Next Level University

#1514 - Don't Kid Yourself About What You Care About

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Are your goals genuinely aligned with your core values? In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about understanding, honoring your core values, and aligning them with your goals is an essential step towards achieving authentic success. It can transform the way you set and achieve goals, leading to a more fulfilling and satisfying life.

Links mentioned:
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Next Level Hope Foundation - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-hope-foundation/

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Show notes:
[2:58] The art of letting go
[4:13] Love the idea of something more than love the actual thing
[10:51] Eddie expresses his satisfaction with Alan's support in his and his business' growth through the Next Level Business Solutions
[14:10] Honoring your core values
[18:31] What we care about is hidden under what we haven't faced yet 
[19:43] 5 M's of motivations
[25:05] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

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, episode number 1513, an open conversation about heartbreak. Today for episode number 1514, don't kid yourself about what you care about. I have not done nearly as many Coaching sessions as you and I haven't done nearly as many Peak performance will just say self-improvement coaching calls as you, because now the majority of my coaching calls are about podcasting. But there have been three Conversations, three key conversations that I have had with clients over the last seven years that really stick out as applicable Tough word for what we were talking about today.

Speaker 1:

The through line of all those conversations were hey, I know when we started working together, you mentioned that you wanted this result. Do you also Value the things that come with that? Now, I know we talk about that often, but let me clarify. Somebody wanted to have some sort of medical practice and I said well, one of the things you value is time, freedom and Movement freedom. You want to be able to go different places. You want to be able to travel. You don't necessarily want to be stuck to a place You're gonna have to go to school for many years if you want to get into this medical practice. Knowing that now, with a higher level of awareness, do you still want the result? Do you still care about that at the level that you thought? And this person said no, they completely pivoted their life. After that, I had another conversation a couple years ago with somebody. Same kind of thing. I really want this result. Okay, cool, just a heads up based on my awareness, which isn't 10 out of 10 high, but it's higher than yours at this given moment You're gonna have to give up a lot of what you care about in the Intram of getting what you think you care about eventually.

Speaker 1:

Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to give up Maybe some of the things you care about when it comes to family, some of the things that you care about when it comes to certainty, in order to get this result that you think you want? Same answer I honestly know, with that new level of awareness, I'm gonna do something different. Okay, awesome, that's kind of what we're talking about today. If you don't really care about something, or In order to care about one thing, it Connects or affects things that you really care about in other ways. It's gonna be really hard to accomplish that. So if you don't care about Podcasting, you're not gonna do a podcast. It just wouldn't make sense. If you don't care about Reading or getting better, you're probably not gonna have a lot of books. You're not gonna have the necessity to to learn. That's what we're talking about today. Don't kid yourself about what you care about.

Speaker 2:

Another thing that just came to me when we were talking about this and I didn't intend on this, because this is a topic that Kevin and I masterminded about and it was a conversation that I had with a client last week but I think a lot of people Love the idea of something more than they love the actual thing, and I think it brings, it gets us in trouble. Like, do you like the idea of being a doctor more than the actual process of becoming a doctor? That kind of thing? And again, that's just a I just chose doctor, but it could be lawyer, it could be business owner or whatever. A lot of people love the idea of being a business owner.

Speaker 1:

I Mean Kevin, it's very sexy to say Okay before you were a business owner.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I really want to do this and then I'll tell my story, but I want to ask you Coming up on. So 2024 will be our seventh year in business and, in hindsight, we didn't know the many things. We've learned a lot. When I decided I wanted to be a business owner and I left corporate, I think I had a very strong understanding of what that would mean and what that would be in Hindsight. I don't think that you had as much clarity what On YouTube right now.

Speaker 1:

We'll give you that idea.

Speaker 2:

I want to ask you a simple question which is and again for the listeners, I want you thinking, when he answers this, from the frame of what. I love the idea of being a business owner more than actually being a business owner, or I love the idea of being a doctor more than actually being a doctor, or I love the idea of being a podcaster more than actually being a podcaster. So think of that when he's talking. So my question for you, kev, is what did you what was the idea of a business owner Like? Articulate what you honestly thought it was prior to actually being one? I had.

