The Roadmap To Unlimited Confidence

Welcome to Shrink for the shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're 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. Today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about the roadmap to unlimited confidence. A high level view of exactly what you need to do to increase your confidence in any area of your life, especially your social confidence, your ability to connect with others, your ability to create something meaningful in your work, in your love, relationships, your ability to just feel capable and powerful and authentically you. That's the kind of confidence that I'm talking about here. And I've done this process again and again and again with so many people, starting, of course, with myself. And now, I mean, I haven't sat down to count it out, but definitely thousands of people between events and groups and other things that I've taught and run, worked with clients in that way, and then, you know, broader through this podcast and YouTube and books and stuff like that. You know, hundreds of thousands of people. So. So this process is proven and if you follow this, you will build confidence. And that's one of the first things I want to start with, is sometimes there's this maybe mystery to it or maybe even a skepticism of like, can you really change? Can people really change? I remember there was a guy that I worked with who that would be like his go to when we were talking about making a specific change in his life. Like, okay, you go and have that conversation with that person you've been avoiding. Let's talk about how to do that. And he's like, okay, yeah, you know, I have a question for you. He's like, okay, Aziz, can people really change? And I remember one of the first times this happened in our early sessions, I was like, okay, let's talk about that. You know, maybe he's got some learned helplessness or he doesn't think that he can make changes. And then I realized after the first time we talked about that, then we brought it up again later, I was like, oh, this is a tactic. This is his Safety police at work trying to prevent him from taking the very real risk that we're talking about taking. And as you'll see in just a few minutes, risk is a key component in creating unlimited confidence. If you are benefiting from this show, I highly recommend that you show it by going to shrink for the shy guy inside of itunes and giving it a five star review. And you can just click the five stars, but you can also type something. I love seeing those. And that supports the growth of this channel. And this channel is. Or this podcast is a big part of my mission, which is mass liberation. How do we reach as many people as possible? My goal is a million or more to help them realize the truth about themselves, to free themselves from that voice of doubt and fear and see that they're actually capable, powerful, entirely lovable, and able to create something beautiful with their lives. So that's what you and I are doing right now here, and let's help other people who might be out there suffering in silence. And as you know, that cage of suffering can be pretty intense and pretty isolating. So let's help break through that. And all it takes is just two minutes on your end to just give the show a positive review. So thank you in advance for doing that. You can go to itunes and look for shrink for the shy guy. So let's talk about the basics of building confidence. Let's put it in one sentence. To build unlimited confidence, do everything that scares you until fear has no power to stop you. There it is in one. There's it. As Keith Cunningham would say, there it is in a bumper sticker. Do everything that scares you until fear has no power to stop you. Now let's break that down for a minute because you might say everything. I mean, it would scare me to like, I don't know, take my pants down and put public. I don't know about that one. Depends on where and when. I don't know. There's a circumstance for everything, but, you know, for the most part, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Or like running into oncoming traffic. No, no, no, no, no. You know what scares you that is in alignment with becoming who you want to be or the goals that you have. Right. So what are you scared of right now? That if you imagine you are 100% confident, you would no longer be scared to do them? What is that for you? If you had just total confidence, would it be no longer scary to do what now? There's probably a long list of things that comes up. Well, I'd maybe speak up in a group more or I'd share my ideas at work. With confidence. I'd step into a leadership position, I'd start my own business, I'd approach that person, I'd share my feelings more openly with my spouse. Even though we've been kind of avoiding those difficult conversations, you know, stuff like that. So do every one of those things that scares you until fear has no power to stop you. And then at this point people are like all of them. But why? Because. Here's why. Confidence is a byproduct of action. Confidence is a byproduct of the action. So you take the action and then you get the confidence. Think of it like, you know, the coins or the points in a video game. You don't get the, you can't level up without experience points. You gotta go kill those bears in the woods and then later you can go fight those necromancers and things. Now in any case, you need