The Secret To Confidence In 2021

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, and welcome to 2021. Yes. Victory, you made it. You survived another year of life on this planet, and I'm excited to be with you, not only today, but for this entire year. I don't even know what year in for this podcast. Like six years, 7,000 years, however long I've been doing this. So maybe this is, you know, your third episode. You've been listening for a couple months. Maybe you've been listening for years, or maybe this is your very first episode and you're like, 2021 is the year that I'm gonna get confident. Oh, yeah. Well, you're in the right place, because that's what we talk about here is confidence. How you can become the most bold, free, expressive, authentic, confident version of you. And let's look at that process. Confidence in a nutshell. How do we get it? How do we build it? Some of the stuff you might have pieced together from other episodes, but let's just put it all together in one place. Let's say you are here because you want more confidence. Well. Well, first and foremost, where do you want that confidence? Is it general confidence? Is it how you carry yourself? Is it how you feel about yourself? Is it at work? Is it in your love life? Is it in your body image? Do you pick at yourself because you don't think you look good enough? Do you feel inferior around other people? Maybe people you think are more masculine or more graceful or more beautiful? Whatever you focus on is conditioned by your gender, your sexual role, what you're taught about, what it's to be a man or a woman, the family that you grew up in, you have all this conditioning, and the result might be that the conditioning, the programming that you grew up with has left you maybe feeling less confident than you want to be, more anxious than you want to be, less permissioned to be you. That's at the end of the Day. What we're talking about here is when we're struggling with some level of social anxiety, we don't have permission to be ourselves. And that's extremely painful. You might have kind of numbed to it or adjusted to it or resigned to it. And that's one of the beautiful things about humans, for better or worse, is we adapt. And if you need any evidence of that, just look to this last year. Sweet Jesus. So many crazy, unexpected things. So much mass disruption, loss in a lot of areas for people, some people's huge gains. But a lot of people just, you know, things are lost, things are taken away. You can't go here. You can't do that. You know, and for some people, whole industries got wiped out, you know, tourism and gyms and all these places struggling to survive. And people adapt. It's like, yeah, okay, I guess I get my doordash delivered and don't touch anybody now, okay? We just sort of figure out a way. So we also adapt to our own personal restrictions, limitations. And maybe it doesn't feel so bad anymore, but that doesn't mean that we don't have grief about it. There's not one person that I've worked with over these years who, as they start to really fundamentally change this. And I'm not talking about, like, a little bit more confidence. Like, yeah, I feel. Yeah, it's like a supplement, I think. I think that vitamin C is helping. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. That's not what we're talking about here. We want a noticeable, radical shift in your confidence in how you approach life. Because otherwise, what are we doing here? Otherwise, what game are we playing? Let's play a big game. Let's go for it. Let's try to remember that you are the captain of your ship and you could control your destiny. So if that's the case, what kind of life do you want to create for yourself? Don't settle for like, I gotta manage my social anxiety. I gotta just get by. Just be normal. No, no, no, no. Let's create extraordinary. Because here's the thing. The confidence that you're gonna build to go from social anxiety to average confidence is the same skillset that you can use to go from average confidence to extraordinary confidence. That's what I discovered. If you haven't read my books yet, the first book I wrote was called the Solution to Social Anxiety. And that was to help people get out of that cage of social anxiety. But then I said, wait a minute. I've been using these tools for years to go beyond Just average. Like, I want to be extraordinary. I want to be able to talk to anybody. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin around anybody. I want to be able to create what I want on my terms in business and career. I want to have an extraordinary relationship. And I realized it's the same stuff. And so that's why I wrote that second book, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. If you haven't checked that one out, I highly recommend that. But we often adapt and habituate ourselves and sort of resign ourselves to this is how it is. And so one of my first goals here in the beginning of 2021 is to shake you up a little bit and say, whoa, Whoa, Is that how it is? Is that what you want? And maybe you're in a place of pain right now. You're like, no, that's not what I want. I gotta change it. Great. But you also might not be. You might have kind of settled in. You might be just going through the norm, going through the motion. This is my life. This is how it is. It's not terrible. It's okay. It's better than it was, maybe, or, no, it sucks. But, hey, this is how it is for me. And I can say all those things from experience because I've been in every single place and we all go there. You know, we all might have an area in our life where we're like, yeah, this is how it is, I guess forever shit. And that's not a reflection of what's true. That's a reflection of your perception in that moment. And that is a very important statement. So I'm gonna break it down for you right now. When you look at an area of your life and feel discouragement or I can't change it, or this is how it is. That's not true. It feels true, but