Speaker 1:

I didn't have very much of an outline at all because I didn't really know any business owners. I assumed you got to make your own schedule, you got to do what you want. I that was kind of it. I didn't really. I didn't start this because I thought it would be cool. Really, I thought I started this because I was so miserable in my life. That's really why I started, so I-.

Speaker 2:

Which, by the way, if you listen to the previous episode, kevin articulates where he was prior to starting this yes, yes, and believe it or not I may or may not have had some giggles?

Speaker 1:

It actually got worse after all, that it got better, but it got worse at the same time. Yeah, I didn't really have any understanding. I didn't really have any expectations. I cared about trying to get away from where I was and I was just so miserable it didn't-. I think really, what sold it was. It was like you can do your own thing. Okay, that's a cool layer to understand. I'm gonna be able to do my own thing, yeah, okay, here's the other thing. Right before I ended up leaving my job, you and I started spending a lot more time together. So I remember you and I would, on days that I didn't have to work, you and I would get up at like six o'clock in the morning and go to the gym and then we would hang out and I was like, if I could do this, if this is what being a business owner would be like I'm in, this is awesome, but I didn't. That was it. It's like, yeah, this would be pretty cool, but that was my awareness very low, all right.

Speaker 2:

so let's say we're talking to that Kev.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Remember, that's the idea Kevin had about being a business owner, which, in hindsight, is no idea. I'm just joking, no, it's true, but I would say it's a lower awareness. Yeah, and again, that's life. So it is what it is. The idea of being a father super pumped. Being a father is gonna be way more different, I can imagine.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's probably. I know that it is.

Speaker 2:

That's knowing you don't know, you know, super important. Okay now, what didn't you under? What is true now? Having been a business owner for the last six years, coming up on seven years, what is true now? What would you tell that, kevin it's a trade-off.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you might not enjoy what you're doing, but you have certainty of what you're doing. At least with a job Like I had certainty of what I was doing to a degree and certainty of how much money was gonna come in and certainty of the longevity and how safe I was at my career. But it's just, yeah, it's just a lot more pressure, it's a lot of stress. There's a lot of I mean, it's real. It's the realest thing in the world when you gotta figure out how to get a client to pay the bills, or at this point I believe we have a 20-person team and that's the whole. Leadership is a challenge and trying to figure out how to communicate effectively and, yes, it's hard, it's very, very, very, very challenging. It's probably worse than you think, it's probably better than you think, and it's also probably worse than you think, better than you think, from the perspective of, but no matter what it's different than you think it's gotta be.

Speaker 1:

Different than you think it has to be different than you think. Better than you think from the perspective of, or better than I thought not you, whether you're watching or listening Better for me. For me from the perspective of if I don't get a good night's sleep, I can sleep until 10 am, because my first call is not until 11. Awesome, great Worse. Sometimes we get a bunch of new clients at once and I'm up at 5 am on a Sunday doing work to make sure everything goes smoothly. But you can't really know either of those in the beginning, and then it becomes a conversation of well, even deeper, would you rather? Do you care more about sleeping in on Sunday or having your own thing? I would rather get up every Sunday at 5 am for the rest of my life than go back to my old job. I'm okay with that. I actually am excited to do that most of the time, not all the time. Sometimes I don't wanna do that. So yeah, I don't know if I answered the question. I just kinda started rambling.

Speaker 2:

Well, to bring this back to the original point, the idea of being a business owner versus being a business owner, I was on the phone with a client and this client I track metrics. Everyone who coaches with me knows that and a lot of our listeners. I talk a lot about that. Habit, tracking metrics, meaningful moves, that kind of thing, big on numbers, and we do these progress reports and every other week I crunch his numbers and I see, okay, you're crushing, awesome, he's crushing it. But there's one metric, one or two typically, where it's like, ooh, you're not exactly winning in that arena, and that's not uncommon. Very few people can win in every arena. Every time it's just not real, honestly, yeah, even me. No, no, not real. So health, wealth and love typically two of them are doing well and one of them is lagging and or dying slowly. In this case, fitness was dying. So he had lost a ton of weight. He's been coaching me for years and I think he's I don't know 20 pounds down over the last couple years and now it's going back up. You can see the trend, you can see the graph and it's like down, down, down, down, down down. And then it's like, oh, interesting, this one's picking back up. And so I had this really honest conversation with him. I said you're crushing it in everything. You're crushing tracking. This is awesome. This is the best you've ever been.

