In this episode, Dr. Aziz explores the concept of "social fitness" and how it can empower you to achieve greater social freedom and confidence. Just like physical fitness, social fitness is about building and strengthening your ability to connect with others and navigate social situations comfortably.
Discover how social fitness can transform your life by changing your perspective on social anxiety and offering practical ways to develop your social skills. Dr. Aziz introduces you to a structured approach to improving your social fitness and shares techniques that will help you gradually increase your social confidence.
Whether you struggle with social anxiety or simply want to enhance your ability to interact with others, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable steps to help you become socially fit and free.
Ready to start your journey toward social freedom? Tune in now and take the first step toward building your social confidence. If you find this episode helpful, please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your feedback helps others discover the show and supports our mission to help more people break free from social anxiety.
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Imagine being able to walk into any room and feel comfortable in your own skin. How would that change your life? In today's world, social anxiety can feel like an insurmountable barrier, but the key to overcoming it might be simpler than you think. Enter "Social Fitness"—a revolutionary concept that can set you free. In this post, we'll explore what social fitness is, why it matters, and how you can use it to transform your confidence and social interactions.
What is Social Fitness?
Social fitness is a concept that mirrors physical fitness but focuses on building your social confidence and abilities. Just as physical fitness involves regular exercise to improve strength and endurance, social fitness involves practicing social interactions to enhance your comfort and confidence in social settings. Developed by Dr. Lynn Henderson at Stanford University, this concept is a game-changer for anyone struggling with social anxiety.
"Social fitness changes everything because it shows there's nothing wrong with you—you're just not in shape."
How Social Fitness Works
Building Capacity
The essence of social fitness is about gradually building your social capacity. Just like physical exercises strengthen muscles over time, social exercises enhance your ability to interact confidently with others. It's about consistent practice and facing social situations that might initially feel uncomfortable.
"You can get in better social fitness shape by exercising over time with consistency."
Applying Social Fitness in Your Life
Start Where You Are
Just as with physical fitness, it's crucial to start your social fitness journey where you are. Assess your current social interactions and identify areas where you feel most anxious or uncomfortable. This could be speaking up in meetings, initiating conversations, or attending social gatherings.
Create a Plan
To make progress, you need a plan. List the social activities that challenge you and rate them on a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 is extremely uncomfortable. Start with activities that fall around 3 or 4 on your scale and gradually work your way up to more challenging situations. For example, if you're anxious about speaking in meetings, set a goal to contribute at least once per meeting.
Commit to Consistency
The key to success is consistency. Aim to engage in social exercises at least three times a week. This could mean attending a networking event, having a conversation with a colleague, or speaking up in a group discussion. The more you practice, the more your social confidence will grow.
Taking Action: Your Social Fitness Plan
Create a social fitness plan that includes:
- Identifying Social Challenges: List situations that make you anxious.
- Setting Realistic Goals: Choose three manageable social exercises to practice each week.
- Tracking Progress: Keep a journal to track your experiences and growth.
"Lift some threes and fours, and start doing things that make you uncomfortable."
An Invitation to Grow
The journey to social confidence is personal and unique. If you're ready to take your social fitness to the next level, consider exploring resources like my program, Confidence University, which offers structured courses to guide you step-by-step. You can also join my 12-month Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind for personalized coaching and support from like-minded individuals on the same journey.
"Don't let social anxiety hold you back. With practice and persistence, you can unlock the confident, authentic version of yourself."
For more information, visit DrAziz.com and discover tools and programs designed to help you build social fitness and confidence. Remember, you have the power to change your social landscape—one interaction at a time.
