The Recipe For Confidence with Matt Brauning

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 have a special treat for you. We're going to be talking with a premier expert in nlp, neuro linguistic programming, which is a fascinating approach to change how you feel, how you treat yourself, how you talk to yourself, and how you interact and communicate with others. And you'll get a more thorough idea of what NLP is and how to use it in today's interview. But what we're really looking at is the formula or the recipe for confidence. And whether you know it or not, all day long you're running patterns. And a lot of these patterns are subconscious or unconscious. You just kind of do them. Just like you have a pattern for brushing your teeth or a pattern for making your breakfast, you have a pattern pattern for how you might feel in a certain situation. You have a pattern that creates insecurity. You have a pattern about how you feel about when someone seems like they're saying no to you or rejecting you. And we go deep into that in the interview, by the way, specifically the recipe or the pattern around rejection and how to discover more of what that is and to change that as well. Because that's the goal, right? Is we look at our patterns that aren't serving us and we find a way to discover what they are, how we're creating it, how we're doing it, and then how to shift it. And what I love about NLP is it's coming from a place of, hey, these things can change and they can change quickly that we're not stuck, we're not fixed, because A or B happened in the past. Now this has to be my life. Now in the present, I have to feel this way and I have to behave this way, and this is my present reality and this is going to be my future. And then we have kind of a dismal, depressing, dark future as a result of these things. And we feel stuck. And what I love about this approach is it's one of many that highlights to us that we're not stuck. If there's anything that we know to be true is that nothing in life, nothing in this universe is fixed. Everything is in motion, everything is in flux, everything is changing, everything is dynamic. All the cells in your body, your mind, your emotions, your energy, everything is different. Everything is changing moment to moment to moment. Even where you are in space right now, the earth spinning right now, whether you know it or not, the molecules in your body are phasing in and out. They're changing the actual sub, sub subatomic components, the quantum components are like blinking in and out of existence as we know it. And if you want to go super macro, then just think about this one, which we tend to think about. The, you know, planets in the solar system are revolving around the sun. We've all seen models when we were in school, right as kids. And so it's like, oh, they're all going around the sun, which is true. They're all moving around in gravitational pull. But where is the sun? The sun is one of billions of stars in rotation around the center of the galaxy. So the whole sun is moving into space that it's never been before. And then our planet and everything else is in tow. We're constantly, everything is in flux, everything is changing. So now we've gone super micro, we've gone super macro. Let's bring it back to here. You right now, you're about to discover something exciting. You're about to see, hear and realize that you can change and you can change faster than you think. And it's just a matter of changing these patterns. So my guest expert today is Matt Brawning and Matt is an expert in neuro linguistic programming. He speaks on it, he teaches on it, he's been teaching it for 15 years. He teaches these evolution trainings where he helps people understand NLP through workshops, through online seminars about how to principles in their lives. He has trained with Anthony Robbins, he's worked with Brian Tracy and Bob Proctor and other greats in the field. He has large companies as clients including US Bank, YMCA, McAfee, Antivirus, just a number of institutions and companies that want to learn from him and apply these with their workforce. And he also is the best selling author of numerous books including Total Freedom from Addictions and the Firebox Principle. The seven drives that fuel every entrepreneur. So just such a well rounded, well trained and thorough knowledge of NLP and so many other things. Guest I'm so excited. So let's welcome Matt Brauning to the show. Thanks for joining us on the show today, Matt.

Hey, man. Happy to be here. Cannot wait to start talking about confidence out of shyness.

Yes. So let's go right into to it. So, as I mentioned in the intro, you have extensive background, a variety of areas, but one of them, and it's not just something you've studied a little bit, but something you've really mastered and actually teach other people, is nlp, Neuro Linguistic Programming. And I imagine a lot of people listening to the show have heard of it, know a little about it, but it is not something that we really extensively focus on. And yet a lot of the work that I do with people is definitely informed from that approach. So we're going to talk in this episode about all the different ways that we can help people shift confidence quickly. And we're going to have you just give a brief description of what NLP is in just a second. But before we do, I want to help people see, you know, what the point is and why. And that is that one of the things I love about NLP is the perception. So one of the frames or the starting places for NLP is that, you know, we're not fixed and change can happen much faster than we would think. And that's one of the things that leads to it to be so exciting and liberating because a lot of people listening to this show, a lot of people in general have a pretty fixed perception of themselves, especially when it comes to their confidence. So what I love about NLP is it's a tool that really invites rapid change. So we're gonna get into all aspects of it. But let's start with someone's like nlp. I've heard of that. What is that? So how do you describe it to people? Like you're at a party and someone has no idea what that is. What would you say it is at a party?

What is nlp? What do you do? So let me pretend I'm talking to my. Because sometimes my mom and dad still are like, what is exactly you do? And Neuro Linguistic Programming. I think the easiest way to describe it is there's as many definitions as there are people practicing probably right now. And the easiest way to describe it is think of it as like the language of the mind. It's not just external communication because there's a branch of NLP where we teach about how to communicate more effectively with people around you. But really it's. Think of it as the ultimate communication tool for your inner Communication, like your inner dialogue with yourself and. And your external communication, how you interact with the world. When you can master the patterns of communication with yourself and others, to me, it's like that's the place to master your life.

So it's really about communication going inwards with yourself and then communication going outwards with others and getting better at that. And you mentioned the patterns of communication.

