Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Mark Metry: Screw Being Shy | Mental Health | E61

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Eliminate your social anxiety, once and for all!  Today we have a return guest on the show, Mark Metry. Mark runs an incredibly successful podcast, Humans 2.0, and has recently launched a book, “Screw Being Shy: How to Eliminate Social Anxiety,” which has already become an Amazon best seller. In this episode, we’ll discuss why we are wired to be socially anxious and learn his top tips to decrease social anxiety Sponsored by Video Husky. If your’e looking for affordable video editing services to take your marketing to the next level check out /cart.videohusky.com/youngandprofiting and get 30% off your first month! Screw Being Shy: https://www.amazon.com/Screw-Being-Shy-Anxiety-Yourself-ebook/dp/B085T7D1X4 If you liked this episode, please write us a review! Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halitaha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to understand. cover value from my guests, people who are much smarter than me on their given topic by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, negotiation coaches, world famous cartoonists, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity,

how to improve your time management, the art of persuasion, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here. at Young and Profiting Podcast. Today we have a return guest on the show, Mark Metri. Mark runs an incredibly successful podcast, Humans 2.0, and he's recently launched a book, Screw Being Shy, How to Eliminate Social Anxiety, which has already become an Amazon bestseller. And this episode will discuss his top ways to decrease social anxiety and the science to back it up.

Hey, everybody, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. I am live here with No. other than Mark Metri. Welcome to the show. What's going on, Halah? It's great to be with you here while the world is on lockdown, just trying to live our lives and do all the things that we had planned and stuff, you know? Totally. I mean, we had this in the books from months ago, and since everybody's working from home, I thought, why not live stream this? Because everyone's going to be on their computers anyway. And so let's bring entertainment to the masses. Why not? So how is life treating you. I mean, the world is crashing. You know, everybody's scared of coronavirus. What are you

thinking right now? Honestly, it's pretty weird because I'm sure like a lot of people, I had like a major plan for what I was supposed to do this month, like watch my book, do a ton of these speaking events, do my TEDx talk, all these different things. And so all that just kind of isn't happening anymore. So, but the book launch happened. And so some good things, a lot of unexpected things. But, you know, I'm grateful that I'm healthy. I'm grateful I don't know anyone who's sick. And I'm definitely an optimist, but I'm a little bit afraid. Yeah, I mean, I think everybody is a little bit afraid.

I think the best thing you can do is prepare and be cautious. I think a lot of people underestimated the coronavirus, and I even got made fun of a little bit for, like, wearing a mask and stuff on the train. But it turns out it was a big deal. And I just think that everybody needs to be as careful as they can. And the best thing that we can do is stick together and be a kind human. I know you wrote a lot of posts about making sure you're a good human throughout all this because it's really easy to, you know, forget your values and things when you're scared.

I mean, I don't know what's going to happen about an expert, but, I mean, I definitely think a lot has changed in the last 48 hours. Like, I think Italy had reported a thousand deaths a few days ago. And then now it's 2000. So, I mean, I think. I think that it's getting exponential, which is bad. And I live in the U.S. and like a ton of, I live in Massachusetts and I just came from New York where a ton of things were put on lockdown. Like you can't go to, you basically can't go to any restaurants or cafes or anywhere for the most part.

Yeah, I've been, I've been stuck in my house for since Thursday night. I have not left my apartment. You're seeing my room. Nobody has seen my room before. So welcome to my room. You guys are going to be seeing a lot more of it. Yeah. Well, stay safe.

Anyway, let's continue on because you know what? Life has to go on, whether physical life or virtual life. And so we're continuing on. So your new book, Screw Being Shy, just came out. My first book. And you actually came on my show. Yeah, it's your first book. I heard an interview where somebody was like, congrats on your second book.

And I was like, that's not his second book. So your first book came out. Screw Being Shy. And I actually had you on the show about five months ago, episode number 41. If you guys want to check it out, we talked about your whole backstory, you know, how you grew up, some of the projects that you did when you were younger in high school and things like that. We talked about your VR company. So if you guys are interested in what Mark did in the past and some of his big current projects, you guys can go back to episode number 41. But for this episode, we're really going to concentrate on screw being shy, the topic of social anxiety.

So when you came on the show, you actually, I asked you if you were going to write a book. and you told me that you were thinking about writing a book, but it was a completely different idea. You said it was going to be like some adventure book, choose your own ending. It was about mindset and you were going to feature your other people that you've interviewed before. And then all of a sudden you hear about your book and it's about social anxiety. And it came out and this was five months ago you told me you were thinking about writing another book. So when did you get the idea to write this social anxiety book? And how long did it take you to write?

Because it was just five months ago you didn't even have the idea for this. fuck yeah so we talked in like what september at lincoln global at that event yeah i mean i remember at that time i i was already working on a book it was going to be called like humans 2.0 and it was like that similar idea and then at the end of that month in september i was in l.a and i was doing another speaking gig and i just got this idea and i just couldn't go to sleep and then that idea was you know whenever i go speak at events or whenever someone hears my story on like a podcast or whatever usually the main thing I got asked by people is like how did you overcome social anxiety because that's a piece of my story and so I mean there's only so much I could tell that person because I know as someone

who's lived with social anxiety for over 10 years it can be something that is not the easiest to talk about given your condition it's a very deep topic and listen, I mean, I've read books by a lot of people that I've had on my podcast that are about like human confidence and behavior. But, you know, I kind of found like my own unique path out of it. And then through my podcast and through me actually like talking to like experts and people that actually know what they're talking about in their respective fields, I've been able to sort of like backtrack what I did on my own journey. sometimes unknowingly and sometimes knowingly, and actually find out that other people have done this. And there's like signs to back up the things that I've been trying out and I've seen results.

