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
#1578 - Do You Actually “Just Trust People Too Much”?
In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros focused on a critical component of human interaction—trust. The conversation will take listeners to understand the delicate balance between trusting too much and not trusting enough. This balance, often called the trust equilibrium, is essential in personal and professional relationships. Navigating the emotional landscape of trust is indeed a tightrope walk. Still, with the right balance, we can stride confidently, expanding our trust circles and embracing the relationships that shape our lives.
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Or Email 💬
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
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Email 💬
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Show notes:
(2:38) Too much and too little
(5:17) Younger Kevin
(12:09) Chad shares how Next Level Podcast Solutions transformed his podcast and provided invaluable assistance along the way.
(12:47) It can be earned over time
(14:57) The importance of trust in relationships
(18:45) Two dimensions of trust
(27:50) 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 our latest episode, episode number 1577. Six questions that will help you understand yourself so much better today. For episode number 1578 do you actually just trust people too much? Got a little snow in New England yesterday, saturday and Sunday and I'm looking out, alan, there's a beautiful sunset over the trees and the snow. It's wonderful.
Speaker 2:New England. I was on a podcast from I Forget where, to be honest. But the very first thing they asked is what's something about where you live that other people should know? Do you know what I said? No, don't give us, I Don't know. I said New England has the most beautiful forests. New England has beautiful forests. Man, I never really, until I started traveling more, you know, I drove across the country and all that. I never really appreciated it. But New England has beautiful forests.
Speaker 1:You tend not to you tend not to appreciate what's right in front of you. Your whole life you know.
Speaker 2:I know fortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just a little side tangent. That's not the point of today's episode. That's not where we're gonna dive into, but I wanted to start with a little scenic Setting, if you will all right, that's really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I appreciate that very much. Okay, I Was reading a book recently that was all about entrepreneurship. I will not talk about that in this episode, but there was a really good perspective where they were talking about there's really two types of people. There's people who Don't trust each don't trust anyone. They don't trust people I don't know why I can't say the word and Over time, they force the person to build trust for them. And the opposite is somebody who trusts everyone and they wait long enough to see whether or not someone proves them right or wrong.
Speaker 1:You and I would talk to so many members of the community early on, talking very or 2018, 2019, and sometimes we would do episodes specifically on Conversations or questions that we got from the community, and a lot of times the thing we would hear is I just trust people too much, I trust people too easily. I trust people too much, I trust people too easily, I get hurt, I get taken advantage of. And now, with this new frame, there's a downside in both of these. The downside if you trust too much let's just say hypothetically is you get hurt more potentially. The downside if you don't trust anyone at all is you don't ever get the opportunity to see the unique benefits of that person or Opportunity or whatever it is may bring to you. So I know a Lot of people feel like they get hurt when they trust too much. But I Think a unique perspective is you can get hurt a lot worse just not know it if you don't trust at all. And I just think trust is one of those weird things.
Speaker 1:I had someone asked me a question one time. They said, hey, my partner didn't cheat on me or anything, but they were talking to someone else and I feel like there was some emotional cheating. I wasn't physically cheated on, but I feel like I was emotionally cheated on in a way and the trust has definitely been broken. What do I do? And I said honestly, you have to be okay for the foreseeable future with questioning absolutely everything that this person is doing and just running it through in your brain and being paranoid and being terrified until you get over it. I don't know if there is a better answer If you plan on staying with this person for a long period of time. Obviously we have to communicate and the person can do their best to rebuild trust, but the truth of the matter is you're going to have to figure out whether or not you want to work through that discomfort over the next year, two years, three years.
Speaker 2:You had a time when you had trouble with people putting their phone down.
Speaker 1:No, 100%, 100%.
Speaker 2:Can you talk about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Now let me preface it. Okay, if you laugh, I'm going to have to can the whole episode. Okay, you want to be ready for that? I just laughed. You said something funny. Is that fair, yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I'm ready.
Speaker 1:No, you're going to laugh because I'm going to hit it. I'm going to hit it real and I'm going to hit it like it is.
Speaker 2:Some of this is straight out of a sitcom. Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1:That's all I'm saying yeah, I'm not proud of this. I've never been the type of person to snoop through someone's phone. That was like something you just don't do, but I, intuitively, I could just tell. With one of my partners, I could just tell something just didn't feel right. I don't know how to explain it, but I just I don't know, I had the opportunity. I think I was probably 23 at this point, younger, kev 22, 23. I said you know what? I'm going to look through this film I have to, that's 11 years ago it is truly mind blowing.