to do the stuff that's uncomfortable and then you'll get the confidence. Now this is probably not new information to you. This is like, hey, get outside your comfort zone or maybe even exposed to the idea of gradual exposure. And if you haven't, I teach it in a much more palatable way in my comprehensive at home confidence learning system called the Confidence University. If you're not familiar with that, I highly recommend you look into that. That's like specific exact steps on how to build your confidence in key areas. Your core confidence and the ultimate confidence foundation, social mastery, which is all your ability to talk to people and feel comfortable in your own skin, dating and relationships and then your career as well. So confidence in all the key areas of life. And in there, there's a huge part of the program is dedicated to action steps because confidence is a byproduct of action. And in there we talk about what I call the ladder to victory, which is in clinical psychology speak a gradual exposure fear hierarchy. Bleh. Who wants to sit down and do something from their gradual exposure fear hierarchy? Nobody. Who wants to climb the ladder to victory? Everybody. He's not a loser. So I kind of teach that concept in that program and you actually map out very specific action steps and how they're going to lead you to your goals. And we have examples and all that stuff. So this might all not be brand new information to you, but the idea of it doesn't really do jack shit. Well, I've heard about that. Okay, how's that working? Well, hearing about it shockingly didn't Raise my confidence. I don't know what's going on. Maybe I need to hear more about it in books and podcasts and videos and stuff. Okay, well, we all know that that's not gonna work. The action is gonna set you free. Confidence is the byproduct of the action. So in this episode, I'm not gonna tell you to go out and do the stuff that scares you. You already know that. The question is, how do you get yourself to do that? And we're gonna look at five levels to taking that bold action that's gonna transform your life. That sound good? All right, fantastic. So level one is you don't do it. That's important to include that level in there, because that's what most of us are doing most of the time if we're honest with ourselves. Unless you've been really working on this for a while, you don't do it. Now, we don't walk around saying, you know what? I want a better life. But those things scare me, so I don't have the courage to do it. So I'm going to settle in my life and accumulate more loneliness and misery. I mean, I don't think anyone is walking around saying that consciously, even though that's what they're doing. We tell ourselves a story. This is how I've always been. I can't change. I'm a loser. No one likes me. I'm not good at telling stories. I'm a boring person. I am not a leader. I'm not good at talking to people. No one really likes me. If someone really got to know me, they wouldn't like me. I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm weird, I'm awkward, so on and so forth, right? So we have a story. And that story says, well, if I'm a loser, awkward, weirdo, then of course I can't date, so why should I even try? And we stay at level one for indefinitely until you come here and you're listening to this and you're ready to change. Okay? So now let's get out of level one. Barf. Let's go to level two. You do do the thing that scares you after much deliberation and delay, and you do it super scared, right? So think about what's one thing that you might do. Is it a conversation with somebody? Speaking up in a certain way? Sharing your ideas in a work situation, asking that person out, talking about the finances with your partner, talking to your stepdad about him not saying mean shit to you or whatever you need to do? Right. That conversation you need to have. So level one is, you just wouldn't do it. And, you know, that might not seem like a big deal. Like, I don't want to talk to my stepdad. That guy's a jerk. I don't want to speak up in the meetings. It's awkward, whatever. I don't want to ask them out. They're going to say no anyway. So you tell the story and then you avoid it. And now you've built no confidence. In fact, it's worse than that. You've not only built no confidence, which is you say, well, I just haven't gained the points yet. You actually lose points over time in this video game. You don't sustain your experience points without taking consistent action. You grow them. By taking action, you grow your courage and your boldness and your confidence. But if you stop taking action, it actually diminishes. It's more like a muscle, right? If you work out a lot, your muscles will get stronger. If you stop working out, it'll sustain for a short period of time, and then they're going to start to atrophy. And so that way, you know, if you, whatever you did, you ran or you lifted weights or you did something like that and then you took six months off for whatever reason and you started again, you can't just go out there and do what you did six months ago. Your body will explode, right? So because you've atrophied, your muscles have weakened. And confidence is a muscle. It will weaken if you don't exercise it by taking action. So another reminder there about why we don't want to hang out at level one. Level two, hey, you did it. You did have the conversation. Yes. You spent maybe three