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
#1623 - Have You Slipped Back Into A Bad Habit?
Habits, those repeated actions we often engage in without much thought, possess an understated yet profound impact on the trajectory of our lives. The cumulative effect of these daily routines can either set us on the path to achieving our dreams or subtly undermine our progress. In this episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros delve deep into the intricacies of habit formation and how it quietly dictates the shape of our futures. It's a clarion call to introspection, encouraging listeners to evaluate their routines and make conscious decisions that align with life's purpose.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Group Coaching - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
Next Level Live - Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 (10:00 am to 4:30 pm) https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
Next Level Book Club - Every Saturday (12:30 PM EST) - https://bit.ly/42E4n8M
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NLU is more than just a podcast; we have 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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Email 💬
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Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
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Show notes:
(2:51) A friendly check-in
(5:01) Constructive or destructive
(6:12) Dramatic reading: Compound effect
(12:19) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching.
https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
(13:29) The necessity of mindfulness and routine self-check-ins to foster personal growth
(19:34) Bad habits will catch up to you
(21:42) 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 yesterday's episode, episode number 1622, an important lesson in comparison. Today for episode number 1623, have you slipped back into a bad habit? Normally, what I want this episode to be I think it would be a valuable thing to have is just have an open, honest check-in with yourself on exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Is there something I stopped doing for a long period of time where I wasn't hitting snooze, where I was saving money, I wasn't getting coffee every day, I wasn't going through the drive-thru, I wasn't whatever spending more time on social media than I need to? Whatever it may be that, has that habit started to creep back in? Alan and I were talking in the preamble for this and I said if you and this isn't something I normally do, but I think it makes sense if you thought of a graph I'm not going to talk about x-axis or y-axis because, truthfully, I don't know which is which and I never will, never did, never will. Every time you say it, I don't know what you're talking about. Really, seriously, it's dead serious X is the horizontal.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:I think x comes before y.
Speaker 1:Why wouldn't x be first? You read left to right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying x is horizontal y is vertical.
Speaker 1:Regardless. I just want you to imagine a line that is splitting a piece of paper in half horizontally. The interesting thing about good habits and bad habits is, for the first seven days the line would pretty much stay the same. So let's just say everything starts in the same spot. Seven days in all, three lines are straight. Nothing's really happening. Fourteen days in, you start to see a little bit of a difference, because there's a little bit of space accumulating between the good habits, which are starting to go upward, and the bad habits that are starting to go downward.
Speaker 1:Nice, a little bit of space, almost nothing. Barely recognizable, barely recognizable. Then we're three weeks in and the space gets a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, and then we're a month, and then we're two months, and we're six months, then we're a year, then we're five years down the line and you have either lost 15 pounds, hypothetically, or you've gained 15 pounds hypothetically. It was nothing you did today, it was nothing you did yesterday. It was nothing you did last month. It was what you've done every day for the last five years. But so much of it is invisible. It is invisible from day to day, good habits and bad habits. Why are you rubbing your hands together? You're fired up, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:Alan said we're talking about habits. I see how we're talking about habits. I said we're talking about bad habits, though, not good habits. You can't talk about bad habits not talk about good habits. I said watch me, son, I love habits. I just want and hopefully that made sense all of that I want this episode to just be a friendly check-in of how am I doing with the habits that I have labeled bad. Bad for you is contextual. It is a habit that is not necessarily adding value to you, your well-being, your mental health, physical health, emotional health, goals overall. A bad habit is just something that is not assisting you in getting to your goals. Are there ones that are creeping back in that you just don't realize yet because you're not seeing the negative downsides of them quite yet?
Speaker 2:I would give a reframe. Huh, sorry. Instead of good and bad, constructive and destructive. So a constructive habit would be exercising consistently. A destructive habit would be excessively drinking alcohol regularly. We all know constructive is building yourself up, empowering habits, and destructive is toxic, negative, long-term detrimental habits. So the reason why I was rubbing my hands together is because I was trying to make a fire. How'd it go? Pretty good. No, the reason I was rubbing my hands together is because I love talking about habits. It's been a while since we have on this show, so this is good. We have it in our description on iTunes.
Speaker 1:We should probably I know what book you have and I know what page you're on. I think. I'm guessing it's Atomic Habits.
