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
#1539 - Should You Focus More On Your Strengths Or Weaknesses?
Imagine the greatness you could achieve by refining strengths and addressing weaknesses. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about the controversial aspect of investing too much time and energy into perceived strengths. Conventional wisdom tells us to lean into our strengths, but what if these strengths are actually weaknesses in disguise? They discuss this common perspective and explore the potential risks of investing too much energy in areas that might not actually be beneficial to our growth and success.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
______________________
Website 💻 http://www.nextleveluniverse.com
The best way to track your habits is here! Download the app: Optimal - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/optimal/
_______________________
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/
_______________________
We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email.
Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/
Show notes:
(2:49) Practice your strength and mitigate your weakness
(6:00) It's about people
(8:17) Helen praises Alan for providing safe and empowering coaching services with Next Level Business Solutions
(11:22) Practice your weaknesses behind the scenes
(14:05) Adjust according to your goal
(16:45) Outro
Next level nation. Welcome back to another very special 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, episode number 1538. Not everything is important Beast. Today for episode number 1539, alan had a has a pink Shaker cup that says beast on it. That's why I said beast. It's emilius, but I'm borrowing it temporarily, it's all. It's all good. If it's yours, I support it.
Speaker 1:Should you focus more on your strengths or weaknesses? This has been a question, or this has been a, a Direction that oftentimes when I'm on podcasts, we end up going in, because I've gotten the question often of what would you, what advice would you give to early entrepreneurs? And it's very hard to give aligned advice not knowing what the person is doing. So I remember I Started with the awareness of Understand. You should be very, very, very Understanding, specific and honest with yourself about what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. I think that's super important.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people who are going all in on something that they think they're bad at or or that they think they're good at but they're not good at, and I know some people that are afraid to go all in on the thing that they're really good at, but they think they're bad at, yep. And then from there conversations came up of well, what do you think it's more important? To focus on your strengths, your weaknesses and I think my answers have evolved, or my answer has evolved or my understanding has evolved. So I thought it would be valuable to do kind of an open thought episode on this. I Don't know what your perspective is, alan, because this isn't something you and I have talked about in a long time, but just to get it started, I would say, now more than ever, I would say, obsess over practicing your strengths and Mitigating your weaknesses, aka practice the things that you're.
Speaker 1:When I say practice, I mean do the reps of the things that you're really good at in front of the scenes, do the reps of the things that you're not really good at behind the scenes, because you don't want to get to the point where you're not well developed. You don't want to get to the point where you're really really good at one thing but terrible at other things, and then there's so many intricacies of that of. Well, eventually you could get to the place where you can Hire someone to help you do the things that you're not good at, and you could only do the stuff that you're really good at, but that really applies mostly if you're gonna become an entrepreneur. So what are your thoughts on all that?
Speaker 2:The, the thing that I find most fascinating about this topic is Whatever your biggest strength is, comes with your biggest weakness. So there are Two sides of the same coin, or or a double-edged sword, or insert whatever phrase you want but If you have a huge strength, that is Significantly and I'm talking statistical strength, meaning if you, if you put a hundred people in a room, you're most likely the best at this thing, most likely that comes with some massive blind spot or some Some big weakness. So for me, I would use math as an example, math and science. So math and science always came really easy to me. It always has always will. And Long-term strategic thinking, thinking, 15 moves ahead, calculating things in advance. And then you know Strategic thinking, thinking 15 moves ahead, calculating things in advance logic, rationality, structure, systems, processes. That's always really easy for me. That feels natural. It's who I am, it's who I've always gonna be, who I'm always gonna be. Kevin asked me behind the scenes before we recorded the last episode hey, can we do some algorithms to figure out a pay structure for you know, different clients, all stuff? I said, yeah, of course I mean that'd be awesome, but the weakness that comes with that is Sometimes a lack of empathy for people who don't think that way, sometimes a lack of humility, for sure, because I calculate things in advance with probability. So what's the probability that this episode goes well? Well, based on the 1538 other ones, it's very high, so sometimes it can come off really arrogant. Confidence is a strength, huge strength for me, but arrogance is a weakness. You know, long-term strategic thinking is a huge strength for me, but staying present in the moment is a weakness. That's kind of where I would go with this, which is whatever your biggest strength is. If you're really good at staying present, you probably have a weakness with long-term strategic thinking. If you're really good with people, you probably have a weakness with spreadsheets and and I've seen very few exceptions to this here's the thing that you need to make sure is true for you, and this goes back to the last episode about productivity. If you are not I always say this at NLU bring you behind the scenes a little bit.
