Jon Brooks speaks with Dr Aziz Gazipura, author of Not Nice, about approval-seeking, saying no and expressing disagreement without turning it into a performance. The conversation explores how to recognise resentment, ask for what you want and practise clearer communication while remaining attentive to other people.
Archive note: the podcast feed dates this episode to 27 August 2023, but the conversation refers to a forthcoming February 2020 book launch. The original recording date is unconfirmed. Book-launch references, rankings and offers in the transcript are historical.
When saying yes leaves you resentful
Aziz uses "nice" to describe a particular pattern: agreeing because you fear disapproval, while concealing what you want. That is his use of the word in this conversation. It does not mean kindness is a problem.
I came to his book because I wanted to become more assertive. In the interview, we talk about the small decisions that make this difficult. You want to say no, but you agree. You want to end a conversation, but you keep listening and become resentful. Learning to name what you want gives the other person a clearer answer to work with.
That answer can still disappoint them. The aim is an honest, proportionate request, with room for them to disagree too.
Assertiveness can become another performance
One of my questions is about people who learn to act confident without checking how they affect anyone else. Aziz describes an overcorrection: after years of accommodating others, someone may start treating every preference as a demand.
There is more to practise than saying no. You also have to notice the situation, understand your responsibilities and make room for another person's needs. A boundary can be clear without being contemptuous. The interview's most useful thread is this gradual learning of small skills, rather than the promise of a new personality.
Where this conversation differs from Stoicism
Aziz says he has not made a study of Stoicism. His account of anger as fuel for assertiveness is a modern view discussed in the interview. Seneca's position is different: he distinguishes involuntary first reactions from anger that endorses retaliation, and argues for firm action without cultivating anger. You can acknowledge a feeling while examining what it seems to demand.
I also paraphrase Epictetus on moving beyond blame. The wording in the recording is a paraphrase, not an exact ancient quotation. Taking responsibility for your response does not make you responsible for someone else's wrongdoing.
The later discussion of Jung's shadow and Spiral Dynamics belongs to other interpretive frameworks. It is not Stoic doctrine or an established treatment protocol. The conversation does not substantiate claims that suppressed feelings cause particular physical symptoms or abuse, that a weekend resolves anxiety, or that every problem has a solution. Those claims remain in the historical transcript as the speakers' views, not as promises made by this page. Persistent anxiety deserves individual assessment; NICE recommends social-anxiety-specific CBT as a first treatment for adults with social anxiety disorder.
For the Stoic foundations, read Epictetus on approval-seeking and what Stoicism says about emotion.
Sources: Dr Aziz Gazipura's books page, including Not Nice and On My Own Side; Epictetus's Enchiridion, for the discussion of blame; and Seneca's On Anger and its account of first reactions, for the doctrinal distinction above. The interview also discusses Robert Glover's No More Mr. Nice Guy and ideas attributed to Carl Jung. Personal experiences and client anecdotes are the speakers' reports, not controlled evidence.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for readability.
The original endorsements and claims are retained below as part of the conversation. They are not guarantees of benefit. Short editorial notes identify attribution and clinical limits without changing what the speakers said.
Jon: Today I get to speak to someone I've really wanted to speak to for quite a while, Dr. Aziz. Dr. Aziz wrote a book called Not Nice, and it's a book all about social confidence, assertiveness, not approval seeking, not being in reaction to other people, setting boundaries, saying no, standing up for yourself. I'm actually quite an agreeable person and nice. And a book like this was incredibly useful for me to speak up for myself and get the things that I wanted in a way that wasn't win-lose, but win-win. win because I didn't feel like I was losing my soul by sacrificing everything I wanted, and win for the other person because I was simply being authentic.
And who doesn't like authentic people? So I have read Dr. Aziz's book, Not Nice. I listened to the audiobook and I dipped into the actual book too. I recommended it to a bunch of people, and I was really pleased that he agreed to be on the podcast. So this is our interview. We go into a lot of things shadow work, the pitfalls of being too assertive, how to find balance, how to escape the prison of politeness, and much, much more. This is a short-ish listen, it's 45 minutes, but it's very packed and it contains a lot of useful ideas.
So if you are someone who is typically nice and sometimes feels like you get walked over or that you don't get the respect that you think you deserve, or you end up you know getting the short straw in different kind of negotiations, this podcast will 100% help you with that. So without further ado, here is Dr. Aziz. So if a couple of years ago I did a personality test on the big five personality traits, and I found that I had very high agreeableness.
And what I what I saw was that agreeable people tend to make less money in the workplace overall, and I had quite low assertiveness, so I set out to try and correct this, and that's how I found your book on Amazon. It was like ranked number one, I think, in confidence and assertiveness. So I got yeah, I got the Kindle and the audiobook. I mostly listen to the audiobook. You do a really good job of narrating that. I always love finding when the authors actually narrate the book.