Speaker 2:You are inaccurate.
Speaker 1:Okay. Compound Effect yeah, Okay, nevermind.
Speaker 2:The Compound Effect and you know what page I'm on. You obviously don't, because you have the book wrong. All right, so back in the day, way back this is probably a year or two in Kevin and I, the Hyper Conscious Podcast, I used to do what's called a dramatic reading. Yes, and Kevin is pumped right now for another dramatic reading. Three friends, and I want you to picture what Kevin opened with with the two lines that are diverging.
Speaker 2:Three friends let's take three buddies who all grew up together. They live in the same neighborhood with very similar sensibilities. Each makes around $50,000 a year. They're all married and have average health and body weight, plus a little bit of that dreaded marriage flab that Kevin and I have. At least he's married, so he has an excuse, all right. Friend number one let's call him Larry plods along doing as he's always done. He's happy, or so he thinks, but complains occasionally that nothing ever changes. Friend number two, scott, starts making some small, seemingly inconsequential, positive changes. He begins reading 10 pages of a good book per day and listening to next level university I'm joking and listening to 30 minutes of something instructional or inspirational on his commute to work. Next way university.
Speaker 2:Scott wants to see changes in his life but doesn't want to make a big fuss over it. He recently read an interview with Dr Mehmet Oz in Success Magazine and chose one idea from the article to implement in his life. He's going to cut 125 calories from his diet every day. No big deal, we're talking. Maybe a cup of cereal. Less feeding that can of soda for a bottle of seltzer, switching from mayo to mustard on his sandwich doable. He's also started walking a couple thousand extra steps per day, less than a mile. No grand acts of bravery or effort stuff anyone could do. But Scott is determined to stick with these choices, knowing that even though they're simple, he could also easily be tempted to abandon them.
Speaker 2:And number three Brad makes a few poor choices. He recently bought a new big screen TV. It's a great choice so he can watch more of his favorite programs. He's been trying out the recipes he's seen on the food channel. The cheesy casseroles and desserts are his favorites. Oh, and he installed a bar in his family room and added one alcoholic drink per week to his diet. Nothing crazy, brad just wants to have a little more fun and live a little. At the end of five months, no perceivable differences exist among Larry Scott or Brad. This is what Kevin was talking about. A weekend, in this case five months, in no perceivable difference. Hold on, where was I? Where was I? Oh?
Speaker 1:boy Rusty on the dramatic readings. A little rusty Scott.
Speaker 2:Scott continues to read a little bit every night and listened to audios during his commute. Brad is, quote unquote, enjoying life and doing less. Larry keeps doing as he always has, Even though each man has his own pattern of behavior, aka habits. I added that part. Five months isn't long enough to see any real decline or improvement in their situations. In fact, if you charted the three men's weights, you'd see a rounding error of zero. They'd actually look the same At the end of 10 months.
Speaker 2:We still can't see noticeable changes in any of their lives. It's not until we get to the end of the 18th month that the slightest differences are measurable in these three friends appearances. But at about month 25, we start seeing really measurable, visible differences. At month 27, we see an expansive difference and by month 31, the change is startling. Brad is now fat. Well, Scott is trim. By simply cutting 125 calories a day, in 31 months Scott has lost 33 pounds and he breaks down the math. And the math is sound. I've actually checked it. Brad ate only 125 more calories per day in that same timeframe and gained 33.5 pounds. Now he weighs 67 pounds more than Scott, but the differences are more significant than weight. That assessment also.
Speaker 2:Scott's invested almost 1,000 hours reading good books and listening to self-improvement audios. By putting his newly gained knowledge into practice, he's earned a promotion and a raise. Best of all, his marriage is thriving. Brad, he's unhappy at work and his marriage is on the rocks. And Larry, Larry is pretty much exactly where he was before, except now he's a little more bitter about it. The phenomenal power of the compound effect is that simple the difference between people who employ the compound effect for their benefit compared to their peers who always, who allow the same effect to work against them At the end of the day. I wanted to read that quickly.
Speaker 1:I wrote that.
Speaker 2:Kevin, it was a blog I wrote six years ago. It was a blog Kevin wrote six years ago that, darren, I've never written a blog.
