Why Doing Things Alone Is Awesome

Do you allow yourself to enjoy activities alone? Do you go to movies, parties, bars, concerts, events and other places by yourself? Or are you held back by fear? What if you had the freedom to go anywhere and do anything and trust that you're going to have an awesome time and maybe even meet some new friends along the way? That's what we're going to dive into in today's episode.

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 show. I am excited to be with you today. Excited. I am pumped. Hopefully you're pumped. And there's some great stuff because here today, which is about why doing things alone is awesome, is going to just open up your world. 10 frames. I mean, it totally changed my life when I learned this, and I hope it's gonna do the same for you. And if you're already comfortable doing stuff alone, this is only just gonna reinforce that and give you even more freedom to own it. So let's. Let's dive in. I'm very excited. If you'd like to jump into the conversation the show, go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and you can send a voicemail message there. You can also call the studio hotline at 206-338-338-3176. Leave a message there. And that's how I get some of the questions that I answer and ask the shrink. And you can go to facebook.com SocialConfidenceCenter go there like that page and you get all the updates about Shrink for the shy guy and everything else that I'm up to in the world, which is a lot. And there's a million and one ways that you can transform your confidence, and it is absolutely a skill. You've heard me say this a lot, probably. If you've listened to this show before and if this is your first show, welcome. Confidence is a skill and you can learn it and anyone can learn it. And if you stick around, you will discover that yourself. So I'm so excited to be with you and go to facebook.com SocialConfidenceCenter to get started on your journey. So today we're gonna look at why doing things alone and is awesome. So first of all, let's look at what makes us not do stuff alone, because this is where I live for many years, and this is where you might be too, is I wouldn't do that much stuff Alone. Maybe a little, a few things, but not a whole lot. And primarily because of fear. That's right. That's the one thing that holds us back from doing anything is fear. Everything else is a story or an excuse. It's just fear underneath the emotion of fear. Fear of doing stuff alone. So what are you afraid of? First of all, what would you want to do alone? What are the things that you want to do that you currently don't do because you're like, well, I don't have anyone to do them with. Think about that for a second. Is it. Would you go to some more music shows? Would you go to the movies? Would you go to dinner? Would you go to a bar, out to a club, out to some event, a party, a gathering? What is it that you currently don't go to as much because you're like, I need someone to go with. Oh, none of my friends want to go. Okay, I guess I won't go either, right? I talked to one guy. He's like, yeah, my friends don't want to do things. And I was like, why don't you go? He's like, well, alone, I got to hang out with my friends. Interesting. So what are his fears? What are your fears? What were my fears? Well, one is people are gonna judge me, right? If I'm out there alone. That's probably the only one. Really. It's just a bunch of versions of that. People are gonna judge me for being alone. They're gonna see that I'm by myself, and they're gonna say, wow, what a total loser. That guy's all by himself, and they're gonna infer all kinds of things. He must not have any friends. He must be weirdo. You know, he's just some loner. Stay away from that guy. He's just a loner weirdo, right? Isn't that the fear or some version of that? And whether they say those things to you or not, it's just like, they're gonna look at you, they're gonna see you alone in the movie and be like, oh, wow, what a poor, lonely loser. What a loser. That's what it comes down to. And then. So then we have this fear of people judging us, and we have this fear that we can't tell anyone. So it's like, oh, my God, If I were to meet someone, let's say I was at a bar by myself, and I started talking to a woman, and she's like, so, who are you here with? And I couldn't say. I'm just here by myself. And I have to say, oh, my friends are here in the bathroom right now. All of them, or, oh, yeah, my friends were here. They took off. I don't know, you make up some bullshit, some story. So, no, we don't have to do any of that. We're going to hopefully free you of all that. But do you resonate with these fears? This is what kept me stuck for many years. And often they're unexamined. Right. We don't think through all that stuff. We just don't even think of it as an option to go do something by ourselves. Or consider it for a moment, maybe envision an awkward scenario of being alone somewhere and people thinking we're a loser, and then we move on. So we have to unearth those fears to be free of them. That's always the case, is we got to find out what is the fear so we can be free of it and we absolutely can shift this. We can be free of this. So in order to figure out how to do that, let's take a quick break right now, and when we get back, I'm going to jump into a transformation that I had, a conversation, one conversation I had with someone that changed my entire life. Life, really, honestly, because when you can do stuff alone, your life just opens up tenfold. And I'm going to share what he said in that conversation and how you can use it, and then we're going to dive into how to break free of this fear, how to overcome your fear of doing stuff alone. So stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this.

