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
#1609 - You Don’t Have To Change EVERYTHING About Yourself
Have you ever found yourself in the throes of self-improvement, only to realize you might be losing the essence of what makes you, well, you? In this episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros shared a moment of vulnerability that sparked an epic conversation about identity, authenticity, and the fine line between enhancing who we are and staying true to ourselves. They tackle why it's essential to recognize and celebrate our quirks rather than trying to sand them down to fit someone else's mold—yes, even if that mold belongs to someone as cool as someone we're not.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Dreamliner - https://a.co/d/f1FWAQA
Next Level Live - Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 (10:00 am to 4:30 pm)
https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
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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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Instagram 📷
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Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
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Show notes:
(2:08) A vulnerable question about identity shift
(4:07) Growing without losing
(5:06) Challenges that make us want to change ourselves
(6:23) Super growth mindset
(7:24) Love who you are for who you are and accept the hardest part
(11:27) Flip the script
(13:36) Matured version of personal growth
(15:06) Sword analogy: Honing and Aligning
(16:53) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/f1FWAQA
(18:30) Strength within the strength and the upsides of what you don't like
(20:59) Difference between character traits and skills
(28:49) 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 well. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1608. Are you knows? Are you why are people Villainizing you? Just to I'll put it out there right now. It's Saturday morning. Alan and I are recording on a Saturday morning and the weekend vibes are just different for kev. So I'm gonna try to. I'm gonna try to work through it today. For episode number 1609.
Speaker 1:You don't have to change everything about your self. I had somebody send me a very vulnerable audio recently and they said hey, how did you deal with the identity shifts? How did you deal with Trying to be more confident? How did you deal with trying to increase your self-worth? How did you deal with all that stuff and not lose yourself? And I said it's a very, very challenging question to answer. I Said I got to the place where I started to understand that it was really important to understand who I was as a human being, understand what I was really good at and try to get better at the things I was already good at, while also working on the stuff that I wasn't good at yet, but not trying to say, okay, I'm really good, let's just say, hypothetically, I'm really good at making people laugh.
Speaker 1:Let's just can that completely, and then I'm gonna be read. Instead, I'm just gonna get rid of that completely and then I'm gonna be really, I'm just gonna be really smart and I'm just gonna let the comedy thing go completely. I won't work on that at all, I won't even use it. Honestly, I'm actually gonna run from it. But I'm just gonna try to get as smart as humanly possible and be more like Alan. And I said I did that at the beginning.
Speaker 1:At the beginning, I was so focused on trying to be like Alan because I thought that's what I had to be, because I didn't know any better. And I said, over time and over time and over time, I started to realize that, yeah, I want to change my weaknesses into strengths, but not From a place of. I have to do that to be a different person. I I Already had unique strengths that I use today and I tried to abandon them because I didn't think they were strengths. So that's really what I tried to get to land.
Speaker 1:For this person it's really really hard to to get it to land, but if you're out there. I Want you to have the permission to know you don't have to change everything about yourself. I know we're a self-improvement podcast and I know we talk about 1% improvement and growing every day, but If you're a mom who likes spending time with your kids or your family, that's not something you necessarily have to change about yourself. If you're somebody who you like making people laugh, that's not necessarily something you have to change about yourself. If you're goofy, like I am, that's not necessarily something you have to change about yourself. So that's really the direction I wanted to go with this episode, just because I think when you start changing and growing and evolving, it's really easy to lose sight of the wonderful pieces of you that already existed when you're trying to make everything else better.
