Upgrade Your Friendships

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 this episode. Yes. Are you excited today? I'm excited. We're gonna share some valuable stuff that's gonna help you get continually move forward on your path to greater confidence. More of you being you in the world and less of you being afraid, Nervous, tense, anxious, self doubting and generally miserable as a result, which is where I spent many years feeling stuck in a lot of those things. So let's talk about how you can break free of that now, today. And if you're benefiting from the show, please by all means go to itunes or wherever else you found it in the podcast app or wherever and give it a great review. Those reviews help me reach more people, which is part of my goal, and I would super appreciate that. So if you're benefiting from this show for free and enjoying it, then by all means give it that review. I'd really appreciate that. And if you want to get something amazing also for free, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com and on there you can get a copy of my eBook 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. And it is full of a ton of valuable step by step insights, practices that you can do right now to systematically build up your confidence. So go check that out@shrinkforthshyguy.com youm can also ask me questions there as well, which I can answer and ask the Shrink segments. So in today's episode, we're gonna be talking about your friendships, specifically upgrading your friendships. Ooh, what do I mean by that? Well, let's start with looking at whether you'd want to upgrade where you are. Maybe you're like, no, this area of my life is perfect. It's amazing. Everything's great and I have no changes here whatsoever. Everything's great. And maybe that's true. And if so, then, then you are, you're, you're in a rare group, I'd say, and you must have done a lot to cultivate that. So well done. Most of us have some something we'd like to enhance or improve in this area of our lives and our connections with others. And there's a couple different situations you might be in. You might not have the friends that you want. Perhaps you don't have that many friends. Maybe if you're really honest with yourself, all your friends are in different cities or when you were in college. And if you looked at your current life right now, you don't really have any friends locally. Or maybe you have people that you spend time with, co workers, colleagues, buddies, but you don't really talk much with them about anything. Maybe you'll watch a game or grab a drink, but you don't really talk, you don't really share what's going on in your life. So you have kind of more superficial acquaintances that you spend time with, or maybe you have friends that you do spend a lot of time with and you can share what's going on, but for some variety of reasons, it's not that satisfying to you. Perhaps you hang out with the same friend who every time you hang out is sharing about his challenges and woes and troubles. And it's not just like a, hey, I need some support right now. It's like a, hey, every time we hang out, this is what we talk about as me and my challenges and you support me. Maybe you're stuck in that dynamic. I know, I've been there. So where are you at with your friendships right now? Are you currently satisfied? If you could just wave a magic wand and it could be different. Would you want anything to be different? And if so, what. What would you want? Would you want more friends? Would you want deeper friendships? This is a super important part because. And maybe the best place to start actually sometimes is just, are you dissatisfied? And you're like, oh, I don't really like that person, or oh, I don't like that they. This is hard to hang out in this situation with these people. Maybe you just feel like, I kind of feel lonely. So maybe you start with where you're dissatisfied, but that'll point you towards what you actually do want. And that's an extremely valuable question in all areas of life, kind of all the time. But what do I want? What do I want in this area of my life, in my friendships? And get really specific here, like, what do I want? You know, is it more friends? Is it deeper friendships, all that stuff. But also in. In those friendships, what is it that I want more of? Or maybe you want less of something and getting really clear on that. You know, for me, in friendships, there's a set of things that I want. I want someone. I want friends who are local because I have a lot of friends from different times and stages in my life that I don't see them that much. And I'm not a big let's talk all the time on the phone kind of guy. I mean, basically right now the only time I'm talking on the phone is with clients and in my off time, talking on the phone with like a one year old and a three year old running around the house like, good luck, good luck having an extended conversation. So that's limited really in a lot of ways. And I want to have friends that are local, people that I can see I can go do something with. And so that's part of it. I also want people who have an emotional depth to them. We can talk about real life and what's happening and not just