This Is Always The Path To 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 to today's episode of the show. Today I'm going to be sharing the path to confidence. And this is always the path to confidence. I'm going to put a few I don't disclaimers or special case scenarios to special considerations. Let's say for when. It might not be the exact right thing in this moment, but even if it's not the exact right thing in this moment, it'll probably be the right thing tomorrow. Or if you just tweak a little, it's still the right thing to do right now. And overall in your life, this is the way. This is always the path to confidence. And this comes not just from one experiment. This comes from literally thousands of iterations in my own personal life. And then watching this happen thousands of times with thousands of people over the years. So I don't know what number that is. A bajillion. Right. There's a lot of clinical, observable, experiential data that I'm basing this on. Plus and it's also verified in research too, in empirically supported treatments for all kinds of conditions. So this is both practical real world as well, as well as like theoretically lab tested, if you will. And it works. It's the path. And you might even know what I'm gonna say. So we're gonna look in today's episode not just about what to do, but what gets in the way. Why aren't you doing it if you know this is what to do? So what is it? What is the path to confidence? Well, it is so important that I actually put it in my five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence mini course, which if you haven't gotten, you can get it for free at my website, drazeez.com-r a z I z.com and right on the homepage there, it says, you know, get your mini course. There's an ebook as well as a little Video training series all about it. But I put it in that, that five part video course because it is the most important thing we can do to build confidence. It's the path. What is it? It's to do what scares you, to do the thing and things that you're afraid of. Dun dun dun dun. Now you might be like, wait, man, I was gonna learn something new today. I already know that disease. Well, if you know that, are you living it? And if you're living it, then you're experiencing more and more freedom. But most people know it intellectually, but do not know it in their own experience of life. In which case, I mean, we could get into semantics here about whether you really know it or not. You might have a concept and you've heard it. It's a belief, it's an idea, but it's not an actual experience. That's like saying, I know how to build an airplane because I watched some people do it on YouTube or I know how to build an airplane because I read about it in some books. But until you've actually built an airplane and been involved in that process, do you really know how to build an airplane? Is it just theoretical? And so we want to step out of theoretical ideas and concepts and knowledge and really look at your life. And if the answer is no, that's okay. We'll just explore what's happening, what's going on, what's getting in the way, what's preventing you from really being able to practice this in your life. But let me explain a little bit more about doing what scares you and how this works all the way up the chain, from the depths, the pit of social anxiety that I was in, all the way up to creating more and more self confidence and then into the realm of extraordinary confidence. You want to become extraordinary in your life beyond average, above ordinary. It's the same process. Do what scares you. So what scares you right now, that's going to be your guide, your guiding star, your, your compass to set your navigation. To put in another way, from a friend of mine, fear is an invitation. So way back when, when I had a lot of social anxiety, what I was afraid of, I was afraid to talk to people. I was afraid to talk to women that I was attracted to. I was afraid to talk to people I didn't know. I was afraid to speak up in groups, I was afraid to raise my hand. And in a class or in a group environment, I was afraid to talk to certain people at work because they intimidated me. I was afraid to speak up in Groups. I was afraid to give a public talk. I was afraid, afraid, afraid, afraid. I was afraid to go to the gym because I would look too scrawny in my mind. So what do you do? I remember I had this big breaking point in my life where I realized it wasn't going the way that I wanted. And I finally downloaded some self or not downloaded, purchased and received CDs. Oh, yes. Back in the day, we got this binder of CDs of this personal development program. It was all focused on dating confidence. But I was ready. I was really ready at the time. And with the guy speaking every time he mentioned another book that was outside of his course, but he's like, oh, this is a great book. I read this one multiple times, or I recommend this book. You know, I would write it down and I would go buy it. This is back in the days before audible was a big. Or maybe it didn't even exist, I don't know. But it certainly wasn't a big thing. And so I downloaded the paper, purchased the paperback books, and I would read them. And one of the books he recommended was a book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. So I got Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And I remember at the time, I would. I had a lot of physical pain at that time, and so my ability to exercise was quite limited. I don't think I could lift much weights at that time, and I couldn't run. But I remember I could do some machines sometimes. So I would do like, the StairMaster. And that didn't seem to bother my body too much. And so I remember I was at UC Santa Barbara and they had this. They put