Speaker 2:Darren decided to put into the compound effect. The reason I was so pumped about this episode is because positive habits, positive choices, these little things daily that really are just a grind and they are drudgery a lot of the time. So Kevin's dieting right now and he hates his life. I'm kidding, but Kevin's dieting right now and whenever you diet, you always want to do a habits episode. Is that true? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's great, because you're just sitting there going. There is no immediate benefit to this. This sucks and that's okay, just let it suck. But the cool thing is is when you make positive choices that are constructive towards your goals and dreams, not only will you be more fulfilled, but you'll also be pleasantly surprised when you stick with it long enough and sustain it, because the results compound, they accumulate, and I often talk about. This will be the last thing I said in this episode, one of the last things I told you this recently, kev. I always look for that moment. There was a moment you and I had where it was all worth it up to that point.
Speaker 2:One time on this podcast, you asked me Alan, if you could go back in time, what would you change? And I had to ask you. Before I answered, I said do I still get to meet Emilia if I change things in my path? And you said yes. I said okay, well then I would change basically every decision I've ever made. I'm joking. I made some good decisions, but most of my decisions were, in hindsight, not optimal. Many, many, many of them. And the irony of that is that owning that, admitting that, actually is what helps me make better decisions. So hopefully this lands for everybody. Hopefully you are all on the accumulated compound effect of positive, constructive choices and hopefully you're listening to NLU, because NLU can help keep you on the rails. It certainly helps keep us on the rails.
Speaker 1:I mentioned this in group coaching. I don't know if I talked about it on the podcast, but one of my favorite shows is Suits and I believe it was the most streamed show of 2023. Sarah and I, when we were watching that, I would often say I'm pretty sure all of these people in the show are closet alcoholics because every after every case or after everything, they'd have a glass of whiskey in the office and I think that I don't know if this don't quote me on this. I saw this somewhere, but I believe the average American has nine alcoholic beverages a week. So if you think in a one Monday through Friday and then two on the weekends five, nine.
Speaker 1:That might seem like a very, very small, inconsequential amount. And again, I'm not going to tell you what to do with your life. You do whatever you want but if you think about it, let's just say each of those alcoholic beverages is, let's just say, a hundred calories, which it's most likely more, unless you're just drinking straight, I don't know. I don't know how much vodka has, but let's just say a hundred, that's 900 calories a week.
Speaker 2:That's three, that's a pound every three weeks, every three and a half weeks, that's a pound, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's assuming you're not already eating more than you need to. And when you drink, you want to eat.
Speaker 2:When I drink, I want to eat, for sure Same.
Speaker 1:But I just want to throw that out there because it might start as well. I'm just going to have one drink. I have a whiskey occasionally, all right. Maybe once depends. Maybe once a month I'll have a whiskey. But if that went from one to two to two to three to three to four, that's where things really start to add up. So this episode, for me, as much as anybody else hopefully, is just going through the rolladex of what is different now. Am I sleeping in a little bit more? Am I staying up later than I know I should? Tara and I had a moment last night where we were watching Jack Ryan Great show. Tom Clancy is Jack Ryan. We finished an episode it was about 9.27 pm Hammered another one no, not me. Tyron said hey, babe, you wanna ride the Lightning that nice, you wanna get weird. Stay up later than we should.
Speaker 1:I said I cannot, no, no, no, I can't, I can't, I need to go to bed and she said damn damn. And then she went to bed too and she got up super early, so it was good, it was a win-win One partner always has to hold the line.
Speaker 2:I always think, Amelia, thank you for holding the line.
Speaker 1:She doesn't sometimes her first meeting's until nine or 10 and she doesn't have to, like she works from home, so she doesn't have to clock in necessarily, so she can get more sleep. But I know, when we find a good show and we're binging it, I know it's going on in my mind Ah, this is going from a fun cup filler to a bad habit, and I just think it's important to have an occasional, just like we have an occasional. When's the last time you gave yourself credit? When's the last time you gave yourself a pat on the back? I just want this to be a time stamped.
Speaker 1:When's the last time you checked in on the quality of your habits and are there bad habits that are trying to sneak back in? That's all, because it's always gonna happen. You're gonna do really, really well on one thing, and then there's always that little voice that says, ah, do this or ah, you don't have to do that, you could do less of this, you could do more of this. Just a kind, gentle self-check-in. That is my next level nugget for this episode. I just want it to be a kind, gentle check-in. Do not beat yourself up, None of that. Just become aware and then act accordingly.