it's not true. What it's showing you is not reality, quote, unquote, reality out there. It is showing you your perception, your state of mind, your attitude, the lens that you're looking at your life and yourself through, which is often distorted for most of us, most of the time, and not even overall, but just in that moment of time. So, for example, what's an area of your life that you want to have extraordinary confidence in? Yeah, let's go for extraordinary. You might say, dude, I just want to be able to talk to people. I just want to date, or I just want to be in a meeting and not be like, you know, having irritable bowel syndromes for a week ahead of time because I'M so nervous before that presentation. I get it. I've had those too. Good old Habby. Yes, but life changing. When you realize that a lot of your physical symptoms are actually the result of anxiety and you don't need to go get medicine after medicine after medicine. That's what I did for years. That's a whole other story. You can check out previous episodes of this podcast, All Around Pain. And I'll be sharing even more cool stuff in this year about how to have an extraordinary level of physical freedom in your body. Because all that back pain and neck pain and stomach pain and headaches and migraines and neck problems and all these things can be coming from your anxiety, your stress, your perfectionism, your fear, your bracing against life day in and day out creates all this tension in the body. So where do you want that extraordinary level of confidence? Okay, you got an area that excites you. Which one do you pick? I don't know. Whatever excites you right now. Whatever delights you, whatever makes you smile, whatever makes you feel inspired or energized a little bit. Great, so you have that one. Now let's take a snapshot of your perspective. When you imagine that, experiencing that, that being your life, how you operate, how you show up, how possible does that seem? Is it exciting? Is it depressing? Is it demoralizing? Is it impossible? Is it probable, is it likely? Is it bad for you to want that? Whatever is coming up, just notice it. You're bringing more awareness to your perception of how you want to be. And that's what I often find in working with people, is there's a lot of judgment ahead of time, a lot of ideas, a lot of stories. Stories about myself, about what's possible, about if that's okay to want, or do I really want that, or, oh my gosh, what other people think if I did that, or on and on and on and on, and then we just don't go for it. And then another year goes by and then we resign ourselves even more and we say, you see, I told you I couldn't change anything. This is how I am. And then, fuck that. That's not what we're here to do. That's not what you're here to do. If you're listening to this episode, you are wanting to change something in 2021 in a big way. And no matter, even if you had every area of your life, you were totally confident, which I haven't really met anyone ever that's like that. I mean, life is not this controllable you know, car that you can just automate, and it's a machine that you drive. Life is an organism. It is messy. It is liquids and fluids and sloppy and roiling and volcanoes and ups and downs. So even if you got everything on lock in your fitness, like, I'm so confident in my body, my fitness. What about your dating life? And then what about your career? And what about this? What about that? Let's say you got everything on lock and you're totally on top of your shit. Total control, baby. Then what happens? Then you get sick, then your partner gets cancer? Like, what's going on now? You need to find a new level of confidence, a new level of resourcefulness inside you to approach life with an open heart, with courage. And that is really what confidence is, isn't it? To approach life with courage, with an open heart, to be able to connect with others, to create meaningful relationships, to do meaningful work in the world, to say, you know what? I believe in this thing. I want to do it, I want to share it, I want to give it. That's confidence. That's what we're here to create. So what is your perception of that confidence right now? Feasible or unfeasible? Painful? Depressing? A lot of people will go to the past and they'll say, oh, man, sure. I would love to be able to, like, lead a big group of 40 people. I was just talking to someone the other day who, you know, he is taking over a business. He was a partner, and now he's gonna be one of the leaders in it or the main person. And he's got to manage about a team of 40 or 50 people. And he's like, oh, God. Oh, God, I've never done that before. I'm uncomfortable. This is how I've done it before. And we look to the past. Makes total sense. That's a reference point for a lot of us. The problem with the past and going to use that as your reference point is it's fixed. It already happened. It shows nothing about what's potential or growth or change or evolution or expansion that you are naturally always doing, especially if you're getting outside your comfort zone. So it is incomplete. It's like saying, well, the fastest I can run is what I've done in the past. The most I can love is whatever I did in the last relationship. The most I can appreciate something in my life is whatever I did before. Well, geez, that's a pretty limited way to live, isn't it? The past doesn't equal the future. The future is wide open. The future is unknown. And that is why we go to the past. Because the future is unknown and the past is known. And we say we want confidence. But you know what we want more than confidence most of the time? Secretly. Certainty, control, safety, predictability, armor. Right. Approach life with an open heart. I don't know about all that. Sounds scary. What if my heart gets hurt? And our hearts get hurt so easily. We just pretend like they don't. We're like, no. Got my armor on, bitches. No one's gonna get me. You know, this was so sweet. So my. Our good