Next Level University
Confidence, mindset, relationships, limiting beliefs, family, goals, consistency, self-worth, and success are at the core of hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros' heart-driven, no-nonsense approach to holistic self-improvement. This transformative, 7 day per week podcast is focused on helping dream chasers who have been struggling to achieve their goals and are seeking community, consistency and answers. If you've ever asked yourself "How do I get to the next level in my life", we're here for you!
Our goal at NLU is to help you uncover the habits to build unshakable confidence, cultivate a powerful mindset, nurture meaningful relationships, overcome limiting beliefs, create an amazing family life, set and achieve transformative goals, embrace consistency, recognize your self-worth, and ultimately create the fulfillment and success you desire. Let's level up your health, wealth and love!
Next Level University
#1449 - 3 Things Required For Transformation
Have you ever wondered why some people transform their lives while others remain stuck? Simply imitating what successful people do doesn't cut it. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about finding those who personify humility, courage, and vulnerability and learning from them. They're essential prerequisites for transformation. They form a powerful triad that can help you unlock your potential and embark on a meaningful journey of personal growth.
Links mentioned:
The Triad of Transformation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14va4lTVJZfCx2aedxx-sX3nk_q4v47Pg/view?usp=sharing
#9 - How to Transform Yourself and Your Life: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-transform-yourself-your-life-alan-lazaros
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Website 💻 http://www.nextleveluniverse.com
The best way to track your habits is here! Download the app: Optimal - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/optimal/
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Any of these communities or resources are FREE to join and consume
- Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
- Next Level 5 To Thrive (free course) - ​​https://bit.ly/3xffver
- Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/
- Next Level Monthly Meetup: https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/
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Email 💬
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Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
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Show notes:
[0:00] Intro
[4:01] The Triad of Transformation
[7:56] Pre-requisites to transformation
[14:29] Kim thanks Kevin for going above and beyond in helping launch the Peaceful Productivity podcast
[15:07] What matters most
[18:52] Losing humility and vulnerability
[25:00] The willingness to start small
[29:20] Outro
Next Level Nation. Welcome back to another episode of Next Level University, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode, number 1448. If you're waiting for motivation and inspiration, listen to this. If you did listen to this, then you listened to that Today for episode number. Pretty good, right. Today for episode number 1449, three things required for transformation. The person that will be talking about this has done 4,500 plus hours of one-on-one coaching. That's not including group trainings. That's not including group coaching. That's not including hundreds of speeches. That's not including thousands of hours studied of self-improvement, Thousands, maybe a millions, Maybe a millions.
Speaker 2:Maybe a millions? No way, because I haven't been alive for a million hours. I don't think Well, no, no, definitely not 365 times 35. No, definitely not 24 hours times 365. We don't have to do the math, we're not going to do this. You're the guy, you're the person.
Speaker 1:That was your introduction. So you came to me one day and you said hey, man, there's three things that are required for transformation. And I said what do you got?
Speaker 2:And this is what you said. If you know Kevin and I's story, he had at 26 or 27, I forget which you had suicidal ideation side of a bed in New Jersey, just all the humble pie. And he texted me and I had a car accident at age 26 that really, really, really shook my snow globe, so to speak, and I thought I knew about myself, was questioned. I got the second chance that my father didn't have my father passed away in a car accident when he was 28 for the new listeners and I didn't know this until my this year.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize this until this year, but back when I was in college I took a fire protection course and Cavill recognized this because you went through the fire Academy, I did, and there's something called a fire triangle and the fire triangle is essentially the three things that are required prerequisites to create fire is oxygen, heat and fuel. So in this case, let's say you have a lighter, and you have a lighter is probably a bad example, because technically that's already a flame, yeah, yeah, and the easiest is if you have logs on the fire.
Speaker 2:The log is the fuel. Obviously, if you smother it, there's no more oxygen, so it goes out. And so this fire truck, in order to have fire, you need, you need fuel.