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Welcome back. So what was that conversation that I had that changed my entire destiny? Well, it was a conversation with a fellow named Gary Miles, who was actually, when I was back in graduate school in clinical psychology at Stanford, he was a supervisor at a clinic that I was working at. I was working at a veterans hospital, working with some vets there. And he was my supervisor. And he was this tall Black guy, like 6 foot 2, muscular, drove fast cars, wore cool sunglasses. He was just. He was kind of my hero. It's like, this guy is cool. And I was really. I'd made some progress through my shyness at that point, a little bit, you know, decent, I'd say, but I was still really restricted, you know. And he could probably tell that from a mile away. And so I remember our supervision conversations were great because sometimes it would be about, you know, my work there and my caseload and stuff. And sometimes we'd just chat about life. And so I remember one time we were having a supervision, it was probably on a Friday, and he, like, asked me, like, so what do you got going on this weekend? And I think I told him some things. And here's the interesting thing, though. It just so happened that that weekend, I think a friend or someone had invited told me about a party on a beach in a town called Santa Cruz, which was about 45 minutes from where I lived. And then they said they ended up I was invited. But then the person that invited me was not able to go anymore. And so I was like, well, I can't go to this party, you know? And I actually told him about that. I was like, there's a party, but I can't go because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I loved his expressions, man. He had his. So imagine this guy, he had his. He always would sit with his, like, hands behind his head, you know, that kind of power pose. And if you don't know about power poses, check out there's a TED Talk by I forget her name, but just look up, like, power pose, TED Talk, body language or something. Anyway, it's one of the poses they do in that study where his hands are kind of behind his head, you know, with your elbows kind of flayed out. He's just like, high power guy, right? So he's like. I say, well, I can't go, blah, blah, blah. And he just looks at me and he pauses and he's like, why not? I was like, because I'm a loser if I go somewhere alone. And he just kind of looked at me. He's like, what are you talking about? It's great to go places alone. It's awesome. I love doing stuff alone. I was like, really? He's like, yeah. I mean, it's great. And besides, not only is it fun, you get to meet people, but when you can do stuff alone and you don't need anyone else, you are totally free. I was like, oh. And that was one of my power words. He stumbled upon it without knowing it, which was free. And it still is to this day. I call it freedom, social freedom, liberation, which is like, oh, wow. The sense of freedom in life that I Don't think comes from having any sort of amount. Freedom can come from having a certain amount of money and a certain amount of liberties in your life. But freedom really comes from an internal state of being able to allow yourself to do what you want. And that's where social freedom comes in, to be able to talk to who you want. And this kind of freedom, which is I want to be able to go do something that I want. And so you know what? He really inspired me. And I went and I took the risk and I went to this party and it was awesome. It was awesome. I just. Because of his confidence, of like, I maybe even asked him, like, well, what about if someone asked if you're there alone? And he's like, so what? I like to meet people. I'm here to meet people. I'm here to hang out. I was like, oh. And it wasn't even so much what he said. And if you're getting so hung up on, like, well, what would I say? It's really about your attitude. It's your tone, it's your energy. If you're okay with it, people are okay with it. If you're not okay with it, people are gonna pick up on that as well. So you just gotta be totally solid in yourself, totally okay with it. And so that's how I showed up to this party. And it was fine. No one even asked me. A few people asked me, like, who I knew and I said the person. And they're like, oh, yeah, you can't make it. I was like, I know, bummer. Anyway, so blah, blah, blah. And we just. It was not even. People didn't even miss a beat. And that opened up a whole new door to me. Then I got excited. Then I was like, I wanna challenge this fear everywhere. So I used to have some discomfort about going to the movies alone. I would still do it, but I felt. I just felt judged a lot of the time in my own brain. And I'm going to teach you about that in a moment about what's happening there and how to be