Next Level University

#1523 - You Are So Much More Than The Sum Of All Your “Failures”

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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The theme of embracing failure as a pathway to personal success is an unconventional approach to personal development. Today, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about redefining the narrative around failure, presenting it as a tool for success. It will challenge us to embrace our past failures, learn from them, and use them as stepping stones to our future victories.

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Show notes:
[2:45] Two trajectories
[4:58] Alan's formula
[6:45] Mindset shift
[10:55] The duality of success and failure
[14:06] Amanda shares how Alan made her feel valued and supported during their initial consultation call, and how she appreciates his holistic approach
[17:27] Best things are yet to come
[20:38] Do something you're afraid of
[27:30] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

I can't accomplish those things, it doesn't mean I am a mistake. It just means that that day wasn't the day. Just like you can't assume that you're going to win, you can, if you want. You can assume that you're going to win every time. You can assume you're going to lose every time. I don't know if either of those truly would serve you. So, whatever you're, afraid of.

Speaker 2:

Maybe it's rejection, maybe it's failure. Maybe it's speaking, maybe it's podcasting, maybe it's writing a blog, publishing, sending a text, sending a message, posting on social media. Whatever it is, do it. The fear will get smaller and you will get bigger. After the discomfort, you will be uncomfortable. After the discomfort, you will get bigger and the fear will get smaller. That's how fear works.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Next Level University. I am your host, Kevin Paul Mary, and I am your co-host, Alan Lazarus. At Next Level University, we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.

Speaker 2:

We bring you seven episodes per week to help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth, self-improvement in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, for free.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Next Level University, 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 1522. We very much enjoyed that episode. Finding more fulfillment in your life today for episode number 1523. You are so much more than the sum of all your failures.

Speaker 1:

The reason I wanted to do this episode is I went for a walk last week and I recorded 19 pieces of content for social media and I was just thinking what are good stories, what are good lessons? What can I share on social media? And this thought just popped into my head and I haven't thought about this in a long time. We interviewed Caroline Zanni twice on this podcast. Caroline Zanni is a teacher that Alan and I both had in middle school I believe Health teacher, health teacher Then Mama Z, mama Z.

Speaker 1:

And then I ended up dating her daughter for three years and she had this thing on the fridge and I'll never forget this and she was kind of a mentor to me in a way. She was weighing a self-improvement long before I knew what self-improvement was and I'll never forget this. And she was kind of a mentor to me in a way. She was weighing a self-improvement long before I knew what self-improvement was. There was something on the fridge with a very similar title to today's episode. I think it was you are so much more than the sum of your past mistakes, failures and something else, and I remember reading that every day, every time I was there on the fridge, I went to the fridge quite often I was like I'm not sure what I was doing. I was like I'm not sure what I was doing.

Speaker 2:

I was like I'm not sure what I was doing.

Speaker 1:

I was like I'm not sure what I was doing.

Speaker 2:

I was like I'm not sure what I was doing. There was some footage of me talking to Dr and the obstacle is the way. I'm not sure which one it is, to be honest with you. But this is, let me articulate it. He gives his whole story. Most authors do they open with story. They're supposed to. You need to know who you're talking to.

Speaker 2:

As a matter of fact, in Book Club, high performance habits by Brennan Brashard just won the poll. Brennan Brashard opens with a little bit of his story, a little bit of why he wrote the book, a little bit of why he's the right person to write this book. That's all great. Kevin just shared those two stories, those two trajectories. One of them is success, success, success, success, success, success. The other one is failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure. Neither one is true. The truth is in the middle. The truth is in the drive to five. The truth is the duality of success and failure. The truth is that it was failure and then success and then failure and then success and then failure and then success and then failure and then success.

Speaker 2:

And Ryan Holiday, in his book Either Ego is the Enemy or the Obstacles of the Way, I remember him telling his entire story from the frame of success and then redoing it and saying what I forgot to tell you or didn't tell you is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and he listed all the devastating things. I had a mentor who betrayed me, I lost this job. I was near mental breakdown. I had to go to therapy.

