This One Tool Will Transform Your Confidence Fast

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, 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 to today's episode of the show. Today I want to share the most powerful tool that I know of for radically increasing your confidence. That sounds pretty appealing. Sounds maybe like a big promise. And as Dale Carnegie says, promises are cheap. But in this episode, it's going to deliver. Because this isn't just based upon a theory or a guess or some academia. This is based upon not only science, but also massive amounts of experience. Personal in my own life, and then having the opportunity to be helping so many people over the years so I can observe this process and start to see that it's a principle or a law, not just my own experience. Plus, it's verified and backed by science, too. So this is where it's at. And I must put a caveat here, which is this is not the right tool for everyone all the time. This isn't the panacea, cure all answer to everything. There are other tools that I share on other episodes of this show, and I think that can be a human tendency to want to find the one thing. So you're saying if I just do this one thing, I'll succeed in confidence. If I just choose one thing, all my relationships will be greater or I'll make a lot of money, Right? Just this one thing. Well, there's one of the things and there's other things, too, but this one here, this is a big thing for confidence and there's a lot of resistance to it. There's a lot. And you'll see. I'm going to describe what the resistance are because I'm going to share the thing and then we're going to talk a lot about in this episode why you're not doing the thing. Right? Because the tool of transformation, of your own liberation is in your own hands and you're not using it. The key to get out of your own cage, whether it's the cage of social anxiety, of excessive niceness, of low confidence, low Self esteem, self hatred, even. You have the key in your hand right now. You're holding it. Can you, can you see it? Can you see the key? Well, it's there. And the question is not if it's there and if you can get out of the cage, it's why aren't using that key? Well, we're going to get to that in this episode as well. So it's not just a here's a great tool. Sorry, you never going to use it. It's here's a great tool. Let's look at what's getting in the way of using it. So you can leave this episode feeling on fire.

Are you ready?

