You'll Never Feel Like Enough Until...

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 the show. Today we're going to be talking about why you might not feel like you're enough or you might fear that you're not going to be enough or other people are going to see you as not enough, which are basically forms of the. The same first concern or feeling of I'm not enough. And it's such a common experience. It can seem so pervasive, so normal. Like, this has been here in the background my whole life. Or maybe not the background, maybe the foreground. And you look around, you might say, well, either a, no one else feels this and I'm a total weirdo, or B, you kind of see through that story and you say, you know, I think everyone kind of feels this. So what's up with that? Well, in today's episode, we're going to help you discover what's going on there and shift it, because that is. I mean, how can you be confident truly when you feel like you believe your experience of life is that you're not enough? How can you truly be confident? Wouldn't it just be more of an act or a facade that we're putting on? So let's get to the root of it and help you really free something up in yourself so you can truly be enough and then go talk to somebody, start a conversation, take a risk in your life, go create something. Just be who you are in the world without that fear running things in the background. So let's. Let's dive right into it. Not enough. Other words people use might be insufficient, lacking, inferior, defective, broken. And you might not use any of those words. You might just have a feeling and those words kind of point towards it. When you hear one of those, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, that is what that is. And it might be right there on the surface. You see someone who is seemingly confident at a party or beautiful or whatever the things are that you think you're lacking in someone's really smart. They can articulately describe something or talk about something really well. They get a good grade, they get a promotion, they get the sale, they do something or they look a certain way, they are a certain way. And you observe them and you have this sinking feeling inside. And maybe it comes out as like, they're better than me. I used to have that feeling, that thought all the time. They're better than me, he's better than me, she's better than me. And with that superiority of them, perceived superiority of them, there is an inferiority of me, and I am. Then therefore I am lacking. I'm not enough. So it might be about specific things. And man, I spent many years of my life bouncing from one thing to another. I'm not attractive enough, I'm not tall enough, I am not muscular enough, I'm not confident enough, I'm not socially skilled enough. I'm not good at talking to people. I'm not good enough at speaking with groups. I mean, at first I avoided that like the plague, and then eventually, when I wanted to get better at that, I thought I wasn't good enough at it. And what you might notice is that wherever you go, whatever you're focusing on, that feeling, that perspective, that story might go with you, right? So when you're a little kid, maybe you weren't good enough at what, Jumping, kicking, running, playing, studying, getting good grades. And then as you grow into another version of you, all of a sudden, now you're not good enough at what, Looking good, sounding good, being cool, getting the boyfriend of the girlfriend, being popular. And then you grow out of that. And now you're in the workforce and it's, oh, I'm not good enough at getting the job, keeping the job, getting promoted, making the sales, making that, this and that happen in the company, and every stage, it feels like that is real. That is an accurate assessment of what's happening. This is where I am, and this is why I'm not sufficient. And maybe you have another story on top of that as to why you're not enough. Well, it's because I'm lazy. It's because I'm inherently faulted. You know, I'm not intelligent. I wasn't born with. With intelligence. I wasn't born with good looks. I wasn't born with social charisma. Or maybe it's something what someone did to you. You know, my mom raised me this way, or my dad was like this, or my, my family was not enough of this, or they were Too much of this. They were critical or abusive or not emotionally. My mom was a narcissist, Whatever. The thing is, there's a story there. And then, therefore, now I'm not enough now. And the kind of unspoken prognosis is that I never will be because of some fault in me or something in my past. And it makes it permanent, which is very depressing. And we don't realize that we. Wait a minute. You weren't good enough at jumping when you were six. And then you weren't good enough at dating when you were 13. And then you weren't good enough at earning money when you were 24. And then by the time you were in your 30s, it's like, well, I didn't achieve enough career status. I didn't have a family yet. I'm not where I'm supposed to be in life. There's a whole nother thing. Yeah. And then in your 40s, like, well, I didn't. I'm not in good enough shape. I got enough money, and I got the career things and I got the family things. But, oh, I'm fat. Oh, no, I'm ugly. Ah. You know, and we can go decade by decade. No, no. Now my body's falling apart. Or all this, you know, and. Or I'm getting old. I'm getting saggy. I'm not enough. I'm not beautiful enough. And we can go through. You can go through an entire lifetime being inadequate. Not enough. From season of life, stage of life to stage of life and not miss a beat, not have any moment. You're like, wait a minute. When do I get