And then also at that time, as I just kind of got deeper in this topic, when you look at the data, social anxiety in America and a lot of other countries is like one of the most common forms of anxiety. And it's also linked to substance abuse and social isolation, both of which highly increase your chances of depression and suicide. And so, you know, I almost kind of fell down that path. And so just kind of looking at all these different factors, I was just like, whoa.

Like there needs to be some kind of a book. There needs to be like some kind of a movement or something. Because there's so many misconceptions from like being introverted to being quiet to what is shy actually mean. Is that different from being introverted? what it's social anxiety. Is that even real? And so for me, I just kind of dove into this head on. And yeah, I mean, it's been pretty interesting. That's awesome. Yeah, well, I got a chance to read your book. Originally, I was going to interview before the book came out. So I was really happy that we ended up

rescheduling and I got a chance to actually read it. It's really great. Tons of research. You also provided a lot of valuable insight from the different interviews and people that you had on the show. So I think it worked really nicely for you. So really great job. I just want to say that before we continue. Thanks so much. Yeah. And then let's talk about the difference between shyness and social anxiety or if there's

difference. I used to think that there is a difference. But when I read your book, you're of the position that shyness and social anxiety are really the same thing. Could you just explain that to us? Yeah. So, you know, first and foremost, there are two kinds of people, I think. There are introverts and they're extroverts.

These are largely just fixed traits about your character that are just about your natural behavior. And what a lot of people don't know is that being an introvert is defined as being someone who is predominantly more living in their internal world, like their thoughts, ideas, emotions. Whereas extroverted people are the opposite. They're more about the external world and whatnot. So I'm an introvert. A lot of people, a lot of successful people are introverts, a lot of successful people. a lot of successful people are extroverts. So, you know, these are just two kinds of people.

You're not better or worse if you're either or. And being an introvert, you know, means that you could be a quiet person that is just kind of more focused on your own, like, individuality with solitude, and that's totally fine. But when you need to speak to someone, you could do that. And then I also think that being shy is a totally natural emotion that is totally healthy to have every once in a while on like a normal

spectrum. And so I think that if you are maybe doing something for like the first time or where it's an environment where it's like your first, second, third time there, or maybe it's just really uncomfortable like you go to an event in like some city where you don't know anybody there. And like for the first five, ten minutes, you're shy. That's totally normal. Yeah. But, you know, there are people that can be shy, like almost every time. They go someplace or they have to talk to someone or anything like that. And so for me, like, I just remember being shy from a young age and, like, literally just not being able to talk to anyone.

Like literally just any kind of scenario, whether it was like at a restaurant, order my meal at a waitress, trying to, like, tell somebody something. I just had a lot of difficulty. And so eventually what happens is if you are continuously shy again and again and again, this usually happens usually early on by someone's age, although this can also happen to adults. But if that pattern is continued, then eventually what can happen is social anxiety can slowly begin to happen because your mind and body are in constantly in this feedback loop. you're shy and because you're nervous. So your mind will get nervous and because of that you'll feel your body signs of being nervous.

Like your forehead or your armpits or your palms will start to sweat. Yeah. Your throat will clench. Your mind will race. All these things will begin to happen. And so you get shy and you can't talk to people. And then also what will happen is sometimes you'll walk into an environment, the same environment. and let's say you're not even anxious, but your body has been conditioned to that,

and then your body will begin to feel the symptoms of having social anxiety, which when your mind realizes that's happening, it will continue those cycle of thoughts of social anxiety. And so it really becomes almost like a trap that someone gets stuck in, and now they've almost lost their free will. So whenever they walk into a social situation, they just can't talk to people. And so usually if people can't grow out of this by the time that they're older, like early, early adulthood, this is where a lot of problems begin to happen. Because when you think about it, social anxiety is actually like a lot more serious than people realize.

If you haven't experienced this or you're just looking at it from the outside, it can seem like, oh, okay, someone's just a little bit shy. And for sure, you can be a little bit shy and not have social anxiety. But if you are socially anxious, this eventually leads to you not really performing well in any kind of like social situation that has a community or network attached because you're super afraid of what other people will think about you. Yeah. And you won't talk instead. And I talk about the varying studies in my book, but there's like a study done by Stanford

University that found that people who are socially anxious are much more prone. to use substances or to socially isolate themselves because it's either like, okay, I'm going to try to do this, but because I have so much stress, I'm just going to use like some sort of an easy fix, like a Band-Aid fix, or it's like I'm not even going to try at all and I'm going to socially isolate myself, which leads to a dose of other issues. Like I believe it's worse for you than smoking 12 cigarettes a day. And what's funny enough is like I did a podcast earlier today and it was like a sales podcast. And the host, he was telling me, he was like, yeah, I talk about this all the time on how, like,

you can be an introvert, but still, like, get your stuff done, like, figure out the best way to live in the world using your strengths. And he told me that he really struggled with alcohol because he was using it. And so, I mean, it's definitely a major issue. And, you know, social anxiety can also be defined as an excessive need to manage one's own self-image. And so it's like, it's not just about not talking to people. it eventually affects every area of your life. Yeah.

