Next Level University

#1579 - A Dangerous Cycle For Your Relationship

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Share episode

Have you ever held back from speaking your truth, only to watch silence breed misunderstanding and arrogance in a relationship? In today’s episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros delved deep into the silent battles many face in relationships – the struggle to communicate assertively and uphold one's self-worth. The silence that often blankets our most profound truths can suffocate, leading to misunderstandings and even arrogance on the part of a partner who remains unaware of our inner turmoil. Break free from that cycle and foster relationships built on mutual respect and balanced dynamics.

Links mentioned:
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Free Course Teaser - http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

______________________

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

The best way to track your habits is here! Download the app: Optimal - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/optimal/    

_______________________

Any of these communities or resources are FREE to join and consume
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700       
Next Level 5 To Thrive (free course) - ​​https://bit.ly/3xffver     
Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/   
Next Level Monthly Meetup:  https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/  
_______________________

We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email.

Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/   

LinkedIn ✍
Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-palmieri-5b7736160/   
Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/   

Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

_______________________

Show notes:
(3:07) Struggling with courage
(7:01) Build self-worth
(9:29) Fear of expression
(11:29) Four pillars of self-worth
(14:24) Chad shares how Next Level Podcast Solutions transformed his podcast and provided invaluable assistance along the way.
(16:30) Investing in self-Worth
(18:13) Relationship dynamics
(24:26) 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 your wealth. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1578. Do you actually just trust people too much? Excuse me today for episode number 1579 a dangerous cycle for your Relationship. So, as you know or you may not know if you are a new listener of NLU Alan and I meet on Mondays and we say alright, what do we want to do for episodes this week based on our experiences, based on the stories, based on what we're going through, based on what we're learning, and Then we'll kind of go from there.

Kevin:

And Alan said I have a, an episode about relationships that I think would be super powerful from what I've learned from the we and the conscious couples Podcast and the coaching I've done. So I said all right, man, I'm gonna give you the mic, I'll pass it to you. Don't fumble, don't drop the ball. Make it awesome and I'm gonna take off. So here's Alan Lazarus, hailing from Uxbridge Massachusetts. Class of 2007 From Uxbridge High.

Alan:

Here he is.

Kevin:

Stage is yours, my friend.

Alan:

Thank you brother, for that amazing introduction. I'm so happy to be here.

Kevin:

Yeah, we're grateful to have you next level university grateful to have you, you funny man.

Alan:

So how do I contextualize this? First and foremost, relationship talks, coaching is something you, me and I do together. It's really quite cool, some of the some of the best lessons I've ever learned. Or in that because I, I just I try to be transparent with my listeners I feel like Relationships were never, never came easy to me. I wasn't very good at this stuff. I don't feel like I was naturally very courageous or vulnerable or Particularly good at communication. I used to actually think I was good at communication. Now I've started saying I think I'm good at communication for a computer engineer, which I think is funny, but anyways, so.

Alan:

So this episode is a vicious cycle that Emilia came up with, not me, but it makes a lot of sense, and now I see it everywhere.

Alan:

And the vicious cycle in the relationship arena so mostly intimate relationship, but really any relationship is one partner struggles with courage to Express yourself, to express concerns, to give feedback, to be honest with yourself and your partner, whatever it is, and then, because of that, the other partner tends to unintentionally be arrogant. Now there's two types of arrogance. There's like intentional, toxic I'm the man type of arrogance. And then there's just like the accidental, low self-awareness, arrogance that comes from not getting feedback over time. And so if you've ever eaten humble pie before like trying something really hard that looked easy you get humble pie and you just get humbled. And then you're humble because you're naturally humble person who just kind of gets distorted because that's human nature. And If you're in a relationship with someone who is someone who struggles with courage, you're gonna end up a little bit arrogant without even knowing it.

