Turning Failure Into Fuel

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, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be looking at something that I know impacts you in your life because I know it impacts everyone. And that is how we deal with setbacks or failures or defeats, rejections, the stuff that just does not go the way that we want it to. And this happens all the time in life, doesn't it? I mean, life doesn't always go the way we want it to. We don't always get the result that we want. So whether it's that you or we're talking to someone and you're very interested in them and looks like maybe you guys are gonna go out on a date or something, and then she disappears or says no or says she has a boyfriend and you feel defeated or deflated or discouraged or it might show up in your work, right? You have a particular account or a potential client or a prospective customer, and it looks like it's gonna go well, and then it falls through. Or maybe you have a customer, an account in your company, in your business and your with your personal clients, and someone drops or ends prematurely or an agreement changes and all of a sudden something that you thought was going to happen didn't, and you feel defeated. Or maybe you put your effort into something you really tried something, tried some new system or program or something and thought it might help you in your business or your social life and it just doesn't work. Or you have an experience of going to a party and you're having a bad time there. Again, you know, one of these setbacks, one of these challenges, and then you just have this natural response to feel disappointed, right? And that's what we're going to be looking at today is how do we deal with that response? How do we handle that in our lives? Because it's inevitable. We're not going to avoid that. We're not going to. The only way to avoid any sort of setback or defeat or failure is to never do anything. And so, I mean, literally, unless you don't leave your house and don't interact with anyone, this is an inevitable part of life. And there are some, several ways that we can handle it that are going to help us in service and several ways that we can handle it that actually set us back even further than it needs to. And I'm going to help you shift out of those things so you don't have to do that as well. But let's jump into what is the natural response to a setback. Because oftentimes people kind of have two major responses that I see. One is they just crumple, right? I mean, have you ever done this? I've done this. Something happens, you get a rejection, and you're just, ugh. Especially when I was early in the process of building my social confidence in dating and relationships, I'd work up the courage to go talk to a woman, and if it didn't go well, I would just get into my car and just be like, ugh, completely deflated. I'm a loser. All that self criticism can start going, that toxic coach can start acting up. You're never gonna get this. I knew you couldn't do this. Ugh. And you just feel really deflated, really crumpled, really scared to try again. And we'll get into why in a little bit why that happens. But that's one major response. And the other response is what I see from people who tend to be more. A little more confident to be, you know, having done some work on themselves. And they do this, they try to just shrug it off and. And they say, yeah, no big deal, whatever, who cares? Plenty of fish in the sea. Didn't bother me. I don't care. I'm moving on. No big deal. No use crying over spilt milk. Let's go. Come on. And that might seem like a better approach, and in some ways maybe it is. It's a little more adaptive, but it also doesn't quite work because I noticed that underneath, or when I've tried to do that, don't you still just kind of hurt underneath? Aren't you just still feeling like crap? And then you're trying to put this layer of positivity on top of a crap sandwich and it just doesn't quite work. And yet you think you should be positive and so you try to pretend like it's not bothering you. Have you ever been in that situation or seen someone do that? I know I fall into that all the time where I'm just trying to be more positive about it. And sometimes it works, but oftentimes it doesn't. But we just keep trying to make it work. And then I see a lot of people kind of flip between the two, right? Positive, crushed and defeated. Positive, crushed and defeated. So what's an alternative way? You know, an alternative way is to actually acknowledge and honor your feelings, validate your feelings, give them. You know, to validate something is to make it, honor it as true. It's valid. It's true. Yeah, I'm feeling that right now. And so what I suggest is right in the face of defeat, just give yourself some compassion, feel in your heart and just feel any natural sense of disappointment or loss, really. All defeat, all rejection, all failure, all that stuff at its core is just loss. You lose something that you had or you lose the potential of something that you wanted. And you know what that is? Loss is just grief. So there's just something you might need to feel in your heart. Just like, ugh, I'm disappointed, I'm feeling the loss of that. And just let yourself feel that loss. Don't try to talk yourself out of it. Don't turn it into some terrible, never ending pattern of defeat. That's your mind spinning on it, right? Can you just feel it in your body? Can you just breathe and put your attention right on your chest and your heart and just feel that? Give yourself just a few minutes and say, okay, it's okay to feel maybe some empathy. Empathy helps with feelings, right? It's okay to feel disappointed or discouraged. I really wanted that job or I really wanted that client, or I really wanted to get that date, or have that person say yes to me. Of course I'm feeling some loss about that. That's okay. It's okay. You can even put your hand on your heart as you do it and breathe into it and just really kind of soothe yourself. That's what you're doing. Exactly. You're soothing yourself. You're giving yourself compassion and you're dealing directly with the underlying root emotion rather than trying to, you know, spiral it into a bunch of negativity or, you know, kick it away and pretend like you're just totally positive. Just give yourself some time to honor those feelings. You know, I had one client I was