Next Level University

#1419 - One Thing A Lot Of People Forget About Their Goals…

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Goal setting is an integral part of any successful person’s life. Having goals — big or small — helps keep us on course and motivates us to take action and stay focused. Whether working out more often or launching a new business venture, our goals provide direction and meaning to the steps we take each day. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about the one thing most people forget about having goals: they can change. Flexibility is critical when it comes to achieving your goals. No matter how well-thought-out your plan might be, being able to bend or adjust accordingly can make all the difference.

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Show notes:
[1:38] Oftentimes, we forget that we can change our goals
[6:04] Everyone has either too few goals or too many
[13:02] Amanda shares how Alan made her feel valued and supported during their initial consultation call, and how she appreciates his holistic approach
[13:47]Once you get the wheels spinning, you can change the destination
[17:45] Stay fluid, and don’t get a big head
[22:03] The next-level nuggets
[26:00] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you set a goal and you do dumb stuff to make it happen, stuff that might not be serving you for the long term, and then you realize, hmm, interesting, if I ever do that again, I'm going to do it a little bit differently. Or you say I'm never going to do that again. And eventually you get to the point where you do say, okay, let me try that again, but now you have different tools Set a goal that you really want to achieve.

Speaker 3:

that, you think, is in your challenge skills sweet spot. As you work toward it, you're going to grow and evolve, and then so are your goals. Your goals are going to grow and evolve.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to next level university. I am your host, Kevin Paul Mary, and I am your co-host, Alan Lazarus. At next level university, we believe in a heart driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.

Speaker 3:

We bring you seven episodes per week to help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth.

Speaker 1:

Self-improvement in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, for free. Welcome to next level university, next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we teach you how to level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode. It was episode number 1418. If you're waiting for perfect, you'll be waiting forever. Today, happy Saturday For episode number 1419,.

Speaker 1:

One thing a lot of people forget about their goals. I'm going to change it up a little bit here. Alan, this was probably I don't know seven years ago. My goodness, I'm getting old.

Speaker 1:

I did a bodybuilding show and after the bodybuilding show I told my coach. I said, okay, that's the first of many. It was a terrible experience. I absolutely hated it. It definitely led to a mild eating disorder, for sure. But then the next year I messaged my coach and I said let's do it. I'm ready to get back on the train, let's do it. So we did a bulk, which I eat more food, and I focused on gaining strength. We figured out this is the show we're going to do. It's three months away.

Speaker 1:

One of my best friend at the time, him and I were going to do the same show. We were going to train together. We're going to diet together. It was going to be amazing and it sucked and I didn't want to do it and I was getting miserable and my quality of living was going down. I was dating Taren at the time believe it or not, throwback and I just wanted a normal life. I wanted to be able to eat what I wanted. I want to be able to go on dates with my new girlfriend and not say we got to stay home and eat chicken and rice because that's all I can eat. And for one of my cheat meals I got to have a half a pint of Ben and Jerry's. Yeah, I was. I think I had chunky monkey.

Speaker 1:

And the next night I was lying in bed and I was like F this, I don't want to do this. I do not want to do this. But then I had the thought my buddy is going to get Upset and he's going to feel like I'm bailing on him. We're supposed to do this together. It was supposed to be like a brotherhood companionship thing. I have shame around the fact that my coach is going to think I'm soft because I don't want to do this. And I tried to talk myself back into it, but I ended up going down. I wanted to make sure my decision was final. So I went downstairs and I hammered the other half of the pint of Ben and Jerry's and I texted my coach and I said I'm not doing this shit, I'm done. I'm done Not doing it, just ate the Ben and Jerry's. I appreciate you, you're great. I just can't do it.

Speaker 1:

The reason I tell that story is because I think a lot of us, when we decide we're going to do something, we decide we have a goal in mind. We forget that we can change that goal and there's two important pieces that I think are important to us and there's two important pieces that come with that One you might be not. You might not be setting as many goals as you could if you think you actually have to accomplish the goal and you can never change it. That's part one. And then part two you might be 50% of the way to one of your goals and you might quit completely and not continue doing the positive things that you've been doing because you don't want to get to that goal anymore.

Speaker 1:

When I started dieting, I said I was going to go down to 170 pounds. A couple months ago. I said I'm going to get to 170. I'm going to get to 170. I'm going to get to 170 before Tara and I go to Belgium.

