24 Jul 2019 · 27 min
Dr. Aziz argues that emotional barriers called "heart walls" built from past pain block love, not looks or personality. These walls dim your inner "beacon" and prevent you from both giving and receiving connection. Confirmation bias keeps you stuck in limiting stories about yourself.
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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 we're going to be talking about what really is stopping you or anyone you know from having an extraordinary love life, relationship, multiple dating opportunities with people that they're really excited about, just really feeling confident and fulfilled in your love life. This episode is all about changing your perspective around what you think is getting in the way and what's really stopping you. And trust me, it is fantastic news because it puts the power right in your hands. And there's something specifically that you can do about this today that can shift things and shift them much faster than you think. So I'm very excited to share this with you. When I share this with clients and they really get it and they start to apply it in their lives, that's when we see big turnarounds in my Mastermind program and in the one on one coaching that we do, they shift from feeling total scarcity, lots of repeated patterns of they're not interested in me or I can't even get a date, or I do get a date, but no one seems to want a second date. Or I can date people, but they want to date me, but I'm not interested in them anymore. Whatever's getting in the way. When they really get this, what I'm going to share in this episode, the doors open wide and they start to really thrive and flourish in their love life. So let's get into that now. And the reason I'm so excited to talk about this is because just in a couple months, we're having our next live event called Unlimited Dating and Relationship Confidence. So this is very fitting for that. And if you're listening to this episode, you definitely want to check out that event. Right now we're doing the super early bird promotion for that where the tickets are greatly reduced just through now through the end of July. By July 31, they're just 1 97, which is over 80% off of the ticket price. So 197 to come to Portland for this event. And if you want to get this area of your life handled, if you want to make massive progress in this area of your life, I encourage you to come out here. I know it's an investment of your time, your energy, your focus, money. But what is more worth it than to feel love and connection? We end up prioritizing so many things. I can't tell you how many people I've worked with who have been successful at work or in other areas of their life. They're powerful, they're accomplished, but their love life has just languished. They have not put energy, focus, or intention because it feels painful, it feels overwhelming. They feel like they can get a handle on work. Like, well, I just know what to do there. But in love, it's, you know, no matter how powerful they are in their company or in business or whatever, when it comes to love, they feel like they go back to when they're five years old or, you know, when they're with their mom or when they were 12 years old, when they were in middle school, and they felt like they got picked on and they hate it because it feels so different than their zone where they feel really powerful and then they don't want to go there. Like, ah, just forget about it. And they either totally close down and say, you know, I don't have time for that. Maybe you've done that in the past. I don't have time for this. I'm busy. I'll get to it later. My life's so full. Like, I just don't have time for it is one story. And another story is, I don't even want it. I just don't even want it anymore. Like, who cares? Love is bullshit. It's waste of my time, you know, or some kind of calloused, hardened, cynical view. So which one have you gone to? For me, I've done both at different times in my life. And really that's just a shell that we put on to cover pain underneath and desire underneath. Because deep down, I think we really do want love and connection. It's really why we're here. Not necessarily to love in a relationship, although that could be one avenue, but just to feel more love, to give and receive more love is one of the core reasons why we're here. So I think on some level, we want it. So if you're not gonna let it languish anymore, if you're ready to do something about it, then make a bold decision and decide to come join us in Portland because nothing moves this forward. No book, no podcast, no video, not even a home study program like Confidence University. Nothing can move you forward faster than being in a room of all these people and me who are just 100% focused on this. The energy of that room is off the charts. And you get from a place of maybe cynical or stuck or scared to. To inspired, hopeful, optimistic, confident. And then it's not just a rah rah fest, like you get specific tools and strategies and insights and learnings on exactly how to make this a reality in your life. So I would love to see you there. Now is the time to do it through the 31st because of the Super Early Bird special, because then it takes the cost factor way down in terms of money, and it's just mainly about getting out here and finding a place to stay. And then you can focus all your attention on the event to get your ticket at the Super early bird price of 1 97. Go to. There's two options. You can go to Shrink for the shy guy, shrinkforthy guy.com that's