The Surprising Secret To Feeling Worthy

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about a key theme. When it comes to confidence, security, and feeling good about yourself and also being able to create relationships, friendships, romantic relationships, career opportunities. It really comes down to a pervasive feeling of worthiness or unworthiness, and particularly the latter. Unworthiness, I'd say, is one of the biggest obstacles and it's hand in hand with social anxiety. When you're feeling social anxiety, you the by definition, you're afraid of others. And particularly what you're afraid of is the judgment of others because you're believing that their judgment is accurate and that they're judging you as less worthy. And that's true. You are less worthy. You cannot experience social anxiety if those things are not occurring. That's just how. That's what's happening underneath the hood when you're feeling nervous. So this worth issue is very. And in fact, I recently came up with one of my hot seats in the Mastermind program that I run where someone was struggling in their dating life and they were realizing that they had this sense of low self worth. In fact, it's such a big issue when it comes to dating and relationships that in events that I've done that are focused on dating and relationship confidence, a big focus of that event is on helping people unlock that sense of self worth. Because if that is low, then it affects everything. You might have a scarcity mindset like, I gotta take what I can get. There's not too many opportunities for me. You might settle, you might accept treatment that is unkind, or even toxic. You might say, well, this is what I deserve because I'm not that worthy of love from people that I think are amazing or, you know, people that I want to be with. So it has a major detrimental effect. And of course, in your career too, you know, I'm not good enough to be in a leadership position or Put this idea out there or have people listen to me or communicate, you know, with assertiveness or directness. So I could go on and on. But basically it's an issue that will affect every single area of your life. And it can be summed up as you feel less than you feel unworthy compared to maybe everyone, but maybe certain people. You know, you look at somebody and say, oh, that person's real charming or handsome or beautiful or funny or successful or rich or powerful or whatever. And oh, I'm not. And there's this sense of like deflation and it feels really true. Having experienced it for many years of my life, it doesn't feel like it's a rational assessment based upon a number of variables, comparisons. It's just like a gut feeling of less than. And it really almost feels like this very primal, pack oriented part of our primate species that is saying, where do I fit into this pack? Okay, I'm less than that person. They're more dominant than me, they're more valuable than me, they're more sought after than me. And so I'm just going to kind of slink down into the corner here and let that person have all the glory. And that really does seem like it's a part of our brain, a part of our nervous system that is responding to some pretty old programming. And so the question as you hear this might be like, well, geez, first of all, do you relate to this? And secondly, how do we change this? Because it's kind of a dismal picture that I'm painting here if this is how it is and you're stuck. But fortunately, if, you know, listening to this show, I don't believe that you or anyone is stuck. I believe this stuff is all malleable and can be changed. And the interesting thing about self worth is it's very changeable. And it's very changeable very quickly, which is great news. And it starts with one key liberating insight. You ready? Which is this, that your perception of your self worth is not real. Your perception of your self worth is not real. It's not factual, it's not a, it's not a thing, it's not a tangible thing. It's not like it's not like a real measurement. Like if you were to measure, you know, what is the square footage of this room that I'm in, You know, you could get out a tape measure, you could say, okay, it's you know, 12ft by 13ft, whatever, that's however many square feet it is, right? So you know the room is 12ft wide. You know, you know that table is 4ft long. You know you're 5 foot 8 or 7 or 12 or whatever. You have a general, very clear way to measure those distances. You can measure all kinds of things. You can measure even non physical things. You can measure, right? Like whether certain numbers or metrics or all this stuff. You know, what you can't measure is self worth. You can't because it's not a real thing. It's a vague accumulation of perceptions. It's kind of like, can you measure like or dislike? Well, no. I mean people could say I like it or I dislike it. You could say, well, give it a number. How much do you like it? One to ten? You could try. But it's emotion, it's perception and it's malleable and it's changing and that is how your worth is too. So in one way it's sort of like I'm perceiving how much I like myself and also how much I imagine others will like me. That's another way to try to describe worth, right? Worthiness. Of what? Of love, of respect, of belonging, of acceptance. And so if I like me and I imagine others are going to like me, then I might feel a sense of high worth. If I don't like me and if I imagine others aren't going to like me, I might experience a low sense of self worth. And that sense of worth is not real, it's just a perception. In other words, it's possible for you to be just as you are right now and have a very different feeling about your worth, right? I