The Nice Person's Endless Quests

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 quests. Perhaps some quests that you have been on and maybe want to stop being on, or maybe you don't even know that you're living out these quests. I didn't for many years and when I saw them more clearly, I was able to choose differently. And that's the goal here for you. Not just in today's episode, but in this entire show. The purpose is to be able to choose differently because remember, whatever pattern you're running, whether it's social anxiety or niceness or the fear of other people, what they're going to think of you, those are not who you are. It's not ingrained into your DNA. That's a pattern that you're running now. You might have run that pattern for so long that it feels like this is who you are, but it's not. And you can change. And the way that we change is we get more clarity and then we make different choices. And of course, as you know, I'm a big fan of pointing out, we don't make the change unless we take action based upon those new choices. So if you're at the end of this episode, there'll be an action step. There's an action step at the end of every episode of this show. And they're not just like something to think about. It's actually an invitation to take the action. Because I know in working with clients over all these years that nothing really changes until someone takes consistent and considerable action in their life. And by the way, if you want support in that, go to draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and just check out all kinds of material there. There's further trainings you can get, like Confidence University. It's a in depth lifetime access home study course that guides you step by step. And then of course, you can go Further with my Mastermind program, which is a 12 month in depth group coaching program led by me, that really, I mean, the most common feedback we get from people who go through that program is I've taken more action in this last 12 months than I have perhaps ever in my life. Sometimes we hear. Ever. Sometimes we hear in the last five years, whatever it is, a lot happens. So the invitation here is to not just listen to this material but to take action based upon it. And there will be an action step at the end of this episode. But first you have to know the quest that you're on and see if you want to make a change. So the quest. Quest. You know, I associate it from my nerdy background with video games. Diablo Cain sends you on a quest into the dungeon. Or you know, fantasy TV shows, movies, books. But technical definition of a quest is a long or arduous search for something. A long and arduous search. And arduous means strenuous effort, difficult or tiring. So a long, tiring search for something. What quest is a nice person on? Well, actually, you'll notice the title of the episode is the Nice Person's Endless Quests with a plural at the end there. Because there's multiple quests that you're on as a nice person. Let's find out what some of them are. Are you aware of any of them right now? Is there anything you've been on a long search for? Arduously strenuously seeking. And what I love about quests, particularly if you think about, say, the quest for the Holy Grail and these other quests of ye olden times and history, they never ended, right? The people ever found what they were looking for. So have you been on a quest endlessly and never really found what you were looking for? Well, let me give you an example and then you can start to see if there's other quests, because you might be like a quest like. You mean kill kill rats in the, in the forest to gain experience points? No, no, we're done with the video game metaphors. We're moving on to you in your life. No, but let me give you some examples so it becomes clear. Here is the probably numero uno quest of the nice person. You ready? I'm sure you've already guessed it. It is to be liked. To be liked, right? I mean, isn't that what a nice. It's approval seeking. I want to be liked. And by who? Well, everybody, right? I mean, that's the ultimate. I mean, be liked by everybody. And so the nice person goes on this quest, this endless, strenuous journey to be liked by everybody. So you got to be liked by your friends. You got to be liked by your colleagues and co workers. You got to be liked by your boss. I mean, that's terrible if you're not. You got to be liked by all your employees. If you have employees or team members, you got to be liked by the people that work around you. Your colleagues, your extended network. You got it? You got to be liked by your friends. Friends. You got to meet new people. You got to be liked by them. Your partner, your girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife's friends, family. Oh, my goodness. You got to be liked by all the family members. Right? It'd be terrible if her dad didn't like you or if Uncle Harry didn't think you were smart. Oh, no, I really care about what Uncle Harry thinks. Right. That's a big deal. So where does it stop? And again, when you're in your day to day life, you're not running around consciously thinking, I have to be liked by everyone, even Uncle Harry, who doesn't seem to like anybody. But that is the emotional compulsion that is driving you, and it is very strenuous. And that's why some people aren't even aware of this. They're just aware of the anxiety. I feel anxious before I'm gonna go meet these friends of friends. Why are you anxious? Well, because what if they don't like me? And it might not be fixated on that. It's fixated on some stupid thing like, oh, does my hair look okay? Oh, I don't know what to say. Oh, I'm feeling too tired. I'm not gonna be on tonight. And underneath that is, well, if I'm not on tonight or if my hair's not right or whatever, then these friends of a friend won't like me. And so you're in this perpetual hustle, this quest to be liked by everybody. Mezze. Aziz, look, I'm not one of those desperate approval seekers. I don't know. I don't. I don't even like my everybody. I don't care. I don't care. My friends. My friends don't like me. Okay, all right, that's fair enough, tough guy. But most likely, you really, really, really, really want to be liked by a lot of people, right? So that means still all your colleagues, your partner, your. Your friends, your family, there's still a huge amount of people. You might say, wait a minute, Aziz. You're saying, even if I don't want to Be liked by everybody. It's still an endless quest to be liked. Are you saying I shouldn't even want to be liked by anybody? Don't I need to be liked by people? Well, sure, I'm not extreme and I get it. We're social creatures, we need to have relationships. No human does well in isolation. And I