Alan:

And Emilia doesn't struggle with courage to express herself. She tends to tell me difficult feedback pretty easily. I struggle more than she does, and what's ironic about this is she's actually asking for more feedback than I am. So in my relationship, if I'm not courageous in my communication when I think that she's not optimal in something, what's a good example of this? So we'll be doing finances and I obviously studied math and finance a lot more in business school and that tends to be a strength of mine. So she's asking me for feedback, she's asking me to teach her, she's asking me to tell her what's optimal and all that stuff. And I struggle because I don't want her to feel bad about herself and on top of that, I also struggle to communicate. So this is the cycle One partner, like me, is a coward unintentionally but just scared to offend, scared to give feedback.

Alan:

And then partner two is asking for feedback, not getting it, probably giving a lot of feedback, which might actually make the cowardice even higher.

Alan:

And so what happens in these relationships that we coach is usually there's one partner who is overly docile and one partner who's overly dominant, not on purpose, just because there's one partner that's not giving feedback and one partner that is, and that can be really dangerous, because if the more cowardly partner, or the one who lacks courage, I think is a better way to say it, because no one wants to be called a coward, even though I think I've been pretty cowardly in the past the partner who tends to shell up rather than speak up oftentimes will suppress, suppress, suppress, and then they'll volcano, they'll erupt, and then that's when too much feedback in too short a time can create a fight or an argument or something really, really negative.

Alan:

In my relationship with Emilia, fortunately, I've only ever tea-cettled, I've never volcanoed, and tea-cettling is something I've phrased as when the tea is done, it starts to whistle and it starts to get boiling, and I've been there a few times in my relationship, but I fortunately didn't get it at Emilia. It was kind of just speaking into the room, so to speak, and so that might be happening in your relationship. If you are someone who struggles with courage, like me, at expressing yourself, then your partner might unintentionally be a little arrogant or lack humility in certain things, where you feel unseen or unheard, when in reality the source of it is just you just aren't giving feedback.

Kevin:

And I think that that's kind of what everybody's afraid to get into. When you look at like a sitcom, usually the relationship is not good and usually one of the people is super arrogant and the other one gets walked on.

Kevin:

That tends to be the way the relationships are on sitcoms. This is another thing too. If you have a group let's just say you have a friend group of five people and there's, like, the unconscious, leader of the group a lot of that is just, it's just social positioning and energetic positioning. That's something you and I have talked a lot about behind the scenes, where sometimes somebody gets so used to getting their way and being quote, unquote right all the time that that kind of becomes their identity. And what we're kind of talking about in this relationship is resetting the relationship.

Alan:

All right, sorry. Until Kev hangs out with him and says hey, I'll put you down.

Kevin:

Well, it depends on the person. It depends on the person. That's always been one of my favorite things. It's like if you were to step outside, we would be just fine you know that was a very unique case and I think that person needed it. I think it definitely reset the relationship.

Alan:

You know it definitely did. It definitely did.

Kevin:

Now maybe that was too much, but I would say, probably not based on the circumstances and the specifics, but what we're talking about is resetting the relationship. I remember in 2018, I think it was I was dating someone, and it makes sense now I was. I had just left my job. Here I am like a new entrepreneur. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I remember there was a lot of conversations I had with the person that I was dating where I tried to reset the relationship of you don't really understand, like.

Kevin:

I appreciate your feedback, I do, but you don't really know what you're talking about and I know you don't know. You don't know what you're talking about. I don't mean this to be rude, I don't mean this to be condescending, but I just have a higher awareness on this. I remember some of those conversations, and even to the point where, at the time, I remember that person was talking about how. I don't remember what it was, but it was like Alan really has a lot of power in the business and I was like Alan's supposed to have a lot of power, but he's the CEO, he's the guy, and I just remember this person just not getting it. They just and I had to say like you don't have to understand, but you can't question every decision. I just need you to trust me. You just got to trust me with some of this stuff. That was a relationship I didn't desire to maintain, so I didn't necessarily pour as much as I could have. But that's just an example as well.

