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
#1546 - One BIG Thing That Holds Us Back From Starting
Humility, often overlooked, is an essential element in achieving success. It is neither flashy nor sexy, yet it possesses an immense potency that can unlock the doors to your dreams. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talked about the path of responsibility, humility, and entitlement. We uncover how these traits shape our decision-making process and relationships. We emphasize the importance of taking responsibility without taking on too much and discuss how humility can play a role in this. Entitlement can often hinder growth, and recognizing this is a significant step towards self-improvement.
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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- Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
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- Next Level Monthly Meetup: https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/
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Show notes:
(1:36) Behavioral Health
(3:56) It's a superpower
(8:16) Admittance factor
(11:03) Bianca, the co-founder and COO of Evolve Ventures, talks about Alan's unwavering support as her coach and the profound impact of mentorship on her life
(12:57) Owning your weaknesses and strengths
(17:39) Meet in the middle. Responsibility and humility
(21:04) Outro
Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your will. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode. It was episode number 1545. Yesterday's episode what's always been true about you? Another deep episode and some deep episodes towards the end of the week. Today. For episode number 1546, one big thing that holds us back from Starting.
Speaker 1:I was on a podcast the other day. We were talking a lot about imposter syndrome and there was just. We just went deep on imposter syndrome and not believing in yourself and limiting beliefs and all these things, and I said you know, one of the interesting things that I think we forget is when you're first starting something. Yes, it takes courage, it takes bravery, it takes vulnerability, but it also takes extreme humility, and Ellen and I came to this thought together, so I can't claim that I came up with that myself, but it takes extreme humility to say you know, I don't really believe that I'm that great of a speaker, but let me practice speaking into the mirror by myself or let me record a video of myself on my phone and then Maybe have the courage later to watch it.
Speaker 1:We see people taking these really big steps, in these grand what seemed like grand actions, when for most of us in the beginning, we have to take something that probably seems like we're going backwards, or it's the thought of how is me Doing this? So in can, in what's the word I'm looking for? Insignificant, this Insignificant action that's not gonna bring me any results. How is this actually gonna help me in the future? And it just, it can be very, very, it can be very, very negative, can feel very negative, it can feel like you're going backwards, it can feel like you're Beyond small. So we want to do an episode on. The one big thing that holds many of us back from starting is having the hyper humility to say it almost seems like I'm going backwards and this isn't gonna help me at all.
Speaker 2:But I also understand that this very, very, very small thing can be the first domino in a, a bunch of dominoes that helped me get to success eventually the other piece of it too is if you have the humility to say, okay, I'm gonna try to work out for 20 minutes today, versus I'm gonna January 1st, I'm gonna Work out five days a week for an hour and a half and I'm gonna get on this new program and I'm gonna buy these new supplements and I'm gonna get this new gym outfit. All those things can help gym outfit supplements I'm not against those but it takes you milley to say I'm gonna see if I can do this for 20 minutes today, and Then do that again tomorrow, and then do that again the next day, and maybe a week goes by or two weeks and then. And Then you say I'm gonna try to see if I can do 30 minutes, and Then another week goes by, and then you try to do and I actually did this I try to do 45 minutes. I'm gonna try to do 45 minutes a day. And then it takes humility and I did this as well to go honestly, I Don't know 45 is as sustainable. I don't think I can do 45. So here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna, I'm gonna make the minimum 30 and Sometimes I'm gonna do 45 when I'm feeling it, and I just think that that, that humility.
Speaker 2:I told Kevin this earlier today via text. I don't know if I was ever sold on the value of humility. I don't think I understood what it really was. And then one more layer too there's a difference between outward humility and inward humility. I Think outward humility is I Not bragging, not being boastful, sometimes being self-deprecating, being modest, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Versus inward humility is I'm going to get a therapist because I want to work on myself, I want to buy this book because I want to keep learning, because I don't think I'm smart enough yet. I don't think I'm smart enough yet. Is humility? It's humble. I already know all the answers.
