Why You're Stuck (Reason #1)

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 to today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. Today we're going to be talking about one of the top reasons why you might be feeling stuck. Stuck when it comes to becoming more free and bold and expressive. And this is something I've seen in clients over the last 15, 20 years. And in fact, I'm going to be sharing the top three reasons why people get stuck. But instead of skimming over all of them in one episode, I decided to split it up and talk about reason number one in this episode and then reason number two in a later episode. So you can really see the patterns. Because I think one of the reasons why my book Not Nice was so successful is because it spends a long time writing, really diagnosing and breaking apart and breaking down the problem, the niceness, the pleasing, the urge to avoid discomfort and disapproval. Because the more clearly you can see what you're doing that's not working or it's holding you back, the more quickly you can identify when you're running that pattern and change it. And that's really what today is about to help you see a pattern you might be running. You might not even be aware that you're running it and it's keeping you stuck. Duck. And then you're getting absorbed in some other story that's not even really true. It's like a red herring that's going, sending you on this long circuitous route that's not getting you where you want to be. And you think it's this other thing, but actually it's this one reason I'm going to share with you in today's episode. By the way, depending on when you're listening to this, tickets might still be available for my in person event. Haven't done one of those in a couple of years. It's called Liberate yourself and we're gonna be spending three days together in May, May 19th through 21st, 2023. Here in Vancouver, Washington, which is just right north of Portland, Oregon. So you'd fly into Portland and then Washington's like 15 minutes from the Portland airport. And we're gonna be spending three days going deep and having an experience where you're going to be able to make a radical and rapid shift. And the goal of those three days is to leave that event as a different version of you. And we're not just going to talk about it, we're going to practice it, we're going to do it. So it's going to be a powerful experience. If you've never been in person with me or it's been a long time, man, there's something in those experiences that just cannot be created anywhere else. So I'd love to share that experience with you. Just go to draziz.com that'S-R-A Z I Z.com and click on the Events tab and in there you'll see a link to go check out Liberate yourself. You learn more about it and if you want to register, you can. We do have a. It's an in person venue and it has a limited number of seats and depending on when you're listening to this, they may or may not be full. So definitely check that out. Okay. Reason number one that you're stuck is what I would call closed loops. So what is a closed loop? Well, it goes like this. You have a hypothesis about how something's going to go. You have a guess about if I go talk to that person, they're going to like me or they're not going to like me. If I ask that person out, they're going to say yes, they're going to say no. If I take that risk and work, it's going to go well and people are going to think I'm awesome. Or if I go for I'm going to get the promotion or I'm not, you know, or I'm going to fail the interview, I'm going to fail the test, whatever. You know your stories are you have some sense or some prediction of how it's going to go. And what is that based on? Is that accurate? Is that a reasonable prediction? Well, it depends. Often our predictions are based upon the past. So I tried that before and it didn't work. So it's probably not going to work again. Now we're in the fallacy of the past equals the future, which it doesn't. But that's a, that's a story we can have. Maybe it's rooted in your identity. You Know, I'm not the kind of guy that someone would find attractive, so it's not going to go well. That's my. Was my story for many years, right? Like, I'm not an attractive man, so why would she be interested in talking to me? I already know what's going to happen. So it's rooted in my identity, my perceptions of myself. Sometimes it's based on an accurate assessment of your experience level. So if someone's like, hey, Aziz, do you want to change out the engine on my 1994 Chevy? Be like, oh, you want to do together? I'll help you if you show me what to do. I'm not going to get it. I don't know what the hell's going on in that engine. Not yet. That I will sometime in my life, master machines, but. So that's an accurate reflection of my skill or expertise in that area. And it's a mixture of all those things. When we make that decision, that calculation, that hypothesis, in an instant, our brains are amazing, right? And so then. Then you act based upon that. You don't talk, or you do talk. You don't go for it, or you do go for it. And the problem and the reason why people can stay stuck is because they operate in a closed loop or a closed system. And it goes like this. I have an idea. I'll give you an example. When I was younger and dating, right? I have the story or the idea I'm