The True Foundation of Unshakeable 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. Welcome today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about building an unshakable foundation of confidence. Another word for that is unconditional confidence. You're going to discover what that is and what is the foundation of this? How do we actually experience this? And you're going to see that it's. One is discovering what it is, and then two is actually practicing it and knowing how to do it. And the great news is, on some level, you already do know how to do it. You just might not be applying it. And this is, this is where it's at. Now. You might hear something like, unshakable confidence sounds probably pretty good. Unconditional confidence maybe sounds appealing, but unclear what that is. But it's very different than you might be living, certainly how I lived for many years. And most people live, most people experience very conditional confidence. Right when things are going their way, they feel confident. I got the raise, I got the promotion, I got people liking me, I got lots of follows on my social media post. Everything's turning up, Milhouse. And then it flips, right? And then all of a sudden, I didn't get liked or someone said no to me or I got broken up with and. Or I got laid off. And then confidence goes in the gutter and people think that's just how it is. Like, of course that's how you'd feel, right? Well, no, not necessarily. So having things go up and down in life, yes, that is, there is an inevitability to that, right? That's the. The vicissitudes of fate, gain and loss, fame and disrepute, pleasure and pain. We're going to go up and down. And if you play your cards right and you take good care of yourself, you might have more gain than loss. But it doesn't. You're not impervious to loss. You will also still experience loss and that you'll have feelings during that time of loss, that is true, that is inevitable. But the confidence part is the part that is not. And the reason that our confidence tends to go up and down with the vicissitudes of fate, with the current, the tides, is because our confidence is linked to a variety of things outside of ourselves. So if I got money, I can be confident. If I don't, well, I'm a loser. If I got a date, then I'm the man. And if I don't, well, then I'm a loser. Right. And it can fluctuate not just by the day, by the month, but it could minute to minute. You know, you share a story or you say a joke and people don't laugh, people don't seem. That person you're trying to tell the story to does not seem interested. Boom. Confidence goes down. And so for a lot of people, you know, your confidence can be all over the place, just up and down, wild swings, day to day, hour to hour, and it's exhausting. And that is in contrast to unshakable or unconditional confidence, where you feel confident in yourself no matter what. Now that might sound pretty far fetched. You might say, how on earth could you feel good about yourself when you get laid off? How could you feel good about yourself when someone says no to you? That's ridiculous. Well, as long as you claim that and fight for that right to feel bad about yourself, well then you'll get it. You'll win. You win, you win. I can't, I can't defeat you. I can't make you do anything. But maybe we can get curious and say, why would we fight for that? And again, I'm not saying that you somehow live in a way where you don't ever experience loss, rejection, things not going your way. I don't believe that's possible. So I'm gonna say that things are gonna go your way sometimes and then they're not gonna go your way sometimes. That's going to happen. You are going to fail. You are going to get rejected. So we can agree on that, right? But then what do you do with that? And that's what we're really looking at here today, because that's what I believe. You have more choice around than whether someone likes you or likes your story that you're sharing. You really don't have much control or choice over that. And that is this foundation that we're talking about. Well, what is the foundation of this unshakable confidence? The foundation is self compassion, the way that you treat yourself. Because if your sense of self worth is based upon the ups and downs, then your confidence is a roller coaster. But what if your sense of self worth was stable regardless of the circumstances? And that capacity is self compassion or even more broadly described, as I put it, often is on my own side. Being on your own side, which self compassion is a big part of that. There's other components too. How do you treat yourself? Do you turn on yourself? And we think that the suffering is coming from the circumstance in our lives. That person said no to me. Of course I feel really bad. But what we don't often do is tease apart the bad. Well, there's. Maybe you feel sad because you really like that person or you feel scared because you got laid off. Sure, that's. Categorize that as bad feelings. But really, interestingly, a large part of the pie. Imagine your bad feeling. You just have a. Imagine a little pie graph like in Google sheets or Excel or something, right? You get a pie chart and you can title the chart. And we're going to title this chart bad. But if you look at the chart more closely, it's actually a pie chart. And the bad is broken up into sections. And there's a certain percent that goes to different things. So maybe there's a percent that's afraid. Oh man, I'm afraid of the future. I'm afraid what's going to happen. Maybe there's a certain percentage that's disappointed. Oh, I was hoping that person would like me. Dang, I'm so sad. Ah, maybe it's, you know, sad slash disappointed. But do you know what a large portion of the pie is? I would say it's the majority of the pie, meaning greater than 50%. But often it can be 70 or 80% of the pie. It is turning on yourself. It is self criticism, self judgment, self hatred, self dislike, self rejection. All different terms pointing to the same pattern, which is a revulsion or a disgust or a pushing away or a criticizing of yourself. And that could be direct, like, oh, of course they