friends have a young son who's in between our two boys. He just turned six a couple days ago and he had his little birthday party outside and covered area, you know, social distancing. And everyone's giving him gifts. And the day before or two days before, we were going to figure out what to get him. And my son, who is 7, is like, I'm going to make him something. And so he gets these toilet paper rolls, there's like four of them, and starts like taping them together to make this cross thing. Imagine the two toilet paper rolls taped together to make a long tube and then crossed over each other. So he got like an X or something. So he starts taping it and then he starts putting more. It's masking blue masking tape, painter's tape or whatever. And he starts taping more and then taping more and then taping more. And then he decides, wait a minute, this thing's really cool. I'm just gonna make like a tape X. So he makes this huge, I think he uses like a roll and a half of tape and he's got this huge X that's all squishy and you can throw it against stuff and it kind of bounces and it's sort of indestructible. And he's like, yeah, this is cool. And he's come up with this story as he's taping. He's like, it's this robot from another planet. Yeah. Oh, it's so awesome. And it's gonna go and it gets caught in these asteroids and then it gets stuck and then it, you know, crash lands on Earth. And he's really excited as he's making it. Open hearted. Joy, creativity, love for his friend. It's one of his best friends, probably his best friend, actually. Beautiful, right? Approaching life with an open heart. And then he realizes he has to give the gift to his friend. And all of a sudden he starts to worry and he Goes, oh, man, is he gonna like my gift? Is my gift good enough? There's probably other gifts that are better. And he starts to feel that vulnerable feeling that we all have. You want a certain outcome, especially with another person, right? Like, you want them to like you. You want them to like your gift, but you're not sure if they will. Now, before we go any further in this story, is there anything you can identify or relate to? Now step back and zoom out beyond, like, literally giving someone a gift, although you might relate to that, too. How about giving your gifts? How about your presence, your love, your attention, your humor, your insights in the workplace and business, your dreams, your writing, your music, your heart? Vulnerable, isn't it? It's vulnerable to put it out there and say, here's what I got. Do you want it? Do you like it? And we say, no, no, I don't want to be that vulnerable. And that's exactly what my son did. He didn't want to be that vulnerable. And so the day of the party, we're gonna go to this thing, and he's, like, moping around all morning being like, my presence sucks. It's terrible. It's stupid. And he's all, like, sad and mopey, and I'm like, hey, bud, let's talk about it. You know, my present sucks. Oh, you think it sucks, huh? Yeah, it does. Oh, did you think it sucked when you were making it? You know, So I started to explore, is that what's going on there? And I was like, what is. What's the story of? And he started telling me the story. And he would light up, oh, it's a robot from outer space. It's so cool. And I was like, okay, but he's not gonna like it. And I was like, oh, you really want him to like it, huh? He's like, yeah. I was like, I know, I know. I want that too. So vulnerable, isn't it? He's like, yeah, well, he's not gonna like it. So I tried one other approach. I was like, hey, well, maybe that's true. He might not like it. We explored, what could he do if he didn't like it? He's like, well, if he didn't like it, I guess I could just take it back because I like playing with it. I was like, oh, that's a great idea. And I was like, you know, there is marketing. He's like, what? I was like, well, you know, sometimes the way you present something really makes people want it more. He's like, what do you mean? I Was like, well, watch this. So you be your friend and I'm gonna be you. He's like, okay. So I'm holding the present. I'm like, hey, here's this stupid thing I made for you. It's stupid. There you go. I was like, does that make you want that? He's like, no. I said, okay, how about this? Hey, Luca, I made this for you. I really love it. It's a robot from outer space. And then tell him the story. And I told the whole story about he came from another planet and got caught on an asteroid and landed on the Earth. And. And I was like, wait, pause. Does it have any special powers? He's like, oh, yeah. And so he told me the special powers. And then I told Luca, in this role play the special powers. And he was all lit up. I was like, well, you could present it something like that. He's like, well, okay. Anyway, he got to the party, he didn't present it like that. He just kind of handed it to him. Lucas was like, oh, neat. Doesn't look like a robot. And then afterwards, he was old. He's like, he said it didn't look like a robot. This is terrible. This is an awful gift. So now he's in the in between space. I was like, are you sure he doesn't like it? We don't know, you know? And that's life, man. It's so tender and vulnerable. I'm like, ha, ha. Seven year old kids, they're so silly. We worry about the same shit, man. Does she like me? Did he think I was good enough there? Are they gonna want to buy that from me? Are they gonna hire me? Am I okay? Please. And those same tender, vulnerable feelings, we've just put so many layers of armor on top of them that we think we don't feel it, but instead we just got pain in our backs and our butts and our stomachs. And we think, we say we don't feel it, but we're just utterly terrified inside. So to create confidence, we must get real. We must drop the facade, the pretending, the posturing that we do all the time with other people. You gotta be real with yourself. Say, yeah, it's a vulnerable game. Yeah, I'm gonna get hurt. I see this all the time