Speaker 1:

And as I started going back to the gym and dieting, I just fell in love with bodybuilding again, really fell back in love with it, which I hadn't felt in a long time. My body's feeling good. I went to physical therapy. I don't want to box like I was boxing before. I don't want to do cardio as much as I was doing it before. I want to lift and diet. I want to lift and diet. I want to lift and diet. And I told Alan. I said I don't even think I'm going to try to get to 170. I think I'm just going to keep lifting heavy. I'm going to keep tracking my calories. I'm looking better, I'm feeling better. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.

Speaker 1:

But there was a part of me. I said it publicly. I said I'm going to get to 170. I told you. I said it's already done in my mind, but my mind changed. I changed my mind and I don't want to do it. Not that I don't think I can. I know I could if I wanted to. I just don't think it's what's best.

Speaker 1:

So that really is my goal in this episode is to give you the permission to decide. One, I decided that I was going to set this goal and try to accomplish it. Two, I've determined and this is you talking to yourself that this goal is no longer aligned or no longer serving me, or no longer what's best, or no longer something I desire. Now, obviously there's layers to this. So this fitness goal, this weight goal, is a very short term goal. It's not like if I said I'm going to my goal is to start a business this year and then I say you know what? I think that's going to be super hard. I don't want to do that yet. I think it's going to be too hard for me to do that. That might be a goal that I never try again and that is something I might regret. I do not believe this is something I will regret. So that's always a good little test to throw out there. Will I regret this if I do change the goal?

Speaker 3:

So many good things in there. My mind is going nuts Sometimes when you talk there's so many, there's so many good things that we can pull out of it. I try not to pull out all the things because I don't want to overwhelm anybody, but what came up for me was this Everyone has either too few goals or too many. Just came up with that today. That's fascinating. I've talked about how many people I coach and I just surpassed my 4500th coaching session. People all over the world, all different cultures, all different backgrounds, all different countries, all different industries, but, more importantly, all different goals, all different goals. I had too many goals. My coach said write down every dream you have. Let's do this. We wrote them all down. I told the story. He said okay, hypothetically, if you could only achieve one of those, you could only focus on one of those. You could only get one of those. Which one would you choose? I said, nope, doing them all. Now I completely understand why he was doing this, because I do this now with people constantly. He said no, no, no, bear with me, bear with me. Which one would you choose?

Speaker 3:

I said the podcast. I get to speak. We're helping listeners all over the world. Kevin and I got a good thing going. He's funny Kidding. I mean, I'm not kidding, you are funny, but that's not what I said. What did you say? We have a good thing going. That's what you said. We're in great rapport. Yeah, we're rolling.

Speaker 2:

We're rolling, we're rolling, we're rolling.

Speaker 1:

We're good momentum.

Speaker 3:

I think I probably used the word momentum. We have momentum and it allows me to practice my craft, it allows me to get better at speaking, it allows me to impact more people all that he said. Here's the fascinating thing you go all in on that one and you can have all the others. I was like, oh, so after that I went all in on the hyper conscious podcast, which eventually became Next Level University, and now that has come true in so many ways, more than I should articulate on this episode. That's for someone who has too many goals, you can achieve anything, but not everything, certainly not everything all at once, and that is a fact. If you are too optimistic, you are in so much trouble, just like I was. Okay. Now, if you're on the opposite end and you have too few goals, it might be because of what Kevin mentioned, which is I don't really want to commit to that, though If I say that out loud and I book that marathon, I have to show up. I want to help everyone gauge right now a little bit of self-awareness, and this is a hard question to ask yourself, but I really I'm not trying to attack anyone with this, but this is important.

Speaker 3:

How delicate is your sensibility? How delicate is your ego? Kevin, you said something behind the scenes to me that you essentially I said why didn't you ever tell me that? And you said I don't know if I could, I couldn't, I didn't feel good enough about myself to tell you, and I remember thinking to myself a lot of what you do now. You were too delicate for lack of better phrasing to where you couldn't do that stuff before. Even at the summit tomorrow, you're gonna show up, you're gonna crush it. You don't have to prep that much and if it goes horribly wrong, you're gonna be able to handle that emotionally. You're gonna oh yeah, yeah, that's happened before Whereas the old Kev you would avoid that feedback.

