Unstoppable Courage

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.

Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today you are going to learn one of the most important, powerful skills of your life. It's gonna single handedly help you break out of whatever level of inhibition you're in right now. Whether you call it social anxiety or you call it shyness, or you just call it fear, or you call it low confidence or low self esteem, whatever you're calling it, that's holding you back, this skill is the way out. Not only that, but this skill is actually the way forward. So when you break out of whatever stuck point you're in and you start to accelerate and grow and expand in your life and and be able to do more things, be more confident around people, start more conversations, connect, date, create relationships, excel in your career and business. As you do all of that stuff, this skill is going to be the fuel that drives you even further. You can go from well, I can't meet anyone to I'm dating someone to I want to find the love of my life or I'm really struggling in my job and people don't take me seriously, to now I'm excelling in my field and now I want to become a leader of the field. Now I want to start my own business in the field. Now I want to take a higher level position in management. This skill is the way to get there. If you looked at the title of the show, then you already know what the skill is. But let me tell you, in case you didn't read the name of the show, it's courage. Trust me, courage is not something you just have or you don't have it. Like so many things in life, like social confidence is a skill and we're gonna go deep into courage today because that's one of the biggest questions I have. In fact, that's a question I'm gonna get to in this show is, okay, I get this stuff, I can do this. Maybe I'm not stuck this way, maybe it's my thoughts and ideas like you're saying, but how, how do I go do that thing? It's scary and uncomfortable. So that's what we're gonna get into today is how to create that unstoppable courage. And by all means, if you have questions for me, I'm gonna share a question from a fellow named Trevor here today. But if you want to leave me a voicemail or you can go to the website shrinkforthshyguy.com to do that. There's a little click link lick. There's a link that you can click that will. That's awesome. Actually, it's combining those two words, a link you can click. So go there and lick the link on the right. And no, don't actually do that. Don't lick your phone, but click that and leave me a message and I'll listen to it and I'll respond to you, or I'll include it in the show. And you can also call the studio hotline, 206-338-3176. Let me know your questions, Let me know how it's working for you. Share something that's not working for you. Hell, disagree with me. I love it. I just want to talk about this stuff. You can also go to facebook.com shrinkforthyguy and. And like the page there and get all the updates about new shows. So what is courage? My favorite definitions of courage I didn't get from the Internet, I didn't get from a dictionary, I didn't get from Wikipedia. Guess where I got it from? A T shirt. Oh, yeah, it was amazing. It was such an awesome T shirt that I actually had the guy pause and said, hey, would you mind if I take a picture of your shirt? Because it's awesome. And if you say that to anyone, of course they're going to say yes, because why do people wear shirts other than to get them noticed? Anyway, I took a picture of it and then I wrote the definition out, and here's what it Courage, also known as fortitude, is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. It can be divided into physical courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, and the threat of death, and emotional courage in the face of shame, scandal, rejection, and discouragement. Its vice of deficiency brings cowardice, and its vice of excess brings recklessness. What a great definition, right? To be able to confront fear. Nowhere in there does it talk about not having fear. We tend to think of courage as the guy who just runs out there on the battlefield or walks over to that person and storms into the boardroom meeting and just lays it down and they look like a badass. We think that's what courage. That's not what courage is. I mean, it might be if they're confronting a fear, but if they don't feel any fear about it, then that's not courage. Courage, which is also known as fortitude, is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, or uncertainty. Confront that Fear, Confront that uncertainty. I love that word in the definition because oftentimes anything that you want to move towards asking someone out, applying for a job, asking for a raise, creating your own business, whatever you want to do with that confidence, that's uncertainty, right? That's stepping outside of your comfort zone. And most of us are not facing physical courage, depending on where you're listening to this podcast from. Actually, you could be in a place where you're literally facing physical pain, hardship, and the threat of death. And if so, that takes tremendous courage. But most of us are not. We're facing emotional threats, right? Shame, scandal, discouragement, rejection, the idea that we're a failure. That's what we need the courage in. That's what we need to face. Confront the fear, confront the danger, confront the uncertainty. And I love this. It's vice of deficiency brings cowardice. And we're going to get into this show what actually cowardice is. It's not what you think it is. It's not what most people call cowardice. It's actually something much sneakier. And I really discovered what cowardice exactly is. And then how you can break that and be free of it. And its vice of excess brings recklessness, which I love that that's true, right? If you just are always confronting your fear without ever thinking about the consequences, without ever taking a moment to assess if what you're doing is working or not, then you can be reckless. You can just go out too much, too far. So we gotta find that middle ground. We gotta be able to start confronting that fear. My sense is, if you want to have more confidence in your life, you're probably not on the reckless side of the spectrum. You're probably towards the needing to confront more fear. And, you know, that's where I lived for many years, and I still live this practice out today where I look in my life always and say, how can I build more courage? Because you do truly build courage. It's a skill that you can develop. So let me start with this. How would your life benefit if you had more courage? What would you do in your life if you had more courage now that you know what courage is? Just imagine that for a second. What would you do in your relationship or your romantic life, your dating life? What about your social life? What about in work, your career, business? If you had more courage, if you had an excess of courage, you had courage coming out your ears, so much courage. What would you do in that area? What would you do if you weren't afraid of a no or a rejection, it didn't stop you. Interesting. What would happen for you in your life if you had more courage. Good stuff to think about. If you haven't thought about it, really imagine that stuff because that's what's possible for you. Because again, all it is is a matter of intention and consistency. And just like getting in shape, you can get into incredible courage shape just by following some basic things that I'm going to lay forth for you after this break. And we're going to jump into a question from Trevor where he asks exactly how to build this courage. And, and then I'm going to share with him how to do it and share with you how to do it in your own life. And you're going to discover what the true meaning of cowardice is and how it's not what you think. So stay tuned. We'll jump into that right after this.

