Next Level University

#1424 - Junk From Your Past Can Be Strengths In Your Future

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Have you ever thought about how the discomfort of your past can forge strengths for your future? In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros discuss the essence of adversity, painting it as the mud we trudge through that shapes us into who we are. They share stories of turning adversities into opportunities. They talk about the importance of humility and how it enables us to grow and learn from our losses.

Link mentioned:
Book a FREE Breakthrough Session with Alan: https://bit.ly/3Wr6clL
Next Level Monthly Meetup #20: "Is Your Mental Health Hindering Your Growth?" on August 10, 2023, 06:00 PM EST - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/

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Show notes:
[4:40] Kevin talks about their recent trip
[9:58] Adversity creates skills
[14:52] Your struggles came with something good
[15:52] Helen praises Alan’s Next Level Business Solutions coaching for providing safe and empowering coaching services
[17:47] Allow yourself to take the lessons
[22:12] Get better through your loses
[29:56] 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, episode number one thousand four hundred and twenty three a vulnerable conversation about love Love.

Speaker 2:

L is for the way you look at me, oh, oh is for the only one I see. V is for the very Extraordinary I actually don't know what he is he is for I Don't know.

Speaker 1:

Same One of two things happened. Either everybody was like, wow, this is gonna be the best episode ever, or we just lost half the people that were gonna listen to it. I think it'll probably be the first one. I'm hoping that's my, that's. Yeah. You don't really don't know what the ease for? I genuinely don't. Okay, we'll have to look it up. That was our latest episode today, for episode number one thousand four hundred and twenty four.

Speaker 1:

Junk from your past can be strengths in the future. I want you to imagine this. It is a Sunday morning. I Wake up in my apartment in New Hampshire. I Go downstairs, I take my clothes out of the dryer and I put them into my suitcase. I pack, I get everything packed away. I got my work boots on my suitcase, I got my gym stuff, everything I need. Then I order breakfast and get breakfast delivered while I'm watching a movie on a Sunday morning.

Speaker 1:

We get further into the afternoon and it gets to the point where I say, okay, it's time for me to go. I drive an hour to my Company headquarters, which was in I Cannot remember where it was right now, for some reason it's like 45 minutes from where I lived and then I got into a work van. I looked at my floor plans that I was going to be Working from when I went down to the job I was gonna be going down to and I packed up this work van. I need X amount of screws, I need X amount of this and X amount of plywood all this stuff Okay cool, I plug in the GPS or plug in the destination in the GPS and then out spits a number, usually six and a half hours. That's usually how long it took me to get to you.

Speaker 1:

Wherever I was going, whether it's with somebody or by myself. I start the trek, I drive six and a half hours to the hotel and I go sleep and then the next day I get up and I go to work. Right, usually the Job sites 15 minutes away from the hotel. Six and a half hour ride to where I'm going to be staying for the week. Occasionally six and a half hour rides, an eight hour ride. Sometimes that eight hour rides actually a 12 hour ride. The longest ride I ever did was 16 hours from Massachusetts to Virginia, because when you drive a work van, you can't go on the parkways. It's this whole thing. Why am I telling you about all this. It's a great question if you're thinking that to yourself. Alan and I drove from Massachusetts to Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, which is an eight and a half hour ride, depending on traffic not a huge fan not a huge fan either of Pittsburgh.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, we live in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2:

I apologize if I offend you, not a fan.

Speaker 1:

We're just missing out on the charm. Probably there's some charm that we probably are just missing out on. Probably true is what I would say plus you and I don't like cities, plus you and I don't like leaving the office.

Speaker 2:

So I think also true any place we go is gonna be in trouble.

Speaker 1:

So we drove eight and a half hours Straight. I mean we stopped for, we stopped to pee and we stopped to get gas. It's really not that big of a deal. When we got the opportunity to speak in Pittsburgh I literally said to Alan. I said we should probably drive. I mean it's gonna be cheaper, let's just drive. It's not that hard, it's not that hard of a ride. It's eight and a half hours. We'll stop once or twice for gas, it's easy. But I know a lot of people that would say there's zero percent chance I'm driving eight and a half hours. There's no way Did I leave my Face mask.