(upbeat music) Welcome to Shrink for the Shagai. 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 gonna 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 gonna 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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're gonna be talking about social fitness and how it can set you free. So I'm very excited to share this with you. You may have heard of this through me or elsewhere. You may have heard me talk about it on another show. And even just when you hear those terms, social fitness, you are gonna get some ideas that are gonna be pretty useful for you. And that's kind of part of why I use that terminology. And it's instantly beneficial because you know about fitness, whether or not you have invested a lot of time in it or are very athletic or something like that. You don't have to be, you already get fitness just by living in the world today because there's so much information about health and physical fitness. But social fitness is something that's way fewer people know about. And yet as you listen to this episode and you really get it, it is a profoundly life-changing idea. And so I'm gonna share what it is and some of the subtle distinctions and how to use it to set yourself free. What do I mean by setting yourself free? Well, social freedom. Being able to be confident and freely yourself around other people. And that's really one of the main focuses of this show. And so the social fitness model will really help you do that. And so I learned this model in my training at Stanford University under Lynn Henderson. She created the social anxiety clinic or maybe she called it the shyness clinic actually. And I did some practicum work there during my training. And I ended up interviewing her for this show as well. So she coined that term social fitness and I've used it ever since and I found it super valuable. So you can check out her works and she has several books as well. If you wanna go further with that. But just calling it social fitness was brilliant because it translates a lot of information that people already know without knowing it and then helps them see their challenge in an entirely different way, which is actually solvable. 'Cause a lot of people when they have social anxiety, they think that it's not solvable on some level. I mean, maybe they intellectually can say, oh yeah, it's a possible overcome this, but maybe not. I mean, I didn't think so when I was younger. And it just seems like this is how I am. Like there's some inborn trait or characteristic that I don't have. That's the feeling, that's the reoccurring sort of evidence that points to that when I go try to be social and then it's really uncomfortable and then I feel awkward and then I wanna do it again or I'll look, I'm clearly not as good as those people doing this. So it must be something wrong with me. And social fitness just changes all of that because no, it's like there's nothing wrong with you. You're just not in shape and that doesn't mean you're bad. It just means, well, it's a question. Do you want to get in shape? 'Cause anyone can get in better physical fitness shape, right? But you can also get in better social fitness shape. And I guess, of course, people have limiting ideas about physical fitness too, right? Like I can't because of this or that, but ultimately, no matter what the circumstance, people can get healthier, fitter, stronger. They might have to adapt workouts to deal with limitations or injury or other things, but that doesn't mean that they cannot improve their fitness in some way. And it's the same thing with social fitness. And the good news is the story is about how debilitated you might be are actually very overblown and they're all part of the safety police's plan to prevent you from taking any sort of social risk. So what is social fitness? Well, it really just takes the idea of physical fitness and maps the process of building your social confidence and social capacities to that same type of process. So when you think of physical fitness, you're gonna have exercise over time to build new capacity, right? That's the essence of it. So that could be whatever exercise you want, you know, that could be weightlifting, running, skiing, any activity that you do, you're going to build capacity if you practice that activity or things related to that activity over time with some level of consistency, right? Everyone knows that if you go for a jog once a month, probably not gonna run any marathons, right? But we all know that if you go for more jobs regularly or do similar things like you do other cardio work, you will eventually build that capacity in your muscles as well as your whole nervous system and your cardiovascular system to be able to run further or whatever you wanna do. So the same thing applies to social fitness. You do exercise over time with some level of consistency and you build your capacity. And this is, it's so obvious when it comes to physical fitness, but when it comes to social fitness, for some reason we're like, what? Yeah, really? No, you know, either one of those people was the gift of gab or not. And I'm just not one of those people as these. Well, that's certainly what I thought. And I have been amazed to see in my own experience with my own life and now working with lots of clients over the years is how much social fitness works. People can get into shape. And so how do you apply this in your life? Well, let's look at physical fitness and map it over to social fitness. So first things first, we need to start where you're at. And so if someone wanted to get stronger and then they go weekend, warrior it, and they go way beyond their capacities, they're gonna get super sore and not be able to work out or they're