Why You’re Anxious Even When Life Is Good

Do you struggle to feel confident in yourself or maybe in life ahead of you despite being relatively okay, capable, maybe people like you, maybe you have a lot of success? And so why do I still feel like I'm not enough and bad things are going to happen to me, right? So that is what this video is about, and it bleeds into everything in our lives, whether it's workplace and imposter syndrome, relationship anxiety, fear of the future, chronic feelings of not enough despite a lot of achievement and success. What's underneath all of this is one thing. That's what I'm going to cover in this video. So if you relate to that profile and you feel like this is where you're at in your life, you're gonna find this extremely valuable. I'm Dr. Aziz. I'm the founder of the Center for Social Confidence. And my work has taken me more and more beyond just social confidence, how do I talk to people and get friends, to a deeper form of authenticity. And now more and more with my most recent book called Doubtless: How to Believe in Yourself and Trust in Life, into more of like really doing that. How do you really move through life with a fundamental sense of inner security and trust? And that is not just about becoming more badass, 'cause that's what a lot of confidence is, right? It's peak performance. How do I achieve more, earn more, get more, be more? But then people are going to notice me, and then I'm going to get it, whatever, the goodies, right? I'm going to get love, I'm going to get recognition, I'm going to get power, I'm going to get safety and security through accumulation. And there's nothing wrong with that. And I still teach people how to become more confident, more assertive, more themselves. I think it's a core essential capacity in life. And yet there's something that's not resolved through accumulation. And maybe you've seen that in your own life. You know, do you already have a partner? Do you already have some friends? You already have some career success? You already have some money? And make sure— maybe more. I want more of more of all those things. Great. But is more of all those things going to give you a fundamental deep sense of security, confidence, trust, ease, flow, or not? Now, you could see from your own experience depending on where you are in your life, but I would tell you, having done that for many years, that the answer seems to be no. Certainly for me and many people that I've come across, worked, helped, but maybe you'll get there, right? There's a great quote from Les Brown. He says, we all know that money It's not going to solve all our problems, but we all want to find out for ourselves. So maybe there's a part of you who wants like to find that out, but you can just take my word for it and maybe you've seen this in your own life. Not quite yet, right? So what's going on there? Well, the problem is there's an illusion, which is the better I get or the more that I've done something, the more I've done this procedure, the more I've led this kind of meeting, the more whatever, then the more certainty I'm going to have, right? Because I've done it before, or I know I'm good at this. I know I can do it that, and therefore my anxiety will go away. My confidence will be sky high and it's awesome. And the story kind of checks out, right? Like if you're brand new at something, you've never done it before, yeah, you're gonna be pretty nervous. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. And if you've done something a million times, you're more confident with it, right? That's true. But that's not totally how life works, right? If it's a super self-contained thing, like can you build this birdhouse out of this wood material and you've done that 500 times, sure, you have total confidence in your birdhouse abilities. But life isn't like building a preassembled thing or putting together a birdhouse, right? It's got so many more variables that are beyond your control. So for example, let's say you've led a certain kind of meeting a bunch. So of course I can lead this meeting, I should feel totally confident, right? But each time, maybe the meeting's different, maybe there's new people there, maybe it's a new challenge in work that you haven't dealt with before, maybe there's someone coming in, maybe your company's in a different place, or there's this new thing or new emerging thing in the marketplace that feels threatening or challenging, right? It's always changing. It's like a river, it's not the same. You go back to the same river the next day, sure, it's still water moving through, but it's pretty different river. Ultimately, it's different water moving through. That's how your life is. Same thing when it comes to social confidence, right? Like, I'm going to talk to anybody, I can speak up. Sure, but you don't know how people are going to respond. And so if confidence is based upon a sense of certainty of I know what's going to happen, that leads to a lot of anxiety. And especially when there's change in life. And guess what? There's gonna be change in life, and a lot of it. And not always when we choose it, like, oh, I'm gonna make a change in my diet today, I'm gonna make a change in my career, right? No, like, life just comes comes at you. It's all of a sudden, hey, you got this health thing, you got to change the way you eat now. Okay, right? Or life changes in your career, or a relationship changes. There's some change in the friendship or your partnership or something, and all of a sudden we're adapting to that. That's how a lot of change occurs in life. And so now how do we feel confident? And what if the change is uncomfortable or hard or unpleasant or painful? Well, I certainly have to feel anxious now, right? But there is a way out, and that's what I put forth in my book Doubtless, and what I'm going