free of it. But so I started to go to movies alone. I even went to a nice dinner alone. I mean, I used to get like, eat a burrito and read a magazine or something. But I actually went to a nice dinner at this Italian restaurant in Mountain View and sat down and just ate this meal. And I'm going to show you how to deal with all the fears that come up around this. And then I started going to electronic music. I'm a huge fan of bass. And electronic music. And I started going to all these shows because I like that more than bars. I found bars to be not as fun because I don't like to drink that much. And I also, you know, just the whole, the environment's loud and I like to be at a place that I found really fun. So like an electronic music show where I really dug the music and then if I wanted, I could drink or I could meet people and talk to women and that sort of thing. So that was my thing. I don't know what it is for you, but you can start doing stuff alone. So let's jump into how to overcome your fear of doing stuff alone. Let's take a quick break and we're going to jump back into that right after this. You're going to learn all about the feared fantasy and how not to lie, how to be totally comfortable in yourself around doing stuff alone. So stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this.

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So how do we overcome our fear of doing stuff alone? The fear of being judged, the fear of people thinking you're a loser, so on and so forth. The first thing to know is that it's just projection. It's just projection. Do you know what projection is? Projection is when we have a judgment of ourselves that we imagine is coming from other people. So it's like if you, I don't know, you look down, you're like, oh, my shoes don't go with these pants. Oh man, I'm wearing the wrong shoes all night. And then what happens? You get out to the club or wherever it is that you're going and. And you know, or hell, it could be a business meeting, right? Like, oh, my business. I've had that before where I'm like, oh man, my pants puddle a little around these business shoes. Whatever it is, you get there and then the whole time or a lot of the time you're there, you're like, oh man, that guy thinks my shoes look stupid. Oh, she rejected me because my shoes were no good. Oh, that guy didn't want to network with me because my pants puddled around my shoes. Right. So we're. We're imagining it. We're putting it into the minds of others because it's our own, but it's our own criticism of ourselves. So a beauty of knowing that. One of the freeing things about knowing that is that if you're okay with it, the world is okay with it. So if it doesn't bother you, it won't bother the world. I mean, people aren't going to. First of all, it's not even happening. People aren't noticing you that much. People don't care about you that much. That's the unfortunate truth. No one. I mean. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. I'm gonna stop talking to my friends. Okay. You see that guy over there? Yeah. No, no. Four people over. Yeah. Yeah, I think. I think, you know. No, no, I know he's talking to people right now, but I think he walked in by himself. Yeah. Oh, my God. That guy is a total. I mean, who's doing that? What is going on with the person if they're doing that? Right? So, you know, it's not happening. And here's the thing. Just get there and. And start talking to people, start interacting with people, join into groups. In fact, if you go somewhere alone, the best thing to do is just dive into it right away. So you walk into the door, give yourself 5 to 10 seconds to survey the scene, and then walk over to some people and start talking to them. Hey, guys, how's it going? Just jump right in. That is the most powerful way. And then once you're in that group, then you can go to another group. You can interact with people. You just feel more on that whole time, whether it's a networking meeting or a bar or wherever you're at. And here's another thing. Don't lie. Don't pretend that you're not there alone. So, first of all, it's going to be really rare that someone asks you, but if they do, you know, just say, I'm just here. So are you here by yourself? Might be a question you might get. Yeah, I love this place. I love to come here and meet people. That's it. I don't need to, and I don't need to be like, wow. Yeah, I know. Oh, God, Grimace. Please don't judge me. Just let that go. Just own it. Yeah. Oh, I love coming out here. I love doing stuff alone. Oh, man. Do you do stuff alone? Oh, you don't? It's fear around that. Wow, what an interesting conversation you can get into. Those are the kind of conversations that I like to get into most. But here's the thing. You don't need to lie. And just in general in your life, you don't ever