So that was really good to listen to.
Aziz: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. It sounds like it was speaking to something that was exactly what you wanted to shift in your life.
Jon: Yeah, yeah, I was actively looking for it. And I'd read books before on assertiveness, but this was the first book that I felt like, huh, this guy actually like gets me, gets it. I can relate and he kind of knows what I'm going through as a as a nice guy.
Aziz: Yeah, yeah, a lot of the books out there are pretty technique heavy and a little bit of psychology. Like, don't think about it this way, just think about it this other way. But you know, when we have 15, 20, 40 years of childhood programming and then living our lives from that programming, it's not just about a simple tactic change. It's really about looking under the hood and saying, what where did I learn this stuff and how do I fundamentally change it so that I can so that I can just use that technique or speak up in this way.
Jon: Yeah, exactly. So I kind of got the book thinking like, oh, I wonder if there are any cool techniques, but what I got was so much more. It was like almost a complete blueprint for transforming the way I act in the world and the way I am. So yeah, I just wanted to say that before we begin. but on the topic of this book, I want to ask you about the title. So the title of the book, the main title is not nice, and then the subtitle is Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent and Feeling Guilty, and start speaking up, saying no, asking boldly and unapologetically, being yourself.
So you could have called your book anything related to assertiveness or confidence or social anxiety, but you focus on on not nice. So, what does the word nice mean to you? And why did you see niceness as such an impediment to confidence?
Aziz: Yeah, I love that question. so when I was gonna start writing the book, I remember I was with my wife and one of our friends in the kitchen of our house, and I was just formulating this idea, and the idea is that you know, we generally nice is maybe is a good word. It means kind or generous or thoughtful and polite. And yet what I'd seen in many, many clients and definitely in myself in my own journey was that there was this cost to niceness, and that oftentimes when people are saying I should be nice or I need to be nice here, what they really meant was to inhibit themselves, to withhold something, to say or do whatever they needed to, or avoid whatever they needed to, to keep the peace, to not upset anybody, to not have anyone be uncomfortable in any way, including themselves.
And what that led to is what might seem like, you know, nice pro-social thing, but ultimately led to degrading of relationships, frustration, not being able to get what we wanted and health, you know, meet our needs in healthy ways, as well as feeling more and more resentful. And so that was a pattern I was noticing. So I was sitting there in the kitchen with my wife and friend, and I said, Let me ask you guys a question. When you hear nice, like somebody is nice, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
And I kind of gave it as a two-option thing, right? Just to, and my friend was like, Oh, I think that's a good thing, you know, I think it means they're kind or whatever. And my wife smiled and she said, You know, I used to think that was a good thing until I talked to you about it. And then, you know, you gave me all these other ideas. And I think now that nice is really about being being polite or being inauthentic.
And right when she said that, that's when, you know, part of the, okay, this isn't just about assertiveness, this is about authenticity. This is about being yourself and nice is actually an impediment, is a block to being ourselves.
Jon: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great answer. It's funny how your wife recognised that being nice is not necessarily a good thing. I'm I consider myself a reformed nice guy, and for a long time I was focusing on like just trying to be kind. And then as I started to learn, I could see that there was a shadow of me almost like using kindness as a as a way to get my needs in a weak way, you know, as opposed to actually like stating what I wanted.
I was kind of like kind to people, hoping for stuff back, and then getting resentful. And I know you have a formula for resentfulness in in in your book, which I which I really like. It's it's could do you do you remember what that is, the formula for resentment in the book?
Aziz: This is a pop quiz. Let's see here. I believe I believe the formula for resentment is when we give more. So sometimes people think, well, if you give a lot, then you might feel resentful, but it's actually giving plus feeling like you don't have a choice, like you have to give. So sometimes you mean you can give a ton. People will give more to others than they would for themselves. People give to their children like crazy, and they could love it.
They could feel like, yeah, I want to you know invest all this money in my child so they go to school and get education and I'm gonna work hard to do that. And they feel really fulfilled and proud of that. The issue is when, okay, I need to give a lot of something or even just a little bit of something, and I don't want to, but I have to. And that leads to resentment every time.
Jon: Gotcha. Yeah. So before we get into some of the concepts from the book, I would like to get a little bit more background on the series of events that led you to writing it.
Aziz: Yeah, I love that. So I personally, you said a reformed or recovered nice guy. I absolutely relate to that. That was part of my own journey. And what's fascinating about that is sometimes it's easy to frame it in the past tense, right? Like I was this nice guy, and now I'm not. And what I've found is that it's a never-ending process. Just like you know, more boldness, more authenticity, more unapologetically being ourselves. It echoes our whole lives because we're constantly changing and growing, and there's always another edge to explore. however, there is like a set point that you can get to where you're not just so pleasing all the time that does feel a lot more free and powerful. but my journey back when I was in my you know teens and in my 20s was I was extremely nice and it really blocked my relationships.
