Why You're Stuck (Reason #3)

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. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and today we're going to be talking about why you're stuck. Stuck, part three, actually. Reason number three. These are patterns I've seen in people and in clients that keep us from fully being free and confident. And so if you're trying to become more bold and expressive and confident and you still feel stuck with social anxiety, with that fear, what other people are going to think of you, with this inability to just leap and take the action that you want, then you definitely want to listen to this series. And we've released them out over the last, you know, six weeks or so. So you can go back and listen to reason number one of why you're stuck. Reason number two, why you're stuck. And reason number three, to quickly recap reason number one that you're stuck is a lack of action. It might not be enough action, frequency of action and duration. Like how over what amount of time are you taking action? For the most part, it's like the gym. People are expecting gains really fast, unrealistically so. So you got to stay in it for the long game, really make a practice and a discipline of leaning into your edge. That's the action part. Reason number two, why people are stuck is because they have these closed loops where you're prioritizing your sense of how the world is and how you are knowing how it is, your beliefs, your stories, and you're actually more focused on being right than you are and actually discovering maybe that something else is possible for you, that people might not see you the way that you thought, that you might be different than the negative stories have told you. That's number two. And then number three is what we're getting into today. This one's my favorite. Well, I don't know if it's my favorite, but it's a good one. And it is. It's One of the most hidden ones, and it can really trip people up. And this one, the third reason you're stuck is called secret specialness. Secret specialness. What that means is we all have a fundamental need to feel special, to feel worthwhile, to feel unique, significant. I matter. And there's things about me that are great and that's. There's nothing wrong with that. And anyone that tries to deny that, like, no, I don't have any of that, man. I don't have the ego. I transcended that. I'm like, mm, okay, let me watch you hang out around your parents and your siblings. Let's see. See what happens then, buddy. Right? So look, that's unrealistic, I think, for most people. And really the goal is, like, how do I meet that need for specialness in healthy ways? How do I draw a sense of pride from bringing value to the world or to my family or to others? How do I have a more stable sense of significance and specialness that's not, you know, a roller coaster based upon accolades or social media approval and likes or pats on the back or atta boys or money or something that can go up and down quite a bit, and then I'm either great or I'm terrible, depending upon the hour of the day. So a more stable sense of specialness. These are much more, I think, truthful and adaptive ways to look at it, rather than some denial of, like, oh, I'm beyond all that. And the reason those are important is because if we don't acknowledge the desire to be special and the need to be significant, then we're going to meet it. And we often meet it unconsciously. And so some of the toxic ways we meet it might be to criticize others heavily. And maybe you do it out loud, maybe you do it online. You got the. You got the barrier of your keyboard. You're such a tough guy behind the keyboard. Piece of dumb. Or most commonly for nice people is you do it in your head. So you're super judgmental, but you don't tell anybody that because that's not nice. But it doesn't mean stop you from doing it right? So why are you tearing people down in your mind? Why are you being super critical? It's because temporarily, while you do it, you feel a little more significant because, hey, if that person is no good, right, they're bad or they're wrong or they're worse than me because of their choices or their appearance or I would never do anything like that, or, oh, that person is so ego Driven. That person's so superficial. That person. So it was such a pushy, jerky, selfish, whatever you're judging them for in that moment of judging, they're down here and you're up there, high up on the peak of specialness. Definitely superior to them at that moment, right? So it meets that need. Another. And this is especially related to the stuckness form of getting specialness and significance, which is especially toxic. That one's like a tar pit A la brea tar pit for your confidence and self esteem is drawing specialness from being not the best, but the worst. And I see this and it, it might be really dramatic and it might be subtle, but here's a few examples of how I've seen it go down. You look around the room and you say, man, I'm different than all the people here. That's what you think to yourself anyway, they don't have it as bad as me. No one understand, no one in the world could understand my anxiety. My anxiety is so much worse than everybody else's. And in that moment you don't know that. You don't know what anyone else has gone through. And you're comparing your inner awareness to their outer Persona. I mean people don't necessarily show up that way, they hide it. But you have no idea what's going on with people behind the scenes. Their anxieties, their panic, their sense of despair or worthlessness or their family problems or drinking or alcohol or drug problems. Like you have no idea what's going on for others. But