need to lie to hide anything about yourself. Don't lie to hide things about yourself. That just poisons your confidence because it shows you that there's parts of you that it's not okay. And, oh, my God, I couldn't handle it and people are going to judge me. No, just don't ever lie about yourself. It's no good. So here's a technique to help you break free of your fear of doing stuff alone. It's called the feared fantasy. So what you want to do is you want to imagine what are all the fears? What are all the things that someone might say to me that I'm worried about? Like, maybe they never say it in their head, but they think it. Like, that guy's a loser. He's here by himself. He has no friends. He's a creep, whatever it is. So imagine all those things and ideally you could actually write them down and then you're going to practice responding to them. And I love enrolling my wife for this or a friend for this, where you get it outside of your head and it's actually funny. I end up laughing a lot. But anyway, let's say someone says, oh, are you here all alone? Yeah, actually, I am. I love to come here and meet people. Oh, well, that's. You must be a loser. A loser? Well, that's a strong word. Wow, you don't hold any punches. No, I don't think I'm a loser for coming out. I think it actually takes a lot of confidence and courage and it's a great way to meet people. Hell, I'm gonna meet a lot more people coming out by myself than I am if I went out with a few friends. Yeah, but no one should go out by themselves. That's just bad and weird. Okay. I'm not really even sure how to respond to that. I totally disagree. I think it's great to do stuff. I think, why should we be scared? I mean, hell, I'm a leader in my life. I'm gonna go out and do what I wanna do, right? And so on and so forth. So I know that was me and me. So a little crazy. I know. But it's powerful when you do this. So do this with you. And you do this in a journal. Best of all, get a friend. If you're like, oh, my God, I couldn't get a friend, because then he'd know that I have fears. Dude, get over it. I mean, what kind of friendships do you want in your life? I personally want friends who know what's going on in my life, who we can help each other with shit and we can laugh and have a good time and watch a movie or whatever. So to me, I want to create an amazing life. And also, the more you do that, the more you let people in your world, the more confident you're going to become. So let's end with your actions, then. Time for action. Your action step for today is to do something alone. And I don't know, when you're listening to this episode, if you can't because your day is full or whatever, then tomorrow or on the weekend. But commit to something. Pick something, figure it out, and then go do it alone. And then just work through it all. Work if there's fear or discomfort, you know, do that feared fantasy. Send yourself love. Relax yourself. Just practice this stuff because it's a. It's a form of exposure. And the more you do it, the more you break free of it. And eventually it just becomes one of my favorite things to do in the world, which I don't do that much anymore because we have a little guy now, but is go to movies by myself, man. So it went from being something that I was uncomfortable with to something I love. And in fact, as you might know from any sort of exposure work, when you do it a lot, it ends up being one of the things you love most. Like for me, public speaking, something I love talking. You know, I used to be terrified to talk to attractive women. Then it became one of the things that I loved most, and now it's public speaking. I mean, all the things that we used to be scared of, if we confront them, can become things that we love because there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of charge there. We can get a high from it. So get out there and do something by yourself. Your life will never be the same again. So that brings us to the end of today's episode. Stay tuned for next week. We're going to jump into something really fascinating about real confidence versus bravado and how you can tell the difference and how you can get to a place of real confidence more and more in your life. So excited to see you in that episode and join you there. If you want to jump into the conversation, go to facebook.com SocialConfidenceCenter and pass this episode along to anyone that you think could benefit from it. And if you want to give it a review on itunes, that would be awesome and much appreciated. So I'd love if you could do that. Thanks so much for listening. 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.

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 see. 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.

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