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
#1553 - Two Words Worth Remembering For 2024
In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros delve into setting realistic goals and embracing imperfection for success. They explore the delicate balancing act of creating objectives that inspire you to level up in all areas of your life. Giving valuable insights into setting realistic and sustainable goals, taking messy action, and tracking habits for consistent results. The main takeaway is that it's about more than achieving perfection but making progress. It's about celebrating every small step taken towards achieving your goals and embracing imperfection as a vital part of the journey towards success.
Links mentioned:
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Show notes:
(1:42) Setting sustainable progress
(2:07) Realistic vs Ideal
(3:53) Optimal vs Doable
(7:00) Understanding messy action
(9:48) Non-ideal progress
(12:53) Austin shares his top-notch experience working with Kevin under Next Level Podcast Solutions.
(16:27) Understanding yourself and realizing what you'll do
(20:14) Non-negotiables and tracking habits
(23:41) Keep taking messy action
(26:26) 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 wealth. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode. Episode number 1552, a big lie about self-improvement maybe a common misconception about self-improvement. Today, for episode number 1553, two words worth remembering for 2024. So we're coming up on the end of 2023. And I know a lot of us have really big goals or maybe really specific goals or a lot of aspirations for what's going to happen in 2024. My goal in today's episode is to help you set goals or help you make progress in a way that is more sustainable. That really is my goal.
Speaker 1:I've coached a lot of people on podcasting and speaking and coaching and business far less than Allen when it comes to business, but most of my clients are business owners and I always say when I'm working with you, I'm going to give you two, I'm going to try to give you two options. I'm going to give you what's realistic and I'm going to give you what's ideal. Ideally, we would get to a place where you do blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank and blank based on the results that you said you desire. Realistically, right now, I think we should just get the ball rolling, and it's a constant juggle between what's ideal and what's realistic. What's ideal would be Allen and I jump on the microphones and neither of us makes a single mistake, and on Monday, when we're supposed to, we get all of our seven episodes done and everything is hunky-dory Sometimes. That's not realistic. What's real?
Speaker 2:How often does that happen? Never, pretty much never.
Speaker 1:I couldn't try the last time.
Speaker 2:One time one week, we did 14, when you were traveling.
Speaker 1:I couldn't tell you the last time we did seven, though I have no idea. It's been a long time, maybe a handful of times this year, I don't know. Have we even done it?
Speaker 2:I think the only time we've ever really done it is when we had to get 14 because you were going on vacation. So we're going away.
Speaker 1:Very rarely is it ideal. Yeah, never, yeah, never. I would say. That's fair, yeah. So that's really what I want to talk about in this episode, not just from a 2024 goal setting perspective, but just in general.
Speaker 1:Ideally, you'd get everything done. Realistically, you might have, and you're not going to be able to see what's written on it because of my camera, but realistically, maybe you have a giant to-do list of things and oh, there you go, you can see it and you work your way through it and it takes you a week and it takes you three days longer to do some stuff. It takes four days longer to do other things. Some things are a surprise to you and you get them done faster than you desired. It's the juggling act of both of those things.
Speaker 1:Now there's another two words that we can substitute Optimal versus doable. What is doable for you right now? And what is optimal for you right now? Maybe what's optimal is you are drinking a certain amount of water and you're eating a certain balanced diet and you're getting eight hours of sleep and you're weighing yourself every day and you're exercising for 30 minutes a day. Maybe that is what is optimal for you, but what is optimal for you might not be what's doable for you, and I just think that's an important fundamental understanding for us all to have, because we're really good at beating ourselves up when we don't do what's optimal and something weird happens. At least this happens with me sometimes.
Speaker 1:When I can't do optimal, I don't even want to do doable. I don't. I want to do less than nothing. I don't even care what's doable, I want to just do nothing. So I've been going through a shoulder issue. Something's wrong with my shoulder. I've been going to jujitsu three to four times a week. No pain. No pain at all, even though people are tugging on it and putting it over my throat and in positions. It's not supposed to no pain, but when I go to the gym it's the worst. So much pain. So I've stopped going to the gym completely.