Yeah, when I think of patterns, let's use a simple metaphor. Let's say you've ever baked a set of cookies before. You know, patterns are all about recipes. And if you have a recipe for grandma's cookies, and my grandma made the best, like, cookies, chocolate chip cookies from scratch. But if I asked my grandma as a kid, grandma, what's the recipe? She'd be like, ah, I just put a pinch of this, I put a little dash of that. You know, grandmas didn't really know. But when you get the recipe for exactly how to make those cookies, you can produce the same cookies over and over again. And let's replace cookies with confidence or compassion or success in sales or presentation skills or literally, whatever result you're looking for, if you can get the recipe or the pattern for that outcome, you can duplicate it over and over again with the expectation of the results. And on the flip side, Aziz, if you are making cookies in your life, that is, if you're making cookies with a result that you do not like, they're bitter, nasty, salty cookies, that is. Let's talk about. You don't have the confidence that you want. You are trying to express yourself, but you can't communicate the way you want to. You have habitual, limiting, or negative beliefs about things, whatever it is. Right. You can. With nlp, as you said, one of the fastest ways to intervene, essentially, you're looking for, what's the recipe? What's the pattern I've been using? And then where did it go awry? And let's tweak it, change it at the neurological level, at the subconscious level. And when you do, sometimes a little tweak changes the entire outcome. As, you know, imagine if you replaced one cup of sugar with one cup of salt. Totally different cookies. Well, you could do the same thing with your mind. I know it's a pretty simple metaphor, but it works.

I love that. So we have patterns, and then those patterns produce certain results that we may or may not like. And I think some people, you know, can become aware, oh, I'm doing this thing, and it doesn't. I don't like it. I don't. I Don't like these cookies. They taste salty. They're terrible. So let's pick some common ones that I see often. I think we all have a pattern that comes up after some sort of rejection when someone says no to us. And that could be asking someone out. That could be not even necessarily direct rejections. Like it could just be sharing something, speaking up in a meeting. And people can just perceive that maybe their idea wasn't received. And whatever the external trigger that they look at the. There's a sort of a cascade. There's a pattern that fires off a pattern of rejection. And I think for. And I'm picking this one because I think a lot of people tend to say, you know, the pattern that fires off inside of me is because of the circumstance I feel that way because the person said no to me, because they said no to me, I have to feel awful about myself. And they don't realize that they're actually, you know, whipping up that, that recipe. So let's, let's use that as an appoint to really explore how this might work. So how would we identify the pattern and tweak it and have rejection? Is it possible to have something like rejection produce no effectiveness or produce it, you know, different? You know, we're not limited in any way. Let's really unpack this one.

You said one of the, one of the most powerful words there. And you said the trigger. And I don't mean it in the political or community sense that it's been, you know, we talked about so much in 2020. You know, everyone's triggered with things. When I think of a trigger, there's two parts of any recipe or any experience you have internally. There's the experience itself and then there's the trigger. Essentially what is the mechanism that caused it to go into action? And both of those are important. You know, you can't just like the goal isn't to become a robot where whenever somebody says something good or bad about me, I just am completely neutral. It's not really how life works in my experience. You can certainly change the reactions. But think of it as you have two parts. You have triggers for things, and then you have the reactions or the creation of the recipe for things. So the first thing to look at is, hey, are there experiences externally that are triggering a certain reaction? And let me use a totally different metaphor just real quick, or an example I think people will relate to and make sense as well. And we'll come back to rejection. Let's say I have a bad habit like biting my fingernails and it's a really common bad habit that people feel like they're not in control of. All of a sudden, before you know it, you're biting them. Well, even those. There's a trigger before you feel the desire or you're in the experience of biting your nails. Even if you're like, in your mind, you're about to do it, you know you're about to do it. You haven't quite put your teeth to nail yet, but you're in that process. Well, if you back up in time, just before that, something happened. And a trigger was either maybe you were sitting around and you felt overwhelmed or bored, you had some kind of emotional aspects, or. And maybe you made a picture in your mind of a jagged nail. That's pretty common one, actually. You make a picture in your mind of a jagged nail and then subconsciously you move your thumb to go check kinesthetically, you know, or tactile touching, you went to check and see if that matched the picture. Now, the moment you checked and it was jagged even a little bit, that itself was the trigger. The picture in your mind was the trigger or the emotion that you felt beforehand was the trigger. So if you follow me on this conversation, the idea is you go from the trigger can't change. People are always going to reject an idea of yours at some point. And you might call it something different. Someone might give you feedback, or they might say, hey, that's a great idea, but we're going to go a different direction. Now, you used to call that rejection. Now it's just, hey, someone doesn't agree with me. The trigger is always going to happen. But in the world of nlp, what we want to do subconsciously as eases to change it. So the trigger, it's like, have you seen a train that you know in all the movies, when the train's barreling down the track and it's going on the wrong track, when it comes to that why in the. In the track and you're feverantly trying to change the track. Well, a trigger is like the train coming down. And when it comes to the why, it always goes down the same track, which is what you don't want. You feel rejected, beat up, you feel terrible, or my example, you're biting your nails and you're like, oh, here I am again. We want to use a technique in NLP where we can change. The trigger stays the same, but we change the outcome as if it changes train tracks. And now the same trigger actually automatically triggers a different reaction. So in a Quick summation. The idea is not to destroy a behavior and feel neutral. It's actually leaning into the fact that we have automatic reactions. And instead of having the old automatic reaction that's negative, what if you could have a positive automatic reaction that feels good instead? So when someone says, I don't like your idea instantly, what if your brain was like, awesome? That means that we need to get more creative and come up with new ideas. What if that was your reaction?