to be enough? Why does this just go on forever? This doesn't seem very good. Because this is just how it is. Because we're lost in that story. We're lost in that experience. And we never pause and question it. And hopefully, right now, as you're listening to me, you're starting to pause and question it. And the first thing to question, sometimes people say, well, you saying I am enough. I mean, because, look, I'm not. Look at that person. They get more dates than me. Look at that person. They make more money than me. Look at this. What are you saying? I mean, look at this. Look, I am fat. Come on. I mean, I am lazy. I'm this, I'm that. Let me know. And you, the first thing to do. I'm not gonna challenge you on any of that. Maybe you are a fat, lazy, undateable, unearnable, incompetent loser. Not here to convince you of anything else. What I'm gonna start with, though, is notice the momentum and the desire to keep that perspective. And maybe you might want to get a little curious about that. Why in the good. Why in God's green earth would I want to not just have that perspective, but champion that perspective, defend that perspective, cling to that story, fight somebody verbally or internally in your own head who's trying to tell you otherwise? I was just talking with a gentleman yesterday who's very successful in his career. He works in computer science. He has a master's degree in computer science. He's hired by some, you know, legitimate company, and he's doing legitimate work for this company. He's been doing it for many years. He's obviously very skilled, very intelligent. He's getting some feedback from his manager not that long ago, and the manager's feedback was nothing about his intelligence and his skill. But he said to him, you know, you're a really smart guy. You're a really bright guy, and what I see you doing is kind of in meetings and stuff, you're. You're on the outside and you don't share your perspectives. And basically what he's encouraging him to do is to speak up more, which is why he's talking to me. He's like, okay, I gotta do something about this. And he will for sure. But this is what he told me when my manager said, hey, you're a smart guy and you're kind of on the sidelines. He said, well, in my head, I didn't believe it. Not the part that he's on the sidelines. He knows that. He believes that because he observes that. The part that his manager says, you're a really smart guy. Now, why would he defend. Why would he resist that after having who knows how many years of education and training and passing tests and qualifications and all the stuff he did to get there in his life. Decades, if you count his younger years. Right. And you may or may not have pursued that much education. It doesn't matter. I'm looking at all the different things you are holding something and usually at some either extreme standard. Well, yeah, but I'm not that smart or, yeah, but I'm not that beautiful. Yeah, but I haven't reached this yet in my achievements or in my. Whatever I have put the value in. So I'm inadequate compared to that. What? But why would you do that? Why would you chronically compare yourself to someone who you perceive as better or a version in your own mind that you perceive as better? Why? And this isn't A question to just have a quick answer to. This is a question to become profoundly curious about. Huh? What's up with that? Why am I doing that? And one of the first things that come to people's mind is why this is how I'm going to get better. I'm going to improve. Look, that person's faster. If I look at, I'm slower, they're faster. I just come on, do what they do and you'll get faster, get richer, you get more beautiful. And that's usually the COVID story because what happens when we use it? First of all, now you're in the realm of what I would call dirty fuel, which I talk about in my book On My Own side Almost. There's a whole chapter on the art of relaxed discipline and the fuel that you're using to get you to do things and create things in the world and live with a high, high energy moving through you. Not grindy dirty fuel that leaves a residue of burnout, cortisol, self hatred, fear, which is what motivates most people to do most things in many ways and myself for many, many years. There's a lot of fear based motivation. Getting away from something, trying. I would see that my pursuit of success was actually a frantic flight from failure. I gotta get this thing to do well, okay, why? So I'm not a failure, huh? So as you observe this and you get really curious about this, you might want to start to also ask, why is my enoughness wrapped up in this thing in the first place? Right? Because if you're in the realm of like, yeah, well, I'm not enough, I'm not, I'm not fast enough. So if I get faster, then I'll be enough. Okay, let me work on being faster. And I don't care if you're fast or slow. That's not the point here. The point is why is fastness or slowness just to use a simple metaphor, that you're probably not putting your whole lot of worth in now that you're not like 7 years old. It was big currency when you were 10, how fast you were. I remember, man, my kids are that age. My kids are 8 and 10 right now and they're, you know, they're getting in more into sports. Basketball, football, soccer. It's fun and I love playing stuff with them. And a little side note here, if you haven't listened to any of my episodes in this podcast about pain, chronic pain, and that's something that's of interest to you, just go to do the search at Shrink for the shy guy and type in pain shrinkforthshy guy.com. you can also go to drize.com d r a z I z.com and click on resources in the top and then podcast. And