And then I learned some of these key concepts that I teach in the book about boundaries, about being able to ask for what I want. And I started to apply that stuff, and it really opened doors for me. I mean, it shifted me from basically never being able to have a lasting romantic relationship to ultimately getting together with Candace, who's now my wife, and really forming something beautiful there and doing things that, you know, were seemed very counterintuitive to me, like say no about something or express when something's bothering me, you know, things that just seemed someone who has a healthy understanding of relationships, that sounds like no big deal.
But for me, that seemed like every one of those was a major risk. This is going to be the beginning of the end if I say something here. So I just was growing a ton in that regard and becoming more and more authentic. And then in my work with clients, I started to be teaching and sharing more and more about that and seeing how it worked for them. And then it became pretty clear, and I'd already written a book called The Solution to Social Anxiety, and I was working with a lot of people with social anxiety, and I was working on another book called The Art of Extraordinary Confidence.
And during that book, I said, you know what, the next book I have to write is about niceness. And then I just, it was I love how this happens in life. Like the next 20 clients I worked with in a row were all 100% focused on this issue. It was like the universe was like, oh, you okay, if you're gonna help the world with this, here you go. And so many story after story in the book and situation, and then testing out material and the exercises and really getting a sense of, okay, what I'm gonna put in this book is actually gonna work because it wasn't just me, it's tested with all these people real time.
And I feel so fortunate to have that as a gift to be able to work with and then share with the world.
Jon: So in my journey in sort of growing in this area, your book was a major sort of thing that helped me along the path. In your own journey, were there any specific incidences or things you read or events you attended that really helped you a lot? Any any inciting moments?
Aziz: Sure. I mean, I'd say the two significant experiences. One was being involved in a men's group in my 20s, and I was the youngest guy in the group, and I was drawn to it because I was training as a therapist at that time, or finishing up my training as a therapist, but mainly I was drawn to it because I couldn't sustain romantic relationships. And I didn't understand why. I knew when I was younger, it was all about shyness. Like I just couldn't speak up.
I had a lot of social anxiety, especially with women. But then when I overcame that, and I could talk to women, I could date women, I had women that would be interested in me, but I would just have such anxiety and aversion and flip-flopping feelings, and I just I felt crazy. And I thought, man, what's you know, I'd love, I'd be so interested in a woman, pursue her, pursue her. And then she'd say, okay, and then we'd sleep together, and then, you know, two weeks into it, I'd be like, ah, I got I gotta get out of here.
And I and I, you know, you can run that pattern a few times and blame the woman, right? It's like, well, she was this or she wasn't enough of that. But after you do that many, many times, you gotta start pointing the finger at yourself and say, okay, what's going on here? And so that's led to the men's group. And that, you know, the very first meeting I had with the facilitator of that group, a man named Elliot Geller, he's a social worker here in Portland, Oregon, and just a brilliant man.
And we I was kind of he interviewed me and I was accepted into the group, and he's like, wait, before you go, he went to his bookshelf and he pulled out this book. He's like, You're gonna want to read this book. And it was a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover. And that's a fantastic book, all about you know niceness as well. And I read that, and that was a very that was probably a theme in the group, you know, among among several.
But just how do you identify what you want? How do you, you know, working through shame around wanting things, being able to ask for what you want and face the fear of rejection or the fear of that you're bad, becoming well, as I talk about in the book, becoming more selfish because people that are historically very pleasing and nice really see themselves as they're they're very self invalidating. They give of themselves to the point of dismissing their own needs. And they think that's a virtue, they think that's necessary, and so they're and I was and I was definitely in this camp too, our sense of what's you know, selfish or not is not calibrated properly.
So then acting in your own healthy self-interest, doing things that are actually good for you and for others because you're being clear about what you want and what you don't want feels bad. Feels selfish pursuing what you know you need to in your life, you know, pursuing the interest that you're into, the hobbies, the passion, the career, the lifestyle, everything like creating the life that you want, people can feel selfish because they're like, it's gotta be hurting somebody. You know, if somebody doesn't like it, or even even if other people support you, there can still be this selfishness feeling.
So I worked through a lot of that in the men's group, at least to be able to get into relationships. And then, you know, the work I got it, so then I was able to continue doing the work even outside of that context. I'd say that was the probably the biggest impact. And then the second was actually with my wife Candace, she taught workshops. There's a community here in Portland, and it was called Solsara, and they led evening and then weekend workshops that were focused on authenticity, communication, just getting a lot more aware of yourself, a lot more able to work through the fear of being real and direct and all that stuff.