I love that. Yes. Okay, so, yeah, I get the point that we're not going to become sort of above it all and indifferent in some way to life. But actually, what we. But that does sound possible to change our patterns so that the things that those tracks that we habitually go down, that don't serve us, that are painful, that are often debilitating, we can change it so we feel perhaps more energized, more capable, more resourceful in the face of the very same thing coming down that track.

Yeah, let it trigger a different. And that might be the next part is different ways that we experience rejection. Some people experience it more as an inner dialogue. Some people have it more as what I call a kinesthetic or like a. Like a physiological reaction. You know, you feel it in your gut, you swallow hard in your throat, your heart starts pumping, that kind of thing. So there's sometimes physical state reactions. Sometimes it's inner dialogue reactions. So the first step is actually pay attention to when you do feel rejected or you have that kind of experience. What are you doing inside while you're reacting? Because that's going to give you a place to start. Like, if the first thing happens to me is I start talking to myself and I'm like, oh, my gosh, Matt, what are you doing? Oh, again, you messed it up. Why are you. Oh, you're so dumb. If most of my rejection is created from my inner dialogue, then what I want to do is I want to set up where I can start triggering new inner dialogue. And I'm talking automatic again. You're not going to rise above it all, as you said. I really love that because to me, that can actually be dangerous. You know, you don't want to rise above to the point where you could be this neutral robot in a way, you still want to react and be emotional and thoughtful and be a human being. But if your inner dialogue causes you to feel rejection, you need to get a hold of it and start tweaking the inner dialogue. Tweak the recipe. If inner dialogue would be sugar, a physical feeling could be flour Picture in your mind of somebody being mean to you or you being shrunken down small. If you imagine your mind, that would represent eggs. Going back to the original metaphor, each one of these is sort of like an ingredient. So figure out what the ingredient is that you lean into the most to feel what you feel. And that's a good place to start.

I love this.

Yeah.

So I'm actually unpacking this right now as we're talking. There's a period of time in my business where I didn't do the enrollment for clients directly myself. I had someone else team actually doing that. And recently I've been restructuring things and getting into a lot more of the. Back into the coaching, bring a lot more energy back into that aspect of the business. And I've been doing a lot more of the enrollment. Calls myself with people that are potentially interested in working with me for mainly my group program is what I is the main way that I work with people on my mastermind. And so I'll have these conversations with people where we're exploring, you know, what their goals are, what their challenges are, and if it's a good fit for them. And some people it is, some people it isn't. And I notice that if I have a couple in a row where it isn't for whatever reason, then it can start to trigger that response. And as you were describing that I was studying the recipe. I was actually doing this yesterday. I was studying the recipe and I noticed that. And it's funny because which one comes first? Maybe they come at the same time. Right. So there's definitely a mental storyline and it's some sort of, like, this is dangerous and bad in the future. Like, this means that if these two people didn't want to do this, then it means no one will ever want to sign up again. Sort of like a catastrophe track. And then I don't know if it's at the same time or in response or precedes it, but there's like that kind of gut feeling you're talking about, like a squeezing in my upper stomach, a squeezing in my chest, and definitely a sense of, you know, I'm not like chomping at the bit to do it again. I'm like, yeah, you know, so I guess some sort of pessimism is actually a part of that as well. Sort of believing that negative storyline. So there might be more ingredients. But those are the first two that I notice in response to that flavor or that particular. No trigger.

Nice. So what you could do to. You want to find the primary kind of the. Or not the primary, but the first one that happens. So the way to. The real simple way to do that is go back in time and like, I would actually tell someone, I call it put the cook back in the kitchen to continue the same metaphor. But you want to go back to the moment when you were actually the last time you experienced that, and you vividly remember it. So if you were a client and you're not, right, you're a friend and a colleague. But let's just play role play here, if we will. But I'd say, hey, if you want to get a hold of this and really figure out that specifically a sales rejection kind of script you're running, and trust me, man, I relate. Because if I have, I do the same thing. I'll have these calls all in a row during one day. And if I get a few rejections or a few nos, even if it's for the right reasons, it's like, oh, you know, I come back downstairs, I'm like, man, I just feel like, why am I even doing this? And should I give it all up? And I go through that process. But it's about taking charge of that and really seeing if you can get an automated new response. So the way to start is to go back and say, okay, do you remember a specific time when that actually happened? When, like, two or more people in a row said no to your offer? And I'm sure you can't think of a time when two people said no, but if you could, can you think of a specific time?

Sure. Yeah.

And as you go back to that time, imagine, you know, you're floating down in your own body. You look through your eyes, you're reliving it for a moment. See what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you're feeling in that moment and go just before now, just before that rejection, or just before they say no. The moment someone says no, that's not for me. And it's the second person. What's the very first thing that happens? Is it something that you see in your mind? Is it something that you say to yourself? Is it a feeling? What's the very first thing that happens when someone says no?

It's a feeling.

And what kind of feeling is it?

Like a squeezing in the stomach and ribs.

The squeezing in the stomach and ribs.

Awesome.

So now you feel, you have this initial feeling, and one you want a quick little kind of a fun trick, something that you like. Everybody, you're listening. You can play with this for yours, with Yourself, you can play with this, with someone you care about, but what you do is basically, you want to play around.

Sure.