Speaker 2:

I think social media tends to be most of the successes and I think that real life tends to be most of the failures and most of the struggles, and I think that's human nature. You know, I'm dressed up right now and I'm trying to present my best, but all of us, whether we're on camera or not, we wake up in the morning with sleepies in our eyes and exhausted. Thank you, I just think it's important to just remember you can't compare someone else on camera in an interview to you just getting out of bed, and I think that's a good metaphor. But this episode, to me, is a simple formula. Success equals try, fail, learn, try, fail, learn, rinse and repeat, and I think success ultimately comes from that process and failure is a part of it.

Speaker 1:

I think failure and success both happen to you. You're not a success or a failure. Those are things that happen to you. Those are experiences, those are seasons. That's really where I want to go in this episode. They're the most quote unquote successful we've ever been. But I'm not a success. It depends on the day.

Speaker 2:

Some days are very successful and you're not failing any less than you ever did.

Speaker 1:

Right, if anything, I'm failing more, but I think of it. It could even be. You are so much more than the sum of all your successes too, because the successes or failures do not define you. They define times, they define directions, they define moments. But if I said to you who are you, you wouldn't say I'm a success. You would say I am this person or I am a failure. You wouldn't say that necessarily. Now have I been in a place in life where I would have said I was a failure, definitely. But now I understand that it's a time, it's a place, but I'm trying to think of it as a trend line.

Speaker 1:

You wake up late. Your alarm clock goes off. You wake up late. You're rushing around. Get in the shower You're running behind. You drop your phone in the sink, because you're running behind. You make your coffee. You spill your coffee on yourself, so you have to change your clothes. You're in another rush. You run out of the house in a rush, forget to lock your door. You have to go back and lock your door. Get in the car, start to drive to work Same amount of traffic as always, but the traffic seems worse because you're running behind. Get to the office and you're in a terrible mood.

Speaker 1:

I think of it from the frame of that is looking at it from a negative quote, unquote failure Of this entire day is terrible. If you walk around in life thinking I am my failures, it's probably very similar where it's probably really hard to even recognize success. But I would say the opposite is true. You wake up 15 minutes before your alarm goes off and this is not real. This second one I portray is not going to be real. The sun creeps into your room. You wake up 15 minutes before your alarm goes off. Well rested, feel very good, no sleepies in your eyes at all. Sit up, pivot to the left or right, depending on what side of the bed you sleep on. You slide right into your slippers. You walk into the bathroom. It's running. The shower is running, it's ready. Your towel is out, it's warm, everything's gravy. Take a nice 20 minute shower or whatever it is you choose. You get out. Your hair is perfect, it's you.

Speaker 2:

And unicorns fly out of your arse.

Speaker 1:

Unicorns fly out of your arse. You make your coffee, it's perfect. You leave and you say, ah, right now, five o'clock, right on time, perfect, cool.

Speaker 2:

You ever see Bruce All-Mighty? Yes, yes, of course. Yeah, this morning. Yes, but you're describing everyone just moves aside while all the lights turn green.

Speaker 1:

This is a Bruce All-Mighty moment, that's what we could call it but I would argue that when you get to work, you're probably going to be in a far better mood because everything is gone perfect versus everything is gone terrible. Success, life, emotions trajectory for a lot of us is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and all I mean by that. Not to get too deep. But if you look back and you think you are all your failures, you most likely are going to think you're your failures moving forward too. If you look back and you think you are all your successes, you most likely are going to feel like you're your successes for the rest of your life too. That's the point I want to make in this episode.

Speaker 1:

It's a simple mindset shift Looking back and saying I have failed or I have made mistakes or I have not accomplished certain goals. That doesn't mean I am a failure. It doesn't mean I can't accomplish those things. It doesn't mean I am a mistake. It just means that that day wasn't the day. Just like you can't assume that you're going to win, you can, if you want you can assume that you're going to win every time. You can assume you're going to lose every time. I don't know if either of those truly would serve you.

Speaker 2:

I don't think they would. I think the goal is optimal and I've talked about this before. I'll never not talk about it, because I think that if you don't understand this one concept, it's going to be very hard to navigate this life. And the concept is the optimal stopping problem. It's Goldilocks too hot, too cold, too high, too low, too light, too dark. Everything is a dance between two extremes. Life is a dance between two extremes. I may have, we've all heard this. It's all relative. Okay, today was today a good day for you? Today was a good day? Yeah, okay. Compared to what A bad day? Yeah, okay. Compared to your best day, was today a good day?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but not as good, Right, I'm not going to fall for your shit, sir this is good.

