Next Level University

#1520 - Being Consistent Is So Much Easier When You Understand This

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Maintaining a routine can be a struggle for many, but the secret to achieving consistency lies in the level of specificity. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about how when you have clarity and specificity about your actions, you are less likely to make excuses and more likely to maintain consistency. Having the clarity to make decisions that align with your routine goals and the consistency to follow through with them will make certainty and consistency your strongest allies!

Links mentioned:
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/

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Show notes:
[1:46] Understanding the specifics of what you're doing
[5:55] Specificity with consistency 
[6:13] How clear are you?
[9:49] The enemy of being consistent
[12:05] The cheat-code
[14:00] Amanda shares how Alan made her feel valued and supported during their initial consultation call and how she appreciates his holistic approach
[15:59] Find and make your own sweet spot
[17:13] Variety in the certainty
[19:31] Don't fall victim to all or nothing, and have a minimum
[24:45] 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 yesterday's episode. It was episode number 1519. One important lesson about vulnerability. Today for episode number 1520 happy Tuesday. Being consistent is so much easier when you understand this. The trials and tribulations of Kevin's fitness journey continue with today's episode, probably the most consistent streak I've been on in a hot minute not quite Alan's 680 or 650 or 700 day streak or whatever it is 620 as of yesterday, so not quite as consistent as that.

Speaker 2:

So what I say? Coming up on 700, you're rounding up and then rounding up again.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I appreciate that, but I do know we will get to 700.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I wouldn't say that unless I Can. I kind of being playful when I say coming up on 700? Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I wasn't at 700, but I was pretty consistent and I was crushing the gym and I was crushing mobility and everything was awesome. And then Something happened my shoulder it's not even that shoulders, this shoulder something happened my shoulders, a little wonky I've had. This is the shoulder I got surgery on when I was younger. I don't think it's anything too serious, but it has drastically limited Slash, affected my consistency. So much to the point, my alarm clock went off at 5 am Today and I laid there in bed and I was thinking am I gonna go to jujitsu?

Speaker 1:

Should I go to the gym and lift? Like, if I go to the gym and lift, what should I do? I'm not gonna do shoulders because that'll hurt. I could do chest, but that's probably gonna hurt too. Or maybe I could do arms. I could do back.

Speaker 1:

Oh oh, sleeping, sleeping again gone, took me, took me back to the dreamland, woke up probably 10, 15 minutes later, same conversation. Well, what am I gonna do is the thing. The thing is, what am I gonna do? I don't know what I'm gonna do at the gym. I don't know if I'm gonna regret. Going to jujitsu is gonna hurt my shoulder worse. Should I just keep resting? I've rested for a week. I don't really want to rest anymore. I need to make a freaking decision.

Speaker 1:

Then I ended up going back to sleep until 6 30. So being consistent is so much easier when you understand this. You understand the specifics of what you're doing. If you want to be consistent, you got to understand the specifics because if there's any, if there's any easy out, we might find it. When I knew I'm waking up at 5. I'm going to the gym and this is the, this is the workout routine I'm gonna do. Then I'm gonna do cardio. I didn't miss. It was completely different. I don't even know how to explain it. I feel so much less strong with my decision-making right now than I did two weeks ago.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm where I'm making excuses of well, what if I? Should I do this, should I do this, should I do this? When, before it was my alarm, my alarm clock goes off. I get up, I know what I'm supposed to do and I go do it. I go execute. I'm not doing that right now. So what would serve me is tonight, before I go to bed and I'm not saying this is what you should do because this could be reckless, I don't know but tonight before I go to bed, I'm going to decide tomorrow. I'm gonna get up at this time and this is the activity I'm gonna do. I'm either going to go to jujitsu or I'm going to go to the gym and I'm gonna do back and We'll see. If it hurts, I will work around. If it hurts at jujitsu, I won't do anything crazy after. I'll just drill To the point.