Speaker 2:You might know this. I heard this on a piece of content, I forget what ah wet. I forget what piece of content my goodness.
Speaker 1:I was telling you earlier it's probably a cereal box.
Speaker 2:By the way you're speaking, you know what I mean. I was doing the conscious couples podcast earlier today. Shout out, Pride comes before the fall. I was like, well, I've done 1600 episodes of NLU and we're at 107 of conscious couples and I've been on 300 others. After 2000 episodes, you gotta figure you'd be good good by now. No, no, you gotta keep at it. You gotta keep at it forever. It will fall forever. So you might know this because you know baseball and your family follows baseball who was the guy who chewed tobacco for like 35 years and there was no repercussions and then got. He died of cancer. He was in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1:A lot of people in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, I forget the name, that's my bad, but there was a MLB player whose story was I think he played for the Cubs for like 35 years or something like that. Maybe it was in LA, I don't know. I don't know baseball, that's my bad but I do know that it was a good example of habits where there was no noticeable repercussion for 30 years and then all of a sudden he was dead within five years when it caught up to him, and so I remember I was. I keep saying you know, when I was 12, I brought this report we used to have something called DARE. Do you remember what DARE stands for? Drugs, alcohol, d-a-r-e, I don't remember?
Speaker 1:No, I never. I don't know if I ever knew what it stood for.
Speaker 2:DARE they would come in and teach us about drugs and alcohol and dangers of it. I remember that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I just don't know. I don't ever think I connected the dots on what DARE stood for.
Speaker 2:I think it stands for drugs, alcohol, reckless, I don't know. We'd have to look it up. But my point is is that after that class I printed out a report.
Speaker 1:I say I'm gonna look it up, and then I look it up, and then I don't say anything and I interrupt you just like I did moving forward. I'm not gonna say, I'm gonna look something up, because I never do, and then the answers are never solved, or you can actually look it up and interrupt me. I think we should do that. I don't like interrupting you.
Speaker 2:I was okay, you have permission in advance. They interrupted me. So after DARE class I learned about cigarettes and at the time my mom used to smoke cigarettes and I brought this, I printed out a whole report and I brought it to my mom. I was 12 years old and I said mom, look, look, you know. And I read the report to her and I don't want you to die, I don't want you to get cancer. I, statistically speaking, if you smoke, you might get lung cancer, and my mom ended up quitting. But whether it's smoking or drinking too much alcohol, or eating too much food, or going to bed late or something as simple as drinking too much caffeine that's one I've had to dial in Bad habits will catch up to you and oftentimes, by the time they do, it's a little bit too late. So just don't wait for it to be too late and just try to make a change now. And that's why we do peak performance tracking and habit tracking. It keeps us on the rails and you notice a lot quicker when you're off the rails.
Speaker 1:Dare, drug abuse. Resistance education Got it To resist drugs and violence. I don't know why it says violence, because violence has nothing to do with the name of it, but there are two things to go against. I would say those are two positive things to go against. If you have not yet locked your spot for next level live 2024, again 30 people in person, 30 people, virtual grotten mass there's going to be a catered lunch. If you're attending live, get a free next level dreamliner. It's awesome. We already I won't say we already finalized what we're going to be talking about, but we did for the most part, and I would say this is going to be the most valuable presentation ever, but it's going to be fun too, because we'll make sure it's fun. Link will be in the show notes. We would love to have you if you're local. A great opportunity to meet other like minded dream chasers.
Speaker 2:Also, we have a book club Next level books with next level people every Saturday, 1230 pm, eastern Standard Time. Keep your camera and microphone off. We hope that you join us or you can contribute as much as you'd like. The chat's always on fire. It's a really great like minded group of growth oriented people that just want to contemplate life habits, and every single week we set an intention and then we put that in the WhatsApp community as well, where we hold each other accountable to those intentions. So it's not just reading books, it's actually improving our lives.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow for episode number 1624. What should your ideal day look like? We'll geek out on that. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU, we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow. Keep up those positive habits.
Speaker 2:Next one.
