Next Level University

#1422 - New Seasons Bring Up Old Reasons

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Have you ever found yourself avoiding something that was once a source of joy? Do negative associations from the past hold you back? In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about how negative periods in our lives can taint enjoyable activities. They break down how our central nervous system can tie negative experiences to previously positive ones and discuss techniques to reframe these experiences and restore their positivity. They talk about aversions and the things we sidestep – such as tracking calories, weight, or finances – that could be the catalysts of growth, and they dig into the root cause of these aversions and explore ways to change our relationship with them.

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Show notes:
[1:41] Positive experience during a negative time becomes negative
[5:24] Experience associated with danger and scarcity
[10:33] The feelings, traumas, and triggers around the act
[14:38] Helen praises Alan’s Next Level Business Solutions coaching for providing safe and empowering coaching services
[15:37] Negative association and your aversion
[27:37] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

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 Monday's episode, episode number 1421. What do you really care about the most and would your behaviors Show it today? For episode number 1422 new seasons bring up older reasons. Interesting title. Hopefully we can make it land and connect with what we're actually talking about today. So I'm gonna start this episode off with a challenge, a question if you have a positive relationship with something during a negative time, is it possible that that would make the positive relationship negative? That's my question to start here, and that's really the direction I would like to take this episode.

Speaker 1:

I was talking to somebody recently, last week, and they said I'm a podcaster, I'd love to Be a successful podcaster, I'd love to figure out what you guys have done and it. Can you share anything behind the scenes? And I said, absolutely, did a call with this person Amazing, human being, super heart driven, just amazing. And we were talking about coaching. And this person said, yeah, no, I tried that. I didn't like it. And I said, okay, can you tell me more? What didn't you like about it? Because there were times in my Coaching career where I didn't like coaching, but it wasn't necessarily the fact that I didn't actually like the coaching. Maybe the client wasn't super aligned, or maybe it was my own limiting beliefs. Share with me what you felt around that. And this person said well, I ended up getting Five or six clients and I ended up getting super burnt out. And then I realized I couldn't do that anymore and I said, ah, so it wasn't the coaching, it was the amount of people or whatever it may have been the amount of people, the amount of hours. And I said how, how often were you coaching them? And she said I was doing a call every week. And I said okay, if you change that, would it seem more reasonable for you? And she said yeah, the Fact that she enjoyed coaching is not why she doesn't want to do it. It's because there are a lot of negative things that were altering that positive relationship. And once we started digging into that, she said oh, you know what? No, I definitely can see myself coaching. I just need to figure out a way to do it sustainably.

Speaker 1:

All of this really came from when we were talking about the episode of me cooking steak. I used to Cook steak in my bodybuilding perhaps is one of my cheat meals and I loved it. I really enjoyed cooking steak. I Enjoyed cooking. I would make eggs, I would make my chicken. I enjoyed it. I looked forward to cooking. I would, when I have had people over, I would cook for them. I loved it.

Speaker 1:

The fact that I had such a negative association with bodybuilding is one of the reasons I had a negative association with cooking and then it just stuck and then I said, well, I don't cook, I don't know how to cook. You've heard me say that so many times. Because we've we've connected on that, neither us know how to cook, we don't cook, when in reality I know how to cook and there are some things I can cook really well. I just had a very negative association with it through a negative time. So, to reiterate the question of thought If you have a positive relationship with something during a negative time, is it possible that that would create a negative relationship with that positive thing?

Speaker 2:

That is our goal to chat about today's episode when you say association, I want to try to make this as clear as possible, please. Everything that we Do, we have a certain relationship with, we have a certain association. So if you did the bodybuilding prep what you hated while also cooking, you might also hate cooking, even though you don't actually hate cooking. That's kind of a thesis here and the reason why and this is why advertisements always have not always, but a lot of times Advertisements have famous people. I always use Matthew McConaughey on the Lincoln commercials. Lincoln hires Matthew McConaughey to drive a linked a Lincoln on a commercial so that you associate all the positive movies and the positive feelings of Matthew McConaughey with Lincoln. And this is also why, as much as I don't like this example, it's a perfect example.

Speaker 2:

After the Tiger Woods thing happened, with all the the stuff Nike backed out, the reason why is because Nike doesn't want to be associated With that bad, negative stuff. And so, bringing this back to your own central nervous system, your own life, what are the things that Whenever you have a negative experience, there's other things that leak into it, and I use my car accident as example. I remember I was claustrophobic after my car accident. I remember ceiling fans would always bother me. I remember double yellow lines would bother me because I ended up on the wrong side of the road and but that had nothing to do with my car accident.