Speaker 2:The only challenge that, I think, makes us want to change ourselves is two things. Number one we set goals that are not necessarily congruent with who we naturally are. So, for example, you set a really large goal for a net worth of a certain amount of money and then you convinced yourself that you had to be more like me to achieve it. Yes, and the truth is there are certain things that you had to be more like me organization, structure, discipline, consistency, tracking habits, you know, using a calendar. So there's certain things that did have to change for you to achieve your goal. And that's where things get really messy. And Kevin and I's story is kind of, in a nutshell, these two things. Kev always had a lot of understanding of who he was in the present. I always had a really good understanding of where I wanted to go and so, towards my goals and dreams. I lost myself and you ended up kind of directionless, floating around, but you knew who you were. And then we kind of flipped for a while and I went fully intrinsic after my car accident and I was just who am I? Who am I, who am I? I'm very present with the deer in the woods and you went like goal, goal, goal, achiever, achiever, achiever. And then we over swung the pendulum the other way and then now I think we're finding our center point and so the two things that I think are at the root of this issue for everybody, because the old me used to have what I referred to as a super growth mindset, and I now understand that a super growth mindset is actually not a good thing. A super growth mindset is the belief that you can change anything you want as much as you want. I just don't agree with that anymore and I have a lot of data to back that up. At the beginning of growth mindset you know, 26, 27 years old I was like, okay, I can change whatever I want about myself. I can get as good at arithmetic or reading rather reading and writing as some of the best authors in the world, and the fact that I've been all math and science up to this point whatever, I don't need to lean into that. I'm an engineer. Yeah, let's, can that, just like Kevin can. To the comedian thing. So you know, what I've come to understand now is that a super growth mindset is too far on the extreme. That's like me spending my life trying to be as goofy and as funny as you Like, why would I do that? I'm not supposed to do that. I'm like a very serious, intense intellectual. It wouldn't even make any sense. And so, and again, that's that frustration. Right there is mad itself for even considering that. Why not? And this is what I told Kev prior to this episode.
Speaker 2:I would rather you accept who you are for who you are, and then identify strengths and weaknesses. Love who you are for who you are, not in a esoteric fortune cookie way, but in a very real way. Like, for example, if you're naturally good at math and science, love that. That's awesome. A lot of people are jealous of that, by the way. If you're really good at reading and writing, love that. If you're really good at communicating, love that. If you're really good at being a mom, love that. Or a dad. Accept who you are. And this is the hardest part Accepting the weaknesses.
Speaker 2:That's the hard part. So so for me, I have a weakness that has taken me a long time to accept Really 30 years being dislikable. My biggest weakness, I think, is being easily dislikable. What I've come to understand is that you can't have a huge strength without a weakness that comes with it being super, super confident and super, super intelligent and really loving who you are and being an achiever and working really, really hard to achieve everything that you want to achieve. And, and, and, and, and. You can't have all those strengths without the being dislikable. You can't want to be a statistical anomaly and also want to be relatable. Those are two diametric opposite things. And what I've found really fascinating and I hope our listeners are thinking about themselves right now when I accepted that I'm naturally dislikable, I started getting less dislikable, which is the interesting thing, because when I was running from it, it made me more dislikable.
Speaker 1:Why? Why do you think? Because it was more ego it was more you're going to dislike me anyway, so I might as well just yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was more of a protector, like I'm pretending I don't care that you dislike me. I know that I'm not naturally likable, so I'm going to put up a wall between you and me because I'm afraid that you're going to dislike me and I'm going to be disliked anyway, so I might as well get you to think different, right, and you can even feel the energy and intensity in that, because if you're going to dislike me, at least you'll hopefully realize that I actually cared about your goals and dreams. And I do think that if anyone were to look back at, I would say traditionally, I may not be likable, but I always got everyone thinking differently and I always helped them achieve more. I would say that's fair. But now that I own the fact that I'm naturally dislikable, I feel like I'm less dislikable. I'm just more accepting of who I am, and I think that because of that, I'm less triggering, and when I'm less triggering, people don't dislike me as much. So it's this weird thing I'm going through. But at the end of the day, for our listeners, for anyone watching or listening to this, what about you? Have you not accepted that you're running from, because that's probably causing more harm than you realize and once you accept who you really are, then you can change from that place, you can improve from that place. One of them and this is the last thing I'll say before I let Kev talk again One of them is and this is what I used to do.
Speaker 2:It's like okay, I had one client and this person's been going on a growth journey and at the beginning it was I don't like who I am, so I'm going to go change it, and I think we all kind of start there. I started there, for sure and then you eventually realize that I'm running from who I really am. I'm trying to change all of these things that are kind of unchangeable in a way, and I'm unfulfilled and I end up with this persona that isn't really me and I can't sustain this anyway. So I'm screwed right and then. So you got to flip that script and this is the new script Instead of disliking who you are and trying to change it from that disliking place, how do you learn to accept who you are the good, the bad and the ugly and then improve that version of you more, more, more, more, more in alignment with who you really are, and I think that I'd much rather you be successful from the inside out than from the outside in, and from the outside in is I want that goal.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to go contort myself to be the type of person who can achieve that goal. The whole fake it till you make it thing versus self-awareness of this is who I am and I do not like certain things about myself, but I'm going to work on improving the things I can and accepting the things I can't change and growing to be the best version of me. And again, that's basically the growth journey in a nutshell. But and I think that most of us start I certainly did in high school I wanted to change everything about me. I wanted to improve everything about me.