not attractive. No woman could see me that way. Then what kind of action do I take based upon that story? Do you think I was flirting with women, approaching women, asking women out, having conversations, connecting, teasing? Any of that? No. No. Because I know how it's going to go. It's going to go badly. She's going to be like, this guy. What a loser. And so I would not talk to women at all. That was probably my primary style. It's a good one. By the way, are you doing that one right now in your dating life or with assertiveness or public speaking or something? It's like, I'm not good at that. Yeah. What are you gonna do about it? I'm gonna stay away with as far away from that as I can get me out of here. So I did that for many years. But if I did talk to a woman, I would be more pleasing, more friendly, just kind of more vanilla. Like that wouldn't just bring all of me, which, if you're aware of this or unfortunately have experienced this as a man who's doing that, you're Sort of neutralizing or diluting all of your masculine energy. And so she's just not going to feel that attracted. And I attributed to my physical appearance. I'm not tall enough, I'm not muscular enough, I'm not white enough, I have circles around my eyes. And it was none of that. I wasn't emitting a strong enough energy signal because I was certain that I was unlovable. And so when you have this closed and I'm just giving you a dating example, you're going to have stories about yourself at work, socially, everywhere, right? But they all have a certain theme which is like you're not enough and you can't and it won't work. And so when you believe that story, then you don't take any effective action or your action is really half hearted, half assed, kind of almost looking to prove your story is right. And that fundamentally is what this is all about, which I'll get to in just a second. But let me lay out the pattern and then we'll talk about what's underneath it and why you're doing it and then how to be free of it. So I test it out. Either don't try at all or try, but doesn't go the way that I hoped. Kind of goes the way that I expect and I'm right. And then I come back and I say, you see, I knew she wouldn't be into me. You see, I knew they wouldn't listen to me. You see, I knew they people don't respect me. And then you reinforce that old story and strengthen it. And the stronger it gets, the more you keep acting in this pattern and this becomes what you might have heard of. It's got a term that a lot of people know which is self fulfilling prophecy. So what's going on there? What's that about? Well, before I share, do you relate to this? Do you see where you're doing this somewhere in your life? Because this is an important part of listening to this show. As entertaining as I am, I'm gonna take a sip of water here. By the way, as entertaining as I am, I'm not here to entertain you, okay? I'm here to entertain you a little bit. I'm hopefully making it entertaining enough that you will receive the information. But I don't want just that. I want you to do something with the information. That's why I have the action steps at the end of these episodes. That's why I run this year long mastermind program and do all these events. And that's why I'm leading this in person event. Liberate yourself, because I want you to do something, and therefore experience something, and therefore liberate yourself. So when you reflect on where you might be doing this, what do you see? Now? I'll share what's going on and what's underneath. I am either not going to do it, or I'm going to do it in a way that's going to prove that I'm right. And when you're right, that gives you a sense of solidity, control, predictability, certainty. It feels good to be right. It. It like, brings you together. It's like, okay, I'm safe. In some strange way, at least I am right. At least I know what's going on. It's almost orienting. Like, you at least know what the hell's going on in this crazy universe that we find ourselves in. At least that's what it feels like. It's the illusion of being in control, the illusion of knowing what's going on. But really, you're just latching on to some perspective because it gives you a sense of ground or solidity, but it's anything but solid. It's just made up. It's just smoke and mirrors, my friend. But you've imbued it with a sense of certainty. And people will hold to their core beliefs about themselves, like a religion, like a fervent faith. But instead of faith in something inspiring, it's a faith in a freaking demon that just keeps you stuck. It keeps you living a life that's not yours and dying with regret, ultimately. But people hold on to that. Now, why? Why would someone sink their teeth into it? And I see this all the time. It's more rare for me now because the way I choose clients is very different. I get to be very selective in who I work with, and I only work with people who are ready. I do a lot of filtering. You know, people have to apply for my mastermind program for me to work with them. People can come to my virtual and live events. They just buy a ticket, and there's no barrier to entry there other than buying a ticket. But if I want to become a client of mine, they got to apply. And then I got to interview them. And I'm assessing because if someone is more focused on proving they're right than