to encourage for you today, which is not to get confidence by controlling everything, but by getting confidence by letting go of the need for certainty to control things. So there's a sense of control. Either I can control this or I have certainty that I know what's going to happen, and therefore it's kind of like a pseudo form of control. Either way, it gives you a sense of solidity inside, something to hold on to, and that actually breaks down the longer you live, the more you succeed. And ultimately we're left with a lot of anxiety despite being in maybe great circumstances. So then what we need to do to really fundamentally shift this is increase your capacity for uncertainty. Now, there's a phrase that a lot of people have come across. If you've explored this at all, they call it uncertainty tolerance. Now, that's pretty good, but tolerance, I mean, doesn't tolerating always sound like something crappy that you just gotta get better at dealing with, right? Tolerate it. This is awful, but I'm going to tolerate it. And that already puts it in opposition with uncertainty, right? Like, I guess I'll deal with you because I have to. And that's fine as an initial stage, like a reluctant kind of begrudging beginning of acceptance, but it's not real acceptance. And to really liberate yourself— and that's a term that has been coming to me more and more and more beyond just confidence— is liberation, freedom. How do I become fully myself, freely myself? Yes, that involves social confidence and better relationships, but it's free to be me in this And then freedom from fear of the future, freedom from needing a certain circumstance to be a certain way, or I'm not okay, and then I'm afraid of it in the future. If it's happening now, my life's awful. Like, that's not freedom. That's conditional relief at best. So I want a sense of greater freedom. And in order to do that, we have to go beyond uncertainty tolerance. We have to actually go to being able to be with uncertainty in a totally new way, maybe in a way of deeper acceptance, like really allowing life to be as it is, and then taking it one step further and actually embracing uncertainty. Relishing uncertainty, choosing and preferring and being grateful that uncertainty exists. And I know this is a huge stretch if you've lived your life with like perma-control guiding the ship. And I'm not going to suggest that you go from that perma-control mode to just blast it all open, man. Just let the current take you wherever you go, man. Right? No, what I'm saying is you have to take a clenching fist inside of you that's trying to get certainty, trying to understand, trying to know, trying to predict, trying to control. And over time, gently, softly letting go and loosening that grip and letting life be, letting all the things that you don't control be out of your control and realizing that what I really need to focus on is not controlling everything or having total certainty. It's being with uncertainty and becoming a student, like really studying why is this uncertainty so threatening to me? And is there a different way to be with that? That allows me to be free? Like, what if uncertainty isn't some terrible affliction that happens and you get sick with it? Oh no, I'm in a period of uncertainty. This is awful. What if uncertainty is actually a condition of life? And the more you can allow your life to float in that uncertainty and learn something, mature in some ways, you can actually enjoy yourself in that flow without needing to know, okay, it's all going to go well, right? Okay, it's all going to go badly, right? Well, I got to either way, just Give it to me straight. I got to know the truth. I just, I don't know. I don't know. And notice how I'm smiling as I say that. It's like, I don't know. And isn't that ultimately true? Do you really know what's going to happen tomorrow, in a month, in a year, in 5 years, in 10 years? Do you really know? And if you think you know, how do you know that? What are you basing that on? And I always teach clients with this. I'm like, well, if you got that level of certainty about the future, then you got any stock picks for me? You know, where should we go to Vegas? What should we do here? Because this is a What's the superpower that you have? It's like some sort of X-Men ability. We should capitalize on that. So we don't know. And that actually can be a beautiful thing. And I would say one key clue here to focus on is not control, but resilience, your ability to navigate any season. And so then it's not about hoping it's only good seasons, but knowing that no matter what happens, I can move through it. And not like I'll survive it with gritted teeth and one leg left., but like it's actually going to grow me and I'm going to emerge on the other side of that more and alive and more open-hearted. Like, what if everything that came to you in life opened you up more? And so there's a confidence, not of self-confidence, I can control, get what I want, but a confidence in your ability to flow with life, be a part of life, connected with life. So if this is speaking your language, you want to go further down this rabbit hole, definitely check out my book Doubtless. I think you'll absolutely love it. And just know that this absolutely applies not in some theoretical philosophical way, but like literally to your workday on Tuesday. How much am I trying to control here? That's a powerful thing you can look at is how much am I trying to control right now? And I'm going to tell you, the more you're trying to control, the more uncertainty is unacceptable, the more anxious you're going to feel, the more stressed you're going to feel. And so if we can shift that fundamentally at its root, then you can really set yourself free. Thanks for being with me today. 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.