the webpage for this podcast. And on the right there'll be a tab about live events that we do. And you can click on that and then the top one will say Unlimited Dating and Relationship Confidence. Or you can go to our main webpage, which is Social confidence center, that's socialconfidencecenter.com and then there'll be an events tab at the top of that page. Go there and click on Unlimited Dating and Relationship Confidence. We'll also have a link right below this episode in the show notes too, @shrinkforthshyguy.com but those are the best ways to find the page to register for the live event. So let's talk more about what's getting in the way of you having that relationship that you want or that dating experience that you want. And I have addressed just a moment ago some of the ways that we can kind of harden. So I'm imagining, if you're listening to this, that part of you is at least open to how do I have that? How do I have the relationship that I want? And let me ask you this. Why? What's your story? Why don't you right now, whether you want to be in a deeply committed relationship or start a family or have children with someone, or you just want to feel more confident to really deeply connect with people in dating, you're not really ready to. To go straight into a monogamous relationship, but you want to be Able to freely connect and have meaningful dating relationships. Wherever you're at with that and whatever you want. Let me ask you this question. Why don't you have that right now? What's the first thing that pops into your mind? Why don't you have that? What's getting in the way? What's stopping you? What's slowing you down? Pay close attention. Because whatever pops into your mind, it's a thought, it's a story, it's an image, it's a feeling. Whatever comes up for you is your reason as to why it's not happening. So I'm curious what it is for you. I know for me, for a long time it focused on my appearance. I am not attractive. And I had reasons why I was not attractive. My face wasn't attractive. The area around my eyes wasn't attractive. My body shape was not attractive. I was too thin, too skinny up top and too fat around my belly and just didn't have the right shape. I was not muscular enough. I didn't look like a superhero. That's what I thought I needed to look like in order to be lovable. What else is it, an appearance thing for you? I also had a personality thing too. I am not confident. I'm not outgoing enough. I'm not talking enough. I'm not a leader enough. I'm not alpha enough. All these things I thought to myself at one point in time when I was really struggling. Or maybe it's something. So it's personality, physical appearance. It could be something about your beyond personality, but just your qualities, your qualities as a person. I'm too much of this or not enough of that. I am too emotional. I get depressed sometimes. So I have too much mental instability. That's not attractive. I'm too little of this. I have too little courage. I have too little capacity to connect with others or something. And then it sort of goes into the vague, there's something wrong with me. That's what I had too, for a long time. Especially when it came beyond just initially meeting women and dating them, but actually creating meaningful relationships. I thought, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken, I'm defective. Which was not the case at all. But that was another story that I had. So stories, stories are coming up for you. This is an important part of the process. That's why we're doing this. I would do this if we were working together in a group or at a weekend. I would do this with you because I want to see, like, what's. Because your story is what's preventing you from having the very thing that you want. And it helps to get clear on it and to take us, because otherwise you're just fused with it. Otherwise, it is reality. This is just how it is, okay? And we kind of want to defend it. We want to challenge other people if they try to question us on it, which is crazy if you think about it. Why are we doing that? Why are we defending our story that's of limitation and lack and suffering and insufficiency and failure and unlovability? But there you have it. We're doing it. We're defending it. And what we want to start to do is take a step back and look at it almost as if you're looking at an object. Like, oh, look at this little ball thing with some spikes on it. What color is it? Oh, what shape is it? Wow. Those spikes really tend to hurt me when I have this thing in there. Interesting. And you're kind of examining as if you're holding a little object, and that's what you want to do with these stories, because that's all they are. It's a mental object. They're just a thought, an idea that you hold or in the past, you've held with total certainty. This is how it is. But you created that. You created that story. You probably didn't even get that story yourself. That's someone else's story. You think you're the only person who has a story that I'm not lovable or I'm not attractive? Right. How many billions of other humans, or at least hundreds of millions who've been exposed to our media or mass media, but probably, maybe even the billions, have a sense of, I'm not enough in some way, particularly for love. So it's not even our own personal thought. And then we kind of just absorbed it from culture. We heard it from someone else. We're like, yeah, that's true for me too. All right? And we take it in, and then we hold onto it. So let's start to let that go. Because you took that in. You created that