And it puts a boundary so that the person has no other chance but to remove it. And like the matter of the fact is, it's like, last thing I'll say, I promise. Social anxiety, it's like, this is not a new thing. Social anxiety is one of the most primal and ancient fears that so many of our ancestors had because it helps you survive to a degree. So it's interesting. Yeah. And we'll definitely touch on that evolutionary biology.

and why that's important to understand when it comes to social anxiety. Really quick, I want to give a really interesting stat that I think plays to this a little bit. 15 million Americans suffer from social anxiety, and 36% of those people report experiencing symptoms for 10 years before they get help. And so I think this really plays on the whole covering behind your shyness. Some people just think it's a natural personality trait that they're shy, and they don't realize that they actually have social anxiety and they need to get help. And so it's really important for people to look at themselves and analyze themselves and see if this is more of a recurring pattern than just like a little bit of shyness.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, first and foremost, big reason why I wrote my book is because, you know, if you are super socially anxious and you have gotten to that point where you are socially isolating yourself voluntarily, I guess technically. But, and, you know, you're in a poor spot mentally. And let's say you are suicidal. Currently, our mainstream options for this world today is either call the suicide hotline or call your doctor or a therapist or psychologist and go talk to them, go visit them or talk to them on the phone. And so, I mean, if you're in that state and social anxiety has driven you to that point, you probably don't want to talk to anybody. And so for me, I wrote my book because for the most part, I mean, a part of it is, yeah, connecting to other. other people. But a big part of my book is just things that you can do alone because I realize that

this part, this message was really missing and sort of a lot of us what we're taught today in terms of how we're supposed to deal with this in society. And so again, I'm not a doctor. I'm not anyone with a professional degree to be talking about anything healthcare related. But, you know, I don't really talk about anything about that stuff in my book. You know, if you need professional help, definitely go for it. But everything in my book is just things that you can do on your own. with your own hands and feed in mind, that honestly, depending on the severity, are not that hard for you to do. So, yeah, it's interesting.

In your book, you say that social anxiety is a result of psychological trauma, right? And so many people, when they think of psychological trauma, they think of something really extreme, like a murder, witnessing a murder or a robbery or being in a car crash, something like that. But you say there's like a spectrum to trauma. Can you talk about that? and maybe also talk about what trauma that you faced as a child growing up and why that led to your social anxiety. Yeah. So, you know, honestly, after interviewing almost 300 people in varying

different fields, I basically concluded that, you know, one of the root causes of a lot of our pains and stresses and struggles has to do with the way that our brains and body formed in the early years of our lives. And so, you know, a lot of people know that, you know, being in a traumatic event can mess you out for sure but like you said like the definition of that is so loose and essentially you know from from what I've learned is that trauma is basically anything that happens to you that you didn't know could happen and so you see something that you that you didn't know humans could do you see it you saw something that you didn't know existed in the world that was pretty damaging or negative in a way and so everyone

has a, you know, varying degrees. And it could, it could even be something not happening. Like, for example, your parents and your family at an early age just kind of left you and they didn't really hang out with you. Then you could grow up feeling that you're always isolated, even though you could be right in front of it next to other people. And so essentially, when that happens, your nervous system pauses in its tracks. And it is trying to figure out what just happened. It's putting all this energy into like, how do we process what happens so we can learn from it and move on. But what happens is, you know, you can go years and years without resolving that. And if someone is already unhealthy, if someone is already not on the path towards growth and towards mindset and all these things we talk about, they can live their lives like 10 years, 20 years after the event that traumatized them. And it could be affecting their behavior in ways that they don't even know.

And so, you know, for this in my book, I refer to other experts about this very deep topic that know a lot more about it than me like Dr. Joe Dispenza, Masson Kipp, Dr. Nicole LaPera. Because, I mean, I wanted to include it because this is super important because I feel like honestly any conversation I'm in where I'm talking about a problem or my view on the world and the root cause is not mentioned, it's just sort of it's missing. And so I didn't want to make a book that was all about all. these tips and all these even though practical things that you can do but i wanted to get into you know the actual root cause and people need to understand that whether you um experience something and it traumatizes you it affects your behavior and so for me yeah it was moving to a different school into a super small town with 5 000 people and having no diversity in that town going to school with people where everyone literally nobody looked like me everyone was the same

Caucasian white. That was also the time of like post 9-11. And, you know, I definitely faced some pretty severe racism when I was a kid and a lot of bullying that came from that. And also, I think basically connected. I also had some physical health issues happen at the same time. Like asthma, autoimmune issues with my stomach, appendix, skin, insomnia, bladder, rashes, my eyes, wide range of issues. Wow. And it goes back to like when your nervous system, when you have a traumatic event and your nervous system pauses, it's not just your mental health, for example, that gets affected. It's also other areas of your physical health because everything in our body and our lives is really connected.

You can't really isolate or separate anything for the most part. And so when that happens, it's like you go on for the rest of your life and your brain is not allocating. it's full 100% resources on like the present moment on whatever's happening in your life because your nervous system is trying to go back to that traumatic event and try to figure out what happened. And so that's why you get people and kids with all these behavioral issues not being able to focus a lot of adults. And one part of it is biochemical and another part of it has to do with traumatic experiences

and people literally not being able to. And because of that, because of the. the fact that they're trying to go back to the past and figure out what happened, they're using that same data, they're using their same intelligence, which could be wrong to then predict their future. And that's what creates anxiety. And so it puts them in like this zone where they're basically stuck in life. They can't move. And so another big reason why I wrote the book too is like, like you, I'm in the entrepreneurial self-improvement world. And I always hear people talking about like no excuses and you should just try harder and all this stuff.