Yeah. So let's scramble this thing. Right? So what you do, the first step is you want to role play a little bit. So we're going to role play, and we're going to reverse it. So instead of me trying to discover how you do it, Aziz, I want you to teach me how I can do it. So imagine, like, I'm gonna take your place for a day. You know, I'm from a temporary agency. I'm gonna go do your job for the day, and I'm gonna replace you, and everyone has to think it's you. So I got to know everything you do, and I got to know how to feel this way. So what's the very first thing I need to do if I'm gonna feel that rejection feeling after my second no to a sales call?

Well, see here, you need to probably stop breathing.

And then describe how I get that feeling you just told me about. Yeah. What do I need to do?

Stop breathing? You kind of lower your head just a little bit, and you're going to squeeze in your stomach muscles and kind of round your body a little bit to get some tent, some squeezing in.

Your ribs as well. Wow, that's great. That's super specific too. Okay, so let me get this straight. So the first thing I need to do is the moment the second person says no, that's not for me, then I need to just stop and take a big breath and then kind of put my shoulders back and let my diaphragm get out, make a big breath, and then blow it all the way out down my toes.

Is that right? No.

Oh, did I miss that?

Yeah. No. No.

Can you try that on just to make sure I'm wrong? I don't want to mess it up or anything. Could you go inside and try that on and see if it won't work? I don't want to screw it up. You know what I mean? I got to get this right. That's right. And just to break it down for us. Oh, so it doesn't work. That's weird. And what we'll do if you want to keep doing that, is we basically get everyone goes through steps, a sequence, right? The recipe. It's like, first it's flour, then it's sugar, then it's eggs, whatever it is. Your first step is a kinesthetic feeling, Right? It's a feeling in your body. And what I'm doing is I'm gonna Number one is what we actually did is we had you dissociate. So you're not. You're no longer seeing yourself reliving it. And one, this is a super quick tip. But it's something that's so powerful in NLP and so underutilized. The difference between association and dissociation to feel things. Association means you're looking through your own eyes, in your mind, or in your memory, as if you're reliving it. Dissociation visually is as if you see yourself in the picture. It's like one step removed. Imagine you go to the theater and you're watching yourself on the screen. Well, if you want to feel a feeling deeper, like maybe you have trouble connecting with intimacy or something, and you're sitting there with someone and that you love them, but you're not feeling that deep feeling, and you want to, well, try on purpose visualizing and associating into these memories so you can access strong feelings. But on the flip side, if you're feeling a strong feeling, like rejection, and you don't want to, a quick little trick is when you remember that memory or you think about that experience, pop yourself. Imagine floating out of your body and see yourself in the memory doing the thing you did instantly, the charge generally will come off the emotion. So the first thing we had you do is dissociate because you're teaching me how to do it. And it's like, instantly. That makes it better. It makes it harder for you to access it, which is pretty cool. And then the next thing is, I want to discover you're going to teach me how to do it, and I'm going to feed it back to you. A little scrambled, a little messed up, as you obviously noticed, but that doesn't matter as long as you try it on and you go in your mind. And now it's like you're trying to train on the wrong track. And it's a little bit like, to switch metaphors, like scratching an old cd. You scratch it once, it's hard to hit the pattern. You scratch it a bunch of times over and over again, it starts to get scrambled and it won't play anymore. So if we continued on this process, we could hit each step and start scrambling each step as we go. And pretty soon what will happen is you're like, you might start laughing, you might feel neutral, but you're not going to be able to access the old pattern anymore because it's so messed up.

I love that. I love that. And so I think what I hear from Clients often is that there's a. An idea or a story that the old pat. They don't like it. Like they don't like the cookies. But some sense of like. But I need to making that pattern. Doing that pattern serves me in some way and usually not conscious of it. But it's like for example, let's say, well, hey, if I get hurt in some way, socially, emotionally, relationship wise, and then I need to feel bad about myself in order to try harder next time or protect myself in the future to make sure it doesn't happen again or avoid rejection, all those things. There's some draw to these patterns. Have you noticed that in working with people? And how do you approach that?