So it was a perfect companion to what I was doing in the men's group. And so those those environments gave me a container to practice, not just to learn intellectually, but to actually test it out and work through some of the fears real time.
Jon: Hmm, wonderful. Yeah, I've heard about that book, No More Mr. Nice Guy, but I haven't read it. I kind of felt like your book kind of would have covered all of that anyway. so I didn't really feel the need, but I might might look into that as some supplemental reading. one of the points you just made and I read in your story in Not Nice when you gave examples of dating and how you how you weren't satisfied even though you built up some level of confidence, I too went on this journey of not having women in my life and then actively seeking to learn how to express myself better and socialise better.
And I met a few guys in these communities where they were all trying to do the same thing, and I and I actually saw that while I learned a lot from these communities of people trying to express themselves better and growing confidence, there was this shadow side of people almost like pretending to be authentic or sort of like putting on a persona of setting boundaries that wasn't really them. So when it comes to changing and transforming and being more authentic, do you think there's a trap of faking it?
Faking authenticity? Have you ever seen that in your clients?
Aziz: I'm curious. Can you tell me more about what you saw that made it seem like more of a show or not quite actually them expressing themselves authentically?
Jon: Yeah, so we would there were some truly great teachers, you know, that were truly authentic and truly confident, and they were like role models to me and other members of the group. And they would they in these videos on YouTube primarily, they would say, you know, don't care what other people think, for example, like l little memes like this, without too much like they weren't like there wasn't a one-on-one mentorship, more just like video-based learning. And they would say things like, Don't care what people think, and then I would see guys in the group that would almost like use this as a way to not check in with other people's feelings.
Aziz: Ah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the it's it's easy to go think about like a pendulum, right? If the pendulum has been pulled far to the nice side, the passive side, there, and you know, meanwhile accumulating resentment, you get some permission to let that thing go, and there's kind of two responses. some people, and I definitely got this with the book and some reviews and comments and emails we get, some people like just entrench even further on the nice side of the pendulum, and they're like, How dare you say that you know selfishness is good?
You're an awful human. And then, and then you got other people who are like, oh, okay, I'm gonna let this thing fly, and the pendulum swings far to the other side, and then it's kind of like, hey, I can say whatever I want. You know, I'm being authentic now. And yes, there's a there's definitely a bit of a maybe immaturity or messiness there that I think over time can hopefully level out. Like that's a phase the person goes through. But that's where the awareness becomes very key to see like honesty or authenticity is not this very simplistic thing of I say whatever I want, whenever I want, to whoever I want, however I want, and they have to learn how to take it.
Like, you know, we want to have a level of sophistication of how do I like I am in a matrix of relationships, how do I advocate for what I want? How do I be curious about what other people want? How do I know how to communicate? How do I take even more responsibility? And this is kind of higher level stuff because in the book it's saying, hey, don't take so much responsibility for other people's feelings, right? That's important. But then once you get more and more sophisticated, if you want to have really high quality relationships, professionally, personally, romantic life, you gotta just always be improving your self-awareness, your communication abilities.
And so you want to say, hmm, you know, I'm not I don't have to take responsibility for this other person's feelings. It's important for me to express what's happening for me, and I don't want to inhibit that truth to make sure they don't feel uncomfortable. But at the same time, when I'm expressing my truth, what's the most is a kind and skillful way to express while at the same time feeling true? You know, and that's where it gets you can get really refined in your language.
And you know, do you frame it as, you know, when you do this thing, it's really annoys me. And that's one level of truth. But as you get more skillful, you might say, when you do that thing, I notice inside I feel tense, and I'm not sure why I feel tense yet, but I notice I don't like that and it makes me want to retreat. And you're saying the same thing kind of, but it's it's much more nuanced, much more self-aware.
And you know, you can start to see how you're you're as you get better and better, your communication is better and better received. And then you're able to start having you're about to say things that other people might always avoid, but you're able to do it more skillfully. And so to me, I think we want to not just stop at I have permission to say whatever I want. You know, that's there's a higher level of I want to master communication and relationships.
And that's I think where maybe you're seeing some of that discrepancy in that group.
Editorial note: the Epictetus passage is paraphrased here. It does not deny external harm or assign victims responsibility for another person's actions.
Jon: Yeah, yeah, I love that answer. I see this as a as a lifetime journey, you know, continuous refinement and growing and peeling back the layers of authenticity. and you just brought up a quote that I love in my mind from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who said that the unwise person blames others for their misfortune, the stoic in training blames themselves for their misfortune, and then the wise person doesn't feel the need to blame himself or others, but simply like observes and sees the kind of reality of the situation and then just course-corrects. that's like continuous refinement.
Aziz: I love that.