Speaker 1:It is truly mind blowing.
Speaker 2:When you say younger Kev, you're talking like way.
Speaker 1:Younger Kev A third A third of my age, younger as well 11 years will change a lot. A lot has changed. My partner at the time went upstairs, saw the phone. All right, let's take a look. Let's take a look, don't laugh, don't laugh. One of the messages this person was talking to someone named Steve. Oh no, I remember this one.
Speaker 1:All right, this is a person that they were going to school with or they were going to class with, I don't know they were doing something with. This was always brutal. One of the messages I can't, kev, I can't, I got to turn it off. I got to turn it off. No, it's so bad. One of the messages you know I'm going to I can't say it without laughing was I can't wait for Kev to go on the road again, something like I can't wait for him to leave again because I'm sick of him. Something like that.
Speaker 1:Because I was traveling a lot for work at the time and I remember yeah, I remember reading that and it was like, oh my God, I didn't know a human being could overheat as much as I am overheating right now. I am nervous, sweating and angry, sweating and sad sweating and embarrassed sweating and shame sweating. I didn't realize you could sweat as much as I'm sweating. So, yeah, that was my, that was my experience with that. It was brutal. It was. It was brutal. But that's that's why this person asked me, because they said I know that's kind of happened to you in the past. And I said here's the thing that nobody talks about, or I never understood. I won't say nobody talks about it. Yeah, you can work through it, but the work you're going to have to do is you questioning everything, probably for a long period of time.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there's a way around that I have no idea.
Speaker 1:When you walk on the ice and you fall through, you're probably going to be more careful around the ice next time. I don't know if there's a way around, oh for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course it's. It's. It's in its own little mini form of PTSD. You know, you get in a car accident. I, after my car accident at 26, I kept getting pulled over because I was too far on the right side of the road, because I ended up there was snow banks actually up in New Hampshire yeah, up in New Hampshire, where you live and it was back in 2016 when the awful winter and the snow banks were covering the yield sign. So I ended up on the wrong side of the road, crossed the double yellows Don't do that and I kept getting pulled over for like months after that because I was so I was hugging my side of the road and I kept popping tires because I kept going too far on my side of the road.
Speaker 2:But that's PTSD. I mean you when you get really, really, really hurt emotionally, because I was physically okay, but emotionally I was not at all from that car accident because my father passed away. For the new listeners my father passed away in a car accident when he was 28. And when I got in my car accident I was 26. So this really messed me up. But that's what happens. Is you you kind of overcorrect?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you fall through the ice, you're going to you're not even going to want to go on foot, like you're not going to want to go on ice at all.
Speaker 2:So, that's why exposure therapy is so important. You have to slowly expose yourself again, and I talked about how I struggled with costrophobia. I had to purposely like puff my chest up walking through doorways and stuff like that after that car accident. But and this is the stuff people don't talk about but for you, Kev, you, you basically had to put the phone, or you didn't like it when your partner would put the phone down. My partner.
Speaker 1:After that I said hey, just, I don't know, can I share something with you? And they said, yeah. I said when you, when you have your phone flipped upside down and it's face down, I don't know. I have trust issues going on, it gives me like a ton of anxiety. I trust you, but I also trusted my, my past partner, and that blew up in my face and I don't know, I don't know, come save me, do something I don't know. I don't know, I don't know require or anything.
Speaker 2:Did you do that with Taryn?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've mentioned that many times, but it's wonderful because, again, I don't know Taryn has the. I don't have a password on my phone. She uses my phone all the time. I use her phone all the time. Obviously, it's different. We're married and we're older now, but it took years to rebuild that trust.
Speaker 2:Which end are you on? Too much trust or too little? You probably swung both ways, because you were probably too much and then too little. After that, right, I'd say probably too much.