Speaker 2:

This is real good. The thing is, it's always going to be relative, it's all. I was actually watching a Harvard lecture recently by a man named Charlie Munger, and he was talking about the science of human misjudgment. And he was talking about the sensory apparatus that we all have can't handle contrast, and he was talking about the study where you put your hand in a hot bucket of water and you put the other hand in a cold bucket of water, and then you take them out and you put them both in the same temperature water and one of them feels hot and one of them feels cold.

Speaker 2:

This is why real estate agents will show you two crappy houses and then one decent house, and then you end up buying it. This is the way it works. This is also why Amazon always shows you what the price used to be. You know, 20% off and we just we can't get over this. This is also why it's $497 instead of $500, because our brain can't interpret that, as it only sees the four. This is why it's $999 instead of $10. G Drive is $999, or YouTube $999. The human brain has all of this challenge with interpreting things accurately. So if you see your life as awful. You're going to feel pretty awful, and is it really awful? It depends what you compare to. Are you comparing to some people's lives that are really, really, really?

Speaker 1:

awful.

Speaker 2:

Or are you comparing it to what you see on Instagram? And if you think your life's great, is it really that great? Or are you just not looking around at what it could be? And so this is the dance that we all have to do, 24x7, 365, between success and failure, same deal. Are you a failure? Are you a success? I don't think you can be either of those things. I think you are becoming one or more of those things, and I think that, at the end of the day, it's kind of like rolling dice Am I a success? I would say I'm more successful than I am a failure, but not as successful as I'm going to be, because I've learned from my failures.

Speaker 3:

Hi everyone. My name is Amanda. I am a dental hygienist and a mom of two teenagers. I was first introduced to Kevin and Alan about three years ago, so that led me to book a consultation with Alan, and I showed up to that call in the lowest spot that I have been at in my entire life. He is a good human that genuinely wants the best in your life, your future, your love, your relationships, your wealth, and you have the chance to be in the same room or on the same call or have these two in your life in any way, then you are blessed and I'm coming up on my 35th year.

Speaker 2:

This is my birthday on Friday and I am so excited because Emilia was like what do you want to do for your birthday? And we are going to do something. But she asked like what can I make that day special? Because we're going to celebrate on Sunday? And I said this, and I meant this. I said sweetheart, it's kind of the same as every other day.

Speaker 2:

I designed my life in a way where I adore my life for the most part. Some of it's really hard and some of it sucks, but I don't really want to do anything different. If I wanted to do something different, I would go do that kind of thing. I want to do what I always do, which is work. I want to work on Friday, my birthday. You want to work on your birthday, absolutely 100%, back to back to back to back to back. I'm going to probably put in I don't know 10 hour a day on Friday. We're going to celebrate on Sunday. I'm not going to do a lick of work, but here's my point I actually will do some work on Sunday. I lied, I can't lie. I'm going to do some work, for sure, 100%. But here's my point If you Age one more year.

Speaker 2:

What you can do is take the failures from that year and learn from them. What's the difference between a two-year-old and a five-year-old? What's the difference between a five-year-old and a seven-year-old? What's the difference between a seven-year-old and 11-year-old? Wisdom Poopy pants, poopy pants, less poopy pants, hopefully.

Speaker 2:

But here's the thing I'm gonna be 35. You know how excited I am to take the last 34 years of data, awareness, experience, knowledge, skills and invest them into my 35th year. The 35th year better be better than my last 34 years. Here's why I have more skills, more awareness, more understanding, more capital, more team, more leadership, more, more everything. It's gonna be a way better year than the previous year. I know that. I'm gonna make damn sure of it. I'm harder working, I'm smarter, I have more capital, I have more leadership, I have more abilities.