All right, let's go. And by the way, if you're benefiting from this show and you want to take things further, you realize that you can do more to transform your confidence. You want to get off the sidelines in your life. You feel like life's passing you by. Maybe listen to a lot of these episodes and you feel inspired afterwards, but then you're not making the change at the rate that you want. Just know that most people find that more is needed than listening to videos or podcasts to truly transform these long standing patterns that have been going on for, you know, 20 years, 30 years, you tell me, in your life, right? But in any case, I have tools and resources beyond this show that can help you. If you go to my site, doctoraziz.com that'S-R-A Z I Z.com and you explore the resources there, there's a free mini course called five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. You can find that right on the homepage. You can also go to my products, where you can learn about Confidence University, which is a deep dive for courses that guide you through social mastery, dating and relationship confidence, career acceleration and more. And then of course, if you're really ready to just change everything fast. The most powerful program that I know of in the world to transform social anxiety and confidence is my Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind. It's a year long immersion, just a massive amount of training, education, guidance, support, feedback, accounting, accountability to really have you make changes and have new perspectives and insights that might not happen otherwise without that environment. So lots of options. You can find that under the coaching tab on my site. And in fact, this thing I'm going to share in this episode is one of the key things that I help people with in the program. And honestly, people don't really start using it until at least three months in, but maybe More it clicks, it'll click in people at some point. I see it all the time. Whether it's three months, six months, it's okay because when it goes. When you grab this tool. Holy cow. So what's the tool? What's the tool? Well, the antidote to. So let's zoom out here. We got anxiety, right? We got niceness. I'm afraid, I'm afraid to speak up, I'm afraid to put myself out there. I hold myself back, I inhibit myself. The essence of niceness and social anxiety. And so we tend to avoid instead of approach, right? This is probably not new information so far. And when we avoid the things we're scared of, we avoid the conversation, we avoid the person, we avoid asking whatever, we avoid saying no. Then we experience a couple of results of that avoidance, which is anxiety increases and our sense of power diminishes. And the relationship dynamics we create are generally worse, right? So boo boo on that. But to break that down a little further, we avoid because we're scared. We have negative stories in our head that say it's not going to go well and we believe those stories. And then you don't take the action, you avoid, you reinforce that story that it's not going to work, right? Because you didn't test it. And so it's like, yeah, I'm sure it would have gone bad. Do you know? Yeah, I know. How do you know? Well, I didn't do it and I'm alive still, so I probably would have died had I done it, right? So we're not actually verifying anything, but we feel confirmed in our belief. And then that further erodes our sense of confidence and self esteem, right? Because you're like, oh man, I'm avoiding the things in my life. I'm not one of those people who can do those things. And that makes us feel worse about ourselves. And then we want to avoid the next time. So it creates this downward cycle. That's avoidance. The other path is approach. And that means you move towards what scares you. That's why I have this saying, do what scares you until fear has no power to stop you. That's what's been backed up by countless thousands of studies and essentially exposure therapy, right? Gradual exposure, flooding, it doesn't matter. You have people do the thing or move towards the thing that scares them gently or throw them in the deep end. The deep end. One's a little, takes a little bit of nuance. But eventually, if you move towards the thing enough, the whole cycle goes the other way. You start to realize a couple of things. One, my negative predictions are not always true. What? Really? It's kind of remarkable when that happens. Maybe you've had that experience in your life. I sure have. Where I'm certain it's not going to go well, and then I take the risk, I defy the doubt, and then it goes, well, what's happening? It's like a confusing, delightful disorientation. What else might be wrong up in my head? And then you start to develop better stories about yourself. Oh, I guess people can like me. I am the kind of person that people want to talk to. Wow, cool. And then you're more inspired to take more action. So you with me so far? Approach versus avoid. Now, what's the tool? Well, the tool is a distinction that I've found that makes all the difference. You probably already know, oh, I want to approach versus avoid. But maybe you're not. Maybe you're. Oh, it just feels like I can. Or it's so hard, or the stories are so thick or whatever is going on. And it seems sometimes like, well, less is going to be the way to go. I'm just going to dip my toe in the water. And what I've found, though, is that one of the most powerful things we can do is actually go far the other way and get into massive action. Like, how much can I do? How quickly? Now, that might sound absolutely absurd. That's why I said, if I'm going to share the tool, but I'm going to share the things, the reasons why we don't do the tool. That's an absolute absurd disease. I'm barely trying to get myself to go over and say hi to somebody. You want me to go ask a bunch of people out in a day? Are you crazy? I'm gonna die. Yeah, maybe. Probably not. I don't know. Who are you asking out? I mean, what. What neighborhood are you in? Maybe you should change your location. Right? No, you mean you're gonna be emotionally uncomfortable? Sure. Right. We're not gonna die. And there's a massive energy shift that occurs when you go into this, what I would call offense mode. Because if you've been avoiding, you've been on defense guarding your whole life, right? And when you start to shift it and you're like, okay, I'm not gonna guard anymore. I'm gonna. I'm gonna try it out a little bit. I'm gonna take a little bit of action. Oh, I don't know, though. It's gonna be conflict. There's this kind of obsession and worry and concern about our own comfort in that, and it makes the process really, really slow and sometimes prevents the growth that we really want. Let me give you an example. There was a woman I was working with who wanted to get better at public speaking, and so she looked for opportunities to speak. She even joined Toastmasters. Right. She's taken action, and so she's going to Toastmasters, and she's feeling so anxious. Oh, God. I'm going to speak up here. Okay, all right. I'm going to try to lean into my edge a little bit. I'm going to raise my hand and say, okay, I have something to share. Okay. And she did that. And then, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with Toastmasters, but they have different roles you can do at a meeting. It's just a bunch of people who come together to learn public speaking and get better at that. And it's focused, I'd say, more on the skill of speaking and just exposure, opportunity to practice rather than rewiring the social anxiety that makes us so anxious in the first place. And so I was helping her with that. Some of the fears of being seen, the judgments that she imagined people would have. So we did some inner tools around that, and ultimately we both knew that the inner tools are great until you put it into practice and take more action. And so she'd go, and then she'd miss a meeting. And this is back and forth. But she was doing stuff. And after a couple months, she's like, I'm really frustrated at how little progress I feel like I made. I'm still very anxious. I signed up to give a presentation, and I was just nervous for a week ahead of time. And then afterwards, I felt like I judged myself a bunch and there's some breakthroughs. But I said, yeah, that's that stage. That's when we're, you know, one foot in, one foot out. We're kind of trying to be on offense, but we're also being on defense. And I said, what's needed here is massive action. She said, what do you mean? I said, well, when I. If I were in your shoes and I really wanted to shift this, I wouldn't