And for sure, a lot of that stuff is valid. I say no excuses all the time. But a big part of it is, you know, a lot of people that maybe don't have issues to this degree don't really know. And so if someone doesn't have the information, and even if someone does have the information, but they don't actually understand it and know how to apply into their own lives, it's not the fact that they just need to get more information. It's not the fact that they just need to be motivated harder. It's the fact that you need to address their underlying psychology and their physiology

and all the things that impact someone's life on a day-to-day basis. And so that's why I talk a lot about the science because it's like you could just say all you want to all day. But at the end of the day, you know, you need to take the most effective approach. Yeah, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

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Yeah. Well, let's talk about evolutionary biology. So you sort of touched on it. You're talking about some root causes. We said that psychological trauma is one root cause. But then there's our genetic makeup. And it turns out that memories of our ancestors are actually stored in our genetics and make us react in certain ways that we can't necessarily control and that we're not actually conscious of.

So could you talk about this evolutionary biology and how that plays a role in our social anxiety? Yeah. So, you know, honestly, a lot of these thoughts come from Robert Green. And essentially, it's this. I mean, we like to think of ourselves as like a complete original human being that we're just like one of a kind. And for sure, we are one of a kind to some degree. But a lot of the things that make us are things that we can't even control, are things that not necessarily we can't control, but things that were sort of given. Like you're given for the most part, whether you're an introvert or extrovert. You're born into whatever location and whatever happens to you. A lot of people have had terrible things happen to them in their lives. And it's not their fault

that those things happen. And so a lot of these things come into play. On top of that, it's like there's a lot of talk on intergenerational trauma. Yep. And I was speaking to to Maston Kip, who I referenced earlier on trauma, and he was telling me that one of his clients came in because she was experiencing rashes every time she took a shower. And so she went to a ton of different doctors, and they had her like change shampoos and all this different stuff, and they were just like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with you. Like we don't know. And so basically, it turns out that her grandma was,

was killed in the Holocaust by an acid shower. Wow. And so when you kind of look at it, there's some science to back this up, but a lot of what we think makes us us are really just underlying survival instincts and things that our brain has learned over the years. The same way that when an animal is born,

you know, and it can instantly recognize things like, hey, I should not get near that tiger because I just know or I should, hey, I should drink this thing called water. Humans very much have the same thing. And so to that degree, you know, a major part of what makes us us has to do with what runs our minds, which is our brain. And when you look at it, our brains have not evolved to make us happy. Our brains have evolved to get us to survive. So whatever scenario, whatever internal environment your brain can create based on the information it thinks it knows, it will create that environment. And so what happens is we face psychological trauma and then now our brain is like, crap,

we've got to find a way to defend ourselves against this. And so, for example, for me, when I was either made fun of or reprimanded when I spoke up or whatever, my brain learned, okay, so when you speak up, people hate you and people make fun of you, and that's not good. And so my brain was like, hey, because of that, we're not going to talk to people again. And then that became my mask. That became my armor. And so for other people, it doesn't have to be about social anxiety. For other people could be, you are living in a super strict immigrant household where the only way to get love from your parents is by getting good grades. So then you study a ton and you get known at your school as, you know, being the

straight A person. And you're sort of doing all these things to help make you survive when in reality we're doing these things and in turn building an ego, building an identity within that mask that is starving us of real validation from our lives. Because a lot of us don't even want to be doing the thing that we're doing to help keep that mask or like that suit of armor to defend us. It could be, you know, you getting physically abused and deciding to, you know, go to the gym every day and getting super physically strong so that nobody can hurt you again. And so this looks like a lot of different ways for a lot of different people. And ultimately, you have to understand kind of a little bit about that science to just kind of help explain things more. Totally. For sure. And I think it's

important to understand just back to the evolutionary biology piece is that in ancient times humans were scared of being kicked out of their community right so humans need each other same way that we need each other now with the coronavirus we depend on each other like if you leave us in a forest by ourselves we're more likely to get killed by bear or tiger if we're by ourselves than if we're with 20 people right so people you're really scared of being like ostracized from your community or being rejected from your community. And so that really plays into people being socially anxious. For sure. And I mean, I talk about this in my book. I just didn't mention it. But, you know, one thing I always am sure of to say is like, you don't have social anxiety. I don't have social anxiety. But my brain can be

socially anxious because you have to remember that, like you said, you know, I originally learned this from Seth Godin and also the science backs it up that a major way that we died was by not being in groups because that meant you couldn't find food you know this is a totally different world you probably get killed or kidnapped or something like that and so you know a major part of our brain you know has not just evolved to detect threats like you have no food left or you know there's a tiger that's going to come kill you it's also evolved to detect threats in the other kind of environment like our social environment as well and so people for example that have social anxiety have been shown to literally have bigger amygdala in their brain.

And so maybe people that are more sensitive to fear-based emotions can become socially anxious because it's an ancestral fear because a common punishment for speaking against a leader or someone in your tribe with authority or the administration or the leadership or whatever was social exile, like you said. And so that can also look like you not saying the right thing in a meeting just because you're trying to pander to what other people want you to think. And so, yeah, that's a major, major part of it for sure. And then I talk about like other pieces of the science in my book, like what actually constructs our reality and the fact that, you know, the average human has up to hundreds of cognitive biases and distortions that our brain has created throughout thousands of years to solve. our problems faster in real time. And so I mean like the most common form is the negativity bias,

which is like, you know, 10 people walk up to you and talk to you today, and nine of them tell you something positive, but one of them says you suck. You're going to focus more on the negative aspect because negative information is more valuable in terms of survival outcomes. And so that's one another one is like your brain quickly accesses memory based on what you've previously been thinking, but not necessarily your real memory. And so that sometimes will give you a distorted view of who you actually are in the moment, which then will reflect your actions and decisions when you're in that fear-based mode. And so I talk a lot about these and how they can affect you in your life because you just really have to understand that there are rules, there are parameters in life.

and a lot of them are just based in like science. And then once you learn those rules, then you can learn how to best abide and follow them to your own standard to best meet your life. And so once you become aware, consciously aware of those rules that, I mean, I didn't know before this, then, you know, you can begin to control your life, honestly.