Jon: On the on the topic of stoicism, I'm I'm a big fan of Stoicism. Are you familiar with Stoicism at all? Have you looked into it? A lot of people seem to say that Stoicism has helped them in sort of letting go of things they can't control and things like that.
Aziz: Sure. I would say that I'm a beginner in that. I've maybe listened to some basic things, have a few of the key ideas, but I have not made a study of it, I would say.
Jon: Gotcha. Well, the Stoics, I mean, everyone has a different idea about anger, and the Stoics tended to be they didn't have much good to say about anger. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on feelings of anger and expressing anger.
Editorial note: the following account of anger reflects Aziz's approach, not Seneca's position. Claims about repression causing physical symptoms are not established by this conversation; persistent symptoms need appropriate assessment.
Aziz: Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And it makes me also think about Buddhism and this idea of and maybe the Stoics are in this place too, of well, I'm not sure where the Stoics are because I don't know that well. But let me give some thoughts on anger, is that for most people, not even nice people, just a lot of people, anger is a maligned emotion. It's like an undesirable emotion. It's a bad. You know, people say, I'm feeling bad, it means that angry.
And you know, and it makes sense because it can be corrosive. And when we're angry, we might want to say things that hurt other people, that damage relationships. We you know, we're resistant to people or situations, we can get we can have consequences from that anger. So it makes sense that we are kind of wary of it and don't like it. however, it is a recurring part of human experience to feel that emotion. And it's possible to become more self-aware and to do more inner work to release whatever triggers are creating that anger, whether it's we want something and we're resisting that we're not having it, some story like we were disrespected.
I mean, I think it's always really good to investigate anger. However, this is especially important for nice people, is we can become experts at kind of trying to think our way out of anger and have reasons why we shouldn't be angry. I shouldn't be angry about that. That's unreasonable. I should just let it go, you know? I mean, come on, I should be more empathic. I should just be a little more forgiving here. And the problem that I've seen is that it's not like we're fully self-aware.
We've identified the anger, we've discovered the root, we let go of an attachment, and then boom, we're at peace. It's more like we try to talk ourselves out of it and then just smash the whole thing down under the rug. And I've seen this again and again. And so what happens is there's like, no, I'm not upset about that thing. I wanted to give that. And that's the story. But underneath, there's a part inside of us that is upset. That's like, no, I didn't want to give that damn thing.
I wanted that for me. And so I think we actually want to work with that anger a lot more consciously. And this is what Carl Jung would talk about as the shadows like we want to consciously turn towards that regularly and just hear it out. Hear it, you know, what if part of us is upset about this and upset about that and is blaming about this and blaming about that? And when we can hear it and we can contain it and we can work with it inside of ourselves, then we're not repressing a lot.
And when we repress it, it tends to manifest as more niceness, more anxiety, and also physical problems and all kinds of weird symptoms that we can get. So I'm a big fan of taking the time to look really let ourselves feel the anger. And most nice people, myself included, even this, even when no one's around, just letting yourself feel angry about a situation was not allowed. It had to be justified. It's bad, it's wrong, it's dangerous. What if you explode? You know, you just need to keep it all under wraps.
And I disagree with that. I think creating space and time to really feel the anger, knowing, you know, that doesn't mean you're gonna go pick up the phone and yell at somebody. It just means you're gonna you're gonna feel it. And then when it's time to communicate, then you can, because you've been with it some, you can communicate with more assertiveness, more directness. And actually, a little bit of anger is useful in communication because you can, I describe this in the book, it's like the anger is the raw fuel.
It's just the fire or the material that's burning. And then the fire, you know, runs through the network of tubes and spins the turbine, and then out of your mouth comes the more refined form of power. And that is, you know, you can say, let's say someone keeps interrupting you, and you know, nice people, first of all, never confront, but if we do, it's gonna be like, I don't, you know, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be very peaceable, peaceful and assertive, but I have no teeth, you know?
I'm like, hey, I when you I don't appreciate when you interrupt me in the meetings. And we put on this strangely soft voice tone so that they don't feel threatened, you know, versus saying it's just still respectful, but it's got more force. Like, let's say you feel the anger, and inside you're like, how dare that person interrupt me? You know, and then so when you say you're like, hold hold on a second, hold on a second. I'm I'm not done. I don't appreciate you jumping in here.
Now there's like a little bit of power behind what you say, and now you can get through the other person a little bit more, especially if they're kind of trying to run over you in their conversation. So I think there's some there's some use for anger when we can communicate it, bring it to give it to the fuel to the assertiveness.
Jon: I love that. Yeah, I think to me that just sounds intuitively so healthy. that way of kind of harnessing anger, making use out of it, and also giving yourself like the I think the anger is only really destructive if you if you kind of like delude yourself that every angry thought is 100% correct, and then you go out into the world and seek revenge. But if you give yourself permission simply to feel the anger, then I think that's that can be a beautiful thing. you just reminded me of something. one of the dilemmas I used to have was when people were talking and talking and talking about something that I wasn't interested in, and I would feel like stuck in these conversations.
