Next Level University

#1589 - The 2 Types Of Self-Belief

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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In today’s episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros explore the profound impact of self-belief and strategic planning on personal and relational development. It is often said that to achieve greatness in life, one must have a strong belief in oneself and the ability to navigate life’s complexities with a sound strategy. This conversation delves into these concepts, illuminating the path to success and fulfillment.

Links mentioned:
`Peak Performance Consultation with Alan - https://calendly.com/alanlazaros/15-minute-call-with-alan?month=2024-01
Email 💬
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

`60-Minute Podcast Consultation with Kevin -
https://calendly.com/kevinpalmieri/1-hour-podcast-consultation-with-kevin?month=2024-01
Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com

`Next Level Monthly Meetup #26: “3 Words You Need to Remember if You Want a Next Level Relationship” on February 1st, 2024, 06:00 PM EST - https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrf-6vpj0jHd3dtDOIDDagugoZEJ2Zz14I#/registration 

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NLU is far more than just a podcast, and we have so many more resources to help you achieve your goals and dreams.

For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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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/

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

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

Facebook ✍
Alan: https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
Kevin: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.palmieri.90/

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

_______________________

Show notes:
(1:38) The source codes of the life you want
(4:27) The two types of self-efficacy
(6:08) Struggles with strategies
(10:07) Self-belief and strategy in relationships
(13:18) Tarryn, host of The Business Of Happiness podcast, shares her wonderful experience with Kevin and the Next Level Podcast Solutions team.
(15:43) Confidence conundrum
(16:13) Building strategies and importance of experiences
(19:48) Failing forward
(24:32) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

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. It was episode number 1588. How do you make your decisions? We talked about logic versus emotion Today for episode number 1589, the two types of self-belief.

Speaker 1:

This is a conversation that Alan and I had the other day. Over the last 1500, almost 1600 episodes and the coaching calls and the self-reflection and the self-awareness, we're realizing that self-belief and self-worth are two of the most important, if not the two most important things when it comes to accomplishing what you want, having a great relationship, all that stuff. It's so important to believe you are capable of it, but also believe you are worthy of it. Alan brought a new perspective when it comes to self-belief the other day, so I'm going to kick it to you, man. Also, if you're watching this on YouTube, I have. Well, you can see on YouTube if you're listening to this, I have the biggest pimple on the end of my nose. It couldn't be in a worse spot and it sucks. That's going to hurt to pop. I already popped it. It just keeps coming back. Yeah, it's almost like you're on camera often. Okay, I'm going to creep on back and let you deal with this again. A little insecure, but not, I guess, not as insecure as I once would have been.

Speaker 2:

Obviously not. I mean, you're talking about it.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes the best way to make the pain go away is just to talk about it. Just to talk about it, let's get it out.

Speaker 2:

Let's get it out All right. So Kevin and I, to his point, have come to understand yeah, self-belief and self-worth are the source code of the life you want. For lack of better phrasing, did your chair just come up? The?

Speaker 1:

chair just gave out. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

We're doing it. It's Friday night, it's all good, we're getting through.

Speaker 2:

I know it's not Friday night for the listeners, but what is this dropping? Sunday, monday, monday, this is Monday, happy Monday everybody. It's Friday night for us, okay. So I was on a coaching session this time last week and one of my clients. We were talking about self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is essentially the psychology word for self-belief. We were talking we pulled up the grid of there's, this grid that we have where the x-axis picture a plus sign. The x-axis is from zero to 10. The y-axis is from zero to 10. The y-axis is self-belief and the x-axis is self-worth and there's four quadrants. The idea in my coaching is I want to try to get everybody to the fourth quadrant, the upper right, and aka high self-belief and high self-worth.

