9 Aug 2017 · 30 min
Dr. Aziz shares five lessons from his Portland weekend workshop: build self-worth, stop getting angry at yourself for being afraid, know the difference between serving and pleasing, act before you're ready, and remember you're the one choosing, not waiting to be chosen.
Questions this episode answers
October 20–22 (year implied), Portland, Oregon.
About 25 people (plus ~3 leadership team members).
Chapters
Hey, Dr. Aziz here, and I want to share something special with you. There was an episode of the show that I recorded right after my live event in the fall, which is all about dating and relationships and creating unlimited confidence in this area of our lives. And I recorded this episode right after I did that live event. I was on fire. I had all these ideas and I shared my top five insights from that weekend. But for a variety of reasons, we never aired that show. And so I thought it would be pretty cool to share that with you today. So if you want to know how to enhance your love life, improve your love life, have better confidence in dating, be able to boldly put yourself out there, you're going to love this episode because it was the freshest insights drawn directly from working with a group of people. And I thought it was fitting because we have just two days left, I think, on the early bird special for. For the next unlimited dating and relationships confidence event, which is coming up this October, October 20th through 22nd in Portland, Oregon. You're not gonna wanna miss this one. The live events that I do, it's my favorite thing across everything that I do, from recording to teaching, to working with groups, working one on one. Hands down, it's the event. And the reason is because the transformation is so amazing. It's so rapid. And consistently watching people go from feeling unsure, tense, closed down when they first get there, to being just the most bold, expressive, fun, funny, interesting, animated, engaging version of themselves. And this event's all about how to bring that out in your love life, in your dating and your relationships. So if you've been holding back on this area or you've been putting it off or telling yourself you're too busy or it's too scary or I'm gonna get hurt or I don't even care anymore or any other story or cynicism, there's. Let's blast that out because, look, this area of our lives is essential. That doesn't mean you have to be in a relationship. You could be happy being single. But most people that are struggling with confidence in this area, they're not happy. They feel ashamed, they feel down about themselves, they feel critical of themselves and they wish they could connect more. So if you're in that place, come out to Portland. I know it might be a plane ride, it might be a big trek, but trust me, it is life transforming and you won't regret it. So you can get the early bird ticket now. If you go to 30daystodatingmastery.com event, that's 30 days to datingmastery.com event. You can also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com, shrinkforthyguy.com and this episode will be the top one you see on the page. And there'll be a link right below the image for this episode, so find your way there. You can also go to my website, SocialConfidenceCenter.com and then there's a, there's an events page@SocialConfidenceCenter.com there's an events page there. You can click on that. So there's many ways to find it. If you're drawn, if you're curious, if you have some part of you that's like, hmm, I encourage you to take the leap because it's gonna be awesome to hang out with you in the fall. And without further ado, let's dive into the top five insights I had from working with people three days on this last October. Enjoy. Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz. Hey everybody, welcome. Today's episode of the show. How are you doing today? So what we're going to be talking about today are my top five insights of my unlimited dating confidence boot camp weekend we just had recently here in Portland, Oregon. It was awesome. There's a great group. It was about 25 people there, plus about three people on my leadership team. And so it was great. It was a big group, but it was like a very intimate, small setting so we could really interact and get to know each other and answer tons of questions and just really see people progress over the course of three days. And my favorite thing that I do probably at this point is teaching those events. And what I love about it is being able to see real time progress. But what I also love is how much I learn because I'm sort of a lifelong learner. I'm perpetually learning. I can't stop learning. And it's different than like reading a book or taking something in. There's just so many distinctions I make from answering questions, from hearing from people, what they share, from seeing things. And it's super exciting. And I wanted to capture the top five insights that I had from this experience while they're fresh, before I forget them and share them with you because for whatever reason, you couldn't be there. Maybe you didn't even know of me at that time or you are super far away. Although we had people from out of the country come or you thought about it and then you're like, no, that sounds so scary and uncomfortable. I'll pass. Well, catch me on the next one. We have our next event in, in March of 2017, but let's dive in these five insights from the weekend. And this was all about unlimited dating confidence. So I want you to think about your own dating confidence right now, your own dating life. And here's the thing. It wasn't. I mean, the technical name of the weekend, if I were to give it a more accurate title, would be the Ultimate Dating and Relationship Confidence. Bootcamp doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same way because this stuff is key for all relationships. And if you want to meet someone, whether you just want to have a one night stand or you actually want to create a relationship with that person, you're going to need what