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they say CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. That's one. There's a study in my book from Stanford University that talks about how meditation is equally as effective at treating, social anxiety specifically and thoughts related to that as effective as therapy and other forms of medication. So that's what I would probably say. And honestly, I think the big thing with this is like a lot of people, I don't know, I kind of feel like there's a narrative that says out there that's like you have to control all your thoughts. All your thoughts have to be positive. If you have a negative thought, just send it back. That's not really the way it works. I mean, once you think a thought, it's been thought. You can't take it back. And so I think a major part is learning how to meditate.

And I talk about this in my book and I titled this section, meditation will crack you open. And essentially what you realize is that, you know, we are like this ocean of thoughts. Every day, the average human mind emits anywhere from 25 to 60,000 thoughts a day. And so a lot of these thoughts sometimes we're conscious of them. We know we're thinking them. Other thoughts were unconscious. of and when you look at all these thoughts you know these very much run the script of our lives like the same way that you pick up a movie script and you see a character and what they say that runs our thoughts and you know 80% of those thoughts are almost identical from the day before and so I think a major aspect a way to start changing your thoughts is to not go through your thoughts at all

because that makes it worse and so if you start to think I should not think I'm this then your brain is going to think I'm this or it's like if I'm thinking like I should start to be more confident because I'm a I'm a loser and I'm having negative thoughts and I keep thinking about that it's going to keep happening and so I think a major part of this is you can't really think your way to better thoughts you have to go outside of the mind and one of the greatest ways to go outside of the mind one of them is meditation and specifically with meditation you begin to realistically understand this because if you're just hearing everything what I'm saying and you haven't you don't meditate you don't know what I'm talking about you might logically understand this in your brain

but you don't actually know what I'm talking about and what I'm talking about is when you meditate and you disconnect from the external environment your thoughts overall they don't decrease they actually increase and so you actually think more when you meditate because you just shut off your external environment. And so your brain is no longer paying attention to anything, but it's now it's inside its own mind. And so when you do that, you think way more. And so a lot of people try meditation and they're like, wow, I can't calm down my brain or I keep thinking. I guess this isn't for me. Well, no, that's literally the point of meditation. The point of meditation is the same way you go to the gym and you lift. It's to exercise your muscles and it sucks when you do it. And so when you

meditate every day, day in and day out, you begin to actually understand what I've said of, you know, life is just a series of thoughts. Like you understand that, you know, life is just, you're on an ocean and waves are just crashing. Like you can't stop the waves. The waves are always going to come. And those are our thoughts. And so the best way to go about them is to address the emotional piece that can then make a decision I want to do based on that thought. Am I going to freak out? and produce more negative thoughts, or am I going to take this with a grain of salt and realize what it is,

which is a series of feedback loops that my brain is giving me based on the different chemicals that my brain is secreting, depending on the environment and my mood and all these different factors. And so when you look at it that way, you can no longer get it. Because this is the big thing, right? Like I think a major meta-blocker of a lot of issues and the big issue is not actually the issue.

So the issue is not the fact that someone is anxious. The issue is not even the fact that someone might not be confident. It's the fact that when they think that and they get shameful that they're having that problem in the first place. And so when someone gets shameful about something, they're trying to hide it. And so when you hide it, you're actually not giving your brain and your body the other resources.

it needs to tackle that problem, and so it stays a problem. And so for me, like I talk about in my book, the big thing for me about social anxiety wasn't even the social anxiety, but it was the fact that like in every scenario, I would try to hide the fact that I had social anxiety. And when I began to talk about it more in the fact that I face this issue, the problem got exponentially easier to manage and to solve. And so, I mean, I talk about it again in my book. I call it shame the ticking time bomb, where a lot of times if we don't address these issues, it leads to a life of quiet desperation where you're trying to hide a lot of different things about your life and it goes past the normal expectation for privacy and it's really impacting your life and it's

isolating you and not connecting you. And so that's a major aspect of to understand of it too and not just with being shy, but also a lot of our emotions, shame blocking them. So essentially you're saying like label that emotion and you can overcome it. Is that what you're saying? I mean, for sure, label that emotion. I mean, you know, I'm sure you've had people in your podcast that have told you like, you know, when you label an emotion scientifically has been proven to affect you less. But I'm also talking about like in a lot of households, like a lot of immigrant households

that are more strict from a lot of the friends that I have, being depressed is not a real thing. Oh, got it. It was like shameful for you to feel socially anxious, you're saying. Yeah, or I mean, there's a wide variety of issues that you can do are like, oh, we just don't talk about that here. I mean, there's a thousand different ways that this plays out in every culture. And so when that happens, a percentage of the population, they grow shameful around this. And this even becomes a more serious issue because they're not talking about this issue. But if they talked about it, expressed it, began to open up the natural ways to heal and get on that path towards growth.

You wouldn't have people, you know, 10 years down the road that are suicidal. using substances. And so that's a major, major part of it. And so it can affect a lot of different people from varying religions, cultures. I mean, when you actually look at the data, shyness is the most common in places like Asia and the Middle East, where those cultures, some of them, are not really that open about these things. And they try to suppress a lot of different, if you look like this or if you act this way. And so, you know, that's a major part of it too. And so when that happens in our society, you also see an equal effect on people's mental health too that often doesn't get seen or discussed decades later.

