Trick Yourself Into High 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 gonna learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're gonna be talking about how you can trick yourself into having high confidence. Now, I know that as you hear that the initial response might be a little skepticism, you know, raise your eyebrow. Is that okay? Is that right? Isn't that weird? Should I do that? Is something bad gonna happen if I trick myself? And it's actually a little bit of a playful way of describing a pattern that you're doing already. We're just gonna flip it on its head. So I'm excited to be with you here today. I don't know if this is your first episode or your 500th episode. We're at episode, like 550 or something right now. This show's been going for 10 years more, actually 35 years. No, I don't know how long it's been since like 2013, something like that. So there's quite a few. If you've not listened to that many, go back and, you know, just poke through, see the ones that look most appealing to you. This show is entirely free and just here to serve you and becoming the most confident version of you. If you are benefiting from it. The one request I have is for you to go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this from and give it a five star review or whatever review you think it deserves. Obviously, it's five stars, right? In any case, that would be really helpful in helping me reach more people and carry out this mission of mass liberation, or divine liberation, how to bring as much confidence to as many people as possible while I'm here. And this podcast is one way to do that. And it's a great way to do that for people that maybe aren't going to be able to do coaching with me or come to an event or invest in themselves. So the podcast and the books are really great ways to carry out that mission on a mass scale. Speaking of which, if you are drawn to more, I do have a virtual event coming up soon in a couple months in March called Not Nice Live, and I'll be sharing more about it in this podcast. And also, there's a way to get super early bird tickets on my website. So that is something we keep that cost as low as possible so anyone in the world with an Internet connection can join. And. And that's another really powerful way to accelerate your progress. So stay tuned for more about that. But for now, let's talk about tricking yourself, which, you know, as soon as you hear that, like, tricking yourself, tricking anybody automatically seems kind of wrong. Right. But let me explain what I mean, first of all. Well, actually, let me ask you this. Is it wrong to trick somebody if they're already tricking somebody? Hmm. Right. Imagine a situation where there's. For some reason, this is coming to my mind. I don't know why. Imagine like a stage magician, and he is performing tricks on stage, and meanwhile, you know, his henchmen or assistant is going around and stealing people's wallets, Right? So there is. He's tricking everybody, focusing on him, and then they're. They're stealing from them. Now, in that case, is it okay to trick them and have some situation where they're exposed and everybody sees that it's fake and they're taking people's money? You might say, well, yes, this sounds like the plot of an amazing movie. Aziz, you should be a Hollywood writer. I would say, yes, that's true. But no, I've dedicated myself to writing books on confidence, and Hollywood can wait. I beat them away with a stick. But no, you might say, oh, yeah, sure. I mean, they're already doing something wrong, and so we could trick them. Well, that's exactly what's happening with you. You are pickpocketing yourself, my friend, and not of your money, but of your confidence. Let me explain. Right now, you are tricking yourself into believing a distorted version of reality in which you are something other than what's accurate. Most likely, it's some form of a failure, a fool, unlikable, unlovable, awkward, strange, bad, incompetent, some. Some version of that. And one of those words might have hit or landed home for you. And I might also just be pointing towards a feeling, and you can search for the right word. The word is not totally relevant to nail it. But you get what I'm talking about. I was just speaking with someone yesterday, highly capable professional, and she was riddled with this doubt. And like, oh, I don't. I'm not good enough. And, you know, people aren't going to see me as capable. And, you know, it's so distorted. Another way to say that is she's tricking herself into believing into something that's not even real. And that's just not true for her. That's true for you, that's true for me, and it's true for everyone. We all do that. We distort. We create this bizarro world in our own mind in which we are so awkward, foolish, unlovable. Another example of this. I was just talking with a client in my Mastermind program last night, which, if you're curious to find out more and want to apply, go to drazziz.com-a z I z.com and click on the Coaching tab. And the new year is a fantastic time to start this, to make sure that 2025 is really radically different than not only 2024, but every other year of your life. And that's the goal in the Mastermind, is people have taken more action in the first three months of that program than they've taken in the last 30 years of their life. And I've seen that again and again and again, not just because of the support and the community and the guidance and the structure that's all helpful, but because we remove some of the roadblocks to taking the action and help people really get on their own side. So rejection, a no, a failure doesn't mean the end of the world emotionally anymore. You get a lot of powerful tools around that and ways to practice that. In any case, there's a gentleman in the Mastermind program, and he said that he was out in the world with several friends, and they went to a club, which was not their normal scene, and the dance music started playing, and they were the first three people out on the dance floor. Three dudes on the dance floor, right? And he's like, oh, man, it was awkward. I felt uncomfortable. I imagine in my head, everyone's thinking, you know, these guys are making us all uncomfortable with their uncomfortable dance moves. And then, guess what happened? This beautiful woman comes up and starts dancing with them. She's probably drawn to their confidence. And they had this, you know, great time. They're dancing, he's being playful, and then afterwards, he, you know, asks her a question or whatever, you know, just kind of sneakily