didn't want to date you, you just ugly loser, terrible. It's like a verbal lecturing, maybe even abusive critical voice in there. Maybe it sounds like a parent or some sort of authority. Oh God. Oh yeah, it's. You're right. We kind of hang our head and just take it. Oh yeah, I am awful. And then that actually in turn can increase fear because if you're a loser, then of course you're going to be afraid about your future because your future prospects are bad. It can also increase sadness because you're like, I guess I'm never going to be with anybody because I'm awful, I'm ugly, or whatever your criticisms are of yourself. And so now that pie, that pie piece of self judgment, self criticism is getting even bigger because it's influencing the other ones too. And so I think a large part of our fear in life is not of the what could happen or challenging or adverse circumstances. It's actually this harshness with ourself, this unsettled, awful feeling that can happen, which is you are unlovable, unworthy, not okay. How can you relax, how can you feel okay? How can you feel at peace or happy or fulfilled if you're not okay, you're not lovable. There's something wrong with you. Like, that's a very disturbing experience. And unfortunately, you might experience that often after every setback. And if it's bad enough like it was for me, you don't experience, you know, you don't have to wait for a setback. You just wake up in the morning feeling inadequate and not enough and not lovable. Hey, good morning, sunshine. I don't deserve to be here. I bet no one's going to talk to me today. That's how I woke up many mornings. And it's painful. So we need to do something different. And what is that different? Well, it's self compassion. It's learning how to be on your own side. It's talking to yourself, treating yourself in a way that with something that you would love. So I was working with a gentleman in my Mastermind program just the other night, and he was afraid of people's judgment of him. Very common topic, I'd say, that I work on in the group of people. And we were looking at it and it was even if he didn't agree with their judgment, let's say they judged him on something that he didn't even think was a big issue. It wasn't like one of his insecurities. Just any judgment from anyone would basically trigger a feeling like they're right and I'm unacceptable. I'm in the level as I am. He said, how do I stop being afraid of people's judgment? I said, the only way to stop being afraid of people's judgment is when you see that it's not a threat. And it is a threat as long as every time there's a judgment from somebody, it's true that you're unworthy and unlovable. So you need to start to build up that other side of you because you got a voice in your head that jumps on that bandwagon every chance it gets. It doesn't even need external criticism, but it sure loves it. And I'm not just talking about him, by the way. I might be talking about you. So imagine this. Imagine you are the captain of your ship. The CEO of the boardroom is another imagery or metaphor for this. And at the boardroom table, you have different advisors, but you ultimately are the decision maker and you have one advisor who is this self critic. And you might not even really know that. It might just feel like it's this fundamental, accurate perception that you're having of reality, in which case you've actually fused with that part of you and you are letting that part sit at the head of the table. But you need to reclaim that seat and start to listen to that critical voice. Oh, you're so awkward. Oh, this. Like, what does it say to you? What do you say to yourself? But really it's this part speaking to you. I know that might seem like kind of a simple or unnecessary distinction, but actually it's, it's the world of difference, which I teach a lot about in my book on my own side almost. Because if it's just you think, oh, this is me, then it's real and it's true, versus like this is a part of me that I can interact with and I can change my dynamic and change my relationship with. So you hear that part and then you need to build another side of you. And a lot of people, you know, imagine a boardroom and then to the left is their hyper critical part always there to say you should do more. That wasn't enough. You're never gonna succeed. You're. Here's why you're not enough. Here's why people don't like you, and here's why they have a right to not like. And why you're. And then you look over to the right side of the table to see about the other advisors. Maybe someone else has got a different point here and it's empty. There's no one there. Where's the self compassionate part? How come we just have this guy? Why did that part call in sick again today? We need. We need him or her. Come on. Right, and you do need him or her. And so to draw that out of this client, I, I used a technique that I learned from David Burns from cognitive therapy, which is to draw upon compassion that you naturally have for a friend that sometimes people find it hard to extend to themselves. So I said, okay, there's a friend in your exact Situation. I described his exact situation. And I said, what would you say to that friend? And he just started to speak and it was a little halting, a little unsure. And he paused after a minute, was like, I don't know if that was good. And I was like, anything is better than nothing. It doesn't have to come out like an eloquent poem. I mean, you'll get better at it over time, but you obviously know how to do this. It's the hard part is directing it towards yourself. It's giving yourself that supportive, loving, compassionate response and some of the essence of compassion. Like, so how do you talk to yourself? If you want to build up this other side of you, this other advisor who is more wise, more compassionate, more loving, more on your own side, how do you do that? Well, you know, one is to think about what you might say to a friend, and another is to understand some of the basic components of compassion. So compassion is, it starts with empathy. You have to be able to notice and experience or sense this pain or suffering in another, in