Speaker 2:you need heat yeah you need fuel, you need heat and you need oxygen. I now realize that, in order to have transformation, I created something called the transformation triangle. You need three things, and Kevin and I didn't have these three things prior to 26, with his suicidal ideation, and prior to my car accident. And the three things are number one, humility, number two, courage and number three, vulnerability. So I'm going to use Kevin as an example in this, but this is essentially what I did, is I looked back at all my clients and I said why are some of them transforming so much and some of them aren't? At first I thought it was me. I'm actually writing a blog right now about this. I thought it was my coaching. I thought, okay, you know, I, maybe it's my approach is off. Maybe that person has more self belief, maybe that person blah, blah, blah. This is it. This is what I've come to realize after 4500 hours and it's more than an hour, because I go way over a lot of times and I have one client in particular that I'm thinking of, that I'm actually. She's featured in the blog that I'll I'll post in the show notes. It's actually technically dropping Wednesday, but it'll be dropped by the time this episode drops. So good, okay. So the the link will be in the show notes.
Speaker 2:But I now understand that, prior to Kevin's suicidal ideation, I don't think he had the humility, the courage and the vulnerability for the level of transformation that he wanted. Okay, so here's. Here's it broken down logically. Kevin wanted to start a successful podcast. He wanted to be more successful. He wanted to be with a beautiful, incredible woman. He wanted a great relationship. He wanted his dream car. He wanted a bigger, better home. He wanted to have an impact. He wanted to have a meaningful life. These wants are were all there, but he wasn't yet the man that he needed to be in order to achieve those things.
Speaker 2:All of those things are actually a byproduct of him becoming better, him growing, him learning skills, him transforming. And so, just like fire needs heat, oxygen and fuel to exist, transformation needs humility, courage and vulnerability to exist, and I've come to realize that in my coaching. And so now, when someone doesn't have humility, I just kind of stop because there's no point. That's like having a log and having oxygen but not having any heat. There's no point, I'm just going to waste my time, thank you, okay, and that's like trying to pour more oxygen into a log with already a bunch of oxygen. It doesn't matter, right? And so what they really need is humility. So you and I got a lot of humble pie in our mid-20s.
Speaker 2:We had our midlife crisis during our quarter life and I'm very, very blessed, I'm very grateful I should say that we had that so early, because you and I ate so much humble pie of and this is the analogy the old phoenix burns down. It's where do you go? Oh, kevin, you know, in his story he talks about how he hit rock bottom and how rock bottom actually has a basement. Well, when he's in the rock bottom basement, there's nowhere to go. But up, there's nowhere to go. But I need help. There's nowhere to go. But listen, I'm gonna start a podcast and I'm gonna get around the smartest person that I know. Again, that might not have been your thinking, but you picked me and I'm grateful because you thought that I knew what.
Speaker 2:I was talking about, which, in hindsight, I did and I didn't.
Speaker 1:I flipped the coin. Yeah, you flipped the coin, alan tails, anybody else?
Speaker 2:But that's really what it required was the level of humility. And then we talked about fear chasing. You have a ton of stories about fear chasing, which is courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is I am afraid and I'm gonna do it anyway, and you did a ton of that. And then vulnerability Are you kidding? I mean, how many vulnerable conversations have we had? You've told me things that I can never talk about.
Speaker 2:Now. I'm kidding, but at the end of the day, humility, courage and vulnerability are prerequisites to transformation, and I, particularly I coach a lot of women I think probably 80% women and a lot of times they're Partners, they're intimate partners, sometimes don't have enough humility, courage and vulnerability, and essentially, what I try to help them with is listen. The transformation isn't gonna happen if you don't see all three of those. And so I'll ask them I'll say zero to ten, how much humility do you see from your husband or your partner? And they'll say Four, four. It's like okay, four, okay, courage. Now, remember, courage is what they're actually afraid of, because, remember, I could give a speech and I'm not super afraid of that. That doesn't mean it's courage. Now, what's really scary for me is saying I'm good at something publicly, that's really scary, so that's a vulnerable thing, okay. So courage, I and when I ask the question, I say zero to ten. How much courage do they have, things they're really afraid of? So I was really scared to go to therapy. That was courage, okay, because I didn't want to do it. So they say, when you frame it like that, maybe two, you know. And then the last one, vulnerability is almost always a zero. It's almost always like oh, zero.