mean, haven't you seen that? Hasn't your self worth fluctuated where like one day you're like, ha ha, I'm the king of the world. And the next day you're like, I'm a scum on the bottom of shoes. I'm terrible, right? Have things radically changed in your life or your character or your personality or something? Or it's just the whim of the day, it's the emotion, right? Because your sense of self worth is also very impacted by emotion, isn't it? If you're in a great mood, maybe your sense of self worth is higher, you're in a bad mood, it's lower. And what are you basing on, right? It's like, well, I'm not, I don't have a. For me, I used to feel really low self worth because I thought I was ugly. Why? Because I was comparing myself to certain people and the media standard and other things I was like, well, I'm ugly, so now my worth is low. But I didn't feel that way every single moment of every single day. Some days I didn't think about it, some days it wasn't that big of a deal. And then I looked in the mirror and it was. And it would go fluctuate up and down. So the reason I'm focusing on this is because the more you see that it's not this real thing, the more liberation is possible. Because if you perceive it as real, then you fall into the most common trap which is trying to build, strengthen or inflate your sense of self worth. Right? It's like it's low, I gotta build it, I got to strengthen it. So how do I do that? Well, I'm going to try to fix my flaws. I'm going to try to get stronger and bigger and faster and richer and more hair in the right places and less hair in the wrong places. And I'm going to learn how to be a better communicator and a better storyteller and wear better clothes and I'm going to, you know, whatever your list is based upon where you think you're lacking in worth and then, and then I'll be more worthy of love and belonging and then I'll get the love and belonging that I hope for. That's the plan anyway. And again, on the surface, if you're buying into this whole self worth thing as real, then you might say, yeah, of course you're doing that. You should. Man, you loser. Get your tighten stuff up now. Come on you fatty, lose the weight, let's go. Right, and you might totally buy into that. It might make the most sense in the world. However, if you just pause for a moment and say, well, has it worked? Has your sense of self worth become stable and high and you feel great now that you've achieved certain things you say, well no, no, no, I haven't achieved enough yet. Okay, yeah, I achieved A, B and C, but what about D, E, F, G, H? This whole list of Alphabet stuff, look at my to do list. Gotta get better in all these ways. So I haven't got there yet, but I will, I will when I get to Z, I will. But guess What? Like the Dr. Seuss book on beyond Zebra, there's a whole nother Alphabet after Z. So it's going to have more stuff to grow and more stuff to do. You got to be, you see this again and again. Like people earn a ton of money and then they got to Be richer people get in great shape and then they got to be more fit and achieve more things. And I'm not saying that you can't have a hunger or a drive to achieve or you're ambitious. What I'm saying is that your self worth is not going to significantly change based upon what you achieve or accomplish. And if it does, it is a temporary inflation of self worth that is very precarious. Which means all, oh, I feel worthy because I made a lot of money those last year. Okay, well what if you don't make more money this next year? Then does your worth plummet? I'm worthy because I got some dates. Okay, so if someone says no to you now, are you worthless? So the worth is very precarious, it's very temporary. It's being constantly pumped up and inflated by the next action. And there's this pressure and this drive and this insecurity to prove yourself all the time then, right? Because if you prove yourself, you achieve the worth. You get the worth, it lasts a little while, then you need to achieve and prove yourself again to get another hit of worth. And then it lasts a little while. Does this sound familiar? Does this sound like something else? Another pattern or process in which you need the thing regularly and then if you don't have it, you feel terrible so you need it again. Well, that might be called an addiction. And so now we achieve this or have this achievement addiction, this hustling, this, I got to improve and I got to get better and then I can feel worthy and then I gotta. And it's usually not working. Because even if you are achieving, and I see this again and again, so many clients, and I used to do this too, which is like, it's like a perfectionism where it doesn't matter how much you achieve, that voice in your head which is the perception which is causing all this problem in the first place, is saying, yeah, but it's not enough yet. It's not enough yet, it's not enough yet. It's this hustle, this hustle, this hustle, and guess What? That is 100% by design. Maybe not consciously, but unconsciously, you are being run by the self protective safety police inside because it does not want you to feel worthy, as strange as that might seem. Because if you felt 100% worthy right now, you would probably be behaving differently. You would take different actions, you would take different risks, you might choose different life paths, you might make big changes, small changes, personality changes, wardrobe changes, you just do all kinds of stuff. If you Felt totally worthy right now, 100% worthy. Or maybe you don't even know what you would do. And that freaks the safety police out too, because the safety police is addicted to one thing above all else, which