all the, like, what do you call, cardio equipment in this hall. There's like a big hallway entering the main gym and weight room, and they just put all the cardio machines in the hallway. So it was such a wide hallway. So you have all these cardio machines on this hallway. And so I was standing in this. In this hallway, and you had these big windows behind you in the soccer field, behind the windows, and the sun was coming down. It was really pretty in a way. And I remember reading this book and I was sweating on the StairMaster. So sweating was, you know, getting on the pages of the book. And I was reading this book and sweating on the StairMaster. And she's just talking about. I mean, just speaking truth. Susan Jeffers. Man, I remember, you know, I don't know, eight years ago or something when I was. How many. This podcast has Been going longer than that. 11 years. 10 years. 11 years. Oh, my God. Anyway, a couple years after this podcast got going, I was like, I want to interview Susan Jeffers. You know, her book is amazing, and it turns out she had died. I didn't know that. So rest in peace. Susan Jeffers. Thank you for your contributions and your work. They live on beyond you. And if you're curious about this book, get it. I'd recommend it. It's still freaking good to this day. Susan Jeffers do. She doesn't say do what scares you. Feel the fear and do it anyway is her wording for it. And so I'm listening to this, reading this book. I keep saying listening, because in this day and age, I only listen to stuff on Audible. In any case, reading this book, and she's basically saying, hey, everyone feels fear. Everybody. Everybody feels fear. Fear is a necessary experience when you're expanding your comfort zone. Like, there's a band of behaviors that feel comfortable because they're familiar to you. And when you do anything outside of that, you will feel fear. Everybody does. And the people that thrive in life are willing to feel that fear and do it anyway. Now, that might not be profound new information for you, but if you really get what she's saying, it's profound. It was profound for me because I'd been living my life waiting for the fear to go away. I'll talk to those people when I'm not afraid. I'll talk to that approach, that woman. When I feel better about myself. I'm not afraid of being rejected or afraid of not being enough. I'll speak up in a group when I no longer feel afraid that I'm not gonna be smart enough or I'm gonna stumble over my words. I'm afraid of being seen and known and acknowledged and, you know, even just have people look at me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm gonna wait till the fear goes away, and then I'm gonna do it. And she's saying, it's never gonna work. And that's what I'm telling you. It's never gonna work. And it was reading that book that I had a profound clarity of, oh, that's the way. That's the path to get what I want in life, to become who I'm meant to be in this world. I is to feel the fear and do it anyway. And so I don't know how long I was on that StairMaster. 30, 40 minutes, and that was the only time I read that book. But that was a pivotal, like, light bulb moment. Aha. Moment, where by the time when I got off the StairMaster, I was like, oh, you have to do the thing that scares you. So I'm wiping my face down. I got my, you know, towel and wiping off the sweat. And, you know, there's women everywhere at this gym. And at that point in my life, I wanted. I never had a girlfriend of my. I had. Maybe I had one or two opportunities up until that point in my life that were women who approached me, but I'd never really approached anyone I was very attracted to. And. And, you know, had anything. Masculine confidence, seduce her, none of that. It was just, here I am. Please. I. Please don't hate me. Not the most attractive way to show up. And so I just really want to do a talk to women. That's why I got that dating program. And I was just, like, listening to the program, waiting for some insight on CD9 that would take my fear away, right? And I finally got it. Like, the guy's like, if you want to get comfortable talking to women, you got to go talk to women and realize they're not gonna. You know, they're not scorpions that are gonna stab you with venom if you say hi to them. So up until that point, I'd probably approached some women here and there, done a few things, but it had been with great, I don't know, turmoil and back and forth, pacing at the edge of the pool, should I jump or not kind of energy. And so I just finished reading this book, got this, you know, sweaty copy of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway in my hand as I'm walking down the hallway, dabbing the sweat off, and there's two women walking the other way. And I just look at them, and I say, what's up, guys? And one of them says, hey. And I pass by them. Now, that might not seem like a big moment to you, but that was huge for me. A casual hello, a friendly greeting with a women. A woman. Two. Two womans. Oh. And so I. And it was so casual, and it was so no big deal. And she said hi back and seemed, you know, warm, friendly. Not like, you creep. You monster. Get away from us. That's what I probably was imagining, because he was outside my comfort zone. And here's a huge takeaway. How fast was that action? How fast did I take that action after reading that book? Yeah, basically immediately. I guess the only other more immediate thing I could have done is While on the StairMaster after reading that paragraph or whatever. And Dripping sweat, I could have turned to the girl on the exercise bike next to me and been like, hey, how's it going? But I didn't. And no, but I mean, it's pretty darn immediate, right? And that's what I teach today. There's two types of action. I