Speaker 2:I didn't like that. I was XYZ and you realize how empty that is at the end. And then eventually you come back to this place of I want to get back to who I really am and I want to improve from that place. And one of them is building on a strong foundation of who you really are, accumulating all of your past into your present, into your future. And the other one is kind of like let me try to be something I'm not and see if I can sustain that, because I don't actually like who I am.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's the word sustain. You and I have had conversations behind the scenes and I'll say I don't know, I don't think that person, I don't think that's right for them. I don't think that's right for them, I don't think it's going to last long term. And you'll say why. And I usually say it's too far outside of their character. I don't mean that, not in a bad way, but it's just. I don't know. This is somebody who really likes a lot of connection and what they're doing and this is just an example what they're doing has almost no connection. It's just so far outside of their character that I don't know if they'd actually be fulfilled doing it. Even if they say it, I don't know, maybe, maybe. I mean again, I've done the same thing.
Speaker 1:I kind of think of it this way when you have strengths, a lot of us run away from our strengths. Not even. It's not even that we have a weakness that we're running away from improving. Oftentimes it's we have a strength that we're running away from because we have the fear of success that's definitely something and because we've been villainized for having that strength in the past. Going back to an episode at was it the last one? I think it was the last one. If one of the reasons you've been villainized in your life is because you're really good at stuff, you're not going to want to do it, especially if you don't enjoy the attention that comes with it. That's one thought I have. And then here's the other thought. Okay, yes, we are putting some limitations on growth here, and I know that's weird, because we don't usually do that, but I think we're just coming to terms with the fact that me saying you can do whatever you want is just not good for you. It's not even true.
Speaker 2:It's not this is just a more mature version of the personal growth. Yeah, that's very motivational.
Speaker 1:potentially it's very inspirational, but that's just a layer one truth. I'm not going to dunk a basketball anytime soon. It's just not in the cards for me Now. If I started 15 years ago, maybe I would have, I would do the right exercises and I'd do the right workout and I'd weigh the right amount. I don't know. You need a 60 introvert.
Speaker 2:There's been people in the NBA who have been my height and done it, but they were genetic specimens Freak out. So this is my thought.
Speaker 1:You already have a sword. Stick with me on this. That's sharp or relatively sharp. Let's work on sharpening that, versus finding something like I have a water bottle right here. Okay, this is the water bottle I had at the gym today. Could I make this into a very sharp object? Yes, absolutely. Would it take me the rest of my life and would I lose the sharpness of the sword I already have? Very potentially and I think that's what a lot of us are doing we're saying well, I have this thing right here that I could use, but these are the things I don't like about myself. I don't like that. I'm short. I don't like that. I'm short, I don't enjoy that. But what else? What else am I going to do? Well, it's real quick.
Speaker 2:So I just realized I do have another point I want to make. After though Okay, I got to make sure you do. You go first and then I'll, I won't lose.
Speaker 1:Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Oh, I do believe there's such thing as honing and aligning. Spit all of my microphone. Honing and aligning strengths yes, let's just say comedy. You can be really funny and then say, yeah, but where could I ever use that? Or how could I carry that over into my dream chasing journey or the jokes I make aren't aligned. Honing that and aligning that is using your strength to increase what you're already doing. So I think you can hone strengths and you can strengthen weaknesses, and I think that's kind of the, the balancing act. But you're most likely never going to take a weakness and make it greater than a strength you already have.
Speaker 2:I was. We're reading a book in book club called the courage to be disliked, and it's got me thinking really. I think it's got everyone thinking really differently. We had a post in our WhatsApp group that was like holy crap, this book's blowing my mind. One of the things that it's articulating is the pros and cons of everything.
Speaker 2:So you're short, thank you, and you think that sucks, definitely. And and okay, fair, all right. But here's the thing You're less intimidating than me, definitely, and people are more comfortable around you. And when I got, I used to be really short too when I got taller, particularly when I actually started putting on muscle, because before that I was just lanky and unintimidating. But now it's harder for people to be comfortable around me, and that actually creates there's pros and cons to everything. So being short creates a safe space for people, and so you can't be six foot four, 240 pounds and not be intimidating Like our buddy Matt. Like Matt is a beast Even when you're around. When you're around him, you're, there's a, there's a physical presence there that comes with something. Now he'll get more respect than you, definitely, in pretty much every room forever, and that's just the truth.