Speaker 2:

I have a sleeping mask that I leave it in the, in the beamer Probably because you were sleeping.

Speaker 1:

Damn. Alan takes his mask out and reclines the seat all the way back. He says hey, man, you good, you need caffeine or anything. It's like no, no, I'm good. He's like hi, man, I'm gonna see you soon.

Speaker 1:

There was one. There was one part where I was I could not stop laughing. We were going over these bumps and I just looked at you and you were just like bouncing up and down with your mouth open and I was like I don't know how. You're possibly not waking up, because it was pretty aggressive at one point. Why am I? Why am I saying all this?

Speaker 1:

The job that I Really didn't like later in life is also the job that taught me how to drive through cities, through busy cities, without being anxious. It taught me how to Drive for long periods of time. It taught me how to reverse, engineer the logistics of how much traffic there's gonna be and what could happen if we hit traffic. The reason Alan and I were able to drive there is because I did that so many times in my old job. But I used to hate it. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy the drives. They were miserable. The first job I ever worked with that company, I got in a vehicle with my boss, who I had met one time before, and we drove Seven hours to a different state. And it was. He did it like it was nothing. He's a guy. It's only like seven hours. We'll listen to a book on tape. It's all good. He was so used to driving it wasn't that big of a deal. That's what happened to me. You remember Devasio?

Speaker 2:

shout out to the guy that he drove down to our event in Florida, because for him that was not a big deal at all, because he was drives tractor trailers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he drove. I think he drove from South Carolina to Florida, which for him probably is not yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's not a big deal at all for him because that's I don't think it's that far, yeah, but the point of that, that's the whole point of this episode what do you have from your past? It doesn't have to be a job. What do you have from your past? That's actually something that's very beneficial for you today. Me, rapping in the past has definitely helped me figure out how to name podcast episodes. 100%, 100%, of course, definitely I love rapping, so it's not something negative from the past, it's not necessarily junk from the past, but I think a lot of us look back on our past and we we almost paint an entire experience, a certain color. But there's a lot of stuff in there that's actually very positive. We just have to figure out how to connect it to what we're doing today.

Speaker 2:

One more example of Kevin's past being very beneficial. Kev came down. We were having audio quality issues because of Windows 11 on my new laptop. Now I'm using the ZenBook Amazing with Windows 10, so you shouldn't have any popping on the audio. But Kevin, for two weeks weeks in a row, would come down on Marathon Monday. Marathon Monday, for the new listeners, is when we record all of our episodes. We were having heating and cooling challenges and we asked Kev, because Kev used to do some of that stuff, and then you were up in our attic Trying to help us get the ventilation in our condo to be better. There's just a lot.

Speaker 2:

Your past is an accumulation of skills that you have developed. You know, emilia and Bianca were having audio issues recently and because of the challenges Kevin and I had, I was able to help them. So a lot of the mud that you crawl through in your past ends up being Really beneficial in the future. I always say this quote the deep, dark holes that we've found ourselves in, the tools and skills that are required of us to climb out of those holes also build skyscrapers, and what I mean by that quote Is an example that would be. Excuse me.

Speaker 2:

Kevin and I are sitting in the studio and we're creating algorithms for our Financial spreadsheets to track how much revenue we're bringing in, how much we're spending, where we're Investing our money, what we're putting into the business. And I remember you asked me like dude, where'd you learn all this? Remember that and I remember thinking I had never really thought about where I learned all this. And I was a global product manager and I was responsible for, in my early 20s, $80 million of a portfolio of products for a company called since out of technologies, and I used to have to put together spreadsheets of. I mean, when you're trying to budget for $80 million worth of revenue, you have to learn this stuff.