Speaker 1:Same. Yeah, I like to give people a chance, but now again, I'm also very you and I have had talks with this. I'm very weird with if I give you, if I trust you and I give you a chance, and then you burn me, whatever you could just go. I'm not gonna really think about it too too much. That's just I don't know. I don't know if that comes from being abandoned as a child. I don't know, I don't really know where that comes from. But I'm very quick, Say it. Probably I would say that has to have something to do with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The proof is in the pudding somewhere. I'm very quick with that, but I also because I feel like I've had a lot of people that have put a lot of trust in me relatively quickly. So I think that's kind of the way I am, but I guess real quick before you go. The whole point of this episode is, no matter what end you're on, there is some sort of detriment. Either you lock amazing people out for your life and again I know this sounds pretty hardcore or you let some toxic people in forever. I don't know. Yeah, you can get better with it. Your intuition gets better, your radar gets better, but you are opening up yourself to one of these two issues and just the understanding of that. As always, that really is the goal for me in this is just the awareness of it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's drive to five. Like all things, there's a, it's Goldilocks, it's too hot, too cold, too much trust, too little. I actually thought Kev of a. I think I told you this optimal stopping problem is something that I am constantly talking about and for the math minds if there are any anyone out there that loves the mathematics underneath this, it's really just like the max point. So everyone's seen a graph X, y, and then there's like a upside down horseshoe and it's the max point. So too much of something, you end up losing performance. Too little of something, you end up losing performance, and the max is in the middle. So optimal stopping the best way to describe it is this you put in something in the microwave, you put the nachos in for too long and the cheese is nasty and it's burnt and it's not good. You put the nachos in for too short and the cheese isn't melted also not good. How long?
Speaker 1:you put your nachos in A minute and a half A minute and a half. I had nachos last night. 30 seconds 30 seconds Perfect.
Speaker 2:We do the fat free cheddar cheese. I don't know if this is made out of plastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's not real.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not real. There's no fat in this cheddar cheese, it's all protein and it takes a lot longer to melt. The fat molecules are not in there to make it, but anyways, and also big plate of nachos. This is not like a little bit of nachos.
Speaker 1:I don't know who the hell you think you're talking to honestly, but you better watch your tone.
Speaker 2:You also might have a more powerful microwave, I don't know. Okay, so here's my point. That's an optimal stopping problem With trust. It's the same deal. Are you trusting this person too much or too little? And I think trust can be earned over time. At this point with Kev, we've been in business together for seven years. I think I can trust him with our finances.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I want you to think. Now is when I start siphoning money from the business Nice.
Speaker 2:And so he's been slowly siphoning money from the business for the last seven years and building my trust along the way. No, but if you trust someone too much, out of the gate you're gonna get burned. If you trust them too little, you're gonna to Kevin's point you're gonna not give anyone a chance and push people away and that kind of thing. And I think that one of the reasons why people it's called keeping someone at arm's length. I have one client right now who just met someone who they're going on probably four or so months and she is so scared to fall in love again. And I said what does your intuition tell you? She's like that, it's great, it's gonna be great. And I said you gotta trust that, because last time the reason why you're struggling right now is because you trusted someone too much, so her past relationship was really toxic. And I said what does your intuition tell you? Back then she said I don't know why I did it. It said definitely not. It said don't do it.
Speaker 1:And I said okay.
Speaker 2:well, what's your intuition? Tell you now. And she said do it, it's good, it feels sometimes the same, but your intuition knows it's not the same. And so I said you're about to ruin something. That I think is great. And I'm objective. And, by the way, the past relationship you were in I thought was terrible. So I'm objective here. So that's one of the cool things about a coach is they can say, they can say objectively, from outside the frame, that this was not a good choice. This was a good choice. And then you can kind of ping pong your intuition off of that.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, this person trusted too much in the past, got burnt and now is not trusting enough. And I think we all are constantly doing that. You over-trust and, yeah, you will get hurt. But if you under-trust you're going to be alone. And so you know, are you at five For me?
Speaker 2:I tended to over-trust. I over-trusted my whole life and I think that I over swung a little bit, maybe even recently, to be honest. Now I think I have trust issues a little bit, not with Emilia and intimate relationships, but I'll give you an example. So on the NLU team, I used to be much more quick to trust people to come on the team and to be on this mission and to. And I got cold feet now at this stage because we've had some negative experiences and there's a team member that I'm so grateful we had come on the team. But I remember telling Kev like I'm scared. I'm scared to let anyone else in. You know, I don't want to let another Trojan horse in the castle, so to speak. And so, yeah, we all either trust too much or too little.
