What If I Don't Feel Lovable?

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 going to 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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're gonna be talking about the core, the root, the bedrock of confidence, self confidence, which is how to believe in yourself. And at the end of this episode, you're gonna have a lot more clarity of what that even means, what gets in the way and how to do it more. It's one of those phrases that everyone hears and has their own definition of. And generally it's good, right? If you said to somebody, hey, is it good, good to believe in oneself or do kids need to believe in themselves more? I think most people would say, yeah, right. It's like self esteem or confidence. Like, is it good to have more confidence? Yeah, sure is. Why not? And so generally it's good to believe in yourself. I mean, there are outlier cases where maybe it's not good to believe in yourself. We'll cover some of those as well in today's episode. But for the most part, it's something that we all want. And at the same time, I think most people feel a sense that they don't believe in themselves that much and they suffer from that. So they. Everyone wants to believe in themselves more and yet feels like they don't. So why is that? Does everyone, does everyone just suck and so they, they should doubt themselves? Or is there something more going on here? Well, we're going to find out in today's show if you are benefiting from this and you want to take things further and you have not yet gone to my site, my website, draz.coM-R-A z I z.com go there to get all kinds of additional support in this process. If you like this show and it benefits you, and yet while it's interesting and exciting, you don't necessarily feel like you're experiencing a radical transformation. Well, just know that more is possible, that this show gives you a sense, a window into what you can shift and gives you ideas and Actions. It's also not an in depth master study of confidence and I have ways to do that. And you can get started for free with a short mini class called Five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. It's for free on my homepage. And then if you wanna take it further, I have Confidence University, which imagine all the action steps lining up one after another where they systematically build into something that's going to produce a in your social life, in your self confidence, in your relationships, in your career. And Confidence University covers all those areas, the core confidence underneath everything and how to apply it. And then of course the ultimate shift occurs, I think in community. So if you want to take things even further, I have the unstoppable Confidence Mastermind program. That's my main way and favorite way of working with clients. So anytime you hear me referencing a client, it's almost always someone that's in that program and it's a year long. Just the masters, you know, stuff you never studied in school. Like a master's level of confidence to be able to walk into any room, owning who you are, saying what you want to say, being who you're really meant to be in the world. And I would love to support you in that. You can also find out more about that and other coaching on my site. So just wanted to let you know about that resource. There's. There's so much good stuff there. A lot of it is for free, including our blog and everything. So just know that you're not alone in this. There's a lot of people looking to build confidence and there are real solutions for you to free yourself from. And one of the main things we're talking about today's episode is free yourself from that nagging doubt. Because let's. That's the opposite of believing yourself, right? It's this questioning of yourself. And what do you question? Well, it depends on how far down the hill you slide. You might question yourself in a specific arena. Oh, can I do this particular task? Can I get this done by the time that I said I was going to get it done? Can I memorize this presentation? That's one form of doubt. But it can go further. What if I freeze? So even if I've memorized it, I won't know what to say? Can I even deliver the lines? Am I even capable to talk to this person? Am I even capable of human connection anymore? Am I just going to stand there with my mouth open and nothing coming out of my face and looking like a weirdo freak? And we Go further and further down this slope and then it gets even worse. Am I even lovable? We talked about that in the last episode. If you haven't listened that, check that out. You don't even believe in your desirability and your worth. So it's not even about a capability and a certain function. It's almost like you don't even believe that I should exist. So it can get real dark and that you might think that's related to an actual incapacity. So let's clear that up right now. Someone says, well, yeah, you don't believe in yourself because maybe you're not very good at something. I don't believe I can get this done. So, look, I probably shouldn't sign up for it because honestly, I'm not gonna be able to get it done. And that's the biggest block, an obstacle here in this whole process of building confidence. And it's that confidence is an inside job. And another way to say it, which is a famous quote attributed to Henry Ford, I don't know if he's the one that said it or not in real life, but whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And that is the essence of what creates belief in yourself. So if you believe it's not possible for you, you generally will find a way to make that so. And if you believe that you can, you generally will find a way to make that so. Now, the doubting part inside of your mind likes to have a strawman argument here and say, whoa, wait, wait, wait. You know what are you just saying? That if I believe I can slam dunk, then all of a sudden I can slam dunk on a full size hoop? You kidding? I'm five foot two. Well, I don't know, maybe some sort of long training, 17 year training methodology. You can jump up that high, but right there