Speaker 2:

And I remember just the accumulation of Adversity over time creates these amazing skills that now our superpowers that you can go and use. And Now I can do spreadsheets no problem, spreadsheet. Our whole businesses run through Google sheets. It's amazing. But For the listeners, which? What have you crawled through in the past? What have you struggled with in the past? I Can promise you, on the other side of that struggle is some skills, some valuable skills that you have developed that other people haven't.

Speaker 1:

Can I add something? Yeah, of course, this just came to me Gas station. So, kevin, me, I worked at a gas station for I don't know how many years, at least three years, maybe more, I don't know, at least three One. One of the reasons I think I'm really good with people is because I had to be really good with people. I was seeing so many people so often, and that's another reason I think I'm funny, because I made a lot of jokes and I'm trying to make people laugh.

Speaker 2:

You also got tips right.

Speaker 1:

I got tips, yeah, you used to get a lot of tips more funny and more likable. Yeah, yeah, part two of that. I believe that's one of the reasons I'm good at mental math, because back then people weren't using credit cards or debit cards as much as they do today, and it was Straight cash $27.50. Somebody gives you 40. Okay, 50 cents is 28. All right, $12 and 50 cents All right. Cool, here you go. There was no, I don't have time for it Calc. It was all mental math. So I think that's one of the reasons I'm actually somewhat decent at mental math as well.

Speaker 2:

Everything that you did in your past, a particularly the struggles, I'm convinced, have created a Mini or full-on superpower that you can now use. I'm really convinced of that, and that's why people who have no struggles tend to be very Complacent, lackadaisical and and not really that good at stuff. I Used to say this all the time and I know why it doesn't land. But my friend asked me one time how do you get good at something? And I said well, how do you get good at chess? I answered a question with a question and and he's like I don't know. I said go lose it, chess a bunch. The person who's willing to lose at chess. If you're winning at chess all the time, you're not getting any better. One of the reasons Kevin and I are strong speakers at this point is just because we sucked for the longest.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and we're gonna yeah exactly and again, it's relative to who you're talking about. Like, compared to Barack Obama, we're not very strong orators, speakers, compared to someone at the beginning, we're amazing. It's all relative and we've talked and done episodes about that. But the point I'm making is here's a really interesting example from history. You mentioned how I read Stephen Hawking. So Amelia just bought a book. What is the name of this book? The theory of everything might be the name of the book. I know that's the name of the movie. Stephen Hawking was. He had a disease that he was paralyzed from the neck down and and he for those of you who don't know Stephen Hawking, he was a physicist and I'm reading this book. It's powerful, but One of the reasons I was I was with Amelia yesterday and I was talking about how grateful I am for my physique and my capabilities, because Now that my back is really hurting me, it's very noticeable how difficult it is to do everything.

Speaker 2:

Also, we watched a movie recently called walk ride rodeo. Have you ever seen it? It's a true story of a woman who was a rodeo Person one of the best and she gets in a truck accident. She gets paralyzed and the physical therapist says okay, what are your goals. We got to try to get back, and Kevin and I know Some people that we've interviewed early on the podcast are ecla grand, isabella, isabella Picard. Both of them had really bad accidents where they were paralyzed and different to different extents, but they were, you know. I know Isabella Picard was told she'd never walk again and now she's doing handstands on the beach and it's amazing. That movie inspires me, because every time I'm injured I have so much Reverence for how awesome life is when I'm not injured. So right now my back is really hurting me. I pulled it Multiple times this past week and I'm just having trouble doing things that I normally do. No problem, and so it's making me more grateful.

Speaker 2:

So, anyways, I ended up talking to Amelia about this. I said no wonder why Stephen Hawking was so brilliant. One of the reasons because he couldn't use his body, so he used his mind. He focused on developing his mind way more, because he wasn't able to do as many physical things as other people. Now Does that mean everyone reacts in that same way?