Speaker 2:And again, I do think, statistically speaking, men struggle with vulnerability more than women. And there's there's biological reasons and there's also Cultural reasons of rub some dirt in it, bro, you're fine, get it together, you're fine. And even as a kid, we we as boys, were, we beat each other up and we it was all about who was the toughest kid on the block and all that crap. But at the end of the day, vulnerability is a struggle. I didn't even know what vulnerability was until my late 20s and I actually think that I was still vulnerable in hindsight, compared to a lot of men. But I didn't know what it meant. And if I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't know what it was, what are the chances? I'm proactively practicing it, and so, for me, the vulnerability was the issue.
Speaker 2:As a man, humility, I think, was there more than I thought. Courage was definitely there, but the vulnerability was not, particularly in public, and so my transformation could only be. So what was that? A 4, a 3, and a 0, did I say 4, 2, and 0,? Maybe, I don't remember. I think I said 4, 2, and 0, but anyways, that's a 6 divided by 3, which is 2. So that means their level of transformation is only going to be a 2. And so what I tell them is listen, what's ironic about this and I know a lot of our female listeners will definitely resonate with this, some of our male listeners as well but what's ironic is it's not until after you leave him that he's probably going to transform, and I've had so many calls Kev where they're like I know if I left him he would transform, he'd turn it all around, and you even talked about how Leah left you and then you transformed, because you finally had all the humble pie and the courage and the vulnerability of crap, I'm lost.
Speaker 2:And I think that I try really hard to communicate the importance of humility, courage and vulnerability. What are they? How do you build them? And, honestly, you're not going to transform if you don't have those three pieces, just like you can't make fire without heat, oxygen and fuel.
Speaker 1:The humility one has always been. The clients that have humility have always been my favorite clients. Just because I feel like we can actually we're on the same page, we have a desired, we have a shared desired outcome. I had a call with someone he's also in group coaching and it was just a great call. It was wonderful. He comes with questions, just super humble, very courageous, very courageous as well, very vulnerable, and those are the clients that have always done really, really, really well, because when you're humble, you're admitting you don't know everything.
Speaker 2:And really what you're doing is you're saying I am open to feedback because I realize that I don't know everything it doesn't mean I know everything, but the assumption there is I know more than you do in a certain arena.
Speaker 1:If you come to me for podcasting, the assumption is I know more about podcasting. Where, if you're a parent and I come to you about parenting, the assumption is you have more experience in parenting than I do Because you do. That's a fact. It would be very arrogant for me to assume I know better than you Based on the zero.
Speaker 2:I have baby sat, I've had friends who have kids, but I've never had my own.
Speaker 1:I've never had my own child that's a newborn, crying at 2 o'clock in the morning. I don't know what that's like that. The humility one to me, because if you're humble enough to stay or stick around, the courage thing that can be borrowed. You can borrow somebody else's belief in courage. The vulnerability one's hard.
Speaker 2:Well for you, the fitness show you talk about. You went and got a coach which shows humility. And that's you saying listen, I want to win this show. And I know that I'm more likely to win this show with you in my corner and you know more than I do, because this is what you do for a living.
Speaker 1:So you tell me what to do. The way I went to a coach and said, ok, I trust you Tell me what to do. That was it. I didn't look at reviews and asking anybody else to coach, and he's a wonderful coach, he's really good, but same with you. I just said, all right, what do we have to do here? So then, how did you know you?