talk about the game or politics or something like that. That's more superficial. Talking more about what's going on in our inner world and our lives and how we're feeling about things and what we like and what our dreams and goals are. And that's another big thing, is having people that are inspired and motivated and kind of turned on in life. They're learning, they're reading, they're doing new things, they're growing, they're not stagnant. Stuck repeating the same day day after day and kind of negative about it. I don't really want that in my life. So I want my friends to be, you know, mirroring me in that, in that growth. And also though, I want friends that can make me laugh because if it's all serious growth talk and personal issues and stuff like that, like, man, that can, you know, that's, that's heavy. So I love hanging out with people that make me, you know, crack me up, make me laugh. The more the better, really. I love being able to drop from humor and just, you know, totally kind of crass, ridiculous Kenny power style jokes down to something that challenging that one of us is going through. So those are some of my criteria. They also have to be equal to or slightly less good looking than me because I'm intimidated. I'm kidding. Although, yeah, one of my friends, Ben, this is a deadly handsome man. When I first met him, I was actually very insecure and felt inferior because I thought he was better looking than I was, more charming and outgoing than I was. And he also had some like a com. Like a very engaged conversation with my wife Candace. Are we married at the time? I think we were just. We were, we were together at the time. And he like, you know, was like, you know, chatting with her and kind of flirting with her and I was like, I'm a failure. I hate him. I hate myself. Yeah, anyway, so I got some ones that are better looking than me. Those bastards. But so what is it? What do you want in your friendships, it's really important. I would, you know, maybe you have some ideas right now. You could jot them down. Maybe after you listen to this episode, take a few minutes and get super clear on that because that's extremely important. And then we're gonna take a quick break and then we're get back and we're gonna talk about how do you actually create this? How do you bring this into your life and make this part of your life right now? Are you tired of feeling stuck in shyness? Do fear and self doubt stop you from being social or outgoing or overcoming social anxiety is possible, but it Requires action. Join Dr. Aziz in an eight week video training program that will teach you exactly how to unleash your confidence. Go to confidenceunleashednow.com welcome back. So how do we create these ideal friendships? Once you got clear on what you want, the first thing and the only place anything really changes and happens in our lives is within you. So a great follow up question to what I want is how do I need to show up in order to create that? That is a million dollar question right there in anything that you want. We're talking about friendships in this episode, but it could be dating and relationships. It could be your business life, your career, any aspect of your life. You know, what do I want? Getting clear on that. And then how do I need to show up in order to create that? And that's putting the responsibility on us. That's putting us into being an owner of our life, a creator in our life rather than a victim of circumstance. I'm going to create. And note that word is intentional create, not find the friendship, find the people. Because those people are all around us. It's us. We create it. And we create it over time. Deeper friendships take time and really connecting with someone and trusting them and liking them and sharing more with them and vice versa, that happens over time. We create that. So how do I need to show up? How do I need to be? And that's a great question to ask yourself. How do I need to be? And usually you probably need to be a lot of the ways that you want the other person to be. That's what's going to attract them. That's what's going to, you know, like attracts like. So if you want to be able to, you know, that was my list that I shared. But maybe you want someone who is as into basketball as you are and you love talking about the game and you love talking about the stats and the players and that's Something that's really fun and exciting for you. Maybe it's all sports or other sports. You know, make that part of your criteria. But then you obviously have to be that way, too. That wouldn't work for me, but you got to find out what works for me. How do I need to show up? If you want someone that can make you laugh, guess what you got to do? You gotta be able to make them laugh. So if you want someone who's funny and you want friends that make you laugh and that are funny, you need to show up and be funny. Same thing. If you want something that's, like, deeper, this is a big one. A lot of people want deeper friendships. And if you really drill in and find out what that means for them, that means more authentic, more sharing, less guards, less walls up, and less pretending like everything's great. How's it going on your life? It's great.