Speaker 2:

And I always ask these questions at the beginning of calls True, false, semi-true. You are the most fulfilled you've ever been. True. You are the most productive you've ever been. True. You are the strongest leader you've ever been. True. You're the most holistically well-developed you've ever been. True. You are the most dialed in in fitness you've ever been.

Speaker 2:

Ooh, like semi-true, right, and I already knew the answer. That's why I'm asking the question. But now you're aware, and I had this honest conversation. I said listen, when you're out at a barbecue or you're at a Halloween party, or you're with your family, or you're with friends or you're with colleagues, does it bother you? Is fitness eating away at you? He's like no, not really. I said okay, I'm not trying to compare, but I do think there's a lesson in this.

Speaker 2:

When I'm not dialed in in fitness, it bothers me to my core. It bothers me so much. I mean, if I go three days without weight training, it is just eating me alive. Now here's the truth. My fitness is such a core value I mean I talk about being a prepubescent.

Speaker 2:

High school didn't hit puberty. All the athletes got all the love and attention. I felt super insignificant. Math, nerd, math and science I just love being fit. It's my favorite thing in the world. It's so important to me. It's 10 out of 10 important to me. I'm a lesser man when I'm not fulfilled in fitness. Even my relationship suffers when I'm not dialed in in fitness.

Speaker 2:

And he's like I said zero to 10, how much do you care about being in extraordinary shape? He's like I said and be honest, I don't want the idea of it, I want the truth. Like probably a seven. And I knew in that moment I'm like why are we even tracking this? You're fine. It's not like you're out of shape. Now I'm not saying not to get better, I'm saying don't be afraid to coast in there. I said now let's talk finance. He's like dude, 12 out of 10. I said, listen, I already knew that I'm your coach. I'm supposed to know what you value. Let's dial that in and let's get rid of some of this stuff I don't need you doing sleep, hydration, nutrition, training, mobility, breath, work, supplementation. You don't need to dial in like a professional athlete. I do, because I'm deeply unfulfilled when I don't.

Speaker 2:

And so, for the listeners, there's a lesson here. What are your core values? Are you honoring those core values? Because if you're not, you're most likely unfulfilled.

Speaker 2:

And what happens is we fall in love with these ideas, these other things. Well, I would really love to be a fitness model. I would really love to be a bodybuilder. I would really love to, but you don't really know what that means and you're certainly not willing to sacrifice as much as it's going to take to get there. So it's just it's CPU leakage. It's like when you have too many tabs open on Chrome or Firefox or Internet Explorer. It's just taking consciousness and effort away and you're just constantly it's hitting your self-esteem. You're not on point. You're tracking something you shouldn't be tracking. We can achieve within reason almost anything we want in life, but not everything all at once. And if you can just understand that and dial in on your 10s out of 10 when it comes to your core values and make sure you're honoring those first, I think you're going to be much more fulfilled, even if we were just to think of it.

Speaker 1:

from where does struggle actually come from? I would argue that oftentimes it's the difference between how much you care about something and the results you have in the thing that you care about. So there's been many people I've had conversations with who say I don't really care about money. And I always say be very careful when you say that, because you're most likely not going to create something you don't care about. If you don't care about money, I'm willing to bet you're probably not going to have an influx of money or an abundance of money.