months or six months thinking about it ahead of time, but you freaking did it. There's a lot of delay there, a lot of deliberation, a lot of overthinking, a lot of suffering, but you did it and you did it scared. Now, most people, when they go from a life of level one and then somewhere in there, they take a level two action, they do it after much deliberation, delay, and they do it scared. You know what they do right? After they've done it? After taking a massive beneficial step in their lives, after maybe avoiding for months or years, and then they do it. What do they do? Well, that was a shitty conversation. I didn't do that very well at all. I suck, right? They collapse on themselves because it didn't go perfectly. And then they're like. They tell themselves they Reinforce the stories. I knew it wouldn't go well. You couldn't see what I was doing right there. I was rubbing my temples because it gives me a headache. It's so sabotagy. But we do it right. And why? Well, to reinforce the story that we can't, so we stay safe. You guys know my stories about the safety police. If you don't, check out the Art of Extraordinary Confidence, my second book. I talk a lot about the safety police. It's the part of you that wants to prevent you from taking the actions and the risks and the steps needed to get the confidence that you want, because it's afraid of rejection, failure, and any sort of emotional discomfort. It's the safety police. So your safety police, after you take the action, scared, will say, yeah, you didn't do it well enough, so never do it again. But. But you shall persist, my friend, and make it to level three. Level three is you do it scared, no delay. And that might seem pretty similar to level two. That is a world of difference. Do it after much deliberation and delay with fear. And then, you know, do it with fear. But right away, that is when life is gonna start to change. You're gonna start to build this confidence in rapid ways. Because, I mean, you could probably heard my stories if you listen to past episodes of this podcast. I would occasionally. So one of the areas I struggled a lot with confidence when I was younger was dating and relationships. And, you know, I lived in level one 99% of the time. But once in a blue moon, I would ask a woman out, and that would probably be if you averaged it out. I was going to say once a year, but maybe not even that. Maybe once a year. Let's just say it's once a year. So between the ages of, like, you know, 11 to 21, 10 years, one woman out a year. Even as I think about that, that's probably a little generous. Oh, my. So. So that's a lot of delay. That's a lot of time in between each repetition there, between each bold action. So imagine that with level three. Do it scared. No delay. You could ask a person out a day. And I did do something like that. At least I talked to a woman a day when I was really building this confidence in this area, ask a lot of them out. And even at one point, I would do this thing where I was talking to women, which was a huge transformation, by the way, for me. I kind of gloss over that right now because that's not the point of this episode. But holy Shmoly. That was a big transformation to take that risk. And I have some fun stories about jumping into the pool. Terrified. The courage it took to do that. But in any case, I started to talk to women more. I found I had this other tactic though, which was like the safety police stuff, which was like, I'm not gonna ask her out because she might say no. So I'm just gonna like, keep the conversation going and try to connect. And then somehow if it's like super, super, super, super super clear that she wants me to ask her out, I'll ask her out. And so I ended up having all these stories as to not do it. And at some point I said, you know what? Okay. Starting a conversation with a woman doesn't scare me. I mean, it still scares me, but I'm able to do it. Right? Do what scares you until fear has no power to stop you. So the fear had no power to stop me. So I'm able to approach women, but then I didn't ask them out. So I said, you know what I gotta do? I gotta practice asking women out. So that means even if I think the conversation is going super well, I still have to ask them out. Even if I think they're gonna say no, I have to ask them out. So then I started doing that again with no delay. So almost every conversation I had with a woman, unless it was going terribly, I'd be like, hey, this is fun. I'd love to talk with you more. I'd love to hang out. What's your email? What's your number? I just started doing that again and again and again and again. I discovered something fascinating, by the way, side note, which is when you're convinced about how it's going to go. Did you know you might be wrong? Whaat? I don't know everything, huh? In any case, that's just me, probably. You do know everything. And if you're telling yourself it's not going to work, it's probably not going to work. So don't take the risk and don't try, right? And settle ourselves back down to level one. