Who Chooses Your Worth?

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. Welcome today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and today we're going to be talking about you and your worth, your sense of value. And I know this topic. When you try to use words to describe self worth, your sense of value, your lovability, these are things that you might not actually be using those words when you think to yourself or talk about yourself. You might not be walking around thinking, I feel lower worth right now or I am less valuable right now. But you feel the effect of that very clearly, almost overwhelmingly so. Right? I mean, just all it takes is imagine someone says something or you look over at somebody else who has someone beautiful who seems to love them, or you look at someone on social media or in the real world who is popular. They, whatever it is, you would like to be more popular. And they're very popular in that, whether it's in their business and everyone wants to seem to buy their things or they seem to grow and reach a lot more people, or maybe it's socially, oh man, look how many comments they get. Or look how many people want to come to their thing, their party, their event, every other. So popular, right? So all it takes is seeing somebody not achieving a certain goal, some trigger, and then boom, straight down to no worth ville. And you might not even think that thought of, oh, I'm less worthy, but you feel it and you feel like there's a loss. Right? That's what I want to talk about today with you, to help you shift that and free yourself of that. And this is coming on the coattails of I just ran an in person workshop called Supremely Confident Conversation Master, which if you were there, it was great to be with you. And that was a topic that came up a lot, was our sense of self worth. Right. Because in social situations and interactions, that's one of the biggest blocks to connecting with others. It's not just your social skills knowing what to say next, how to keep the conversation going, how to take it deeper. That is one level of connection. But when we have a story that says I'm not worthy, I'm not lovable, I'm not enough, then connection becomes really hard. And I'm not talking about just initial conversation connection, I'm talking about a whole relationship. Being able to really bond with other people and create friendships or dating, long term relationship, all that stuff becomes almost impossible when that sense of self worth is not there. Or maybe it's not that much of an impediment, but it comes up strongly and unpleasantly way more often than you would want. And I don't know any human on the planet who doesn't sometimes feel unworthy, less than insignificant. But how often and how far down do you go? And ultimately how do you shift this? How do you unhook that sense of worth from things that you might not have control over or just anything that might make it fluctuate so greatly from day to day? So let's start with this self worth, sense of valuable. I'm okay, I'm good, I'm lovable. I would say that that's actually not too much about your actual lovability and actually it's about something else which is your sense of significance. So significance is a basic human need and it's the need to feel special, impressive, unique. Like look at you. And I would say another way to say it is you almost feel inflated when your sense of significance is going up. Like yes, look at me. Haha. Some people might say, oh, it's your ego. But ego is kind of a big term and also can be kind of loaded. And you know, people have all kinds of things like I'm going to get rid of my ego and I'm in a meditator now. And so I don't want to use that word because it has a lot of other meanings, but just straight to the. One of the core drives of the ego, right. Is to be significant is to be special. Look at me. And so think about, you know, you host a party and everybody wants to come. Ooh, you get this kind of inflated feeling, right? It's like powerful and expansive and. Yeah, right. Or you, you want to sell something and everybody wants to buy it. You sell out. Yeah. Oh, everyone thinks you're sexy. Everyone thinks you're good looking. Right. And you may or may not have actually had experiences. I certainly have. I mean I kind of have that everywhere I go. Everybody thinks I'm sexy, but so I'm Not I'm giving kind of dramatic examples here, but we all have our own versions of when we feel significant. Maybe it's winning at something for you. Winning the game, getting the job, getting promotion. Right. There's this expansive feeling and it's great. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's one of the first things that I want to start with. It's not like, well, you shouldn't want that stuff. What do you mean? I don't know. Maybe we could get to some goal. If you're trying to transcend the ego and you're a Buddhist and stuff, maybe. But for most of us, I don't think we need to make that wrong or bad. The problem is that we become really narrowly focused or attached on that and you hinge your sense of self worth to that thing. So now all of a sudden, how many responses I get on a certain post social media or how many people come to my party, which is fine to want that feeling of inflation and greatness. If a lot of people come, but let's say a lot of people don't come. Or depending upon what the demands are in there, let's say a lot of people do come, but it's still not enough to some imaginary goal you had. I was imagining 200 and we only had 150. Wow. And then you could feel that deflation. That's the opposite. When we don't have the popularity, the desirability, at least as we see it, we don't feel significant. Then there's this kind of deflating feeling. And everybody hates that feeling. Right. What do you do in that feeling? Well, some people get frantic. They try a thousand percent. They get desperate. Other people just implode. Like, oh, what's the point? I don't even want to do it anymore. I don't even want to go out there to say hi to my 150 guests, because there's not 200. There's a great movie called Pop Star, which if you haven't seen, that's gonna definitely be your action step for this episode. Especially if you're a fan of Andy Samberg and Lonely Island. If you're not familiar with any of Those, then maybe YouTube a lonely island video or two and see if you like it. But anyway, there's a movie called Pop Star, which is fantastic. And Andy Samberg is plays Connor for real, who is part of this three. Group of three. They're kind of like the Beastie Boys, you know, they're not called the Beastie Boys, but they're like, you know, these three white rapper guys