gonna get injured, right? And it's the same kind of thing. So we want to find activities, exercises that are within your means. And here is where you want to set aside any shame or ego that's like, I should be able to do this. What's wrong with me? That's an embarrassing thing to need to go practice, okay? Okay, you could dub it as bad and then not do it and then stay where you are. Or, I mean, look, if you're really overweight for whatever reason, you had an injury and you weren't able to work out or you've been really sedentary or you went through really stressful time and you kind of turned to food a lot or any other pattern or experience or circumstances that has led you to be, say, heavier than you want to be. And I don't know, everyone has a different desire in their health and their body. I'm not saying you have to look a certain way or be a certain shape or size, but if you feel like, wow, I have put on more than I want and I'm not exercising, I'm not active. And you need to start by just going for a walk, a 20 minute walk, a 30 minute walk around your neighborhood and then you're feeling a little gassed and you need to take a break and you know, that's great, that's fine, that's where you're at. Anything else is kind of stupid, isn't it? To say, oh, no, I'm gonna, I should be able to run. I used to run, I'm gonna run. Okay, you got pride there is just gonna cause you to delay everything further. So it's the same thing with social fitness. So you start to think about the things and the way to measure social fitness, cause it's different for different sports. If you're running or you're weightlifting, you have the heaviness of the weight, the number of reps, the distance, the time, all these different things, right? When it comes to social fitness, the main thing you're gonna look at is your own subjective experience. Because, you know, there is no objective weight when it comes to a social activity. It's how you feel about it. So how intense is it? How scary is it? How nervous would it make you? How uncomfortable would it make you? Those are all kind of pointing towards the same thing, right? And then for simplicity's sake, I'll usually have clients rated on a scale of zero to 10. Where 10 is, it's the heaviest, it's the most uncomfortable, it's terrifying. It's horrible, it's awful. And zero is what? I don't even, that's, is that even a thing? So, and then you get, you give it a number. So let's say walking up to a stranger that you don't know and starting a conversation with them. What number is that? I might say, well, it depends on these. What kind of stranger are we talking about? We're talking about a business setting and a networking conference, or are we talking about a sexy stranger? Are we talking about someone I just wanna, you know, to ask a recommendation for a restaurant nearby? What am I, which, who does that in this day and age? Just ask your phone. Don't go talk to another human out there, it's weird. It's all just looked down at our phones. But, I actually am saying that a little bit ironically, I would encourage you to go interact with your fellow humans out there. And those could be great social exercises because, you know, social anxiety is rampant right now. And it's only increasing. And there's a lot of factors for that. One of them is kind of the isolation of the modern age. But part of that isolation is that we are around thousands of people, depending on where you live and where you go, around a lot of people. And you don't interact with them. You know, back in the day, you swing by a gas station and be like, hey, how do I get to so-and-so? I'm looking for this street. And it's all go here and go there. I'm not saying those people are your best friends, but there's some human interaction there. You might start a conversation with someone on the train. You might interact with people, right? But now, everyone's got their phone shield force field out. It's like, how dare you pop my bubble? I'm having an important conversation on social media. So there's an extra layer there of discomfort and it is worth it. It's an extra layer of exercise. In fact, start to think of things in terms of weight. Now, you don't have to be a weight lifter, but I like this 'cause it's a simple metaphor, kind of maps onto that zero to 10 scale I just told you about. I think in terms of how heavy it is. And if you come across an experience in life, you're like, ooh, that was a heavy one. You know, I don't know if I can lift that. There's no shame in that, that's okay. That's a difficult experience, a difficult conversation. And maybe I need to work up to that. And just like in physical fitness, it might take a little bit of time. So, you know, if you can't lift a certain weight, whatever that weight is for whatever the extra, let's just say 100 pounds, right, for whatever exercise. And we say, what can I lift? I can lift 60 pounds. Okay, well, if you can lift 60 pounds today, it's unlikely that next week you're gonna lift 100 pounds. Unless for some reason you're just kind of getting the hang of this brand new exercise and then bam, you surprise yourself, but no, you're probably looking at, I mean, depending on the exercise and whatever. I mean, you're looking at six months of training to get there, right? And so, you wanna give yourself this spaciousness with social fitness as well. Some of those things that are, you know, eight, seven, eight, nine, 10 on your list, might take you a little while to work up to that. And that's okay. Because in the meantime, let's get stronger. Let's go practice with the threes and the fours. Let's go interact with people. And what you really need to do to build social fitness is just like with physical fitness, you need to prioritize it. And man, how many