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm kidding. So we're at level three. Do it scared, no delay. Right? So what's level one? Don't do it. What's the it? The stuff that scares you. Why do we want to do the stuff that scares us? Because the stuff that scares us builds our confidence. That's right. Do what scares you until fear has no power to stop you. Every action you take builds your Confidence. Think of it like your confidence coins. That's what I teach my kids. You get a courage coin every time you take an action that you're scared of. So level one, don't do it. Level two, do it after much deliberation and delay, with a lot of fear. Level three, you do it scared, but you do it with no delay. Now life's starting to move. Now you're cooking. What's level four? Well, you've broken through. You start to do it with more flow and presence. Ah. You can breathe as you do it. You can actually be there and not just up in your head freaking out. You can actually be talking to the person that you're talking to. You can actually be in the conversation as it's happening. You could be leading the meeting and not stressing about how you're leading the meeting. You can just be in there being like, cool. What problems are we gonna solve today? Okay, let's do it. There's gonna be a lot more enjoyment. There's gonna be a flow of your gifts. And you know what? You've probably experienced this in some area of your life somewhere. So this isn't totally brand new. This is just bringing this to the areas that you want next. That's part of growth, baby. Yeah. That's what we're here to do. So level four, do it with flow and presence, people. A big question I often get is, like, how do I go from level three to level four? So do it scared with no delay, to do it with flow and presence. And I said, are you really playing at level three? Are you playing at level two? Are you really doing it with no delay? Or, like, you know, when I say no delay, that's like, boom, as quickly as possible, that's like, ooh, I want to talk to that person. You go talk to that person. Ooh, I need to have that conversation. The next time you're in the meeting, you have that conversation, right? So it's speed of implementation. You take action. You're looking for the opportunities to do it. And most of the time, I find that people are actually playing at level two. They're doing it after much deliberation and delay. They're doing it as, like, spread out as much as possible, as few iterations as possible, and hoping to leapfrog over the fear stage into doing it with flow and presence. Is that ringing a bell for you? I can't see you right now, but I can feel it. I know you're nodding your head, you're smiling. I got you. I got you and I can get you because I did the same thing and I do the same thing in other areas. That's what I want to highlight with this podcast and this relationship that you and I are having, which is you get to hang out, listen to me talk at you. I am not like some perfect being who's gotten all this stuff and now I don't feel fear. There's always another area of confidence to grow in. And so I will do these exact same patterns. I'll catch myself not doing something in a certain area of my life and like, God damn it. Well, there you go. And then I'll notice myself delaying and putting something off for a long time. And then I'll notice myself saying, you know, I gotta speed up this process. Let's go have this. Go do it. I go in my frenzy mode and start taking massive bold action. But I'm still scared. But I stick with it. And then I break into that level of flow and presence. There's a lot more, there's a lot more there to get from level three to level four. Because the bold action and consistent action is the necessary ingredient. You cannot do it without doing that. And while you're doing that, there are many other approaches that can radically increase your flow and decrease the fear. And that's what I spend a lot of time working with people. And I have a year long mastermind program, if you heard about it. It's called the Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind program. And that's a year long group program where that's what we're focused on. Like people get into that program, they're going to be taking action. I mean, they're invested. It's a year long program. They're, they're showing up where there's accountability, there's support, there's guidance, there's action steps. It's very rare for someone to be in that program and start to not take action. Right? So they are now we're doing it, we're doing it scared. How do we decrease the delay and how do we do it with more flow and presence? There's tons of tools and other things I teach in there. I also teach those to a certain degree inside of Confidence University. That's the self study version. But if you want to go further, faster, grow even more and have this year be an incredible year of your life, I highly recommend you check out the mastermind. You can go to. I don't know, I don't know how you find it. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com under this episode. We'll have a link to it. Yeah, probably. Probably will be there. All right, so let's talk about level five. So level four is you're doing it with flow and presence. You're like, what could be better than that? How could there be anything more than flow and presence? Well, there's always something more. Right. Level five is you're able to do those things with joy and grace. What? So it's not even like you're in the moment and you're present. That's pretty awesome. But flow and presence doesn't mean the absence of fear. Right. You can be present and you can notice, ah, heart beating. Oh, nervous thoughts. Ah, that person. Oh, I can feel their presence and what they're needing. Right. You're able to hold it all and you're in flow. You're that much more effective. You're not stuck in your head, but there's still maybe fear there. Level five is when you've broken through and you do it with joy and grace. This is when your gifts shine the most. This is when you're just, like, having total fun. This is discovery, brilliance, creation. This is when something divine is moving through you and it's just fun. It's effortless. This is a beautiful place to be. And in that, you know, there's not a fear because you see from a whole different perception. So, yeah, the deal might not work out. Yeah, the person might get upset. Yeah, they might not like me or whatever, but that doesn't feel like a threat anymore. Isn't that a beautiful place to be? So that's what we're playing for here. It's level five now. You stay in level five all the time, 100%. I don't know. I hope so. I don't think I'm in level five all the time with everything. That's the game of it, you know, it's a moving target, so just assess where you are. It's like one place is better than another. You might think one place is better than another. No, it's not. It's not a better, worse, right, wrong thing. It's just like, what's going to be the most effective? What's going to be the most fun and enjoyable? What's going to produce what you want in life? And yeah, yeah, something is better than something else on those scales. But it's not a moral thing. It's not like, if you notice that you're in level one, you got to hate yourself and you're bad and you suck. In fact, if you do that, you will never get out of level one. Because when you attack yourself, does that inspire and energize you to go take things, actions that you're scared of? No. You're more sensitive, you're more upset in your nervous system. And so you're less likely to want to take fear, take action that scares you. So we got to do something different. We got to get on our own sides. And of course, if you're not familiar, I teach a lot about that too. How to get on our own sides, that's sort of like the other side of it. You know, there's this meditation teacher, Tara Brock, talks about the two wings of the dove. When it comes to mindfulness, I don't remember what the two wings of the dove are. Presence and compassion, I think. But if there's two wings of the confidence dove. No, that can't be a dove. It's got to be an eagle. The confidence eagle. Hawk, thunder, cougar, falcon, bird. One wing is action, this bold action stuff we're talking about. The other wing is being on your own side. And if you just take a bunch of bold action, but you're hating yourself the whole time, one, you're going to burn out. And just two, imagine an eagle with one wing flopping around. She's going in a circle. She's not sticking her claws in her prey and feasting on the gooey innards of that mouse. That's what we're here to do. Get that confidence. Eat that mouse. All right, let's talk about how to turn this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. I would say that the action step here is fairly guessable and self explanatory. What do you think it would be? That's right. It's to do one thing that scares you until fear has no power to stop you. Well, one time is not going to be enough. But, you know, get in motion, see where you're at. Pick an area and call yourself out. You plan at level one, where you're not doing it, you plan at level two, where you're going to do it. Maybe in about six weeks. Are you, you know, step it up. Can you do it today, tomorrow, when can you do it? What's the it? Can you identify the thing that scares you? And again, the stuff that scares you is the stuff that's gonna serve you and move you in the direction that you want in your life. Not some random thing like, I'm scared to stand on my head for 45 minutes and let all the blood pool in my brain. I don't know, does that like get you something? But you know you can do physical stuff. Physical stuff scares us and teaches us that we can do more than we think. So maybe it's simple, like you're gonna run harder than you run typically, or get yourself into a cold shower for a couple of minutes. That'll do ya. That'll do you right. Fantastic. So you get to decide what it is for you. You get to take that action. And again, if you want more support in taking action, I highly recommend going further with me this year we have Confidence University, where you can study at home. There's also once a month a call with a coach on my team and a group acceleration call, we call it. So that's a fantastic way to get some accountability and support. And then we also have confidence, the unstoppable confidence mastermind and other stuff too. So if you are looking for this year to be your year where you radically transform and if you're like, you know what, I've been playing at level one and two for nine years and I've listened to podcasts and books and stuff for the last two or three and you're still in level one or two, you know, more support is needed. And I'm a huge believer in coaching. I would not be where I am today without coaching. So I highly recommend that you look into that if you really want to transform things this year and you're here. So I'd imagine you do. So good to be with you. I'm excited to share these tools with you. More, so much more coming this year. Until we speak again, may 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 vlogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com. Sam.