Yeah.

How about you? Great. Yeah, Great. Instead, being able to share what we're really excited about, you know, our dreams, our goals, our challenges, our frustrations, areas where we don't. Where everything's not great, where we're struggling, stuff in our relationships that we want to get insight or feedback on, all that stuff, we want that. But a lot of people are waiting for someone else to do it for them. Well, they'll start. They'll be more vulnerable with me first, and then I'll do it. Then I'll know it's safe and then I'll go. But both people are waiting most of the time, and then, well, they. If they wanted to be deeper or share more with me, they would have. But the reality is we need to lead. We need to create that ourselves. So you need to show up. You need to be the kind of person that you want to attract into your life. So that's the second step, I suppose. First step would be finding out what it is you want. Then you need to be, you know, show up as that person in the world and then think about it like a garden, you know, it's not something that you can just go buy. You can't just go down to the mall and buy a friend today. Although that would be interesting. Maybe one day we could buy robots that act like our friends. A buddy of mine who runs a gym, he's got. He's got one of those Amazon Echo things. And that's fascinating. It's, you know, it's just really strange. He, like, he has to talk kind of loud because it's a big gym floor. And so he'll be Like, Alexa. And then the little blue light turns on. He's like, play punk music. And then she'll start playing it. Or she. It's fascinating, huh? It. The device will start playing it, and then he'll say, alexa, turn it down. It's like this funny dynamic we've created where we're like. We create these robot servants, and then we're yelling at them already like, damn it, serve me, you piece of shit. And it. I could just see the seeds of robot resentment that's going to turn into Terminator, basically. Like, I feel like those movies are kind of an inevitable prophecy. We're gonna create these robot slaves who will turn on us. In any case, you can't do that. You can't go buy a friend in the store. It's something that you cultivate over time, as we were talking about. And the best analogy for it is like, a garden. And I'm not a gardener. I'm not very good at gardens. In fact, we actually plowed our garden down and put grass in because it's too much damn work. But think. And we all understand the concept of a garden where you plant seeds and you take care of plants and you water them, and there are certain plants that you want. So getting clear on what you want in your friendships is like getting clear on the kinds of plants that you want in your garden. Then this is the third step, super important. You have to stop giving your attention and energy to the plants that you don't want. So if you have a plant in your garden that's like a tomato plant, but you don't like tomatoes. They don't taste very good, but it's just been in there forever. You're like, well, I'm gonna. You know, I have an hour to garden today. I'll spend 30 to 40 minutes of that on this tomato plant. Now, that gives you virtually no time to actually cultivate anything else. And that's a lot of the time, what people are doing with their friendships. They're cultivating older friendships that are no longer satisfying to them simply because, well, we're friends. And there's some ideas we have about friendships. Such as, well, you can never. You can never let go of your friends. You can't break up with your friends. You can't stop being friends with someone. That's a lifelong bond, man. I'd be a bad person if I stopped being friends with that person. But I'd really encourage you to question that and to look at that, because in my book, any voluntary relationship. And I suppose you could say all relationships are voluntary. It's a little interesting with family and parents and that sort of thing. But any relation, especially a friend, that's completely voluntary. And in my book, any voluntary relationship has got to bring energy to my life and not drain energy. So you want to pay attention after you spend time with a certain friend or you hang out on the phone with someone you know, a friend of yours, did that bring energy into your life or did that drain it? One client I was working with and she was wanting to cultivate, you know, deeper relationships, romantic relationship, as well as friendships. And a lot of her friends were in different cities from different times in her life. And she would interact with them on the phone. She'd have these conversations and she kind of didn't really enjoy it. She said, I sort of dreaded the catch up conversation that we'd have once every three, four weeks. And I said, well, why do you call? She said, well, basically the guilt builds up enough to where it's been long enough that I feel like I have to call. And it's almost like there's this obligation pile that starts to build up, get more and more weight, more and more marbles of obligation adding to each other. And I thought, shit, now I guess I gotta call them. And then when she was done calling them, I said, well, did you feel energized afterwards? Excited? She's like, what do you mean? I was like, well, you know, after you talk with them, you felt like, wow, that was fun. I felt engaged, I feel connected. I feel more energized in my life. She's like, no, I think I mainly just feel relief. And it was like relief about having satisfied the obligation. And like, those are big red flags. You don't want to be having relationships out of obligation. And anything that drains your energy, you want to be really careful about why you're doing that and what purpose that serves in your life. Because if it's draining your energy in that area, preventing you from putting energy into something else, and that could be other friendships, but it could also just be you living your life, taking care of your body, your health, working out, kicking ass at work, progressing in any area that you want, enjoying yourself, having fun, all of that is part of our energy and related to our energy. And if our energy is drained, it's harder to do any of those things. So it's okay to let go of friends. It's okay. And you don't have to make a big deal of breaking up with them. Ah, we're not friends anymore. You Know, just don't spend 45 minutes taking care of that tomato plant. When you go to your garden, just walk right by it. Or, you know, give it a. Give it two minutes of your attention and then go on to the stuff that you really want. So maybe you see that person less. Maybe you stop calling them to initiate. Maybe you just kind of take a step back in that relationship, and that gives you energy and attention to put on something else. So stay tuned. We're gonna be right back right after this to talk more about how you can create the friendships that you want now. And we'll share the key step, the biggest step, the most required step that's usually overlooked. So stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this.