Yeah, my first book was called Total Freedom from Addictions. I wrote in 2007 after going through my own addictive cycles since 16 or 15 years old. Really. And the major pattern I noticed is this shame guilt pattern. And it's a fascinating one for me. The distinction that I've made in working with clients between shame and guilt is. Guilt is almost always external. Right. So I'm guilty regarding someone else or a situation or an external expectation. Shame is an internal expectation or it's guilt about yourself. Either way, they're pretty similar in how they emote. And shame and guilt became like are one of the strongest emotional driving forces for why subconsciously people are trying to stop doing an addictive pattern. So whether it's drugs or it's pornography, or it's anger or it's gambling or it's overeating, fill in the blank. Something that we do compulsively. We do. And then at the end you go, gosh, I didn't want to do that, but here I am again. Any of those kind of patterns. The biggest thing that people try to do is they'll feel guilty or shameful about the pattern. And I think it's the subconscious mind trying to use a mechanism to get us to stop doing it. However, it's the reverse process. The more guilty I feel, the worse of a person I feel like I am. And now I've messed up. Now I failed, now I'm a screw up. And now I'm gonna talk down to myself. I. And what's the best way to lash myself, to beat myself up? If I'm trying to quit smoking and I had four days with no cigarettes and then I smoked a cigarette. Oh, Matt, you idiot. Why did you do it again? Well, if I'm really that bad and I messed up, someone's got to pay the price. Someone's got to have the consequence for my screw up. It's kind of what the judicial system is based on, right? There was a. Something was committed, there was a crime committed. In this case, I smoked a cigarette even though I said I wouldn't. There has to be a punishment. Now what's the best way to punish yourself? If you feel guilty, shameful, go do more of the thing that you know makes you a bad person. There is no better way to punish yourself than to do more of what you said you wouldn't do. So it actually becomes this vicious cycle where now the guiltier you feel, the more you want to do the behavior again. So we got to break that. And the way to do it. It's a weird juxtaposition, but it's something you like. Emotions are a muscle. You got to practice them over and over again. So it won't feel natural at first, but you just got to do it anyway. If you quit smoking for four days and you smoked one cigarette, there's a big difference between beating yourself up for one cigarette and celebrating that you are now, let's say there's 20 cigarettes in a pack and you smoked a pack a day. Normally you would have smoked 80 cigarettes. So you are 79 cigarettes down from where you used to be. So it's like, do you want to celebrate that you're 79 out of 80, that's an A plus on a test, or are you going to beat up the one cigarette? And I get it, it's a natural automatic reaction. Oh, I'm an idiot. But you got to take control of the thought. And sometimes it's just simply taking the inner dialogue and saying, hey, no, that's not true. That's not true that I'm a screw up. I just got rid of 79 cigarettes out of my life, man, that's awesome. I'm on the way to being healthy. In fact, had I not been making these changes, I would have been doing nothing but smoking and feeling fine about it. The fact that I feel weird and the fact that I only had one shows me that I didn't have 19. Like, this is a celebration. And even though it feels weird and even though you don't want to, you gotta find a way to celebrate the 79 missed cigarettes. You gotta celebrate that even when you smell like an ashtray because you just had the one. If you follow me on that, that's the, the imperative thing is you jump in right away and start celebrating what you know, the success, not hanging up on the failure. And the first Time you do this, it's going to feel dumb the whole time and you'll still, you'll be battling emotions. But if you backslide another time, you got to keep celebrating that. And focusing on the change part, not on the backslide part is probably one of the most important aspects of hanging on and solidifying change.

Yeah, there's so much in what you're describing here, I think that people have this like, I'm going to focus on my ultimate outcome, which would be quitting smoking or whatever their ultimate outcome is. And anything less than that, or anything less than clear, immediate, constant progress to that is that's what I'm going to punish myself for. And that will make me successful, that will make me good, that will make me stronger and more capable. And as we all know that that's not actually true and that any goal that we have, the likelihood that we're going to achieve 100% hit rate success along every step of the way is totally unreasonable. It's like a lot of these standards and expectations we can have for ourselves are very unrealistic. And so what I love in what you're describing is it's another pattern, right? It's a pattern of noticing and celebrating successes. And I wonder how much even more powerful would be if in addition to celebrating those 79 down is what about at the end of every day that you did make it through celebrating those 20 less cigarettes and like building that muscle of celebration. So I'm curious, you know, having studied NLP for so many years as you have, is that something you've really conditioned and patterned for yourself, that ability to see what's right, celebrate wins and have that be more of a natural kind of default way that you focus and perceive the world? Yeah.

It's interesting you say that because as we're having this conversation, which I love, where it's going. I've been doing a lot in the last couple years. One of my main principles in my life and I'm teaching a lot is leaning into your strengths and leaning into how you're made.

Right.

So in some branches and schools of NLP thought, you know, people, it's all about, hey, change everything and everything can change and it's all possibilities. And I'm like, I love that and I subscribe to that in some ways, but in other ways, I'm 40 years old this year and like ever since kindergarten, I remember going my first day of kindergarten and I was in the PM class and as I show up in the, they had the 8am and they had the 12pm classes and I was in the afternoon class. And I remember my mom saying, oh, I'm so glad you're in the afternoon class, because it's hard for us to wake up in the morning. And for years, my entire life, I finally figured out this is a limiting belief. Why do I think I'm not a morning person, et cetera, et cetera. But in the last few years, I really lean into. I don't think I'm limiting myself, but it's different. Living limited versus leaning into your strengths. My strengths is at 6am I can't think of a time in my life that I've ever functioned really, really well. But at 9:30, 10:00 in the morning, I'm sharp as a tack. And then again at 9 o' clock at night, 10 o' clock at night, I wake back up again and I'm super sharp. So for me, it's like, why do I fight that? And why do I want to fit this mold that other people say is the right way to go? And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to set myself up to win. So I'm going to have a good night's sleep in the morning, I'm going to be super productive mid morning, I'm going to be going through my day and then I'm going to have some creative time at night. And I find myself way happier, way more content, more joy, I get more accomplished, I have more free time and I'm not fighting myself anymore. So a big aspect is leaning into how you're made. I say that to say this. I'm sorry for the long answer. Hope that's okay.

Yeah, I love it.