trying to check in, like, hey, were we being super weird and awkward? But he didn't say it like that, right? It was more just like, hey, that was A little rough, wasn't it? Or something like that. And she's like, no, it was great. And in that moment, there was like a click in his mind. He's like, that was all in my head. Another words to say that is. It was all made up. Another way to say that is he's tricking himself into believing this weird. And the example that I use for him is it's almost like if someone's on a drug trip, right? Like they take a bunch of LSD very. Before they get on the dance floor. And they're just in their own trip, man. They're seeing trailers, colors changing. They're, you know, the person, they're dancing with faces morphing into their grandfather and their grandson and, you know, angels and demons and who depends on how much you take, right? And then if you just imagine from the outside, they're just kind of standing there, bobbing around on a dance floor, and you cut back to. Into their world and it's like, cut back out. Just a dude standing on the dance floor, right? Why? Because it's all in his own head. He's in his own trip. And that's what's happening to you and me. Not because of a high dose of lsd, not recommended, just to be clear on that. But regardless, no drugs, just in your own experience, your own daily life. So you're tricking yourself. And guess what? There's a part of me that does this to this day. And I believe it's a function of our safety police, right? Why on earth would you trick yourself into believing that you're a nobody? You're enough and you're unlikable, you're incapable, you're unworthy. Well, I'll save you the, you know, digging through 500 episodes of podcasts and just, you know, cut to the chase. After studying this for so many years, it's because you have what's called a safety police inside of you. It's a part of you that doesn't want to feel painful. It doesn't want to feel the vulnerability of life. It wants to close down and live a defended, guarded, isolated, shut down life. Now, that sounds pretty terrible, but it feels better to some part of you to have that sense of control and live a guarded or defended life than it does to be wide open to life, experiencing the ups and the downs and fully in it with your heart. Of course, that's more adventurous, more exhilarating, more alive, more fun, more meaningful. But it also means feeling more. And so as a way of shutting down and Defending against feeling. We adopt this safety police strategy. Most people make this decision when they're pretty young and they don't even know they made that decision, and they just carry it out for their whole lives. But you, you, my friend, now you know. And if you want to learn more about this, check out my book, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. It's been around for a little while. I think 2015 is when I published that one. So it's been a minute, but if you haven't checked that one out, it's fun, it's fast, it's an easy read, and it really illuminates this whole pattern in depth. So if what I just said there about the safety police intrigues you and you're like, what? You want to know more? Check that one out. The Art of Extraordinary Confidence. You can get on Amazon or audible, and that part is going to try to shut you down. And I have that part, too. I don't think that part goes away. And so it will tell me that I'm incapable. It will tell me that, you know, the group call that I ran wasn't good enough, that I'm not going to help this person, that this event's not going to be useful for people. It's been saying that for the whole time I've done this. And meanwhile, you know, we're getting raving testimonials and people are talking about how much their life has changed and they're sending me these thank you emails. And so I've learned that that voice just says stuff, but it's not necessarily true. It's trying to trick me, Right? Does that make sense? And it's tough to see it when you're in it and you're in the spell of it. It's like a hypnosis. And you're like, well, geez, I don't. That sounds nice, Aziz, but I think it's true, right? No, no. Remember the big handful of LSD analogy? That's what's happening in your own mind. It's crazy exaggerations and distortions and magnifying things and excluding other things. This person I was talking with, this client, you know, she had a number of clients herself. And the incapable story would fixate on one person maybe, who didn't get the result or didn't go well with. And I said, what about the other 50 people? Or however many say, well, they don't count. So do you do that? You know, there's always people that might like you or love you, and you focus on the person that doesn't like you. You do all this great work, and you focus on the one time you failed or the thing you fell short on or whatever's not working in your life. Right. That's not reality. That's what you're focusing on. That's what you're magnifying. That's how you're tricking yourself. So how do we flip this on its head? How do we turn this whole thing around? Well, the best way to defeat a trick is a trick. I feel like. What was that? They made a couple of them. Catch. No. Oh, man. There was, like, these magician movies. Oh, man. They had Woody Harrelson and that guy from the Social Network. You know what I'm talking about? It wasn't Catch Me if youf Can. That's like an old movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm gonna have to pause this recording to find the name of that movie. Aha. I didn't just pause. I totally just thought of it myself. No, I paused the recording, looked it up. It's called now youw See Me. Didn't they make a number two of that? Yeah. Anyway, is, you know, somewhat entertaining. Somewhat just, like, kind of over the top, and they can't really explain all the weird tricks that are happening and gets kind of convoluted, in my opinion, but somewhat entertaining. It's about all these magicians that are, like, super awesome magicians, and they do super awesome stuff, and it's like, you know, that's the kind of drama in the movie. It's like, the best way to trick the opponent is to do a trick within a trick. Everyone's like, ooh, you guys are so smart. Anyway, that's what you wanna do. You wanna do. Now you see me kind of stuff on yourself. A trick within a trick, a dream within a dream. So here's what you do. You get yourself a big handful of lsd. No, don't do that. That's not medical advice. Don'. What you want to do is you want to trick yourself into the opposite. Trick yourself into, I am super capable. I'm