Speaker 2:

I just don't know if we think that way. I was such a failure at 17 years old, but I wasn't more of a failure than other 17-year-olds, but I was failing at everything. Compared to me at 34, and at 37, my 34-year-old self will be a failure at everything, and I think that that's the duality we all have to hold. When you get older, you should be getting wiser. You should be getting better, you should be getting more effective, you should be using your time more intelligently, you should be taking on more responsibility, you should be more emotionally intelligent. And again, a lot of shoulds there. But I think that's what life is it's this constant progression of growth and contribution and this ability to improve as you go, so that the years do get better and better and better, and so that hopefully, you have a little bit more success than you do failure, knowing that you're always gonna be failing forward.

Speaker 1:

Simple next-level nugget for me Simple, maybe, different than usual. Reality can be very, very heavy, but as humans we can make it far heavier or far lighter depending on our mindset and our perspective and our belief and our reflection and all that stuff. So maybe today's next-level nugget is an empowering dust yourself off, get up and get after it today, because no matter what you've been, no matter what you've felt, no matter what direction you feel you've been trending in, today is a new day and it's a new opportunity and it could be one of the great days you look back on in the future. So, yeah, that was a really great day. I made a lot of progress that day. Maybe it's one of the days or the first day that I gave my first speech ever. That's something I'll never forget or going meeting Terran, or reconnecting with Terran, alan messaging Emilia you never know. The beautiful piece of this is we are the authors and the editors and the publishers of our own books, and that means you can change the story right now if you want.

Speaker 1:

Last thing before we go there was a quote. I shared it one time. It's not my quote, I found it somewhere and it was something along the lines of isn't it magnificent, that isn't it? I'm going to get the quote right if I'm going to say it isn't it magnificent that some of the best days of our lives haven't even happened yet? And that's a very, very, very positive spin where the polar opposite would paint a completely different picture. Isn't it super depressing how some of the best days of our lives have already passed this by? That's what this episode is in a nutshell, so that all of that is my next level note.

Speaker 2:

Before we go. You mentioned earlier, kev, that you felt like a failure. Yeah, yeah, definitely, and I have a theory as to why that is and I want to vet it up against your awareness live here, having been on both ends. So my theory and I knew Kev back in the day is that you were avoiding failure so much that you ended up more of a failure. And once you embarked on this hyper-conscious journey, you started to seek failing forward and getting outside your comfort zone, which is actually why you've ended up successful.

Speaker 2:

So, in a way, I think people who avoid failure end up feeling like failures because when you avoid failure, you're shrinking. You avoid talking to that person, you avoid getting rejected, you avoid reaching out, you avoid giving that speech, you avoid starting that podcast, you avoid writing that blog, you avoid publishing it. I talk about my first YouTube video Awful. When you're avoiding failure, you're actually perpetuating feeling like a failure because you're going to keep shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Versus what you did is go to the mall and talk to strangers and start a podcast and go to a Brennan Brashard event and get on a plane even though you were scared and give a speech even though you didn't think you were good enough to give a speech. You started playing to win instead of hiding and playing not to lose, and I think that that's actually why you've become so successful, in my opinion, I think that's a big piece of it.

Speaker 1:

All I was saying with the failure thing is there were times in my life where my expectations of myself were far higher than the results I had in my life and I didn't know how to get there, Because right now, theoretically, my expectations of myself are far higher than the results I have. But I kind of know how to get there. Like well, we're just not there yet and once we get there, my expectations will shift. So I'll never really get there, but at least I feel like I'm on the path to getting there. Back gas station Kev.

Speaker 1:

My expectations of myself were so much higher than my current reality I didn't know how to create a new one. I think that's why I felt like a failure. I was thinking of this the other day before I went to bed. I remember I was working at an HVAC company eating, ventilation and air conditioning and I had no right work with this company. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was tired because one of my friends was dating the daughter of the owner. This was the company where you had to race to the bank Because the cash somebody's check would bounce every week.

Speaker 3:

And I remember I was Two out of three. Two out of three get paid.

Speaker 1:

I never, my never, bounced because I went straight to the bank. I was smart. This was before mobile deposit. This was back in the day, probably 2000. When there was physical banks 2009, maybe 2008, 2009. I was driving to a job. I don't think I had a car. I was using my girlfriend's car. She had an old person Buick. Nothing against you if you drive a Buick, but this was for old people for sure.