in the moment we tell ourselves we do and that somehow we're separate and we're somehow special because of our messed upness. Or we can have a secret specialist. It's almost like I have it harder than others. I have it worse than others. I am worse than others. Or even like I'm more of a victim than others. So man, my upbringing was so much worse than theirs. My trauma is so much worse than theirs. My oppression, the oppression of my people or my race or my gender or my. Where I grew up is so much worse. And look, I'm not denying. I mean you might have grown up in some really rough places with some messed up stuff going on. So this is not about that. This is about the way that we can use that to create this separation and some bizarro distorted sense of specialness from being stuck, from being the most stuck. And it's important to call that out. If you see it in NLP neuro linguistic programming that they would call this a form of secondary gain. There's some. Something we're drawing from this, we're meeting some need from it. And it might not be serving us, but hey, we. Our needs are like food and water. We're going to find a way to meet the need for food and water. And the metaphor I use for this is, if you're thirsty, you know, we all have a need to drink and hydrate. And let's say you forget your water bottle, you're out somewhere, you went for a hike and you ran out of water or whatever, and there's no streams around, and you know, you'll be thirsty, but you'll be fine. It takes you three hours to get home. Maybe you have a headache, you're parched, you're okay. You drink some water when you get home. But let's say you are out overnight. Let's say you are out for two days. Two days out in the wilderness, no water to be found. I don't know, you're in Arizona or something. He tried chopping open a cactus and there's nothing inside. And then all of a sudden, you're out. You come across this old, abandoned, decommissioned road, and there's this old little kind of seeping up of water from the ground, and it's like, brown and muddy and murky. You gonna drink it? And I say, ew, no. How about on day three? How about if it's that or die? You know, you're. At some point, you and me, we're getting down on our knees and we're slurping up that brown sludge and just hoping nothing bad happens, right? And that's how the needs that we have as humans are. And one of those needs is to be special, to be significant, significant to matter, to be. To be unique and different. And so if you can't meet it in a. In a healthy way, in a empowering way, you're going to meet it in the dirty, mucky pond way. And that is. That's what the secret specialness is about, why I'm worse than everybody else. And so when you. When you hear this, you have to ask yourself, okay, am I making myself separate from others? Am I somehow giving myself a sense of significance? And a great exercise to do, which will be, you know, we can. I could save it for the action step, but I'll be able to share it with you right now, which is to look at. How do you meet the need for significance in your life? That need for specialness? What. What do you draw? A sense of specialness? Feeling good about yourself, proud of Yourself, things that you feel set you apart, that make you unique. So instead of denying all that, like what actually helps you meet that need and there's a variety of ways to meet it. So see what you do and see if maybe some of them are more empowering, less empowering. You don't need to evaluate anything. Just take a moment to actually reflect on that. And you know, when I've done this exercise at different times in my life, I would draw specialness from different things. It's kind of like, what games are you going to play? What are you going to value? What are you going to think is, you know, important? Someone, someone might, you know, draw a ton of significance from their car. They might say, look at my car. And that's partly why there are, you know, high end sports cars that are, you know, really over the top, showy, fancy, like, everyone look at me and my, you know, insert car here. Like, look at my Lambo, everybody, right? And it's, it's about significance. Like, everybody look at me, you know, and then there's another guy, maybe he can't afford the Lambo, maybe he does and he doesn't want to. I don't know, usually probably can't afford it. And he's the guy who takes the muffler off of his motorcycle. And so when he goes down the street, you know, everybody's going to know he's going by, right? And no, he probably can't afford a Lambo. That's why he's doing that. But anyway, he's still going to get his significance, baby. And you could say one is better and one is worse. I don't know. It's all the same, right? It's all, how do you do it? And you might judge that person like, oh, look at him in his Lambo trying to get significance. Where are you doing that? I mean, because we're all doing it. And it's funny, whenever I hear, you know, someone who's done something with their car where it's loud AF and everybody hears it and they drive by and it kind of hurts my ears, I'll be like, look at me. And not obviously they can't hear me, but it's just to whoever's around me or myself, I'm like, look at me, look. Everybody look. Look at me, look at me. You know, and it's just a fun way of pointing out and being playful about that desire for significance. But, you know, what is it? Is it your possessions? Is it your body? You know, people like to look more fit or More athletic. And it's partly about feeling healthy and strong and come on. It's partly about like, hey, I'm one of those few people who looks like this. And maybe it's your clothes, right? You know, your makeup