Speaker 2:I think it's important to at least ask the question. And if you trust too much, you're probably giving people the benefit of the doubt and you're going to be let down sometimes, but you're probably going to live a more wholehearted life and you're probably going to grow from that pain. If you trust people too little, you're going to shut everybody out and you're going to have strong boundaries and a lot of self-respect, but you might not be as collaborative or have a big enough team or whatever to achieve, because you can't achieve much on your own. That's one thing that's really important to understand. You cannot achieve much on your own. Seriously, I've really learned that in my 30s. Without a team, you are jeft.
Speaker 2:I mean it's important to have people that are climbing with you to the betterment of all. And, as fortune cookie as that might sound, it really is so true. I mean Emilia and I, kevin myself, emilia and Taryn, kevin myself, emilia, taryn and the NLU team, kevin myself, emilia Taryn, bianca and the entire Evolve team, the entire we team we have, and then the whole community. Better together is so true, it's so true but it's dangerous.
Speaker 2:It's dangerous because you let people in and they are toxic and you have to block them, and I know a lot of our listeners have dealt with stalkers. It's really dangerous. But it's also that's what life is. It's risk and reward and hopefully you get smarter and smarter and smarter along the way and hopefully you don't let a lot of toxic people in.
Speaker 1:To go a deeper level or change it in a different way. In this book I think it's called Beyond Entrepreneurship by Jim Collins, so I'll make sure I give credit to the author. But he talked about the two types of trust character and competence. You trust someone's character. If this has always been my frame and again, maybe it sounds a little crude I don't mean it in that way. But if I was traveling and I don't want to use Tyran, I don't want to use my wife, but when I was younger I would say that's the type of person if I was traveling I would be totally, I'd feel totally safe with my partner staying at their place. I would never worry about that. Where there are probably I don't know whether you're watching or listening if you have these people in your life, I don't know. But you might say I would never let my or I'd never want my partner to be over there without me because that person's kind of a creep. But I don't. Yeah, that's a character thing. That's a character thing. A competence thing is I don't trust that person.
Speaker 1:We hired those people. They came over and they tried to fix the attic. I don't really trust them because they fell through the ceiling. It's like, okay, maybe we're not gonna have them back, but there's different-. Those are good questions. Yeah, there's different levels of trust.
Speaker 2:You can tell which one you do, because one of the questions is much better. What One? Of the questions is would I trust my partner alone at their house? And the other one was what?
Speaker 1:Would I hire that person again? Would I go back to that restaurant? There you go. How's the service? How's the food? Would I go back to that restaurant, yes or no? I don't trust the fact that the food is gonna be quality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't trust that sushi. I don't trust that they prepared it properly and it doesn't have parasites or whatever. Yeah, competence and character, that's a good framework.
Speaker 1:That's from the book. That's from the book, so I cannot like Jim Collins Beyond. Entrepreneurship 2.0 is the book.
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting, kev, I overly trusted on competence. For sure, that's. One of my biggest issues in life was I looked for competence instead of character?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you also not you, the collective, you, a lot of us assume most people are gonna be the way that we are Like I'm never gonna be as thorough as you. I'm working towards it, but that's just if you expect me to be the same level coming from the get. If you and I start working together and you're like, yeah, he'll probably be pretty thorough, like what do you think pretty thorough is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, compared to what do I?
Speaker 1:think it is. I read it over, looked good, sent it, you know, sent it off Versus something else and the character thing too Same.
Speaker 2:There's another question too is would I leave $1,000 on the table at their house? Would I leave my wallet at their house? Hmm, you know, that kind of thing Would I yeah.
Speaker 1:I love questions like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really good, david I. There's certain people. I mean Christina is a great example, just a random example, but I would leave my wallet out right on the table, not a big deal. Christina is so trustworthy. I would rather have that than competence any day of the week. And Christina, you're also very competent, so thank you. But, like, character is more important. I'm convinced it's more important. I agree you need both. You do need both, but it's more important Competence. Put it this way Brandon you're a great example of this. He came to us interviewed and he's like I don't have any skills, but I'll work really hard. I would put my wallet out on the table at that dude's house any day of the week. And, brandon, you can train competence.
Speaker 1:I can coach competence.
Speaker 2:I can't coach character Seriously, man. So character over everything is a motto we used to have way back and I think that maybe for the listeners back to trust, if you're gonna trust people too much, make sure it's on character, not on competence.