is certainty. The familiar, the known, the predictable. Because predictable, even if it's painful, equals survival, equals safe to that part of you. And so I'll hear again and again, like, oh, I want a date, I want to be in a relationship. And then, okay, what are you doing? Well, I'm trying to fix this part of myself and fix that part of myself and get to this and achieve that and become worthy in all these ways. And it's a wild goose chase because all that's needed to create the, you know, to create love and connection is to move towards that directly, make a beeline towards it. You don't got to go on this crazy circuitous route through the woods and over the mountains and under the dale. Can you go under a dale? What is a dale? Isn't that, you know, you know what I mean? O' er the dale? Isn't that like a song? Anywho long route that you don't need to do, you can just move straight towards it. So you might say, well, how do I do that? I mean, I am not enough or I am not confident enough or I am pudgy or I am this or I am that. Okay, sure. Hey, listen, you want to take better care of your health, you want to become more confident, you want to get stronger, whatever it is you want to do, awesome. Do that because that's who you are. And that feels like the next step for you in this life. But what if it's not? In order to get love, because love is available right now. And so the way out of the self worth obsession and the sense of the inadequacy in the self worth is to see that it's a complete illusion and that really you are you and you have qualities that make you unique, right? There's physical qualities and attributes. The way you look, the way you move, the way you smile. There's emotional qualities or characteristics, right? You know, are you playful, are you intellectual, are you a goofball? Are you growth oriented? Do you love physical art or movement or sports or athletics? Are you creative, are you artistic? Like these things, right, that make you you. In fact, do you know what those things are? Could you rattle off a list right now if I say what are five qualities that make you you? I am what? And they don't have to be the most, you know, well, what If I said I'm intelligent, like everyone's intelligent. Like, don't dismiss it and say, well, it's got to be hundred thousand percent unique. Like, what makes you unique is your mixture of those qualities with your physical appearance, with your unique life experience, with your unique calling of your soul that you're here to do. So you don't have to establish your uniqueness at every stage of the game. That's more of the self worth game. So what are just some five basic simple qualities that describe you? I am what? And if you're drawing a blank here, that's another symptom of you having listened to the negative voices inside that tell you that there's nothing much special, nothing much worthwhile here. But you break free from that voice when you stop listening to it, you stop giving it so much power and you say, okay, what, what are my qualities? I am playful, I am generous. I am loving, I'm compassionate, I am silly. I am determined. Okay, great. That's just a hypothetical example, right? So you being that way. And one other question would be when you were at your most free, whatever the opposite of social anxiety is, the most confident, the most free, the most relaxed, the most carefree, what are qualities that you embody, ways that you are in the world that just come out of you? Are you open? Are you expressive in certain ways? Do you just like sing spontaneously? Do you get, you just really like focused in on something? And maybe you get determined or competitive or creative, like what. When you are just completely not self conscious, completely free, what are some of your biggest qualities that come out of you? Okay, great. So all of these different qualities that you're naming, these are just simple words or ways to try to make sense of your essence, who you are in your natural state. And worth, not worth, is a meaningless, arbitrary measurement. What if I were to say, okay, go outside and go over to that fir tree or that oak tree over there and I want you to measure how lovable and worthwhile that tree is. Here's a measuring tape. You like how big it is? No, no, no, no, no. How worthwhile it is. You mean like how healthy it is? No, no, no, no. Worthwhile. We're gonna spend all day there and you'll be like, dude, what the hell are you talking about? Can I leave now? Right? It does not make sense. I mean, you could say, is it a big tree or is it a small tree, or is it larger than the other trees around it? Or is it more in a state of health? Is it in a state of Decline? Is it a state of decay? Like there's all these things you could measure, but the worth you could not measure? You could say, I like the tree, or I don't like the tree. But does that have any meaning of what the tree is itself? What is the tree doing? The tree is going to tree. It's treeing. And if it's an oak tree, it's going to be oak treeing and making acorns and leaves and then dropping those leaves. If it's a fir tree or something, it's an evergreen, so it's not going to drop any of its leaves. It's going to just have its leaves and make its little pine cones and be growing its bark and reaching up towards the sunlight and photosynthesizing. It's doing it. It's its essence. And those are the qualities, right? The tree is this, the tree is that. The tree does what it's meant to do. That's the same thing as you. And so you do you. You express you. And it's not a question of if you're worthy or not. It's a question of how much are you allowing that process to occur. What if the fir tree