Speaker 2:But unless you show up in a really nice car I'm joking, but at the end of the day, you are also going to create a safer space than he can he's not going to be able to be as naturally vulnerable as you. Meaning, when he's vulnerable, it'll be very, very surprising to people because he's such a beast of a man.
Speaker 2:And that comes with its own strength within the strength, but it comes with a weakness of oh whoa and so so here's my point, before I confuse everybody Everything you dislike and I'm going to do this in book club today Everything you think you dislike about yourself, I want to discuss the upsides of it. I know that everyone seems to want to be good looking, and I've been not good looking and I've been nerdy and prepubescent and I've been also fitness-good looking.
Speaker 2:Fitness model, yeah, and I'm telling you, people are intimidated more. It's you're not as safe of a space. It's like a weird thing. And I have some people that I coach that are drop dead gorgeous and that they struggle to connect with people because they're so attractive. And so I just want I'm not saying being attractive is not great. What I'm saying is everything you think you want that is, the diametric opposite of what you dislike about yourself actually comes with a massive con that you're not looking at.
Speaker 2:And I used to joke and I used to say it's the most attractive girl at the bar, that's the most lonely, and I used to joke about that. But I think it's true and what I mean by that is everyone's trying to either be with her or get something from her. How many people are jealous of her? How many people have ulterior motives and aren't authentic with her?
Speaker 2:I mean, this is a real conversation in the real world and, at the end of the day, just the whole point of this is try to accept the strengths and the weaknesses, the pros and the cons, the likes and the dislikes, because I was asking myself this question earlier today, before book club, to prep for book club, like what do I actually love about myself, what do I like and what do I dislike, and what are the upsides of the things that I don't like? You know, I mean there's so much here for everybody, because there's certain things you're not gonna be able to change about yourself anyway. There's certain things that you can change, but maybe you shouldn't, and then there's certain things that you can change, that you should. And how do we parse all this out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's deep. It's a deep episode. I was trying to think of a good example or a good analogy, because I still don't know if if it's landing for me, but I don't know, if I was listening, if it would have landed for me. Yet I always go to the video game. Let's say you had a hundred points you could use, spread across five different strengths or five different attributes like strength, speed, accuracy, stamina and toughness, hypothetically and you had a hundred points to split amongst those five. If you already have 70 points in toughness, that is your unique advantage and that's I'm not saying don't work on anything else, but all I'm saying is you already have an advantage.
Speaker 1:There are some people I know we're using football as an analogy a lot lately. I don't know why, but there are some people who could they play soccer so they could go play in the NFL and kick. They could be a kicker, they could train for the rest of their life to be a quarterback, and it may never happen. But there's also a quarterback who is a natural quarterback and they're really good who can't kick a ball to save their life. They both have unique strengths and unique weaknesses, but they both own them in order to get where they actually are.
Speaker 2:That's well, you're go ahead, hit me with it. No, you're good, You're articulating the difference between character traits and skills, and I think that it's almost like you wanna find your strengths and then mitigate the weaknesses that compliment them. Like you're funny. And maybe how do you be intelligent and also make the funny? Amplify that Versus. I'm just the dumb funny guy. You see how different those two worlds are, and I think that that's I hopefully gonna help land for everybody, because and I wonder too how inaccurate everyone's feedback is of us it's almost like if you are really confident, people don't naturally put wind in your sails because they don't think you need it, and if you aren't super confident, everyone's like no, no, no, you're great, you're great, you're great. And it's like, honestly, is that feedback even accurate? So a lot of the feedback we get from other people is not actually accurate and again, that's a whole nother episode. But yeah, I digress being a human's heart.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's the I mean, oh it's I mean. What else are you gonna do? You could be a Imagine if you woke up and you were. You're like a penguin bed sheet, you know, I mean. I Get into bed at night and I pull you up over me and I go to sleep. Be a strange strange, weird life.
Speaker 2:It's a useless, useless, uh Mental exercise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's wasted time for sure. I gotta put a lot. I gotta put a good laugh to put a giggle in here at least I call you Amelia, my penguin, your penguin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, penguins only have one mate for life. He's my penguin.
