The Most Important Decision Of Your Life

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, let's talk about the decision of. Of a lifetime. This is, hands down, I believe, the most important decision that you will make. Beyond who you marry, beyond whether you have kids or not, beyond where you live, beyond what kind of work you do, beyond whether you're gonna leave or stay at your job, or beyond where you invest your money, beyond all these things that we think of as very important decisions in our life, there is one that I believe is more important than all of them. That's what we're gonna talk about today. And I'm so excited because it can really positively impact the course of your life. So if you're benefiting from this show, I'm so glad that you're here. This is where I'm. What I'm teaching here is what I'm. My wealth of background, of knowledge and teaching this stuff for so many years, but it's also really current and fresh. So I'm running many group calls every week. I run an intensive mastermind program. It's a 12 month program. That's the main form of coaching that I do these days. And so I'm running pretty much a group a day every weekday, you know, three, four, sometimes five groups a week. And it's powerful. And we're just in there. And people have already read my books, they're studying all these materials I have for them, and then we're just diving in. We're diving into their work life, their social life, their relationships, where they're afraid, where they're having a hard time taking risk, or where they are taking risk, but then feeling contracted and tight and scared or where they went for it. And it's going well. And that's uncomfortable too sometimes. So really just in the trenches, building our confidence together, all of us in this group. And what I do is each week there's so many insights and lessons and distinctions that I'm getting as I'm working and teaching and coaching, and then I go and record these here for you. Absolutely for free. So this is just coming from a recent call. And also, you know, if you're benefiting from this show, my request would be that you take just a couple of minutes and give it a review on itunes or wherever else you're listening to this, maybe on Spotify or something like that, just takes a moment. But what that does is it helps expand the reach of this show and my mission with this show, with my YouTube channel, which if you haven't checked out, by the way, it's called Get More confidence. It's on YouTube, my books. Everything that I'm doing is to carry out this mission of mass liberation. I mean, there are millions of us, millions of people who are struggling in silence with social anxiety, low confidence, disliking who they are and feeling like this is it, just like I did. Maybe just like you did at some point in your life, like, this is as good as it gets. This is who I am. This is my lot in life. And no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not. This is. That's not true. That's not the case at all. Radical and rapid transformation is possible. So if you're willing to support that mission by giving it a review, it is free to do. And it supports me in doing what I'm here to do. And maybe you're a part of that too. And you're also, in your own way, spreading knowledge or information. You can share these podcasts with people. But let's not keep this stuff a secret, man. People need it. And what I'm going to talk about today, we all need. And that's the decision of a lifetime. So what is that? Well, what could possibly be more important than who you live with or what kind of work you do or whatever? Well, let me put it to you this way. Let's say you are single and you find your dream man or your dream woman, or you don't like your job and you go find your dream job. You change the circumstances and let's say that new partner followed you around the house everywhere you went and just pointed out what you were doing wrong. They were just kind of like a shadow followed you around the house. Like you didn't put that away. You know, you're making a mess. You're such a messy person. And then you go brush your teeth. You're not doing that good enough. You are. And then they look at your belly in the mirror. Oh, man, you're Kind of losing it. You're getting soft. It's pretty gross. I don't even know why I'm with you. Like, good God, isn't that, Isn't that terrible sounding? How long would you stay in that relationship? I mean, hopefully not very long if you're, you know, that's pretty abusive. Verbally at least at this point, maybe emotionally. I mean, it's an unpleasant scene. Let's say you're at your dream job and you have a colleague that follows you around. You didn't do that, right? You're going to fail in this project. Why are you even here? It's not going to work out. You're not making progress fast enough. You're not very good at this. What's wrong with you? This is all going to fall apart. You're a fraud, you're going to get fired and so forth. It doesn't matter how good your dream job is. Pretty terrible, huh? So you might say, well, hold on a second, Aziz. Why would that be my dream job if I had that colleague? Or why would I be with that partner if they were so critical or abusive? Yeah, exactly. That's my point. And who's this? Who's this person that's doing this to you? It is not your partner, it is not your colleague, it is not your boss, it's not your dad, it's not someone else. It is you. It is you in your own mind. And it's either going to be active, like you're aware of it, you're aware of how you're picking on yourself, you're aware of how you're critical of yourself, or it is in the shadows. It is subconscious. It is so familiar and so baked into your normal perception of life that you don't even notice it, you don't even see it, you don't even hear it. It's just the background hum that you're used to that creates a sense of pressure inside of you, creates a sense of inadequacy inside of you, creates a sense of, you know, no matter what I do is not going to work. Maybe pessimism or discouragement or hopelessness or helplessness, these are all results. And we might not even be