Speaker 2:

The car accident was what my central nervous system Associated danger and fears and scare, scare city with scare city City, yeah, scare, scare city Right next to sin city in Vegas. No. So, uh, those other things were not negative, but my central nervous system couldn't tell the difference. It's like people that go to war and then they have PTSD and they hear the pop of an engine and it sounds like the pop of a bomb or the the explosion of a bomb. It's the same type of thing. So I think it's a good thing to kind of figure out what what used to be something that you really really enjoyed or maybe didn't enjoy, and then bring it back up and see, see if that was valid. You know, maybe, maybe you loved reading, but then you were forced to read in school and got bad grades.

Speaker 1:

Now you hate?

Speaker 2:

reading. What if you still love reading? You just the narrative you told yourself was I hate reading, when in reality you hate reading Jane Eyre or whatever we were forced to read back in high school, you know, and nothing else. Jane Eyre. I actually think that was a pretty solid movie. I watched the movie. Of course I did every book report I ever did. I also watched the movie. Maybe only watch the movie, you know, the truth comes out. Spark notes calm, remember that cap course. The spark notes. Read the spark notes. Watch the movie.

Speaker 1:

You're good to go. Whatever you now, I can only imagine how easy it would be now to write a book report on anything. Yeah, because a blinkest now, just if you just googled it. I mean, obviously there's a lot of AI stuff, but the internet was, yeah, there were some capabilities when we were around in high school, but not like there is today.

Speaker 2:

Well, we talked about Google being only 24 years old. When you and I were 10, google was just founded. Yeah, it's wild, but that's that's what this episode is. Bring up some old stuff, things that you really, really, really love and things that you really, really, really don't, and see if that's still true. I think that we should all be doing that on the regular weird analogy. But you and I, back in the day, used to use Windows 95, remember way back and then Windows 2000, windows XP, windows Vista I used for a time.

Speaker 2:

They Upgraded that stuff. We just talked about the audio issues we were having with Windows 11. I couldn't stand going back to this machine with Windows 10. It's better in some ways and then it's worse in other ways. What if you could take the better and bring it into Windows 11? And then that's kind of what we're talking about in this episode. Is, you know, kevin's on version 3.3. I'm on version 3.4 and whatever age you are if you're 25 or you're on version 2.5 let's go back. Let's go back to some old versions. Let's study some old versions. Let's figure out, let's figure out what core values maybe you Loved and do you still love those things? If not, why not? And then the things that you think you hate or thought you hated. So, for example, emilia thought she hated sushi. Now she loves it. Sushi. Saturday Been eating too much sushi to love it.

Speaker 1:

That that I can imagine that if somebody out there and I don't know if anybody specifically would deal with this, but imagine if the memory you have of Fizz ed class from high school because I remember this was the thing For me for a very short time I don't want to shower in front of other people I remember thinking, yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm gonna shower in front of these people that I go to go to class with.

Speaker 1:

They're gonna see me and they're gonna see me naked. I don't, I ain't into that. Imagine if that was your first time being exposed to that. You had a negative association and now you say I'm not, I don't exercise, I don't do fitness, I don't do exercise. I have a negative association with. It has nothing to do with exercise.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you remember how older people never had an issue with that because that's all that was common way back in the day, like, oh, at your gym and stuff. Older people are just so. That's so normal for them. Yeah, there's a lot of 21st century, sir, put on some trunks, you know, but then again what that's?

Speaker 1:

yeah, that's what it was normal for them.

Speaker 2:

You know, yeah, and that there's a lot of this running under the.

Speaker 1:

It's just running under the surface. It's just running under the surface when, if you've never experienced and I've had boats of what I told Alan, I said I don't know if I want to coach man, I don't know if I want to coach. And then it sometimes it was well. It was just a client that was very challenging to work with, or somebody that was very, very challenging to work with, or somebody that I didn't really understand how to help, or somebody who had an ego, somebody had unrealistic expectations, or Somebody that triggered something in me. It wasn't necessarily the act of coaching. It wasn't necessarily the Act as much as it was the feelings around the act and the traumas or triggers or Whatever it may be.

