Sebastiaan: Hi, my name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier. I’m a former social anxiety disorder sufferer, social confidence coach and I specialize in helping people go from social anxiety to feeling calm and relaxed in social situations. That’s the end goal that I help people get to but they don’t always go all the way to the end of feeling completely calm and confident in all social situations with all people enjoying connecting with others having a great time socially, having satisfying and rewarding friendships, having fun socially.

That is a particular level shall we say. That’s a particular stage that you can get to but not everyone just gets there within doing a bit of tapping or even within doing a couple of sessions. For some people, many people in fact, this is going to be a journey over time.

I know we’re living in this quick fix – “I want a result right now” society but that’s not how things go that’s not how things work when you’re dealing with a life problem that you’ve been having for a long, long time. You need to have a better mindset towards that and that mindset is a mindset of persistence. I want to talk a bit about that today.

A lot of people hear about tapping for example and so they try it out and maybe they tap along with a video or something and then it doesn’t instantly work for them and they’re like ah, see, it doesn’t work for me.

Wow, amazing, you try it once and then you claim that it doesn’t work for you? What if you’re doing it wrong? What if you’re not doing it in the right way? What if it just requires a different approach? What if it requires more tapping? What if it requires more tapping in a different way? What if it requires tapping with someone else and you can’t do it yourself? What if, what if, what if?

Then they give up and are like okay, well tapping doesn’t work. Men, you’re lacking persistence. That’s a big problem. That’s the people that try it out and then they’re instantly okay, this doesn’t work.

Other people, they try it out and they get some relief. They’re like wow this is great but soon thereafter the relief is gone and so they’re uh, it’s just temporary, see, this doesn’t work. Okay, this is not for me. All right, this is the same thing. What if something did work but you only address the surface of the problem and you didn’t address the actual cause of the problem? It’s just like you’re cutting weeds instead of pulling weeds with the root out. If you’re just cutting weeds what’s going to happen to the weeds?

They’re going to grow back. What happens when you pull a weed? Well, there’s nothing to grow back. You pulled it root out and all then it’s gone. A lot of people are just tapping on the symptoms and so they get some temporary relief but it will come back. They’re like ah, this doesn’t work for me, I’ll give up. Persistence! You need persistence! You need to continue!

I want to pat myself on the shoulder because I have a lot of persistence but that came from somewhere. That persistence came from I realized that this was something that was going to work for me because I saw so many people make a transformation. Not in the area of social anxiety but I saw all these DVDs from Gary Craig, the original DVDs like 50 or 60 hours where he and different psychologists and psychotherapists were EFT specialists work with people in a variety of issues. PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder self-esteem, public speaking, feeling not good enough. All sorts of stuff.

I saw these people transform I’m on camera and you cannot fake 50 hours of camera work you got to have some really damn good actor so I knew that that was for real. Like there has to be something in this for me, it has to work for me.

Also, I also kept persisting because it was just unacceptable for me to have social anxiety because I’m by nature a very outgoing guy and up until the age of 11 or 12 I didn’t have social anxiety so I knew it was something that started. I knew that something was off and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to live a fulfilled life if I couldn’t just be really myself and freely myself in all social situations.

I’m like I’m going to keep going because I’ve had some results. I noticed that my social anxiety has decreased. I’ve seen other people make transformations using this technique. I’m told that it works on so many things so I’m going to see how I can get this to work for me. I’ll do whatever it takes until I get to free to be myself no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes. And it took long years, years.

People sometimes have the misconception that I overcame my social anxiety in a couple of sessions or in a couple of months or something.

Not at all. I made progress yes but it took me six months of trying by myself before I saw the first shift. For six months I was trying and trying and reading and investigating and going to forums and watching these DVDs and getting all the online information that could get but I couldn’t get any results.

Then my first result was on a workshop where I had an actual shift where I worked with that workshop leader and he asked me these difficult questions and I became embarrassed and ashamed right in front of these people and he said do this tapping, that’s where I first experienced it working. I had a profound shift emotion drained out of my system within a minute or two of tapping I could calmly talk about what like a couple of minutes ago would upset me massively. That was big, that was like wow this works there’s something I can do with this. But I had to persist and I had to persist and I have to persist.

After months my social anxiety had decreased a lot. The general anxiety decreased a lot but I had sticking points for a long period of being around attractive women long time before I became comfortable there. Being the center of attention in a situation where I can’t escape like on a dinner table. Long period of time that I had anxiety there. What else was a sticking point?

Like going to a party where I knew people and where I also not knew people and so I had kind of friends and not kind of friends. How I was going to perceived meeting these new people by these people that already knew me? That was a sticking point. I have many, many sticking points that took me a long ass time to get rid of.

Another sticking point was I was anxiety free most situations but I wasn’t enjoying myself socially. I was kind of sitting there not really pleased to be there kind of like well can I get out of this? Are we done with this? I’m not connecting, I’m not really interested in these people, they bore me, that kind of stuff. That was a sticking point for a long period of time.

Not having enough friends or not having close friendships was a sticking point for a long time. There were many, many sticking points that I had so I had to persist through all of that to get to the other side.

But it’s a point that you can get to and it’s a point that’s very valuable to get to but it requires persistence.

There are multiple stages that you go through. I’m actually going to talk about this more and the not-too-distant future. I’m working on something that explains this really clearly but there are stages that you go through and milestones along the way of going from one stage to another.