aware that it's coming from this inner stance of criticism, rejection and denial of ourselves. So this. And it can come up sometimes more intensely when you take a risk, when you step outside your comfort zone. Maybe in your day to day life you've managed to minimize risk and discomfort and other things. And so the voice is just there in the background. Here and there throughout the day. But when you really go for something in life, something meaningful, and people that are really starting to do this confidence work start to wake up and go for what they want in life, well then that voice can intensify and it can make anything, no matter how good the circumstances suck, can make them painful, it can create suffering. And so we need to shift this. I was just speaking with a client in one of my group programs the other night where she's taking a risk in business. She has a career and she's doing well on that, but she wants more. She wants to create a startup. She has a vision for what's possible with that. She doesn't see herself as long term in the job that she's in. So she wants to either build this business or some other thing or move to some other place, job in her career, something. Though she feels that more is possible than just sort of riding that job out for the next 20, 30 years. So she's in the process of doing what it takes to create this startup and she says, I'm stressed out all the time. And as we started to explore it, what made it stressful, what was not necessarily the extra work because she was really passionate about the project, she really believed in it. What made it stressful was that there was a massive fear of failure. Failure was utterly unacceptable. She would be utterly unacceptable if she were to fail. Failing means that you are worthless, that you're unlovable, that you're bad, that you're wrong. It's unacceptable. And so you might have this in some area of life and it may be failure for you, it might be rejection, it might be something that's like, that's unacceptable. And so either we avoid any sort of risk or if we take the risk, we are freaked out inside because maybe it's the consequence, oh, I'll lose some money or I lose this opportunity or whatever it is. But the real fear is I'm going to experience this horrible sensation of the bottom dropping out of my life because I become this worthless person that is not worthy of it's shame, right? It's not worthy of love, not worthy of respect. I can't tell anyone that I tried this thing and it didn't work out. I can't tell anyone that I asked that person out and they said no. We just feel this heavy weight, a burden that's created from this fear of failing. And that's just one thing that might be unacceptable. Many of us have a list, a big list. I call it the Grudge list that you have against yourself of all the things you can't be. And some of them you're hustling to try to avoid. You're hustling to try to avoid failure. You're hustling to earn more money. You're hustling to reach whatever milestone you think you're supposed to hit at whatever age you are. Well, at 32, I'm supposed to be this. And at 46, I'm supposed to have this, this and that in my life. And I don't. I'm a loser. Oh, my God, I better achieve. And so you hustle, or there are certain things that you're not hustling on. You've kind of given up, or you just feel like it's not possible to change it. Like maybe, I don't know, you're bald or something and you're like, well, can't do anything about that. So now I'm just settled into like, yeah, this is why I suck. Here's my why I suck list that I can't change. And either one is terrible, and either one doesn't have to be that way. That's the point of this episode, and that's the point of making the decision of a lifetime. Because when I'm talking about this with a client, I'm highlighting the pattern. She's like, yeah, that's exactly what's happening. So how do I not feel so freaked out about failure? I said, great, It's a great question to be asking. And there's two ways we can ask that question. We could be like, ah, how can I not have this problem anymore? Right? Which is basically saying, I don't want this anymore. Make it go away. And the other one is to be truly curious and say, huh, I wonder how I can shift this experience of failure and my fear around it. You slow down and you breathe and you start to get curious. One, the first one is kind of an entitled, I shouldn't have this. Kind of in resistance to life, you know, kind of a victim stance. Even though we're asking a question like, how can I resolve this? It's still kind of a victim stance, right? Because it's like, God or life or someone else has made this happen and now I have to deal with it and how do I get rid of it? Right? It's very. It's much lower energy, much less resourceful than like, huh, how am I doing this? I'm creating this. Failure isn't inherently painful. There could be feelings. You could feel disappointed. And same thing goes for rejection or anything else. Right? Like you could feel disappointed. I, hey, I really wanted this project to work. You could feel discomfort around time that you put into something. I'm not saying that there's no discomfort here. What I'm saying is that crushing feeling or the panicky terror of that feeling, what we're really afraid of there is our own self hatred, our own disconnection of a sense of from worthiness. It's our own, the bottom dropping out on our worthiness. That's the thing that we're most scared of. And how do we shift it? Well, it starts with the decision of a lifetime. Because at some point in your life and you may have already made this decision, you may be getting close to make this decision, but at some point you need to make a decision that goes something like this. I am committed to like from now on. I am, I am going to be on my own side no matter what. Anything else is insanity. Anything else is more of the same. I've done that for 10, 20, 30, 50, 70, whatever. How old? Doesn't matter how old you are. I've done that for so many years. I know what that's like. And yes, maybe I drive myself more, I get a little more done because I'm stressing myself