Alan:

Yeah, this was a huge weakness for me. I think in some cases it was a weakness for Kev too. So if you resonate with Kevin and I, you probably have this weakness to some extent as well. I think our listeners tend to struggle sometimes to stand up for themselves and I really want to encourage people to do that. I think there's four ways to build self-worth. I've been thinking a lot about this because I had I've been pulling up this sort of quadrant with my clients often these days.

Alan:

I really think leadership comes down to helping someone build their self-belief and their self-worth. I think that's what leadership is Like. Yeah, you're harmonizing people in a direction, but I just want to help people build those two things Self-belief and self-worth. And from the outside in, a lot of people think like they appear to have high self-belief when in reality they don't, and they appear to have high self-worth when they really don't. So you kind of got to try to look from the inside out, which is hard to do when someone's not vulnerable. But to bring this relevant to this episode, the people with lower self-worth really have a hard time often speaking up for themselves, like you in that situation. It's like you didn't want to be toxic, so you didn't want to say hey, just so you know. You really don't know what you're talking about.

Kevin:

Yeah, yeah.

Alan:

But and you don't want her to feel bad about herself but at the same time it's like how many businesses have you started? And because we've been bullied we don't like to be bullies and every now and then you just got to you gotta ask the question how many businesses exactly have you started? It's a little toxic, but it's like, and then they go well, none, oh. So how many degrees do you have in business?

Kevin:

I can't say that because I don't have any either. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. I'm falling myself out. You know what I mean?

Alan:

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Not a lot of ground to stand on. On that one At least.

Kevin:

I went to college, that's fair, okay, how? Many podcasts have you started and grown, and globally. That's right, tell them, tell them.

Alan:

Every now and then you just gotta stand up for yourself. So the four ways to build self-worth real quick if you struggle with courage like me. Number one set and honor boundaries. Set and honor boundaries. That was Kevin, trying to set a boundary of like, listen, you don't really know how we're designing our business and you don't know what's optimal. So you know, don't try to tell me how to run my business. That's a boundary. That's funny. Number two, and in hindsight it's like come on.

Kevin:

Well, yeah, but also now I realize that I could have done a better job of explaining it or opening up the conversation. At least right Now I have more data than I did back then. I was a new entrepreneur. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Yeah.

Alan:

Now it's almost like you knew what you were talking about more than you gave yourself credit for, but you really didn't know what you were talking about. Compared to now.

Kevin:

Yeah, yeah, I would say, that's fair.

Alan:

Yeah. Number two is keep and honor the small promises to yourself, to yourself. And when you say you're gonna work out, work out. When you say you're gonna do mobility, do mobility. When you say you're gonna write, write. I've been working a lot on that this year. And number three is stand up for yourself, which is when you do get bullied. You have to have the courage to just call it the F out. You gotta. You gotta stand up for yourself. That was really hard for me, for sure. I think I'm doing a much better job now and now I am super toxic, no, but you do. You gotta stand up for yourself. And then the fourth one what was it? So, keep the small promises, honor boundaries, set honor boundaries, stand up for yourself.

Alan:

There was one more that was super important oh, invest in yourself. Yeah, you gotta invest in yourself, you gotta. You gotta get that personal trainer or you gotta, you know, go to the chiropractor or go to the spa or get that massage, or hire a coach or do group coaching, or buy that course. I have a course I bought and I've actually been listening to it every single morning no exaggeration in 2024, but it's 275 bucks a month for like a whole year. It's expensive, course, but I've been using it for probably about a year now and it's been super helpful, super, super helpful.

Alan:

And I think there's something about investing in yourself that does something to you Because it tells your subconscious and unconscious brain that you're worth it. You're worth the money, you're worth the time, you're worth the effort, and I think it's more about a self-worth thing than anything. I mean, I hear about these coaches that charge way more than the value of the coaching, but what I do think that happens is the big price point of investing in self. I do think does something to people, even though maybe the coaching isn't up the bar, in my opinion anyways.

