Tolerate Failure (A Life Of Confidence Skill 1/4)

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. Today's episode of the show. I hope this episode finds you well. I'm excited to be with you because I'm going to be sharing something in this episode and the next upcoming episodes that are gonna be extremely powerful for you. Because if there's one thing that I've been on a mission to defeat, to eradicate, to destroy, is the story that's there's something wrong with me, or I was born this way, or some sort of fixed identity of brokenness that so many people that I talk to that struggle with social anxiety or niceness or any other pattern, pattern that is not serving them, that is keeping them stuck, restricted, not living the life that they want, not being who they want to be, not feeling free. You know that cage that you often hear me talk about, the cage of niceness, the cage of social anxiety. But I often find when I start to dig in there with people is on some level, there's a part of them, maybe it's subconscious, but it's in there that believes this is how it is, this is who I am, this is the life that's. That I get. And they perceive their confidence or its opposite, their social anxiety or their niceness as a fixed trait, something that's just part of who they are. Maybe they were born with it, maybe they got it through some upbringing in their past and now locked in and it becomes fixed. And that is absolutely false. Everything about research and behaviorism and human psychology and even neurobiology and. And everything shows that that's not true, that we can change that, and yet it persists. And that's a fascinating story to explore as well, which you've probably heard me talk about a lot in this show is about the safety, police and other ways we have to protect ourself. But really that's what social anxiety and niceness are at their root is protective patterns. And so we can change those. We can fundamentally approach life very Differently. And hence this little series of episodes called A Life of Confidence. And I want to share the skills, the specific skills that you need to build to have a life of confidence. That means confidence in every single area, not just in your love life or your dating life and not just at work. I see that all the time. People have a lot of confidence at work and then none in their dating life or they have a family and they have a great love connection, but they have tons of insecurity about being more of a leader or more expressive at work. So what about confidence in all areas of life? A life of confidence. That's what these skills are about. And I'm gonna share four. One in this episode and one over the next few episodes. And the reason I broke it down to four is because any big skill has sub skills. And you probably heard me share this before, but confidence is a skill. Confidence is a muscle. You can build it, you can learn it, you can develop it. Hence the story that I'm stuck this way. This is just who I am. This is just a trait. Complete and total bullshit. That's what I used to think. That's what I believed for many years. And that's why I'm on a mission to destroy. To destroy. So like learning the guitar, for example, there's a bunch of sub skills. Chord progressions, scales, right hand technique. Do you strum, do you pluck, do you grow those weird nails and do flamingo guitar? So what are you doing in the guitar is based upon the skills, the sub skills you develop. So just similarly, confidence has sub skills. Now there's probably like 50 I could come up with, but I came up with a big four because it's like the Pareto principle, right? Like what's the 20% of stuff that makes 80% of the results? So what are the 20% of sub skills of confidence that are going to produce the biggest shift for you because your time is valuable and we want to make sure you get the most out of listening to this show. So let's talk about that first one today and we'll get into the other ones over the next few episodes. Sound good? Okay, so what would you guess is a sub skill? That was an interesting way of talking. What would you guess? Listen, bro, what would you guess? Huh? Getting confrontational here. Alright, what would you guess? That's just how I talk. That's how I say you, apparently. What would you. You. Hey, what would you guess is the number one? I don't know if it's number one. I think all four are equally important. But what is a very important sub skill, do you think? Something that you must be able to do in order to have lasting confidence across multiple domains in your life. What do you think? What comes to your mind right now? And who knows? This might be one of the ones in a future episode. So you might be right. But today, what I want to focus on, a very important sub skill is the ability to tolerate failure. That's what we're going to focus on in this episode. This is an essential sub skill of confidence, the ability to tolerate failure. And you're going to discover why in this episode and hopefully leave this episode with an already increased capacity to tolerate failure. And then you're going to build on it. Because the way this process works, and I see this happening all the time because I'm working with a lot of people and online live events and then also in ongoing group