Speaker 1:What's doable is I could go to the gym and do different exercises. I really need to go and do legs. That's not going to hurt my shoulder. I could probably go and do arms. That wouldn't hurt my shoulder. I could probably go and potentially do back. That might not hurt my shoulder. Maybe chest and shoulders are off the off the board for now. So if you find yourself similar to me in this instance in an all or nothing attitude of well, it's not optimal. Yeah, I couldn't do the doable thing, but I'm not even going to do that because I'm so frustrated. Maybe that's another thing to explore after you listen to today's episode.
Speaker 2:I think the something is better than nothing. Mentality is important.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 2:I had a moment earlier when I had finished my morning routine because my morning routine was not optimal, even though it's set up to be and I was in the bathroom and I was TMI, I was peeing and I was thinking to myself you know, I actually did get a lot done this morning. And I had this honest conversation myself of you don't feel like you've had a great morning, but if you really look at it, you got more done this morning than some people do all day, but you never give yourself credit for that. This was like a dialogue I was having with myself loud. No, no, no, definitely not, although I did tell Kevin, you and I we watched home alone yesterday and he just has outer dialogues. Yeah, you notice that in the movie he's just I'm not afraid anymore.
Speaker 2:His inner dialogue is his outer dialogue. A great movie it was. It is a great movie. It was a great movie. It was great, we enjoyed it thoroughly.
Speaker 2:But anyways, I think that this idea of Okay, well, I can't, I only have 20 minutes and I can't get my 30 minutes of learning in, but I might as well get something in, let me get something done and I think that Something is better than nothing is probably a better mentality, mentality than I want, my perfect morning routine or no morning routine and I think that the other piece of this is messy action.
Speaker 2:If you are not adopting messy action, we have a hole in our closet door from a, from a couch that we brought up. So we brought up for those of you who listen to the conscious couples podcast, you know the conscious couples couch. That's where we do all our coaching calls. I actually have a coaching call right after this with a couple and that couch is heavy, super heavy. So we tried to hammer that thing right on up the stairs in our house and we Hammered it into the closet door at the bottom of the stairs and it's just a big hole right in our closet door and Emilia and I have been really working quite diligently towards many endeavors, and so we just left it there.
Speaker 1:I was gonna leave it.
Speaker 2:I Said, well, we'll probably sell the house in like a year, so we'll be fine. My point is this there is no such thing. If you go to anyone's basement right now, what's it gonna look like?
Speaker 1:Probably, mayhem, most likely, unless it's a finished basement.
Speaker 2:Exactly so the attic if you go into my basement.
Speaker 2:You're gonna see frisbees and footballs from next level Hope Foundation. You're gonna see a whiteboard from the studio that Kevin and I took apart, that I never put back together. You're gonna see rugs. There's like three or four rugs down there, right, that's. It's not just your basement, it's not just your bedroom, it's not just your pile of laundry sitting there. That is human Condition. That is the human condition. And right before the holidays, before your family comes over, you're gonna do a full December cleaning just like everyone else on earth, deep clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quick, deep clean, before before people come and Thanksgiving. You know, it's like you think we can patch this door. Nope, let it ride. I'll tell the story. It's all good.
Speaker 2:So Messy action is the only way I Think shooting for ideals can be productive. But thinking there that you're ever gonna hit them is Is so silly. I was on with a client earlier, showed it to Bradley, my man, bradley. He runs a big team, big financial firm, awesome, super on point, and we were talking about messy action. We were talking about 2023 versus 2024 and what you thought you'd achieve versus what you did achieve, and he crushes it. And I'm telling you there are things that he had to let fall in order to crush it, and that's what the whole conversation was in 2024. What are you gonna let fall? What are you gonna be okay with letting fall?
