Dr. Aziz explains what he means by "fearless": not absence of all fear but freedom from chronic anxiety (worry, social/performance anxiety). He presents exposure as the core solution — including imaginal exposure for abstract fears — paired with soothing the nervous system by focusing on bodily sensations and breathing (allowing rather than resisting). He gives a short guided exercise (identify 3–5 specific fears, intensely imagine them, tune into physical sensations, breathe/soften) and urges daily practice; closes with a CTA to draziz.com for more resources.
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Is it possible to be fearless? Let's find out. If you're benefiting from this, be sure to click the like down below and subscribe for more videos that also will help you stay connected with everything that I'm sharing. Because the more you watch these, the more you engage here, the faster you're going to grow. Now let's look at that question, to be fearless. Because I think, I mean, who wouldn't want to be that? I ask a room full of people, you know, how many of you would want to be fearless? Everyone's hand goes up right now, is that really true? I mean, totally fearless? I don't know. Would that be problematic? Right? Would you, like, run into extremely dangerous situations? Would you lose your capacity to function in the world and keep your body safe? To a degree. I mean, fear can actually be healthy, right? Fear is what might be your intuition. It's like your animal instincts kind of perceiving a potentially dangerous situation, right? Let's say you're in some neighborhood or some place and it seems safe. Or maybe it's a woman on a date with a man she doesn't know and it seems safe, but something like, there's a little bit of fear there and is that bad? Right? So when I say fearless, I don't mean some sort of strange, devoid of human emotion experience, but what I mean is to stop being so damn anxious all the time. To stop being scared of like every day of your life. Like, I wake up in the morning, I'm like, oh my God, what's going to happen today? Or I'm just hanging out making some toast and I'm anxious and what's going to happen in this work meeting? And so maybe it's being free of worry and anticipation, fear and performance anxiety and social anxiety and all these anxieties. That's what I'm talking about with fearless. And then, sure, there's a lion that jumps out of the bushes to attack you. Good, you still want to be scared. Mobilizes you into action right away. Gives you adrenaline and cortisol to go run the other way or punch that lion in the face. That's probably what I would do. Not really. No. No. I would run anyway. So how do we do that? Here's how we do it. The solution to fear is to face it. Put quite simply, right? We've seen this with thousands of research studies over the last 50 years with behavioral psychology and exposure therapy, they call it. They helped wipe out phobias from any sort of insect, animal, spider bridges, water phobias, I mean, you name it. Anything that humans could be scared of, behaviorism would do a radical reversal of all that, and it could be accelerated too, especially if they did the imagination, all this stuff. So facing fear helps us overcome it. Now, that's a little. Doesn't apply very well, right? If you're like. Well, if you're scared of spiders, be around spiders. Like, okay, great, But I'm scared of losing money in the future. I'm scared of someone not liking me in that situation. I'm scared of a vague sense of someone disapproving of my work that I put out there. These are like kind of more less tangible things, right? And yet that's what dominates us when it comes to living in a fearful state. So how do we overcome that? Well, it's actually the same method. You just have to do it in a different way. Here's how it works. Come up with. You could do a little list right now. I just did this the other day with my mastermind group where we spent a time with people who came up with a big list. But you could do a quick one with me right now. Three to five things. What are three to five things that scare you? And be specific. You know, just like I'm scared of meetings at work. Well, what are you scared? Are you scared of speaking up? Are you scared of being judged? Are you scared of a certain person? I'm scared of running out of money. Okay, like losing your job or running out of money in a certain bank account or your income stream going down. Like, just get a little more specific and come up with just a couple right now. And even if you're not going to write anything down just in your head, come up with at least one right now. Okay, first of all, even that is more than most of us will do. Most of us are, like, in constant avoidance, fleeing from our fears. So it comes up in our mind. We're like, I don't want to think about that. Ah, ah, ah. And then there it comes back again two minutes later. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. And then we start getting rumination, right? Like, get it away, get it away. Ah. It's following me everywhere I go. I gotta drink something to turn this fear down. Gonna smoke something, gotta watch something. And, you know, it might distract you for a little while, but then there it is, waiting more intensely. So we gotta face it. And you want to get specific because that's going to help you face it even more. So let's say I'm afraid of sharing at work and feeling embarrassed or inadequate and someone judging me or thinking I'm not smart. I'm afraid of speaking up in meetings for that reason. Okay, great, great. So what you're going to do is you're going to find yourself some uninterrupted distraction, free time. I know in this day and age that still does exist. It's like mythic dry land in the old water world movie where it's like, I believe it exists. Like it is possible in this day and age to have some time where you're not being bombarded by stimulus and it's just you and you. So I like to do it outside, going for a walk or a run or a hike. You could do it sitting. You could do some meditation. You can just have a little quiet space in your house or your bedroom or whatever, your car even. You know, you could do this. Once you get proficient, you can do it in your car even while you're driving. But typically, first, you might want to start with giving your full attention to it. But what you're going to do is you're going to think of this fear, and that's very different. Normally we, like, ruminate and worry about the fear, trying to get rid of the thing. Here you're actually going to focus on and say, people not liking me when I speak up. Especially so and so, like Bob. I imagine Bob thinking