I say that to say this, when you said people will naturally focus on whether it's the one cigarette they had or the 79 they didn't have, etc. One of the predispositions, I believe that's kind of a personality trait. And this goes back to a Myers Briggs personality styling. And we studied that in NLP calling meta programs. And it's a really fast, super quick, efficient approach to understanding some of your potential predispositions and how you might behave in situations so you can set yourself up to win. Essentially, one of them is the sorting filter. How do you sort information? Now, I find that some people are naturally set up to sort for differences and some are naturally set up to sort for sameness. And how that translates is, let's say, like my dad is a difference disorder. So if he comes over to our house he's going to walk in. The first thing he'll see is, oh, you got a new coffee table. And that's cool because, like, oh, yeah, you noticed, right? But it also can be annoying when I go, hey, dad, here's my new book. I'm so proud of my new book I took a year to write. And he'll look through in the very first thing. He's not trying to be mean or critical or judgmental, but he sorts for differences, so he'll find a typo error before anyone else will. Now, for me, I'm a sameness filter, so that means I'm going to look for the things that are the same, the things that are corresponding to each other, the normalness. What's normal and prevalent. And that's great for a lot of things. Like if I'm winning a lot and I lose a few, I'm the kind of guy that can go, hey, you know what? You lose a few, so what? But, you know, mostly I'm a winner. And then it's a little dangerous when my wife gets a new hairstyle and I don't notice for three days. Right? That's the problem with the sameness filter type person. So how does that work out for rejection and for habits? If you're a differences filter, if you notice the one thing in the room that changed, what will usually happen is that also corresponds to a little bit of perfectionist, where you can win 99 out of 100, but you'll focus on what the one thing that didn't work. That's the problem with the differences. So what we need to find is a way to flip that upside down. If you're a big differences filter, you got to find a different way. So let's look at the smoking. Just to keep that example. If you replace a behavior, if you replace an attitude or a state, you go, okay, I was smoking. What am I going to do instead? I'm going to start going for walks. Let's say use your differences filter to your advantage. Make it a superpower. So you're like, okay, yeah, I focused on the one cigarette out of the 79, and that sucks. But forget about the cigarettes for a minute. Let's focus on the walk. Hey, most of my week, I didn't really go for a walk, but that one day I did, and I went for 15 minutes. And it's like, if you're going to filter for things that are unique and not the norm, you can't get one without the other. You're not allowed to only Focus on the negative things. If you want to focus on the exception, not the rule, you got to focus on the exceptions for when you do well as well. It's a little bit of a shift, but it's something, again, consciously to focus on. You can't have one without the other.

I love that.

Does that make any sense at all?

It sure does. And what I'm hearing in it, too, is that we have these. You describe them as metaprograms. We have all these different patterns that we are doing, often unconsciously. And what you're describing is how we can become more aware of them and. And then expand the way that we're using them and not necessarily have to stop being a differences kind of person and noticing those things, but being able to more consciously use it and then expand it. So we're not just focusing on the differences where we're failing or falling short, but also the differences in which we're taking positive steps. So what I love about all of this is it just brings so much more choice back into. Into our lives and that we can not only change a pattern that helps us relate to people out there, but these patterns inside really determine our confidence, our sense of value, and then also ultimately, how we feel about ourselves at the end of the day. So I love this. So let's explore maybe one or two other key questions. And I think there's just so much here. But let's say, you know, someone notices that they have fear about taking an action. Such a common thing, you know, fear of it doesn't work. I'm going to fail, or all people aren't going to like me, or I'm going to be embarrassed or whatever the imagined result is going to be. And yet they know on some level, we all know, that confidence is a byproduct of that action. If we're able to take that action consistently, then we can discover new things, get new results, achieve what we want, and also show ourselves what we're really capable of.

And then the positive result will reinforce the feeling that you wanted to have in the first place, right?

Absolutely. It's like, hey, I can do this. Okay, I'm going to go for more. So what's the NLP approach to help people? I mean, basically, we're talking about courage in a way, how to access more of our courage when we're in those places where we're afraid, but we know we want to do it anyway.

Really, really good question, Aziz. And I love how you said courage, because we've maybe heard the definition or Not. But I love this definition of courage is standing up and taking action despite the fear, in the middle of fear, not the absence of fear. And that's a resource that we absolutely need. Every single person needs to be able to tap into courage from moment to moment. When we look at how to. So the question is, how do you do it? And it's like, it's easy to say, yeah, take the action. And that's gonna make you feel better afterwards. But how do you get the ball rolling right? How do you. How do you do the first action even though you're scared to do it in a way? First off, it's gonna go back to what we started talking about at the beginning of this interview, which was, what's the type of step? The three main ingredients that most people use is either visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. So when you feel scared or when you feel uncertain and you're. And you're procrastinating, you're not taking action, you're putting it off. And you know, it's because every. You know, it's fear, rejection, whatever. First thing to think is, okay, is this, Do I make a picture in my mind of what's going to go wrong? Am I having an inner dialogue where I say to myself, oh, my gosh, like, how am I going to do this? I'm no good at this. Or is it a natural feeling? Inner dialogue is a huge one, and I love doing this. So here's. Again, I love the idea. Here's a quick tip, something you can take away and use right now and try out. If you find yourself with a negative inner dialogue that's causing you to not take action or to freeze, first thing you gotta do is screw up the dialogue. Now, there's two ways to mess up a dialogue. You can mess up the content, meaning, say different words, but that doesn't work. 10% of the time, it works, okay? And this is, you know, I'm gonna grill, grill and rake over the coals, the affirmation people, for a second here. Just for a second. And sorry if that's. I love it. Sometimes 10% of the time. The main challenge with affirmations where you say positive things about yourself is one, it's not in the middle of a pattern. You know, if I sit there and I wake up and I write in my dream journal and I say, matt, you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, people like you remember Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live back in the 90s. You know, if I do that it's like, I feel good then, but what about when the rubber meets the road and I'm about to go make that sales call and I get into a real situation? Well, in a real situation, my natural subconscious reaction is going to come to the surface one way or another, and my affirmations didn't do any good. The main reason that doesn't work is because when you change the content, you're not doing the right thing. Let's go back to the recipe metaphor for a second. Let's say you are violently ill when you think about eating a chocolate cake. And you don't want to, you know, but you don't want to be. You want to feel better. Well, what if you did all your therapy on vanilla cakes and you were like, I'm going to change this chocolate cake problem I have, and you started working on vanilla cakes and it was wonderful. And after a month of therapy and intervention and coaching and change work and nlp, you're like, life is great. I am so good with cakes now. And every time you see a vanilla cake, you respond positively. But then in real life, someone brings you a chocolate cake again, and then you're back to square one. So step number one is don't change the content. If you make a picture in your mind of failing, don't change the actual content of you, the other person, the situation. Leave it the same. If you say something negative to yourself, believe it or not, and go with me on this for a second, you want to leave the words the same. If you say, you are such a loser, Matt, you need to keep the word exactly the same. I still want to say to myself, you are such a loser, Matt. Because that's my automatic reaction. Now, you, you know, listen to this. You might be jumping out of your seat going, are you kidding me? I'm not gonna call myself a loser. Look, I'm not telling you to do something you're not already doing. Whatever. Whatever I say about myself, I just wanna keep the words the same as step one. But instead, imagine trying to change what I would call the quality of ingredients. Instead of using bread flour, use cake flour. In this case, instead of using a downward tone where you say, you're what I say, you're such a loser, Matt. Instead, try an upward tone. You're such a loser, Matt. Or instead of using a serious tone, you're such a loser, Matt, use a sexy tone. I mean, how weird is that? When was the last time you said something negative to yourself and it sounded like this? You're such a Loser, Matt. Ooh, and I. And it sounds weird. Try it out. If I change my tone, if I change my tempo, if I change my volume, what if I scream, you're such a loser, Matt. What if I whisper it into my left ear? What if I use Mickey Mouse's voice? You're such a loser, Matt. How can you possibly get the same reaction? So to sum it up in a bumper sticker, start off by, don't change what you say to yourself. Change how you say it. Your mom told you that when you were a kid. It's not what you said, it's how you said it. And that is so true for taking control of your inner dialogue and ultimately taking control of your response to fear.