we went over and I'm going to share in these insights and this. I mean, we had a few people there that were actually married. They're in my Mastermind program, and they wanted to come to the event and they said, is it going to be good for me because I'm already married. And I said, yes, your wife will thank you because we talked a lot about activating the most powerful, mature version of you as a man. And I think that goes extremely well in relationships. So let's dive into these five insights from the weekend. The first one, oh, by the way, if you're enjoying the show, by all means, please go to itunes or the podcast app on your phone or wherever you found this and give it a review and share with other people if you're enjoying this, because that helps me reach people. And my goal is to reach those people who are at home alone and kind of maybe at the end of their, at the end of their rope, they're like, nothing, nothing will help. And those are the people I want to find because I was one of those people. And I have a. That's part of my mission. So that would really help me carry out my mission. So if you're benefiting from what I do and you want to support me, I would super appreciate that. Thank you. Also, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com if you want to ask me a question that I can answer and ask the shrink. So let's go to those insights. The first one is self worth is king. I mean, man, I knew that going into the weekend that I was gonna be teaching a lot about self worth. But again and again and again, I just see how so much falls into place when you value yourself and everything is so hard when you don't. And so what we did is we explored in one of the exercises, who is it that you think you need to be in order to be attractive? We all got messages, we all got stories about you're not attractive as you are because of your appearance, because of something about your personality, because of your skin color, because of whatever, you're not attractive. Your voice, your voice tone, your accent. I could go on and on and on because of that. I'm not attractive. This is the story we tell ourselves because of that I'm not attractive and I never will be. And I'm kind of fucked. That's kind of the story. And not the good. Not the good kind of fucked. I'm just screwed. No, no, not the good kind of screwed. I'm just destined to be alone forever. That's the one. And we think that that's true. That's just a fact, but it's not. And the determining factor is self worth. If you know your value, you become extremely more valuable and attractive to someone else. And so, you know, of course, on the weekend we talked about strategy and how to start conversations and how to flirt and all that stuff. But when our self worth is solid, we do those things way easier, they work way better, and we go much better responses when our self worth is extremely low and then we're trying to act confident or trying to appear a certain way, maybe we can pull it off. But usually that lack of congruence, you know, you think one way, but then you're trying to act another. Usually people can see right through that. Women are very perceptive and they can feel it. They can intuitively just sense. And so the most valuable and most important thing that you can do if you want to have more success in your dating life is to build your self worth. Now that is a big topic. I have a whole program called the confidence code, which is all about that topic. And a lot of my material is about that topic. And so we're not going to obviously get to the bottom of that in this episode. But one key way that we did that at the event that I want to share with you is looking at where you're demanding some sort of perfection of yourself. You know, I mentioned some of those reasons why we think we're not attractive. My appearance. I talked about this a lot at the event. I used to think that I wasn't attractive because of the area around my eyes, especially beneath my eyes, has darker pigmentation. And I thought, oh, I have these like gross bags under my eyes all the time. And that's, you know, society has determined that not attractive, even worse. It's not just in my head. Everyone thinks this. And so I would not approach women. I would not put myself out there. And I was demanding I look differently. And so you want to see where it is that you're demanding. I need to be this way, I need to be that way. That is undercutting your self worth like crazy. So if you did nothing else, if you just stopped demanding that you look different, that you talk different, that you be different, you're already one huge step closer to a higher sense of self worth. They might say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I can't just not stop doing that. I have to keep beating myself up for this because it's totally unattractive. Really? Do you really have to? Or is it just a habit? Is it just something you've done for a long time? Is it just something that you decided to do because there was probably a time in your life where you didn't beat yourself up for something, right? Like, I didn't beat myself up for the way my eyes looked when I was 8, 9, 10 years old. Started when I was 12. So at some point I decided this is bad and it should go away. So I'm going to resist it forever. So when did you decide that and can you decide to let it go right now? Hmm, interesting, huh? See what that brings up for you. If you want to go deeper with that, definitely check out the confidence code because there's a ton of stuff in there. The whole first half of that program is all about core self esteem. Rock solid self esteem, and then a lot of social skill stuff. So it could be really valuable for you. But that's one of the first insights I had from the weekend was like, wow, it all comes back to self worth. The higher your self worth, the higher your success in dating and relationships. We're going to take a quick break right now and then we're going to dive into my second, third, fourth, and fifth insight from the weekend. Core