I remember one of my dreams. One of my goals was because I was in so much chronic pain, especially before when we had our first son and I was like, man, my vision for myself is I can run pain free. I can do sports, I can play with my kids, I can throw them around, I can wrestle with them, I can run with them. And here we are 10 years later, and that has been 100% possible. And now I get to go run around, play with a football or play basketball with them, not even think about, oh, is this gonna hurt my body? And so, so much more. You know, running and long distance and hiking and all this stuff. And so this is just a little side note, a little plug here for if you got pain and stories about your body and what it's capable of and chronic conditions. I had an autoimmune condition for years and, you know, quote, unquote, autoimmune condition. I don't even know if that's real or just a label that we put on something. Some symptoms I was experiencing, but I found deeper solutions for the symptoms, and it's a total game changer. So if that interests you, check it out. I mean, it's the most extraordinary gift in my life of all the things that I get to experience, to be able to just have that joy of. I love the sports that I do like, the athletic pursuits, like, I'm gonna go do this hard thing. Ye a macho. That's fun. But to just run around and play basketball with my kids is so sweet. And so I want that for you. If there's any pain that's stopping you. And that also includes, maybe not, quote, physical injuries that you perceive, but stomach problems, migraines, all kinds of stuff can be resolved. It's pretty, pretty extraordinary. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Why you feel like you're not enough. Why is your worth linked up with that thing being fast in the first place? And again, this is not a question to answer real quick because if you answer real quick with your mind, you know what it's going to say. It's going to splutter, it's going to be indignant. How could you? How could you say that? Money doesn't matter is what you're saying. You're saying, you say you should live on the street. Huh? Huh? What are you saying? That I could just be like 500 pounds and dirt all over my. My shirt and think, that's fine, huh? You're like, whoa, whoa. Why are you getting all hot and bothered there, buddy? I'm just asking what. What is your worth linked into and why? And could something else be possible? Because until it is, you will always feel like you're not enough and always be afraid because you think you are. Those things. Speaking of my kids, when they were, I don't know, 2 and 4, 3 and 5, one of them would. We had to be very thoughtful about what you give the kids, because if you give child number one little toy dinosaur and child number two doesn't get a little toy dinosaur, instead of it being, well, child number two's got other toys. They got their. Their thing they got the other day. They got their little. Their little block set that they were loving playing with. Loving their block set. So good. Child number one, the dinosaur. Child number two gets the block set. They'll just play in the living room. It's gonna be great. No, no, it's not gonna be great. If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. All of a sudden, it's like, he got a dinosaur. Why don't I have a dinosaur? What about your blocks? I don't care about my blocks. This suck. I want a dinosaur. And then if you don't have a second dinosaur, then it's a lot of drama about the dinosaur. It's my dinosaur. He's taking the dinosaur from his older brother and the older brothers. Now the older brother's pushing his face to the ground. And then you got to go intervene. Says drama. And now the dinosaurs up on the fridge and no one can play with it because there's too much drama. So what's going on there? The dinosaur is not the coolest thing in the world. It's the dinosaur's. Mine. It's mine. Those are. That's my dinosaur. And so if the dinosaur gets threatened to be taken away, the kid freaks out. Like, we're talking full on meltdown here. Screaming, crying freaking out. And as an adult, you watch this and you're like, what is a little crazy? Okay? It's crazy. Those little kids are so stupid. And then you walk out to your car and you're like, who keyed my car? And you. And you basically mirror the same little freak out that your kid had about his dinosaur. He went, well, of course it sees, this is my car. This is a little dinosaur I think cost $5. This car costs $50,000. It's a Mercedes. Do you know what that says about me? It says I'm a success. And now I'm less of a success because a Mercedes with a big key mark across the front is not successful. Now I gotta get it painted. That's gonna cost me another $2,000. So it's the, this is me. This is me. And you feel like you're not enough because that Mercedes isn't enough. That toy dinosaur isn't enough. Your achievements are not enough. Your degrees on the wall is not enough. And when you're trying to make that enough, you're trying to find yourself and your sense of enoughness, your sense of fullness and worthiness as a human being, as a soul, as the great mystery from which you came out of and are a part of. Then you're going to be perpetually afraid, perpetually inadequate, perpetually not enough. Because it's not enough. It's not who you are. And it could never be a fraction of who you are. It's like the surface. It's a tiny little skimming of water across the surface of this vast ocean. I remember one of the supervisors I had when I was going through some of my training, she had, I mean, she had every single thing that you could get framed as some sort of credibility put up on