Speaker 2:didn't just roll the dice.
Speaker 1:I knew I'd be better off. I didn't know necessarily where I ended up. That's humility.
Speaker 2:Is that reckless though? I don't know, man, I think in hindsight you have a thing with this. I think that you were more resourceful and intuitive than you think. With that there's a dude of all the people in my life who I could have helped me be successful.
Speaker 1:I wonder if not with a list In terms of pure potential. You're hilarious man.
Speaker 2:No, I think that you knew you needed to get around more successful people, and you knew that I was getting around more successful people and you had the humility to interview me and ask me questions. Yeah, that's that makes sense. I honestly never I've been looking at what matters most. I used to think intelligence was what matters most, and I don't mean just intelligence like natural intelligence. I mean I used to think awareness is what matters most.
Speaker 2:I don't agree with that anymore, because if you have humility, you will learn more in the long term. I think we all start out with different potential and I think some people are more naturally smart. I was one of those people in certain areas and I think over time if you don't have humility.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of smart people without humility and they've gotten worse. I don't want to say worse, but they haven't gotten nearly as amazing as Brandon's a great example of this. Brandon came on the team and he was vulnerable, courageous and humble and he just surpassed I want to celebrate Brandon here for a second. Brandon just surpassed a thousand days tracking habits when Brandon interviewed for this opportunity to be on the NLU team three years ago or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it had to be at least three years ago.
Speaker 2:No, three times 365 is more than a thousand. I think it's around three years ago.
Speaker 1:I believe it'll be three years in December, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, december 2020 or December 2019, I forget which 2020. Either way, he came on Zoom with us. We were in the studio, I'll never forget it, and we said okay, brother, what are your skills? What can you bring to the table? And he said, honestly, I don't have any skills, but I'm willing to work really hard. And you and I were like yep this is awesome.
Speaker 2:Versus someone coming in there like hot shit, like look at my resume and look what I've done. Now I think there is a drive to five there. If you do have skills, I think you also need to share that, but not in an ego way. And Brandon has been one of the most improved humans I have ever met in my life I'm not even kidding and it's because of his humility. He was scared of that call, he was super scared to meet us, but he had the humility to say I need help. He had the courage to show up and he had the vulnerability to say you know what? Honestly, I don't think I'm that great, but I'm willing to work really hard. And here he is a thousand days later, and him and his girlfriend. I obviously want to protect his privacy, but he's crushing it. He's honestly, probably he's achieving his dreams. I'll just leave it there. He's achieving his dreams and I would put money on Brandon. I would, because he's hardworking and he has humility, courage and vulnerability and that's what's possible when you have that triangle.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:I don't want this to be like a we talk about us thing.
Speaker 1:But how do you? I don't know what the question is. How does somebody know who?
Speaker 2:to surround themselves with in order to get transformation. Is it just those three things?
Speaker 1:Do you pair up with people who have that, or is there something else?
Speaker 2:I think, believe it or not, the way I used to answer that question was get around successful people, figure out what they did differently and then do that, and I disagree with that. Now, what I would do I think that's actually dangerous. What I would do now is get away from the people that don't have those three things. I think that's more important than I think. Getting away from toxic people is much more important than getting around successful people.
Speaker 2:And what's even more scary is the wolf in sheep's clothing, which is someone who's really successful, and they've lost their humility, courage and vulnerability. And you know what's fascinating, and Kev, this is genuinely one of the reasons we don't have guests anymore the people at the beginning of their journey. They had tons of humility, courage and vulnerability and then they transformed, transformed, transformed, transformed. And now they have a lot of success and they've lost their humility. And it was very hard for us to interview them because it's like listen, that's not how you did it. Don't lie to our audience.
Speaker 1:You're never going to hear me, and vulnerability too. I know the lack of humility was concerning I had a moment recently where I had that moment where I was thinking. I answer questions.