mastermind programs and other group programs that I run. So I see this day in and day out, week in, week out, how this process of growth and transformation works. And one of the key things we must be able to do is understand the stuff I'm going to share in this episode, but then execute on it, act on it. Because if you don't, it's not going to change anything. So you're going to learn about tolerating failure today here together with me, but you're not going to have developed that skill. It's like watching a YouTube video about changing a car tire. You got some basic understanding, but you don't know how to change a car tire until you do it a couple of times, Right? So it's the same thing with this. You're not going to develop your capacity to tolerate failure until you tolerate failure a few times. So let's take a step back and define a few terms. So what is failure? And doc, that would be a question I'd pose for you. What is failure? What comes to your mind when I say failure? And when was the last time you failed? And how do you feel when you fail? And what's your association to the word fail or failure? Is it positive, negative, revolting, scary, shame inducing? So this is important because how we relate to failure is going to determine a lot of what we do in our lives. So let's define failure. So failure would be not getting the outcome that you wanted in the time frame that you wanted. So I wanted this person to say yes to me. When I asked them out, they said no, that was a failure. I tried to get the job and they didn't Hire me. That was a failure. I went into my boss's office to talk about a promotion and they said, no, I failed. I tried to sell something to somebody on the street corner, hey, listen, man. And they said, no, that was a fail. Whatever it is, the failure can come in a variety of ways. It can come from, I'm asking something of someone else. We might call that a rejection. I am attempting to produce a certain outcome in my workplace and I'm not able to hit it. Whatever it is, I don't get the outcome that I want in the timeframe that I want. And then I call that a failure. And you might not walk around using the word failure like that was a failure. But you know, your energy, your attitude is one of like, that shouldn't have happened. I don't like that. That was bad, that was wrong. That was not the outcome that I like. And so therefore I'm upset or frustrated or ashamed right now. So that's failure. Now why on earth do we need to be able to tolerate that? And my languaging around this is very intentional because if I were to say, embrace failure, go for no, people are like, okay. And that's a very powerful concept. And I've interviewed Andrea Waltz, one of the co authors of Go for no on this show from way back when. You can find that episode if you just go to shrinkfortheshyguy.com it's just spelled out shrinkforthshyguy.com and do a search in the upper right and just type in her name, Andrea. A N D R E A. I can't imagine. I interviewed too many other Andreas, so she should pop up. It's a fun episode to listen to, but that's sometimes a hard sell. And so instead of, you know, you gotta love failure, embrace failure, how about just tolerate that shit? How do you just get through it? And here's why this is important. Because failure, which is not getting the outcome that you want, what needs to happen in order for you to fail, you need to get an outcome. In order to get the outcome that you don't want, you need to get an outcome. And that means you are doing something. That means you are taking some action, that means you are progressing in some way. And so if you are not getting outcomes, AKA you are not failing, it means that you're not taking action and then you're not growing and you're not learning. Now, many of us have in the background a fantasy. Maybe it's a fantasy version of ourselves. Maybe it's a fantasy about Someone else that we admire or idealize and we say, listen so. And so they. They're able to take the action and get all the results that they want without failing. Or, you know, maybe a very, very, very small amount. I mean, you know, they fail, like once in a while and it's not that big, right? And this is a delusion. This is a fantasy. This isn't true. In fact, if you listen to the story of anyone who's successful in any arena, whether it's sports, business, relationships, health, anything, any way that a human can grow, and you find out about their story, listen to their story on an extended podcast interview, or read their book where they tell more of their story or something, not just where you see their face plastered on a Twitter post or some soundbite of them, but you actually find out about their story, and I guarantee you that you will discover that they made all kinds of failures. In fact, generally, a string of failures is what got them to where they are. Because here's what happens every time we fail, we learn. In fact, it's probably one of the most powerful, fast and effective ways to learn. Now, if you combine that with also study, like, what you're doing here is a form of studying that means inputting information to help you steer the results in your favor, optimize your chances of getting the outcomes that you want. I mean, I'm a huge fan of studying. That's what I am, like a