Speaker 1:

If you don't care about love, I wouldn't bet on you having an amazing, fulfilling relationship that maybe you deserve. Or if you don't care about fitness, you're most likely not going to get to the place where I don't know I won't say that, but maybe you won't. Maybe you won't get to the place where you feel super comfortable in a bathing suit. I can't guarantee you will, because either you change your perception or you change your behavior. If you change your perception, it's just honestly, I don't really care that much about money. Okay, maybe you don't, or you've convinced yourself. Honestly, I don't really care that much about money, when in reality. Maybe you have belief that you can't earn more money, or maybe you have a money block, or you have a negative relationship where first you say you don't care about it and then you say but honestly, I think I probably care about it more than I'm giving myself credit for I need to change my behavior.

Speaker 2:

Or and this is so such a good topic, I knew I was going to adore this topic you say you don't care about money, and maybe that's true, but you do care about freedom, and guess what money buys? Or charity. You see, right, you do care about charity, you do see. And so you might not care about money itself. But what if you care about something that requires money, like your husband or your wife or your aunt or your uncle or your parents or your whatever? Okay, I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2:

I have one client who wants to take care of his parents as they get older.

Speaker 2:

You might not care about money, but you care about that, and that's going to cost $200,000.

Speaker 2:

And so you kind of have to understand yourself at these layers, and it's tough on a podcast to go this deep. But you might say, well, I don't have a core value of money, that's fine, but what are your core values and what kind of money are you going to need to honor those? So, for example, amelia and I, when we have children, we've talked about how we need to put ourselves in a financial position where we can actually be available to them, because it costs a lot of money for daycare. It costs a lot of money for a night nurse. It costs a lot of money to have a housekeeper so that we can spend quality time with our kids instead of these other things, and that's something we're grateful for, and we're earning that now in advance. And so, if nothing else, my next level nugget is dial in your core values and try to get really clear on them, and then the second layer would be what is going to be required of you in order to honor those.

Speaker 1:

And what you care about changes too. That's another. I mean, maybe not if it's necessarily a core value. I mean, obviously, I guess that can change too, but for a long time I would always say I don't care about travel. I enjoy traveling more than I ever thought I did, more than I ever was willing to admit. Is it stressful? Yeah. Is it a pain in the butt when there's business stuff going on? Yeah, of course. But I went to New Jersey and Connecticut recently, which is not a ton of travel, but it was like a five-hour ride and I enjoyed it. I love checking into the Airbnb. I loved being away. I enjoy traveling, but for a long time I would have told you that I didn't care about it when in reality, it was the uncertainty around traveling or the trauma I had around traveling in the past, or planes and airports, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So sometimes what we care about is hidden under the fears and insecurities and limiting beliefs that we haven't faced yet, and that's just another reason that self-improvement and personal development and self-awareness are so important.

Speaker 2:

And then your last thing would be Kevin and I, a long time ago, we used to talk often about these five M's of motivation and maybe we'll do an episode another time about them but mastery slash status was one of them. Mating slash romance was one of them. Movement slash freedom was one of them, which you referenced either last episode or this episode. The person who cared about movement and freedom wanted to be what was it? North Adontist or Adentist or something? Yeah, and what were the other ones you have?

Speaker 2:

materials, possessions and then mission slash purpose Okay, Materials, of course, I forget the materials.

Speaker 1:

One materials slash money, yeah, possessions I think yeah, and then you have purpose.

Speaker 2:

Mission slash purpose. Yeah, we have a PDF of this.

Speaker 1:

We haven't looked at it in a minute. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's been a while since we talked about this.

Speaker 2:

If you want to email me, alan at nextleveluniversecom, I do have a copy of it. I will send it to you if you're curious. Okay, but here's my point. I had a call with a client a long time ago this is years ago, probably four years ago, three years ago and she's like oh, I don't really care about mating slash romance, Cause I used to order them with my clients what's your order of importance? And they put mating slash romance last. Later on, I coached this person for years. We found out that that's the one she's actually most fearful of. She's the most uncertain and fearful of that one. It's actually number one. And as she evolved she eventually realized that. And so a lot of times what happens is we think we don't care about money, or we think we don't care about fitness, when in reality we're just fearful and uncertain about it. So that's just another layer to remember when you're dialing in core values.

Speaker 1:

I had a practice for a long time where, when I woke up in the morning, my most important one of those was probably material slash possessions.