like, this guy's an idiot. Okay, so that's what you want. Now here's what you're going to do. You're going to imagine speaking up in a meeting and not visualizing it going perfectly. No, because then you're still trying to run from the fear. You're going to imagine speaking up and imagine Bob saying some stuff about you, not just thinking it, but saying it. So, like, literally, you're going to envision this. You're going to think about it. You're going to focus on it enough until you start to feel the fear and the discomfort. Now you know you're on to the right place. Then what do we do? And this could be with any fear, by the way. You do this with your fear. You can even try it right now if you want. And sometimes you don't have to try very hard. It's like, oh, God, Oh God, it's right there. Ah, it's been there all day. I've been trying to ignore it. Okay, great. Then now you're in exposure mode. And what they did in behavioral psychology to make it so effective is they didn't just torture people by like, dangling a spider. And the person's like, ah, get it away. I'm freaking out. And they're like, no, no. Like, no. They teach people techniques to calm themselves. Because what makes exposure effective is you soothe the nervous system during exposure, which retrains the mind body to see that this thing is not a threat. Like, I'm not gonna die, right? So what do we do? We focus on the thing that scares us just enough to get it going. Then you can bring your focus out of the future, out of Bob, out of whatever and come into right now, right now. You do this with me right now and you're going to notice what do I feel? What's happening in my body? Fear, like all emotion is physiological. It's a machinery that's happening in your body. With neuropeptides on a chemical level. There's an energetic component to it and there's a behavioral response as well. But, but what we want to focus on is the whole swarm of sensations. Fear is going to feel like squeezing or contracting or tightening. It's going to be like moving and coiling through your body. And you're going to start to breathe and allow it. That's it. It sounds so simple, but it is so effective. So right now you're going to breathe in and notice, where is that? Do I feel tension in my ribs? Is there a tightness in my jaw, my neck, my throat, my chest? For me, I'll feel a lot in my ribs and sometimes it goes down in my mid back and then down in my lower back. Where do I feel the reactivity? Like the tension, the fear, the squeezing, the burning, the twisting, whatever words. You don't have to label it. You just want to tune into it and breathe and soften and allow it. That's it. You're going to let it, you're going to let it rip, let it burn. And if you get into your head and you're like, oh my God, Bob's going to say this and it's going to go so bad and then I'm going to get fired and okay, all right, you got enough. You got enough of the machinery going. Now you're going to come, let it go. It's the future. You're gonna come right back into now because that's not happening right now. What's happening right now is you are freaking out. So that's what I'm gonna pay attention to, the physiology. Stay out of your mind and go into your body with your awareness and keep breathing and allowing. And what you'll do is like, you'll find There'll be a spot for me. There'll be a spot that's like really tight or really intense. Like, I don't wanna go there. You're gonna go there, like bring your awareness right into, like, say, the ribs. For me it's always the ribs. Always the ribs. It could be here, it could be anywhere for you, but for me it's there. So I'll like focus on this area and you can even put your hand there if you want, or some fingers there and you're just gonna. And I'll start to breathe into that area. Almost like I'm bringing breath into it. I close my eyes often. I guess sometimes if I'm walking, I don't, but if I'm sitting or something and what am I doing? This is the million dollar distinction. I'm not being like this. Fear is terrible. Get it away. Get. Is it done? Is it gone? Where's it going? Is it gone? Get it away. What you resist persists. So you're gonna allow the fear to be there and activate as much curiosity as you can and give it as much space as possible. And the space is you can be here as long as you need to. I know that just by giving attention to this, it's healing, it is liberating. And I got all the time in the world. Because if you're trying to rush this, it's going to just. You're just going to be locked into resistance that's still running. When you're resisting it, you're still running. So you have to stop the running and turn and really be with it. Like, wow. Okay, you're scared of this? Yeah. Show me more. And you can't see it. My hands are off camera. Sometimes I'll have an open posture. You know, it's like hands down, kind of by my sides, about this high. I'm raising them so you can see them, but they're a little lower. And I'll kind of bring my shoulder blades together, my chest open. Sometimes I head up and it's just like, okay, yeah, it's a receptive posture, right? Like I'm receiving this. Just be with it. And I'm just going to be with you until. Until I don't need to anymore. And you know, if I got to get up and go do something after 10 minutes, okay, I'll come back to this later. I don't have to get to the other side right away, but just being with it. But the distinction here is it's proactive. And so I do this on a daily basis. I'll go out for a walk or take some time and I'll just be like, what needs attention? What am I afraid of? What am I tense about? What am I grasping around? And I focus on it. And I focus on it. You know, the horrifying can never go this way outcome. And I focus on that outcome and calm my body. And then what happens is you get this, like, superpower and you're just like, yeah, okay, that can happen. I'm more okay with that now. And now look what else. Look at all the other options of what we can do. Look at it opens up the playing field so much. So this is a powerful practice if you apply it and Any questions Share down below. If you want to learn a lot more about this, make sure you check out my work overall. You can go to draziz.com and that's dashraziz.com and get five steps to unleash youh Inner Confidence. I have a the fourth step is it's the third step. It's the fourth step is Think Less, Feel more. And I talk about exactly this. So if you want to know the tools that I use, there's so much in there. So check that out and by all means share down below. Let's all grow together. I want to hear your comments and your feedback 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.