Speaker 2:

I was doing this with this client who I think struggles with self-worth way more than self-belief. I said what's your self-belief? Zero to 10, statistically speaking. She said I think an eight. I said I would say that's fair, maybe a little higher, to be honest, but fair. Then I said zero to 10, what's your self-worth? We dug into her heart on this one and I think she said probably four, maybe three. I said yeah, okay. So how do you build self-worth? We went through all the ways you build self-worth. We rated them from zero to 10, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2:

The next day she sends me an audio. She says I was thinking about the self-efficacy thing and I was thinking about self-belief, and I think there's two types of self-belief. The first type is I do believe in my own ability to execute. This person's a sicko. They execute systems. They work out when they don't want to work out. They track their calories when they don't want to track their calories. They are, statistically speaking, on the very high end of self-discipline. They can execute in their behaviors. I saw her do a cut that I don't know. It would be terrible if I were to do that.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to her belief in her own ability to execute behaviors, she's very high. She said there's another type of self-efficacy that I've studied that I don't think I have very high. She said I believe in my ability to execute the behaviors, but what I don't believe in enough is my ability to decide what behaviors are actually going to get me to the outcome, and that's where this episode was born. Number one self-belief part one is I can execute against the behaviors that I need to execute against. I can do the work. Self-belief part two is I can figure out the proper strategy, I can figure out the right work to do, and so someone who has quote, unquote level 10 self-belief they need both it needs to be. I believe I can do the work, but I also believe that I can figure out which work is most important, and that comes to reverse engineering, finish lines and strategizing. So, like someone who can figure out what the next right chess move is and then can execute that chess move is essentially the concept.

Speaker 1:

We used to have a mentor and I always struggled getting advice from this mentor because I always wanted strategy and I wanted tactics and I wanted tips and I never got any of them. I got all sorts of deeper understanding and that was always a challenge for me, and we have done a lot of episodes on how to three ways to the number one thing. The reason we do episodes like that is because I think a lot of people struggle with strategy. When you sign up with a coach, I mean, yeah, you're paying for accountability, depending on what it is, but oftentimes it's strategy. What do you want to accomplish? Well, I don't know how to do. Blink. I did a podcast breakthrough session with someone today amazing human. It was wonderful and it was just how do I do this? Am I doing this right? How do I do this? What do I do if I want this? It was just all strategy and I think that second one, the strategy versus behavior. But then again, I know the behavior is really hard too. It's really hard to do something consistent.

Speaker 2:

Well, let me ask you because you've been a really shiny example, I think, of what it's like to build self-belief Zero to 10,. How much do you believe in your own ability to do behaviors, to execute? Ten, okay, zero to 10,. How much do you believe in your ability to identify what behaviors are going to get you to the outcomes you want?

Speaker 1:

When it comes to people, understanding people and understanding that, it's pretty high. But when it comes to reverse engineering, finish lines and strategizing, I don't know, maybe like a six, six and a half. For me it's the opposite, my belief in understanding people is actually lower.

Speaker 2:

I've been wrong so many times. My belief in reverse engineering what your calories need to be in order to hit a certain weight by a certain timeline. That's 10 out of 10 for me. Well, it's numbers, but when it comes to how other people, yeah, exactly, I think it's the math thing. It's numbers.

Speaker 1:

For me it's intuitive. There's been a lot of times where I'll say something to you or I'll say something to the NLPS team and I'll just be like no, I'll smooth it over with this person, I know what to say. It's okay, I know what to say to get the result we want. Not always, but there's a good amount of times where I'll just do something and it works pretty well. But that's just because I've done that for long enough.

Speaker 2:

You know this comes down to our last episode I don't know if it was the last one or the one before about IQ versus ZQ.