Speaker 2:You're not gonna be 10 out of 10 on point with everything. You're not. You've got to choose your 10 out of 10s very, very carefully. And you know, in an ideal world We'd all be wealthy. In an ideal world, we'd all Weigh ourselves every day, you know, and and track our macros and our calories and our micronutrients every day, and We'd all eat nutritious meals and never get pizza on a whim. That isn't real. It's not real, it never has been and it never will be. I coach some of the most incredible humans you've ever met. They are so on point, it's not even funny and they're still off the rails in certain things, and you just have to know that you can be 10 out of 10 on point in a couple things. That's it, though Only a couple. I've never seen anyone fully on point with everything. It's not real.
Speaker 2:And Social media and going to people's houses is designed to appear ideal. My backdrop and Kevin's backdrop it's designed to look ideal. My hair is gelled. I've got a collared shirt on. Everything is designed to look ideal. It's really beautiful packaging. That's okay, I'm not making that wrong. But our very first backdrop was a black Curtain, just a black curtain, and we had my sister's an x-ray tech and we were in my sister's old bedroom for our first studio and she was an x-ray tech, I should say, and she had a skeleton. So we, we put a hyper conscious podcast muscle shirt on the skeleton and called him Steve McQueen the McQueen, and it was our mascot.
Speaker 2:And so Just please, please, please, do yourself a favor and and Realize that no one on planet Earth has a perfectly clean car with a perfectly clean basement. Who, you know, has a perfect life? It is. It is so far from any reality you've ever seen, and it just looks that way from the outside in, but from the inside out it's not, and you just have to trust that. But Despite all that, you can get better and better and better. In other words, your non ideal Version of yourself right now should be, and could be, and and ought to be, better than your Messy action version of you five years ago, and I think that's empowering messy action, messy improvement, messy discipline you know, messy, non-ideal action toward a better, bigger, better, right future. Well, and see, even right there. Just just Jeff forward, please just mess it up. Just just break some eggs and You're gonna have an omelet that is way better Than what was before. There it is.
Speaker 1:Well, even something like that, is it ideal from a professional speaker standpoint? No, is it ideal for someone who wants us to be funnier? Yes. So even in that, even in that analogy, you're not really gonna be able to cross ideal across multiple lines. It's just, it might not be realistic I'm not trying to use those words in a in a punny way.
Speaker 1:I've seen this a lot with people who are doing something for the first time that they've never done before, and they beat themselves up because it doesn't go ideally and they don't let's just say they don't release the thing, whatever it means, whether it's getting on a call with somebody who could be a potential client for their new Dream-chasing thing that they're doing, or a podcast episode or a speech or whatever it is. And I always try to get them to understand that. I Know we want it to go ideally, I know we want it to go optimally, but even when you get to the point where you have the opportunities you want, even then it's not gonna go ideally. Even when you get to the I guess it's kind of similar to the episode we did yesterday Talking about there's no before and after. Even when you get to that big speech, you'll have things that go wrong 100 might not, might not have the time to prep as much time as you wanted.
Speaker 1:You might have been up up late the night before because there's something going on with the family. I had a client who just gave a really big speech in. I don't remember where it was aspen, I think, I think it was somewhere in, I think I was somewhere in Colorado and it was a really big speech and she forgot to record it. And I said, well, I said I'll tell you exactly what I said not ideal. Yeah, we've done that. We've done that. Of course you have a speech coming up right. She said, yeah, next week. And I said, all right, what would be most optimal is if you hire someone to come get content of you. You don't have to worry about it, that's all. We just will take the thing that was an ideal and, if we can plug that hole, hopefully that problem doesn't happen again.
Speaker 2:But to your point, alan, I don't know if there's or you can do what we did and put the camera right next to the giant fan on the projector. And Mistakes are made yeah, mistakes.