Kevin:

No, that's fair. I would say that's fair. I think the common mistake is you get a lot of external things. I go buy a TV. I told you I was a guy who would go buy a big TV, and we were joking about it.

Alan:

That's not gonna help myself worth.

Kevin:

But if I say I spent $1,000 on a TV, but I took that $1,000 and I bought a series of books and then I really was proud of the way I was going through the books and learning and taking the things I learned and putting them into practice and seeing results, I think that's like an investment in yourself, Really saying I'm gonna do this for my benefit long term and my self trust. And if you just think of it as I'm putting a new garage on the house, the value of the home is going to increase. I'm putting new knowledge into my brain. The value of me as a human is going to increase, Not intrinsic value, but maybe we would just say like value to capability ratio, hypothetically.

Alan:

Here's the problem, though, Kev we buy a bunch of books and don't read them, and it actually hurts our self worth. That is fair, so it ends up going in the other direction. That's why the keep the small promises thing is so important. Don't try to buy 50 books and read 50 books. Buy one book and try to finish it so that you actually invest in yourself. So it's almost like a good analogy to your point is you put a new garage in but you don't finish it? You leave it half empty, half finished. No one's gonna it's not gonna increase the value of the house until the reno is done, and so make sure you complete your reno's.

Kevin:

One of my favorite ways to approach this. I guess maybe it's not directly connected to this, but, tara, she has a preface that she'll say before she asked me a question, she'll say this isn't usually, it'll be I have a question for you, can I ask? And I'll say yeah, and she'll say it's not. I don't want it to come off as judgmental, I'm just genuinely curious and it'll be some sort of question where, if that wasn't preface, I might have gotten I won't say a maybe triggered in some way. But that's a really good way to kind of open up the dialogue. That way. The other side of things and this is probably what I would have done in the past if I had the knowledge I have today instead of saying, look, just trust me in what I do, I think I would probably try to and I've tried to do a better job with Tara of let me try to explain to you my thinking.

Kevin:

I cannot guarantee that we will ever be on the same page 100%. Is that my goal? Yeah, I would love for that. Is that realistic? Probably not, probably not. But let me try to explain the deeper thoughts that I have about it. That way we can have a deeper conversation and maybe we can try to move closer to the middle with our understanding. Is that always gonna happen? No, but I do think there's a constructive way to be on Either end of this. Just awareness is the first step. What end? So this would be my next level nugget. What end do you find yourself on? Typically, our audience is Extremely heart driven human beings, so I would. I would argue that you probably won't be the the more toxic side of the relationship, but you never know. So that would be my next level nugget is where would you self identify yourself as first?

Alan:

well, I also want to make this clear that I think that the overly dominant in the relationship can be very, very toxic, and I think overly is probably the extent of the Overdominant versus just dominant in general. I don't know if I think empowered is a better word. If you have a very empowered partner and you're the less empowered partner, usually it's a self-worth issue and that doesn't. But I do want to make it clear it doesn't necessarily mean it's toxic, because I've seen relationships one, one Couple, that we coach. We've coached them for a very long time. One of them is naturally very humble, but but she doesn't get humbled enough because the other partners is Struggles to communicate their, their courageous truth, and so what relationship talks coaching has done for this couple is, you know, the male in the relationship has. I coach him too and he's really told me a lot of the things that are challenging and I've just been giving her a lot of feedback that he's too scared to give her and a lot of cool things about couples.

Alan:

Counseling or relationship talks coaching or whatever is. It's a triangulation where Instead of talking at your partner, you're basically talking over there to someone else and it's and then that person's kind of relaying it. So it's almost like you're talking to your therapist or your coach and then the other partners like, oh, I didn't know, you Felt that way, like that. That's never, because when you're direct at each other sometimes it can be very triggering. So I just want to make it clear that just because you are super empowered or Maybe a little arrogant every now and then unintentionally it might actually be because you're not your partner's not giving feedback. It's not actually because you're naturally not humble. You just you just aren't getting the humble pie that you probably should be based on the other person living in the truth. So Last thing I'll share.