Speaker 2:

I think there's a parallel here of if you have the first self-belief of I can do the behaviors. Well, if you're resonating with what Kevin's saying about I know what to say, I know how to get along with people, I know how to influence that kind of thing. I think that's more EQ. I think the IQ is much more. If I do these things, I'm gonna get this outcome. You know, I actually think it's really. I've come to understand that it's really difficult to reverse engineer goals, and the reason why is because usually let me try to explain this concept All right when you look at an acorn, you don't see some big, huge tree 100 years later. I mean, imagine if you never saw a tree and you only ever saw an acorn. Just for a second, the acorn is the idea. So I wanna build a billion dollar business. Okay, that's just an acorn. If you've never seen a tree before, would you really think that it can become that Like a redwood or an oak tree? You'd be like what the hell?

Speaker 1:

It doesn't all fit in there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, and so I think that, as much as that's probably not the best example in the world, I think that as a kid, somehow some way I was good at figuring out what acorns made what trees, and that's really what I'm doing a lot more of now, because I realized that's not a given anymore, because so for you. You didn't even know, you had the strength of knowing what would affect what people in what way, and that kind of thing. I remember you saying well, if I want it to work, it'll work. I remember thinking I never felt that way in relationships.

Speaker 1:

Well, a big piece of it is because of the person I'm with. That's not just me.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Right, there's relationships. I was in that. I would never say that. I feel very comfortable saying that with Taryn.

Speaker 2:

Well, when I was single and you were with Taryn, I had no confidence. When I ended my last relationship, yeah, and you said something to me on a session where it was essentially well, of course you're not confident, you've never succeeded yet, meaning I had been basically 29 years of not having a successful long-term relationship. I had four and a half years, five years and then, I think, a two-year one, but I had never really succeeded at this long-term relationship thing. And so Kev's like well, of course you're not confident, but I remember thinking to myself I'm really confident in other areas you know.

Speaker 2:

And so what's the difference? I think the difference is awareness. I think I was good at reverse engineering finish lines, but not very good at understanding human beings as much as I thought. Anyways, particularly relationship stuff. And if you asked me, now, having studied all the relationship stuff, the inner work, therapy, conscious couples, podcast cycles, triggers, insecurities, all the stuff we've done at NLU but more importantly at the we and conscious couples, I feel way more confident now because I feel like I get it. I understand what makes a relationship fail and what makes it work, like trust, communication, vulnerability, humility, courage, difficult conversations, empathy. These are the things that are critical.

Speaker 2:

And so, at the end of the day, for all our listeners, let's check in which of these beliefs do you have more? Do you have part one? I know I can do the behavior. Or part two, I know I can decide which behaviors are going to get me what outcomes. And maybe you're out there saying I'm not very good at either of those. That's okay. Let's just build them up a little bit by a little bit, by a little bit, and eventually you'll get to a place, because you have said a 10 and a seven, 10 plus seven, 17 divided by two, you're probably around eight. You know 8.25. Yeah, confidence. So I think that your level of confidence, your level of self belief, is probably the average of these two. What's the level of self belief that your?

Speaker 1:

chair is going to hold my arse my arse Very low, very small amount. I think the hardest thing about the strategy thing is think of it this way If you don't have a lot of reps in strategizing and then following through, it's really hard to have confidence because it takes a long time. If you're strategizing for something and it takes you two years to accomplish that's a long time before you actually get that belief here. This might land. I don't know. This lands for me when I say it, so maybe it will for you, whether you're watching or listening. If you hire a coach to just tell you what to do, maybe you're really good at the behavior.

Speaker 1:

When I did bodybuilding, I hired a coach and I just wanted him to tell me what to do. I'll follow through. I just tell me what to do, tell me what to eat, tell me how much to eat, tell me how often to weigh myself, tell me when you need pictures, and I'm good. The strategy was super valuable too. I understood the strategy to a degree, but I was really paying him for accountability and strategy because I wouldn't have pushed myself as hard if I didn't have a coach. But if you think of that, if you pay someone just because you want them to tell you what to do. But you know you can follow through. You're probably really good at the behavior. Maybe you just don't know the strategy. That's really me, in a nutshell. I'll just ask Alan, what do I do? And he'll give me a system and I'll just run it forever and then he'll say like are you still doing the same thing?