this case, yourself. So every time that critic is active, there's automatically suffering, right? There's two kinds of suffering. There's the suffering of just listening to that critic inside tells you you suck and you're unlovable. That's. That's painful. That's suffering. But the critic is coming out of fear. We attack ourselves. We criticize ourselves when we're scared. So we're afraid. There's a vulnerability to life that maybe I won't get responses from people that I, that I hope for. Maybe I can be exposed to pain or loss or hardship and it's very vulnerable. And so this inner critic pipes up and says, well, if I could just kick you around and make you do it perfectly, then you would somehow we would avoid all the pain in life. That's why Theodore Rubin, in his brilliant book Self Compassion, Self Hate and Compassion is the title of it. One of his terms for this self hating part is the omnipotent screamer. Omnipotent means all powerful. And so this part is yelling and screaming. It's enraged that it doesn't have all power. It wants to be all powerful so it can avoid pain in life. So we start with empathy, which means seeing the suffering. And so that advisor turns towards you and says, hey, and use your own name. Hey, Aziz, I'm sorry, you're suffering right now. That's painful. Or whatever happened that day, like, oof, that was a rough moment in that meeting. So maybe you had a moment where the meeting felt a little awkward or someone didn't like something, or someone judged you, or it seemed like they were. And then you leave and the critic is like, this is so awkward. And you're so awkward. And they were judging you and they think this about you, which is true. And. And then you. Okay, all right, all right, that's enough. Thank you for that input. Let's hear from the other side. And the other side says, hey, wow. Woof. That meeting was rough. I'm sorry. Sorry you went through that. That's challenging, right? Do you see that? That starting point of empathy. And then what? Well, then we acknowledge that this isn't some you problem. This is a we problem. Oh, man. So you know how many people have felt that way in a meeting before? That happens to everyone. To not know what to say or to have someone have a challenge. I mean, this is. This is what one of the big challenges at work is. Or, oh, hey, someone didn't respond to your text, or maybe they don't want to go on a second date with you. It's like, ooh, you know, when that happens to us, to we. To humans, that's painful and happens to people all over the place, not just you. And what that does is that's the antidote to the personal failing blame that we put on ourselves. Well, this happened to me because I suck. It's personally some flaw in me versus, like, this is just how life is. And then there's words of support and encouragement like, hey, you know, I. I'd imagine there's things that we can do. If you'd like to explore how to be different in the meeting next time, because it sounds like that was really painful to have that moment where they were judging you and not sure what to do. I think we could explore how we might want to respond in the future. Right? There's a support, there's an encouragement there, and that's where the way we talk to our friends is much more compassionate. If your friend, you know, got dumped after the third date, you're not going to pull out a line, which is hilarious from Dumb and Dumber, which you may or may not old timey movie now. But, you know, his friend loses his job and he comes home, and Jim Carrey's character, Lloyd, he tells him, he's like, I lost my job today. And then Lloyd laughed and he goes, you are one pathetic loser. Right? And it's humorous because it's so absurd that he would say that to his friend. But that's what we say to ourselves. And it's toxic and it creates this roller coaster of confidence. But you can get off the roller coaster and you can have a much more stable sense of self knowing that no matter what, I am worthy, no matter what, I can be on my own side. And that is powerfully protective and is a source of just a radical change in your confidence. So let's talk about how to put this in action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step is exactly what I assigned to my client in the Mastermind is to for the next two weeks, take a couple of minutes to write a very brief letter of self compassion. And you could be type have a note file on your phone where you just put it in the same note file each day and you just kind of put the date if you'd like. Or it could be a literal letter that you pen in a journal or on paper. You could save it. You could not save it. It doesn't matter. It's about writing it. It's about taking literally even just two minutes at the end of your day or sometime, anytime that works for you. Maybe it's longer, maybe it becomes five minutes. You just write a few sentences. You actually write them out because this is strengthening your capacity to actually access. This part might just start with hey, I see you. How are you today? I love you. That was a hard moment. Or it's okay or whatever voice you want to bring. And if you're unsure what to say, just think, what would I say to a good friend? And it's about acknowledgment and caring. Like I'm curious about you. Empathy, like oh, of course you're feeling this or that. Like, oh, you're feeling, what are you feeling? Oh, I can see you're feeling joyful there. You're feeling a little scared there. Okay. It's this loving, attentive curiosity. You just write out a few sentences of curiosity, of support, of encouragement, of empathy, of common humanity. Letting yourself know that it's not just you and it's a we here and that's your practice. Try it for a couple of weeks and just see. It's a powerful boost to building that other side of the boardroom where you can have a stronger and stronger voice that's truly on your own side. And of course if you want the deep dive on this to really master this area, check out On My Own side one of my books that you can get on Amazon or audible. Alright, beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

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