Speaker 2:I try to answer questions on podcasts as vulnerably as possible. When people say what's your biggest fear?
Speaker 1:Fear and rejection Failure.
Speaker 2:My biggest fear is failure and rejection Hands down. In this moment I'll say this to them like right now, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to answer questions on podcasts and draw right now.
Speaker 1:That's my biggest fear, not something I evolved through 10 years ago, not that, or?
Speaker 2:when people say what's your?
Speaker 1:I don't know what a good question for vulnerability would be, but I just feel like we asked a lot of people really good questions and we didn't always get deep, truthful answers.
Speaker 2:I don't think we did man.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize that. I'm sure with some clients we did Some guests, some guests we did, and those are the interviews we liked.
Speaker 2:Those are the interviews we probably liked. In hindsight, I don't think we knew We've got to be on both sides.
Speaker 1:Until you. It's almost like there should be a rule you shouldn't be allowed to interview someone until you've been interviewed.
Speaker 2:Vice versa, because if you've never been interviewed, you don't know what it's like to be interviewed. You really know what you would have done, and if you never interviewed, you don't know what it's like to interview. It's very important to see both sides. I know that's not. That's the topic for another podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, what I would say is and I did want to read this, it's a quick excerpt from the blog, but I'll do that what's required for real transformation? Here's what I know Whatever goal you have, whatever life you desire better business, better body, better relationship, better home, better car, bigger impact whatever it is, it's going to require you to transform, because, by definition, you would already have it in your life if you were already the person who could attract that or create that, and so transformation is required. Kevin and I have transformed over and over and over again on this journey, and it's been absolutely brutal in many regards. And when we look back to old content or we listen to old episodes, it's very challenging for us because, not because we were bad or because we didn't have peer intentions or because we weren't helping people, because we were, it's because we've gotten so much better and we didn't realize how little we understood in comparison to now. And in five years from now, we're going to feel the same way Because we're. There's an infinite amount of transformations that you can have.
Speaker 1:There's an infinite amount of potential that you can that we're not going to reach any level and be like okay, we're good now.
Speaker 2:So transformation is probably more important than what we talk about, and that's what today's about. So what's required for real transformation is the heading of this excerpt. Years into coaching, I started seeing some clients transform far more than others, and it bothered me At first.
Speaker 2:I thought it was me. Maybe I was doing something different with certain clients and not with others, without realizing it. After further analysis I can tell it's my writing. After further analysis, however, it eventually became evident that there are specific prerequisites required prior to transformation that some clients and others didn't. Some clients had and others didn't. To me it felt a lot like the fire triangle in figure two, just like how oxygen, heat and fuel are required to create fire. I realized that humility, courage and vulnerability are required to create personal transformation. Since then, I've never looked at coaching or transformation the same.
Speaker 2:We've all heard that cynical notion that people don't change. It's untrue, of course, but it's easy to believe it when we witness evidence all around us. We witness people trying to lose weight who are still obese, people trying to quit drinking who still drink, and people trying to quit smoking who still smoke. It's all around us every day. But what if people can transform themselves and their lives? It's just less common, but we've all witnessed evidence of that as well. And what if it's only uncommon because we have the wrong recipe? What if people can create lasting, positive change? Just like how we create fire with heat, fuel and oxygen, what if we really can create transformation with humility, courage and vulnerability. That's my thesis for this blog, and while I've witnessed hundreds of people who failed to change, I've also witnessed hundreds of people who transformed themselves and their entire life when those three attributes were present.
Speaker 2:If you had asked me five years ago this is the end of the excerpt if you had asked me five years ago what was the most important thing to achieve your dreams, I would have told you self-belief. I probably would have said self-belief five times. It's not Self-belief I now don't think is real unless you have humility first. Here's why If you have humility, you will be willing to start small.