Speaker 1:

The other day, alan, I get up and I went for a run. I told you I the last time I went for a run intentionally and I wasn't running from something was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. I'm not somebody who enjoy I don't really enjoy running, but my shoulder was hurting me and I know what else to do so. I went to a path that's like 10 minutes away. It was early, it was cold, but it's it's falling to England, so it was beautiful and I said I'm gonna go for a run. See what happens didn't hurt me. There was some certainty there. I knew in my mind Well, this won't hurt me, so that's your bear spray.

Speaker 1:

No, no, bears down no bears.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's, it's.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure. Yeah, it's not. I mean it's black bears. It's in the middle of the city. I'm not too worried about the bears there. Okay, yeah, and black bears, you get it. Well, again, not to minimize a bear, but if it's a blackberry, supposed to fight back, they don't like that. If it's a brown berry supposed to lay down and play dead because you might have a.

Speaker 1:

You might end up that way. If it's a grizzly, if it's a polar bear, I Don't know what you're supposed to do, because those things are crazy, terrifying, definitely. So a little bear activity in today's episode. But that is my early next level nugget for this episode. The level of your specificity, I think, will help with the level of your consistency. That is my early next level nugget.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, man Just getting into it.

Speaker 2:

What jumped off the page for me as I rudely interrupt you Clarity, how clear are you? Emilia and I. Yesterday, sunday If you're listening to this, it's Tuesday, so this is this past Sunday she said I feel like number one. I'm very grateful. I'm a kitchen man, I do all the dishes, I do all of the meals, I prep our meals, and by prep our meals I take food out of the Instant Pot and the rice cooker really. But at the end of the day, I'm in charge of the kitchen. I'm the kitchen man, said kitchen man. And so it's automated for her. It's done, don't worry about it, just show up, eat the food. It's going to be great and you can obviously have input.

Speaker 2:

I'll ask her what do you want for takeout? And we have a couple things we roll through. And on Sunday she says I really want to learn this because I have been running macros, micronutrients and calories. I know what her calories are, I know how to help her fit them, I know how much protein she needs, I know the allocating of the micros, proteins, carbs, fats. So before I get into any of that, the point is is she said every Sunday, can we just real quick run through the week?

Speaker 2:

So I was in front of the whiteboard. I put Sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, all the way to the following Sunday and I said, okay, so today's Sunday we're eating leftovers we had leftovers Domino's Awesome. Then we have C and R, c and R, chicken and rice, chicken and rice, and then we're going to get takeout on Wednesday. So Monday and Tuesday are going to be chicken and rice and then we're going to get takeout Tuesday and then we're going to do Thursday, friday, chicken and rice, and then Saturday night we're going to get sushi and then Sunday is actually my birthday celebration, which is going to be awesome.

Speaker 1:

You have a banana split. What are you going to have? Was it a banana split last year?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, two years in a row actually Good memory. Kev always remembers food, of course, of course, big food lovers. So I actually didn't even think of the banana split, to be honest. So what I wanted to do was a Hobbit marathon. So the Hobbit movies, extended versions, are very, very long, and so I'm going to see if we can do all three back to back like a 12 hour day. I'm literally already kind of freaking out about it, to be honest. So, speaking of clarity, when you go into the week knowing what you're eating, knowing what workouts you're doing, here's another piece fitness. We do a walk and then weights, walk, weights, walk, weights. We're alternating, we do weight training every other day.

Speaker 2:

And in the calendar she asked me. She said can you start putting in parentheses what we did so that I can understand the rotation, because I'm doing all this in my head? She always asked me well, what's the day it's push? And she's like what's the day it's pull? Oh, it's legs. And it can get confusing because technically okay. So, for example, tonight's a walk, tomorrow is going to be push, because Sunday was legs. And so the last time we did push was one, two, three, four, five, six, six days ago. So you only do the same muscle groups every six days. And she asked me she's like are we over training? No, definitely not, because we have six days in between training the same muscle groups. So the last time we did chest, which is push chest and shoulders and triceps, is six days ago. So we have plenty of rest in between. Don't worry about it. So here's my point. I gave her clarity, not so much that she has to worry about it, but at least enough to where now she knows okay, we're getting, take her on Wednesday, we're getting sushi on Saturday, so she can go into her week with more certainty.