awesome. Everybody wants to be my friend. Everybody loves me. Might say, whoa, whoa, whoa, Aziz, come on now. You had me with, you know that I'm distorting reality and this negative perception of myself is extreme. But, you know, I'm not just going to flip to the other side and be all delusional. Guess what? You're already delusional. You're already tricking yourself. You're already making this whole thing up, so why not make up something that serves you, I said, but it's not real, Aziz. Well, what do you mean, what's not real? That you're not lovable. So that you're inherently lovable and you're awesome is not real. Man, you are far down in the trick, my friend. It's gotten you. It's gotten its tendrils in you, and you've bought it hook, line, and sinker. No, shake it off. In fact, shake your whole body out. Shake your face out like a. Like a wet dog after it gets out of the river. Shake it out of you. It's nonsense. Like what. What conditioning has taught you that? Why on earth would you believe, oh, I'm inherently bad and unlovable and unworthy? Yes, someone may have said that or someone communicated that. But right now, here, today, as you're listening to this, you are the one that's perpetuating that. You are replaying that story. You are carrying forward that propaganda against yourself. And so it's time to trick yourself into the opposite. So here's an example of how I did that in my life where I used to have all this self consciousness around dancing. And I started to study it, and it was like, oh, man, I imagine people all over the place are just looking at me, being like, that guy sucks. His moves are stiff. He doesn't know what he's doing. He looks so awkward. And then at some point, I realized, I'm just making all that up. I don't know what people are thinking. People are probably not even paying attention to me. And so guess what? I started to make up the opposite. I said, you know, people are looking at me. They're probably thinking like, damn, that guy's moves are smooth. He looks so good. And I just started to smile. The first time I discovered this, I kind of stumbled upon it just through self reflection and experimentation, which is how I've discovered a lot of these confidence techniques with my own. With my own crazy brains. And I just started to smile because first of all, it was a little silly, you know, the idea, because I don't think I'm that good at dancing. So the idea that people would be like, wow, look at his grace. You know, it's kind of humorous, it's over the top, but it also dispelled that fear. And then if someone was looking at me and thinking something positive, then I felt more relaxed, more at ease, more free. Then I started to say, wow, what if you did this more often? So I remember where I was at the time. I was learning how to do therapy as well. And I was very insecure as a new therapist, like, oh, I'm not very good, my session sucks and I'm stuck and all that stuff. And that was a very common repeated refrain in my mind. And so I'm going on this trip, I'm making up this story. It's not like clients are saying, hey, this isn't working for me and you suck. They just be like, hey, thank you for the session. I'm going to go and reflect on what we talked about. And they leave the room and then I'm like, where? It's time to implode in self hatred. I suck, right? So I started to challenge it and do this. I say, wait a minute, what if they're walking out of here saying like, wow, that was a really powerful session. I'm so grateful for that. Is that what happens? I don't know. You know, there's ways to do post session reports of, you know, surveys and that sort of thing. And I've experimented with that back then as a therapist and now currently my business at times. So I'm not saying that we have to be so disconnected from reality that we're like, I'm amazing. And someone's like, actually, I think I had a problem. Like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, I'm amazing. No, I'm not talking about that level of denial or defensiveness or delusion. I'm talking about a baseline assumption that you're showing up well, that you're awesome, that you're lovable, that you do great work and sometimes there's going to be an issue with that. And look, even if there is an issue with that, someone's like, hey, I don't like what you did. If your baseline assumption is I'm awesome and I do great work, then when someone comes to you with something you can actually explore, like, oh, tell me more. So if someone says, hey, I don't think that session was very good, say, oh, I'm curious, like, what, what didn't work for you? Or what were you hoping for? And you can actually ask that question. Whereas if you're all beating yourself up and you think you're a, you know, you suck and you're awful and they say, hey, that didn't work for me, you're just gonna collapse inside. So even if on the outside you're like, oh, tell me more, you, you can't really hear it. You're just like, ugh, I hate myself, I'm gonna die. When is this conversation gonna be over? Right? So we're actually not more receptive to feedback. You think you're being more open minded or more humble, but you're actually more closed off and more egotistical cause your self esteem can't handle it. So when you trick yourself into knowing your awesomeness all of a sudden you perform better and you can actually be more receptive to real feedback when it comes your way and not take it so personal. So let's talk about how you can put this into action in your life now. Time for action. Action, action. So I want you to pick something that you might tend to distort negatively about yourself and on purpose start to weave a story. You could even say it out loud. You could start talking about it in your mind. How well did that date go? How well was that? How would you do that conversation, that group presentation that share and you might say but this feels so wrong. That's not how a win. It was awful and I suck. Okay, so notice that. Just you don't have to push this through and get in a big conflict in your head about it. Just say wow, wow, wow wow. That part of me really, really wants to make me the, you know, piece of crap at the center of the universe. But maybe, just maybe I can soften and open to something else and then try again to weave in that story. You might just find like me with on the dance floor or me after those therapy sessions you start to feel a little better and guess what? You're making it all up anyway. Might as well make up something that serves you all right. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.