human sponge. So I'm going to study. But we've all probably fallen into this trap of, like, I'm going to study 7,000% more than I'm going to take action on what I study. And that's problematic, right? You know, I remember there was this. This is way, way back when I was new to Portland. So this would be 12, 13 years ago, something like that, in Portland, Oregon. And I just moved here, and I'd grown a ton in my confidence over the previous years. So I was able to move to a new city in a pretty empowered way where I was like, I. I don't know anybody in this city, but I'm just gonna meet people and I would just go out. You know, I think like a couple weeks before I started working, and then even on weekends and stuff, I would just go walk around the city and talk to people at coffee shops and cafes. And I actually made a first round of friends that way, and then kind of felt found that they weren't my people, and I made other friends and they weren't my people. And it took me a While to kind of find my community, but somewhere along the way, and I really don't remember the specifics of how I got there, but I have a memory of being there. Probably through some forum or something online I found a couple of guys who were also interested in getting more confident and comfortable approaching women, specifically during the day. Not in bars or clubs or anything, just like, you know, because that's what I'd done for many years. I hated bars. And so I would just. I wanted to be able to have the confidence to say if there's a woman in any setting, you know, at a bookstore, in a supermarket, at a restaurant, wherever, that I would have the confidence to walk up and start a conversation with her. Now she might not want to date me, she might not be available, that's to be discovered. But I want to be able to have that ability. So I remember and I'd been practicing that for probably a number of years. But hey, there's always more potential available. For me, it wasn't, I think for some guys who pursue that, it's about how many women can I sleep with and then become amazing? For me it was about how free can I become from my own fear, right? It's like I want to. How much can I just like see what I want to go after in life, Whether it's talking to a woman or anything, and just do it instantly? Like that's what I was pursuing at that time. And not that I was against dating women and having sexy times, you know, but I wouldn't say that was the primary driver for me. But I remember I met up with a couple of these guys. There was just three of us in this bookstore called Powell's here in Portland. And one guy was kind of like a muscular, good looking guy. And I saw him and I was like, what does he need to do this stuff for? But the truth is it's not about what you look like, it's your confidence, right? And he was nervous and didn't feel worthy and all that stuff. And the other guy was this young guy. I mean he was probably like 17. And at the time I was probably like, I don't know, 20, 25, 26, something like that. But he was 17 years old and you know, kind of think like social network kind of, you know, founder of a tech company looking guy. He's young, he's kind of computer nerdy looking and he's got this notebook in front of him, like a mead spiral notebook, 80 page spiral notebook kind of thing. And it is filled with like page after page after page after page after page of notes of, like, him studying pickup artist stuff. And the kid was like an encyclopedia. And so he was, like, sharing this and sharing that. And he had, like, so many things of what to do and what to say and stuff like that. And then I was like, okay, we talked for a little bit, get to know each other. Like, okay, let's go out, you know, let's go talk to women. And the point was to kind of spur each other, because, you know, going out and doing that stuff by yourself can be challenging. You know, you can face your own fears of. Of rejection, of failure, and it can be very uncomfortable, and we often can avoid it. So the purpose is to have a little bit of accountability, right? So one of us points over. I think I pointed over to some woman looking at a book or something to the fit, muscular looking guy. And I was like, go talk to her. And he's like, oh, my God, I can't. And I was kind of like, hey, you're awesome. Basically, I was trying to help him find that confidence. And the other guy there, the young guy, was like, okay, she's looking at that. Say this. And he had, like, 17 different openers to use. And throughout the course of the day, we kind of, I don't know, went to different places. And to his credit, he did go talk to women. So he wasn't, like, totally absent of action. But the amount of knowledge he'd accumulated versus his ability to face his fear and take action was heavily lopsided. And I was like, oh, I get it. I get it. It's like, I'm gonna study so much, and I'm gonna get it figured out so perfectly that I can't fail, that I'm not gonna get rejected. And that was the fantasy question for you. Are you doing that in your life in any particular area? I'm gonna study so much. I'm gonna figure it out so much that I can't have anything bad happen to me. You know, I hear this, that sometimes people are wanting to put themselves out there more for business purposes or