when I help people with dating. They're kind of like, so how do I date and get the person to want me and not feel any rejection, pain, discomfort? I'm like, okay, well, let's see what we can do here. Step one, how do you feel about discomfort? Let's see if we can change that, right? Cause look, you got. What else are you gonna do? Not engage in life? Or you can go like the super spiritual route and be like, I'm so removed. I'm in this world, but not of it. I feel nothing. I have no attachments. I'm outcome independent all the time. It's like, okay, I don't know anyone actually like that in real life. I guess authors will talk about how they're that way, but I don't see that in anyone's reality. I think it's either extremely rare or it's some sort of posturing. And that's okay. But I know it's true for me and everyone that I've talked to and work with, which is, hey, we feel things, we get hurt, we get upset, we get disappointed, we get discouraged. The question is, what are you gonna do about it? Are you committed to showing up more fully for yourself and in this life? So when you focus on that thing that you want to create, yeah, maybe you go to the past and try to armor yourself against the disappointment or discomfort. But then what does that get you? That gets you a present that you tell yourself your friend doesn't like and never will like. You tell yourself, no one's gonna like your gifts. No one's gonna like what you share. No one's gonna put that. No, it's not never gonna work. And then a year goes by, two years goes by, 10 years goes by, and now what do you got? Well, now you got the pain of regret. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the pain of trying and failing or the putting myself out there and getting rejected. I take that pain all day long over the pain of. I missed out on the last five, ten years of my life. Cause I wasn't fully living. To me, that's death. So what are you gonna do? What are you committed to? How do you want to show up to create an extraordinary level of confidence for yourself? This year there's tons of tools. So you got this podcast which is absolutely free. You can check out my YouTube channel as well. It's called Get More Confidence. If you're not subscribed to that, I highly recommend that we're putting out a lot more videos these days. Get more confidence. And then of course, if you want to go further, you can go to my website, draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and go and get the ebook 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. And we have some exciting stuff coming up around an online virtual event live that you can be a part of. We'll share more about that soon. But there's so many resources available to you. The only thing that stops us is us saying, I can't do it. It's not going to work. Just to get that safety, that security, that protection, that armor. And you got to make a choice. You got to decide right now, hey, I'm going to open up. In fact, if you can open up your arms a little bit to the side so your palms are kind of facing forward and out and your shoulder blades, that's like your upper back is coming together so your chest is wider open than normal. And take a full deep breath into your belly and your chest and just say out loud, I'm opening to life. Or think it, or just listen to me say it depends on how much you want to play full out. I'm opening to life. I'm ready. Bring it on. And that is one of the most powerful boosts to people confidence. They say, okay, what's the trick? What's the secret? How do I get it? And it's always, how do I get it? With no risk of pain, discomfort or challenge or failure or loss or anything. And you've already sabotaged yourself at that point. Life is a full contact sport. These relationships are a full. How are you going to get into a deep relationship and not feel? We're going to talk more about that in a future episode. Instead of trying to feel better all the time, which means not feel bad stuff, how about you feel better, you improve your capacity to feel emotions more skillfully and we're going to talk more about how to do that. So many good things for you in this year. I cannot wait to be with you. So let's turn whatever you're learning today into your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is to pick that one area of your life that you would love to have extraordinary confidence in. Maybe there's more than one, but just pick the one that energizes you the most right now. And then write out a little couple sentences or a short paragraph about what is that like in the present tense? I am what I do, what this is how I show up, this is how I live. And it could be in your physical health, it could be in your love life, it could be in your general self esteem and confidence, how you show up around anyone or around strangers. It could be in your conversation confidence, being able to connect with and talk to people. And be totally comfortable in your own skin. What's your vision? What do you want in a key area? Just pick one. I know there's maybe a desire to do all of them, but just pick one. It's a perfect time of year to do it. And then notice how you feel about it and just be in connection with that vision. Read it here and there, maybe once a week, maybe even a couple times a week, and start to notice how your perception shifts from day to day. One day it's like, oh, that's totally impossible. And the next day you're like, yeah, I'm gonna do it. And you start to realize, like, hey, maybe when I look at this vision, my perception of it is not real or true or a reflection of what's really going to happen. It's just a reflection of my perception in that moment and my energy level and my mood and my attitude. And so when those change, my optimism will change. And regardless, let me keep taking the steps, let me keep taking the actions. Let me keep showing up how I need to show up to create that vision for myself. Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.