Next Level University

#1572 - How Well Are You Using Your Intuition?

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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In pursuing personal and professional excellence, there exists a profound, yet often overlooked, ally within us all: our intuition. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros guide us on navigating the delicate balance between the heart's whispers and the mind's rationalizations. They unravel the subtle threads of intuitive thought, offering the insights to cultivate this powerful yet often underestimated, human capacity.

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Show notes:
(2:23) The role it plays
(4:46) Why do we ignore our intuition?
(7:21) Unexplainable knowing is an experience?
(11:45) Nathan expresses his appreciation for the invaluable coaching services he received from Alan.
(12:26) Perspectives that shape one's intuition
(13:13) Confirmation bias
(15:32) Fear or intuition?
(17:32) Honest self-assessment
(18:45) Calibrate that intuition
(23:17) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin:

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 well, we're in giggly moose today. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode. I thought I was gonna be able to get through Episode number 1500. Oh, my chair did it again. You said 1571. What are your top three words?

Alan:

You kidding me with this chair? I didn't have time.

Kevin:

Our poor listeners man, I know I'm sorry, I'm sorry I it happened up on podcast growth you today too. Today for episode number 1572 how well are you using your intuition? We used to talk about intuition very often, alan, and then we just kind of stopped talking about it completely and in our year-end review we were talking about what made the biggest difference this year, and you had a bunch of things habits and this and this and this and leadership and this and I said, honestly, I think one of the things that is kind of going under the radar is intuition. How many times did we have a conversation and just say, intuitively I don't know how to explain it, but I think this is the direction we should go in and I Don't know, have you I guess maybe we'll start here have you consciously been honing first this? What would you define intuition as? Let's start there. And then, have you consciously, intentionally, been honing your intuition over the last year, or do you think it's just something that is Coming more with time and experience?

Alan:

Appreciate the questions, the first thing that comes up is I've been helping my clients do this Because I'll often say things and any clients who are listening that they'll know this I'll often say intuition only. I Don't want you to think too hard about it. I want to know what comes up for you when I ask a question like I was just on the phone with a client earlier and I said intuition only. I, blank, had the most successful year I've ever had in 2023. True, false, semi-true, and he's true I. So, to answer your question, I don't think I'm consciously honing my intuition. I think that I'm naturally doing it because I want to lead by example and I'm helping my clients listen to their intuition Constantly. I'll also ask questions of okay, what's your highest self? Tell you. That's another way to kind of tap into someone's intuition, because the story you're telling yourself versus the truth Is where we get in trouble. So, for example, my relationship right now Okay, my intuition has been telling me, alan, you're, you're working too much and your relationship isn't getting poured into enough. And I've been saying like sweetheart, I'm sorry, 2024 is gonna be different, 2024 is gonna be different. And she playfully was like well, you said that in 2023 in terms of the amount that I'm working, and she doesn't want me to work less. So let me make that clear she's she's an entrepreneur as well and she's working just as hard, if not harder, but there hasn't been a ton of. There's been a lot of late nights, lately, and there's that, you know, new Year's Eve, I worked the whole day. So, anyways, my intuition is pinging me. It's saying Alan, you, you need to refocus, because this game is not sustainable the way you're playing it. So I would say I am listening to my intuition. We used to talk about intuition being a whisper at first, and then, eventually, it becomes a scream if you ignore it. One thing I've been ignoring there's a reason I have glasses on. Right now I Am supposed to do an eye exam, an online eye exam. I Tried to do it and they want you to be 10 feet away and I didn't because I'm not 10 feet away, and I submitted it and they rejected me, so I couldn't get my new prescription and and so now I'm wearing glasses because but intuitively, I've I've known that I've been letting that ride.

Alan:

You called it riding the lightning. When you're riding the lightning, quote-unquote it means you know you're Jeff, and your intuition is telling you to do something. You're ignoring it, you're procrastinating, and so what is intuition? I think intuition is a combination of your highest self, your highest truth, your, your, your accurate perspective of what's really going on inside of you and around you, and I think it's also your subconscious mind, kind of bringing Things up towards your goals and dreams. Last piece of this if you say you want to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks, for example, your intuition is going to ping you every time you're eating pizza. And what I mean by that is your intuition's gonna say hey, alan, you said you wanted to lose weight, not gain it, put down the pizza. And I think we ignore it because we don't want to put down the pizza. And I'm not making that wrong. Everyone ignores their intuition. There's not a single person that I coach who doesn't ignore their intuition.