things that you can do now to rapidly improve your dating life. Stay tuned. The other day I was at the supermarket and I saw this cute guy in the produce aisle. I was hoping he would come and talk to me. I gave him all the signals. I looked at him for a second to get his attention. I stood nearby pretending to look at some apples and I even smiled at him as I walked by. He just looked nervous, averted his eyes and turned away. It was almost as if he wanted to talk to me, but just didn't know what to say or do. It was a shame too. I was really hoping to meet him. I've been feeling lonely recently. Are you tired of being that guy? I personally spent many years in that place where there was women everywhere around me that would have dated me and if I just had the courage to go talk to them. And that is the same that is true for you. Even if you think you're too short or too fat or not rich enough, that is all just stories in your head. And if you want to learn how to transform that and break through to the next level and create the relationship that you really want just by being yourself, then go to www.30daystodatingmastery.com and get started today. Welcome back. So the second insight that I had from this weekend is, and this weekend, like all of my live events, we have a period where you're actually going to go out and practice whatever we're doing. So this one is all about dating and relationships. Guys had a chance to go out and practice interacting with people and particularly women that they were interested in. In my event in the spring, the supremely confident conversation master, we have people go out and we have more women at that event. They go out into the world and they practice talking to people. Makes sense, right? And then in unlimited or the ultimate confidence breakthrough, which is all about not being nice, being more powerful and assertive and completely eliminating your fear of what people might think and rejection. People go out and do wacky shit. That's all I'll say about that one. So in this case, they go out into the world and sure enough, some guys would approach women and had a variety of different responses and some of them had some great successes. And one guy actually set up a date and then had a date with her that night. And it was like, it was supposed to be like a 30, 40 minute thing. And they hung out for four hours. It was awesome. He is awesome. But some guys went out and they wanted to do something. Oh, I'm gonna approach her. Ah, no, I'm scared. Ah, you know. And despite all of our talk around fear, you know, do what scares you until fear has no power to stop you and how to work with fear and overcome fear all, you know, and they want to do it still. There's some of them got stuck and that's inevitable. It's part of the process. And you might have had that experience too. But the key insight that I Had was anger and frustration at yourself will never help you overcome your fear. So guys would come back into the room and they'd be sharing and they'd be like, I'm so pissed off at myself. God damn it. You know, I'm all the way here in Portland. I traveled here and I couldn't even do it. And they're so pissed off at themselves, as if that was going to help them be able to do it the next time. And it's this unexamined unconscious pattern that we run automatically. In some ways, it almost feels like the pattern is running us. But no, you are running the pattern. You are doing it. You've just forgotten that you have control over the wheel. And so this pattern starts and we just start beating ourselves up. And the reason that's never going to work is because when you beat yourself up, you're actually lowering your self worth. And the reason that you were too scared to approach her was because your self worth was too low. Your perception of your self worth, I should say your self worth is already inherent. You are inherently a valuable, good, worthwhile, lovable human being just for. Just for being you. But we perceive ourselves as not that. And so I'm scared to talk to her. Why? Well, because I'm not good enough for her. I'm going to bother her, she's going to reject me. And it's because I'm a bad, not good, not lovable, not attractive person. That's what's behind our anxiety, right? And so we're feeling that fear, we don't do it. Then we beat ourselves up. We lower our worth even more. We actually make it even harder for us to do it the next time. So as soon as I saw that happening, I called it out and we talked about that for a good 40 minutes. Just like, hey, look, maybe longer. I went on a jag about self compassion. I worked with someone around that, like, we have to interrupt this pattern because it will kill your confidence. Not just in your dating life, in all areas of life. Anger and frustration at yourself will never help you overcome your fear or get what you want. Great. The third insight that I had at the weekend was this idea of serving versus pleasing. And that's some terminology that I got from one of my teachers named Rich Litvin. And I really love that concept, serving versus pleasing. And that's such a powerful concept. I'm actually going to do a whole episode all about that serving versus pleasing in your life and at work and with socially and with everyone. But I want to focus just for A second on serving versus pleasing when it comes to a woman. So when you're pleasing a woman, everything's going to go badly, basically. So here's what pleasing is. Pleasing is I'm going to tune into you, which is so far, so good. Pay attention to the other person. But my whole focus is going to be on what is their emotional state right now. And I better make sure they don't feel or show any signs of discomfort, frustration, upset, guilt, sadness, irritation, anger. Basically nothing quote unquote, negative. So I'm going to pay super close attention to them and I'm going to make sure that they're only feeling neutral or positive emotions. And for some of you, neutral is not even good enough. You got to please them so much that they're only