her wall. So there's her diploma, there's her licensure, which is pretty standard. You know, I do that. I have the, what is that over there? The, my doctorate diploma on my wall. And I do that as a. Intentionally. Honestly, I don't care about that thing on the wall. It doesn't. I, Dr. Aziz, I doesn't, that doesn't in any way inform how I'm going to be with somebody. And I put it on the wall though, because I know that there are some people who would not trust me to help them until they saw that degree, which is totally fine. I get it. You know, they want to establish that there's some barrier to entry or some proof of credibility. And I'm like, you know, I went through a lot of, I went to, through graduate school with a lot of people that I wouldn't go get help from. So I don't know if that piece of paper means what you think it does, but any case, that's fine, that's fine. If they need that, that's helpful. But I remember this person I worked under, sheep. She had the, the degree, the licensure, her undergraduate degree, a one year master's program degree, some certificate of some other training she did some establishment of. I'm like, I'm a multidisciplinary. Oh, what's the word? She was kind of like the. She was like the inclusion police of the. Of the organization, you know, diversity police. She loved me. She's like, oh, you're brown. You can. You can. You can help us with our diversity talks. I'm like, oh, God, I don't want to do diversity talks. I mean, it was literally, like, 12 things on her wall or 10 things on her wall. Just like, oh, my God. Right? Why? I did. I didn't feel like I was enough with the 8 thing on the wall. Maybe I need the 9th thing on the wall. Or maybe other people would see that I was enough, and if someone else sees me as enough, maybe then I would feel like I'm enough. But it doesn't work, which is why someone who's pursuing the external validation of, look, I got the promotion. Look, I got the job. And then people about it, and they tell their spouse about it, and they tell their parents about it, and then they're upset because they're like, my dad was not that excited about my promotion. I want him to be more fun. Why? You know, this goes back to that problem I had. My dad's a narcissist. I knew it. I wanted him to be more excited about my promotion, but he's not. Ah, now I'm not. Now I'm not satisfied. And you think it's because your dad's not satisfied. They're expressing something that you wanted to express about your promotion, but it's because you are trying to find you and your sense of worth in the promotion, in your position, in your job, in your role. And nothing, no role, no matter how well you play it, will fulfill you ever. Maybe you got a temporary, temporary pause in that not enoughness feeling when you've, like, just totally crushed it in that role for, like, you know, you get that crazy job that no one else could get. Oh, I've been working 10 years to get it, but, boom, I am the man. Yeah. And then what is that? You know, a week, a week into that job, and you're like, oh, I got to deal with this, and I got so much responsibilities, and, oh, I'm not enough. I'm a fraud. I'm an imposter. So there we are. There we are. Back to the beginning. So what do you do? I was talking about this with a client recently. He's like, okay, I'm with you. I'm with you. It's not working. I Don't feel like I'm enough. So what do I do? How do I fix that right now? It's like, well, how do we fix that right now? I would say that it's a process. It's a retraining of how you perceive yourself and life around you. And that's probably not going to happen right now, but you can start right now. Actually, it will happen right now because there will be another. Because now is it right. And you can see that for a minute right now, and then you'll probably forget again. And then you can see it again for a minute. And what is it that you see? You see that I am not the role. It's something that I do right now. I'm in the role of, I don't know, teacher, coach, advisor, mentor, something, whatever label you want to put on it. I'm doing that thing right now. And then when the recording is done, I'm not doing that, I'm gonna go do something else. And it's the same thing. I'm at work, I'm doing this thing, and it's fine. I love doing this thing. This is one of my jams. I love teaching and recording and sharing and helping and all that stuff, writing. But I am not my books. I am not this podcast. And I'm. I don't need to look for my sense of enoughness through the podcast, because as long as I'm doing that, then what? How do I do it? Is my. Is it enough when it. I've recorded enough of them? Is it enough when enough people have listened to it? Is it enough when I get enough positive reviews about it? What if you get a negative review? What if not that number of people listen to it? What if you don't record that many of them? Do you see how as soon as I try to find my worth in this experience, I'm anxious and I'm inadequate? And this can be very confusing for people at first because it's like, but then what? Okay, I get it. Don't find my worth in my work or my achievements. Totally. No problem. I'll find my worth in my. Well, I'm a great dad. I'm a good husband. I'll find my worth in that. Well, what about when your wife's upset with you and your husband's upset with you and they're saying you're not a good partner? What about when your kids do something that you have a story that says, well, if my kids did that, then I'm not a good parent? Oh, no, how embarrassing. Do you see how it's just the same shaky ground? So what if you didn't put it on anything out there? No thing. What if your sense of self worth, or