Are you inspired by this radio show? If you're ready to take your life into your own hands, get a copy of Dr. Aziz's new book, the Solution to Social Anxiety. One reader recently said Aziz has devoted his professional career to finding practical ways to break down the self destructive mindset. Holding, holding you back and to developing exercises to create a new pattern of success. He's done his homework and he ties his advice to strategies that have been proven to work. But sometimes he can get you just to laugh at yourself, at the sheer ridiculousness of the toxic way you judge yourself and hold yourself back. That can be the most helpful of all. Imagine a high school coach who stood on the sidelines during the big game screaming at his players, you suck. You don't even belong on the field. You're going to lose big time. Everyone is going to find out you are a complete fraud as a football team. That's what you're doing to yourself. You need to cut it out. This book will help you create a self reinforcing pattern of success rather than a pattern of failure. Go to socialanxietysolution.com to order your copy today.

Welcome back. So now we're gonna learn how to actually build that courage. And it's more than just do it. I mean, that's, that's kind of obvious advice, right? Just go out and do it. But there's a missing piece when people tell you to just go do it. And that often doesn't work. And now it's time to ask the shrink. That's what I want to share with my response to a fellow named Trevor who wrote in and said, hey, Dr. Z's, I discovered your audiobook, the solution to social anxiety through itunes, and I really like it. You are the first person that I really believe gets it. And thank you. That's awesome. Thank you. Trevor. My first question is, you're a doctor. How did you make it through school with social anxiety? I've been to three different colleges. I hate going to class. I get sick before and after class, and then I just stop going. It felt great to get myself out of those situations and just to escape. How on earth did you manage to get a doctorate when suffering from this demon? I would rather soak myself with gasoline and light myself on fire than go back to class. I don't understand how you can accomplish so much with such an effective inner critic raging in your mind. So thanks for the question, Trevor. And I love the dramatic description of. Of what you'd rather do than go to class. Right. It just shows how painful that can feel and how in some ways, the emotional pain that he's talking about of going to the class and the fear is really worse than physical pain, because physical pain often has a clear cause, a clear end. You know what's going on. But emotional pain can just feel endless. And here's an interesting factoid about pain is that pain that we feel like we have no control over actually feels worse. It actually hurts more. They did a fascinating study, and I'll only take about 20 seconds to describe this because I don't want to veer off track too much, but they did a fascinating study where they had people put their arm in a bucket of ice water, which is painful after a little while. And then they had one group where they had them. They had to stay in there for a minute, and they couldn't take it out. And they had them rate how much pain they felt from 1 to 10. And they had another group, they put their arm in an ice bucket of water, and they didn't tell them how long they had to keep it in there. They said, keep it in as long as you want and can, and when you're ready, you can take it out, but go for as long as you can. So that second group had power. They had control over the pain. Right. They could take their arm out anytime they wanted. And guess what? Not only did the second group go longer than a minute, they also rated the pain as less intense than the group that felt like they had no control. And that's exactly the case for Trevor.