Speaker 2:

And I would I think it's materials slash money, is it?

Speaker 1:

material slash money, whatever it is, let's just say, we'll just say it's money, hypothetically, I would say, on a scale of one to a scale of zero to 10. Alan told me I can't say on a scale of one to 10 anymore because there's zero. And I said I don't think so, man, and then he pulled the numbers back and said I have to do it that way, so from now on, no he didn't, if you were to draw it out zero to one.

Speaker 1:

One to two, two to three, three to four, four to five, five to six, six to seven, seven to eight, eight to nine, nine to 10. That's 10. So I guess you're right on this.

Speaker 2:

Also, alan told me something Like in my computer engineering days zeros and ones. You always gotta start with zero.

Speaker 1:

It's like a computer programming thing Also, evidently you can't fall down seven times and get up eight. That's actually not you can only get up seven times.

Speaker 2:

You can only get up seven times because you only fall down seven times.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Could you be stand you fall down seven times, stand-up eight. No, no same thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I can't tell if you're joking.

Speaker 1:

No, no, I was very serious there because I thought maybe the quote was wrong.

Speaker 2:

This is the sandwich thing. Yeah, yeah this With the spreadsheets we're not gonna get into it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, you trust me, you don't. You do not want to know whether you're watching or listening. I used to wake up in the morning and I would say on a scale of zero to 10, how comfortable am I in this thing? So, when it comes to money, how do I feel today, Based on what's in my bank account? For most of this, we are very, very scarce, and I used to do that. For certainty, too, we would talk about maybe we'll talk more about the basic human needs.

Speaker 1:

Tony Robbins did a TED talk on it, but one of them was certainty. I'm very certainty driven. When certainty is low, I am struggling. So maybe same idea for you. If what you care about is the thing you have the least of, you might not have much motivation because you might feel stuck. So I figured I would add that Next Salvation If you haven't joined Next Salvation yet, please do. A wonderful group of humans who are into self-improvement, into growth, into overcoming the ego, into having cool conversations like this that is really what we get to do for a living. We get to have cool conversations, and obviously our Facebook group is the same way. So if you are looking for cool people to have cool conversations with. Get to the next level with. Grow with, evolve with. Please join our Facebook group. Link will be in the show notes below.

Speaker 2:

We have our next level holiday event coming up. Next level Hope Foundation holiday event with children of single parents. It is on December 10th. We already booked the YMCA and it's gonna be absolute mayhem in the best way. We're gonna play all the sports and we're gonna get kids gifts. It's gonna be a really fantastic event. Photography there's gonna be a backdrop. It's quite awesome. We did it last year and it was just awesome. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite days of the year because I get to play basketball all day. It's awesome. So we have a GoFundMe. That is not done yet, but it is coming soon, so keep an eye out for that. Kevin and I will be matching $500. So the community what we're asking, our goal is $500 total from the community for this event and we're gonna be matching that. So it's gonna be a thousand total, okay, and so that will be coming down the pipe. Please keep a sharp eye. I do not have a link for you yet, but it will be soon.

Speaker 1:

And usually what we do with that money. That money goes to renting out the YMCA, getting food, getting snacks, getting refreshments Alan usually gets some sort of beanie babies and or stuffed animals and then we'll also get all the kids some sort of presents. So last year it was frisbees and footballs and basketballs and soccer balls, footballs. I don't know if I said that. This year I'm sure we'll probably do much of the same. So that is where all the money will go, and to our amazing photographer as well. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:

Tomorrow. Shout out to Melissa. Shout out to Melissa.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow for episode number 1,515 juggling short term and long term. I was gonna put balancing short term and long term, but I don't really know as you've heard us say many times, balance. I don't really know if I think balance is a thing. I think it's a juggling act. Life is a juggling act because right now I'm juggling, speaking on these microphones, with all the rest of the things going on in life. So that's what we're gonna talk about tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we learn if fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Honor those core values. Next explanation.

Speaker 1:

Good work. Good one. How was that Good one?

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host