What is it?

Hi, Nerd King. I'm so glad I finally got a chance to talk with you. I need your help bad.

Mmm. Hang on. I am chatting with two hotties headed for Comic Con.

Okay.

Okay, that's enough for now. I shall leave them wanting more. What is your question? If you do, in fact, have one.

Okay. There's this group of three guys, and they keep teasing me. They push me. They make fun of me. They do it all the time, especially in front of the popular girls. It makes me look terrible. I hate it. I need to know what to do. Nerd King.

Hmm, I see. Are these men perhaps taller than you?

Yes.

More muscular?

Yes.

Better looking?

Yes.

It's worse than I thought.

So what do I do?

Silence. I am assessing your situation. Okay, possibility four against one.

Three. And then there's two.

And then. Better looking. Hmm. Okay, I've got it. Here is what you must do if you want to vanquish this band of ruffians. You must go into a nearby forest and creep slay rats and bears to acquire gold and items until you have reached level six. What is your level six power spell?

My. My power spell?

Ah. Amateur. Hang on, I'll look it up. Yes. Oh, here it is.

Ooh.

Ring of Fire. Better than I anticipated. All right, once you have reached level 6, charge your ring of Fire spell. Gather in a group of four of your friends. Making a team of five, five versus three will have much better odds. Of course. Have your friends wait in the forest. Make sure two of them have range.

Weapons range. Weapons?

Yes. Bows, ice, arrows, magic missiles. For the love of Galaxia, stay with me, man.

Okay. Okay.

Next, go by yourself and attract the attention of this band of ruffians. Be sure to look weak and helpless. Shouldn't be too hard for you to pull off. Okay, as they move towards you. Run towards the forest. Run and. And when they follow you in, you and your friends will gank them. Hit them with everything you've got. Use your ring of fire.

Okay, so attack them in the woods and burn them.

Are you deaf as a Telosian bat? Yes. Hit them with everything. They will think twice before messing with you again.

Wow. What a great plan. Thank you so much, Nerd King.

My wisdom is obvious. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a League of Legends tournament starting in five minutes. I must prepare for battle by reading the online FAQ twice. Good day, sir.

But I have one more.

I said good day.