Speaker 1:

If you saw me in the kitchen cooking the steak, you would think I was a. I Was in love with cooking. I had music playing, I was dancing it. It brought me back to that. It brought me back to what it was like for me when I used to cook for myself. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would. I would garnish the plate. I try to get all fancy, but I a lot, of, a lot of the things that I loved were Muddied by the hate of bodybuilding I had even bodybuilding.

Speaker 1:

There's a wolf and we did an episode. I won't go deep into it, but I wouldn't even say I was a bodybuilder. I don't want to identify as a bodybuilder because when I identified as a bodybuilder I was miserable and I was hungry and I was depressed and I was anxious.

Speaker 2:

So interesting. Yeah, you associate pain with the identity. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I I.

Speaker 1:

Ran away from it and you.

Speaker 2:

But here's the problem you can't get bodybuilder results without really embodying that identity. That's like wanting the results of a podcaster without ever identifying as a podcaster.

Speaker 1:

Well, if you have negative associations, yeah, yeah, but I mean, I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't really. I don't think I was conscious of it, it was just that was a. That was a very rough experience. I don't want to. I don't want to do that. They're even with food.

Speaker 1:

I was at the supermarket the other day and I was like I'm gonna get some of this. I was just looking in the frozen section. There's these meals I used to get and it just took me back to when I lived with Matt and I was broke. I would get those because it was good, decent calories and they weren't super expensive. Yeah, so it took me back. It's like I don't want that. It's gonna take me back to you know. So it's. I know it's weird and maybe, I don't know, hopefully it's landing for you if you're out there. I'm thinking of stuff like this all the time. Maybe I'm. I know I'm weird, though, but hopefully something from it will resonate with you. I just have the experience at this point with just reflecting where I can. I'm starting to see it in other people more and more and more of oh, it's not, you don't hate that, you just don't like the version of that that you're familiar with, because you were going through something.

Speaker 2:

Mmm Okay.

Speaker 2:

That makes sense, that's actually a lot of what we do in coaching, and I'm assuming that's the case with you as well. It's, it's here's your goal. Here are the things you need to do consistently to achieve that goal. What are those things that you're avoiding on that list? Why are you avoiding that? How many times have you had someone say I don't want to track calories? Listen, I did. Weight watchers, I. You were probably in a. You're in a different spot. Tracking calories is not that bad. You just have a huge aversion to it. A lot of people have a huge aversion to the scale. What if you had a huge aversion to the scale back when you weren't this version of you? Yeah, you know, I, I, it's. So. Anything that you are avoiding, anything that you are avoiding, I'm telling you there's some massive pain associated with your central nervous system. There, there's, there's gotta be, and this is why intimate relationships are so powerful for growth.

Speaker 2:

Because, if there's ever anything Emilia is avoiding, or I'm avoiding, we are each other's mirror, because what's a good example of this? She doesn't track her finances as avidly as we do and she is like I think I'm avoiding it. I want to change my relationship with. We did a check in yesterday about our three core values, and they are Areadite, align and optimize. Emilia and I are definitely weirdos and we rated ourself from zero to 10 on each and then we said what's one improvement? We skipped the wins because let's just improve.

Speaker 2:

I do that for too long, though. It's a dangerous game. I felt terrible about myself in the past when I overly did that, but anyways. So one of the things for her was change her relationship with food and change her relationship with finances. You, if she is avoiding tracking finances, which I think she's actually doing it today. She is a negative association with math. She had some pretty terrible math teachers. From what I can tell genuinely and I know a lot of our listeners will resonate with this there are very few of our listeners, kevin, our listeners very few of our listeners.

Speaker 2:

There are seven in a row, man, we almost had it Seven in a row. There are very few of our listeners that I talk about math all the time behind the scenes. If you ever coach with me, we're going to talk math no matter what. So our listeners usually have a huge aversion to mathematics not always, but it's common Almost everyone with an aversion to math. They don't have an aversion to math, they have an aversion to a teacher they hated. Dude, you got to figure that out. It's not math. That's the issue. You felt dumb, or you had a teacher who made you feel dumb. It's not math that you're mad at.

Speaker 1:

Or you weren't good at it. I mean, that's possible too. I wasn't very good at math and I hated it for a long time, but now you're.

Speaker 2:

Mr CFO, jeff, you're tracking the finances every day. You love money but you hate math. It's like money is math. Let's merge the two. Let's ride out into the sunset wealthy together. It's important to separate that when you parse that out. It's really fun to maybe not fun it's really important.