in your own experience, and you can destroy that. There's a point of creation and a point of destruction. And today, this episode could be a point of destruction where you just decide, you know what? I don't want to believe that anymore. That doesn't serve me anymore. It doesn't help me. So you might be wondering then, like, well, what's really getting in the way? Because, look, listen, Aziz, I have a lot of evidence, okay? People have told me that I'M unattractive. And that happened to me too. I had people that made fun of me for my appearance. So look, I had people that told me I was unattractive. And I have evidence that people don't like shyness or don't like anxiety or like those people who are more alpha or whatever your story is. Look, I have tons and tons of evidence. And that's because our mind has something called a confirmation bias, where once we believe, once we have a theory, we just find evidence to confirm that theory. And this is the most common heuristic that humans use in our minds. It's a mental shortcut. It's a mental form of laziness to try to get things done quickly. And so we say, hey, look, this is how I think the world works. Hey, look, everything proves my hypothesis. And this comes up again and again and again, especially in scientific research. You, you know, they'll be like someone who's a big proponent of a certain whatever, it's a medicine or a theory or an approach or something, and all of their research on it shows the result is positive and other people go try to replicate it and they're like, meh, we don't get the same results. And partly that's because of the confirmation bias. Like the person doing the research, whether they want to or not, no matter how objective they try to be, often has part of them that wants to confirm that because their identity is wrapped up in it. Their belief, their sense of certainty is wrapped up in it. And that's what you're getting from those stories, is a sense of certainty. This is how it is, even though it also brings you pain and lack of love and connection. So my question for you is, are you willing to let that go? Are you willing to open to something new right now, in this moment, as you're listening to this, doesn't matter what you did before. It doesn't matter if a week ago, a month ago, five years ago, it doesn't matter when you pick this up, are you willing or open to letting that go right now? And what's more true, are you open to investigating what might be more true that could still produce the same results that you had of lack of love, lack of connection, feeling ignored, feeling rejected, whatever the same results, but a different way to explain it, a different story, a new story. And I think as I share this story with you, you're going to find out that it's probably more accurate. And the story is this. We, every single one of us, you can think of us like a Beacon of light. Like, imagine there's a lantern or a lighthouse inside of your chest, in your heart, and that's you. That's your light, and that emits out of you. And you can think of that as love and energy and focus and attention, enthusiasm, and all the things that are coming kind of bright, the light coming out of you. And what happens is, when we emanate this light, there are other humans around on the planet who will respond to that. They like that light. Not everyone. You know, that's impossible. Not every single person is going to resonate with you. But a percentage of people will say, ooh, I'm drawn to that lighthouse. I want to go there. And that is what attracts people together. And that could be for friendship, socially, business partners, as well as employees and employers. But also, and specifically focused for this episode, love, romantic love connection is you're putting it out there, or they're putting a signal out there, and you pick up on it and you resonate. That's why. Have you ever experienced where you notice somebody and you're like, who's that person? You know, you might say, well, it's the physical appearance. They look a certain way. They're my type. And maybe, maybe. But I mean, come on, how many people have you seen or met that are your type? Or look thick, look, look, physically, there we go, the way you want them to look, just your type or whatever, and then you still felt no attraction for them. Right. How often does that happen? That does happen because it's not just about the physical appearance. It's about what energy they're emitting, how do they move, what's their style, what's their personality, what's their heart, what energy are they emitting? And so we're all running around with these beacons and these lanterns. And so if your light was fully shining bright 100% right now, then you would be attracting people left and right. And the only reason you're not is because you have blocks. You have walls and curtains and filters over your heart, over that lantern, over that lighthouse that's preventing the light from coming out. So it could be reducing it by 50%. So now you're only shooting out a 50% signal. It could be reducing by 90%. So now only 10% of your light is coming out, and what is blocking it. What are these walls? What are these curtains? What's your sense? Can you feel them? There's a guy named Brad Nelson who teaches a lot about this. He calls them heart walls. Can you feel the heart wall? Do you Know what I'm talking about? And what that is, is that's moments from your past where there was pain and you felt that pain. And the most place, the biggest place that we feel as humans is in our heart. That's why they call it the seat of