working with who has been really practicing talking to women and building up his ability to expand his social confidence. And he's had a number of successes in the fact that he's talking to a lot more women, he's asking more women out, and he still hasn't quite had that breakthrough moment where he's getting more yeses and he really feels that shift in his confidence. So sure enough, there's one woman he knows, he's been talking with her for a little while and he asked her for her number and she said yes. Awesome, right? But then they were texting back and forth and she was just very evasive, always too busy, can't do this, can't do that. So he talked to her about it, and he didn't quite know if she really, you know, she said she ended a relationship a month ago, and so perhaps she was just, you know, kind of hurting still and just being really busy with work and school and not available. Or he's like, you know, maybe she's just saying that to let me down. Gentle. So he didn't know. And regardless, he felt pain, he felt sad. He really liked her. They had great chemistry, great connection, great rapport. He would have been happy to date her, but she wasn't available. He got a no. And so he came in to see me the next day. Actually, his session was the next day. And he was just really discouraged and deflated. And instead of me saying, you know what? Look on the bright side, look at all this stuff. We just let him feel that way. And I said, you know, that's okay. I have that. I find that there's a natural dip in enthusiasm after a setback or a failure. A natural dip could be a couple hours, it could be a day. If it's a serious loss, like a relationship of many, many months or years, you can feel sad, you can feel the loss for months. And this idea that we're just not supposed to do it, we're just supposed to think positive and look on the bright side and be grateful, I think that's bullshit. I think that we use that as a way to avoid the feelings that come when we lose something. Now, let me clarify. I'm not talking about spiraling into a lot of negativity and saying that you suck and nothing's ever going to work out. That's not feeling the loss. That's just grinding away in self criticism. In a weird way, that's you trying to not feel the loss as well. And I know that might be a little counterintuitive, but, you know, really be with the emotion. Feel it. Give your honor the feeling, allow yourself to feel it. And then we're gonna take a little break, but when we get back, I'm gonna show how to avoid that trap of getting overly negative. Because sometimes people start to feel the feeling and then they just go into their mind and it's just off to the races with all the negative self criticism. So I'm gonna teach you how to deal with that, why we do it in the first place after a defeat. And then, of course, how to move through that period more. Leave the situation overall as a net positive, where you're moving forward faster and further in your life with more confidence because of the defeat. Because of the setback. So stay tuned. We'll be right back after this.

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Welcome back. So remember I was talking before about feeling those feelings, but what about that pattern that we have of being crushed and going into hyper negative shutdown mode? You know what I'm talking about? So exactly. This is what this client did. Nothing's ever gonna work out. Look at these. I've asked, you know, he's asked four or five women out so far in this process and I've gotten five no's. It's never gonna work out. There's something wrong with me. I'm a loser. And that's the first place that our mind goes to, right? There's something wrong with me. It's never gonna work out. I'm not good enough. I'm some kind of loser. I. And that is not feeling your feelings. That's going into some kind of, you know, shell. And why does our mind do that? Why do we go to that place of it's never going to work out? Have you ever wondered why you jump to that conclusion? Well, you know, what happens is when we experience a loss, we don't get what we want. We might call it a failure. We might call it a setback, a mistake, whatever you want to call it. We feel pain, right? Stay with me. So far it's pretty basic. We feel pain. We feel emotional pain. We feel like someone's gonna judge me. I feel embarrassed. People know I feel humiliated. Or we feel the emotional pain of the judgment of being a failure. We also might feel physical pain, which is pretty rare. But I guess if you really failed a lot and you couldn't pay your bills, you might get your power turned off. And there's physical pain of being cold or even homeless. But usually that's not what most of us face in modern culture unless we're sort of really struggling in some areas. But we feel that emotional pain and we don't like that pain. There's A part of our brain that is entirely designed to avoid pain and potential threats and danger. It's called the amygdala. And that part of the brain says, no pain, no pain, no pain. And so what happens is, once we feel that pain, it calls back all the memories of other times that we felt that pain. And you can think about it like a trial lawyer making a case. It's like, look, we felt pain now from this experience of trying to ask this woman out or trying to go for that job or ask for that raise. We felt pain there. We felt pain here and in the past. X, Y and Z. Look at all these evidence pieces. Here is my conclusion. Don't try in the future, because if we don't try, we won't feel any pain. That's what that hyper negative shutdown place is trying to do. It's trying to get us to not try ever again so we can avoid this damn pain and we won't feel it ever again. Now, of course, that's a natural human response. That's what our brain is designed to do. But it doesn't work in your life. If you shut down and you conclude that you're never going to feel that pain again by avoiding it forever, what are you also going to miss out on? You're going to miss out on the success, the thing you want, right? The money, the income, the job, the friends, the relationship. You're going to miss out on that stuff, right? Because you have to try again in order to create that. But that part of our mind in that moment is like, this hurts too much. I just don't want. I can't. I just can't. No, no, no, no. I just shut down. Shut down. And this is incredibly