who are kind of obnoxious and loud and raucous and, and they get super famous in this movie. And then Connor for real kind of sets out on his own because he's the most popular of the three. And he kind of becomes a solo artist. And the movie starts where he's been at the top of the charts in his solo career. He's loved by all. Stadiums of people want to see him for his concerts. And then the movie starts when he's releasing his next album, which he wrote all by himself. He had no one else help him. He made all the music, he did everything. And then basically no one likes the album. Well, not no one, but you know, huge groups of people, large percentage of his audience doesn't like the album. And so he goes and he's doing his tour and he looks in the stadium and there's, you know, still huge amounts of people at the stadium. But if you look at the upper rafters in the stadium, they're empty. And he's like distraught and disturbed by this, right? So he's still loved by millions, but it's not what it was. And so no matter what level you experience or achieve that significance, you might not feel it. And that's the problem. Not significance, not wanting significance, not the feeling you get when you get the thing. That's all fine. It's that we put way too much in one area. Like all of my self worth, all of my sense of significance is based on how many people are at that concert. In the case of Connor, for real, in the case of you, it's, I mean, it could be anything. How productive was I today? How many sales did I get in the last month? How much money did I make? How much money did I make compared to so and so? How many dates did I get? How many responses on my dating app did I get right today, this hour? Did that one person that I was interested in respond to me? Any of those things could be the determining factor for your significance in that moment. And that's the problem. It becomes hyper focused, very siloed, very all your eggs in one basket. You know, I was talking to a gentleman today that I, that I work with who is, you know, very successful in a wide variety of areas. He runs several businesses, he has a family, he's in good health, he's athletic, he's into martial arts. And you know, he was going to go to this gathering, this sort of business, but also people just sort of hanging out. So you're Networking, but it's not a hardcore business event. And a lot of people there are more successful in business than he is. And so he was going in and feeling very insignificant, like, I don't belong here. I'm not good enough to be here. And meanwhile, when he's in that, his sense of significance is all in that basket, which is basically his. Not just his business success, but his net worth. Meanwhile, he's not able to draw significance from anything else. So I said, okay, in addition to drawing a sense of significance from how much you own or how much revenue your business does, what else. What else can you draw that sense of significance from? And he gave me a long pause and he's like, I don't know. Now, is there nothing else for him? Is there nothing else for you? So let's say that person doesn't want to get back to you. Let's say your post flopped. Let's say you tried to sell the thing and no one wanted. Let's say, no, your business idea didn't take off. Whatever the thing that you were putting all your significance eggs into that one basket, and then it didn't work. Okay. Where else do you get your significance from? And when you say, I don't know what you're saying, there is. I'm attached to having it all still be from this one basket. Then I don't want to let go. It's gotta be. It's gotta be from here. It's gotta be from here. It's gotta be from here. If I keep that pressure on myself, then maybe I'll finally make it happen. And I'll be the first to tell you that it's not gonna work. That kind of pressure is not going to create a diamond. It's going to create a smashed face, a smashed soul. Right. I'm not saying you can't go after the thing I was telling the client. Yeah, keep growing your net worth. Keep growing those businesses. It's a great game to play. Why not play that game in this life? And you gotta be fueled as you do it. And right now you're not fueled because you're under the illusion that your significance comes from only one source in every area of life. Getting all your. Whatever it is from one source is problematic. Right? In investing, having all your money in one place is a bad idea. Unless it's Bitcoin. Then you're brilliant. Maybe time will tell, right? But no, you shouldn't have all your money in one asset. Maybe not even in one asset class. And that's sort of Investing wisdom and Common Sense 101, which it takes people like me, and maybe you too, some time to learn, you have to lose some money first. How about in business, right? If you have one supplier of your a particular item. In fact, big companies do this all the time. Like, they don't want to have all of our screens come from this one supplier in China or all of our materials come from this one place in Africa. And then in that case, now, if there's some issue with that one factory in that one country, in that one city, the whole thing shuts down. So in any area of life, in friendships, right, I have one friend, one close friend, and then if that friend is unavailable, I don't hang out with anybody else, right? That's problematic too. So being able to meet your needs socially with a variety of people, being able to meet the needs for your business in a variety of ways. And same thing with investing. So this is true for your significance as well. And the question is, who gets to choose where that sense of significance and worth comes from? Who gets to choose? And for a lot of people, the answer is they do. Who's the they? I don't know. Mom, dad, whatever cultural field I grew up in. Now, it's unlikely for most people that I talk to because I don't necessarily work with, like, young children. I'm working with adults. And they're usually not having their parent there with them kind of chastising them. They might talk to them on the phone and get chastised now and then, but, you know, the parent's not picking them up from school, being like, you didn't do good enough, right? No. What. What does that mean? You are doing it to yourself. There's an internalized voice in your head that's representing the cultural field, either through your parents or somewhere else that you pick this stuff up. Then it's not just family. It starts there, but it could be professionally. I was noticing this in myself. Some of the pressures of what I should achieve in business are ideas that maybe started in family, right? You got to succeed