actually making the changes they say they want, then I can't help them. And back in my therapy days, where I kind of just took whoever, whoever had insurance, whoever would work with me then there was a lot of clients who are kind of like, yeah, but, you know, and now I'm just like, hey, if you. If you want certainty more than you want the extraordinary life, maybe I'm not your guy. And so what's happening there, though, is we're hungering. We're sinking our teeth into certainty. And I still will see this with clients sometimes, but they want something different. They're just running this old pattern. They don't see it. And that's probably where you're at, too. And so I can help them see it. When they see it, they can start to make changes. What it is in its most fundamental level is a prioritization of certainty, that solid feeling of that safety that comes with that. And that's my highest desire. You might say you want something else. I want love. I want career success. I want friends. I want social freedom. Really? Do you now? Yeah. But I don't want to let go of any negative stories about myself, and I want to know exactly how it's going to go. And I don't want anyone to reject me, and I don't want any awkward moments of silence. And I certainly don't want someone to judge me. And I never want to put anything out there that gets a negative comment online. Okay? So what you really want is to stay protected from all criticism, all judgment. And the way you're going to do that is you're going to hold on to some negative story that keeps you from acting and keeps you safe, quote, unquote safe. So maybe a simpler way to say that is you're addicted to certainty. And you might say you want some. Just like someone who says, I don't want to drink anymore, I want a healthy, you know, relationships in my life. I want a great. I want a great career and. But what they really want is to keep drinking if that's what they are doing. So, anyway. So. Well, that's the nature of addiction, right? They're out of control. They have to go to aa, admit that they're not in control. Now, there's differing opinions on that. I'm not gonna go down that route. But the takeaway is that that person says they want one thing, and then they go back and do another. That's partly how you might identify addiction, right? Is a lack of ability to choose, to feel like you can choose. And if you look at certainty in your life, does it really feel like you have choice? Or does it feel like there's an addiction running there? And what I've seen is often for people, there is. So how do you heal that? How do you release that? Well, what is the experience of not collapsing down into that perspective and getting safety and certainty from thinking you're not enough or no one's gonna like you. Or in my case, telling me she's not gonna want to talk to me, so why even try? Well, the opposite of that is uncertainty, unknown, mystery, spontaneity, discovery. Going into the unknown to see what's there. Adventuring, if you will. So do you want that? Can you start to hunger for that more than the certainty? And when most people even imagine, and certainly me, after doing many years of hiding and holding back and playing it safe, to imagine going into the unknown is scary, it's freaky, and it's almost like this. I think I even talk about this in the Art of Extraordinary Confidence, my second book, I call it. I think I'm referencing like Zelda 2. And there's a little in Zelda 2 in case you never played it, it was a Nintendo game and it was so great. Ah, nostalgia. Anyway, you. You would run around out in the woods killing things and stuff and, and then you'd occasionally go into a town and, and you'd walk into a town and people would tell you things and sometimes you'd learn clues about where stuff was. But in the book, I made it as if there was a town and the town was very far away from the, the edge of your comfort zone. From the leap across the chasm into the unknown. And when we're in the town, we're very far from it. We're very safe from it. We're in our stories and it might be miserable in that town, but at least it feels like you're not going to die. And then when you start to work your way to the edge of that cliff where you have to jump across, it's scary, it can be really uncomfortable. And that's that uncertainty that I'm inviting you to move towards and to go into. And one of the ways that I help clients do this is with gradual exposure. Because if it's like, go, if you told me when I was a 16 year old kid, go talk to those four women who are giggling over there, I mean, you might as well say, jump across this 30 foot chasm with crocodiles underneath. Like my nervous system just couldn't do it. It would have actually set me up for failure because I would have tried to push myself if for some reason I did. And I did have a few experiences like that that were so embarrassing that it actually is counterproductive because now you're like, oh, My God, I could fall into that crocodile pit. And it was worse than I even thought. I lost a leg. Right? And so that's why most, most almost always, sometimes I'll go with a more hardcore approach if a client is really ready and really wants to. But for the most part, I almost always advocate, hey, let's take it slow. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. As my friend Josh would say, he learned in the, in the army. And so let's take it slow. And slow actually goes way faster. You just click, click, click, click, click, work your way up. What I call is the ladder to victory, which I talk about in Confidence University, where I have four courses that guide you through Core Confidence Foundation, Social Mastery, Dating Mastery, and Career Acceleration. But in there we talk about the ladder to victory, where you map all this out and you take it step by step by step and you work your way up so it doesn't freak out your nervous system and overwhelm you too much. So you can handle a little bit of uncertainty. What's the uncertainty of just saying hi to somebody? I mean, the likelihood of you losing a leg in that scenario is low, let's say, depending on who, who you're saying hi to and what weapons they're holding. Right. But saying hi to somebody that's real low level can be still uncomfortable. But it taps you into that uncertainty of I don't know what's gonna come my way. Because the path to getting unstuck, the path to living the life that you want, is not briefly going from your comfort certainty ville out into the woods of unknown and then running back to town. It's questing out in those woods. It's going further and then going beyond what's beyond those? The mountains. Oh, wow. What's beyond what's, what are the mountains like? And then what's beyond that? And then your life becomes an adventure because you're not just hastily and compulsively running back to the known. You've cultivated your capacity to reside in the. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen when I say hi to that person. I don't know what's going to happen when I ask that person out. I don't know what's going to happen when I take that church change in my career. And it doesn't mean I'm never scared. It just means I'm courageous. Right. Think about someone going on a literal adventure out of the town back in ye olden times, through the woods where there's bandits and Thieves and marauding gangs and dragons and such. Probably they might have been scared, but here I go. Reminds me of, I think it was the Hobbit cartoon. Maybe they made a newer one. But when I watched it when I was a kid, I think it was made in the 70s and I watched it in the 80s and it was okay. I don't say it was great, but anyway. Bilbo Baggins sings this song before he goes on his adventure. The greatest adventure. It's so bad. No offense to anyone that likes that. It's one of those cartoons where I didn't even like it that much when I was a kid, but I got to watch something and so I was like, I'm watching something. This is, I'll take this over anything, even if it's kind of bad. But you know, he was scared before he set out and you might be too. So this isn't about some bravado and pretending like you're fearless. This is about courage, being willing to go into the unknown because it's worth it. So let's talk about how to turn this in action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step is going to be to, to practice going into the unknown on purpose in a low level, manageable way. Something you could consistently do a couple times a week for a month or two. Just take it real slow. You'd be amazed at how much it speeds up. So I'm going to say hi to that person. I'm going to lean in a little bit. And the key is not just to do the action. The key is to look for what is real. And I'll do this with clients. So in my Mastermind program, when they share about an action they took like that, some, you know, a small thing, I'll say, well, how did the person respond? And my goal there is not to say, oh, they responded positively. Yay, that's so good. Oh, they didn't like it? Oh, no, no. I'm not on that level of drama. I know the long term trajectory. I know if you keep showing up and you keep taking bold action and going to the unknown, your life's going to get extraordinary. It's just a matter of time. So I'm taking the long view. But the reason I'm asking is because if they get a positive response, I say, oh, so you, what did you, what did you used to imagine would happen? Oh, they would reject you and then you took the risk and then what did happen? And it might sound like I'm almost being condescending or like laying it out like, like they're a child or something. But it's not my intention at all, and it's actually for the benefit of the whole group is. It's. I'm. I'm making it really clear. We're consciously taking in oh my stories are not true. They're closed loops. And I got to crack those suckers open and get new information, new data, new experience, new evidence, and then therefore, a new life. So thanks for being with me today. Speaking of a new life, if you're called to spend three days together with me, live in person with a group of amazing people who are coming from all over the world, then Definitely go to Drizes.com, check out the events tab, and liberate yourself. And if there's still tickets, which I think and believe and hope there are, you can get yourself a ticket. And if not, we'll make sure we have a wait list up there. And man, let's make this let's change things more and faster and bigger than ever before. That's the invitation, and I can't wait to spend time with you, whether it's in person or in a future podcast. 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.