But the value that what I’m trying to communicate here is like you want to have persistence. Some people give up even before trying. They have no persistence whatsoever they try one thing for one minute and it doesn’t work and then they are like I give up, this doesn’t work. Okay, great, guess what that’s going to do for the rest of your life that kind of mentality, that kind of mindset? Not much good, I’ll tell you that.

Then we have the other people that easily give up. Oh, I’ve tried this, I’ve given it a go, I spent fifteen minutes on it and I still haven’t had my life transformed. It doesn’t work for me. Okay, all right, that gives you a certain level of success. Not much.

Then there are people that try it and get some results but eventually they kind of reach a sticking point like some of the sticking points that I just mentioned that I have myself and that’s where they give up. It’s like okay, well, it was nice for a while but I can’t progress any further. Really?

You’re just running into a block. It just means you have to do more investigation, get some outside help, try different things. Persist, persist, persist. Learn more, study more, figure out why you’re experiencing that block. There’s always a solution, there’s always a solution. You just need to persist; you need to keep going.

There are next levels and next levels and next levels. Don’t stop until you have what you want. Keep persisting.

Then there are people that make it quite far but then they have like a remaining sticking point. Most of their life is pretty well but how I see there’s often with clients because in the beginning I usually say to people well, let’s work get it for three sessions and after three sessions we evaluate where you’re at. We work these three sessions, these three sessions might solve 60% of their social anxiety and then they’re like okay, this is it, it’s good here. Partly that’s a financial thing but most of the time it’s not that they don’t have the money, they’re just like okay it’s better now and they’re kind of complacent.

They’re like oh it’s a lot better than it was now I can kind of live okay. Live okay?

Raise your standards. You don’t have to have social anxiety for the rest of your life. How much is social anxiety affecting your life? Think about it! Your relationships with other people, your career, your joy in life, your satisfaction in life. What you’re doing your mind, your creativity. Everything is affected by this. Raise your standards. Anxiety free and at ease. That’s it at ease connecting with people effortlessly, having fun being able to joke around. That’s your normal state of being. I’m hanging out with my daughter yesterday. She’s just a ball of fun all the time. If she doesn’t get ice cream, if she can’t go to the playground she gets a bit huffy but that’s what like 10 seconds or 30 seconds or maybe a minute and then she’s back into feeling good having fun, playing games, joking around. There’s this freedom that they have this uninhibited that kids have.

That’s why it’s so lovely to be around kids. They just have that fun vibe, that nice energy and that’s your natural state. That’s there when all the social anxiety crap is out of the way. When there’s no longer a perception of threat and you feel totally safe being you saying whatever comes to mind that’s total freedom and that’s something that you can get to but it requires persistence.

Now let me be clear, it might take you years to get there. Wow, years. But look at that from a large perspective how long are you alive? 80 years 90 years? If it takes you five years to get there. I’m not saying that it will  some people it’s a couple of weeks but even if it takes you five years to get there so what? If you’re say 25 now and it takes you until you’re 30 to get there you still have 50 years that you’re going to benefit for these five years of input. Even if you’re 40 you’re going to be 45. The rest of your life the other half of your life you’re going to be able to enjoy yourself socially. This affects everything. Every area of your life. So, persistence, persistence, persistence.

Keep going, don’t give up or change your approach. Do more, put in consistent effort. It is not, not, not, not, not one big shift that’s from one day into the next going to resolve all of your social anxiety. It’s all of the little things that add up.

Little bit of tapping here, a little bit of tapping in there and tapping in the right way that is so that you got a little bit closer to where you want to be, little bit closer to where you want to be, a little bit closer to where you want to be. This adds on top of this work, this adds on top of this work, this adds on top of that work, this adds on top of that work. And it all starts to stack up, it all starts to build up.

More little steps you take towards where you want to be the more progress you’re going to make.

A lot of people are like well, I don’t want to do this tapping. Maybe in the weekend I’m just going to tap for the whole day, I’m going to tap for three hours. Yeah, great, how about you just do 15 minutes per day and you stick to it? It’s going to do you a lot more good because it’s easier to form a habit when you do something every single day.

I’m going to be talking about this a lot more because a lot of people they’re just not tapping enough and they don’t have that persistence mindset. It’s so essential to get to where you want to be.

I hope I instilled a little bit of that persistence mindset in you today because that’s one of the main ingredients to getting to where you want to be. Social anxiety is not a lifelong problem if you take action and you take consistent action and you take these little steps. Make this be your personal growth honor. Make it your honor to get to the other side and to address this problem no matter what it takes, no matter how much persistence that it takes and work on it every single day until you’re where you want to be.

When you continuously persist and you alter your approach when you get stuck and you maintain that vision then it’s inevitable that you’re going to get there. Never give up attitude, continuously persisting.

This is a Sebastiaan, the persistence coach. I hope this has been helpful. Subscribe to this video. I release videos like this every single week or if you’re listening to these in the podcast my YouTube channel is www.youtube.com/user/Sebastiaandoc.

Alright, go have a great week, persist and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye for now.

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Sebastiaan

Sebastiaan van der Schrier is a Social Confidence Coach and ex social anxiety sufferer. He helps socially anxious people become confident using a unique and painless approach. He is the host of the Social Anxiety Solutions podcast show and runs the first ever online Social Confidence Community.

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