Speaker 2:

No, does that mean that you have to have a bad accident or a bad debilitating disease in order to be as intelligent as Stephen Hawking? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there is a truth in here that every struggle you've ever had, every job you hated, every relationship that was toxic, it came with something good. It can't. You came out of it with something really powerful. And I know a lot of people who had really really challenging childhoods one that we spoke to this past week and and the grit on these people is unbelievable. You know that they're at their reaction to pain and adversity. It's like hard work is not the problem, it's all good, and I think that that's just a really powerful empowering frame to look from it, because every, every failure, every rejection, every sad moment, every painful experience, every challenge comes with something positive. If you can Stick with it and try to make something of it and, more importantly, make something of yourself, that's got to be one of the most empowering big ideas we could ever bring, I would agree.

Speaker 1:

I. Has Emilia ever lit something on fire when she's cooking?

Speaker 2:

I actually don't think so. We don't cook much.

Speaker 1:

Instapot kind of does the work for it Rice cooker does the work for you.

Speaker 1:

Taran was making breakfast one day this was years ago and she lit the bread on fire. She forgot about it. She just forgot that the bread was in there and she was losing her mind. She was freaking out. She was like, oh my goodness, what do we do? What do we do? And remember, I went to the fire academy and I don't I look back on that with a lot of positivity. I have some negativity around it too, because I was such a coward I didn't ask any questions, but that's something I use, that all the time. I use that all the time. I, when we went to our friend's house recently, we were having a fire and shout out to Tony if Tony's listening and Tony just took a bunch of paper and threw it in there and just walked away and I was like that's not going to work, this isn't going to happen.

Speaker 1:

This isn't going to be and then I waited and it went out and I made a fire. I fixed it. I mean, that's something I learned in the fire academy when you learn to put out fires, you also know how to make them. So there's a lot of that too. I just wonder if you, whether you're watching or listening if you look back and you allow and we kind of did this, this is kind of a repeat episode of what we did last week but if you look back and say, oh, the fire academy, I remember being so afraid and I remember getting rejected and and then not allowing yourself to take any of the losses or any of the lessons from that, because there are, there are so many of those where when I tell the story of the fire academy, I don't ever tell the fact that now I feel comfortable around fire. I always tell the fact that I feel like a failure because I didn't ask any questions, and then the first time I went to a live fire, everything went horribly wrong.

Speaker 1:

I wonder whether you're watching or listening. Ask yourself that question. That would be my next level nugget. What are some of the things that you look back on and you don't have a ton of good to say that you could pull positivity from Lessons, experiences, expertise, perspective, whatever it may be, because there's got to be something in there. I'm sure no. Again, some experiences are horrible and maybe there isn't a lot of positivity, but I would argue that there's probably a lot, and many of the things we look back on I want to give an example of all the intimate relationships I've had in my life.

Speaker 2:

The one I'm referring to right now is what I believe to be the worst one, and I'll keep it anonymous, of course. But that also taught me the most, and here's why Whenever it was negative, toxic, whatever label you want to label it I used to go and research relationships. I remember taking a two and a half hour seminar about how to make an intimate relationship work, because our relationship just not wasn't working. And eventually, quite frankly, I fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. I think to some degree we weren't meant to be together. I know for a fact we had different paradigms and, quite frankly, I think and this is my truth, I don't. It got to a point where it was like I don't know if this is me, I don't think this is something that I can shift. I think this might be on her 50% or whatever because you can change yourself. You can change what you say. Think, do feel, believe, you can study, you can get better. If you want to be successful in business, you have to study business. If you want to be successful in fitness, you have to study fitness and you have to practice it. You want to get better podcasting? Same deal. So I was trying. I was practicing relationships, I was studying relationships. I was practicing relationships. I was studying relationships, she wasn't, and so it got to the point. Eventually it was like, okay, I'm not going to be able to fix this, I'm not going to be able to make this work, and so, but now fast forward.