Speaker 1:

He's like yeah, man, it's awesome, isn't it? He's like no, no, it's time to switch.

Speaker 2:

Oh darn. That's been really funny. Like Kev runs systems, that dude will just run, just run a joke behind the seat. He'll just run the system for as long as he needs to. Which is a superpower, honestly, as long as you get the right system. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

But look at I mean look at this Our behavior, like we'll just do episodes forever, forever, and as we do them we'll learn more strategy of how to get better. But you can't. It's really hard to do one without the other, because if you don't do it consistently, you don't know if the strategy is working. If you don't have the strategy, it's hard to do it consistently. It really is a kind of a juggling act of if you don't have one. Yeah, it is. Maybe this is a new version of the confidence conundrum in a way.

Speaker 2:

Maybe this is why you had self-belief with me more than without me. Instead of borrowing my belief, what if you just borrowed my strategy? Well, that's the belief I needed, yeah yeah, yeah, and I think that she even said as soon as I had the system, because she lost 22 pounds in 20 weeks, which is just awful. I mean, anyone who's ever done that, it's just horrible.

Speaker 1:

Not great.

Speaker 2:

And she did not have. She wasn't overweight or anything. It's not like she had a lot of weight to lose and I was so impressed, blown away, crushed it. She's like well, once I had the system and I knew it would work, I can execute. It's that I don't know my own system will work. So maybe, instead of borrowing someone's belief, maybe you can borrow someone's strategy and maybe that will build your belief. But then the question becomes you can't always rely on other people's strategies, so you kind of have to learn how to strategize. And that's another episode.

Speaker 1:

I know, yeah, this is deeper than I expected it to be. I won't say that I expected it to be deep, but it's not that straightforward. It's not. Well, you're either good at one or the other, or you're good at both, or you're good at neither. The only way to get good at strategy is to do it consistently enough and then test out stuff.

Speaker 1:

I said something to you today. We were talking about something behind the scenes and we were just talking about growth and growth over the years. And I said one of the best things ever for me that you did was you let me fly the coop, for lack of better phrasing. And you said what do you mean? I said just let me go out and do things. One of the most important things I ever did was I got to the place where I said I would rather write up an email, send it myself and lose the client than write up an email, have you, look at it and then us get the client. I don't think that's serving. I think we're past that and I need to learn this on my own. So that works really well for me. I took your strategy and I took what I learned from the strategies you've taught me and what I've been practicing through those strategies, and then I tried to figure out all right, what pieces of that strategy can I remember enough to use it on my own?

Speaker 2:

And what part of those strategies suck?

Speaker 1:

That's true too, but now I have my own strategies, built off of the strategies that you taught me, the strategies that I tried, and then what worked and what didn't. So I think that the only answer for that is you have to get outside of your comfort zone. I know I sound like a broken record with that, but you have to use if you have level one understanding of strategy, awesome, use level one understanding of strategy to try to get to level two. And then, when you get to level two, it's the same thing though of yeah, you're most likely not going to go from I don't know what a great example is. You're most likely not going to go from learning how to drill two pieces of wood together to building a custom mansion in a year. The strategy just doesn't.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't compound that fast, but there's no reason you can't build. You know, drill two pieces of wood together and then drill four pieces of wood together and then build a platform and then build a shed, and then build a bigger shed and then build a tree house. Your strategy becomes tools for you to use later. Strategy is just understanding inputs and outputs. Really, when I do this, I get this result. Then you stack them. You want to teach strategy? You probably know it better than I do. No, no, no, no. That's not what I'm laughing at. That's not what I'm laughing at.

Speaker 2:

I had a funny story I've never told before.

Speaker 1:

Let's hear it.

Speaker 2:

When I was a kid I know you got to jump soon, kev. When I was a kid, I built a tree house with one of my best friends, kiki, and we decided to do something that we thought was very innovative. That was actually a really terrible idea. We had this mighty oak, this huge oak tree in the tree house. So, instead of putting the boards to where because there was these perfect five trees and one of them was really thick, huge, thick oak tree if we go around the tree we'll have so much more space in the tree house.