And in your book, you touch on this and you give you for the first time I was like, oh, it's actually okay to just like kind of tell them. And that was a game changer. And I realised that after that yeah, I wasn't actually helping them by kind of listening to them and being bored. It was actually good for them that I let them know that you know I had to cut the conversation short. So yeah, thanks for that. That was that was really useful.
Aziz: Yeah, what a what a relief, huh? You don't have to be prisoner anymore.
Jon: Yeah.
Aziz: Polite, prisoner of politeness.
Jon: Yes, yeah, that's a good one. you just mentioned the shadow from Carl Jung, and I love the section in Not Nice on shadow work and keeping a shadow journal. Could you explain what the shadow is and how we can integrate it and it the usefulness of looking into it?
Editorial note: this shadow model is an interpretive framework. The proposed link between repression and sexual abuse is not substantiated here. An unwanted thought is not evidence of intent, and abuse remains the responsibility of the person who commits it. This passage is not a recommendation to process trauma alone.
Aziz: Sure. So we think of ourselves as one person, like I am Aziz, and you are Jon, and it's actually we're we're a collection of these multiple parts. And so in any given situation, I is actually a mixture of different desires and drives. And you know, the simple example I like to use is part of me wants to eat the salad, and another part of me wants to get the cheeseburger and fries. And depending upon what you ate that night, you know, one part you use in charge versus another.
And we also have a part of us that's kind of a collection of all the stuff that we were taught is not allowed, not acceptable, not right, aka bad. The part that we're sure would be feel shame around or not want others to see. And this is what goes into that part is based upon our culture, our larger culture, the country and ethnicity, ethnic group we're part of, religious groups, as well as our own family and peer groups and stuff when we were young.
So we learned, you know, for example, anger is bad, don't ever show anger. or we learned, you know, the what you like to watch is bad, you know, or cartoons are bad, or too much TV is bad, or you know, it could be a million one things. but what happens is we get this big collection of off-limit stuff. And then what do we do with it? Well, most of us are like, well, I'm gonna try to be the good part of me and not be that bad part.
It's kind of like the angel or the devil on your shoulder. And what we're doing is we're consciously striving to be good, good, good, good. And there's another part inside of us that's got all kinds of other feelings, though. You know, it's like, I just want to have sex with the person, I don't want to be in a relationship with them. But that's bad. So, but what where where do those feelings go? It's not like you they you've amputated them. So what happens is they just get pushed down out of our awareness.
And they might bubble up, like maybe you feel this surge of sexual attraction for someone who's not your partner, but you're like, oh my goodness, that's you know, that's threatening. So oftentimes they won't oftentimes they won't even come into our awareness. Like we'll have mechanisms to protect us from these bad feelings, quote unquote bad feelings. And so this is problematic because nice people have super large bucket that goes in the shadow category, you know, like asking for what I want, bad.
Saying no to somebody, bad. And so we just have even more of a shadow to deal with. And here's the thing that's fascinating about the shadow is we think we're staying in control by pushing it down. Actually, the more we push it out of control, Carl Jung says it becomes like an autonomous agent that starts to run on its own and starts to eventually be able to take control of us. And you'll see this in small examples like you're healthy, healthy, healthy, healthy, healthy, and then all of a sudden you cannot stop yourself from like binging on ice cream.
You know, you're just like, I can't, I can't do it, I can't stop anymore. It's like the shadow is just taken over. And that's a you know, maybe a light or benign example, but what about the example of someone who is repressing certain sexual energy, repressing, repressing, repressing, repressing, and then they act it out in some sort of twisted or distorted way through molestation or something like that. So the what we want to the more we suppress it, the more we keep it out of awareness, the more Carl Jung said it perverted it could become.
That doesn't mean like sexually perverted, but it means like distorted and twisted and extreme. And another example of shadow might be we push feelings of dislike of a certain you know group out of awareness, out of awareness, out of awareness, and all of a sudden it erupts in like hate and you know, vengeance and all these things. So, what we want to do is we want to gain control of ourselves and be able to direct how we want to behave and how we want to act and what we want to do and who we want to be in the world.
And the way that we do that is kind of counterintuitive instead we actually turn towards the shadow, hence the shadow journal in the book, and we actually become very curious. We actually want to suss out and explore like what are all these awful bad things inside of me. And it can be very uncomfortable. It's like, oh, I don't want to go in there. And I think one of our fears is what am I gonna discover and what does that mean about me?
