Dr. Aziz delivers a short motivational talk arguing that being disliked is inevitable and that accepting this can free you to be more confident. He recounts a recent three-day virtual event called the “ultimate confidence breakthrough,” then teaches a practical reframing: when faced with judgment, imagine the critic as a child (first-grader) to reduce threat, respond with empathy/curiosity, and continue acting authentically. He closes by inviting viewers to a Facebook group called “Confidence Warriors” and encouraging ongoing practice.
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Hello and welcome to your weekly confidence Boost. How are you doing? As you can tell, it's a beautiful summer here in Portland. Not sure where you are. Most likely you are in some place where it's a summer, unless you're in the southern hemisphere, in which case you're in winter. Losers. So I want to share something with you today that will hopefully free you up to be more confident in yourself. And this is coming on the coattails of a live event we just did, online virtual event, three days, extremely powerful. And it was all about becoming more boldly yourself. Called the ultimate confidence breakthrough. It was a powerful experience. If you were there, thank you for showing up and being with me. And if you weren't there, you may want to consider coming to the next event because they're powerful experiences. And if you like these little videos and other things. I do, you will absolutely love that immersion experience. But one thing that came out from that event was there's a lot focused on being more boldly ourselves. And the biggest obstacle to that is people judgment, fear of judgment, fear of disapproval. And so we spend a lot of time unpacking that. And there's one. I'm just going to share one little tidbit from that that is very valuable, which is this. We spend a lot of time being afraid of what if someone doesn't like me? And then we try to calm ourselves down by saying, hey, you know, most likely that's not true. And people can be. Actually, it might go really well and someone might like you. And those are all great ways to deal with. But you can also say, wait a minute. Actually, yes, people aren't going to like me. And that's the subject of this video, which is this. You will be disliked. There you go. There you have it. You will. It's going to happen. It's inevitable. In fact, someone right now watching this could be disliking me. When you say disliking you, it can be so whole, you know, whole, all encompassing. But maybe they're just judging some aspect of you. They're judging something about you and then there's a feeling of judgment or aversion towards you. Right. And what if that's okay? What if that's really okay? You might say, that's not okay. That's horrible. It's terrible. It's scary. It's threatening. That's bad. It's wrong. I feel hurt. Well, but it's gonna happen. So how do we become more resilient to this as opposed to trying to avoid it? By not putting ourselves out there or telling ourselves it's not happening, when maybe it is. Well, there's many different strategies and tools I teach for that, but one that's really helpful is this. Let's say someone's judging. You know, I get this all the time. People will judge me and they'll tell me their judgments. This might happen to you too. They'll say, I don't like the way you did this. I think you should have said that instead of this. You should have taught it this way. You shouldn't have tried to sell anything online. You shouldn't wear the shirt you were wearing. You shouldn't have your hair the way you have your hair. You shouldn't have stubble on your face or when I had a beard, you shouldn't have a beard. You know, you know, you should look like this and you should do that. And like people have a million and one ideas and judgments about how you should be. And they might tell you that and they might not, but they might be thinking it. So what if that's all happening and you just made one slight perceptual shift, which was this. What if you were a teacher of a classroom of like first graders? I remember there's a period of time, very short, but about 6 12, 68 month period in my life where I was a substitute teacher. I did not like it at all. But it was before I went to graduate school, I think. And I was like, that sounds like an easy job. It wasn't easy, but, you know, I got a chance to the hardest. I mean, I was actually really good with high school kids, but the hardest was the first graders. I was like, oh my God, I don't know what to do with all these little kids. I'd never had kids in my life and I just was overwhelmed. But just imagine you're in a room full of first graders and you show up, you know, whatever you're afraid of people judging you for, you know, that you, that you walk funny, that your hair looks like this or that you stutter or whatever it is, right? So let's say you walk into the classroom with little kids and you're wearing the shirt that you were worried about, or your hair looks the way it looks, or you think you're too fat in some way, and one of those little kid comes up to you and goes, you know, and they're well conditioned and indoctrinated children, so they call you Mr. Or Mrs. Right or Ms. Or so it's like Mr. Gazipura. I'll say that's Dr. Gazzapura to you. Mr. Gazipura. You know, you shouldn't. My dad says beards are wrong. You shouldn't have a beard. Just imagine that. Like in that moment, are you like, oh, my God, this little kid's right. Jump out the window? Or is it kind of like, oh, okay, he doesn't like the beard. Or if a little kid's upset, like, I wanted you to do this and you didn't. You know, just. Just imagine holding it that way for just a minute. What if people were like big children? When I step into that, when I really hold that, you know what I feel? I feel like space instantly goes from feeling threatened to not threatened. If I'm scared of someone's judgment and then I imagine it's coming from like a kid, then I'm not scared. I'm not scared of little kids judgment. And then I actually feel some sense of. I can just empathize with it because I do that all the time with my kids. Oh, yeah, you wanted the toy and then he took it from you, right? Or even if, like, my son's like, I don't like that you. With this last event, you know, it's over the weekend, so I'm just working all weekend, and I don't usually work on weekends, but he's like, I hate that you don't. You know, I didn't like that you were working on the weekend. And I'm just like, yeah, I get it. I miss you too. Right? So you can just respond with empathy or curiosity, but it doesn't have to be so threatening because it's just their model of the world, just their ideas. And you don't have to conform them. You don't have to change what you're doing. You're just like, I'm keep doing what I'm doing. And here's the key thing is you don't need to stop them from thinking that way or having that perception. So what would that do for you? How could that free you in your life? Beautiful. Thanks for being with me today. And if you are not part of our Facebook group, we just had a number of people at the event join it then. Then you can join for free just by being on my email list here and you can click down below and it's called Confidence warriors. And I encourage you to go there and you can share what you're learning from this weekly confidence boost and from anything else, my materials, or just join the community and share your struggles, share your dreams, support each other, grow. And if you want to see what people are up to. There's some recent posts inside of confidence warriors of what people were doing at this last event, including burning out their embarrassment circuit, inoculating themselves to rejection to become rejection proof. Some really fun stuff. So go check that out and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