and pressuring myself. But ultimately, is that how you want to live? Ultimately? If. Is that the best you can do? Ultimately, is that the best you can feel? Is that the most you can create? Is that the most you can contribute? Is that the most you can love? Is that the most meaningful work you can do from that place of self hatred and self judgment and always riding on the edge of worth and worthiness? Or is something more possible? And if it seems like no, no, no, this is what I want to keep doing, well, then you're not ready for the decision of a lifetime. Or you either kick the can down the road or you make the decision, say, you know what, the way I'm doing things works and yeah, I'm pretty hard on myself and I'm a perfectionist. And that's how you gotta be if you want to be number one. And if you own that and that feels right for you and it's working for you and you're thriving in your life and you're experiencing the level of fulfillment and joy that you want as you progress and take actions and take risks and yeah, do it. It's your life. You choose. Right? What I've found with me and so many clients that I work with is it's not working on some Level. It hurts, it's suffering, it's painful. It either makes you avoid risks or take risks with intense suffering and discomfort. And so how do we shift it? Well, even before you look at techniques, there are a million ways to change your relationship with yourself, to upgrade that relationship. In fact, I have a book called On My Own side, Almost. Have you read it? Have you checked it out? You can get it on AUD or Amazon and it is an in depth study of exactly how to do it. But the whole thing starts with highlighting the insanity and guiding people through making the decision of a lifetime. Because without that, all the techniques don't work. It doesn't matter. It's very temporary. It's all this big band aid to try to get rid of some suffering and then go back to the way we did it before. Now we got to make a fundamental shift and you don't even need to know how you're going to make it work. The techniques come later. Figuring it out comes later. It comes with a decision. Right? Same thing. When someone makes a decision to do a startup or whatever, they don't know the whole road ahead. They don't know. It's like in year one, I'm going to do this and then year two, I'm going to have to hire these. It's like, whatever. You have a general, vague idea. It's like, hey, let's go. I'm deciding, I'm going to do this thing. Same thing for having a kid, right? Whatever. Big step in your life, let's see how it goes. I just know I want to. And you figure it out along the way. And that's exactly how being on your own side works too. And so what does that mean to you to be more on your own side? Where would that, you know, start? What would that look like in your life right now? I mean, this is such a huge game changer for confidence. It's a big statement where I mentioned those group programs that I run in the beginning, it's a big component of that. And we have this really cool thing called the Precision Confidence Assessment that I guide people can take quarterly in the Mastermind program where they get to see their scores increase over time in different components of confidence. And one of the measures is omos, which stands for on my own side. And we had someone sharing last night about this and his score went from a. I believe it was, it's a hundred point scale and it went from like an 18 to a 50. And you might say, well, 50 out of 100. That's still not amazing. Well, it's like. Well, if you talk to him, he says 18. 18 was when he started the program. He's been in about for six or nine months, I think, and now it's maybe six months, I don't know. And it's a 50. And he says, it's a different life. You know, it's the difference between constant self criticism and judging himself and thinking he wasn't worthy of a relationship and not asking people out because he didn't think he was worthy and being intimidated at work and feeling infer that's 18 on a scale of 0 to 100. And then he's like, I take more risks. I speak up. I'm asking women out. I'm dating. Yes, there's more growth. Yes, I see I can be even better to myself and more optimal in the way that I treat myself and relate to myself. But this is radical improvement, and only more is possible. So are you at the place where you're willing to make the decision of a lifetime what would happen if you just kept doing things the way you were doing? And if your mind's like, yeah, but how, how, how? Like, then that's the sign you're not quite ready yet. Because we get to a point where we don't even know what the. We don't even know how. We don't know what it's gonna look like. We're just like, you know, you either are like, enough of this, like, I'm done with this, or you're like, something more is possible, damn it. It's either getting away from the sucker towards something, a possibility, but either one. You know, if you're kind of like, it's just, then it's staying in the status quo because the critic serves a function. It's a big player of your safety police. And so if you're criticizing yourself, you're telling yourself it's not going to work. You're telling yourself that you suck. You're telling yourself that you're ugly. You're telling yourself, don't speak up because your ideas don't matter. Guess what you do. You don't speak up. You don't ask people out. You don't put yourself out there. You don't do the startup. You don't make changes in your career. You don't go for the interviews. You don't speak up more directly with that colleague or friend or parent. You keep it all familiar and contained. And that's the point of the criticisms. And maybe if there's not a strong, like, sense of like, something's going to change here. Then it's not quite ready for the decision. But the invitation would be to look at what might happen over the next two years of your life, five years of your life, if you continue to treat yourself that way, if you continue to be hard on yourself, if you continue to judge yourself, attack yourself, blame yourself, put pressure on yourself. What is that