Speaker 1:

Now you're over. Yeah, now you're overselling, now I'm overselling. First of all, you said parse it out From what. You really parse it out. You think parse is a good word. I actually when you said it I was like wow, you sound, this guy sounds wise. I take advice from you. If I just listened to the show and you said parse it out, I'd be like nice.

Speaker 2:

You got to parse it out. Is it math that you have an aversion to? Is it money you have an aversion to Think of? Health, wealth, life and love. Okay, health is physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. If you're drawn to emotional health and mental health, maybe you need to work on physical health. I have one relationship that I coach and the female in the relationship said yeah, no, my friend, well, she's one of those fit chicks. And I remember I called her out. I go why are you? What does fit chick mean to you? Because you can't want these amazing results without also kind of confronting the fact that you think she's one of those fit chicks. And again, I'm not trying to make fun of her and I'm trying to help her understand that you're never going to have the same results as that woman If you keep making fun of her unconsciously and making fun of quote unquote fit chicks. Just like Kev, you don't want to be seen as a meathead bodybuilder, but you do want to be jacked.

Speaker 1:

You got to be careful. I am one. I'm a meathead bodybuilder. Now I accept it. But I did everything that comes with it. You know it was never that. I don't know if it was ever that. I don't care about being a meathead, it's.

Speaker 1:

I just I just had a lot of pain around it, a lot of pain around being a bodybuilder. That's some of the most miserable times in my life. Some of those yeah, probably top three worst. Worst times in my life. I've said this on the podcast before I am probably one of the rare people that you will meet that paid. I actually paid money to get out of a job. I paid $1,000 to get out of a personal training contract early because I said I would stay there for at least a year. I'd pay $1,000. Fine, quote, unquote.

Speaker 1:

And the reason was sales. I had a negative association with sales because they wanted me to sell in a certain way. That was not aligned for me. I didn't want to tell people they were going to die if they didn't lose weight or not. It wasn't true. You're not that obese. It's not that you're not going to die. Most likely I'm not going to tell you you're not going to be around as your grandkids. That's not aligned for me. And then, when we started this business and tried to figure out how to make money and I had to learn sales, that was very challenging for me because I associate it with being sleazy and greasy and dirty and selling people at the expense of themselves. Now I love sales. I'm reading books on sales, I teach sales. I love it. I love sales because I redefined what it actually meant. All it means is help. There's changed S-A-L-E to H-E-L-P. Same thing If you're doing it in your own aligned way. But that took a lot of conditioning and it took me being very broke to rebuild my relationship with that as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely the pain got great enough to where you were, like you know what maybe sales.

Speaker 1:

That was something.

Speaker 2:

Kev, you sold me on that movie. You're sold on it. Yeah, man, when I asked Kevin the, what episode was that Two episodes ago?

Speaker 1:

It could have been any episode. What was the name of it? I could be anything.

Speaker 2:

What's the name of the movie? Oh, Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer. Yeah, Kevin sold me on that and I said, hey, you know why should I go see that movie? You said great movie, inspiring. Maybe not inspiring, but true story, you learn a lot yeah, contextual history.

Speaker 1:

I just listed out words history contextual graphics inspire, that would actually work on me, you'll get to have popcorn when you go. There you go. That's all you need to know.

Speaker 2:

But that's the thing, right, you are selling 24-7, 365. You just don't call it that and nothing moves until something's sold. But if you have a huge negative aversion to sales because you had a job like Kev where they made you go outside of alignment anytime you were way outside of alignment with the core value you have massive pain. Whenever you have massive pain, you're going to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. That doesn't necessarily mean that you landed at five. It means you didn't, it means you probably over swung.

Speaker 2:

I am convinced that all of us are born not knowing who we are, not knowing what we are, not knowing our skills and weaknesses, not being self-aware, naked, scared and ignorant. And I think that over time we go out into the world and we try things and we explore and we experiment. We have a little kitten that's exploring and it's so fun to watch. She'll only go like six feet away from her dad and then she'll come back, and then she'll try seven feet and then she'll come back, and we're all kind of doing that. And there's that great quote of you'll never put your hand on a hot stove again, but you'll probably never put it on a cold one either, because you're just going to assume every stove is hot. You're going to assume every sushi is bad, every math is bad, every.