Speaker 2:

Uncertainty is the enemy to being consistent. It's that's why self-belief is so important. What is the opposite of self-belief? Uncertainty. I'm not sure I can do this, I'm not sure I know how to do this, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to learn this, I'm not sure I'm making the right moves, and so clarity is the solution. More than people realize. As a matter of fact, in my coaching I often say that One of the reasons why you've gained momentum is just I've just been injecting clarity.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes my clients will say I can't wait for these calls. I feel so invigorated after, really, what they're saying underneath all that is, I went off and I executed for a couple weeks and I got kind of lost in the sauce and I need another clarity call. I need another injection of certainty. I need to know for a fact that I'm doing the right things. Another client said I need a fitness check-in. Another client said I need a finance check-in. I always ask intentions before my calls. Usually the intention is hey, I want to work on XYZ because I'm uncertain in XYZ.

Speaker 1:

I would venture to guess that Taren and I have the best date days, slash date weekends, when they're scheduled ahead of time. We were yesterday, so Sunday. We were going to go visit my mom and memes. She ended up. Taren said hey, I got invited to go somewhere by some of my friends. Sunday is usually our day. I said no, you're good, you don't have to ask. She said I just want to be respectful. I know it's our date day. I said I will always choose you going out with your friends. That's important to me. I said we'll figure it out when you get home. We'll figure it out whether we're going to go or we'll just figure something out.

Speaker 1:

She called me on our way home and she said I don't know, you're a little bit later than I expected and I know you're later than you expected. I feel like you want to just hang out. Is that true? Do you just want to hang out? She said I don't know if I really want to be in the car for an hour. I said I don't really either. She said what are we going to do if we stay home? I said I don't know. This is a dangerous game. We might just end up watching something. She said well, okay, maybe we'll end up watching something. We ended up watching something, but if we had a specific date, okay, this is what I'm going to do from 9 to 12. You're going to get home at 12. We're going to leave at 12.15. We're going to be here by 1.

Speaker 1:

Odds of us were way more invested in the experience. We've put time, effort, energy and focus into actually creating this outcome. And when you're specific, you can work on the scheduling piece of it. You can say I'm going to get up at 5. I'm going to be at this place at whatever time. So for me, if I get up at 5, I'm usually at the gym by 5.30. Awesome, I'll be at the gym until 6.45. Awesome, I'll be home at 7. I'll shower, I'll be in the office by 7.15. And I'm going to have almost four hours of back office time before I do anything. Today, when I woke up, I didn't have any of that.

Speaker 1:

It was mayhem I didn't have any certainty because I didn't have any clarity and I didn't have a very consistent start to my day. So we often we've talked many times about overthinking. I'm not saying that you should overthink your day, but I do think that having clarity and specificity around what you're going to do, imagine two people. One person knows what time. Let's just say we'll just stay on the gym because we've been using the gym or exercise. One person goes to sleep on Sunday night and they know what time they're going to exercise on Monday. The other person goes to sleep Sunday night and they have no idea what time they're going to exercise on Monday.

Speaker 1:

I would bet on the first person 100% of the time, to be more consistent, just because life is going to happen. If anything is consistent in life, it is the inconsistency of it. Things are always going to pop up and pull you off and sometimes priorities are going to jump to the top and you're going to say, well, it would be better for me actually to do this than go do what I was going to do. So if we can follow through with some specificity, some clarity, some planning, I think that is a cheat code for a more consistent life.