Speaker 1:They are also Funny creatures. They like fall on the ice all the time. They're not, I don't know, and we'll go, but how have they survived as long as they have? I feel like they are. They're not aerodynamic, they're not very fast. I mean, they're really good in the water, but they don't have any. They got little little little hands. They're super fast in the water, yeah, but what happens when you're on the water? They don't lay in trouble, they don't lay their eggs, water.
Speaker 2:I Don't think they're about as fast as you. I'm fast as heck In very short distance I used to steal bases when I played baseball.
Speaker 1:I would get on first. I would steal second. I would steal third. I Was the man. You were the man, was the man back then.
Speaker 1:I could, I could throw a pig skin over the clean, over those mountains, if I wanted to. Okay, next level nation. We are having air hour. Excuse me, live event March 23rd 2024. Next level live. It's kind of like this Next level live is a more I Don't know you.
Speaker 1:You see personality to deeper level because it's an entire day. So it's Alan and I on stage, but there's a lot more jokes and there's a lot more Conversation amongst Alan and I because we're on stage together, which is a very rare thing. There's not a lot of dual speakers that go on stage together. I don't know. We've done it both ways. I like being on stage together. None of that matters really. Tickets are $97 for in-person. We're selling 30 tickets in person, 30 tickets virtually. In person, you get a free next level dreamliner as well as a buffet style Meal. It is in Groton, massachusetts, so if you're a local, please come join us, and if you are virtual, tickets are $47. We're gonna live stream the whole thing. There'll be breakout sessions behind the scenes. Christina's gonna run it all. So, yeah, whether you're virtual or Close by, we would love to have you.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. If you've not got your dreamliner yet, were you done.
Speaker 1:No, you interrupt me third time, five times in this episode, five times. I was, that was good, we're fired up.
Speaker 2:This is the dreamliner is right here showing it.
Speaker 1:You Useless to you, but he's showing it on the camera. It's here. I'm gonna describe it though for those listening.
Speaker 2:All right. So the idea of the dreamliner is how do you take your big dreams Decade plus dreams, big dreams break them down into small inch pebbles? So you take your big dreams and you break them down into this year's goals and then you break that into this quarter's goals and then you break that into daily habits. I've used this dreamliner every single day in 2024. I actually have three of them and Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time. It has let me just go through it real quick. It has your top three gratitudes, top three most important tasks for the day. It has your most important win from the previous day, has your most important improvement from the previous day, and then it has your next level nugget. And the next level nugget doesn't have to be our next level nugget in these episodes, they can. It's basically whatever you, whatever breakthrough you've had that day, and then on the right side there's notes, and so this is my notebook that I use every single day, and the.
Speaker 2:The main point of the dreamliner essentially is it didn't, we didn't want a journal that you couldn't be consistent at. I, I most of the journals out there are. They get me to question my whole existence every day. I'm not trying to do that. I want something simple that I can do in 10, 15 minutes and move on with my life. You know what I'm saying? That's what the podcast is for.
Speaker 1:The question of your existence every day. Yeah, Exactly you want a journal in peace, solitude, quietly, with a candle lit, gentle.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm a big fan of Brendan Burchard and his work and I respect him deeply, but the high performance planner is too much, I don't know if I have it. It's too much. You and I used it for a very short time back in the day because we went to one of his events and it's just like it's an hour long endeavor every day. It feels that way, and so, anyways, we want to do it differently, we think differently and achieve your dreams 90 days at a time.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow for episode number 1610, I believe. Do you ever overcome the fear of judgment? I did a post on TikTok and I got a little something. I got a little something from someone that triggered me, and I was already not in a great state, so it made me feel bad. Did you fight him?
Speaker 2:No, no fighting.
Speaker 1:No fighting allowed. I'm gonna keep it positive.
Speaker 2:I was kidding. Yeah, no, I know.
Speaker 1:But I'm gonna keep it positive. Yeah, I'm gonna keep it positive. All right, we're gonna do an episode on that. Do you ever Was he a bully? I feel like it was a little bit. Yeah, I feel like it was a little bit of a. I'm just trying to add value on the internet as I do A little bully, so we'll talk about that. We're gonna talk about that tomorrow. Do you ever really overcome the fear of judgment?
Speaker 2:An open conversation it's actually me on a fake account.
Speaker 1:I do know where you live.
Speaker 2:And I know where you sleep. I'm done talking now. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:So that's what we're gonna talk about tomorrow. 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.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon. Cape business good luck.