Alan:

I had someone tell me literally yesterday. I said in hindsight how obvious is it that that relationship was never gonna work? She said, alan, I knew the moment we started dating. And I said and she's like I know how ignorant that sounds, because if I knew, why did I do it. I said that doesn't sound ignorant. That sounds like all of us, all of us have dated someone and been like.

Alan:

Our intuition was like definitely not, this is not your person. And we still did it for sometimes years. I did that. So why do we ignore our intuition? I think it's self-worth. I think self-trust and self-worth is the only way that you can honor your intuition, because if you think you're crazy or you think you're wrong or I couldn't possibly know, you're not gonna trust it. And then, when you don't trust it, you don't build that trust, and then you just ignore it more and more until the pain gets great enough and then eventually you actually do trust it. And so we haven't talked about intuition in a while, but intuition's a big part of my coaching and my own personal development as well.

Kevin:

I think it's hard too when you don't. So let's just say, for the sake of this, for the sake of ease, it's a gut feeling. Let's just say it's a gut feeling. It's a knowing, an unexplainable, unexplainable knowing. I just know, but I can't explain why Gut feeling go with your gut when you get it and you don't trust it and you don't follow through. I don't think it helps you hone it. There's been times when you and I are talking and you'll say something and I'll say no, no, no, this is what it is. And I always say I'm 99% sure, I'm not positive, but I'm 99% sure and I don't know how to explain it. You'll always say, Kev, you don't have to say that. You don't have to say you don't know. If you're sure, like I feel, like you're sure.

Kevin:

That's intuition but I don't know. I genuinely I wanna safeguard myself from saying I know with certainty this is the truth.

Alan:

Well, I think it's a humble thing when you say 99%.

Kevin:

I think, it's important.

Alan:

I appreciate it.

Kevin:

I think it's important yeah, but it very much is. It's probably something that I feel I have more experience with. Maybe I have more, a more deeper understanding of. I've been focused on it longer and with that focus, the experience I've had has been more accurate, and then you can see how intuition is just experience for a lot of us.

Alan:

You did that just before this episode about expenses. Kev's been CFO for two and a half four years, 27 years, yeah, 27. 27, 28 years. Been in business six years. He's been CFO for 27 of them. So he was CFO for two or three years. I honestly don't know, but I became CFO and took on those responsibilities, I was let go.

Alan:

Quarter ago or something Feels like it's been a while, but time goes by fast and slow. It's weird. Whole another episode, but right before this you were talking about expenses and you were saying listen, the team, blah, blah, blah, like it goes quicker than you think.

Alan:

So, I've tracked for longer than you have. You were essentially trying to say my intuition is telling me that we're in trouble unless we make XYZ and we're not actually in trouble. So don't take that the wrong way. If we overinvest any business, if you overinvest, it's dangerous. So Kevin's just saying don't overly invest, keep enough cash on hand to where we're good, because we don't wanna be scarce ever again, essentially. But that was you trusting your intuition and me kinda not trusting you, because my intuition's telling me a different story. But we drove to five. So your intuition's telling us that we might be in trouble if we don't do XYZ. And I'm saying I think we're good. That tends to be what we do anyway.

Alan:

I tend to be overly optimistic, you tend to be overly pessimistic, and so we end up realistic in the middle. And in my mature years mature early years I've come to realize everything. I actually used to think being optimistic was good. I don't even know if I believe that anymore. I think being realistic is the middle. I wanna be centered in everything. I don't wanna be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. That's a whole, nother episode. But I think your intuition is trying to tell you and draw conclusions based on your experience and the data that you have, and I think a lot of it is based on data you don't even know. You have and you do have to trust it, but you also have to stay humble in that, and can anyone ever think of a time when they trusted their intuition and it didn't work out well? And even if it didn't work out well, would you even know it?

Kevin:

I don't know, that's why this is such a hard topic that's what I was going to say is, I wonder, if I think my intuition has come in the way of certain anxieties and certain paranoias, for lack of better phrasing that my intuition is predicting something that could go wrong and I try to find all the ways to not allow it to go wrong. Where with you, you don't think about what's going to go wrong, so it goes wrong, and then you use your intuition to figure out how to get out of it.

Alan:

Yeah.

Kevin:

I would say, I'm more future oriented and more opportunity oriented and you're more A different dimension of the drive to five, in a way.

Alan:

This is good. I would say that I'm constantly thinking of opportunity and opportunity cost. I was talking to actually a client earlier about this and the difference between Kevin and I. So Kevin tends to think short-term, I tend to think long-term. Both have pros and cons. He tends to be more productively paranoid. I tend to be more optimistic. We've talked about drive to five a lot. When it comes to our intuition, I'm more focused on opportunity and he's more focused on potential pitfalls.