people I've been here, maybe you have in your life as well, where you're like, I'm totally gonna start doing more of X for reals, whatever that X is, running your exercises of choice. Go to my Zumba class, I promise. Yoga, I'm gonna do something. And then are you? You doing it? No, I don't know. But while you're not doing it, you're not getting any stronger, right? So, and we know it, and then we feel guilty, and we say, oh, I should, and I should, and I'll do this, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then eventually, eventually, you reach some point. And that might be a moment of looking in the mirror. That might be a moment of put going on the scale. It might be a moment of not being able to fit in your pants, or maybe it's nothing dramatic like that. And it's just, you get frustrated. You get irritated. And instead of imploding and collapsing, and going into self-pity and hopelessness, something else activates you. There's this transform energy, and you say, like, enough of this, I'm gonna frickin' do something about this, and you do. You commit, you sign up for something, you get some program online, you just go to your calendar and say, okay, I'm gonna work out these Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm gonna get to the gym, I'm gonna figure it out. I know I've had all these excuses in the past, I'm gonna do this. And then everything changes, right? Because you started to put this consistency into it. And that's what's required for social fitness. If you dabble, if you say, oh, I probably should go practice this stuff, but I don't know. And that's one of the key questions I ask people. When I talk to people who are interested in my mastermind program, one of the questions I'll ask them is, well, what happens if you don't do anything significant here? And you just sort of stay on the course that you're on. What's gonna be the result in five years? And the reason I ask that question, you know, it's kind of uncomfortable, is because I want people to see, hey, and look, if they tell me, like, I'm doing pretty good and in five years I think I'm gonna be doing pretty great, I say, okay, fine, then maybe you don't need this program. But usually what they're gonna tell me is something like, well, I'm gonna feel like even more regret and my life's gonna be sort of the same where it is. And that's depressing to imagine, you know, I'm 35 now and by the time I'm 40, nothing's changed. Or I'm still single or I'm afraid of my connecting and having friends, I'm missing out on my life. It's like, yeah, yeah, and what's the point of that question? And I'm asking them, but I'm also asking you right now, the point of that question is to activate that transform energy that says, okay, I'm gonna get out there and we'll start practicing this stuff. 'Cause if we don't, if we just know, if you know about going to the gym, but you're not doing it, that's not real in any way. What do you really know? You have some information in your head, I guess. And so if you know about social fitness, but you're not practicing it, well, what do you got? You got a whole lot of knowledge in your head. You could tell someone else about it, I suppose. But let's practice this, right? So how does that look? Well, what I find, you know, just like with, you know, any other form of physical fitness, structure, some degree of structure is helpful, is essential, kind of holds us accountable. So in terms of my own physical fitness, I have structure. And the structure is, I have time, the plan is to work out in the morning before my kids get up. And this, that's in the summer. In the school year, the plan is to get up and do some mobility. Then my kids get up pretty early for their school. And then when they go to school, first thing before I go to work, I go work out. So depending on the time of year, it's a little different. And you might have that too, if you have any physical routines, you move things around or whatever. And so I'll do weightlifting typically four to five days a week in that morning slot. And that's the structure for that type of activity. And now, do I ever miss a day? Well, sometimes, right? I also have another structure to do a cold plunge before I do that workout. And do I hit that every day? I'd say mostly, mostly. All right, so we're not talking about perfection here. But we're talking about, it's like, there's a structure, there's a plan in place. And if I either know clearly that I did it, or that I didn't do it, and either is good information for me. 'Cause if it's, I didn't do it. And that was, you know, occasionally I've learned to actually be a little more flexible. And let's say, it's early morning, Candice is like, hey, do you wanna hang out? Instead of going to work out, I will generally say yes, right? Because that's a great opportunity. But sometimes, you know, I don't know, maybe I missed the workout yesterday or something. I was like, no, I wanna make sure I get to my workout. And so there's some flexibility there. I used to have more of a spartan rigidity that I think, you know, sometimes can miss out on some of the sweetness in life by being too structured. So, you know, this isn't about perfection here, but it is about having a plan. And then if I'm just, you know, blazing around, or waking up and using my phone, or messing around and wasting time, and then I'm not working out 'cause I delayed too much, I don't do the cold plunge because I just don't feel like it. And then I dodge it, you know, I'm very aware. Oh, okay, I didn't do that. And you don't need to beat yourself up. You just need to know to name it. Okay, I'm not sticking to my plan. What's up with that? And you get to learn. You get to discover what tricks do you play on yourself? How do you talk yourself out of it? How does fear subtly influence you? Whatever's going on. And the biggest problem I see with a lot of people is they don't have a plan for their social fitness, or their physical fitness either. But you need a plan. 