Alan:

It's my next level nugget is my past relationships.

Alan:

There's Several that I think my partners that too, in particular, that I think my partners were actually pretty arrogant, but I think that me being less courageous and not being able to communicate effectively definitely didn't help that. But there's one partner that I had in the past that wasn't arrogant at all and when she was being quote-unquote arrogant or maybe trying to understand, I I think that I didn't do a good job of just Courageously communicating, whereas if I did, it would have broken this cycle, this toxic cycle of one person lacks courage, the other person ends up with lower awareness, thinking they have higher awareness, which is quote-unquote arrogance. I could have broke that cycle with my own courage, whereas one of the partners I'm thinking of I definitely couldn't have, no matter how hard I tried, because that person was actually just arrogant. So I think it's something to check in with and you know, maybe you're the the the one who struggles with courage, maybe you're the one who struggles with humility, but Check in on that and and see what you can do.

Kevin:

I appreciate the reframe of not not necessarily toxic, because I did use the word toxic, so I appreciate that that reframe very much. If you, my friends, are looking for a community of like-minded people and you love Facebook, you like being on Facebook. I know a lot of our audience likes Facebook. We have a Facebook group called next level nation and it's all about positive stuff. Like this. You can have open, honest, vulnerable conversation About what's real, because I know we're all going through our own stuff behind the scenes and not everybody has a safe place to share that. So if you are looking for that, please click the link in the show notes and it will take you to next level nation. We'd love to have you.

Alan:

So we have a course coming out in February called Seven simple steps to a next level you seven modules. We like seven at NLU. Seven modules, seven videos, seven simple steps to a next level you. It's a free course. It's a free course. We will be announcing that in February. I just wanted to tease it here, and we have other courses on the website too. So if you want to go to the website and check that out, we have something called the next level five to thrive. That's also a free course. We also have a paid one.

Kevin:

I think that's next level live 2022, an event that you can pay for as well right on tomorrow for episode number 1580, an answer we all know but we hate to hear. I think you and I have come to a realization that Coaching has gotten harder. It's gotten easier in many ways most ways but it's gotten harder in one way and we're gonna talk a little bit about that tomorrow. Well said, I appreciate that very much.

Alan:

I appreciate that very much. It's like what does he? I gotta tune in for that I could be talking about anything. I could be talking about anything, who knows?

Kevin:

I don't even know what I'm talking about most of the time. You know what I mean I do, do you know? So you do know what I mean I do yeah. All right, as always, we love you. We appreciate you. Shout out to my chair for not whipping me back in this episode. I'm grateful.

Alan:

I'm grateful.

Kevin:

I didn't change anything. I have shingles if you're watching or listening, whether you're watching or listening. So I'm in a I'm like trying to hold on real tight so I don't move too much. Amen.

Alan:

Shingles. Is that like an adult chicken pox?

Kevin:

So in a way, but it's a neural, it's more neurological, where I have more pain internally than I do. My skin hurts, but my muscles are really bad. Neurological means brain.

Alan:

Okay, so let me rephrase that it's nerve Central nervous system. Yeah, there you go. Cns central nervous system.

Kevin:

My. I went to the doctor and she showed me a graph of like the I think they're called nodes or nodules or something and you have them that run off your spine.

Alan:

Mm-hmm.

Kevin:

And my the where I am inflamed is like C11 or something. I don't know. I just nodded or it was like that's pretty cool, I'm learning, but it sucks. Did you have chicken pox as a kid? Yes, you have to have chicken pox in order to get shingles, so I can't transmit shingles. But if I am around someone who's never had chicken pox, I can give them chicken pox. Definitely Interesting. So yeah, but thank you for letting me let me event about it Get well soon.

Kevin:

I'm trying. I'm trying, I'm on my meds, all right, 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:

Stay courageous and humble. Next up on nation.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Alan Lazaros

Host
Head Shot

Kevin Palmieri

Host