Speaker 2:I got off a podcast pre-call earlier and this person is not humble. It was hard for me because there's this part of me and this is scary to share. I'm leagues ahead of this person in podcasting, but she was acting like she was ahead of me and she was not humble enough to face that. I actually listen. I don't need your help in that. I could tell I'm just like stop trying to guide me, I'm ahead of you. Whenever you're with someone where you feel the need to say that it's not even worth it, it's just sail away. It's probably not a line blah, blah, blah. I don't even think this person is conscious of it, but it's like listen, if you had done your research, you would know the answers to these questions. You would know XYZ.
Speaker 2:Humility is a superpower. I am so convinced of it for a couple reasons. Number one you will actually build self-belief because you will set achievable goals. It takes humility to say I'm going to work out for 20 minutes today and then, when you keep that promise, you build self-belief. And then, the next day, 20 minutes, you keep that promise and you build self-belief. The next day, 20 minutes. Then, when you have enough belief, then you say 30 minutes. But if you lose your humility, you're going to say you know what? I'm going to bump it to an hour and a half and I'm guilty of this.
Speaker 2:All the time I was like I'm going to write my blog every two weeks. For the rest of my life. I'm going to write every day and I'm going to write two weeks. Every two weeks, I'm going to publish a blog. I failed at that.
Speaker 2:That was my goal in 2023. I got to blog 14 and I could not sustain it, and there was a moment of failure where I was like I am super humbled, I cannot keep this up. There's no way. December is too crazy. I got too much going on and I underestimated what this was going to take. And that tends to be my tendency I tend to be very confident and I tend to be overly confident at times. But it takes humility to say you know what, in 2024, I'm going to try to do one a month. I'm going to see if I can do one a month and then, if I prove to myself I can do one a month, maybe in 2025, I'll bump it to bi-weekly. I think all of that is humility, but I don't think that's what people think of when they see humility. Humility looks different from the outside in than from the inside out. That's my thesis for this episode.
Speaker 1:I think what you're talking about is I am capable of less than my ego wants me to think I am. That's humility, that admittance factor. Every time I say admittance factor, I think of mittens Admittance factory, for gloves. I was listening to a book the other day and I heard a word that I've heard many times, but I don't know if I ever really fully understood Hubris Hubris.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, hubris. I don't know if I know either, to be honest. I mean, I think I do, but I don't what would you guess? I might as well do it. I would say hubris is something to do with thinking something about yourself. That's not true.
Speaker 1:Something like that, hubris from ancient Greek describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination or synonymous with arrogance. Right, I would say that was pretty accurate.
Speaker 2:The reason I that's exactly what I said right, yeah, you said that word for word.
Speaker 1:They were talking about ancient leaders in the book one of the books you suggested to me how the Mighty Fall. It's a business book.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:The hubris is almost no matter what. This cannot fail. The humility is we can do everything right and there still is gonna be some level of quote, unquote failure or not living up to what we actually want to happen. The humility is having the ability to continue even when things do go wrong. It's just admitting that things are not gonna go a thousand percent the way I want them to. But even when they don't, I'll recoup, I'll lick my wounds and then I'll do it again and the same thing is gonna happen.
Speaker 1:I think I really think that's what it is, and I think it's also being honest with what is, and the humility is admitting what is. That's why you saying I wanna do one every other week. But honestly, what is right now is I'm just not capable of doing it to the degree I wanna do it with everything else going on. Let me be humble and say well, based on my new understanding, my new awareness, I think I can do one a month. I actually think I'm capable of that with what I know, and then we'll see what happens. If you can't do that, maybe the new level of humility is maybe it's every other month. I don't think that'll happen, but it's so important because it helps us start small and I think it also helps us restart. I don't know if you've ever have you ever had a surgery that required physical therapy.
Speaker 2:No, but I did go to no. No, I didn't go. I was supposed to go for my ankle.