are bounds here. There's a. There's a pretty gnarly, extreme example of this from a book I read a long time ago. I think it was called the Con Game. I don't remember the exact name, but it's a book about con artists. Fascinating book, but there was a story in there that of a guy who's a relatively infamous con artist, probably because of this kind of thing that he did. But he conned his way onto a naval ship, although he was not in the Navy. Might say, well, that's, you know, that's something. It's not that crazy. As the ship's doctor. Okay, that's a double level con There as a surgeon. I am the ship's surgeon, and I am neither a military officer or a doctor or a surgeon. And he's playing the part and doing whatever a con man does once he's. I mean, it's kind of a weird con because it's not like you walk in and do the thing and then leave or even profit in some sort of monetary way. It's more like, now I'm gonna hang out on the boat with you guys for a year or whatever. I don't know, maybe, you know, runs away at the next port. In any case, in this particular incident, there was actually an attack on the boat or an accident on the boat. I don't remember the details, but something happened where multiple sailors were injured in a significant way and needed emergency surgery. At which point you would think that the command, you know, chuckles and says, you got me. I was just like, put me in jail. I'm a piece of junk. Take me away, Right? No. You know what this dude did? He operated on the soldiers. I said, well, Aziz, you said, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So he thought he could. He was totally congruent with his con, and so he, you know, miraculously did successful surgery, right? No, no, he, like, horribly mangled and killed some of the people because he literally didn't know what he was doing, but he acted like he did all the way through. So either he had so much pride and so much fear of being caught, or he was caught up in his own crazy delusions. I don't know all the details. I forget the guy's name. Probably look him up a whole book about that dude. Crazy. In any case, there are limits to whether you think you can or you think you can't. You're right. And so doubt is going to want to put everything into that category, though. And so, sure, there's an arc of learning. We're not talking about delusional level conman surgery here. So if you want to get better at basketball, you want to get better at a sport or socializing, connecting, flirting, public, presenting a certain facet of skill in your work. You, whether you think you can or you can't, doesn't mean you can pull it off tonight with sheer willpower. It means, well, if you put the time in, if you put the hours in, you will learn it. So if you want to learn a second language, maybe you speak only one language, like me. Speak American. I speak English. That's all I got. And if you want to speak A second language. Or maybe you already speak a second language. You want to speak a third language or a fourth language or a ninth language freak, then you can. You absolutely can. I have no doubt in my. I don't. Even if I've never met you before, I will. I'll bet you a lot, a large sum of money that you can learn a second language now. Can you learn it by tonight? Probably not, unless you want to, you know, spout out a few phrases from a phrase book. But I mean, to become fluent in a language you can. It just takes time and effort and engagement and effort. Over time you will speak that language. Maybe it takes you longer than someone else, maybe it takes you shorter, takes you nine months instead of six months, or it takes you three months, or it takes you a year. It doesn't matter. Depends on how you're, who your teachers are and how you learn, and also how much you're willing to make mistakes and sound foolish and try things out with real people as opposed to just, you know, pecking around on your phone, using an app and trying to learn it all safely there. But it doesn't matter. Eventually, if you do the right things, the right practices, you will, 100% guaranteed speak a second language. That's what we're talking about with whether you think you can or you think you can't. You're right. It's a matter of are you willing to put the effort in? And this is where we start to see the real purpose of doubt is not to give you accurate information about you or life around you. It's to keep you downsized, small and avoiding all risk. That's all doubt is. It's a risk reduction mechanism in your mind. And so it tells you, don't even try to learn the language because you won't succeed. You can't. You can't figure it out. It's impossible. Don't even try to go, you know, have a relationship that's better than the your past dumpster fire of a relationship that was divorced. Don't even try to do that. It's not never ever gonna work again. That's not true. That's doubt trying to prevent you from taking the risk of opening your heart again or learning new things in a relationship that make you feel uncomfortable because you gotta be able to have conversations you avoided in your relationship that failed or just the straight discomfort of mental focus of learning a second language. In the example I was using earlier, so that's a key takeaway, is that you can, with practice, over time, learn and any other voice in your head that says you cannot is not about truth. It's about comfort. It's about fear. It's about the avoidance of whatever emotion you experience when you feel like you're failing or you feel like someone's upset with you. Now, I know you might say, but, Aziz, I get it, theoretically, and for people overall, but for me, you don't understand. I mean, I've done this and I've done that, and it's been five years of me trying this thing and that thing, and I just can't. You know, we all got that thing that we just can't resolve. I've been anxious for 27 years around people. How could I not? Or I remember, I tried this program, and I got a little more of that, and it didn't work. I was speaking with a client not that long ago who is building up a side business. He's very accomplished