Because the fear is primarily driven by the inner dialogue.

I'd say inner dialogue is the majority of the time, over 50%. A lot of people still have primarily, the fear is driven by pictures they make in their mind. That some people are very strong visuals, some people are very strong kinesthetics, where it's primarily driven by. They just get this instant physical reaction. In that case, what you want to do is change your physiology. And not to cut you off. And I know you're going somewhere with it, but if you're thinking, I don't really have much inner dialogue when I am trying to find courage. If it's feeling, if you just get that, like you said, you know, that tightness down there. One of the things we'll teach in our NLP courses is because I love running, whether it's a live course or we're doing virtual courses all year. And it's fun to do, and online courses. But when we take someone through an NLP course, we'll teach you a physiology first. And if you have strong kinesthetic reactions, the first thing to do is focus on where your body is actually postured and how you're moving it or not moving it. Let's just say, like you said, my shoulders are over and I'm feeling this way. And you're like, well, how do I change how I feel? Well, the very first thing is move your shoulders back. Breathe deeper. And here's a quick tip. If you're deep in an emotion or a feeling and you feel like you're stuck there, look up, look up with your eyeballs, not just your head, but actually look up. And then look off to the left or look off to the right and try either side. And that's where you're in your eye patterns. You're actually accessing the visual cortex of your memory. And when you're accessing a picture, it's much harder to connect to a feeling. Most people, when they try to access a feeling, are looking down and to their right, like over by your right knee. And that's where we go, we try to access feelings. So it's a quick intervention you can do on yourself, but check your posture and if you physically change how you're sitting or if you're sitting, stand up and just do it. Just take a second and say, I'm going to stand up, I'm going to look up and to the left. And then just do that and check in and see if the emotion diminished or if you even feel like you can't access it in the moment. And it's like, I'm telling you, it felt like magic the first time I tried that out. And I do it with my 9 year old son, Val. It's so much fun. He'll, he'll be kind of grumpy face, you know, and he looks at me and I put my thumb in the middle of his eyes, like on his eyebrows and I pull up just to mess around with him and I say look up and try to be grumpy. And he looks up and he starts smiling because he can't access the feeling when you're looking up. Change your physiology and that's going to change the feeling.

I love this. And you know, one thing that's standing out to me as you're sharing these things is and I've had experience with a number of these, these techniques and they work. And the thing is, and I think the biggest obstacle that people have in doing them is that they're different or they're unusual, you know, like saying that thing in a certain different voice, you know, moving your body in a different way. There's like a self consciousness there. And. But the liberating truth is if you decide, you just got to decide what's most important to you, like what's most important to me. And if you decide, like, hey, feeling more confident is more important to me than staying in exactly the same narrow, constricted, hopefully judgment free way of living that I've done and behaving and acting. But if you're willing to try something new, I mean, these things are powerful. And I also think that the social pressure that we feel to kind of conform and operate in certain ways can control people a lot more than they think and really limit them. And I'm sure you've maybe seen this too with people that sometimes there's like A you're doing an intervention or something with them, and you suggest they try something or say something. And there's this kind of like, I don't know if I want to do that. And the only thing that might be stopping them is, like, it sounds weird or it looks weird.