'Cause if you, you know, what's that? Just like a famous quote about that, right? If you, if you fail to have a plan, then you're planning to fail. I believe it's something like that. So what structure might be helpful for you? And what types of things might you do? And this is where it gets very personal and practical in your life. And probably a great time for your action step. Time for action. Action. Action. So your action step today is gonna be to develop some basic skeleton of a social fitness plan. And one way to do that would be to just think of all the things that you might be nervous to do in your life. All the, whether it's workplace things, dating, social interactions, family members, public speaking. Let's do a quick scan through all the different areas. And list a bunch of stuff. And it's best to do this out on paper and a digital file. What are the things you're, you can even just think about it right now in your head as you're listening to it. What does, I'll be nervous to talk to that person at work. Oh man, even that presentation would be scary. And all the way up to like, you know, applying for this or changing jobs or the things that maybe really scare you. And you draw them all down and then you, you can, you know, give them numbers. If you like on that zero to 10 scale. So you know how intense or scary they seem. And then you basically say, you know, let me, let me practice some of these things. And let me shoot for, here's a great number I've found is three things a week, three times a week. And some of them are very specific, like have a conversation with this person at work, right? Are you gonna do that every week? I don't know what you can do at once, right? It's like one conversation you've been avoiding or something like that. And then there's other things you can do more repeatedly, like speak up in a meeting at work. Maybe there's a meeting and you tend to stay silent. So you're, you know, once a week, you're now going to do that and you have that. So you're on Wednesday, I'm gonna speak up in this meeting at work. And so you kind of think about it the week ahead of time and you come up with a little plan. Okay, on Wednesday, I'm gonna speak up in that meeting at work. Monday, I'm gonna, you know, after work, there's people inviting, you know, they're inviting people to this happy hour mixer thing. I'll go to that. Right, normally you'd be like, "Oh yeah, I don't want to do that as people there." Talk to someone to go to that and I'm gonna talk to two people while I'm there. Right, you kind of get to make it up as you go. And if you really want just a lot more guidance on how to create this, then there's two different ways to do that. One would be to check out my program Confidence University. You can go to theconfidenceuniversity.com. And on there, there's multiple courses that you get as part of the university, a social mastery course, dating acceleration, or dating mastery and career acceleration, I should say. And all of those guide you through the process of creating this kind of social fitness model approach. Like I call it your ladder to victory. And you get a lot of ideas on how to create it and how to fill it in. And then you get to start to practice that. And of course, if you want to take it even further, then I do have that 12 month mastermind program called the Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind. And a number of people that are in that were long time listeners or are long time listeners of this podcast. And eventually they reached a point where they're like, okay, I'm making progress sort of listening to this. And it's time to really make this change. And so in that, in the mastermind, people have tons of ideas for actions and you can report on the actions that you're doing and get one on one accountability from other members and get input from me on your list and what you're practicing. And it's really varied. We have people that are doing kind of intensive things like, okay, I'm going to do rejection practice this many times over the next month. And then other people that are more opportunistically looking for situations in their workplace to challenge themselves. So it isn't a one size fits all. Although I do have a special bonus program and they're called the Confidence Gym that's kind of, it's like a seven week program. And once so each week is dedicated to a certain exercise and you do it multiple times and then exercise shifts. And so it is a standardized approach that will get anyone into better social fitness plus there's more customizable stuff as I mentioned as well. So if either of those appeals to you, definitely check them out. Regardless, you're going to want to leave this episode practicing something. If nothing else, just start doing stuff that's uncomfortable. Lift some threes and fours, that's it. And if you don't even have a plan, you don't structure it, just come up with something and start leaning in and doing it. 'Cause otherwise none of this stuff about how to talk to yourself and get on your own side and set your boundaries and come up with your rules and own your reality and all the stuff I talk about in this show. If we don't act on it, if we don't build the muscle of social fitness, then it's all just theoretical. So I hope this serves you. And until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to Shrink for the Shy Guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to ShrinkForTheShyGuy.com. For free vlogs, e-books and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