indeed self came from no thing out there? Because it's all unstable, it's all changing, it's all not who you are. Well, what then? How do I, what do I. Well, when you come back to this moment right now, And this is where it gets interesting, but there are many different teachings that point towards this. You what if you are what's observing right now? What's listening right now? And that observer can watch you do different things and you can choose to do different things and take actions and play roles and then you put them down. And so who, who am I? I'm the one here right, right now, watching things. And I don't mean that the party that's like thinking about a bunch of stuff. I got to do this and I got to do that. I gotta do this and achieve that role better and make sure that this person sees me that way. And I gotta better not mess up over there. But I'm not fail over there. No, that's not you. That's just like the, that's the simulation you're running about how to move all the things around out there so you're enough. I'm talking about being right here as you are. Breathing, observing, feeling, watching. Sometimes they call that in traditions, the transcendent self. That's who you really are. What if that were who you really are? I'm not going to tell you. I just ask you, what if that were who you really were? And what if when you're that, when you know you're that and you're observing from that, the idea of worth and needing to establish worth or prove worth or be enough is kind of an absurd, irrelevant question. Well, do I want to record a podcast or not? Well, is it going to be enough? You mean how many people it reaches or how long, how many episodes I record or what? I mean, you can measure that. You can measure how many episodes you record. You can measure how many people you reach. But that's different. That has nothing to do with enough. I mean, you can have a goal in that area, but that again, that has nothing to do with you and your enoughness. And the best metaphor I've used, you know, I go to for this because it sometimes help people get out of their heads, is say, okay, go out into the woods and find yourself two trees. Shouldn't be too hard to do. They're everywhere. Or even just go down the street where you are, and there's two trees, and look to the tree to the left and look to the tree to the right. And. And I'll say, which tree is more enough? Which tree is more worthy? You'd say, well, I like that one more. I like the one on the right more. I didn't ask which one you liked more. Which one is inherently more worthy, which one's enough and which one's not enough. We say, enough of what? I mean, that one's taller. That one has more leaves. That one has a thicker trunk. That one's got, you know, different coloring on this side of the branches. Okay, great. Yeah. Those are all the little nuances and differences and contrasts we can notice. That's all there for sure. But which one is enough? Well, that one's taller. I didn't say. Okay, so it's taller. Does that mean it's more? Well, no, it's just taller. Do you see what I'm pointing towards here? Because when we observe trees, you're not doing it through the lens of the cultural field where you've learned what's good, what's wrong, what's right, what's enough, what's not enough. And most people will live out their entire lives in this play, in this theater of what is enough? And did I get there? And they. They're constantly never there. And they could be succeeding at the highest levels, and it's just suffering. So let's put this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is going to be to observe what are some of the things that I've put my sense of self, worth and self into. And usually the word my and mine is good indicator. My what? My job, my house, my clothes. And not all things you've put yourself really into. Like the metaphor I was just using with a client yesterday is, I have a pen on my desk. Here. Here's my pen on my desk. Sure. I use the word my for this because it's my pen. It's sitting on my desk. But my pen, my desk. I mean, honestly, you could swap them out with another pen and another desk. I don't really care. It's fine. I don't have a sense of self in that. Right. So not everything have you really put it into, but you put it into some things. And maybe it's not my job, maybe it's a certain aspect, like my performance or my ability to accomplish or do a certain type of thing quickly or whatever it is, but study it, observe it. You don't need to change anything yet. Don't even try to change anything. Just watch it and become fascinatedly curious. Like, wow. Because for me, I've known this stuff for a long time intellectually, but until I really got how much I'm going to inherently, I just kept achieving more and still not feeling like enough. And at some point, I got tired of the suffering and I stopped believing in the illusion that, well, if I just achieved a little bit more, you know, it's like climbing rungs of the ladder. I got to Ladder 2, Rung 3, Rung 4, Rung 5. Okay, I'm on Rung 6 now, and I still feel like I'm not enough. And I have all this stuff in my life and all these people that love me and a family and get to do work that I love and success and financial abundance and so, okay, now I'm at six, rung six. Why is rung seven gonna be gonna all of a sudden provide what I'm looking for? Joy? Peace? Freedom? I don't think so. I thought that's what I thought about rung number four and five and six. So when you get really curious, you'll be willing to try something different, perceive something different. 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.

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