in general to earn love. But then it became kind of determined. The specifics were determined by working in first in therapy, which is not super. I would say that field is not very driven and capitalistic and in business, business heavy. But then I got into being an author and a teacher, online and coaching and online marketing. And that world is very much like, let me teach you how I made $907,000 in 36 hours. Right? It's very much money driven and or can be. And so being in that world, there was a sense of like, oh, if I'm a somebody, I should be able to do these things too. But the only reason I even explored that world was because I was like, hey, I want to help people. And I feel limited in therapy. I'm working with people one on one. I'm only working with people locally. I feel like I want to teach, I want to write, I want to work with groups. Okay, I got to learn how to do that. Let me go check out these coaching trainings, because those are the kind of people that are doing that sort of thing. And then I get into the coaching training, and they're like, do you want to become super millionaire successful? And I was like, sure. Sounds pretty good, I guess. But that wasn't the original intention, right? So now it is a number of years later, and. And I am exploring how do I want to be in the world, what do I want to offer, what do I want to create? And I'll notice in the background there's like, you should be having. You should be pursuing the Tony Robbins dream. You know, mega seminars, huge amounts of people, New York Times bestseller, what the hell's wrong with you? And there's a part of me was like, I don't want to do that. I don't necessarily want to do what it takes to create that level of reach and grow a team to the size that would be needed to maintain all that. That's not my jam. I like writing. I like being by myself. I like working with people. I like running around in the mountains, in the woods. So if I have a voice in my head that's saying, you got to do more. Come on, who is that? And I would say that's the voice of the cultural field, right? Originally from family and then added to. As the cultural field works, it kind of accumulates over time. Like, I get this message from dad, and I get this message from my bro. I got this message from the coaching industry teachers I had. And so it seems like it's coming from within, and it seems like it's me, but it's not. And then the question is, who gets to choose? Who gets to choose your value and what your significance comes from? What if you grew up in an environment that said your significance is based upon the. The thickness of your eyebrows and you're a real somebody. If you got real thick, bushy caterpillars up there, Men and women, I'm talking everybody. Thick eyebrows is where it's at. And are you some loser with thin eyebrows. And so now it's, you know, you're 42 years old, and you're like, I'm such a loser. My eyebrows suck. Like, how long are you going to keep doing that? Who gets to choose your value? Say, I don't. I don't know. I'm just a loser. I. I don't feel worthy. Why not? Because my eyebrows aren't thick enough. Do you see how you are choosing that? Even if it's a part inside of you, like your critic, you are letting the critic wrestle the wheel away from you. You are deferring. You're abdicating your inner authority and saying, you take over. I'm not in charge, and you just have your way with me. So I'm gonna come back to that question. Who gets to choose your worth? And so often we act as if it's being chosen for us, and there's some pressure inside of my. Maybe it's my own critic. I don't even know. I just. It has to be this way. This is just how I feel. And what this is is a lack of you claiming more, you taking responsibility and saying, I. I am the inner authority in my mind. I get to choose. And then you follow that up by claiming and bringing your attention to and owning the other sources of significance in your life, which is a great segue, actually, into our action step. Time for action. Action, action. And as I mentioned earlier, action step number one is to watch pop star. Action number two is going to be for you right now to reflect on what. What are my sources of significance? What could I feel good about? Could I feel good about my health and how I'm taking care of my body? Could I feel good about the way that I am with someone? Am I loving? Am I connected? Am I patient? Could I feel proud of where I was and where I am in a certain area of my life? Wow, I really struggled there. And now I studied a lot, and I achieved this. It could be anything in your physical health, in your social life, in your career, in the way you are with people interpersonally. And if you bring something up like, oh, I feel good about, you know, how I am with my brother or my siblings, and then there's that voice in your head saying, well, that's not impressive enough. Those aren't thick eyebrows. Okay, again, who gets to choose? Who determines that thick eyebrows are better than being loving with a sibling? You know, one of my dear friends and gentlemen that I work with, Ben, who is helping run the event that we just did, you know, he's got a younger brother, and his younger brother calls him, I think, almost daily. And, you know, it's nothing. It's generally, I wouldn't say, needs to be addressed every day. But Ben is just loving with him. He picks up, he chats with him for a few minutes. It's so sweet. Right. Could Ben draw a sense of significance from that? Of course. What a beautiful gift to give that to a sibling. Right. And so. But if inside, he or someone else is like, yeah, but that's not as worthy as being really popular or making a lot of money or having big eyebrows, that's just the cultural field talking, and you get to choose. And look, I'm not saying you don't want to make a lot of money or you don't want to have those big, thick, juicy, bushy eyebrows. By the way, in that society, a thick unibrow is the tops. That person becomes a supermodel. I'm not saying you don't want that stuff. And there's no problem in wanting that stuff. The problem is all of my worth is in that one basket. And so if I'm not hitting it, then I am wretched and worthless. That's what we got to challenge. That's what we got to do is. And the way we solve that is diversifying. And in order to diversify, you need to realize I am the inner authority. And so the way you get back to that is who gets to choose your worth? And that's the question that I'll leave you with today. Thanks for being with me. Until we speak again, we have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. 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 it.