Speaker 3:

You didn't want to fail. You didn't want to look like a failure. You didn't want to be like you didn't fail. You didn't want to look like a failure. You didn't want to look like a hypocrite. You were so trapped by your delicate sensibility and I'm not trying to be unkind, but if you have a very delicate, fragile sensibility, it's gonna be very hard for you to break out of that and to set goals in the first place, Because you're so afraid to be judged by other people when you say, ah, you know what? Nope, I decided I don't want to do that.

Speaker 3:

For me, my problem is having too many goals. My problem is making too many promises, my problem is over committing to too many people and that kind of thing. Being overly optimistic is genuinely a challenge for me. If you are really struggling with setting goals at all, remember you don't have to achieve them. At the end of the day, no one really cared that much that Kevin didn't do that. Show they're focused on their own stuff. They're focused on their own identity. They're focused on their own goals, their own achievements, their own dreams. They're focused on their own family and their own income. And, at the end of the day, if you do get someone that reaches out and says you're a hypocrite like, you're gonna have to handle that and it's better than not having goals at all. So that's what came up for me, which is, set a goal that you really want to achieve. That you think is in your challenge skills sweet spot. As you work toward it, you're gonna grow and evolve, and then so are your goals. Your goals are gonna grow and evolve. I can't even tell you how many times I set a goal and then got close to getting it and was like you know what? That's not really what I want. What I actually want is this because the point of goals is not to get the goal. The point of goals is growth, and when you grow, you're gonna obviously evolve and have a new consciousness, new self-concept, new awareness, and you're gonna want different things. You're gonna. Your core values are gonna shift a little bit. Your core aspirations are gonna have to shift a little bit. Your core beliefs are gonna shift a little bit. Your self-concept is gonna change a bit.

Speaker 3:

I had one client. She literally said I wanna be a personal trainer and I wanna be a fitness influencer and I wanna inspire people in fitness. Crushing it, crushing it, crushing it, doing it, doing it, doing it. Multiple clients happen, it's all happening. She was gonna get her NASM certification. She gets a new job, new opportunities.

Speaker 3:

She didn't anticipate in pursuit of these goals, by the way, because she started shining brighter. All of a sudden, she gets this other job. That's twice as much revenue as the previous one. And now she's like nah, I wanna go all in on that. Perfect, perfect. You didn't know you were gonna get that job. And here's the key she wouldn't have gotten that job, in my opinion, if she didn't have the goal in the first place. So, yeah, she didn't end up becoming a personal trainer, but the pursuit of becoming a personal trainer and fitness influencer is what got her shining and got her outside her comfort zone. And then that's what created this other opportunity, in my opinion, because she started to believe in herself more, she started to study more, she started to get into a groove, she started to get momentum and once she got momentum, she's like you know what, Now that I know this version of me, I want this, this and this instead, and that's just the journey.

Speaker 2:

Hi everyone. My name is Amanda. I am a dental hygienist and a mom of two teenagers. I was first introduced to Kevin and Alan about three years ago, so that led me to book a consultation with Alan, and I showed up to that call in the lowest spot that I have been at in my entire life. He is a good human that genuinely wants the best in your life, your future, your love, your relationships, your wealth, and you have the chance to be in the same room or on the same call or have these two in your life in any way, then you are blessed we if you're a new listener you might not remember this, because this was a minute ago.

Speaker 1:

If you've been listening you might we did a 10 pound and 10 week challenge where we Alan and I committed to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks each, or if we didn't, we wouldn't get to record an episode. One of the reasons I changed my goal, alan, is because when I did that, I did mostly cardio. I was boxing pretty much every day and I love that. But when I started lifting again and I fell back in love with it, I realized I cannot, could I? Yes, it would not be serving me to actually keep that goal and exercise the way I'm exercising, because I'd have to do cardio every day. I'd have to eat even less than I'm already eating. It wouldn't make any sense. It would be. You know what it would be. It would be an ego goal. That would be more of an ego goal for me to say, well, I got to 170. When in reality it doesn't really matter that much. It's just a number, it's just an arbitrary number on a scale. It's great for me to shoot. If I didn't shoot for it, I never would have started working out the way I am and I never would have started tracking my calories and I wouldn't be weighing myself every day and I wouldn't be taking creatine every day and my multivitamin. I wouldn't be doing that. And I'm doing all those things, and that's the positive side of it.