emotion. We feel in our hearts. And it hurts. And then we try to stop the pain. And so we try to stop the feeling. And we do that by just putting up a wall. We try to disconnect a little bit from our heart, we try to get into our heads a little bit, we try to shut down a little bit, we try to numb out a little bit. We do whatever we can because we start this process when we're really young and at an age of, well, I mean, even prenatally, we can be doing it before we're born, but especially as we're born, we're a little baby. A moment of rejection as a little infant from a parent, a parent yelling at you when you're two and a half years old for not doing something that they wanted, or getting exasperated with you. These things in our nervous systems are overwhelming. And so what we do is we just find a way to kind of build up a block of energy or emotional energy. We put a little armoring of our heart and then as we get older, we do more and more and more and more and more. And then, you know, let's say you put yourself out there in love when you're young, maybe 10, 11, 12, 15, doesn't matter, and you get rejected or you get your heart broken or something, and then all of a sudden, boom. And this can happen even later in life. You know, you're in a. After the first time I fell in love when I was 21 and that relationship ended, I put up a heart wall that lasted for, well, geez, maybe seven years, six years. And I didn't know it at the time, but that's what was blocking my ability to have a long term successful relationship where I really settled in and felt good. I could have dating experiences, but I always felt anxious after that first experience. So what walls are you putting around your heart right now? That is the first thing. Now here's the thing. The walls are not like total, you know, total eclipse, complete darkness. And like 0% of your energy and light is getting out. But it could be reduced. It could be 50%, it could be 80% is being blocked. Who knows? Here's the thing. Even if 50% or 70% of your heart, light, we could call it, is being blocked, you're still got, you know, 30 to 50% coming out, right? And guess what's going to happen that's still going to attract people. It's not as strong of a signal, but someone could still see the lighthouse and say, what's that over there? I'm still drawn to it. It's the same energy. It's still the same essence. It's still you. It's just diminished. Your energy is diminished. And so what happens though is there might still be people that are attracted or interested or drawn and then they start to move towards you. But then what do we do? Well, someone starts to move towards us and then we're like, ah, I'm uncomfortable, I'm scared of receiving. So not only am I scared of like emitting my light, but I'm also scared of receiving. And so this is what explains some of those strange behaviors that just come out of you when you start to date somebody. Maybe you get super anxious, maybe you feel. For me, I felt this super strong urge to move towards a woman. Like, I want her, I want her. And then as soon as she responded and we got close, especially after we made love, then there'd be this like, I gotta get away. Ah, right. What is that? That's like, I'm scared of receiving love. I'm scared of letting love in. If I let love in, what's going to happen? More pain. That's why I got these heart walls in the first place, right? To protect me from this. And so sometimes though, our desire for connection and love overrides this fear and this need for certainty and safety. So we do connect. But then for how long? Usually it gets overwhelmed after a short period of time and we start to withdraw and retreat. And so there we are. We're afraid to fully put our light out there and give our love. And then we're afraid to fully receive love. And that is why we don't have the connection that we want. That's why you go on a million first dates and no one sparks your interest. Because you got a lot of walls up in front of your heart. That's why when you get close to someone, they start to show interest in you. You freak out or quickly lose interest in them. It's because they're gonna start to get in. Oh my gosh, they're gonna get into my walls. I gotta put up. This is not safe. There's a part of us that thinks that's not safe. So that, that is the only reason why, why you not have the love connection and relationships that you want in Your life, it has nothing to do with your appearance, with your personality. I mean, look, you can say, well, there's little things. I'm improving on myself, or I want to work on myself in that way. Those things are going to be. That's just cosmetic. That's just the surface level. Because here's the thing, whatever you look like, and maybe say, well, I gotta lose this weight first. I gotta be in shape. You know, okay, whatever, you're a little overweight, or you're like, wow, I gotta get my personality handle. I get too anxious around things, whatever. So whatever your quirks are, whatever your shortcomings are, whatever your weaknesses are that you're blaming. Here's the thing. There's someone out there that has the same weaknesses, the same weight, the same appearance, the same everything. But they've removed their heart walls and they're approaching the world and life and other people, and particularly people that they're attracted to with this open heart and this, like, hey, here I am. Who are you? I want to connect with you. I'm interested. I'm not guarding myself because I know that I can handle whatever life brings me. Like, that's what they're saying. I