the exasperated older brother or something like that. Right. See she drops her purse and you go, you kind of scoff and roll your eyes and it's over the top. It's clearly, I mean, if you, if you make it too sarcastic and dry and she thinks you're, you really are like criticizing her for making a mistake, that she's not going to go well, right? So you got to do it playful. In fact, David d' Angelo called this, you know, cocky, funny or play mean. Playful and cocky, right? So you're, you're playing this kind of jerky guy a little bit. And then she laughs. And it's, it's little things like that that I learned from, that were actually very effective. Um, but he said certain things too. He being David d', Angelo, that, that really disturbed my poor self esteem mind, which was in every moment you're either building or destroying attraction. Dun dun, dun dun. So I'm like, oh shoot, I better always be building it because I can't naturally be attractive, right? So I was constantly, anxiously trying to build, attract and playing a role more and more and more. And so that might work in initial dates and stuff, but then what if you're actually like get a girlfriend. Which I did. You kind of don't know what to do with yourself. You get a little spazzy, a little weird, and now you gotta hide who you really are. You can't just unveil yourself in the moment. Because I was really convinced that just me, hey, that didn't work for whatever 20 years. No one liked that Aziz that he's not women. So I gotta hide that guy, gotta put him in a closet, lock the door, and then play this other character. Turns out that's not true. I mean, I could, I sure could lose some of the pleasing energy that was helpful. But a lot of me was great. The non pleasing Aziz just Aziz, he's awesome. Now that I know that too. But then I didn't. And so my relationships were short lived. I couldn't let women get really, that close to me. I'd have to leave, break up, right? Because I couldn't really just let my guard down and be myself. Until I met Candace, who's currently my wife. And I made a commitment as I started to get to know her. In fact, I met her through workshops. She was teaching about authenticity and authentic relating and honesty. And as I started to date her, it was like, I'm gonna do this very differently than any other woman I've been with. It's very much like the movie Hitch if you've seen it. Although I don't think I was successful. As successful with women as Hitch was in the movie. So more like, you know, if Hitch was a. A level major league player, I was more in like the minors maybe, Maybe more like the guy who could do okay at the basketball court down the street. But I was still playing basketball, still doing okay in any case. Then I met Candace. I was like, I'm going to do this very differently. And so I'm going to practice unveiling myself. And what did that mean? Well, that meant that when we were hanging out and we were talking, instead of what should I do to build attraction, it was what is true. And I'm going to say it. What a shocking concept, right? And it sounds so simple. And no dub when you hear me say that or you're watching the movie Hitch or something like, just be real, man. But when you're in the moment, everything in your system is like, don't be real. You're gonna mess this up because you suck. Raw, right? You probably know what I'm talking about. So I messed it all up. No, I didn't. I actually took the risk to be more real and I would start to share things with her. So if I felt an urge to get away or something was bothering me, or I felt anxiety or something, I would just name it. And I made a practice of that. And what I found was shocking. Shocking not because now when I look at it, it's like, no, that's duh. That's how you build real healthy relationships, dude. But no, it was shocking to me because it was. It was totally counter to my map of relationships. I talk about this, I'll talk about this in not Nice Live, by the way and other events. But you have a map, internal map of relationships. How you see, if I do this, then this is going to happen. Kind of like your, whatever your Google maps or your car directs you where to go. If you turn left here, that's what's going to happen. You have a mind map of relationships, which is if I turn left here, which means if I reveal that I'm anxious right now to her, then you know we're going to crash into a brick wall. At least that's so my map said. And what ended up happening is every time that I was more real with her, we got closer. That was revelation number one. And number two was my self confidence improved, my self esteem improved because I didn't have to hide it. I didn't have to pretend. And that's where I started getting these massive distinctions between pseudo confidence and true confidence. So pseudo confidence is, I play a role and then I get acknowledgement, kudos, you know, ladies, money, whatever you're going for by playing that role. And you think that's going to make you feel great and confident, right? Look at all these people who love me. But it doesn't work because now all that confidence is being funneled through the role. And you know that that's not who you are. You're more than any role. You're like a soul. You're a full being. And so what happens when I stop playing the role? What if I don't play the role well enough? What if something changed? Oh, there's anxiety, anxiety underneath. Whereas true confidence, unconditional confidence is, I know, in my core, my value, that's undeniable. And when you share who you are with other people and they reflect back to you, I like you, right, because you're not playing the role. You're