be saying, okay, let me work up to it. I was like, when's your next talk that you signed up for? And she's like, well, I'm signed up for a talk in, like, three or four weeks. And I said, okay. The way I'd be thinking about this is, how can I give two to three talks per week? And I sat there in silence. And she looked at me like, what the f are you talking about? Bananas, right? And I'm like, yeah, chicken, banana. Let's go. Let's do this right. Because that's the energy that's going to change everything. If you're dibbling around for 6, 9, 12 months, maybe giving a talk a month, you're not going to get very far. You're not gonna have the opportunity to practice and build that resilience. And there's something about this powerful energy shift that occurs. You're like, let's go. Like, I. You just flip the whole cart over, flip the whole thing on its head. And I don't know what metaphor we're using at this point. You flip something over, you flip the table over. Let's go. You go to beast mode. And then you just go into massive action. And this is a tool that when someone is in the right place, they're going to hear it and they're going to do it. And she was in the right place, and she says, all right, I get it. I'm frustrated enough. She's been in my program long enough. She knows the principles, and she sees it. She realizes it's on her. It's one of the key things I help people do when I work with them, is take total ownership of their lives. Because everyone is kind of waiting around for it to get better on its own or for someone to save me, or it's not in my control or, oh, that voice in my head just tells me I'm bad, and I believe it, or my parents didn't raise me right. And I'm not saying that's wrong. It's just ineffective. And you're not going to have life that you want. And you could take that story to the grave. I mean, many people do. I'm a victim of circumstance. I'm a victim of life, and it's tragic. And so we must take ownership. And so that's what she did. And it was remarkable. She came back next time. What happened? She's like, I'm signed up for. I'm doing a talk this week, and I'm signed up for one next week. And she started. She signed up for a weekly talk. And so there she was, doing the talks each week. And I mean, within three weeks, radical shifts. And would you say, well, it wasn't that much more practice, was it? No. See, that's the thing about confidence. It's not just pure. It's. I. I use. I say confidence as a muscle, and you can build it. And it is as a metaphor, but it's actually different than physiological muscle. You. You go hit the gym hard for a couple of days or a week or something, you're not going to walk out, you know, looking giant, right? You're not going to be Wolverine or something after a week of working out? It doesn't work that way. And by the way, if you ever try to lose weight and you're like, I'm going to undereat, I'm going to exercise more. You know, you start doing it and you're eating like, it feels like way less food, and you're hungry, you're kind of tired, and you're like, I'm still going to work out, though, because, you know, I want to get leaner or lose some weight. And you do it for like, a couple of days, and you're like, wow, holy cow, this has been intense. And I'd imagine that I am probably going to be like five pounds lighter. And you weigh yourself through the same like, oh, my God, I have to do this for, like, weeks or months. Oh, no. Oh, no. But then what happens? Something kicks in, usually a week or two in, where all of a sudden you adapt, right? And that's why one of the best prayers is not take this pain away, God. It's, God, give me the strength and resilience and resourcefulness to handle what's in front of me. That's the ultimate prayer for life. Whether you believe in God or not, it's the ultimate incantation for you, taking control of what you can control in life. And one of the things you can control, one of the few things you can control, is your own action and the rate that you take it. Now, one of the biggest obstacles that I hear you know about this is it's too much or I can't. I'm too scared. And that is a legitimate response. And usually before someone's ready for massive action like this, they have to have done some prep work. One of those things is becoming more aware of your relationship with yourself and determining how much you're on your own side. Because if you're massively not on your own side, you're your own worst enemy, your own worst critic. This approach becomes pretty tough because, you know, one even before you take your first action, the critic is going to start berating you. And that's a whole other, you know, episode topic. I'm sure I have tons of episodes about that. You know, the different approaches your safety place is going to use, how your credit is going to keep cycling through things until it stops you. But ultimately that must be addressed to a degree. You don't have to be like in perfect love of yourself and accept everything. No, but just a little better so you're not stabbing yourself in the foot every step you take. So you got to get more on your own side. You might want to dabble with some, some slow action, some gradual action for a little while, just to get a feeling of what that's like and the rate of progress. And then when you're ready, boom, you can go into massive action. And this isn't that you do this forever. I'm not saying to this client like, you got to give three talks a week for the rest of your life. No, but just for like a month or two. She gives a talk a week, it's going to change everything. Because back to my point around muscle, physical muscle versus the confidence muscle is. The confidence muscle is adapted over time. But it's more, it's, it's more ephemeral, right? It's, it's malleable. It's not a physical. You don't have to build actual tissue. And so things can shift. You can have a mindset shift. You can let go of an old story, you could have a new belief, you could change your perspective, you could make a decision. And then things do change, and sometimes radically. Now, it doesn't mean that you don't pick up an old pattern of fear again. And that's where the training comes in, that's where the consistency comes in. But man, a lot can shift quickly, especially when you go into this mode. So let's talk about how you might put this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step has two options. Option number one, prepare for massive action. Option number two, take massive action now. Right? So, and that's why I'm giving the two options. Because if the second one just creates a freeze overwhelm response in you, then it's probably not the right time for that tool. Gotta do a little more inner work here. What are some of those stories? How do you treat yourself? Have you been taking some action? Have you been doing some gradual exposure? And the answer to that is no. Then you're not ready for massive action. This is a really powerful tool, but that's like trying to wield something, you know, I don't know, what's like a blowtorch or some kind of advanced tool, a chainsaw or something, you know, you got to start with something more minor, build up some capacity, and then you can wield the more powerful tool of course, with a chainsaw, there's a lot of people that use it with no training, no awareness whatsoever. That's where some shocking and somewhat humorous and somewhat horrifying YouTube videos can be found. But that's. That's. You do that on your own time. But the question is, which one are you going to choose? Prepare for massive action or massive action. And notice the framing of the first option. It's not do some stuff and then wait around. It's knowing that you're preparing. Because if you ultimately want the life that you want, to create a life free from social anxiety and excessive niceness and people pleasing and high confidence, it's actually going to require bursts of massive action in different areas of your life at different times. In your health, in your relationships, in overcoming a fear in business or career and building a capacity like assertiveness or approaching or social mastery. It's going to require that of you. Life is it's not me requiring that of you, it's life asking that of you, inviting you to step up in that way if you're ready to create the life that you want. Awesome. 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 are awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkfortheshyguy.

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For free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.

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