was saying, man, I should be an oak tree? Fir trees are losers. They suck. All right, I'm gonna make acorns. How successful is that tree gonna be, that fir tree, at making acorns? It doesn't. It makes pine cones. It's not gonna work. And so when you're trying to be something, to be worthy or worthwhile, it's this fool's errand, this red herring pursuit that can just go on indefinitely and keep you guarded and protected and avoidant of life, of your life as it's pass. Or you can decide right now and say, I am gonna be me. I'm gonna do me, I'm gonna live me, and I'm gonna embody the heck out of these qualities. If I'm playful, I'm gonna be fully playful. If I'm alive, I'm gonna be fully alive. I'm expressive in these ways. I'm gonna be fully expressive. And that's why I always get people that will comment, especially if they hear me talk or at an event or whatever. They'll be like, you make a lot of, like, animated gestures and sound effects when you talk. I say, yeah. And they're like, you know, sometimes people ask me about public speaking particularly, right? They're curious about how I became skillful with it. And they're like, is that something you, like, learned, you know, to do or specifically around the gestures and the sound effects and stuff. And I'm like, no, no. I just. Like, that's what I do. That's what I did when I was a little kid. We had a camera that my dad got when I was a little kid, like one of those. One of those earliest camcorders kind of cameras. It recorded to a VHS tape. You had like this big thing on your shoulder and recorded it into a VHS tape. And I remember he would take footage of me when I was a little kid, like seven, eight years old. And whenever the camera got on me, I could have been doing whatever with my brother or running around. And as soon as the camera got on me, I had my tongue sticking out. I'm waving my arms around, I'm making the silliest, weirdest gestures that I can. It's just part of my essence. That's what I do. I'm silly, I'm expressive in those ways. Now there's a big chunk of my life where I wasn't silly and expressive because I was suppressing it. Right? That was me trying to be the oak tree or whatever. And then at some point you just gotta own it and you gotta allow it. And so the question is not am I worthy? It's how much am I allowing myself to be me and be my essence? Because when you 100% start to put your essence out there, who you are, your qualities, amping them up to their maximum potential by fully embodying them and giving yourself permission to live that way, what's going to happen is you're going to become all the opportunities, all the stuff that you hope is going to come your way when you're quote worthy is going to be available to you. The love that you want, the relationship that you want, the dating experiences that you want, the career opportunities that you want, the friendships and connections that you want, it's all going to be there. And some people aren't going to want to date you. Some people aren't going to be your friends. Some people aren't going to want to hire you. Yeah, that's. That's life. That is the. That's to be expected. And if you're willing to experience that and say yes, some people are not gonna like me. But I'm not for everybody. I don't need everyone to be my friend. I don't need everyone to date me. That's a lot of people that's hard to manage. I just need a few people who want to date. I just need one relation, one, you know, if you want to settle into an amazing, beautiful, extraordinary long term relationship, like how many? You just need one. Unless you're gonna try some weird, complex polyamory situation and more power to you if you can pull that off. That sounds pretty draining and exhausting to me. I'll stick with one. That's enough. So you only need one. How many? You don't need to be for everybody. You need to be who you are. And you're going to magnetize and attract those who resonate with you and your essence. So let's put this in action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to come up with that list of qualities, right? Those five, seven qualities of who you are. Also include the qualities of you when you're at your best, your most free. Even if you don't live that way every day. Because maybe you're stressed out or you hold back. But when I'm not holding back, when I'm not stressed out, this is what comes out of me. This is how I am. And then what I invite you to do is to read through that list. All of the qualities. Qualities that you are, the qualities that you are at your best. Read through it once a day. Just take one minute, read through it, prime yourself to be that way every day. Start to live it more and more. Start to own it more and more. Stop focusing on worth. If you notice yourself going to the concept of worth and evaluating your worth, say this is a dead end street. I don't do this anymore. Evaluating your self worth regularly is like the person who's got an eating disorder who is weighing themselves 12 times a day, 20 times a day. It's meaningless data. You're not going to do anything with that information on the 14th weighing of that day. It's a compulsion. And same thing with our checking of our self worth and our evaluating of our self worth and our obsession with our self worth. It is a meaningless obsession designed to pull you away from life. So it's time to choose something else. It's time to choose you. Being you, embracing you, owning who you are, expressing who you are, loving who you are, being who you are and attracting all that you're meant to in this life. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are, 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 it.