Right.

If he feels like, I can't shift this, I have no control. I can't do this. This is gonna Last forever, then the pain is actually worse. And then at that point, sure, lighting yourself on fire and the old gasoline soak and burn trick might seem like a good idea, but here's the thing. Inside of his question, inside of your question, Trevor. The answer is already embedded in it. And you know what it is. I don't understand how you can accomplish so much with such an effective inner critic raging in your mind. And the answer to that is, I can't. No one can accomplish so much with such an effective inner critic raging in their mind. The key to accomplishing more, the key to getting yourself to go to class, the key to having the courage to go into that classroom to talk to those people in whatever area you specifically, other than Trevor, want to have that courage in, that comes from not having such an effective inner critic raging in your mind from dismantling that critic. And so the short answer is, I learned to make my inner critic less effective and less raging. I took risks and focused heavily on learning the skill of self compassion along the way. It's not about just getting out there and doing it. That's what I thought it was at first. I learned about exposure model of approach to overcoming fears, and I just went out there and I did it. But my inner critic was just tearing me to pieces. So I'd go talk to someone and afterwards it would say, oh, that wasn't good enough, you suck. Or I'd work up the courage to talk to a woman and maybe I'd ask her out and she'd say no. And it'd say, you're a loser, you're terrible. So I was trying to just get myself to go do it because that's what I thought courage was. Just go do the thing you're scared of. But that's not, because that's not sustainable. How long can you pull that off? No, the secret to courage is actually learning how to be compassionate with yourself. And so I did what it took to become more compassionate myself. I read books. I read books like Tara Brock's Radical Acceptance. I read Brene Brown's stuff on the gifts of imperfection. I read Theodore Rubin's book on self compassion and self hate. I read David Byrne's books on how to talk to yourself and how to improve your self esteem. I read all kinds of books on the subject. I went to workshops, I got into. I did coaching with people, I did therapy. I did whatever I could to learn how to be more compassionate with myself. And that allowed me to take more risks and get more successes and more rejections. It was hard. It was painful. Rejections were painful. I had to learn the skill of not turning a no into a personal problem into a personal failure. Oh, Kristin Neff's book called Self Compassion, also very awesome. If you're taking notes on these things, by the way, if you don't take notes on these shows, do so. I mean, these shows are. I mean, if you went to a standard therapy, I still do practice some therapy. But if you went to a standard, traditionally trained psychoanalytic therapist, they'd have you sit on the couch, they'd have you spill your, you know, what are your old family issues? And you'd spend 200 bucks and you would get nowhere versus listening to 20 minutes of this show. If you take notes and apply this stuff, this will rapidly change your life. I've had people write in and say, look, Aziz, all I did is listen to your shows from start to finish and apply the action steps. And my life is totally different. So that can be for you, too. Take notes. That will help you engage yourself more. So the key is that I developed the tolerance for no. I studied how to interact with women, and I practiced that a lot, too. And I got rejected a lot along the way. Anytime there was something I was scared of, public speaking, asking questions in class, I did it again and again and again, and the whole time more important than the outcome, I realized, more important than, does this person say yes or do I get a gold star in the class or do I give a great presentation? More important than that is how do I treat myself? And if you want to make a real shift, if you want to maximize your courage, then it's not getting out there and just doing a bunch of stuff. It's committing that you're going to treat yourself well no matter what. The most important thing is how you relate to yourself, not the outcomes that you get. And if you do that and combine that with taking consistent steps towards what scares you, you will develop an amazing reservoir of courage. And I found that people really can maximize this with proper guidance, whether it's coaching with me or a program with me or finding a therapist that really works for you and knows their stuff. But you need that help, even if it's just a friend, you need some of that guidance that help, that support to get you through that phase, because that early phase, you'll start doing stuff, but then your critic will get you, so you have to be able to work on that criticism. So in a moment, we're going to take a quick break, and we're going to jump back in and look at exactly what cowardice is, what the opposite of courage is. So you know exactly how to dismantle that. And then we're going to go into a little bit of how to generate that courage in your body and then your action steps. So stay tuned. We'll get back into things right now.