in his current profession, but he wants to have a side business that involves sales, and he's been terrified of sales. Never would have done something like that in the past. And as he's built confidence through my program, he's willing to try something like that, but he doesn't. He still doesn't like it. He gets a lot of uncomfortable feelings when he practices. And so his mind will tell him, you know, you're just not ever gonna get this. Never. So I was talking about it with him in one of the group calls. I was like, never, Never, ever, ever, Never, never, never, never. Why? Why not? Right? Why. Why is that unobtainable? And from the outside, you might hear that and say, I doesn't make any sense. Well, you guys say, well, Aziz, some people just can never sell anything. Look, I'm not saying that some people might be. It might come more quickly and easily to some people, that's true for everything and all. If. If you didn't know this, just if you ever have children or spend time, you have niece or a nephew or around anyone, friends who have kids. I mean, you'll see it. One child in the family just naturally picks up something easier than the other one. There's the kid who's better with instruments and music and singing and stuff. And then there's a kid who's better at sports, and then there's a kid who's better at reading, and there's a kid who's better at math. And it might be the same kid who's good at, you know, sports and reading and the other ones, he's good at music and math or Whatever. So, and. And there's some overlap, but there's always certain skills and abilities that come way easier to one kid than the other one. And depending upon, you know, you could probably just remember on your own family or upbringing if you had siblings. Music came way more to me. And it wasn't just that it came easier. I was also more interested in it. But those are often hand in hand. Right? We are gravitated towards the things that come easier to us, and we kind of resist the things that don't come as easy to us. And for me, social skills didn't come as easy, but I did okay with, you know, as a little kid and having a friend or two from school. And then when I got to high school and I had even middle school and I had to learn, how do you talk to someone, especially even in middle school, like, how do you talk to a girl you're interested in? I didn't have any skills there, and I had a high level of risk aversion and shyness. So I didn't learn any of those skills. Like, they didn't come easy to me. And so I avoided them. So then. And this is where we come to the big reveal of today's episode, is that you start to construct a sense of who you are, your identity around the things that come easy to you and you pursue and the things that come harder that you avoid. And that's where people say, I'm not a math person. I'm no good at math. I've never been. I've never been good at math. As if somehow that makes math not accessible forever for them. It's really interesting. I mean, have you ever heard someone say, have you ever said anything like that? And people around take, oh, yeah, you didn't get the math gene. Me neither. I hear you. I'm not a good speller. Never been a good speller. Maybe that person had some reading challenges when they were young. Maybe they had some dyslexia or other problems that prevented them from easily picking up reading like their peers in school. And then what did they do? Did they say, you know what? I'm going to go home and I'm going to put an extra hour of training the fundamentals into my mind beyond my other homework. I'm going to look at vowel pairs and sounding out words. I'm just going to do repetitions again and again. I'm going to make flashcards and I'm going to master the fundamentals of phonics. So I can do really well at reading at this Young age. Yeah. Who did that? Nobody, right? Unless their parents made them. Kids like, oh, God, reading is terrible. I hate reading. I don't. Spelling's the worst. Got to get outside and run around. I like using my body. I'm better at that. I'll focus more on basketball and whatever, or cheerleading or whatever opportunities I have to be active and succeed because we all like to feel like we're succeeding. So I'm gonna find those opportunities and I'm gonna pursue those. And then you construct an identity. And that identity is not true unless you were to say, oh, there's things that came easier to me and things that were a little harder to me at a certain point in my life when I tried them. And so I geared myself towards the things that came easier and avoided the stuff that was harder. And here's a list of the things that came easier and a list of the things that came harder. So these are my skills and qualities that I've developed in myself. That would be a pretty accurate statement. But we don't say that. We say, I'm not that kind of person. Or, I'm this kind of person. I'm not that kind of person. I'm not athletic. Never been athletic. And you might not walk around saying that to yourself. We do something even more insidious to ourselves. We don't say, I am not athletic. Or maybe we say I'm not good at reading, or I'm not good at this, or, you know, I'm not good at speaking in front of others, or I'm not good with groups. I'm not. Or the. The classic nail in the coffin, shy, social anxiety, identity. I'm just not a people person. I'm just not good with people. Okay, well, that's a problem, because most humans live in some sort of community. I mean, you might be a, I don't know, you got a shack out in Alaska kind of gal or guy, you know, but you go in it, go into the nearby outpost once a month for supplies. But most of us are going to live with other people. And even if you're super isolated in the modern world and you're, you know, cell plugged into the Internet, you still got neighbors and colleagues and co workers and probably some family, right? Maybe some friends. So there's people. See, if you tell yourself, I'm not a people person, I'm not good at talking to people. I'm not good at connecting with people. And that's extremely limiting because we will live our identity. And the