Speaker 2:

We have a podcast called the conscious couples podcast and we coach married couples, couples, individuals. We help them achieve their dreams together. We help them stay on the same page, we help them uncover what's going on. All of that is because Emilia and I, in her early 20s, her whole life, I mean, she was in an eight year relationship that just never worked, but she was trying to figure out why it didn't work and trying to figure out what to do about it, and trying to. You know, if she had never been in a relationship before and I had never been in a relationship before, we would have screwed this up for sure. Can you imagine if Taryn was your first girlfriend? Oh, you would have screwed it up. I would have screwed this up, I, emilia and I, when we first met three and a half years ago, coming up on four, I remember saying I'm so grateful I made all my mistakes in my other relationships. Now, don't get me wrong, I've also made mistakes in this relationship, but not even close to the extent. In my early 20s I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

Speaker 2:

So that the mistakes you've made, the rejections, the failures, the painful jobs, the painful relationships, the painful experiences with your fan bam, all of that stuff develops you, assuming, assuming you are humble, assuming you're trying to get better, assuming you're interpersonal development. And even when you're not, it's still developing something. So I mean, think about your first intimate relationship. Everyone out there watching or listening. If you've ever been in an intimate relationship, you screwed that thing up. No one, no one, gets their first job and they're just awesome at it. That's not real, you know. That's like being like yeah, you know I'm an Olympic basketball player, but I never really lost any games. Like. That's not real. No matter what you do, you're going to lose constantly for the rest of your life. The question is are you getting better through those losses? And I think that's the only question that really matters when it comes to, you know, failing forward.

Speaker 1:

Even the not going to college route. That benefited me tremendously in so many ways. I was working while everybody else was partying and I wasn't. It's not like I was making money or anything, but I had work at it. Yeah, definitely. I remember having friends who they do summer jobs and they'd have they'd complain about getting up at seven in the morning and I remember thinking I've been up at five every day for the last like two and a half years.

Speaker 2:

You know, but I bet you never looked at it like that back then.

Speaker 1:

I never right, no, no, yeah, back then I didn't Back then I did Five am is no problem for you.

Speaker 2:

You've been doing this for a year. Five am is nothing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's. That's nothing To the point where we stayed up until midnight. So we came home Sunday Definitely shouldn't have stayed up as late as I did, but we stayed up until midnight 12, 30, and then I get up at 4 30. So I drove a total of probably 11 hours because I dropped Alan off and then I drove an hour and 15 minutes home on four hours of sleep. I was tired, but that's not something I've never done before. So that's definitely. If you're a parent out there and you have had to stay up all night with your, with your little one, that's an entrepreneurship hack. That's a level of grit and patience that a lot of people don't have.

Speaker 2:

That's something that crosses over too. No one gets stronger and more capable from easy workouts. So everyone this is the last thing I say I promise this is, in my opinion, the most empowering belief ever. I'm not even kidding, this is my most empowering belief. This is this, is it?

Speaker 2:

No matter who you are or how hard your past has been, you have a spotless future. That's part one. Your future is spotless. You can create a different future. Most empowering thing in the entire world, in my opinion. That has helped me in my darkest times, still does whenever I'm going through it.

Speaker 2:

Second part, part two your past being hard actually made your future brighter if you do it right. If you look at all the skills you've developed, all the lessons you've learned, you are more capable now than you used to be. You are Strong. People are not created by easy workouts. Strong people are not created by easy lives, and I know that I coach a lot of people, the people with the hardest past. There's one person in particular I'm thinking of who had the worst childhood. It is unfathomable what her mother was, and she is the strongest person, one of the strongest people I know, and it's because of that and that's awesome. So it's not awesome what happened, but it is awesome who she's become because of it, and I think that that is, in my opinion, the most empowering belief I could ever. If I could only say one thing on a bulletin board, it would be that Is that your next level?

Speaker 1:

nugget.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm Okay.

Speaker 1:

I had to make sure I get a next level nugget out of you. I got a next level nugget out of you.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:

My next level nugget.

Speaker 2:

That is the the next level nugget for me. Next level nugget.