Speaker 1:It was an ideal. It was an ideal, what we learned from it. We learned from it and even the optimal versus doable. I like that. What's optimal Might be to go for us a six mile run, but what's doable in the beginning is almost never what's optimal long-term, and you said this, and you said in the beginning what's doable is what's optimal. Yeah, yeah because you'll do is always what's optimal because You'll actually do it. I.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just gonna say quickly I was on next level, a next level live today in next level nation with Amy and I, and I was talking about how, now more than ever, understanding yourself and realizing what you'll actually do is one of the most important things ever, because you can hear all the advice in the world, but if it doesn't resonate with you and you don't believe you're gonna do it, or you can do it, or if it's possible for you or you're not the type of person that would do it, what are you, the type of person, what would the type of person that you identify as? Do Start there, start there Not and again, I think it's good advice what would the type of person you want to become? Do Awesome. I love that. I think that's great advice. I think, starting with what, the type of person that I identify as today, what would I be capable of? Let's do this, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I love what you did there and we should put this in some of our group coaching and stuff. What would the type of person that you aspire to become do? Okay, start there Now. What's a version of that that you would do now?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Like maybe that's a level five and you go to level one and then you eventually get there. I think that would be a cool way to bridge the gap.
Speaker 1:I just think now I know you've been on a little bit of a tie rant on social media, about social media, over the last few weeks. Understandably, the problem is we're getting unrealistic advice from most people. Definitely there's this guy.
Speaker 1:I don't think I follow him, but he just shows up on my feet a lot and he's making fun of, in a satire way, people. He says when you wake, I wake up at 12.01. I go to bed at 10 pm and I wake up at one minute after midnight and first thing I do is I buy an income property and with the money I make from the income property I buy a very heavy SUV that I can write off the taxes with, and with that SUV I do deliveries of DoorDash. And he's just making satire of how people say if you're 30 and you don't have your first rental property, you're a loser or whatever. And he's just poking fun at the fact that maybe that was ideal for you, maybe that's the way it worked, but it's probably not realistic for most people. I think most of the advice that is given is not realistic for most people.
Speaker 1:I really do, and I've been trying to say this more and more when I go on podcasts. I don't want, when I tell you my morning routine, which is now Jeff, three ways from sideways, I don't have one. I wake up and I work. That's my morning routine now, transparently. I always joke and I say I don't want this to be that meme of I get up at 3.30 and then I do four hours of meditation while I'm juggling three chainsaws that are on fire.
Speaker 1:But I'm also, I'm also playing checkers with my feet at the same time and I'm winning at everything I do. This is the morning routine that I have that works for me. Quote unquote. But I also miss and here's the thing you don't have to do my morning routine to get your level of success. That's it. Wouldn't it probably wouldn't serve you to do it the way I do. Again, one person's ideal might be your realistic, your version of ideal might be somebody else's realistic, your version of realistic, whatever. You know what I'm trying to say. It's one of those hard things when you can only say it really two ways. So if you get the first way and you don't get the second way, it just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:But you know what. I mean, I do, I do, and I think our listeners do too fortunately.
Speaker 1:I sure hope so.
Speaker 2:Fortunately I was talking to that same client, bradley, earlier. I said you can only have so many non-negotiables. I found that really empowering, actually, because I do exercise 30 minutes a day every day. I've done that for many.
Speaker 1:no, I don't wanna say many years, 200 years 200 years, 250 years, no, 650 days.
Speaker 2:I think as of yesterday. I would have to check with Siri, please don't go phone. Okay, s-i-r-i, but I think it's 650. 650 plus. But it's a walk. Or it's soccer, it's basketball, it's usually a walk, it's usually a walk. Or the gym Weight training. We alternate Walk, weight training, walk weight training. We did some basketball and soccer and blah, blah, blah, like next of a whole foundation running around with the kids playing football and basketball. Okay, but here's the thing what if you wanna write every day and you wanna exercise every day and you wanna meditate every day and you wanna, you know, blah, blah, blah? I was asked this on a podcast recently. He said what's the one most important thing that has changed your life? And I thought of a couple things, but the one that jumped off was habit tracking. I don't care if you get 100%. No one does, no one does. You got 100% for four months.
Speaker 1:Thought you'd never miss, and now you don't even have a morning routine.