Speaker 1:

Once you get the momentum and you get the wheel spinning, you can change the destination. You're already moving. I'm okay. You know what? Instead of going to this place, I'm gonna go to this other place. Let me take a ride here. You still got momentum. You can still do it. The hard part about all that is that comes from the awareness of well, I've done this before. I know what it took. Now, this time, I understand that I can change my goal. Sometimes you set a goal and you do dumb stuff to make it happen, stuff that might not be serving you for the long term and then you realize, hmm, interesting, if I ever do that again, I'm gonna do it a little bit differently.

Speaker 1:

Or you say I'm never gonna do that again, and eventually you get to the point where you do say, okay, let me try that again, but now you have different tools at your disposal. I actually there's two pieces of this. One, I am sad that Taren and I are traveling, when we're traveling, because I wanna keep dieting, I actually do Now. It sucks and I'm hungry all the time and I'm not saying I enjoy it and it's easy, but I am very committed to the journey and I'm enjoying that Cause, when we go to Belgium, I'm not gonna diet. I'm not traveling across the world and I'm gonna diet.

Speaker 1:

No, I'm not gonna be tracking calories. I'd like to find a gym, but I'm not gonna be tracking calories. That's part one. The part two of it is I'm super excited to get back and then start trying to put on muscle, but tracking calories, weighing myself every day, keeping the same habits, is changing the goal. The habits are the exact same. Track your calories, work out, do mobility, weigh yourself. All that. The habits are exactly the same. It's just the inputs are a little bit different and I'm very, very excited for that. So those are the two.

Speaker 3:

When you two Sorry to interrupt you when you two Now that you and I don't use as many filler words, hmm, don't change long pauses. So when you two go to Belgium, which is the current goal, what if, when you go to London and Visit those other places, you're like you know what? We had planned on staying in this hotel In Benjamin in Belgium, but, honestly, let's just stay here you read that happened, it already happened.

Speaker 1:

We had already happened. We were supposed to go to London for one day and Taryn came to me and said hey, can we do two days in London? Do you mind if we stay over in London?

Speaker 3:

I was like yeah, sure, I'm, I'm all for it, we're there, I don't care, I don't care, do whatever you want. And let's say, you're in London the first day and then Taryn's like you know what yeah, I don't want to stay another day. That's you got to stay fluid, you gotta. That was said on the next level you live. Who was it that did the next level you?

Speaker 3:

like again shout out to rich Rich said stay fluid and don't get a big head. That was good advice, really good advice. And when you, you do need goals, I'm never gonna say otherwise, because I just don't. I don't agree. I think goals are how humans are wired and there's a lot of science underneath.

Speaker 3:

Steven Kotler wrote a book about this where he talks about how not having any goals is actually bad for us on a Biological level and a neuroscientific level. So you got to have some goals, even if they're unconscious. You know, shooting towards something, building towards something, brighter future, hope for the future, that kind of stuff. I've talked about that a thousand times. But once you are on the path and you're gaining momentum and you're gaining new awareness and you're gaining new Capabilities, you're going to pivot. You should. You weren't aware. I mean, you've never been to London. Well, you've been to London. She's never been to London, or she has been? No, no. So when she's in London, she might be like you know what? I don't like this. Let's go back to Belgium.

Speaker 3:

You, it's like trying new foods. You, you know, you go to a restaurant and you try your partner's food and then you're like you know what? Ah, I actually want to get this. I don't want this food that I originally came here for. The chicken piccata isn't as good as I thought it was gonna be.

Speaker 3:

Insert analogy here. Here's the point. People say it's about the journey. It's not. It is and it's not. The destination you choose in advance dictates the journey. If you want to climb Everest, that's very different than climbing Mount Wachu, said mountain nearest. Everything has to change. You want to climb Mount Everest. Every training you do, every coach you get, every Cardio session you do, it has to be tweaked a little bit. You're gonna. It's gonna be way harder, way more challenging, way more risky. It's gonna cost way more money. It's gonna take way more time and effort. But you might get to base camp too and be like you know what, let's go climb Mount. I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, you don't have to. You don't have to. But I will say this last piece, which is, unfortunately, sometimes that can hurt people's ability to build self-belief. One benefit that I've had to the perseverance towards any Goal, whether it be the 10 pound and 10 week challenge or whatever, is that you build self-belief when you do whatever it takes to get the goal.

Speaker 3:

Hmm and if you, if you do continuously quit Before you ever get to any finish line? I had one client who wanted to do 20 pounds and I think it was 20 weeks or something like that, I think it was 24 weeks or something. But she wanted to quit and the reason she didn't is because she needed to prove to herself she could do it. And now she has that tool in her tool belt. Now she knows she can do it and she also knows how to do it, which is good. But If you quit every journey before you get to the goal, you won't build a ton of self-belief. So that's dangerous. But if you only ever set a goal and then never pivot, never change your, you just have blinders on and you're gonna end up hurting yourself.