Alan:

A good example of this is we hosted a live event once and one of our team members at the time said what if it snows? And I said I never would have thought of that Because it is February or March, I think at the time. No, it was January. It was January, so it very well might snow. I never even thought of that because I'm calibrated. My intuition is calibrated toward opportunity and toward success, and I think this comes down to expectation as well. I think some of us are expecting to succeed. Other people are expecting to fail. So you're constantly looking out for any way you could fail and I'm constantly looking for any way we could succeed, and what's ironic about that is we're both right and we're both wrong. I think one of the reasons we don't trust our intuition is because I don't know if anyone's intuition is 100% accurate. Then, on top of that, there's something called confirmation bias where, let's say, my intuition told me.

Alan:

The best case I can think of is with Emilia. When I first met her, I used to think people that said, when you know, you'll know. Because I used to say like, how do you know? How did you know that was your person, how did you know? And they would say, well, when you know, you know, and when you find your person, you'll know.

Alan:

And I used to think that was the dumbest thing ever when I was an engineering brain. So I was like what? And up until that point I had never felt that way. So of course I'm going to think that's unintelligent. With Emilia now I actually give that advice and when I do, I tell people I used to think this was nuts. I used to be the guy like that makes no sense, you just know how. And now I'm like no, no, you'll know. So intuition is one of those inexplicable things and I want to stay humble with this because I think your fear can disguise itself as intuition, because you might just be afraid, you might be scarce, you might be wrong, and sometimes your fear is pinging you and scarcity is pinging you and it's disguising itself as intuition, when in reality it's just scarcity and fear Abundance can too, though.

Alan:

Of course.

Kevin:

Yeah, I think that's. That's the other thing. One of the when you, you and I were talking about upgrading lifestyles for lack of a better phrase I remember I told you, I said intuitively, I know this will be important for us, but I kept saying I don't know. Man, I'm like 99% sure, but there's a piece of me that just wondering, if I just want to upgrade my lifestyle, yeah, that abundance, that hopefulness you can, yeah, hopefulness in getting a result that you actually want, can also disguise itself as intuition.

Alan:

Well, when you ask the, the question is this fear and scarcity, or is this intuition? Or or a better question is is this your highest self? Because I think you can tell when you ask questions like that.

Kevin:

Yeah, if you ask them often, I think you can.

Alan:

What was it back in the day when we used to do episodes? One of them is I don't even want to swing and the other one is I'm afraid I won't hit the ball. I don't even want to swing. I think is your intuition. I'm not a I'm afraid I won't hit the ball. I think it's fear, and so I think we just confused everybody, probably on this episode.

Kevin:

This is one of those hyper-conscious ones, because it's like I don't. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of intuition, but if you said to me, hey, go do an hour seminar on it, I'd probably say, eh, I'd rather talk about podcasting or something I don't. I just don't feel like I can. I don't know that I have it understood enough where I could do a beginning and closing, and this is what you should take away. I want this to be one of those episodes for you, whether you're watching or listening, that makes you question your intuition, how well you've been leveraging it. Have you been running away from it?

Kevin:

I think sometimes intuition can be guilt. It's that feeling of I know I should be doing this, but I'm not. So, like you said, the whisper, it could be excitement. I think it can show up in so many different ways for so many different people. But, just like everything else, I think it gets better when you use it. I really do. I think as you practice using it more and more, you have more trust in it. If it's a tool, let's just say intuition is a tool the tools that you use the most often are probably the ones that you have the most confidence in. If I gave you a drill and I said here, zip in these 50 screws in your wall, how long do you think it would take?

Alan:

I don't know, I don't have a lot of experience.

Kevin:

If you were a carpenter who did that for a living or a general?

Alan:

contractor who did that?

Kevin:

it might take you five minutes, because you just do this all day. This is nothing.

Alan:

And they could easily answer that yeah, whereas I can't Because they have more experience with it.

Kevin:

It's just. I think it's just one of those things where what first step is identifying what it means to you. What does intuition mean to you? What does it feel like to you? Is it a gut feeling? Is it a knowing? Let's start there From there. How often are you listening to it? How often do you have the courage to say it? I love our relationship because now we just do that behind the scenes Just like, hey man, intuitively, this is what I got. I could be wrong, and then usually we're better off because of it, regardless of whether we go 100% in that direction or we go 100% the other direction. Most often we drive to five and land somewhere in the middle. But it takes courage to admit what your intuition is saying. It can be a very scary thing depending on the people you're around. So all of that would be my next level nugget, I think identifying and defining first and then just seeing what that means and then practicing leaning into intuition, regardless of the discomfort or fear surrounding.