Speaker 1:One of the most humbling experiences is rehabbing an injury.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because your ego wants you to think you can do a certain thing, but you can't. Physically, your body is not prepared to do that, so you have to take these unreasonably small steps. I remember when I got shoulder surgery it was probably like 19, 18 or 19, and I went from shoulder pressing the 100 pound dumbbells in each arm to doing a, I think, a two pound dumbbell at the beginning of rehab again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's brutal.
Speaker 1:It was so, so challenging from an ego level.
Speaker 2:And by ego. What we're talking about here is identity. The identity that you held before that was I'm strong, I'm jacked, I'm awesome for being able to do the 100 pound dumbbells, and some of that is positive pride. If you've earned that, that's awesome. The other part of that is listen. If you're trying to hang onto that, you're in trouble because you're gonna re-injure your shoulder, and so humility has utility. That rhymed really nicely. Humility has utility in the sense that you're gonna if you're not humble, you're gonna re-injure your shoulder, but if you're so humble that you never try to get back to where you were and that's why it's.
Speaker 2:I think humility is the sweet spot between overly confident and not confident enough. I think humility is the drive to five of okay, I was overly confident for bi-weekly blogs, but maybe once a month is the sweet spot. We'll find out, and when I try it I'll either. Or maybe it's too scarce, maybe I'm capable of more, you know, and I think we all tend to be on one end or the other. And so humility is not just owning your weaknesses, it's also owning your strength, and that part never really made sense to me fully. It's admitting what is, if I am being a bad partner to Emilia. Owning that and then working on it is humility. But in the past, when I was with a bad partner, even though I was being a great partner, humility is also realizing I shouldn't be here and I've made a poor choice to be here. I think it's admittance. Now you have me thinking of mint.
Speaker 1:It's admittance.
Speaker 2:It is. It's admitting that you're great and it's also admitting that you're not, so admitting whatever's true. I made a poor choice to be with this person in my past. I'm thinking about my past and I hope everyone's thinking about their past or their current or whatever it is. I made a poor choice. I even said that to Emilia last night. I said I'm having trouble with this person and not to Emilia, I'm not having any trouble with Emilia, Fortunately, I shouldn't say no trouble, but very, very little, very minimal. And but I'm talking about this person that I'm having a hard time with and I said sweetheart, the truth of the matter is I knew, I knew this would happen and I did nothing about it. This is my fault. That's humility. This is my fault. I know that I had this intuition seven months ago and I did nothing about it. Oh my God. And the humility to be like. Honestly, this is my fault. It is, I could have easily just stopped working with this person, but I didn't.
Speaker 1:I had, did I? I don't know if I mentioned this on the podcast. There was somebody reached out to me that was gonna start a podcast. We did a bunch of, we did several calls, a lot of communication, and they then they messaged me back a couple months later and said things have changed and I'm not gonna do the podcast anymore. But since I paid, what should we do?
Speaker 1:And I sat with that for a second and normally I get triggered, like that's a trigger thing for me, of oh, my goodness, I'm gonna disappoint this person, it's a whole thing. And I sent them a message back and I said my truth is. And I said I wanna make sure that we get to whatever we come to, whatever resolution we come to, as a win-win. I wanna make sure you feel seen, heard, and I want whatever we land on to be fair. From my perspective. What's fair is we did two calls and we did a lot of prep work and I think I would say I probably wouldn't give you any money back based on the amount of work we did. And I said but what's your truth? And they sent me an audio back and they said, well, this, this, this, and they didn't really get to a resolution. So I said, well, think on it and let me know what you think is fair, and until I hear from you I'll do nothing different. Just let me know what you think is fair.