feeling great around you. And then in order to make that happen, I'm going to say what I need to say and I'm going to not say what I should avoid. And so we end up being this weird partial version of ourselves. Oh, that might offend her. I don't know if she's going to like that, so I won't say that. Oh, she seems like she might be a little unsure about talking to me, but she doesn't like talking to me. I better get out of here. And we eject, we leave, we flee. And we don't stay in the conversation. We don't go deeper, we don't flirt, we don't take any risks because we're trying to please her. And here's the thing. Women don't want a boy who is pleasing them, pleasing their mom. She wants a man. She wants a strong masculine presence. And that's where serving comes in. Now, serving, what that means is what does this person actually need right here? What would actually light this person up? You know what? So looking at her directly in the eye, giving her your attention and your presence and paying close attention to what she says and then responding to that and giving her that respect and attention that's serving her because that's what she deeply needs as a human. We all do, right? And part of serving is also tuning into what you want. And that's a whole nother thing that I'm going to get into in that episode. It's all about serving versus pleasing. But you got to factor you in there, too. Does this feel good to me? Is this something I can give right now? Is this right for me? When you show up from that place and you serve her instead of please her, everything shifts. So stay tuned for that future episode with more information about that. We're gonna take a quick break right now and then we're gonna get back into my last two insights from the Unlimited Dating Confidence Weekend. These are super important, especially the last one. Save the best for last. So stay tuned. We'll be right back. Right. Do you want to rapidly change the way you see yourself? Do you want more confidence and better results in your life? If so, then you need to learn about cognitive rescripting. It's one of the most powerful tools that Dr. Aziz teaches. He is so adamant about everyone learning this life transforming tool that he is actually giving it away for free for a limited time. Go to www.confidenceunleashednow.com to claim your free copy of Dr. Z's new eBook and audio training program called rewrite youe Story. Free. 3 Steps to Triple your confidence welcome back. So let's look at the fourth insight from the Unlimited Dating Confidence Weekend. Action first Refinement second Action first, Refinement second. Let me share what I mean about that. So here is the most important takeaway is you have to get into action. You have to put yourself out there again and again and again. And you might have heard this and you might intellectually know it, but until you're living it, until you're doing it, you don't actually know it because it's just some intellectual concept that you're not actually connected to because it's not influencing your life, it's not guiding your behavior. That's a sign that we actually really get something and really know it. So this is inherently a numbers game. So if you want to approach someone and start a conversation, let's say you're looking for a girlfriend. Well, let's say I said, okay, you want a girlfriend, Go out today into the world, find one woman, approach her. What are the odds that that's going to be your girlfriend? Then you guys are going to hit it off great and settle down together and eventually she'll become your wife and you'll have a family and it'll be awesome. What are the odds of that? Well, I don't know exactly, but I'm betting pretty damn low from one person. Now the likelihood is that that person might not even she might be married, she might not want to talk to you. She might be in a relationship, she might be pissed off. You might not be her type. I mean, there's a million reasons why it might not work out, right? Maybe she's not your type. Maybe you guys have nothing in common. I don't know. But when you pick One person, the odds are very low that it's gonna work out. Now, if I said, okay, go approach 10 different women and see how it goes. See which ones you hit it off with. See which ones you know, you set up a date with. Now, of those 10, maybe only five or six will talk to you. Maybe four or five of them are not even open to talking with you. And then of those five or six that you talk to, maybe, I don't know, maybe four of them are available, but only two of them would want to give you their number and hang out, set up a date, right? Or maybe you get three numbers out of those 10, but then only two of the women actually follow up. Maybe the one gives you her number, but she never responds. Maybe it wasn't even a real number. I don't know. Right? So these numbers are made up, and the better you get at this, the better your numbers might be. But at the end of the day, no one is getting 10 out of 10 women to go on a date with them and sleep with them or be their girlfriend or something like that. That's unrealistic. So we have to get out there. We have to get tons of practice. We have to take tons of action. And that's the first part. But the second part is action first, refinement second. So sometimes we want to get all the details figured out. We want to know exactly how to do it right. Well, how do I flirt in this way and how do I say it in that way to make sure that I'm cool and I play it off right? And the problem with that is, if you're not getting tons of practice, if you're not out there swinging the bat, working on your technique about how should I hold the bat? Should I do it a little differently? Well, it doesn't matter. Get out there and start swinging. Then you'll refine. So refinement is very important. And I would highly Recommend my program 30 days to dating Mastery, if you want to go much deeper into that, because that will teach you a lot of the skills that you need that you might not even know. So, for example, if you keep approaching