Speaker 2:

If you're over-scheduled, your life will be mayhem and you won't be able to execute and you'll constantly feel like you're failing. If you're under scheduled, you're gonna be off the rails and inconsistent, and so you gotta find your own sweet spot. Emilia and I recently were talking about calendar stuff, and she is always trying to help me come up in my calendar. She's been using a calendar since she was like 11. I didn't start using a calendar until really college and even then it was loose, loose calendar. You know it's like class. From this time to this time I may or may not attend that class, Unless it's a test, but anyways. So she's always like well, should we put that on the calendar? And I'm always kind of pushing back. The amount of things on my calendar is already overwhelming me. I look at her calendar and it's too much for me. It's fine for her. She knows what it all means. She knows all the color. It's all color coded. It's excellent. I'm not taking anything from that. That's great, I'll get there. But we can't jump 10 rungs on the ladder and then expect me to be able to keep climbing. So we're constantly figuring out what the right amount of scheduling is for me, and I think we all need to find the sweet spot of enough structure, certainty, clarity, calendar and then enough flow and spontaneity and variety.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of people, myself included, when I first started on this journey when I was I was 27. I was coached. And my coach I saw her calendar and I was like I don't want that. That looks terrible to me. That looks awful. Now my calendar looks a lot like that, but at the time I was what I really couldn't articulate. But what the truth was is I, I'm not ready for that yet. I got to work my way up to that. So if you coach with me and you see my calendar and it freaks you out, that's okay. It's kind of supposed to. You're not supposed to just jump to that. You're supposed to consistently and sustainably, incrementally improve over time. And so if it freaks you out to have, you know, 620 days in a row of exercise, that's okay. That's not where I started. For years I struggled to exercise consistently, years and years and years and years and years. So the key here is to find your own sweet spot between the right amount of clarity and structure and the right amount of variety and spontaneity.

Speaker 1:

We did an episode a while ago of the two D's of consistency, discipline and design. Discipline is doing what you know you should do when you know you should do it, regardless of whether or not you want to. And then design is making it easier to be disciplined. The discipline is the alarm clock goes off and you get up. Design is you put your alarm clock on the other side of the room so you have to get up to turn the alarm off. I would say you are on the high end of both of those. Maybe. If none of that appeals to you, alan's life, don't worry, it does not mean you can't be wildly successful in your own right just because Alan is on the higher end of that.

Speaker 1:

I definitely get sick of the alarm clock going off at 5 am every day. It's like I want some variety, but I also love it. There's the little. There's young Kev inside saying why don't you just sleep in, dude? But then there's grown Kev who says wow, you're not really going to be fulfilled if you sleep in.

Speaker 1:

I know initially it sucks getting out of bed, but when you get rolling you're always grateful you did maybe do more of that. And then eventually sometimes it gets to the place where I just I didn't want to take a week off. I really didn't. I wanted to go to the gym and I wanted to go to Jiu Jitsu, but there was a part of me that said I think it's probably best if you don't go do those two things. I could have had more of a let's meet in the middle and maybe I'll go for a run or maybe I'll go, I could go do cardio or I could find something to do. I didn't do that I could have.

Speaker 1:

So even in that there's always. You can always be more specific and more dialed in and more focused. But I would argue. My next love of the nugget would be if you are craving certainty, it might be because you have too much uncertainty, too much variety. If you are craving variety, it could mean it could be because you're riding the lightning too much on having just regimented certainty, specifics, clarity all the time, maybe doing a little D load quickly. Right, alan has his movie night, I'll have my UFC night. That that can help. Or find variety in the certainty. So variety of we're going to get sushi instead of pizza, that's variety in the certainty of what we're going to order out.

Speaker 2:

So there's many ways to stack this Definitely, and all of us have different size cups when it comes to certainty and variety. Some people need more certainty than variety. Some people need more variety, so there's a lesson in that too. My next level nugget is don't fall victim to all or nothing. I keep ping ponging between 20 minutes of learning and 30 minutes of learning on my habit tracker and I keep switching it back to 20 minutes because I keep getting half we do on the app. We do green, yellow, red. Green means you did all of it, yellow means you did some of it, red, you did none of it. And zero, one or 0.5 for people who are using Google Sheets, which our team is.