Speaker 1:Last thing before we go. My favorite question for a judgment of character is if you had a child, would you want your child to date the type of person that someone is? I usually say that with myself, like if I had a child, and again don't think this is, I don't mean it in a weird way, but if I had a child and eventually they grew up to be a young adult and they were dating someone and eventually they fell in love with that person, they got married, would I be okay if the person that they married was similar to me, with my character, with the way I treat them? I think that's a really good friend, really really really really Very deep question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love my deep questions. Anything you wanna add before we let's get out of here.
Speaker 2:Next level nugget is if you're gonna trust, make sure you're trusting on character. That's it Short and sweet. A lot of the mistakes I made in life was not being honest about someone's character.
Speaker 1:My next level nugget would be do not tell vulnerable stories to Alan, because he'll make you talk about them publicly on a podcast and then laugh at you for that. No, totally kidding. What would my next level nugget be? For every upside there's a downside. For every downside there's an upside. Oftentimes, the things that we think are keeping us the safest are also keeping us the most lonely.
Speaker 2:That's what I would say the safe, there it is.
Speaker 1:Right in live I was thinking to myself this is going to be a really powerful one-liner. And then my brain just shut off, that's safe.
Speaker 2:That was the end of the script. Keeping us the safe.
Speaker 1:If you, next level nation, are looking for a group of like-minded humans who are into self-improvement, who like having deep conversations I love having deep conversations, my favorite thing in the world. That is exactly why we talk about what we talk about, and the community is the way it is, because we all value very similar things Please join our private Facebook group, next level nation 715, something like that. Member strong, something like that, but we'd love to have you in there. Link will be in the show notes, as always.
Speaker 2:All right, let me see if I can do this. Hold on, let me see what.
Speaker 1:I can do in. All right, hold on. Can you give me to do a little singing? Yes, please, let's see Some people want it all. But, Jeff doesn't know what he's looking for. He's rolling through his phone, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Looking real lost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, forgot to order contact lenses, so he's rocking glasses now. This is the decision.
Speaker 2:Excellent work.
Speaker 1:How are you? Are you getting any closer at all?
Speaker 2:I am getting closer. Yes, I've got this.
Speaker 1:I promise.
Speaker 2:Thank you everyone for your time. We really appreciate you. I'm being playful. Your call is very important to us. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1:You are number. I'm getting there. I promise you have anything to preface it with at all. You want to let us know what you're doing for the people that are just listening.
Speaker 2:Here we go, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Here we go.
Speaker 1:It's better be the best thing I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 2:The first group, ambitious army. Second group gratitude with attitude. Many of our listeners were in these groups, so this is cool. This is cool Celebrating.
Speaker 1:Roughly 120. 120-ish 123. Yeah, 3.
Speaker 2:3. Group 3. Tribe of abundance Shout out to tribe of abundance if you were in that group. Group 4. Pursuit of excellence Shout out to you if you're in that group. Pursuit of excellence. Group 5. Legacy by design. Group 6. G6. And yes, we did open that one Playing that song. Yeah, we did. Group 7. Aspiration nation Nice Group 8. Goalkeepers Group 9. Operation breakthrough. Group 10. Powerhouse Group 11. Ignite Group 12. Growth gurus Congrats to growth gurus. They just graduated from group coaching at the end of December. And then group 13. Shout out to group 13. They are currently running. That is group 13. Team breakthrough. And if you want to be a part of group 14, email me, alan at nextleveluniversecom. That's it. That's all I've got.
Speaker 1:What was your favorite team name thus far If you had to pick Now all amazing team names?
Speaker 2:But I have a favorite, yeah, I do have a favorite, hold on. Hold on. Ah, you know what mine is Pursuit of excellence.
Speaker 1:Aspiration nation. For me it's a good one, it's a really good one. It flows so nicely it flows really well.
Speaker 2:It's a good foundation nation that is excellent.
Speaker 1:Speaking of flowing nicely, let's flow on nicely to tomorrow's episode. Tomorrow, for episode number 1579. A dangerous cycle for your relationship. Alan and Emilia have coached many a relationship and that means Alan is getting lessons with these coaching calls and he has a lesson that he wanted to share for tomorrow's episode. So that is what we're going to do tomorrow. My chair Out here. Yeah, as always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and an NLU. We do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Trust the right amount.
Speaker 1:Next subination Nice, good Nice. Now we wait four hours later. No-transcript.