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in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash yap free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwestregisteredagent.com slash yap free. Wow, that's really interesting. I never really thought about it that way. So you brought up Robert Green previously. And when I was reading, I think it was chapter three of your book, it's called Life's Greatest Invention. It reminded me of the Law of Death Denial.

So he wrote this book called The Laws of Human Nature. And he talks about the Law of Death Denial. And essentially, it's people being afraid of death. We fear death. And he says that until we accept our own death, we can't be free. And so that's his thoughts on it. What are your thoughts on death and are you afraid of death? And whether I'm afraid of death or not, I'm not sure.

But honestly, I think the big idea here is, like Robert Green, like, you have to get an understanding of it. Because I don't know about you, but I never really actually thought about my death until, like, when I was 18, 19. And so I think a big reason for that is because we value human life so much now, unlike at a time previously in history, that has never happened before. And so we're trying to, like Robert Green says, like we're trying to almost run away from it. Like we make these graveyards and we try to put people in like the corner that are dead. We try not to talk about it. We try to hide it.

And, you know, it's something that's terrible. When in reality, I mean, 100,000 people die every day. That happens every day. That's just the cycle of life. People are born, people die. And, you know, a lot of, you know, for example, like, when you look at any major religion, culture, tradition, they all address death or the afterlife in some way, shape, reform. And so this is clearly an important problem. And so for me, like, even though, like, these signs where everyone,

whether it was a religion or something, a reminder of death, they sort of like blend in the background and you don't really realize it. And you don't actually ever consciously think of dying. And so when you really think about that, I think it very much distorts you. And so, for example, like today, because of the whole coronavirus thing, honestly, like, you know, despite the thousands of people that have already died and a lot of the bad things that have happened, I think a lot of people are being like reinvigorated with a sense of what it means to be alive.

Like I saw I was on Twitter and I saw a janitor for a nursing home that said, I mean, she dropped some F bombs in there that were inspirationally dropped. But she was like, I'm cleaning every damn inch and floor of this restroom or of these facilities. I'm not going to let anyone here die. And so I think we almost have throughout. the course of our entire history, we've always been in wars. We've always been in like plagues. We've always been in varying flus that have killed millions of people. We've always been against some big enemy. And so for the most part, I think a major aspect of that for the last, you know, few decades, for sure things have happened has greatly decreased because the world has gotten into a better place.

Yeah. But I think when you were reminded of your death, it's so, so, so important. And the fact is, is like when you realize this, you're essentially like, wait, so if I know I'm going to die and I know I'm a shy person that I don't want to be anymore and I actually have a lot to say and I like talking to people, but I just really can't get myself to, when I'm dead, I'm going to regret this so much or am I really going to let like the opinions of other people stop me because I'm going to die one day? And so you get down this line of thinking and you realize that to a big degree, death is life's ultimate motivation. Totally.

And so when you get that, it really begins to, you see your life in a different perspective. And on top of that, you really begin to take responsibility for your life. Right. Like so, for example, today, like the CDC and the World Health Organization and a lot of people are speaking out and they're saying, hey, a major part of this is what you do on your own. You have to be responsible. Like if you are sick or if you think you're sick, don't go outside.

Make sure you're sanitizing. Make sure you're staying healthy. Make sure you're doing all these things because you could be impacting other people. And so with our own lives, you have to take responsibility not for even your own health or your sickness, but you have to take responsibility for your life itself, for your existence. And the matter of the fact is, it's not like, you know, you have to take on like everything in life. and it's not about taking too much responsibility,

and it's not about confusing something being your fault versus it being responsible. A lot of terrible things have happened to a lot of us, and it's not our fault that those things have happened, but you are responsible for who you are today because those things might have affected you or not. That's just the truth of the matter of the fact is. And until you can get around that fact, you can't change yourself.

And so the way that I think about this is like, the same way when you make a social media account, the same way when you're signing up for a program, and it tells you, hey, yo, here are the terms and conditions. You got to hit this box. You got to hit agree. And if you don't, you can't play this game. You can't sign up. And so, you know, we're not really given that at the beginning of our lives, but I kind of feel like this is almost the same thing for someone to really realize this, understand their death and realize what that actually means for them to be responsible for it. And I feel like if you know that and you also understand the like the science and the truth about how our society works and the way our brain works and you realize

the root cause then you can actually develop like a legitimate runaway perhaps like a ground planned that you can begin to take steps towards to help yourself on this thing that is going to totally change your life and so i feel like once you have those three elements then you can be like all right i'm going to be motivated i'm not going to you know not be unmotivated because I stopped caring about this. I'm not going to like move on to the next podcast or the next information thing. You're actually going to care about this if this is a big aspect of your life that you care about. Yeah, totally.

So we covered a lot of the mental stuff, like how to make sure that, you know, we're not totally overtaken by our unconscious thoughts. We talked about the law of death denial and how we basically need to use death as motivation. Let's talk about our physical selves, our body, exercise, nutrition. How does that come into play when it comes to social anxiety? So researching how the human body and specifically the gut microbiome and food and nutrition work has been like a side hobby of mine since like 2017. When I began to learn about health. And then also when I met Nivee Jane, who you've had on this podcast.

I believe and he goes into it and so like for me a major trend that I kind of saw was and even when you look at like the mental health field you know there's an emerging field of science called nutritional psychiatry and essentially what they're beginning to realize is that food is actually one of the most powerful forms of treatment for mental health which you don't really think of like for me growing up I always just thought just eat what you got to eat to survive and then if you you eat too much, then you're going to gain weight and get fat. That's my only understanding of food that I had. And then when I actually dove into the research and the science, and then you also look at like the mental health communities and even like authors and leaders talk about this, they talk about a neurotransmitter that impacts many aspects of our lives called serotonin. And serotonin impacts a lot of things about us from our sleep to our mood. to our appetite, to a wide range of things, to our social functioning in groups. So it's extremely important for social anxiety.