have this in my ultimate confidence formula that I share with people in the Mastermind program. But there's two types of action you got to take, and one is immediate action. When you learn something in the Mastermind that I'm teaching, in these calls or even on this podcast, when you learn something, you got to take the action immediately. That's why I'm going to encourage you to do the action steps at the end of this episode. It's not like, well, think about it for three weeks, it's do it today, do it right now. And then the other type of action is consistent action, right? Because if you do one thing once I said hi to those two women and then never did anything again, probably not going to change much, right? So it's consistent action. You got to keep doing it again and again. But at that point, I got feel the fear and do it anyway. Do what scares you. And it's been 21 years, 22 since that moment of my life. And I have not stopped. I have not stopped doing what scares me. Now, that might sound like grueling, as if I'm on some sort of death march. No, I'm. I'm not doing something horrible every day and bleeding out my eyes. I'm not David Goggins. Don't worry, I'm not that hardcore. But in general, in my life, I'll. I'll turn towards the things that scare me. And I've done it again and again and again. So back then, it was a lot of social confidence, you know, just building up this capacity. So approaching women, I would start. I started speaking up in groups. I went and did public speaking. I did Toastmasters, I did Improv. I'm condensing this as if it all happened at once, but it was over a period of many months and years. Just doing the next thing, doing the next thing, doing the next thing, doing the next thing, doing the next thing, the next opportunity, the next fear. What's the next thing I want to move towards? Then it came into professional pursuits and creating a business and then growing a private practice in therapy and marketing myself and then going and writing books and creating things online and marketing myself online and just creating and creating and doing and doing and doing. Always a fear barrier. There to put myself out there at the next level always. And that's the thing from Susan's book, is everyone feels that if you're like, oh, my gosh, But I feel afraid to do it. I couldn't do what he did because I feel afraid. It's like, no, it's not that the fear is there. It's just that there's a more willingness to do it anyway and feel the fear as you do it. Now, what I would add into that and what I do with people as I teach and work with them, and you probably got it from this episode or this show in general, really, is you gotta be on your own side as you do it. You gotta have this level of self compassion and support and trading out your inner critic for being an inner champion to really guide and navigate you through this. Because the fear is uncomfortable. The fear is scary. Being scared is scary. So we gotta have love and support and guidance and connection along the way. It's not some stoic Spartan, you know, go kill the wolf at night with a spear kind of ritual. You can. You can have more gentleness with yourself. And so sometimes people say, well, you have to do it scares you. I was like, yeah, maybe. But if. Maybe take it. Maybe sleep it off and try again tomorrow, that's fine. Maybe tone it down and make it not so intense, right? If it's too scary to go do this one thing or talk to this person, can you tone it down? Can you say hi to someone who's less threatening? Can you work your way up to it? And that continues to this day. And it's not just social confidence, just risks in life. So we live in our dream house now. We live out in the woods. And I remember moving here just felt so scary, Felt out of reach. You know, this is a bad financial decision. Perhaps, maybe we shouldn't do this. It's kind of. We're not going to be able to sustain it. I'm going to foreclose on the house. I had so many, like, visions of me nailing in a sign out on the. You know, on the street in front of this house and the kids standing and the sign says, like, for sale or something. And the kids being like, do we have to leave, Daddy? Yeah, we do. I couldn't do it, right. These, like, tragic visions of doom and calamity and failure. And it wasn't like we were buying something that was just totally extravagant. I mean, it was actually quite. If you looked at all the numbers, I'd say relatively conservative as far as the. You Know debt ratio that we have personally in our finances. What is that debt to debt to equity. But it was way outside of my comfort zone and in fact, it took me a while to adapt to living here. It wasn't that it was too expensive and we were gonna lose everything. Is that it was, it was too good, right? Like that. Oh, we get to live in a place that I personally, maybe not everyone. It wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. I mean we're pretty far out here in the woods and it's 30 minutes to. I mean the kids school is about 15 minutes away because it's out in the country as well. But any sort of shopping or, you know, movie theater or anything, you're looking at 30 minutes to get there through. Through windy country roads. And some people would hate that. They'd be like, oh my gosh, that's. You're so isolated. And to me it is, it's extraordinary. I mean I have like running trails on old logging roads down at the end of our road and just get to look at trees out right now as I'm recording this. So to me it's. It's a dream come true. And there was a lot of fear about that. Like it's too good. It scared me on some level, like something bad's gonna happen. It was in what Gay Hendricks might call an upper limit problem from his book the Big Leap, which I'd recommend reading or