And am I still a good person? And what if I go in there and then it gets control over me? And I always reassure people like your best chance of it not getting control over you is you actually going into the room. You know, go down into the basement, go open up all the boxes, turn on the lights and say, What's down here? And yeah, oh God, I'm attracted to that person and I want to have sex with them, but they're not my wife.
Okay, great. You know, I want I just wanted the money. I didn't care about the people, or I just wanted the I was selfish there, or I was angry, I wanted to punch that person in the face. All these things, if we can just notice them, feel them, acknowledge them, they pass over us like a like a wave. And then we're back to how we want to choose from our values, from our higher self, from all that. And I feel like that's where the shadow journal is actually writing about it can be so helpful to give it that attention, and then we start to become more and more free and more and more powerful too.
Jon: So when these kind of like sort of shameful thoughts come up, would you say like that's the you want to try and catch them and then make a note of it and then sort of explore them in a journal? Is that the idea of the shadow journal?
Aziz: Yes, yeah. So if you notice something that comes up that makes you uncomfortable, that you think, oh, I shouldn't feel that, I shouldn't have that, that's a great thing. And then maybe you can address it in that moment, but maybe you're, I don't know, you're feeling something in a work meeting or whatever, you know, you're not gonna be able to just make a note of it or mental or write it down. And then yeah, you want to have some space and time.
Because most of us are like, I'm out of that situation. Now I can forget about that. But we actually want to take this the time to write and say, you know, what could be what's bothering me here? What is what might I be angry about? What lustful thoughts might I have? And it's a strange thing at first. People are like, why do you want to go into the bad? But it's not really bad. It's just energy. It's just part of, it's actually part of our humanness.
I mean, we're we are animals, we're gonna feel aggression and attraction and desire for dominance, and you know, there's what's his name? The creator of something called spiral dynamics. Are you familiar with that?
Editorial note: Ken Wilber's name is raised tentatively. The speakers do not establish the origin of Spiral Dynamics, and the discussion should not be read as a verified attribution.
Jon: Is it Ken Wilber? Is that him?
Aziz: Oh, so Ken Wilber definitely you know writes about those a lot. I don't know if he was the originator of, but there's a there's like different levels of or stages of consciousness, and one of them is called the green level, and it's you know, kind of focused on equality and you know democracy and committee decision making, and there's there's definitely like a shadow side to the green meme that can be very harshly against anything in the shadow. And it's like you gotta be really nice and inclusive and all that stuff, and so it's important that you know that the to grow, we always want to keep being aware and turning towards the shadow rather than trying to push it down.
Jon: Yeah, yeah, that's huge. That's huge. in I think in spiritual circles, this the idea of shadow work seems to be becoming more and more popular. I think one of our most popular articles on high existence is all about Carl Jung's shadow and how we can integrate it. I was really pleased to see you include that in the book. one of the in my own journey, one of the big insights I had was for a long time I was so focused on self-improvement as a way to kind of like cope with symptoms of anxiety and these difficult feelings, and then I discovered sort of like trauma healing and like looking back into the past as opposed to just trying to cover up like my wounds and trauma with like self-optimization. do you think that trauma healing, digging into the past is an important part of growing in confidence?
Have you have you thought much about that?
Aziz: You know, I'm sorry, the internet just cut out for just a second there. And you said that you were doing the trauma work. And could you repeat the last part of that question again?
Jon: Yeah, so for a long time I had like difficult feelings of anxiety and you know social anxiety and just sort of like general like you know difficult emotions come up and I always try to sort of handle them with self-optimization, you know, like going to the gym and trying to like be better and stronger and enhance myself. And then a big breakthrough was like, oh, hang on a second, maybe I should go back into my past and write about it and think about about that and sort of heal from some of the things that happened. do you see that in with your clients as like an important thing in helping them to grow in confidence and authenticity?
Editorial note: the February 2020 launch reference is historical. The anecdote about a weekend is not a treatment timeline or a reason to discontinue care.
Aziz: Yeah, absolutely. I have a motto that I learned or took on somewhere along the way, many years ago, that was whatever whatever works and whatever it takes. And this is there, people can get into such camps about you know what's the best. Well, you don't need any of that stuff. You don't need that childhood stuff. You just need to focus on, you know, your distorted cognitions, or you don't need any of that, you just need to meditate. You don't need any of that, you just know there's like this desire to exalt one approach and kind of devalue the others.
And I'm like, but they all like whatever works, let's let's do everything that can that can support. And I feel like it's it's like two arms or two wings of the bird, right? There's like yes, becoming more an effective human and being able to understand and how to work with our bodies and take action and achieve what we want. And that the optimising part is extremely valuable. And there's major blocks to optimising when we got these like festering wounds in our psyche, in our emotional body.
