Why are we all walking around beating ourselves up and not taking bold actions? Is it that people don't know that that's what you need to do? And that's your life's work? Or is it that it's actually really hard and there are easier ways to do it? Or maybe it's both.

It's a great, it's a great, it's a great question. Um, I think a lot of people, if you intellectually ask them, should, are those things good to do? They'd be like, oh yeah, just like eating my vegetables and working out every day and spending time slowing down on plugging for my phone and connecting with my spouse.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's great. But are we doing all those things? Right. And the reason we don't, just like we don't do all those other healthy habits. Well, maybe some people do, but the reason it's a challenge to do something that sounds very simple is because there's an emotional, uh, driver underneath the surface and each one has a payoff.

The bold, I start with the bold action. There's a huge set of payoffs for not taking bold action. And one of the payoffs is we get to avoid the thing that everyone by default is trying to avoid in life, which is pain. And so when we take a bold action, we're going to experience a variety of forms of pain.

Some of it's just discomfort, you know, to wake up, to focus, to take the action, to consistently follow up. It's, it's, there's a discomfort to that. And then there's an emotional discomfort of what if they don't like my show? What if someone doesn't agree with me? What if someone criticizes?

What about if my work's not good enough? What if I'm rejected? It all comes down to that. Disapproved of rejected. And most people are so afraid of that. And even unconsciously avoiding that, that they push the action to later. They, they make it way smaller. They delay it. They hesitate.

And they don't even necessarily know that that's what we're doing, right? It's just like, no, I'm busy now this, but underneath I'm scared. And then we got our, you know, we don't want to, we want to look macho. We don't want to say we're scared. So we say I'm stressed and I'm too busy.

So that's the payoff for the bold action. You might say, what is the payoff for treating yourself bad? I mean, obviously that's, that's terrible. Well, I would say that it actually serves the same master. So when I tell myself that's going to fail, I'm not good. I didn't do that right.

That's creating this, uh, it's almost like a fog and amnesia. I kind of forget my strengths. I say, I'm sure you've done that. I've done that. It's like two in the morning. And the way you're seeing yourself is like this helpless, incompetent person. You're like, wait a minute, that's weird.

Why am I even believing this? Because the more we believe that we, uh, stay in this kind of shell, it's like a protective walls of this negative identity. I'm a nobody. Who am I? And that nobody who's nothing is even further from taking that bold action. And all of this is, is under the umbrella of what I call your safety police, which is a, like a mechanism in your psychology.

You could think of it. That is its purpose is single fold. It is to keep you safe. And the safety police is like a survival mechanism inside that's run amok. It's, it's just too high. The dial is set too high. And so safety means no pain, no rejection, no threat, no danger, no risk.

And so you tell yourself you're a nobody and you avoid the action and you get to stay in that bubble, which feels safer in the moment. Of course, meanwhile, your life is passing you by. So it seems like both of those are a little bit like, uh, like this voice in your head, this inner critic that is kind of controlling you.

Is that a fair assumption? Yes. Yeah. The inner critic, you could think of it as like the mouthpiece of the safety police. It's the one who's kind of narrating. And the crazy thing is like, why do people believe it? It's almost like, because it's familiar and also because it has proximity, you know, it's, it's coming from in your head.

And so it's like, you're, it's closer than your closest friend. And so like, where is that? Okay. I guess that's true. And I'll often do that with clients. I'm like, where is that voice coming from? And they're like, what do you mean? Like, it's from my childhood. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Right now. Where, how are you even hearing that thing? And then it's like a confusing mindfulness question. They're like, I don't know. Right. But it's close. And all of a sudden we assume because it's close and we've heard it a lot that it's true. But if you pay attention, this is probably one of the tools I help clients break free with is if you pay attention to its track record of predictions, it's really bad.

It's really, it's all, you're going to fail at that meeting. No, one's going to buy the thing. And you go there and it goes okay. And people buy the thing that person would never go out with you. And then the person goes out with you, right? Maybe not that one, but the next one.