Speaker 2:

On Google Sheets, we have a dashboard, and so I kept getting 0.5s because I don't shower for a full half hour and I usually do my learning in the shower, so I'll throw my phone on a book or a speech or a training or whatever, and then I'll just usually it's 20 minutes, not even while I get dressed, and all that. And so the all or nothing mentality was getting to me, where if I don't do the full 30 minutes, I'm not gonna do it at all, and so what I did is I switched it to 20 minutes and I'm way more consistent now because of that all or nothing mentality. So it's almost like set the goal in alignment with what you're most likely to do and then go up from there once it gets easy. So one more tiny example Emilia and I do 30 minutes minimum per day of either a walk or weight training or soccer or basketball, whatever sport, whatever moving of our body.

Speaker 2:

Last night I was Sunday night 8 30 PM. The last thing I wanna do is be in the gym. I was in the car and there's that moment in the parking lot of like, honestly, fuck this. Now I'm not even kidding. I actually said those exact words. That's my exact words to you.

Speaker 2:

I believe it Fuck this and she's like I know. I'm like, okay, are we doing 45? She's like no. So we went grocery shopping Hennepers right there and we got food, put it in the car. That's the one good thing about winter is you can put food in the car, leave it in the car, groceries and then we did a half hour. We got the half hour done and she said one of her gratitudes before I went to bed. We do gratitudes and she said I'm so grateful I have someone else who can hold the line, because in those moments when you don't wanna do it, you just buck up and you just do it. You do the minimum. So my next level nugget long-winded is have a minimum and make sure the minimum is sustainable where you can check the box and say yes, I showed up. And then, if we're feeling good sometimes this happens the other night she's like let's do an hour. Awesome Empty gym, feeling good, let's rock. But at least we hit our minimum every day. So hopefully that's helpful.

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. If you have not yet joined our private Facebook group, next Level Nation, please do so. I think we've had, I don't know. I told Alan I've been talking about it pretty much every episode because I realized we have so many things. There's book club and there's meetups and there's group coaching and there's just so many things. Free courses, paid courses, all this stuff, events, retreats, next Level Hope Foundation. I am going to just talk about Next Level Nation for the foreseeable future, because maybe you're just listening to us for the first time. I think that's probably the next best step for you anyway, because we're most of us want more community, more aligned people in our lives. So if you have not yet, please join our private Facebook group Next Level Nation. Link will be in the show notes below, as always, if you join Next Level Nation.

Speaker 2:

At the very top there's always a calendar post featured, and so November's up there right now, so you can see everything else we're doing for all of November. The calendar's always in NextLenation if you're curious about all the other stuff. Speaking of the featured post, there's one other featured post right now. It is a poll for book club. The five books are High Performance Habits by Brennan Burchard, indistractable by Neri Al Flip. The Switch by Michael Burt. Ah, that did get a vote Nice.

Speaker 1:

One vote for.

Speaker 2:

Michael, it wasn't High Performance Habits for me, the Courage to be Disliked. I don't know how to pronounce these authors' names, so I apologize if I do them wrong Ichiro Kashimi and Fumitaki Koga, your Aronias Zones by Wayne Dyer, and those are the five books. Right now we have 24 votes technically 25, because one of the people messaged me in WhatsApp because they're not on Facebook. But please vote what's winning.

Speaker 1:

Don't leave me hanging. I voted for the Courage to be Disliked.

Speaker 2:

High Performance Habits is currently winning and actually I just realized in this moment this is dropping tomorrow, so most likely High Performance Habits has won. Get your book Damn.

Speaker 1:

We're not certain, but most likely, I'm gonna make another Facebook account and vote for the Courage to be Disliked.

Speaker 2:

You're gonna have to, but the person that voted outside of Facebook also asked for High Performance Habits, so that's gonna most likely win. So if you wanna join book club on Saturday, get your High Performance Habits book as soon as possible. You can get it on Amazon. I prefer hard copy. It's an awesome book and we're super pumped.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow for episode number 1,521, why a lot of us end up feeling stuck. Do I know what we're gonna talk about? Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Anything you wanna add?

Speaker 2:

That's an awful lot of clarity and certainty about our listeners.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm all about consistency. As you know, as always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and NLU, we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Stay consistent Next time on Nation.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host