and women don't seem interested in giving you their number, that just happens again and again. And you are practicing, you are talking to them, then there's something key that you're missing, and you're going to want to learn what that is. And 30 days to dating Mastery will teach you all the core stuff so you can compare. Oh, am I doing that? Am I doing that? Oh, I'm not doing that. Oh, shit, I better start doing that. So you can refine later. But get into action. And refinement is super important. The fifth insight from the weekend. This is my favorite one. You ready? You are the selector. You are the selector. You want to come from a place of power with this. So this came up because when I mentioned the numbers game kind of thing, and I gave all those numbers about well out of 10, blah, blah, blah, one guy in the event raised his hand and said, you know, it almost sounds like you're telling us to think of it like a job application, where you just put a lot of applications out there and then some of them will follow up, and some of them you'll get an interview. And then even if you get an interview, you're not necessarily guaranteed the job. And I was like, yes, exactly. No, wait. And I caught myself. I said, no, it is like that in terms of the numbers, but instead of being the one who's applying for a job, you are the owner of the company, and you're looking for the perfect fit, the perfect person for the job that you have. You want to fill that job. You're looking for someone. And so you're going through a ton of applicants, and of course not a lot of them are going to fall short before you get there, but you're looking for the right person for the job. You are the selector. And I could see him, really. Several people told me after that they have never thought of it that way in their entire lives, and I didn't either. But it's true. It hopefully, and it becomes more true. But first, you want to just own it as true because. And this happened at the event too, and this always happens, which is like, oh, but man, a hot woman, a hot girl, like, that's gonna be the thing. And I get it. You know, we're men, and physical attraction is a big part of what draws us initially. But. And I tell a couple stories about there, like, you know, beauty. So what? Physical beauty. There's tons of beautiful women, there's tons of beautiful men, there's tons of beautiful people in the world. But how long is that gonna last? How long is that gonna hook you and hold your attention? So what often happens is, guys think, well, all that matters is if she looks a certain way, then who cares how she treats me? Who cares how, you know, conscious or aware she is? Who cares how funny she is? Who cares this or that, as long as she's hot, right? And it's like, well, in the long run, that's not going to give you what you want. So you want to see through that. And one way to do that is when you see a woman that's really beautiful, it's like, yeah, yes, she's beautiful. I'm a little nervous. And so what? There's 50 other beautiful women walking around my city within a five block radius right now, and I could talk to any of them. So let's see what's, what's going on with her. Do I enjoy this? Is this a fun conversation? Is she interesting? Does she, Can I, can, can I throw? And she catches and throws back to me in the conversation as opposed to just like I'm throwing against the wall and it's bouncing off. Right, so you want to be the selector here and don't let the beauty totally, like absorb you. And I think really all it does is take one experience for a guy to be with a woman who, who is his sort of his dream woman, you know, physically, in appearance. But then everything else is just shitty and it's like, it feels terrible. I've had that experience. And then it's like, oh, I get it, you know, but maybe it's like Les Brown says, we all know somewhere deep down that money is not the answer to all of life's problems. And having tons of money isn't going to solve everything. But we all want to find that out for ourselves. So maybe it's the same way with dating a certain appearance or a certain type. Maybe you got to find that out for yourself. But in any case, you're the selector and the more you can own that, the more you can have that sense of power and choice, and the less desperate you are, the higher standards you have, women feel that. Women are attracted to that and you come from a place of power and it feels much better and your results are much better. So those are my five insights from the weekend. If you have benefited from these, by all means share with people you think might benefit from this podcast. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com if you want to ask me questions or go deeper into the show. Show notes and transcripts and whatnots, past episodes. And before we end though, we gotta go into your action step. Time for action. Your action step is to take one of these insights and turn it into a practical action. So if the self worth stuff really resonated with you, take some practical action. Action to increase your sense of self worth. If you can't be, you know, anger and hate yourself into overcoming your fear that really struck a chord with you, then work on that. If you, you know, serving versus Pleasing. If you notice you're totally pleasing all the time, work on that. Action first, Refinement second. If you notice you're all hung up on doing it just right, but you're not getting into action, then get your button to action. Or the fifth one, knowing you're the selector. Just experiment. Like walk through life for a week or the next five interactions you have with women. And before you go do it, just say I'm the selector. You might not believe it. It might not impact your behavior yet, although it might very quickly and very powerfully. You never know. I am the selector. So take one of those. Turn into a practice, turn it into action, and rock it until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that 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.