whatever, you know, so they're gonna do recording, audio or video recording. And then, you know, they'll be like, hey, Zeez, I want to talk to you about, you know, making videos, because, you know, you do a lot of that, and, you know, you seem confident at that, and I want to learn how to be more confident. I was like, great. You know, tell me what you've been doing. Well, you know, the last six months, I've been thinking about Making my first video. And I've gotten this camera and this equipment and this lighting and this and that and that. And I've got this perfect setup. Like, great. How many videos have you shot? None. I need a better setup. It's like, no, you don't. You don't need to spend your time studying this setup either. You need to learn and then take action. And if you take action, you will get results or outcomes. And some of those outcomes will be what you want, and some of those outcomes will not be what you want. And you know what? A lot of the outcomes, you won't even know if it's the outcome you wanted or not. Like, putting yourself out there on a video. Like, what outcome do you want? I'm going to get famous. Okay, from one. How? What do you mean by famous? Why? What do you want? So really looking at our actions as part of a process, part of a series of steps in a larger direction that we're heading in our lives, as opposed to each singular event being so significant. That's part of being able to tolerate the failures to say, I know where I'm headed, I know what I want. Whether it's, I want more love in my life, I want more connection, I want to feel more empowered in my career, I want to be more of a leader there. I want to make more money, I want to create my own business, I want to make more friends, I want to deepen those friendships. I want to be more authentic. Whatever it is that you want, there's going to be a series of ongoing actions in that direction, and each of those individual actions is going to have an individual outcome that you're gonna like or not like. And in some ways, it's not that relevant along the way. I mean, sure, if you keep getting an outcome that's adverse, and it just keeps happening again and again and again and again and again, and you kind of feel like you're hitting head against the wall, you know, sure, maybe more input is needed. Maybe you need to learn something. But one of the best ways to tolerate failure is to ease up on our hastiness, to conclude what something means, that this is bad, that I'm not getting it, that it's not gonna work. Because what that does is that slows the whole process down. So, like, any skill. Right, let's bring it back. I mentioned the guitar at the beginning of this. If you want to play the guitar, you know, I've seen this in people, and they're tentative. They don't want to make a bad sound. They don't want to make a squeak, they don't want to make a buzz, they don't want to sound off. It's same thing with singing, right? Oh, I don't want to sound off key. I don't want to sound bad. I don't want to fail. And so I will not try. And that is the death knell. That is going to be a life in the cage. The cage of. In this case, we were talking about confidence, right? Life of social anxiety. Life of not liking who you are, life of being so nice and pleasing and maybe even getting some people to like you doing that. But you not feeling authentic, you feeling drained from even your closest relationships. That's the worst kind of torture, is when your intimate relationship, your partnership, your friendships, your close work relationships are all draining because you've been so nice and you've just created these really dysfunctional dynamics of giving too much, of not asking for what you want and need, maybe even attracting people that kind of feed off of that and are narcissistic or take more from you or are not givers. It's painful. And that comes about because we're afraid to fail. We're afraid to take those actions, take those risks. And yet that is the very thing that we have to do to build up the muscle of confidence. Because confidence is a byproduct of that action. You do it more and more and more and more and you will start to build a resilience. So the first time you fail, it will feel very bad, probably. And if you don't stop there, though, and so many people have so much of a cloud of anticipation built ahead of time. I better not fail. I better not fail. What if I fail? Oh, my God, it'd be so terrible if I fail. And replace. The word fail is kind of vague here. It could be like, oh my God, they better not like me, or they'll be terrible if they didn't like me. Oh, the presentation better go really well or I better wow the audience, or, oh, it'd be awful if I didn't wow the audience. You know, like that kind of back and forth drama. Like we're so much in that and there's so much built up emotionally that when the outcome occurs, we're kind of already lost. Because, I mean, have you ever done this? I've done this. I can be so scared of a certain outcome happening that I take the action. And the outcome in truth, like from an outsider perspective or a more objective perspective might be the outcome might be ambiguous or neutral, right? Let me give you a more specific example. Let's say I really want this person to like me. I really want this person