And a lot of the mental health medications, primarily a percentage of them target that mechanism in the body and the brain. And it actually turns out that 10, 15 years ago, we thought that all of our serotonin, all of our neurotransmitters were in our brain. It actually turns out that's not true. and only 5, 10% of serotonin is in the brain, 90, 95% is in the gut microbiome. Wow, I did not know that. Which is next to your stomach and intestines, which is actually this vast ecosystem of trillions of bacteria.

Speak of bacteria and viruses that human beings have created a symbiotic relationship with for thousands of years that have basically made us the number one species on this planet. And so if there's something wrong with your gut, then there's eventually going to be something wrong with you. And there are countless diseases, even outside of the mental health world, that are linked to having an unhealthy gut microbiome. And so a major aspect of this is like if you want to improve your mental health, there's a section in my book where I say, a strong mind is built in the kitchen.

And I think that's the first place you have to start. And so a major aspect is you have to really begin to either become conscious everyone's a little bit different on where they are in their health journey. You have to at least become conscious of what you're putting in your body. And you really have to stop honestly eating things that have been made in factories, things that have been made by scientists. Because the matter of the fact is, is, you know, most of America is obese. And that's not because those people are weak.

It's not because those people have, like, less willpower than you or I are they're even more disciplined. it's because those people's nervous systems and biochemistry don't stand a chance against the billions of dollars of money that has been created by keeping people unhealthy and creating artificial junk food that has literally like the same way people talk about like Facebook and apps being addictive. These companies hire the world's best scientists, the world's food gastrologists. and they figure out a way to make their product, same way as any company. How do we get the user to do it as much as possible? How do we make it addictive? Sugar.

And the worst part about this is there's a study I mentioned in my book where they take the brains of people who are doing hard drugs, like crack, cocaine, heroin, and they also do brain scans of people who regularly consume junk food. And the gray matter is almost the same, which means that they're, is a severe amount of addiction going on around the world. And for sure, a big part of it is like for me, when I was over 200 pounds, it was initially led because I had so much pain going on in my life.

That was the only way I knew how to deal with my emotions. But also food, especially processed food, is extremely, extremely addictive. And so what I talk about in my book is like, if you have that problem, you need to, again, the same idea of what I said about thoughts. in terms of you can't focus on the negative thoughts, you have to go on the positive ones. You have to do the same thing with food. So don't focus on not eating junk food. Don't focus on not eating ice cream, not eating brownies.

Just focus and try to do your own research and try to learn what healthy food that you can easily put into your diet that you can easily put into your schedule. And when you start to slowly give your body the right nutrients, fats, fibers to fuel your brain and body properly, you're not necessarily going to be that pulled to eating like an entire pint of ice cream like I used to do all the time.

And so that's a major aspect of it. And when you do that, you're going to see a major increase in your mental health. And so that's number one. And I advocate for eating. Again, I don't necessarily believe there's a universal healthy diet because I think everyone's body and chemistry and gum microbiome is different. But I definitely advocate for most people probably a higher food. fat diet where the majority of their calories are coming from fat because there are countless studies that I talk about in my book. I mentioned chemical compounds like omega-3 that most people know of,

things like vitamin D. A lot of chemicals and a lot of vitamins and minerals that are mostly found in fats in like products, foods, animals that you eat that are super good that are known as brain foods that I think a lot of people just quite frankly don't eat or don't supplement. supplement with. And so me, I feel like I barely ate a vegetable in my life. I had a strict diet of like muffins and crackers and bread and all this stuff. And the matter of the fact is, is if you're not eating vegetables, if you're not eating things that are natural that come from the ground and that have just been made, your biochemistry is going to suffer. And for me, I mean, I think I always suffered because of my health because of food, but for me, my breaking point was

18, 19. For some other people, it's like in their 20s. For some other people, it's like, they'll eat whatever they want. And they're 30 and they're like, oh, I don't know why I'm facing this problem. And honestly, I think after talking to a ton of scientists, doctors on my podcast, the best, the best, I think probably 80% of your health is connected to your food. Yeah. The rest is other aspects. And so for sure, it's not the end all, be all by no means. Like you could, you could be eating a ton of vegetables and still hate your life. If you, haven't figured out some other things and you're not relieving stress. But when you look at it and when you look at stress going back to like psychological trauma, psychological trauma can create the number one

form of chronic stress. Number two form of chronic stress is your diet, is your food. And so when you look at that too, it's like you've got to do that. And then when it comes to like mindset and everyone talking about the brain and how to think better, it's like how else do you think your brain is going to recreate new brain cells. How do you think it's going to... Yeah, it needs the nutrients. It needs the fats. You know, you can't be, in my opinion, if you really want to maximize your brain health,

you can't really be drinking alcohol every night. You have to be moving a lot during your day. You have to make sure you're sleeping for a good enough time. And that could be depending on the person anywhere from seven to like nine hours. And so those are super factors to making sure your brain is properly restored because we now know that if you're... brain is inflamed, you have a much higher increase of getting anxiety, depression, suicide. And so a lot of these factors are linked in together, especially in the body.