Speaker 3:

I did a marathon on a whim to do that 10 pound and 10 week challenge and I was bedridden for a whole day after that. For lack of better phrasing, I mean, we ordered some food and we were okay. He merely did a half marathon with me, but my legs were shot that week. That was an optimal. I'm not a marathoner, you know.

Speaker 1:

Definitely reckless the Track is easier to follow on your second lap. So if you've done something once before it, you're probably more informed when it comes to making a decision. If you're doing it for the first time, it is hard, because I wanted to quit the first bodybuilding show many times, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. That's why I knew I wouldn't regret it if I did it the second time. Fight if I said this isn't for me, it's not aligned. I don't want to beat myself up anymore, it's isn't good for my mental health, because you knew you could do it.

Speaker 3:

I knew I got to believe.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I knew I could do it. I just didn't think it would be worth it. And if I don't think something is worth it, I usually don't want to do it anymore. It just doesn't make sense to me, unless unless, to me, building belief is worth it. So I think that's a very important thing. What's your next love? And oh, get to son Uh-huh.

Speaker 3:

Everyone has too few goals or too many. Where are you on that spectrum? If you're on the too few side, I recommend three. I think one is too few. I think five is too many. I think I used to have 10 or 15 dreams. I wanted to be, you know, an actor and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3:

I think that if you're on the too few end, try to. I think when I say too few, some people don't have any, some people don't have any measurable goals. I do think you're making a mistake. That's my opinion, but I also think there's a lot of science underneath that If you have too many, you're also making a mistake. You're spreading yourself too thin. You're most likely becoming pretty decent at everything, but not truly great at anything, because you know, the best chef in the world mostly cooks, the best speaker in the world mostly speaks, the best podcast from the world mostly podcasts, and I just I think that's a fundamental principle and I think very few people are the exception to rules like that. So for me, I think three is the sweet spot, but uh, so if you have less than three goals, up the ante, try to go for three. If you have more than three goals, maybe consider going all in on the other ones, hoping that the other ones will kind of come as a byproduct.

Speaker 1:

My next level nugget would be dig into the why beneath the goal. Why did you want the goal in the first place? Was it ego? Was it attention? Was it somebody else wanted the goal for you? That's a great place to start, because at least you'll have the awareness of why did I sign up for this in the first place. That is what I would say. Next level nation. Our next round of group coaching, group 11, is going swimmingly currently an amazing, amazing, amazing group ignite is their team name. The next round is September 26th, 6pm Eastern Standard Time. If you are interested and you want to be put on the waiting list, reach out to Alan. Alan at nextleveluniversecom. We will put your name on the list and then, once the website is up to date, we'll help you take care of all that and then we'll get your spot locked. So if you've missed out on one of the other previous groups, please reach out. Make sure you get in early. That way we'll hold your spot and you'll be off to the races.

Speaker 3:

Imagine someone who has no clarity. They're not committed, they're not confident, they're not consistent and they don't have a community surrounded around them of like minded dream chasers. That's someone who is probably on the struggle bus. They're probably having a really hard time and we have a course for you if that's the case. Now imagine you are crystal clear on where you are, where you want to go and how to get there. You're committed to get there, but you know you can change along the way. Like we just talked about, you have amazing growth, minded people around you, great community. You are confident because you're building self belief along the way and you're consistent, which is also another reason why you're so confident.

Speaker 3:

We have a course called the next level five to thrive. Those are the five clarity, commitment, confidence, consistency and community. If you have positive in all five of those, you are going to be off to the races, you're going to have tons of momentum, you're going to be feeling it, you're going to be loving it and we have a course that is designed specifically to help you create those five the next level five to thrive. The link will be in the show notes tomorrow for episode number 1420.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow is Sunday If you're listening to this on Saturday. Another reason self awareness is everything. I saw a new movie that really brought a lot up for me, a very deep movie, oppenheimer. Many of you may have heard of it. That episode comes from that lesson. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and an NLU. We don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 3:

Evolve and let your goals evolve with you.

Speaker 1:

Next one Thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university. We love connecting with the next level family.

Speaker 3:

We mean it when we say family, if you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. Everything you need to get ahold of us is in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host