Speaker 1:

You know what we'll do one day. This just came to me. I'm a vision. I don't know if you know this. I'm a bit of a visionary myself. One day, we will have a book of all the next level nuggets. Wow, we have a lot. It took us 1400 episodes to start doing them, so there won't be any of the terrible ones from the past, but in another 1000 episodes or so, we'll have a really good book.

Speaker 1:

Shout out to Gerry Ann for coming up with that idea. That was not us. Cannot take credit for it. My next level nugget would be If you're doing something right now that you strongly dislike, I would even say the word maybe you hate, maybe it's a job. I'll just say a job. In this example, there are things that you are doing today that five years from today you'll be doing in a different way, but they will be so valuable you would not believe it. That is my next level nugget.

Speaker 2:

Little perspective. I appreciate that.

Speaker 1:

I also again, you might not know this, you might know this, depending on who you are, I don't know Now a bit of a speaker myself as well, definitely of Greece, to stage your two in my day.

Speaker 2:

Definitely. I've bombed a speech or two in my day as well.

Speaker 1:

So definitely par for the course.

Speaker 2:

And you want to say before we get out of here Kevin and I learned our best lessons on the speeches we bombed. Yeah, so just take the, take the W's out of the, out of the L's and keep failing forward. That's it, keep failing forward.

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. We have been mentioning this for the past couple weeks and Allen's calendar has Filled up quite a bit because we have an amazing community of people who want to Learn more and learn about themselves and get to know us, and we want to get to know them. We are still doing the free call with Allen. So whether you want to bring questions about a career change or a relationship or entrepreneurship or mindset, or you just want to connect with Allen his link will be in the show notes. It's a free 30-minute call. You get to connect with Allen. What better?

Speaker 2:

It's all. I have very long pause there. Thank you so much for everyone who has reached out. I've been very, very grateful. I love to meet our listeners. Please, please, please, reach out. Let's continue that as long as we possibly can. My calendar is a little overwhelming, but it's a good thing. It's a good thing. I love this. We have a meet-up tonight, so this episode is dropping on Thursday tonight at 6 pm Eastern time, august 10th, we're gonna start saying the dates. August 10th, we have a meet-up called is your mental health hindering your growth? And the answer is yes, it definitely is, because you are capable of far more and all of our mental health is hindering our growth.

Speaker 2:

I Never really studied mental health. I didn't have a therapist until I was in my 30s. That was a mistake. Even recently, I feel really good. I feel like I've grown a ton, and I had that moment of I wonder if I, I Wonder if I still should pay for this. This therapist and I was like no, no, no, allen, you're not gonna go to the gym once and then be fit for life. Keep it up, keep it up. So we're gonna talk about mental health. We're gonna talk about what I've learned from my therapist what I've learned about IFS and CBT and DBT and ACT all of those acronyms if they don't mean anything to you, they will soon. There's a lot of really powerful tools that therapists use to transform people's lives. And we don't pretend to be clinicians I'm not a certified therapist or anything like that but we can teach you high-level stuff that will help and change your life.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow for episode number 1425. What song is playing on repeat in your head? We're not talking about actual music, musical notes, t-swift, whoever else people are listening to nowadays. I don't know. I hear a lot about T-swift because she's crushing it, drake. We're talking about the inner dialogue that you have that is running your life. That is really what we're gonna talk about in that episode. Allen says what record is Playing? I said nobody knows. Nobody listens to records. I have a record player, you believe that seriously.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, tara, and I have a record player Did you used to Ricker Ricker.

Speaker 2:

No, no, I've never.

Speaker 1:

I've never Ricker Ricker, whatever that means, but we have a, we have one nice and it's a very modern one. Excellent. Yeah, take a picture and send it to you. I know that's it. I know you'd be so happy if I did that, so I will. Yeah, please do, I can't wait. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and an L you either, not a fans, we have family. We'll talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Keep building that brighter future. Next level nation.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host