Have you ever wanted to know how to start conversations with anyone? How to never run out of things to say, how to make friends quickly and easily, how to shift out of boring small talk conversations and into something way more fun? And how to stop second guessing yourself during conversations so you can feel completely relaxed while talking with anyone? If so, you need to learn the nine elements of social mastery, which is a key component of Dr. Aziz's program, the Confidence Code. Go to www.yourconfidencecode.com to get your copy today and become a conversation master.

Welcome back. So what is cowardice? Because oftentimes that's just another form of self attack, right? You say, oh, you're such a coward. You're such a wimp. That's what I would say to myself all the time in my head. And those are, let's say, nice ways. Those are euphemisms. I would say much worse. You know what I'd say to myself in my head? And this is why this show has an explicit rating, because I just want to be honest and real and. And that's what you might be doing too, as well, in your own mind. And the more honest we can be with each other, the more real, the more you can progress, the more I can help you, the more we can both grow together. So what I would say to myself in my head is, what the fuck is wrong with you? You're such a pussy. God, you're such a wimp. What's wrong with you? Right? And that's the tone. And so cowardice became this terrible thing, another reason to attack myself. But here's the thing. Cowardice is not what you think. For example, I was working with a guy and we were in a Target, I believe. And I might have told this story somewhere, but I'm gonna have a different twist to it this time. And there's a woman that he's working on talking to women. And so there's a woman there looking at the CDs in the target, and I encourage him. And he starts to walk towards her. And right as he's about to get near her to start a conversation, he makes a beeline left and pretends to start looking at CDs next to her. And then he meanders around her and circles back and doesn't do it. You might look at that and say, oh, that's cowardice. No, it's not, Damn it, it's not. Because guess what? He walked towards her with the intention of doing it. He was close. He was taking action. He was pushing the edge of his comfort zone. And no, that time, he didn't get the outcome he wanted, which was opening his mouth and saying something. But he's a hell of a lot closer than before he did it. That deserves compassion. That deserves praise. That deserves fucking respect. That's courage. I'll tell you what cowardice is. Here's what cowardice is, is telling yourself a million and one reasons why you can't do something. Cowardice is not trying and having some BS story that you tell yourself as to why you totally would do it. But this stuff gets in the way. So, for example, one guy I was working with is wanting to meet women, and he's like, oh, but I live out in the suburbs, and I don't have a car right now, and it's just too far from my house, and I'm working too much. My hours are too long, and I just don't have free time. That's cowardice, because he's telling himself a story. And the reality is, if he really, really wanted to meet women, he could find time. He could make the time. He could commit himself to getting there via public transportation or a bike or whatever it fucking takes. And you know what's even more kind of worse form of cowardice is being cynical and being jaded and saying, oh, that stuff's stupid. None of that stuff works anyway. Those people that teach that stuff are idiots. Oh, yeah, that person's gonna do this. And I worked with one guy who had that edge around him, and I worked with him. This was back when I was doing therapy and I was working with anyone, whether how much they were motivated or not. And we were together for maybe six, eight months. And he just had this shell of cynicism that I just didn't know how to break through. I mean, I tried everything, and he'd kind of roll his eyes and mock me in sessions. And part of me was like, fuck you, dude. I'm trying to help. But I was like, no, I got to help this guy. I got to help this guy. And I kept on trying, kept on trying. I just kept on beating my head against the wall. In the end, I was just like, I don't know what to do for you. I mean, that cynicism was like, oh, yeah, I could just go walk up and talk to a woman and do this. Yeah, right. And he was just totally shut down. That is cowardice. Not taking a shot and getting close and then at the last minute pulling out or running away. That's fine, because you're at least facing your fear. You're turning towards it. That is tremendous courage. No, no. Cowardice is just coming up with excuses and stories and then also being cynical, jaded, too cool to try. And guess what. Cowardice kills your soul. Courage is rewarded in life. If you're courageous, you are rewarded. You get results. People respect you. You get positive responses from people. When you're courageous, cowardice is punished or at best, it's ignored. And if you live with cowardice enough, that means you make a bunch of excuses and never try. Or you're cynical and you're jaded and you think it's all stupid, so you don't give it a shot. That kills your soul. And that's what that poor guy was struggling with. That's why I wanted to help him so bad. And I can only hope that my work with him sets something in motion, that down the road he'll be more open for it. But when you're ready to make that shift, when you really want to activate that sense of courage, and how do you do it? Do you know how to activate courage in your body? And if you really want to develop this even more, I actually have a bonus program I've created called 4 Ways to Create or 4 Steps to Creating Unstoppable Courage. And it's actually a bonus that comes when you get my 30 days to dating Mastery program if you are involved in one of my special promotional offers. So that's a way to get even more in depth. But I'm going to give you just a piece of it right now. And if you want to learn more about that, go to 30days to dating mastery.com and you'll learn more about that program. But here's a simple tip to get started, and that is you gotta activate courage in your body. You gotta use your body. Most of us don't use our bodies. We kind of walk around in the same patterns and carry ourselves in the same way. And we get up, we roll out of bed. The only time we use our bodies is if we're working out. And even then, that's a very specific motion, right? It's a socially sanctioned motion. I'm running my arms or pumping my arms and running my legs. I'm Jogging or I'm sitting on the bike. But we don't want to do anything that's a little unusual, a little out of the ordinary. But fuck that. If you can do something out of the ordinary, that itself is courage. So this courage building exercise I'm going to share with you, not only does it generate courage, but just the mere act of doing it is a courageous act. And you know what it is? It's doing what my friend calls getting pumped up and another friend of mine calls it, because they both seen me do it. My other friend calls it my gorilla moves. And that is you put on some music in the morning and just one song gets you pumped up. And you just, you pound your chest, you yell, you say, yes, I got this, yes. And you get strong in your body, you yell out the word yes. You talk about what you want for your life, you say what's going to be true for you. Like, I can do this, I got this, I can handle this. Yes. And I'm doing it quiet here so I don't explode the microphone. But you yell it. You get that intensity in your body and you breathe deep and you walk tall and you walk around like you're a motherfucking badass. And you do that for three or four minutes in the morning to a song. And you better believe that's gonna get stored in your body somewhere and that's gonna build up a reservoir of courage. And then when you're in this situation, later that day, you step into an elevator and there's a woman standing there right near you, and you're like, oh my God, I wish I could talk to her. Or you're going to give a presentation or you need to go have a one on one conversation with your boss. And that always makes you nervous. Then right before you do that, just take a deep breath in and think about the energy that you generated in the morning. Take a deep, full breath in through your nose and then say this to yourself in your own mind. Fuck it, I'm going to die anyway. Fuck it, I'm going to die anyway. What's the worst that could happen? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna die anyway. I'm not gonna escape death by avoiding this thing. Fuck it. One of those phrases will click for you or come up with your own, but just say something that triggers that sense of urgency. Like, life is short, man. I mean, how many elevator rides are you gonna go down and not talk to her? How many days are you gonna miss out on? How many career opportunities are you Gonna let go by fuck it, take action. And then remember to give yourself the self compassion that you need to continue to build up your reservoir of courage, of strength, of power. And that actually brings us to our action step.