Speaker 1:

And I had to stop on the way to this job and I had to get gas with quarters. I don't know. I don't think I was just super broke, I don't think I had any money. I remember I think I have like $4.00 in quarters here. I don't even know if that's going to get me to the job and back those times. When I look back it was like, oh my goodness, this is absolutely brutal. But here's the thing. Now I get to talk about it and laugh about it because we kept going that's all. That's why I can't help it.

Speaker 2:

I just laugh because I always told Kev when it was the worst. I always said we're going to look back on this as the best. Yeah that's fair. And you were like, no way, this is the worst. You know that's funny, but yeah, no, that's pretty low.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't great, but that's what.

Speaker 2:

I.

Speaker 1:

The stuck feeling for me and maybe, whether you're watching or listening, it resonates with you. You can connect to this. But it was my expectations of myself were drastically higher than my reality. I just didn't know how to change my reality.

Speaker 2:

The next level nugget that I would give is try to flip the script. Try to actually stop playing to avoid failure. You're going to fail, no matter what. Jk Rowling says this verbatim in her Harvard commencement 2005. She said you may never fail on the scale that I did, but some failure in life is inevitable, unless you live so cautiously that you avoid it all together, in which case you fail by default. So flip the script, like Kev did, and just seek failure, seek getting outside your comfort zone, seek rejection, seek the thing that you're afraid of, and then the fear dissipates and you get bigger and the fear gets smaller. And if you can keep that up, I'm telling you do something you're afraid of. That's my next level nugget. Go, do something you're afraid of. If you're afraid to message us, send us an email. Alan at xleveluniversecom, kevin at xleveluniversecom.

Speaker 2:

Do something you're scared to do and the fear gets smaller. After you do it, you're like, okay, I'm a little bit bigger now. I had to shield bump some podcaster earlier. She was not aligned and I had to say no, I'm not doing that. I was afraid to be a dick, but I had to speak up and say no, I'm not going to pay you to come on your podcast? Absolutely not. At the end of the day, some people are that way and it's not aligned for me and I was afraid, but I did it anyway. So, whatever you're afraid of maybe it's rejection, maybe it's failure, maybe it's speaking, maybe it's podcasting, maybe it's writing a blog, publishing, sending a text, sending a message, posting on social media whatever it is, do it. The fear will get smaller and you will get bigger. After the discomfort you will be uncomfortable, but after the discomfort you will get bigger and the fear will get smaller. That's how fear works.

Speaker 1:

We have had several new amazing NLU family members. Join Next Elevation, next episode. I'll look so I can give you a shout out. I don't have my phones over here and it's a whole thing finding it, but if you have not joined our private Facebook group yet, please do. We would love to have you a safe place where you can be your authentic self, where you can talk about what matters to you and you can grow to your next level life. As always, link will be in the show notes. Why don't you take it easy over there?

Speaker 2:

That's my bad. I just went to my Audible account to look at high performance habits by Brendan Burchard how extraordinary people become that way. This book I said this to one of the team members earlier I was like this is a real book, as opposed to the fake books we've been reading. No, no, no, here's what I'm saying. This is thick. This is decades of research.

Speaker 2:

Brendan Burchard put serious love and research and due diligence and excellence. This book is excellent, so so good. You can always tell how valuable a book is by the size of its appendix. You immediately get to tell me that this book has a huge appendix. So the very first chapter is just the introduction. On Audible, it's 54 minutes. I just bought my paperback version. It's coming in tomorrow. I recommend either Audible or hard copy. I typically do both and I use the hard copy on the actual meeting. So if you're not in book club yet, the link to register will be in the show notes, and high performance habits by Brendan Burchard has officially won the poll and we will be doing 10 weeks in a row of high performance habits and it's definitely an excellent book. I haven't read it in a long time. It was published in 2017 and it's going to be world class, real good.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow for episode number 1524, the 5Ms of next level motivation. We did an episode on this many, many, many moons ago, so I thought we have a lot of new NLU family members. It might be time to revisit, and now we have had so many new lessons and stories and examples that we can probably make it land more powerfully than ever. So that will be what we talk about tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Keep failing forward. Next level nation.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university. We love connecting with the next level family.

Speaker 2:

We mean it when we say family. If you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. Everything you need to get ahold of us is in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host