listening to if you haven't checked that out. But that was feel the fear and do it anyway. And then most currently, I had this experience about a month and a half, month and a half ago, where we took a vacation and I went to Hawaii with my family and I took a lot of vacations when my kids were younger. Not a lot, I guess. Depends on. It's all relative. I think my wife was always like you, you don't take really vacations. But I did. We would go on road trips and stuff when my kids were young and go camping and then. But for the last couple years, especially after moving here, I didn't really take long, more than, you know, couple days here and there, time off. And we went on this vacation and it was so good for me. I was like, wow, wow. It's almost like I couldn't see how much I'd been in work mode and how much that was affecting me. On weekends there'd be like this driving quality and even in my downtime and so it was so good. Got the Hawaiian vibes. And I came home and I was like, you know what, man? I just need to be able to step away more from work and not be always progressing things. And so I just made a decision. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna move at more of a sane pace. And of course, that voice in my head, the fear voice, was like, dude, everything's gonna fall apart. And I just learned, feel the fear and do it anyway. So what does that mean, to move at more of a sane pace? Well, my wife was at a workshop last weekend, and she was gone Thursday. She got back on Tuesday. And so I was with the boys on Friday, and I took Friday off, and then I was with them on Saturday and Sunday. Monday was a holiday, so I was with them on Monday. And then on Monday, one of my kids got sick, and so we didn't go to school on Tuesday, so I stayed with him on Tuesday. And I didn't even do any work. You know, I moved some appointments around. And, man, in the past, I would have been so freaking stressed, right? Like, death is gonna happen. You got to be at the helm at all times. And I've been practicing, though, for the last month and a half of like, hey, I'm gonna feel the fear and do it anyway. Like, life is about more than just work, right? I truly value a time with my family. Like, love and connection is the most important thing to me with humans, with my family, with clients too, but also with my family and with nature and the cosmos. And if I'm too driven, then I feel less of that and I feel more restless. So I'm gonna feel the fear and do it anyway and slow down. I've been doing that for last month and a half. So when I had this opportunity to practice this, there was some fear a few times, like, it should be working. I'm like, no, that's okay. Work will be there. Here it is. It's Wednesday. I'm back at work. I'm recording this, and all is well. Nothing exploded. So there's always, like, whether it's leaning into a difficult conversation with a partner or having a conversation with a family member or asking for something or asking for a raise or looking at what it would take to change some work circumstance, the difficult conversations, the speaking up, the taking a risk in business. Like, all of these things scare us. And the path to building confidence is always to do what scares you. Again, with those caveats. If you want to wait till tomorrow or tone it down and do something else, that's fine. So this isn't some crazy, militant approach, but it is the way it's like you want to get stronger. The way is to, is to tax your body in some way. So you want to never work out but get stronger. Like that doesn't. Then you don't really want to get stronger. You like the idea of being stronger, but you don't want to do what it takes to get stronger. And so that might be the case. A lot of people want the fruits of confidence, the fruits of stepping boldly into their life, but they don't want to do what it takes. And that's okay. It's not bad. It's just suffering. And when you've had enough like I did, then you make a decision and the decision is to do what scares you. So you ready to turn that into action? Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to make that decision. If you want, you don't have to, you could, you could wait a while, maybe do what scares you starting next year. You know what, Jesus, we're already almost halfway through the year. You need some ramp up time, maybe 2025. Start doing what scares you in 2025, but not at the beginning of the year because that's a hectic time. Maybe, maybe mid-2025. So about a year from now, maybe, you know, and if that feels too soon, maybe two years from now you can start doing what scares you. So that's an option. Or however long you'd like. Or alternatively, why not right now? Like right now. What, what would scare you in business, in career, socially, relationships, anything. And pick something small or big, I don't care. Is there an email you could send what's something and just do it. And if you have really no ideas, then just simply after this episode, walk into your bathroom, go to your shower, turn it on and turn the temperature dial all the way down to cold. As cold as it will go. Take off your clothes, get into said shower. That will scare you. And then you've done something that scares you for the day right there. And you know, stay in there for about 30 seconds if you can sing, shout, scream, whatever you need to do. And there's a beautiful example of doing what scares you. And yes, I've been doing that for many years as well. Have now upgraded to a cold plunge. So I get to dunk myself in that thing. That's glorious fear every day. Why? Because that is the path. Alright, 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. I'll talk to you soon. 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 social confidencecenter.com Sam.