sharing what you really think, feel, what's really happening for you in that moment. And they say I still. And that is when they say I like you or demonstrate that by wanting to be around you. That doesn't mean that they never have feelings. Candace would get upset. In some of our conversations, we have conflict. That doesn't mean that someone doesn't disagree with something that you said. Or I totally have a different opinion and don't like this. Or there's conflict, there's sparks, there's friction at times, and it's fricking real. And guess what? The bond is 10x stronger than the fragile pseudo bond of let's all be nice and not say anything and not upset each other and not really know each other and then just play the role of being a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife. So I started to make that practice, take that risk again and again and again. And then it created this super strong foundation not just in our relationship, but in my own self confidence. Because then I can start bringing that to other relationships. I'm going to share more of the real me with this friendship. I'm going to share more of the real me in this situation. I'm going to share more of the real me at work with clients. Back then I was a therapist and I still had all the training as a therapist where they most therapy training will, you know, pretty thick walls. Don't unveil yourself, keep it focused on that person. Professional boundaries means you don't reveal anything about yourself ever. And if your client asks you a question, you cock your head to the side and they say, what about you? Are you know how's your relationship? And you say, my relationship? And see, if they just keep talking because you get the focus off on you. And if they press further, you say, that's an interesting question. I wonder what's behind you asking me that question. Why do you ask me that question? And you make sure you never reveal anything about yourself. Further clients safety, right? And so I come, I don't know, I get some of the ideas behind that. Right? You got to make sure people are self aware and they're not like with their clients. Like, you think you got problems? Let me tell you about my water heater that exploded last week, which I did in this episode. Ironic. In any case, you think you got problems, Let me tell you about mine. Basically, though, as you probably tell from this episode, from any of my books, my superpower is intimacy. And instead of shying away from that or thinking that's bad, I lead with it front and center. And some people don't like it. If you look at the negative reviews for my books, yeah, there are a few, not gonna lie. It's not like I've looked at them. In any case, there's a lot of positive ones, but there's also some negative ones. And if you look at the negative ones, one of the types of critiques, it's like, I don't want to hear this dude's stories. He's talking about himself. Ugh, what a jerk. What a self absorbed jerk. Right? And that's how they perceive it. And that's fine. I'm not for everybody, but the people that resonate with me. And if you made it this far in the episode, maybe you're one of those people, they appreciate the authenticity because I do too. And that's the kind of client I want. That's the kind of relationship I don't want to deal with anybody who's not gonna go there with me. And I try to steer all my relationships there, even relationships with family members who are like, that's not their jam. I will lead with this. I will use the magic ingredient for not just self confidence, but for intimacy. And I'll share more openly with them. And some people, it cracks them open and they share a lot with me. And then other people are like, huh, that's really uncomfortable. Can we. Let's talk about the weather, right? And that's okay. I'm just like, all right. You know, I used to take it all personally, and now I'm like, oh, yeah. Not everyone wants to go there. Not everyone has to go there. But that's Just who I am and how I show up. So I'm going to ask what I really want to ask. I'm going to say what I want to say. I'm going to be who I really am. And, you know, it turns out even the people that don't take me up on that and really want to go there with me, like certain cousins and family members, they still love me and, like, being around me. It's not like you lose anything. All we lose is. Is our defenses. Ooh. Think about that one. All right, let's talk about your action step for today. Time for action. Action, Action. Your action step for today is going to be to practice what I'm talking about. Because if you listen to it theoretically, and you're like, wow, good for him. Yeah, like you're watching a movie or something and you're just cheering for the main character, that's cool. But I'm not the main character. You. You are the main. Listen to the last episode. Claim 2025, man. You're the captain of your ship. You're the main character of your own life, of your story, of your epic adventure saga. And so you want to practice this in your life, not just theoretically learn about its possibility, but really go test it out, practice it. And you don't have to go off the deep end and share the most intense thing with everybody. Just pick one relationship in your life, the next person you're talking to, and unveil yourself a little bit more, maybe just 3% more, 5% more. You don't gotta go crazy with it unless you want to. And that's fun, too. All right, let me know how it goes. That's your action step for today. Until we speak again, may 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 Dr. Azeez. 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.