Speaker 2:

So the tree was in the tree house. This was a legit tree house. We had shingles, we had a rug, we brought electricity out there, we had a trap door, we had a full window. This was. We took years to build this thing and I'll tell you what we failed forward.

Speaker 2:

And here's what happens when you nail nails into trees they die, they sap lots and lots of sap all over the electrical cords, all over the rug, just awful right. And we also. I'm pretty sure we might have mutated some spiders because of all the foam that we had to put to like block the rain.

Speaker 2:

But anyways, my point of the tree house story is this you have to fail forward and our next tree house would have been world class. But why? Because our first one was just mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake, and, yes, most of the nails that we put in took about two or three before we you ever hammer a nail halfway, and then you have, you mess it up, and then you have to hammer it in because you can't take it out. Of course, yeah, of course. So I never told that story before. But what does this have to do with belief? I believe in my ability to build a tree house Seriously. Here's why I did it. I did it before and I failed so many times on so many things. Now can I build a world class tree house? No, it's a way better one than we built I'll tell you that for sure A couple of kids who didn't know what the hell we were doing.

Speaker 1:

Well, sometimes that's fun. It's fun to not know the strategy sometimes, I guess, if you don't really want a very good result. He wasn't thrilled, he was so mad at us.

Speaker 2:

Understand. He's like we shouldn't the whole year like. Back then it felt like years, but probably a couple years. He was like dude, we shouldn't have put the damn tree in the tree house. It's like dude, get over it, man, we made a mistake. He's like so still salty about it. Understandable.

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. If you are seeking strategy when it comes to peak performance or your small business or whatever it is maybe your new business, your large business, whatever. If you're seeking strategy on how to get better, reach out to Alan. Alan can help you with that. If you are seeking strategy with podcasting, help reach out to me. I will help you with that. I was going to talk about next level nation, but I think if we're talking about strategy, those are the two things that we really help people strategize around. So Link will be in the show notes for all of our information. But, yeah, happy to chat about anything you need help strategizing on.

Speaker 2:

Alan at nextleveluniversecom, kevin at nextleveluniversecom. Spelt just like it sounds my voice. I'm losing my voice. Brother, you need me to carry it home. We have our. You need me to carry it home. No, no, no. I got this Three words you need to remember if you want a next level relationship.

Speaker 2:

Which you do Our monthly meetup, number 26, and it is in the love month, february 1st 2024. So our monthly meetup for the love month, february, is three words you need to remember if you want a next level relationship. The link to register will be in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Tomorrow for episode number 1590,. I hope my nose pimple disappears by then. Another thing Kevin and Alan are polar opposites with Nice, nice, I don't know if I've ever used you know it was on a podcast earlier today and the guy said Kevin is more jacked than you.

Speaker 2:

It's a fact.

Speaker 1:

That's not. It wasn't to be mean or anything.

Speaker 2:

That's a fact Shots fired.

Speaker 1:

No, it is a fact.

Speaker 2:

I said he is jacked.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that. If that person is, if that host is listening, shout out to you for being a real one and taking care of Kevin when he's not there, because I'm sure Alan was flexing away. You probably even asked.

Speaker 2:

I didn't flex. Once you said hey, hey, I don't even know why you brought that up.

Speaker 1:

Kevin's not going to hear this, but between you and I, who's in better shape than me or Kevin? And then you got an answer. He didn't like Surprise. He even told me All right, we're going to go, because it is 7.15 and I promised Tyron we would spend some time together. So I'm going to go see my wonderful wife. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we learn to fans. We have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Build both types of belief. Excellent nation.

Speaker 1:

And so all of us will be with natural ourselves, of course, because today was Obama's last reason to make it here called Dad today.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host