to like me. It would be awful if they didn't like me, right? The outcome I want is they like me. And I go talk to that person. And let's say the outcome is ambiguous. I don't know if they like me or not. You know, they didn't. It wasn't this huge outpouring of like, you're amazing. But it also wasn't like rejecting. It was just kind of neutral. And then I've walked away from that interaction being like, ah, I knew it, they didn't like me. And that's not even what's happening. That's just that anticipation, that fear. And it's like this. We live in our own closed loop of making stuff up and then verifying it. And we got to break out of that. And the way we break out of that is to say, I don't know what the outcome's going to be, but I'm going to take the action. And then when that outcome comes, I'm going to learn. I'm going to take new action. When that outcome comes, I'm going to learn and take new action. And we do that again and again and again and again. And guess what's the fastest, most powerful way to build that ability to tolerate failure? Fail A lot, A lot, a lot, a lot. The faster, the better. The more, the better. The more reps, the better. And this is the part that's like, when I'm working with people. I mentioned earlier in this episode about the group programs that I run. I can guess the rate of people's growth because everyone's different. And I used to kind of have the expectation that everyone grows really fast. And, you know, everyone's got to be a rabbit blazing out of the gates, right? And I've learned over years to just be way more wise or compassionate or just like, hey, you know, everyone's on their own path and has their own level at which they can integrate and act on what they're learning. But a pattern I have seen is I can indicate when there's someone that comes into the program and they are willing to fail and fail quickly. I know that they're going to be a leader in the group. They're going to be a front runner, they're going to grow like crazy in that year. And I can tell usually within the first couple weeks just based upon how they show up and what they're doing versus the person who's like, okay, I'm going to take that in. And some people need to do that. And it's not like one person's better than the other. It's just they're at that breakout moment. They're close. And other people, maybe they have to be in that for four, five, six months of just really kind of absorbing and building up a belief that they can tolerate the failure. And, you know, just a teaser for the next one of this series, we're going to talk about tolerating. This is the skill number two, which is tolerating disapproval and rejection, people disliking you. Now it's kind of like failure, right? That could be an unwanted outcome, but it's a very specific kind. So I wanted to dedicate a whole episode to that. But in that episode, I'm gonna talk more about emotionally, how do you actually tolerate this stuff? So right now you're learning. It's good to go fail. You might be saying, okay, great, I'm with you intellectually, Aziz, but I emotionally just break down. I collapse. And so I'm going to talk more about that in the next episode. How do you handle the dislike and failure as well? How do you emotionally handle that so it doesn't cause such a implosion and you're free to be a lot more ability to act and to share and be who you are. But speaking of act, before we leave this episode, let's talk about your action step. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step today is simple. Take one, action. That we're gonna get an outcome and see if you can fail. So you're going for something and you don't get it. That makes sense. So it could be something really simple, like looking around the room that I'm in right here, there's this little beam up high. I'm gonna jump and try to touch that beam. And I'm not gonna do it while I'm recording, but after I'm done recording, I could do that. And I'm guessing I'm not gonna be able to. It's pretty high, but I'm gonna go for it. That's one really simple, kind of more metaphorical way to demonstrate that I can fail and I'm gonna tolerate failure, but I'm really gonna go for it. I'm really gonna try to hit that beam. I'm not gonna say I can't do it, so why even try? Like, no, I'm going to jump as high as I can and try to hit that beam. That's the outcome. But. And If I do hit the beam, then I'm going to go take a different action that I do fail at. Does that make sense? So you're going to really go for it. You're going to go for the outcome and you're going to keep taking actions until you get a failure. Now you could just jump up and try to touch a beam, but you could also direct this to an area of your life that's significant. Maybe something in your workplace, maybe something in your love life, maybe something you know you want to try. Just like something small that you could do today, take an action and fail and you will be opening up the door to greater and greater freedom and confidence. As you do that and know that as you do that, like this, just changing your perception of failure can really start to shift things for you. Alright, fantastic. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and so know on a deep level now 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.