Speaker 2:

You have to look at what has caused you pain and what if you were wrong about what caused you pain. What caused you pain? Yeah, it was bodybuilding, but not just bodybuilding. You overdid it. Definitely If you had body built in a more aligned, healthy way that was sustainable, you wouldn't have had so many difficulties. For me, you know, alcohol caused me so much pain, so much pain, and so I swung all the way in the other direction. I'm like I'm never going to drink again. That is my choice. But would it be the worst thing in the world to have one? I don't think it'd be a big deal. I'm not going to, and that's my choice. But I'm not also naive enough to think that that's not because of all the pain you know, and that's why I'm not like how dare the have glass of wine? It's all good, it's just not for me.

Speaker 1:

So if you do ever have a beer, better be with me. You son of a bee, I don't think I will.

Speaker 2:

No, I hope so, I hope not. I also hope not.

Speaker 1:

Discipline, inspire technology. You have anything you want to say before we go? Man, I got to get out of here. My eyes are watering all of a sudden. I think I've pushed it too hard.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely. Seven episodes in a row strong work. This is good. You strong work.

Speaker 1:

You strong work. Anything you want to say before we get out of here, that's what Kevin says at the end of every episode. He says strong work, and I say strong work. And you say you strong work Also sometimes I say that was the worst thing I've ever heard in my life, of all time ever.

Speaker 1:

No, you never said that, no, usually you do Anything you want to say before we go Next level nuggets, let's do it. Mine is ask yourself that question Are there any things that I had a positive relationship with during a negative time that taints negative? What could I do for you?

Speaker 2:

I'm sorry to laugh. I had a flashback to a moment. I swear to you this is not super valuable, fyi, best hook ever, I know. So I was at the Burger King drive-thru at one point. Right, have you ever ordered chicken McNuggets?

Speaker 1:

at Burger King. I don't order chicken McNuggets. I cannot eat it. It's gross. Even when I got the chicken from Domino's, I bit into a vein and I threw them all away and I'll never get it again. Seriously, I don't like chicken.

Speaker 2:

The Domino's chicken is bomb.

Speaker 1:

They did me dirty, go ahead. You were sitting in the drive-thru for the ninth night in a row In the Burger King drive-thru.

Speaker 2:

I asked for chicken McNuggets? Yeah Right, and they're like what I was like. Ok, just regular nuggets please. It was actually hilarious. It was a really funny moment. They are apparently very upset that I called their nuggets McNuggets because they're competitors. That was a completely irrelevant story.

Speaker 1:

You continue? Yeah, we're going to go, that's it.

Speaker 2:

Why did I think of nuggets? Oh yeah, next level nuggets Got it. What is yours, Do you?

Speaker 1:

have one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I do. Here's my next level, McNugget. It would be this Anything that you've decided you hate or anything that you've decided you love. There's probably some truth to that, but most likely there's more to learn. And yeah, everything that you love, you learned to love. Everything that you hate, you learned to hate and there's implications to that. Explore that.

Speaker 1:

OK, if you're listening, I'm going to do something a little different today. I want to spread some positivity. If you're listening to this, this is my request Send somebody a message and just tell them you're thinking of them. Send them a text, call them, send them an email, whatever. Send them a pigeon and throw a letter on a pigeon. Send her. Whatever you do to send stuff, do that. You're going to go see them in person, do that. But yeah, tell somebody you care about them and check in on them and make sure they're doing all right. That is my call to action for this episode.

Speaker 2:

If you feel like you've been avoiding things in your life, you feel like you've been procrastinating. You feel like you've been. Who was it? Recently, One of my clients said I feel like I need to be unlocked. I feel like there's a next level for me and we just started digging. We started digging and there were tears. Tears flew. I'm telling you, when you face uncomfortable truths and tears fly, there's another version of you on the other end of that. It's the old Phoenix burning down and the new Phoenix rising from the ashes. I really do adore that analogy. Transformation can happen, but only if you dig where you don't want to dig. The gold is buried where you least want to dig. I will help you dig there. I'll ask you the questions. I'll ask you many questions that are going to get to the gold, for lack of better phrasing. So, free 30 minute session with listeners. I'm currently doing that. Click the link in the show notes Book on my calendar. We'll dig deep together for some next level McNuggets.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow for episode number 1,423, a vulnerable conversation about love. You didn't know we were going to do that, I didn't. We are going to do that, as always. We love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU, we do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Keep digging Next level nation.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

Host