Speaker 1:And I told Alan after I said that was very big for me because it wasn't from an ego place of I'm not giving your, you've been a pain in this and that and that I'm not giving your money back or not even answering the message and just saying I'm not even gonna worry about this. That's arrogant, self deprecating would be. I'm so sorry, you're disappointed and you haven't had a perfect experience. I'm gonna give you all your money back. I would have done that in the beginning, for sure. I think the humility is. I understand the way you're feeling and I understand you don't have a real thing in the world, a physical thing that you thought. But also, my time is valuable.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and where's your ownership for deciding to do this and pivoting? Why do we take the L? That's a piece of it too.
Speaker 1:That's a piece of it too, and that's what I was trying to relay in the message of I understand you decided to go in a different direction, but that doesn't mean we didn't, as a team, put in, worked to get you in the direction you wanted to go in the first place. The goal with that and the goal with that story is just the humility is. This is my truth, not my ego, not my trick. I'm not triggered. This isn't my ego. My truth is this is the actual facts of what happened. I want the facts of what you feel happened, and then I think we have to meet somewhere in the middle. So does that mean we're gonna give you all your money back or you're not gonna get any of your money back? Probably not. I think we're probably gonna meet somewhere in the middle and the truth is most likely one of us will end up less aligned than the other one. That's a deep conversation going?
Speaker 2:Do you think you have a call soon? So last question do you think that I just had a moment where humility and responsibility are very tied together? The more humility someone has, I'm gonna shout out Brandon again. Brandon is a very humble, wonderful person. He takes ownership. He doesn't point at NLU for his problems. He doesn't point at me, he doesn't.
Speaker 2:Well, you didn't coach me well enough, or you didn't. It's like listen man. He actually messaged me recently. He's like listen. I've been a little MIA. I really need some help. I'm struggling with some stuff. Can we get on the calendar? Because I had to cancel some of the coaching sessions this week with the holiday event coming up and he wasn't entitled about it. He was very humble of listen. I know you're busy. I value your time. I would just really appreciate it if we could get on the calendar again. I'm really struggling. It was very humble, it wasn't. You owe me coaching. How dare you cancel a session? Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:Whereas in the past there have been people who have been very attacky and entitled about stuff, and I just think, at the end of the day, brandon takes a lot of responsibility for his own outcomes when things don't go well. He doesn't like blame other people. You know, just like me with that person, it's like listen up, because Emilia was upset. She's like, well, this blah blah. It's like sweetheart. In the truth of the matter, underneath all this is is I made a choice to work with this person and that's on me. I could have easily chosen not to. I should have, I knew not to, and so, at the end of the day, I think, responsibility. I don't know if you can take responsibility without humility. Well, you can take. That's my new thesis. You can take too much responsibility, though. That's another episode, I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's really what I was trying to say with that story of I could take all the responsibility and just say, yeah, you know what? I wanna make sure you had a 10 out of 10 experience. We'll just eat the money. I don't think that's the way I should do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If it was, maybe, if it was a different circumstance, and Well, if she took no responsibility that person, and then you would have to take all the responsibility, or maybe that might be your tendency, so I think, yeah, it's a drive to five that would be my normal tendency, for sure.
Speaker 1:Now, let's say some emergency happened and there was a tragedy, that would be different. Right, it might be. The humility might be. You know what, even if you wanted to do this, you're unable, based on your circumstances. Yeah, it would be more aligned for me to give you all of your money back. That would be what would feel best for me. So, yeah, maybe we'll have to do a humility part two, most likely.
Speaker 1:This is one of those deep episodes Next level nation, we have to bounce because I have a coaching call after this. As much as I am enjoying the longer episodes I think the last one was like 28 minutes, the one before it was 30 somewhat minutes. Let us know if you like the longer ones. I know Alan does Tomorrow for episode number 1,547, scarcity, abundance and how they affect your growth. That is what we're gonna do tomorrow. If you have not joined our private Facebook group yet, next Level Nation, please do so. We would absolutely love to have you in there and maybe we can further the conversation around ego, around entitlement, around humility. We can do that in Next Level Nation. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, we're grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we do it out of bands. We have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Stay humble. Next Level Nation.