don't mean some solitary confinement tank in a prison kind of isolation. I mean the modern day western world lost amongst a sea of humans in an urban area. Isolation where you're surrounded by people but no one cares, no one knows you, you don't know them. Everyone's like plugged into their phone and goes home and plugs into the oasis and it's just like, who cares? I don't know who my neighbor is. I don't, I don't want to know. And there's people, like huge amounts of people feel extremely isolated. Even if you talk to people, I'm not talking about. You're like a hermit in your house. You talk to people, you talk to people. You might even have a few connections, acquaintances. But if you don't have deep human connection. And what do I mean by deep human connection? I mean true intimacy, which is people know you and you know them and you know what's going on in each other's lives. And not just the superficial stuff, but really the ups and downs, the heartbreaks, the desires, the moment to moment, day to day victories. If we don't have at least a couple people in our lives who are on that journey with us, and doesn't mean you talk to them every hour or every day even. But you know, know you connect, you have a few friends, maybe someone you live with, someone you love, a partner, a family member where you can, they know what's happening for you. If we don't have that, it's painful. So I know that we want those connections and they're important. But that's different than the liked, because liked is. Well, there's a couple quests that nice people go on that just don't work. So one is to be liked even by your relationships, by people you're close to. You need to be liked all the time. That means my friend or my partner or my family member can never be upset with me, can never be disappointed with me, can never have a moment of differing opinions or friction or tension or whatever. It has to be all smooth all the time. And so that's that same quest to be liked. Even in your close relationships, you have to be liked all the time. And it's exhausting. And you cannot be authentic. You cannot have a important necessary conversation or a valid disagreement or a valid differing perspectives that needs to be explored and sorted out and figure out, okay, how are we gonna live? If you see it this way and I see it this way, or I want to do this and you want to do that. So the quest to be liked can be with everybody. It could be to maintain the approval of those close to you. And it's exhausting. Are you exhausted with that quest? I was so exhausted with that quest. You know, here's another quest that a lot of nice people don't see, which is the quest to be seen fully or positively. Now let me explain that one. I just talked about needing to be seen and known to not feel isolated and how important that was. Right, so you're saying. Wait, you. Yeah, that's right. You wanna be seen and known and. Yes, yes. In fact, when I am helping people clients overcome their approval addictions, I often invite them to take on a new goal other than to try to get everyone's approval. Cause that's an endless exhausting quest which is to be seen and known, to know others, not to be liked by everybody, I'm not for everybody becomes the mantra to remind yourself of to liberate yourself from the cage of niceness. But there's another kind of being seen that can actually be an endless quest. And this is what I mean by that. You want to explain very, very thoroughly to help someone see you in a certain light. So maybe we're still back to a cousin of approval seeking. This quest is a side quest, a subquest, but it's distinctly different. So I want to mention it. So if you're going to say no to somebody, you're going to tell someone not to go here, I don't want to do that or whatever. You have to explain exactly why. So they really know where you're coming from. You need them to see, hey, I'm saying no to this thing. Not because I'm scared or not because I don't like you or not because of this. I'm doing this because I really need you to see that. That it's. Cause I have so much on my plate and I'm just too busy. But I really care and this is what's going on. So I have to really, really explain it. And what this leads to is one over explaining where people are sharing and sharing and sharing. Or maybe you've talked to somebody where they're trying to get their point across and they'll say the same thing like four times in a row with slight variation, but they don't even pause to see if their first one landed because they're hungering to be seen. And when you're really, really hungering to be seen and you don't even check to see if you are, then it leads to this over explaining phenomenon. Or you cannot stomach the idea that someone misperceives you. Oh my God. Right? So let's say someone, hey, that was, I don't think you treated that other person right. That was not, that was not good of you. I don't like the way that you spoke to that person. Right. This is just a hypothetical example. And now you are just eating, eaten up inside. Like, ah, you can't handle it. They didn't think, they don't, they don't know that. The reason I was talking to that person that way was because three weeks ago we had this exchange and that person did this to me. And so I did this to them. And I was just doing this because they did that and dit, duh, duh, duh. There's this huge backstory and that person doesn't know anything about it. How dare they? How dare they say that about me. And look, I'm not saying it feels great to have someone misperceive you. You might be pissed off. You might be like, hey, they don't know what the heck's going on. There was a big backstory there. That's not the problem. The endless quest is now you have to go get that person to see you, quote accurately. I'm gonna go chase them down. I'm gonna go explain to them for five hours. I'm gonna try to get them to see, you have to see why I spoke to that person that way. Don't you see? It's because three weeks ago, this and that. And then it's awful if the person's like, I don't, I don't see that. I think what you did was inappropriate. I know I have to come back here. Torment. Because they don't see you in the way that you want them to see you. They don't see you in a way that feels accurate or fair or right to you. And you have to control that. That's what these quests are all about. That's what the nice person's hell is. And it is a form of hell. And I don't mean some sort of, you know, alternate realm or religious interpretation of hell. I mean the idea of a realm of torment. Because now you're going around the day. And you're an under threat. You're under the threat of someone not liking you. You're under the threat of someone misperceiving you. And the way that I