I mean, in our energy. It's just like it's hard. Like I the optimising technique might not work when you have this part of you that is attacking you every morning when you wake up, which is actually the subject of my next book, which is coming out on February 25th, 2020, which is called On My Own Side. And it's sort of a follow-up to not nice because the biggest obstacle people have to being confident is their own self-doubt and self-criticism. And so when someone wakes up in the morning and this critic is right there in their face saying, today's not gonna go well, or you aren't going well in your life, you're just you're this, you're that, all that date last night was so awful and this is happening, just hitting the gym and saying your affirmations is not an effective solution.
It's like a you're trying to barrel through. And so, yeah, then taking the time to do deeper healing, looking at how you're not right with yourself, how you, you know, what is this anxiety? What am I scared of? And usually the fears, I mean, fears are fears of feelings. So like what feelings am I don't I do I not want to feel? And oftentimes those feelings are not necessarily from what's gonna happen to you that day, the feelings are feelings from the past, you know, stuff you felt around your dad or stuff that you felt when your parents divorced, or and it's coming around.
And you might think you're done with the past, but the past isn't done with you because there's more. And so I think, but at the same time, you know, and I when I went to got trained in clinical psychology and learned how to do all different forms of psychotherapy, certain models of psychotherapy I think were grossly ineffective at helping someone optimise their life now. So we're gonna dig into the past for seven years. And I had clients like this that came to me, they'd done psychoanalysis for five or seven years, sometimes three times a week.
And they came to me and I'm like, you can't start a conversation with a stranger. Like this is we got we can we can solve this in a weekend. Like, what are you doing? So I think both sides are are super important and you know, you get the optimal results when you are willing to do to do both, to do anything and everything.
Jon: Yeah, totally. That backs up my experience 100%. I'm really looking forward to your new book. Hopefully I'll get a chance to read it when it comes out and speak to you about it again in the future. That would be really cool.
Aziz: Yeah, I would love that, man.
Jon: So I'm mindful of your time. I just want to ask you one final question. sort of like a hypothetical thought experiment. If you could go back as you are now to meet the version of yourself when you were kind of struggling most with the, you know, the being the nice guy. I know that this journey is a big journey and there's no you know magic pill, but what would what would you what advice would you give yourself that would get the ball rolling, that would have like an immediate hopeful shift for that younger version of yourself?
Editorial note: calling oneself "lazy" is the speaker's imagined self-address. Anxiety and relationship difficulties are not evidence of laziness, and no outcome is guaranteed.
Aziz: Yeah, I'm putting myself right back to the time before I discovered the men's group, before I learned about niceness, you know, and it was just kind of a wash in it. And that version of me really thought that there was something wrong with him. There's something wrong with me. And I couldn't even put my finger on it. You know, I'd like worked on my confidence, I could talk to people better, but I just and it was like something's broken in me.
I just can't have close relationships, is what I thought. And so what I would tell that part, and I think that's so common when we're really stuck with an issue and we don't know the solution yet. It's very easy to adopt a fixed mindset and think that we're just broken in some way or incapable or born this way. And that was the that would be the main thing I'd communicate to him. I'd say, Aziz, that is that is not true. And to be frank, that's lazy.
It's it's you know, it's like you're you're giving up. And here's the thing every problem has a solution, and usually the solution is not some big fell swoop, it's just a series of small steps. And the biggest thing I'd want to impart to him is Did you know that creating the relationships that you want is just a series of very small skills. And when you accumulate enough of those skills, like being able to say no is a skill, being able to know what you want in a certain situation is a skill.
You develop it through practice, you get better at it. And if you learn just a handful of those skills, you'll be able to have a beautiful relationship that just is the best thing in your life that keeps getting better every year.
Jon: Wow, I love it. That's beautiful. And I also love the kind of you're being lazy as kind of kind of like a bit of like tough love. Tough love, yeah.
Aziz: That's how I talk to that little guy.
Jon: He's the little, he's the same size as me. That's that's amazing. So, where can people find out more about your upcoming book and get in touch with you or just whatever you're working on?
Aziz: Yeah, I mean, the best place to go to is draziz.com, D-R-A-Z-I-Z, draziz.com. And that'll take you to my main website where you'll find out about my newest book on my own side. You can find out about my YouTube channel. I have my own podcast on there called Shrink for the Shy Guy. my goal is to put out as many resources as I can for free to help people radically shift in their confidence. And then if people want to go further, I have live events, coaching, mastermind programme for people who are really serious about making this, not just a little improvement, but a complete identity shift from held back or anxious or self-doubting or self-critical or nice to being their their freest, boldest self.
So draziz.com is the best place to get started for that. Awesome.
Jon: I love Shrink for the Shy guy. I listened to that. I've binged quite a few episodes. Really stuff. All right. Yeah. So awesome. Okay. Well, thank you. And hopefully we'll get to do this again soon. I love it. I appreciate it so much.
Aziz: Thank you for having me.
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