Are you tired of feeling less than and inferior? Are you tired of people deriding you or making fun of you in subtle ways at work or elsewhere in your life? It's time to take charge of this and raise your self esteem. And as you respect yourself more, other people will too. And you're going to learn how to handle when people are being jerks. In order to get this confidence, you need to transform your self esteem and improve your social skills. Go to www.yourconfidencecode.com to find out exactly how you can do this, starting today. Welcome back. So now we have this idea of not draining our energy on friendships that aren't satisfying to us. We're clear on what you want, you know, you're gonna cultivate it over time. How do we do that? What do we do? What is the equivalent of, in the guarding metaphor of growing these friendships? Well, basically, you need to become more active. And that's the step that a lot of people overlook and they stay stuck in stories. I talk about this in my book the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. There's these layers which are excuses and stories that are on top and preventing us from doing what we need to do. Underneath those is fear. And then on the other side of that is action. It's actually part of the solution to all this stuff too is action. But getting into action. And so we stay in stories though, like, oh, people in this city aren't very friendly or oh, people don't like me here because I'm from a different place or because I have this accent or oh, no one, no one likes someone with this skin color here. And I suppose that could be true if you're in some backwater place or something like that. But usually, usually, even if you do encounter some people that don't like you for whatever reason, that doesn't mean that everyone doesn't like you. But we stay in that story. Because it's safer, it's easier. Or we say, oh, you know, it was easy to make friends when you were in high school or college, but, you know, when people hit 30, they just, they don't. Their lives are full. They don't want any friends anymore. And we make these blanket statements about people or ourselves. Oh, no one would want to be my friend. And those are just stories and excuses. The truth is that there's an abundance of people in this world, on this planet, as we can see, and that the key determining factor is how much action are you going to take, what level of action are you going to engage in life with? And it's very similar to actually romantic relationships as well. And so you want to be looking to cultivate these, these relationships. You want to be looking for people you can interact with. So you gotta. You keep your radar on in a different way. So when you go out to do something, you're not just, I'm gonna go do this thing and leave. You're like, oh, well, who knows? Who, who knows who I might meet today? I wonder what friend I might meet. I wonder what experience I might have. And then when you're out and about and you see someone that you just, you know, you like the cut of their jib, you like the way they laugh, or you had a conversation with them that was interesting, or they said something that intrigued you, follow that, go lean in, start a conversation, hey, what are you guys talking about? Or, hey, you said that thing earlier and I wanted to ask you more about it. And you just interact with that person. You move towards the people that you admire that you're drawn to. And in fact, right now, if you think about your sphere, your social sphere, the people that you know or friends of friends, people you know of colleagues, there's probably at least one person right now that you can think of that you like or admire or are drawn to in some way. That's the person to go pursue. That's what we want to do. We want to be able to pursue these people. And that means going up to them, interacting with them, having a conversation, and just like in dating, asking to hang out with them. It's like you talk with them for a little bit and you're like, oh, this is fun. I'd love to hang out more. What's. What's your number? And I know we did something around this with Paul Sanders a little while back about his system for making friends. And he has a bit more of a. Kind of a more. I guess it's less Vulnerable way of asking. It's sort of like, hey, what's your number? Maybe we could hang out sometime or something like that. I forget it was something like. It was a little bit scaled back from my version. I think I even questioned about him in the interview. But because my version is, if I'm liking the person, I'll express that, like, wow, this is fun. I like talking to you. I'd love to hang out sometime. Or we should, you know, go for a run sometime. Let's say we're talking about running, for example. Oh, we should go for a run sometime. Or, oh, we should go see that movie. I'd love to. Love to hang out with you more. So I like to be a little more expressive because that's just kind of who I am, and I don't want to hide behind, you know, I'm a more vulnerable person in that way. But you can. You can kind of pick your. Your level and. But whatever it is, you have to, quote, ask them out and get their number, as it were, because that's. That's just how the process works. And then once you have that contact information, then you need. You need to be the one to initiate, because sometimes people get the information, you exchange information, and they're like, well, they didn't text or call me, so they're not interested in me. It's like, no, no, no. You got to insert yourself into people's lives. People are busy, life's full, life's happening, and you got to insert yourself. And you know what? You can. If you put yourself out there a couple of times, maybe three times over a period of a number of weeks, and they're just not available, and they don't seem that interested, that's okay, move on. But at least you gave it a significant kind of attempt into breaking through people's I'm so busy, you know, way of living. Because underneath, a lot of people need friends, I think. And if you're an awesome friend and you're an awesome person, then especially people need you in their life. And that's a final thing, to bring it all home, actually, is, why are you an awesome friend? Why are people better off for having you close to them? And if you can't answer that question, you're like, I don't know, it's gonna be a little harder to make friends because you're just not gonna be as willing to put yourself out there. There's gonna be a little hesitation, a little bit of like, I'm sort of bothering them, and they don't really want to hang out with me because I'm not good enough for them, but just like, no, I'm an awesome friend and here's why. And if you're aware of that and maybe take a few minutes to become aware of that, then you are in great shape for carrying all of this out. And actually that brings us to your action step.

Time for action.

Your action step for today. I mean, there's plenty in this episode. Do one of the things that we talked about, whether it's coming up with exactly what you want in a friendship, figuring out how you need to be writing that stuff out, thinking about that more, maybe looking at some of the friendships that you might want to shift or change or end or let go of things you want to stop doing, like making those long distance calls if it's not fun for you, not engaging for you. And of course taking action to reach out to people that you're drawn to and finding a way to connect with them and persisting in that. I mean, there's tons of action opportunities here. The choice is yours. And this, this is kind of a piece of a larger module inside of my program, the confidence code, which is core training and confidence for your self esteem. Being that kind of person, who knows, of course people want to be my friend and then being able to connect with people, how to have conversations, engaging conversations and to do so in all kinds of places like at work or in a networking meeting or just out in public at a restaurant, all kinds of stuff like that. So if you're benefiting from this, if this feels like an area that you really want to handle in your life, I would make a special recommendation to go check out that program and you can find out more if you go to your confidencecode.com yourconfidencecode.com I just thought you could, you could benefit from that. So take one of those actions. I don't know which one it is, but you do do that because inside an information without action is not going to change much. It might be satisfying, you might feel better learning, but ultimately your life's not going to transform and that's my goal for you. So go ahead and find that action step. Take it. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level 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. 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.