see clients dealing with this, especially before they start working with me and how they have been dealing with it in their life, is they've just downsized their life. Because I can't put myself out there online because someone might perceive me. I can't share about this new business that I want to create because someone might judge me for it. So I'm not even going to talk about it with people. I can't put this idea out there. I can't speak up and work in this way. I can't take on this project. I can't step into my life, whatever it is. I'm not just talking about career or endeavors related to your impact in the world. It could just be your hobbies, your interests, your passion, how you want to express yourself, all of that, your art, your music, anything. I can't. I can't. Because someone might misperceive it, Someone might judge it, Someone might not get where I was coming from with it. And yes, my answer to them is always yes, yes, yes, yes, they will. Not everybody, I mean, not everyone's gonna hate you. That's the good news. But someone's gonna. If, especially if you put yourself out there, someone's gonna dislike it. Someone is gonna misperceive you. Someone's gonna want to misperceive you. Someone doesn't even want to know where you're actually coming from. They want to put you into a category in their mind. Oh, you'. And then they want to dislike you. And no matter how you could talk till you're blue in the face, trying to get them to see you differently, begging them on your hands and knees until your knees are raw to chasing them around with your hands clasped, saying, please, please, please see me differently. And they don't want to. And if you take a moment and just get curious about that, you can start to set yourself free. Say they don't want to. Why would someone not want to see me? Why would someone want to put me into a category and then just dislike me? Well, it gives them a sense of certainty, gives them a sense of significance. It makes them feel powerful and superior. And what human doesn't want to feel powerful and superior, especially if they can do it with no effort other than just judging somebody, is worse. And so now you're going to alter your life. You're going to downsize who you are in this one existence that you know you have for sure. Maybe your beliefs give you a sense of certainty that you get a bunch of iterations and this is just one incarnation. You could do it 34 more times, I don't know. But for me, all I know with certainty is I'm here now. And then I don't know what comes next after this life. So this is my shot as far as I know. Maybe if I have some really convincing past life dreams that'll change my perspective. But for now, this is what I got. And that's what woke me the F up 21 years ago. I'm 42 now. I woke up when I was 21 and it was not just like a one wake up. There was a progressive wake ups, but the first one was, oh my God, this is my life and it's not going where I want it to go. I need to do something else. And me chasing and currying favor and trying to get everyone to like me isn't what I'm here for. And that's not what you're here for. So the question is, what can you do instead? When you wake up from these patterns, what more is possible for you? Let's take that and turn that into action, shall we? Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step is to look honestly, take a little inventory, if you will. Where have you been Chasing someone's approval or needing to be seen in a certain way by somebody. Just pick one area and if nothing comes to mind, you're not really looking. Because look, I've been doing this work for many years and teaching people for many years about this. And I'll look in my life and I'll still, of course I'll Give me one minute and I'll find an area where I was like, oh, yeah, Yep, I was wanting that person's approval. Oh, I was needing to try to impression manage their. Well, I mean we all do this. So it's not like, ooh, stamp it out of your life and then you're perfect. No, it's about getting, being able to see what's there and then be honest with it. So you can say, you know what, okay, I was approval seeking. What if I wasn't? But that's part two of the action step. First is take that little inventory. Find. Maybe it's someone at work, maybe it's a date, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a friend of a friend, maybe it's a stranger. Okay, so find one of those places and then find the Place inside of you that's clenched. And I mean like physiologically in your body, emotionally, there's a place that's tight that says, like, I need something from this person. I need them to like me. I need them to see me a certain way. It's painful that they don't like me. So find that person in your world right now and that little dance, that little emotional quest that you're on, and the invitation is to practice taking a full breath in and as you let go, reminding yourself, I don't need anything from this person. I don't need anything from you. And maybe that person's your spouse. And you know, that's a great. Do you really not need anything from your spouse? Like on one level, maybe on a spiritual level, no, you're whole and complete. And then on another level, we do have needs and relationships, right? So I wouldn't take this one as a sense of like, I'm an island and I need no human but that graspy, like I need this exact thing from this person right now. It's like I don't need any one thing. So even if a partner, right, Like I need love for my partner. Okay, but does that mean you need them to agree with you on this certain issue right now or you're not? Okay. No, no. Right. You can, you can soften there. So just find that part that's so clenched and so scared and find the fear underneath and just be with it and bathe it in your awareness and love and self compassion. And if you want a tool to practice that even more, like how to be with the feelings underneath. There's other episodes you can search for. Just type in feelings, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and type in feelings. There's a whole episode about the life changing art of feeling your feelings. And also if you haven't downloaded it, go to notnicebook.com that's not nice. Book.com and then enter your your name and email and you'll get to a page that has all the bonus materials for that book. And on there is something called the peace process, so you can follow along with that. That's a guided way to be with these feelings so you can get to the other side. Awesome. I hope this serves you and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are to release the endless quests and fully know that you're awesome right now. 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 social confidencecenter.com.