Alan:

My next level, nugget son, I think intuition needs to be calibrated. If you have, what's it, what's it? I'm not a tool guy man. What's a tool that needs to calibrated, to be calibrated? Oh, I'm not really good at.

Kevin:

I mean, I don't know. I don't think most tools do need to be calibrated. Let's just do this. You have to balance your wheels. Your wheels have to be calibrated in your car. I don't know that.

Alan:

So I think that as we grow older, picture a car that has wobbly wheels and then over time, you gradually get smoother and smoother and smoother as you calibrate them. And I think that as you get more experience knowledge plus experience plus reflection I think that you create self-trust and intuition trust. And then you know, you start to learn where you can and can't trust your intuition. And usually you can't trust your intuition whenever it's associated with trauma. So, for example, if you've been really, really, really hurt in an intimate relationship, your intuition is most likely really noisy.

Alan:

And I think that my next level nugget would be try to figure out where you can trust your intuition.

Alan:

So for me, when it comes to long-term success, when it comes to fundamentals that are going to matter long-term, I know that I can trust that.

Alan:

But when it comes to what tool to talk about, to calibrate into it, I got nothing for you. So, knowledge, experience plus reflection, and somewhere in there, if you have 10 out of 10 knowledge, 10 out of 10 experience and 10 out of 10 reflection in a given area, I think you can trust your intuition. That's why Kevin asked me about relationships or coaching calls, because I have 5,000 coaching calls, so I can trust my intuition when it comes to what's best for people. That's my lab. I'm researching what works and what doesn't work every day at this point, 6 days a week, so I can trust myself and what will work for people way more than I used to be able to, but it's not like I could have said as a brand new coach. Well, my intuition says this is what's best for you, and I think that that's what is kind of weird about intuition you got to trust it, but you also can't fully trust it, which is why it's so hard.

Kevin:

Yeah, I have moments where I'll be talking to someone about podcasting or something and I'll get asked a question that I've never been asked or never thought about. And I have an answer and I say it very confidently and I say I'm not sure, I don't know how to explain it, but this is the answer to the best of my ability. I'm not saying it's the end, all be all, because I've gotten bits and pieces.

Kevin:

Yeah it's just. It's like a Lego house, just a bunch of different Legos. It's not one big Lego, it's just a bunch of small ones, brick by brick. Yeah, I got a brick from here, where I learned this about social media, and then I got a brick from this, and when you put all those bricks together, it's a strong enough building, or at least a strong enough foundation, to go off of.

Kevin:

I think that's a good way to explain intuition, but if you've ever had a moment where you say I don't know how to explain it, but that could be an intuitive moment you're having.

Alan:

Yeah, that's far.

Kevin:

We have those very often. Next, if you are looking for a group, a community, a family of like-minded individuals who are into self-improvement, I know at the end of the day, one of the biggest things that holds us back, unfortunately, are the people that surround us. Next will not be that it will help you get to the next level Positive people who are growing every single day and want to help you do that and see you grow to your unique potential. Our private Facebook group link will be in the show notes below, as always.

Alan:

I was on a podcast yesterday or the day before and they asked me where should people go if they want to know what you do? And I thought of the website, because we talk high level about 23 departments and a charity and 21 person team, all this stuff. But I think to myself does anyone, do our listeners really know everything we offer? We obviously know our business model, but do our listeners really know that? So if you go to the website and peruse the website, you'll see all the stuff we've got on there. We've got monthly meetups, we've got book club, we've got optimal, we've got an app. We've got all this stuff and it's all on the website. So peruse the website. If you haven't ever checked it out, there's a lot more that we offer. If you're into this podcast, there's a lot more that we offer. A lot of it's free as well, and just check that out and explore and see what your intuition says to go down next.

Kevin:

Tomorrow for episode number 1,573,. We are cruising through the 1500s Real quick, Kev, yeah sure.

Alan:

For our listeners who are driving and can't click the link in the show notes it's nextleveluniversecom. It's not nextleveluniversitycom. The person who owns that URL is charging way too much for it, so we went with nextleveluniversecom. So this is the podcast Next Level University and the whole universe is at Next Level University. It's at nextleveluniversecom.

Kevin:

Yeah, it's trying to hustle us. Definitely we're going to get it.

Alan:

Oh, eventually, for sure. Yeah, we'll get it, we'll get it?

Kevin:

Yeah, tomorrow, I already said that. Did I say that? No tomorrow for episode number 1,573. Don't worry about getting there fast. Again, there's a little bit of a theme here for the new year. It'll be the first Saturday of the new year when that episode will drop, so we're going to talk about that. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Alan:

Calibrate that intuition Next time on nation.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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