And if you look at its track record, it's terrible. But then still the very next day, think about that. If you had like a financial advisor and they were just, they couldn't beat the market. They were wrong all the time and you just keep going back to them. And you're like, well, what do you think this time?

And they're just so certain that you keep going to it. And I think that's how we are with the inner critic. So what do we do with both of these areas? And what are the tactics? Yeah, great question. So a lot of people, when they discover this, they're like, okay, how do I kill the critic, right?

It's the enemy, slay the demon. And I don't think it works that way. You can think of like the parts of our psychology as that old show Survivor. I don't know if it's still running. You can't vote them off the island. You can't get rid of them, right? They actually are a part in there.

The problem is not the survivor and the safety police. The problem is the dial. The setting is too high. You do need some survival skills that prevents you from jumping off the 30 foot building and breaking your legs, right? It's like you have a sense of risk and all that.

The issue is that we need to turn the dial down. And so the first thing that people have to do is they have to even know this conversation that we're having exists and say, wait a minute, it's not just me, Aziz or you, Chris, it's, there's a lot of diseases in there.

There's a lot of parts inside. And one of the parts is this inner critic. So the first thing I do with people is can you, I, can you know when your critic is talking, can, do you know when it's you thinking versus the critic? Now we don't have to get crazy, you know, it's philosophical, like what is me, right?

But, you know, are, are you seeing clearly, are you having a distorted view of yourself as incapable and unlovable? You'll, you'll start to hear the critic and get better at it because you'll know it's languages and extremes. It's going to go awful. Everyone's going to think you're terrible. It magnifies, it's just, just like a fun house distoral mirror.

So you got to get one is identify the critic and just get good at it. So with clients, I'll have them do an awareness exercise usually for like a week or two where they're just noting it, tracking it. I'll have them name it too. And some people just call it the critic.

Some people come up with these like pretty funny, creative, silly names, um, just to break the pattern a little bit. So you start to, to, to name it. Then the, the biggest technique you could call it tool is not some hack to just know what to say. It actually is deeper than that.

You have to make what I call the decision of a lifetime. So I have a book called on my own side, which is guiding people through this. And so you're aware of this critic and they're like, yeah, yeah, it's do it. It's all the time. I can name it.

I can see it now. Okay, great. Take a moment and really pay attention to what's happening here. Like really observe it for a while. Cause when you do, hopefully there's some part inside of you. It's like when you watch a movie or, I mean, maybe this has happened in your life.

You're watching someone be almost in an abusive relationship. And you know, if you're watching a movie and, and what's that one with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro from way back in the day, this boy's like some just terrible abusive stepfather. When you're watching that movie and you're identifying with the young character, every part of your body wants that young, you know, son or character to like, stand up to that tyrant and say like, this is effed up.

Like I'm leaving your house. I'm out, I'm done. And basically people have to have that moment inside of themselves. Because what happens is like, okay, the critics beating them up and they're believing it. And they're like, okay, I caught it. Now what do I do? But the energy is not there.

You need to have a revolution inside. You need to usurp the power of the critic and take control of your, of your inner self and be the captain of your ship as I call it. And that means like the critic is the parent kicking you around. You need to become the parent.

So it's a decision. The decision comes from like reaching a threshold moment of really observing, like, this is effed up. I can't like, what is this? What am I doing to myself? And you got to have this sense of almost outrage or disgust or revulsion or something. You say, all right, that's it.

I'm going to take control here. Because otherwise, before that decision, it always goes like this. And I see this all the time. People go to cognitive therapy. They teach them how to deal with their negative thoughts, which is their critic. And they'll write out the critical thoughts. You're a loser or nobody likes you.

And they're like, okay, what do I do? And the therapist is like, challenge the thought. And they're like, okay, I'm good. And many people do like me. Is that right? And it's, it's got no power because they're still, they're framed. They're still living within the reality created by their critic.

They still see themselves that way. And so we have to shatter that and be willing to see what's really true.