Social protocol. Here's a quick story. This has actually become a famous NLP story. You might have even heard I talk about it on our online course. There's a woman that worked with an NLP practitioner. She had her daughter who was doing massive, terrible tantrums every time they went to the store, down on the ground, banging her hands and knees, sort of tantrum. And the woman's like, I've tried everything. I've tried to be kind. I've tried to be stern. Now, the truth is, she didn't try everything, but she tried what most parents do, which is be kind and be stern. And one of the problems is children have more flexibility than parents. So I teach there's one of the laws of NLP is the person with the most flexibility will control the system or the environment or the outcome. So if you can be more flexible than whoever else you're working with or more flexible than your environment, you're always going to find a way to win. When you think about a kid with a tantrum at the grocery store, kids have 101 ways to get the candy bar. Parents have two ways to say no, be nice or be mean. So the practitioner says, hey, why don't you try next time she throws a tantrum? Why don't you get on the ground and throw a tantrum just as big as your daughter, maybe bigger. And the woman looked at him and said, I could never do that. And the practitioner said, that's exactly why you still have the problem, because I could never do that. You're not being flexible enough. And they went away, and it was like, well, that was a waste of time. Well, a couple weeks later, an email comes in, and it's like, thank you so much. What happened? Well, the next time they went in the grocery store, the little girl starts throwing a tantrum. I want the candy bar. I want it. And the mom looked, and all the shoppers are looking at them. And she's seen this scene so many times, and she finally just thought, what do I have to lose? So she dropped on the ground right in the middle of the grocery store. She starts banging and yelling, no, I don't want you to have it. I don't want to buy it. And she throws a bigger tantrum. Within three seconds, the little girl stops, she stands up and goes, mom. And never threw another tantrum. There's power in emotional flexibility. To be able to control that system, you gotta be able to get outside what we think is allowable or what we think people are gonna judge us for and just try it. You know, don't be a trend conformer, be a trendsetter. Decide to get out there and say, I'm gonna do something new, even if it's wacky and weird because it might just get a result. And hey, be a trendsetter, let someone else come on there. Let someone else decide to try on your new trend.

Yeah, I love that story. And I've seen that in so many different ways with, with my kids. If I can approach them and it could just be creativity, silliness, playing, afraid of them, we go into problems when it's like I'm going to lock into one of my two methods, right? Kindness or sternness. And it's like it's not working. I should probably just use more sternness. And it never is going to work, right. There's always some creative, expressive, flexible way to approach. And that's just with kids, that's with our own inner states, that's with parts of ourselves, that's with these patterns. So I love this and I know that we are just like at the tip of the iceberg, just scratching the surface of what you know, what you teach. And so for anyone who's listening, who's intrigued about, hey, how can I learn some of these techniques and tools and start to use them in my own life to improve my confidence. You mentioned online courses, events, other things you do. How can someone find out about you and start to learn this stuff right away?

Oh man. Well, first off, thank you for the conversation because this is. I don't always get to have a nice deep conversation like this on every interview. So this has been a pleasure to chat with you my friend. And thank you for that little plug. So here's what I want to do, make it real simple and easy is if you head over to NLP, NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, NLPwithMAT.com what I put up for your listeners is my entire complete comprehensive NLP course manual. It's the same manual that we use for our seven day live certification classes. But I took the whole manual and put it up there completely free. It's a 74 page color manual chock full of NLP language patterns, NLP techniques, the things like we've been talking about. It teaches you deeper on these visual, auditory, kinesthetics, everything deeper on there, 74 pages, like you don't need to go through all of them, but I'm telling you, it's the most comprehensive, power packed entire course manual. It's yours for free@nlpwithmat.com and then my name is Matt Brauning B R A U N I N G and I'm Matt Brauning on all social media. So whatever your platform of Choice is besides TikTok, head over to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and follow me and message me. I reply back and I love hearing from people.

That's fantastic and thank you, thank you for gifting that. And I think that's a great place to start to really. Because even if it's just like picking up one or two of the ideas in that manual and then testing them and then seeing like, oh, whoa. I mean, I think that's all it takes is like, wait a minute, I can shift this. That in itself just starts to opens up some more possibility. And then of course someone can get excited and go way further with that. So again, yes, absolutely. A pleasure. I love your ability to explain this stuff and make it extremely accessible and relatable and instantly usable. So thank you so much for being with us today, Matt. Amen.

My pleasure. Thank you so much.

That brings us to the end of our interview, but not the end of our episode because there's one more thing we gotta do, right? It's your action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step for today is to apply one of these techniques that you learn one of these approaches, just a small one. And definitely go to the website he suggested to get the further manual and find more depth. But just like instantly, right now, just apply one so you can see that this stuff can have an effect. Maybe it's something as simple as putting your hands up and looking up with your head like he was describing and looking up with your head and with your eyes and just noticing what the effect is as you take maybe fuller, deeper breaths. Just that it's like a 30 second thing. It could be. I'm a huge fan of one of the scramble techniques that he was describing where you identify what that critical or scary inner dialogue is like. It's never going to work out. I'm never going to have what I want and just take what that dialogue is and then say it out loud in a ridiculous voice. And the simplest one that anyone can do is some version of Mickey Mouse which is just a high pitched squeaky, like you're never going to have.

I'm never going to have what I want.

And just do that two or three or four or five times and you'll just notice the effect. That's really what I want you to take away from this, is just experiment with these things. And of course you want to go further. Check out his materials. Sound good? All right. And remember, you have a choice. Do you want to be a little unusual, a little ridiculous, a little bit of a trendsetter and get free or stay trapped in patterns for the rest of your life? Choice is yours, my friend. Take that action and I'll see you in the next episode. 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.