or your style or your watch. My kids are really into watches these days, especially my 9 year old. And I remember when I was his age, I was super into watches too. I think I tell a story in my book on my own side about when I was in India with my dad getting a fake Rolex and how cool that was to have a fake Rolex. The crown, you know, the Rolex crown symbol actually fell off on my flight home and settled down near the six on the clock face and I was like, no, my ticket to. Oh. But anyway, they're, they're into watches and they ask me questions about all kinds of watches and they mostly want like sporty ones. My 9 year old wants an apple watch or whatever, but, but we got to talking about like fancy watches and nice watches and he's like, well, how much will people spend on a watch? I'm like, I don't know. People could spend 20 grand on a watch easy. It's like $20,000. And I was like, well, yeah, I mean you could probably even get like a Rolex for like 80,000 if you want. And he's like, not as in him. I mean he could someday if he wants. Right now he's not that flush, but you know, I'm like. And he's like, what? Why is it $80,000? Does it, does it have like really precious metals in it? And I was like, I don't know. I mean, I don't really know that much about Rolexes. I'm like, I don't. Maybe some of them do, but those are probably even more. I think the ones that are 80,000 might even just not have any. Maybe they have a little gold in them, I don't know. And he's like, wow. And why? Because when you flip up your wrist and you got that 80,000 bling jangling, you are telegraphing significance, baby. So we all have our ways. And what are yours? There's also ways to get significance that are less about a thing or a purchase and more about who you are and how you show up. And I found that for me over time I have. That's where I've. I naturally draw a lot more significance. So I definitely draw deep connection and love as a dad and a sense of like, significance. I feel I'm special. Not necessarily to everybody, right like no one else might care about that. But to them, I am very significant and that feels deeply fulfilling and nourishing. To my wife, Candice, I'm very significant. I am significant to the clients that I help. You know, I matter in their lives. And that feels really good. So I found that when I draw my significance from something about the way I'm showing up and what value I'm bringing in the world, it tends to be a really good, strong. It's like good burning wood as a fuel source versus gasoline or something. Right? It lasts a long time. It's very stable. It's not based upon, you know, something that might be out of my control ultimately, like my, how my face looks or maybe things you might think are in your control, like how, you know, can you buy the fancy car? But to me, that feels like that's going to come and go. And what, what endures is, you know, what I offer and what I give and what I create. I think I have a. The more I've gotten in touch with my strengths and my wins and what I'm good at, I draw a sense of significance from that. I feel really proud of and content with and happy with my ability to create things, to write books, to communicate like this with you, where I can sit down and just speak and have. I know that I have an effect on people when I do that. So really owning your strengths and with clients that I work with who chronically diminish their strengths, which is a part of social anxiety and low self esteem and low confidence, you're really, it's a double whammy because not only do you lower your confidence, but you also, you don't let yourself feel a beautiful source of significance that's right there, which is your strengths and the value that you bring. So I gave a number of examples. Let's turn this into your action step now. Time for action, action, action. Your action step is going for you to actually write this out. I'm gonna encourage you to pull out your phone right after this episode, maybe get ye olde sheet of paper and a pen, old fashioned styles and write down what are three, five ways that I get a sense of significance right now? And then mark them. You know, is this, does this feel like it serves me? Is it healthy? Is it unhealthy? And then specifically, look, are there any ways that you get significance that are where you're the worst or it's the hardest for you? Kind of like victim specialness? And if so, you know, maybe. I'm not saying you do that all the time, but maybe sometimes you notice it. Or when you're in a more, you know, more of a frustrated or upset state or hopeless state, you go there, just name it, call it out. You don't need to make yourself wrong and attack yourself for it. Just say it like it is, because that's part of shifting that pattern and it helps you choose something different and then start to acknowledge your strengths. And one other potential action step that I highly recommend you take is if you've not listened to my book, 100 wins in 100 days, go check that one out. That one is so powerful. Actually, it's a very short book. I actually honestly wrote it for clients that I work with, and I do. Almost every client suggests that they read it. But it's also available to the broader public, you know, through Amazon and Audible. So I highly recommend that you read that because as you start to acknowledge your wins, you will unlock a new level of significance, of healthy, long, burning significance that can really serve you in your life and get you unstuck and creating something extraordinary. 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 that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.

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