Speaker 2:As CEO, cfo, but mostly CEO. It's about people, lead people, design systems, track metrics, and the lead people is number one for a reason. My goal is to get. Excuse me, I had to burp. My goal is always to get the optimal Person in the optimal role with the optimal responsibilities and the optimal goals, and that will bring the optimal results. And when I say optimal, I mean goalie locks, not too hot, not too cold. So what's a good example? So, amy Lenny, this isn't a lot of shadows for Amy L last couple episodes, unbelievable for assistant coach of group coaching, just such a. I mean you can just.
Speaker 2:I think of it like I've told Kevin this before I'm at the bottom of the ocean floor, we're looking for gold and I've got this little metal detector and it's like beep, beep, beep. And then all of a sudden it's like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And then you go past it. It's like beep, beep, beep with Amy Lenny, a screw up coaching. It's like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's like off the charts. It's exactly where she's meant to be. It's aligned with who she is, it's aligned with what she's practiced, it's aligned with what fulfills her. She's just crushing it.
Speaker 2:And there are other people To know fault of them. They're just different than Amy. They would not do as well as her. That's okay. I think a lot of us get very offended when it's like well, you know, I want to be good at everything. Stop with that. I'm not good at everything. I'm supposed to be in spreadsheets more than Kevin. That's okay. Kevin could spend the rest of his life trying to be as good at spreadsheets as me and it would never work. I tried, he tried, and we do. We get insecure about this stuff because all of us want to be different than we are, and I think that Maturity is owning who you are and being the best version of that. Whatever you are, be a good one, and so hopefully this episode will help you kind of Realize that you have weaknesses, but it's because of your strengths and Hopefully you can accept and Love yourself for both.
Speaker 1:I Always use the video game analogy when it comes to this of let's say you're creating a character and there's four categories Under your character and you get a hundred points. So you have a hundred We'll call them experience points and you can Bring me back to my Diablo two days back in the day. You can spread them out amongst these four Attributes However you want. So let's say it's speed, strength, agility, stamina. Speed, strength, agility, stamina. You can do a hundred speed and then zero. In the other three you could do 25, 25, 25, 25. You could do 50, 50, 0, 0. You could do it however you want.
Speaker 2:My thought is or you could throw in a cheat code and no god mode. Well you could?
Speaker 1:That's not how I play my game sir, not anymore.
Speaker 2:I was a young in.
Speaker 1:Okay, my thought is, if you're already good at something, so let's just say You're already super fast. That's one of your speeds. Yeah, you're gonna continue working on your speed, but your speed is probably going to grow easier than your stamina or then your strength. I almost think of it is. It's a train that already has momentum, so you don't have to put as much effort in Not saying you don't have to put any effort in. But for me, alan could spend the rest of his life trying to squat as well as I do Mm-hmm and it, and I could probably just keep going at the rate I'm going and I probably win every time. Yeah, but when it comes to other stuff, it's just not gonna be me and I'm just running long distance, running for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not gonna. It's not gonna happen. Now, what does that mean? That means I could probably Focus more on long distance running, that I am Squatting and I would be better at squatting and I'd be able to get a little bit closer to Alan when it comes to the long distance Running, and then, vice versa, alan would spend more time squatting and less time doing long distance running. He'd still be able to beat me in a long distance race and he'd be able to get closer, hopefully, when it comes to squats. That's why I think you should Practice your strengths because you're already good at them you're already gonna be getting higher quality reps and Practice your weaknesses behind the scenes strength in front of people, weaknesses behind the scenes Because then you're gonna be able to maintain self-belief and self-worth, hopefully also if you've ever.