Yeah. And then the other two factors that are really important for our listeners to consider is sleep and exercise. Those two also decrease your stress and help you become a better person in general. Yeah. I mean, I think the two most important things are about that is this. So I think if you are someone who's busy, which is everyone, I think you need to schedule these things out. Like I think you need to go to your calendar. You need to be like, okay, from 1015 to 1020, I'm going to get up and I'm going to do as many jumping jacks as I can for five minutes. And so I think a major part of this is like a lot of us go to the gym and we exercise a certain amount of times a week. And I mean, that's great and all for sure be active, get fit.

but also our body was not meant to have a hyper-concentrated amount of activity for an hour and then sit down inside all day on like a laptop. And so schedule moving throughout the day. And then also what I advocate for is trying to find some spot in your schedule where you can schedule in a big walk. And so what I do is like I'll try my best to schedule a ton of meetings where I can just be on my phone. I don't have to be looking at anything, and I can just have a meeting after meeting after meeting, and I'll just be on my air pause, and I'll just go for like a two-hour walk or like a one-hour walk. And so that's a major aspect of it.

And then, you know, if you're eating healthy, if you are exercising, if you're moving your body, you know, sleep is probably going to work much better for you. But I'll share one tip about sleep that I think is pretty powerful that I don't really hear that often. So I learned about this thing called sleep anchoring. And essentially what this is is you go to sleep at night and you close your eyes. And essentially what you do is every time that like you inhale, you inaudibly. So don't say this out loud, but you play a vowel sound in your head. And so you could be like, ah. But you don't say it.

You don't say it. And you just say in your mind like. So you breathe in and then you pretend to say a vowel. Yeah. So while you're breathing in, you're saying a vowel. And then when you exhale, you say a different sounding vowel. And so let's say that's ooh. And so you inhale, ah, you don't actually say these.

Ah, you exhale, ooh. And so you do this in your head. And if you actually do this and you're focused enough and you do this for five minutes, you're probably going to knock out in like maybe three minutes. Wow. This knocks you out instantly. It creates a rhythm which mirrors the way that your brain waves actually move. And so when you do that, you slip into sleep much, much easier.

And so that is a super easy trick that anyone can do. But a lot of people, what happens is they begin to do it. And because they don't have a controlled mind, they don't have a strengthened mind, they lose focus. And so they start to knock out. They start to fall asleep, but they stop saying the sounds, the vowel sounds. So then they're half asleep and then they wake up again. They're like, wait, what just happened? And so if you have a focused mind through meditation,

this is going to be a lot easier, but either way, it's super powerful. It'll knock you out real quick. Really great for our insomniacs out there. Thank you. Lifelong insomniac. Didn't sleep for the first 10. Same year. I have like the worst in my life.

I'm much better these days. I don't know what happened, but I used to have a lot of trouble sleeping. Okay. So we're out of time. So the last question I ask all my listeners is what is your secret to profiting in life? My secret to profiting in life is the same way. that you have profit in the business, you invest, and then you get returns on your investment,

that's the way that I view life. And so that comes down to your daily decisions. And so I know that every time I use my fork and I pick up something green over eat a donut, I just made an investment. And I know I'm going to return and profit on that investment years down the road. And so that's an example.

And really every single thing I do. For me, I break down life into just like the most simplest tasks that make of life. So it's like you have to sleep. You have to move. You have to eat. You have to eat slash drink. You have to talk to people. You have to breathe.

And then maybe you throw in one other one in there. And so if you can do those to the best of your ability and you can keep making those daily investments, then you're going to profit on each one of those exponentially down the road when they all synergized together. And so I feel like that's what I've been able to do. I feel like that's what a lot of people have been able to do. That's why I feel like a lot of people who are more focused on the big picture of like what does life actually mean. And they're not just focused on how to make more money or how to get more clicks on your website or on your podcast as an entrepreneur and they're focused about like their mental wealth and the more important things

in life you know then i think you can have that like perfect synergy of just like like what the best way to describe this is a is a hurricane i wrote an article about this and it's like eventually a hurricane once a hurricane starts it's picking up so much stuff it's picking up so much energy it's going and going and it's attracting so many opportunities towards it. And so I feel like if you can lay out all these different areas of your life that are important to you and also what make you up as a human and you try your best to knock those out of the park, then you're going to be super, super successful on your investments and profit in the future. And also, if you want to 10x your investment, you should go to Amazon and you should check out

my book, Screw Being Shy. Definitely leave a review for Young and Profiting for Hella. crushes this podcast. She's doing such a good job. So many, so many podcast guests that we have interviewed in common after they've been on your show have told me how great of a job that you've done. Oh, wow. That's so great of a person you are and how successful you're going to be. Oh, thank you. I wish you the best of luck and people can check out my LinkedIn and just check out the book, Screw Being Shy. M-A-R-K-M-E-T-R-Y.com. Awesome. Mark Metry is amazing. We're going to stick the link to his book, Screw Being Shy. It's on Amazon, Kindle, and Paperback. We'll stick the links in our show notes. And check out his podcast, Humans 2.0. It's super popular. We've had a lot of the same guests like

he's mentioned, but he's got a lot of awesome people on that show that I've never interviewed before. So go check out his podcast. He does a great job as well. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Until next time, we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to write us a review or comment on your favorite platform. Reviews are the number one way to thank us, especially if you write a review on Apple Podcasts. And be sure to share this podcast with your friends and family and on social media. You can find me on Instagram at Yap With Hala or LinkedIn, where I spend most of my digital time. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Thanks again to Video Husky, the sponsors of our show.

If you're looking for affordable video editing for a flat monthly fee, head over to cart. video husky.com slash young and profiting for 30% off your first month. Big thanks to the app team as always. Shiv, Parth, Tim, Hasham, Peter, Matthew, Danny, Boyo, and Omar. You guys are awesome. Thanks for making this show so amazing. This is Halla, signing off.