nail in the coffin is we Tell ourselves. I don't like blank. I don't like math. I don't like talking to people. I don't like people. Maybe. I don't like social gathering. I don't like parties. I don't like dinner parties. I don't like mixers. I don't like conferences. I don't like presentations. I don't like speaking. No, no, that's not my thing. I don't like it. You know, I said that for many, many, many years. If I don't like dancing, I don't like dancing. Stupid. What did that mean? It means dancing and rhythm didn't come naturally to me. I also didn't have any exposure to it at all in a kid. As a kid, I mean, I. The first time in my life that I saw my parents dance was at my cousin's wedding when I was. Oh, goodness, I don't know, maybe like, let's just say 16 years old. First time I ever saw my parents dance. Right? So it's not like we were living in Brazil and everyone was dancing around every. Yeah, because that's what people do in Brazil, right? Just dance around their kitchen. No, but in the culture, there's a lot more dance, right? And in many, many cultures, in many households even. I grew up in the United States, Even in the U.S. i mean, my kids have seen me and my wife kind of dance around the house or sing, sing out loud, be silly. I've danced with my kids in our living room to music. I mean, there's all kinds of different exposure they got, right? So it didn't come naturally. It might have had I been exposed to it, but it didn't. And then by the time I got around the opportunity to dance, I was already more self conscious and I held myself back. So I didn't develop any skills or comfort or rhythm with it. And I told myself, I don't like it. That means it's not who I am, who I. It's not even who I want to be. Okay? That's for other people. They're stupid dancing. So how do you use this knowledge to set yourself free and to fully believe in yourself? Let's find out with an action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step is to first things first. Look, what's an area you'd like to believe in yourself more? What would that look like for you? What would that mean for you? Is it in your career you want to believe in yourself more? In your professional abilities or a certain subset of your abilities, depending upon your specific career track? There can be really specialized things, right? Like, I want to get better at knowing this medication profile in these patients, or I want to get better at this type of coding or whatever it is. Maybe it's more generally I just want to believe in myself at work instead of feeling the opposite. It'd be like the imposter syndrome, right? Oh, my gosh, I don't know anything. Is it that you tell yourself you don't know anything? What? So where do you want to believe in yourself more? You want to believe in yourself socially, some facet of dating, relationships, and then what are you telling yourself that erodes that self belief? Where in your identity? Are you not the kind of person who blank. Whatever it is you want to be able to do? I want to be able to walk up to a group of people and just talk to them. Well, I'm not the kind of person who does that. Okay. Notice that what is baked into your identity, because if it's baked in your identity, you're not going to do it. I remember I had a client one time who was really good at giving presentations. In fact, he spoke as part of one of the things he did for work. So he'd speak to audiences. And he was good at it. He was great at it. But when it came to just spontaneously talking in a group of people, even two or three or five people around a dinner table, he was just quiet, which was odd for people because he was so animated and speaking in front of a large group. And then he talked to people afterwards in groups of three and four. And he was just, you know, ghost town, didn't want to say anything. And he said, you know, Aziz, I just want to be the kind of guy that speaks up in groups. And so I said to him, if you want to become the kind of guy who speaks up in groups, you got to speak up in groups a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. And then you will be the guy who speaks up in groups. That's how you transform your identity. You upgrade your identity. And what I'm saying here is not rocket science like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, brainiac. It's obvious intellectually, but emotionally, he had 700 obstacles to speaking up. Well, people are going to think this and people are going to think that people are going to judge this. That's what you got to work through. And you can't work through any of that. As long as you're saying I can't, and I don't like it anyway. It's BS. Stop lying to yourself. Do you really want It. Does it really matter to you? Okay, great. Put the effort in and you will get there. We're not talking about. Look, even that crazy con guy that I mentioned earlier in today's episode. If he wanted to perform surgery, which apparently he did. If he wanted to perform surgery, he could, right? He could. Of course he could. Now it would take him, you know, whatever, nine years from that moment of having no medical knowledge to where he's actually successfully doing a surgery, give or take, I don't know. And then he could. And the same is true for you. What's your time horizon? And look, you would not get there in nine years if you didn't even study for your first exam because you told yourself, I can't do it anyway. And again, is that true? No. It's uncomfortable. It's a risk. And there's emotional discomfort with those risks, that uncertainty. There's also just the discomfort of, you know, focusing and studying and trying to learn something and maybe missing a question on a test or failing or answering a question in front of others and not getting it right. So when are you going to put that focus in to what you want to create doubt? Loves to tell you never. And maybe. Fine. Maybe later. Liberation is always now. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level, you are 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 confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.