Speaker 2:So the answer is humble pie, stay humble. No one ever, even Bradley. He has 100s, 100s. He hit I don't know 94% yesterday and even that I said listen, we gotta up the ante in 2024. You shouldn't be getting 100% all the time. You know, this system's obviously too easy. I think he only has like six or seven things, but again, that's. He does a lot more than just track habits. Here's my point Tracking habits every day. I don't care if you get 50% or 60% or 80% or 100%, but if you do that one thing every day, that's something. And that way you can kind of you can kind of have one non-negotiable that helps you stay more consistent at all the other seemingly impossible non-negotiables, if that makes sense. And that's kind of what I've done with my life, and that's where I'll end, where I have a couple non-negotiables that I never miss and those hopefully keep me on the rails enough to get some of the other non-negotiables in. You know, three days a week or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's a challenging thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's possible and impossible simultaneously. It's quite alarming, challenging thing.
Speaker 1:So my next love of nugget would be Focus on doing the doable until you can turn doable into optimal and then, when that happens, you'll have new doable that'll turn to optimals eventually. That, really, I think that is the lesson in this. Yeah, we can do seven episodes a week, but that's because one was doable and we did one long enough and then two was doable, three, now seven a week is Barely by the way.
Speaker 2:That's the important part. It was barely doable.
Speaker 1:Now with everything else we do. It's barely doable. I know we very rarely have optimal weeks. I could not tell you I don't think I had an optimal week this year. No way I did. No, I know.
Speaker 2:Same have I had optimal days?
Speaker 1:Maybe I would say I've probably had optimal days, not me. Yeah, well, you're different than I am. You stretch yourself more than I do.
Speaker 2:My next level nugget would be that, which is my worst. My least productive day now is more productive than my most optimal day back a year ago. I think that that's really what matters. Whether it's playing an instrument or playing a sport or business, whatever it is, the old version of you would get its butt kicked by the new version of you. That's okay. That's supposed to be the way of it. Instead of trying to be optimal all the time, I think just focus on getting better all the time, and when you focus on getting better and failing forward and taking messy action, you end up optimal over the long term. That's really empowering. It is. I think it's empowering to realize optimal is impossible. It's the same thing with perfect, Perfect and optimal. It's never going to be fully optimal. It's never going to be fully perfect. It's almost like you have to hold this duality of I want to make things as perfect as they can be, knowing nothing's ever perfect.
Speaker 1:I should come up with a term for that. Messy action is one, but let me think on it.
Speaker 2:Perfectly imperfect.
Speaker 1:I want an alliteration of P and P, productively perfect.
Speaker 2:Imperfectly productive.
Speaker 1:No, that's not P and P damn it. No, I don't know, we'll think about it. You want to just take some time right now and make this an hour episode and kind of verbalize it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would be optimal for me is we do another episode and then I go to my coaching. Okay, all right, let's do that.
Speaker 1:If you are looking for a group of like-minded individuals who are into growth and do not think self-improvement is super weird which I know there's a lot of people out there that do, we have a private Facebook group called Next Level Nation. We would love to have you there. You belong, you are welcome. You can be authentically. You Link will be in the show notes, as always.
Speaker 2:Group coaching is a place where you have permission to be imperfect. You can start small and build. It's a safe space to be humble, vulnerable, courageous and just not have to put on a show. They're all private. It's only the group that has these recordings. The group is a tight-knit group of individuals that is there to actually get better in their real life, not to put on a show. If that is something that's intriguing for you, it's changed the lives of so many people. We've graduated we're about to graduate 120 people from this program. This will be the 13th group. January 2nd start 2024 off right with the promo code NLULIST and her all-one word, it comes to less than $97 per month for the three-month program.
Speaker 2:I hope you join us. It's going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow for episode number 1,554,. One simple way to know if a habit is worth doing, slash sticking to. We did an episode talking about that a little bit and that is where I got the inspiration, or idea, I guess, for this episode. We're going to do that one tomorrow for episode number 1,554. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, Grateful for each and every one of you At NLUL. We do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Keep taking messy action. No-transcript.