Time for action.

Your action step for today is to practice that Courage Generation ritual. Putting on that song, getting pumped up, getting energized, saying what you need to be true for yourself for that day and, and really activating a sense of strength in your body. You know the song that's gonna do it for you as I'm talking? You probably can think of it. Maybe it's a metal song, a techno song, a rock song, whatever's got some energy for you. Hell, it might even be a country song. I'm not gonna judge. Whatever's gonna get you pumped up. And then also in your day, tomorrow or today, if you're listening to this in the morning, do something, step up and do it. I don't know what that thing is for you, but you do something that would. If you had courage, the courage that you want, you'd be doing it already. Now go do that thing. Maybe there's that woman that you work with that you've seen, she's involved in another wing of the company or something. You see her once in a while and you made eye contact, but you've never talked to her. Go talk to her. Maybe there's another woman you have a crush on that you haven't had the courage to. Go talk to her. Go talk to her today or tomorrow if it's midnight. And it doesn't have to be dating or relationships. Maybe you're already in a relationship, maybe you're not working on that area. Then where do you apply this in your life, your social life? Go to that event that you've been wanting to go to, or in your business life, go have that conversation with that person. Go ask for something. Go lead that meeting. Go step up and do something. Even if it's minor, even if it's telling a colleague who always asks you for something, saying no to them. Whatever the thing is that you're a little bit scared to do, go do it today if you're listening to the morning or tomorrow if it's nighttime. Awesome. So thanks for listening. Great sharing this stuff with you. I want to hear more about your experience. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and leave a message there. Or send me an email, let me know how it's going for you. I really want to know and I really want to hear about your progress, your successes, your challenges, everything. So thanks so much for listening and until we speak again next week, 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing in confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.