Speaker 2:Someone with humility doesn't say I'm going to go, I'm going to go lift 500 pounds. Someone with humility says I'm going to go try the bar and I'm going to get a personal trainer. And then they build belief by keeping that promise, by achieving that thing, and then they slowly build their way up and they prove to themselves over and over and over again through courage and vulnerability and trying and risk and failing forward. I think that real belief is built with that triangle and I think that, even if I look back at my own life, where I believed in myself the most. It was always because I was willing to start so, so, so small, and I just had a lot of proof in that area. Now, when I wasn't humble is when I thought that that meant I could transfer that to any arena I want. And that's not true, you'll notice. I mean in fitness. I've asked you before where am I being arrogant?
Speaker 2:You said in fitness a little bit, and it's like oh okay, so I've earned this self-belief in mathematics and in academics and in whatever but, I, haven't earned it yet in fitness and I now realize that that was where my lack of humility was is I had self-belief that transferred to a completely different arena and I applied it the same way. So hopefully that helps people, because humility and self-belief, I'm convinced, are very connected. The interesting thing about fitness is fitness can go backwards where? There's different seasons. You're probably not going to forget math equations.
Speaker 1:I mean you might, but they're still there.
Speaker 2:I think your brain improves more than your body over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you do it right, but it does degrade to if you don't use it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Deep episode the kid went off.
Speaker 2:I would say your humility is the number one cheat code. I think that's why you got here more than some of your peers.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:And I will sing that because I do believe it's true.
Speaker 1:Okay, you want me to play a guitar or piano for the same.
Speaker 2:Well you're extraordinary at both.
Speaker 1:I am yeah, I'm world class. I'm the best member of that. There's not an instrument I couldn't pick up to be the best at Totally kidding, whether you're watching or listening. Very, very important Next up, next up nugget for me. Ask yourself, where are you in those three on a scale of one to 10? How much humility do you have? How much courage do you have? How much vulnerability do you have?
Speaker 2:What odds are, that is your potential for transformation.
Speaker 1:What would you like to say?
Speaker 2:I would say that's my thesis and, more importantly, assess the people in your life who you think might be holding you back. I would be willing to bet that they have low values if you were honest with yourself in those three things.
Speaker 1:Next elimination. We are excited to announce that the next level dreamliner will either be out in q4, fourth quarter or the first quarter of 2024. It's a great way for you to stay on track. We have an app for tracking habits.
Speaker 2:But this is a paper version. It's gonna have a lot more stuff. I think we're probably gonna have a journal in there.
Speaker 1:We're gonna have a bunch of different stuff.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be quarterly super excited one of the most exciting things, or the things I've been most excited about. Genuinely, I've wanted us to have something like this, where it's physical. We have a lot of digital stuff, video stuff. I like physical stuff, so I'm very excited to see the team is working very hard and diligently. So shout out to the team behind the scenes crushing it very excited to get it out.
Speaker 2:And you'll be the first to know when it is available. If you resonated with this episode, there is a blog that unpacks the how how to transform yourself and your life is the name of the episode, and it's step by step, how to build humility, how to build courage and how to build vulnerability and how to transform yourself and your life. So the link will be in the show notes and, uh, good luck. Good luck tomorrow for episode number 1400 and 50 what you focus on.
Speaker 1:Excuse me, nothing after you said good luck on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I said that that's funny.
Speaker 1:You, you are you done? Good, can I start now?
Speaker 2:1450. It's a lot of episodes. What you focus on expands. That's the episode Alan came to me and he told me a deep, dark secret that I'm gonna share with every single one of you on the next episode.
Speaker 1:I'm just kidding, we're in very goofy moods right now.
Speaker 2:Mostly me. You're pretty serious.
Speaker 1:This is a good one. I you enjoyed this very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really important.
Speaker 1:Good, that was a big breakthrough, big breakthrough.
Speaker 2:I hope it helps everyone, that's all well, good luck. We love you, we appreciate you and in lu, we don't have fans, we have family. We'll talk to you all tomorrow. Stay humble. Next elimination