guess you could use that as a pickup line, but I'm talking about that they're saying that with their attitude and their mindset and their energy, that person who's identical in all their characteristics will find dates, will thrive in their love life, will have an amazing relationship, an extraordinary relationship, if that's what they want. Even though they have all these things that they're still quote, working on, and they can still be wanting to get in better shape. They could still be wanting to work on their anxiety, to feel more calm and peaceful and confident, whatever it is. But that's not the reason why they don't have the relationship. In fact, being in a loving relationship can help you get in better shape, can help you work through anxiety and feel more on your own side, more confident, can help you do in anything that you want, because you have this amazing person who's on your team, and both of you are supporting each other to grow. I mean, I've grown radically in the last eight years that I've been with Candace, way more than I would have if I had not been with her. So it's not like I gotta grow and get perfect and then I'll get in the relationship. That's just another story to put it off in the future. Because as much as we say we want it right now, there's a part inside of us that says, yeah, yeah, that sounds great. Uh, oh, she's serious about this. Or he's serious, he's gonna make it happen. Let's just. Yeah, let's make it happen. But a year from now, when we've solved X, Y and Z, when things have changed, when we're ready. Right. And that's just another way to try to protect ourselves, to stall it out into the future. Is this making sense? What are you seeing about yourself? What are you realizing about your own heart walls? Hopefully you're seeing that there's this new way of looking at why you haven't had what you wanted. And the good news is, what do you gotta do if you want to transform this? All you have to do is what? That's right. All you have to do is remove these walls around your heart and start to let that light emit more and start to receive love more. That's all you have to do. And all the other stuff, minor little things, that's like the deck chairs on the top of the boat, right? They don't really matter that much. You can look a little different way, you can wear a little different clothes. That's not really going to significantly change much of anything. So how do you do this? How do you put this into practice? Well, we're gonna talk more about removing heart walls in other episodes. General confidence work is gonna help you do this. Once you understand this, that the more confident, the more boldly, authentically yourself you can be, the more you can emit love, then the faster you're gonna remove these walls. And of course, I'm gonna bring it back to what I talked about in the beginning, which is coming to the live event. Because at the live event, we have an opportunity to go in there and help people remove these heart walls. We'll be doing that at the live event, person after person, real time, helping people remove these walls because they're emotional, they're energetic, they're beliefs, they're stories. There's all these things that are in there that produce this armoring around the heart. And we remove that armoring, help you feel what's underneath, help you feel any discomfort or challenge that caused the heart wall in the first place. And get to the other side, where you feel way more free, open, alive, loving, and ultimately able to be yourself around anyone and know that, of course, you're lovable and worthy. And that's the. That's one of the main focuses of the event, which is called unlimited dating and relationship. So it's all about that inner Confidence for love, for dating, and for relationships. So again, I'll mention it one more time, but I highly encourage you to come. I don't think I mentioned in the beginning of the episode where to go. Go to shrinkfortheshyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com, there'll be a tab on the right for the events. You can also go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com SocialConfidenceCenter.com for the. And then there's an events tab and you can go there and find unlimited dating and relationship confidence. So excited for that one. And before we conclude today, let's talk about your action step. Time for action. Action, Action. Your action step for today is going to be to identify at least one. I mean, I think we have dozens of moments in our lives where we put up walls around our heart, but I want you to think of one right now. Or sometime today. Ideally now. Like, what's one moment in your life where you know that you put up a heart wall? You're like, oh, yeah, it was after I broke up with so and so or after I had my divorce or after this. And you just knew it because afterwards you were like, distrustful of people you were attracted to, you know, or, you know, distrustful of love, distrustful of trust. Like, trusting in people's bullshit, man. It leads to pain, right? So when, when was one of those moments? And then just start to sit with that and, and, and start to ask yourself over the next few days, like, does that serve me? Am I willing to let that go? What would it feel like to let that go? And just breathe into your heart open and invite that heart wall, Imagine it dissolving, imagine it crumbling, whatever you see to help your heart open up a little bit more each time. Beautiful. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I 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.