Speaker 2:If you look at our society I'll go quick with this but if you look at the economy at a higher level, it's the people that are the best in the world at what they do. They get paid the most. There's an. There's an inverse. There's an exponential increase in profitability with being the top 1% in in everything. I mean the top 1% of actors get 80% of the movies. Maybe not 80, but 60, 60% of the movies, and let me use the 80 20 principle for this, actually. So so I digress.
Speaker 2:We talked about Pareto a lot. Pareto principle it's it's 20% of the people own 80% of the wealth. 20% of the Football teams win 80% of the games. 20% of the basketball teams win 80% of the games. So when are you, the top 20%? You you definitely want to focus on that because you're gonna be more valuable in that space, and Amy Lenis is a good example of that. She's definitely in the top 20% of transformational leaders and coaches. Definitely, I mean it's. I mean she's probably in the top 1%, honestly. But so that's good. You're in your sweet spot, that's where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 2:But if you never work on your weaknesses, your marriage might suffer. Yeah, yeah, you might be the best coach ever, but are you gonna be good at being a mother or a father? Are you gonna be good at, you know, running the household? Are you gonna be able to have a good relationship? Are you gonna be fit? Are you gonna be physically fit? So for Kevin and I, we would. We would interview all these people We've interviewed hundreds of people on the podcast way back and we would see that there are so many wealthy people that are not healthy and definitely not in love, and we didn't want that. And so we had to work on our weaknesses, because if you, even if you think about my strengths, talking about them in the beginning, those are all really good for business and for success, but those are not good for relationships. So I had a huge advantage in one area and I had a huge disadvantage in this other area. I'm not a naturally gifted relationship person. I'm Very robotic and I think extremely logically and rationally and and human beings are emotional creatures. So I had to work hard on the emotion side, but only because I aspire to have the best relationship I can possibly have, and so that's really you know.
Speaker 2:Back to Kevin's analogy of stamina, agility, strength and speed speed when you put those points needs to be custom, based on the, the goals you have in life. If you're okay with being successful in in business, but but alone, then maybe you put it all on strength, you know, maybe you don't have to be well-rounded. I don't think that's a very good life. I would much rather you put you know, put the statistics, put the skills, the, the skill points, the experience points, on the Strengths and the weaknesses, according to the person you aspire to become.
Speaker 2:So, back in corporate, what I was working for Cognix as a sales engineer, I was really in my strengths for sure, numbers, finances, understanding, technology and equipment. These are very complex systems, but I wasn't well-rounded and so my relationships weren't as good as my success in business. And so and some people are the other way around their relationships are great, but they're not as wealthy as they want to be or financially free as they want to be. So you got to be ready and lefty I think we're already are lefty. I think it's important to not only I guess a fighting analogy would be good you got to be able to use your legs, your hands, your arms, your elbows. Moitai is the. What is it the?
Speaker 2:the art of eight limbs, son, the the art of eight limbs. If you're someone who can grapple and and can box and can can kickbox, you know you're gonna be a better fighter overall. But you got to have one that's really really really good, which is your secret sauce, and and you can't lose that, because there's nothing more more capable than someone who's really really strong at one thing that they put themselves in that spot for. But they also have a well-rounded game so that they so that they can't be taken advantage of by just getting into the ground or whatever.
Speaker 1:I love the fighting analogies it's clear that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I do love the analogies.
Speaker 2:I Appreciate, I appreciate the taking of the risk. I do just enough, I know just enough enough to be dangerous.
Speaker 1:Next level nation. If you have not yet joined our private Facebook group group, excuse me, please do. Next level nation. It's appropriately titled. The link will be in the show notes, as always. Tomorrow for episode number 1,540 what does it mean about you if you disappoint someone? I am realizing that a lot of people deal with the core wound of the fear of disappointment, much like I do, based on some conversations that I've had. So we are going to go deep into that for tomorrow's episode. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and an L you. We did not have fans. We have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Focus on both strengths and weaknesses, next up on nation.