doing on a cellular level in your nervous system to have that message of pressure, inadequacy, basically, I don't love you. I don't like you yet. Unless you do X, Y and Z, you got to earn it. And then even if you do well, now there's a new target for you to hit before I can perpetually withholding love until we're better. What's the cost of that? And just be with that. If you're not quite ready, if you are ready, well, let's do it, huh? Let's turn that into our action step for today. Time for action, action, action. Your action step for today is to make this decision. Now, maybe you've already made this decision during this episode, but let's do it. Let's formalize it. So if you can stand up right now. Yes, it's more powerful. I mean, think about the biggest decisions in your life. Did you make them? Laying down? Come on, let's stand up here. And if you're driving, well, sit upright, you know, and just breathe fully and deeply into your core. If you're standing, you know, be balanced between both legs, not kind of shifted on one leg and saggin, like, stand up right fully. Stand up like you're the fucking captain of your ship and you're the owner of your life and you're the master of your destiny and feel that inside. And I want you to think about that critical nagging. Remember that person, that metaphor, the person following you around the house, picking at you all day long. I want you to imagine the critic like that. Like it's another person outside of you who's always like, well, you didn't do that, right? And this wasn't good enough. And just like, see it, sense it, feel it, tune into it. And you know, in any abusive relationship, there's a period of time where the person just takes it and they take it and they take it some more. And if you're watching a movie about this, that's where you're like writhing in your seat, being like, come on, stand up for yourself, man. Come on, woman, leave him. Or whatever you're seeing, right? And all of a sudden, though, there's that movie. It's a good movie. There'll be a moment where there's just that threshold, where there's just one more, you know, criticism, one more mistreatment, one more injustice. And the person stands up and rises. Can you feel that in your body right now? The way you've been treating yourself, what you've been tolerating? You're gonna focus on that for a minute. Breathe in deep, and then find your fucking courage and you're gonna say, no. Enough of this. And use your body. Say it out loud. Enough of this. Enough of this. Come on. Something more is possible. I know something more is possible. I'm more than this. This is not how I treat myself. I can do better than this. In fact, you know what? I'm gonna find a way. From this day forward, I'm gonna be on my own side no matter what. If I fail, I'm gonna be on my own side. If I get a rejection, if someone doesn't like me, I'm gonna be on my own side. If someone's disappointed in something I did, I'm gonna be on my own side. If I. I lose money, I'm gonna be on my own side. If I don't make the best investments, I'm gonna be on my own side. If someone thinks that I did something wrong, I'm gonna be on my own side. If I think I did something wrong, if I make a mistake, if I fail, if I fuck up, that's okay, I'm gonna be on my own side. I can learn. I can feel disappointed. I can feel frustrated. I can feel my feelings. But I'm not gonna turn on myself. I'm not gonna make this big drama about how I'm unlovable and I'm loser and it's so terrible. I'm done with that. I could do that for my whole life and get to my deathbed and then just be like, oh, man, how much I missed out on the joy of life. Because I was so stressed about being a somebody and being enough. And now I get to the end of my life, and I realize it doesn't fucking matter. Doesn't matter if I'm a somebody, if I'm enough, if I'm impressive enough. What matters is, you know, did I live? Did I share? Did I give what I got? Did I love people? Did I enjoy the moment where I got to hold my lover's hand or look into my kid's eye or look at that sunset or take that trip that I always wanted to take or Start that business or make that change or you know, lead something. That's what matters. Did I live? Did I give? Did I love? These are the big things, right? You don't gotta be perfect, you don't gotta never fail to do these things. And so you can just decide right now, can you feel that in your core, in your body, in your heart, in your soul? And if so, breathe it in. Look around your surroundings. Take in life from a place where now you are aligned, you are congruent, you are on your own side. Forget the how, you'll figure it out. You'll figure it out. Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. Thanks for playing along. Hope this serves you. Let us know. You can go to shrinkforthshyguy.com, send a message to that site. You can also go to my main site, draz.com and probably better to send it through draziz.com I think that's more of a direct path-a z I z.com and man, go deeper with this. I mean this is just the beginning. Check out Omos on my own side, the book you can get on Amazon, Audible, you can find about it on. You can also go to omosbook.com omosbook.com and get a 10 day rapid OMOs program video training program for free there too. So much you can do. Of course you want to take a step further, go to the drazeez.com site and check out the coaching page and learn about the way that I work with people in groups because man, they're powerful. We got a lot of momentum in those groups and people's lives are changing month after month, year after year. Complete upgrades from shy, anxious too nice, hesitant to just bold. Bold motherfuckers stepping up, sharing, speaking up at work, making changes, getting jobs, interviews, dating, getting married. Like I mean just amazing stuff. Makes me smile to think about that entire community, that crew, so grateful to be a part of it. If you're interested, would love to invite you. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably resonate on some level with me. So that's always an open invitation. 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.