natural, normal part of the process. Both the feelings of loss and defeat and that desire to shut down and not try again. I've been working with this stuff, you know, my story, for many, many years. I work with people all day long about it. I think about it. I focus on always growing my own confidence and applying what I'm teaching. And this still happens to me. In fact, just the other day, I had an experience where I was working. I'm pretty full with clients right now. And one client I really liked, and we were doing really good work. And we're about three months into our process, and he's one of my top clients. He's achieving a great amount. He's going really well. And at the end of our last session, he's like, ah, Zizi, I have to stop. And I Was like, why? Like, we're doing great work. It's going really well. He's like, I don't know. I just. Finances and I don't know if I can afford this, and so on and so forth. And it's challenging because I felt this sense of like, oh, well, that's unfortunate. Like, I really want to keep working with this guy. He's really great. And so it's like, well, let's talk about it later in the week, right? You know, because it was the end of the session, we didn't have much time, so we're going to talk about it. And after the session, I felt that that exact stuff we're talking about, I felt that loss, right? That potential loss. And then that defeat voice started coming in. Oh, there we go. We lost another one. It didn't fully help him as much as you wanted to. Oh, man. Maybe you're not a very good coach after all. Maybe no other clients are going to come in the future because you're not good enough. If you were better, then he would stay and would have completed and, oh, you should have done more. And no one's going to come to you in the future. Oh, you're all so on and so forth. This is just a little window. And I've been doing this stuff forever, and so it still happens. So one thing I want you to realize is, is this all. This whole process of building your confidence isn't about eliminating the negative voice and never having it again and never feeling negative emotions. If anyone's trying to sell you that in a product or a program, look out. The reality is to not be held back by this stuff. So I know this well enough where actually I got home that night and I was feeling a lot, and I was like, you know what? I just need to be patient with myself. Just let myself feel these feelings. I can see my mind is spiraling into some negativity. I'm just going to go to sleep and rest, and in the morning I'm going to work on this when I'm recharged. And so I woke up in the morning and was still feeling that loss feeling. But then I was like, you know what? I'm going to work with my mind to grow from this experience, to work with this experience so it doesn't hold me back. Because that is the key thing that you want from any setback or failure. Not that you don't feel any negative feelings, but that they don't hold you back, that you don't buy into that story that says you're not good enough and don't try again in the future because it's not going to work out. That is complete and total bullshit. And so what we need to do is we need to learn how to honor our feelings but then not spiral into that never ending pattern of defeat and to replace that pattern with something that actually helps you grow and inspires you. So we're gonna take a quick break right now and to get back, I'm gonna share exactly with you what that pattern is, what I do in my own life, and what I teach my private clients to do. I'll talk to you soon. Hold on one second.

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Welcome back. So how do we deal with that defeat or that setback in a way that actually propels us forward faster so we're stronger, we're more able to take on, we're more resilient rather than being broken down. And there's a great quote from Churchill about being able to move from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm. And that it truly is a deep source of confidence to be able to keep going and face the one after the other. Because that's really the ultimate path to success, right? And everyone who's successful in business, in their career, in their relationships, they've moved through a lot of failures and rejections along the way. No one just tries once and hits a home run. Right? You strike out a lot along the way. So first things first though, I'm going to hammer this in is you have to honor the feeling. Let yourself feel sad or down about it. Miss it. Give yourself a little bit of time before you apply some of these techniques. Now you can try to apply these techniques and see how they work for you. And if you notice that it feels like underneath you're just sad and you're putting a layer of positivity on a shit sandwich. Let yourself just feel it for. I say that term all the time and I kind of am just used to it. To me it just means like, oh, it feels real bad, it's a shit sandwich. But sometimes I'll say that to someone and they'll crinkle up their Nose because they're actually imagining that and they're like, oh, it's gross. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. I just, I use it like a metaphor. Anyway, what you want to do is honor your feelings. But then at some point, after a little bit of time, you need to start applying these techniques so you don't take the wrong conclusion, which is, I suck and don't ever try again. So what are some of these techniques? What do I do? What do I teach clients to do? The first thing is you got to remind yourself of your identity and your ideal self. You got to reorient yourself back on who you are, who you want to be in the world and what you're moving towards. So what I did after this situation with the client is I rested, kind of got my body back and the next morning I started working out and I put on some loud music on my headphones, some techno and I was just like bobbing my head and then I start just speaking out loud. And my wife is used to this by now. He's like, oh yeah, he's doing his moves. And actually my little 10 month old son will kind of watch me when I do them sometime. He's like, you crazy, man. He doesn't say that. Of course he can't talk, but he thinks it anyway. So I just like whack my chest and puff up my body and walk around the room and I'm like, you know what? I am an outstanding, exceptional author, speaker, coach. I'm here to help as many people as I can. I'm on this path, I'm on this mission. You know what? I am an outstanding author, speaker and coach and I've reached so many people. I've helped this person and that person. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm an outstanding speaker, author, coach, and I've helped so many people and I just get myself pumped up and clear about what my goal is, what my new identity is, what I want to be, who I am in the world. And that you can do that for any area, for your business, for your work. You know, I'm an incredible salesman. I have this ability. I can speak to anyone and impact them. I am an incredible influencer. I am an incredible communicator, or for the area of dating, relationships. I am an incredibly attractive man. Women are hoping that I'm going to come talk with him. I have so much to offer in relationships. I have this to offer. I have that to offer. A woman would be lucky to have me as her partner, right? So you call in that power and that strength in your body and remind yourself of your target, of who you want to be in the world and who you are. And then from that place, you tap into the most powerful antidote to defeat. And that's determination, right? Because you can get back up. That's what determination is to me. Listen, I'm going to find a way. And I've experienced so many setbacks and defeats to even be able to speak to you right now on this podcast. Small defeats of little challenges with technology and finding the right stuff. Larger defeats of not getting certain clients, of having rejections, of not knowing how to do things, of having business deals fall through in the process of growing this business that I have. And one, the reason I can do these podcasts for free is because I have grown my business in other areas so that it's funding me and supporting my life and my family so that. So that I can go do and offer these things. Because that's my ultimate mission, is to be able to earn enough money that I don't have to think about the money and I can just focus on expanding the reach and touching as many people as I can so we can eradicate this plague of social anxiety. It's foolish. Why should any of us feel it ever? And so the reason I've been able to do all that is because of deep determination. And every time I experienced a setback, I'd say, you know what? I'm going to get there. And it might not be as quick as I want it to, but I'm going to get there. It might take me instead of one year, five years, or instead of five years, 10 years to get to X goal. I am going to get there. I am determined. I am determined. And you find that deep determination in yourself. Not that I'm going to succeed every time, but damn it, I'm going to keep doing this until I get there. Nothing is going to make me stop. I'm going to try another approach and do it again. Try another approach and do it again.

Try another.

Try another approach and do it again. Now, can you find that determination in yourself? Do you have that? Where is that? I'm not even going to say, do you have it? I know you have it. It's just a matter of activating it inside of yourself. Breathe deep. Open your eyes slightly wider. Let that air out and just feel that sense of determination. I am going to keep getting this until I get there. I'm going to keep doing this until I get there, nothing can make me stop. I'm going to keep getting back up. That determination is what is going to lead to your ultimate success, my friend. And I've seen that again and again in hundreds of people. So I know without a doubt that it works. It's just a matter of activating it inside of ourselves individually. So we got tapping into your identity, who you want to be, determination, and then I found some measure of just taking small action can help me start to activate something. So you know what, I have several other people that reached out to me about coaching. I'm going to just send them emails and see how they're doing and see if they want some help or there's some way I can serve them in their lives. So I take some action. Or this guy where he got a rejection from that woman, just walk around and pick a busy day in the street and just go say hi to some people. And just as you walk by some attractive women just smile and say hi to them. Just, you know, don't have to go out there and try to go date again right away, but just really take some small action that shows that part of your brain that's saying, don't try again. That shows that part of your brain, you know what? I'm not stopping. I'm not stopping. And that is the key takeaway from this entire conversation today is that in the face of defeat, you need to show your mind that you're not stopping, that you're going to keep taking that action. And that's what distinguishes the people that succeed from the people that don't. It's not intelligence. It's not some innate born magical luck or talent. It's that determination, that willingness to keep going, keep trying again. And this absolutely rates to building your confidence because that is the fastest and most direct way to build your confidence. Try something, fail, try again. Try something, fail, try again. So the more you can be on your own side in this process, the more you can just let yourself feel your feelings, honor yourself, treat yourself with compassion. And I know if you listen to previous episodes, you know more how to do that by now. Treat yourself with compassion and then find that power source inside of you, that determination, that drive, that identity, that reminding yourself who you are in the world and then taking some small action that is one of the fastest and most powerful ways to, to deal with setbacks and defeat. And once you do that, your confidence will just continue to grow, continue to skyrocket. So thanks so much for joining me today. Please, by all means, join in the conversation, go to facebook.com shrinkforthshyguy you can also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and send me messages through the websites. You can subscribe on itunes. All kinds of stuff you can do on that website. Because I love hearing from you, hearing your questions, hearing your challenges, and I look forward to speaking you soon. Until we do, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know that 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 shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com. Sat.