#1730 - The Balance Of Selfish Vs Selfless…

In today’s episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros discuss being kind to others and looking after yourself. They share personal stories showing how tricky it can be to know when to put others first and when to focus on yourself. They also discuss being agreeable and how it impacts your relationships. Knowing how agreeable you are can help you manage social situations better and set good boundaries. Listen for helpful advice and a caring chat about meeting your needs while meeting what others expect from you.

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

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Show notes:
(2:51) Balancing selflessness and selfishness
(10:30) Agreeableness vs. disagreeableness and how it impacts personal and professional life
(18:00) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/f1FWAQA
(19:37) Flying high or flying low?
(23:03) The importance of discipline and focus
(25:10) Social anxiety and coping

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

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 1,279. We're trying something new. If you're watching it on YouTube, you can tell. If you're listening on the audio version, alan and I kind of moved our studios and we're trying something a little bit different. So I have to read off another screen. It's a whole thing. But yeah, yesterday's episode being consistent isn't enough. We talked about the consistency juggling with improvement Today for episode number 1730, the balance of selfish versus selfless, selflessness, selfless, whatever. A couple of stories on this that happened to me recently and they are the reason I wanted to do this episode and I told you I love doing episodes. Should we just? You want to giggle it out for a sec? I know it's a little bit weird, I may laugh.

Speaker 2 0:56

Okay, it's definitely weird, because I'm looking at Kevin's side profile, so I'm talking to you the side of your face.

Speaker 1 1:05

I'm talking to you the side of your face. I'm talking to the left side of kevin's face. I'm curious to see how this will feel. I'm curious to see how it'll look. I'm curious for feedback. We you know us we are always talking about improving and changing things and getting a little bit better and failing forward. This could be a fail forward moment, but so far I think it's. It's different, it's different. So two weeks ago it has been a couple weeks of drinking for me, a couple weekends of drinking. I've had more to drink in the last two weeks than I have probably in the previous two years. I couldn't tell you the last time I had more than two alcoholic beverages two weekends in a row. Slippery slope, slippery slope, yeah, yeah, I love it. It's fun, that's the problem.

Speaker 2 1:43

Yeah, we talked about that off there.

Speaker 1 1:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a couple weeks ago, uh, my buddy, matt, was having a 35th birthday party and taryn and I were kind of planning what are we going to do? We're going to stay down there, what time are we going to go? And I said, honestly, I'll probably go down, let's, let's go down. She wanted to come with me. I'll probably have a drink, two drinks, I I'll play can jam, I'll play bags, I'll play whatever, and then we'll we'll head out.

Balancing selflessness and selfishness

Speaker 1 2:09

The night before we were getting ready to go down, we got a FaceTime call from Matt. So Matt texted me and said hey, brother, you have a chance to talk. And I said, yeah, man, I got you. I gave him a call, didn't answer. I said, oh, maybe he's maybe driving or something. And then he FaceTimed me. And when he FaceTimed me, him and his then girlfriend, now fiance, were showing off their ring, so they had just gotten engaged. And I said, taryn, come in the kitchen. Something happened, and then we kind of celebrated together. So then I had this moment of okay, so tomorrow we're going down to celebrate his birthday, but we're also now celebrating the fact that they just got engaged and they're going to be getting married. I don't know what's going to happen. This might change my plans, I don't know. So we go down and, you know, hug it out. It's congrats. Awesome, we were the first ones there Of course.

Speaker 1 2:58

One twisted, of course. One twisted tea turned into two, and then two Twisted Teas turned into four, and then there still was nobody really there and none of the games had started yet. I was like alright, so Taryn and I had a conversation and she said what is the plan? And I said, honestly, I'm going to stay. I do not expect you to stay at all, don't worry about it. You can take my car, I'll worry about getting home tomorrow. It's all good, taryn took the Beamer.

Speaker 1 3:28

Yeah, yeah, taryn took the Beamer home. Yeah, she took Scarlett home safe, and then I Ubered the next day by myself and it was a brutal. Scarlett is her name.

Speaker 2 3:35

That's the name of our. She's red Mixer.

Speaker 1 3:38

Our mixer. Yeah, it's Focus. Right, scarlett, is that where you got it? No affiliation, no, no, you know me, I like to name my cars. I'm weird. I'm weird with stuff like that.

Speaker 1 3:49

So she took Scarlett home and I went over to Carly, who was Matt's now fiance, and I said, look, I'm going to F you up with the truth, I'm staying and I'm going to get weird tonight. And she's like wait, you're going to stay, matt's going to be so happy. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to stay. So I told Matt and he was, he was so happy, big hug. And then we partied. We partied hard, but that was an inner. That was an inner conversation for me of, look, I wanted to go home. I did, I wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed. But I do feel like this is what's right, I think this is important and I know he'll really, really, really value this. So that was last weekend or two weekends ago, whenever it was. So this weekend Taryn's brother got married, so my brother-in-law got married. So Friday we go down for the rehearsal His fiancée now wife's family.

Speaker 1 4:38

Wife's family. It was in Connecticut. In Connecticut they rented a really nice Airbnb. So we went down for the rehearsal. We did the rehearsal, we had pizza, and then we went out to a bar for a drink, went out for a drink and then went back. And then Saturday was the wedding. We went to the venue. I was there from like 12 until 12 almost. Taryn got there at like 7 o'clock in the morning so she was there for a long time because we were both technically part of the wedding. So great meal, awesome dancing, several whiskeys Did you guys have?

Speaker 2 5:12

to come out at the beginning.

Speaker 1 5:15

Like when they we were I walked, so Taryn and I walked down the aisle together as members of the family, and then were you part of the couples that come out on the dance floor during the no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 5:26

Thank goodness. Thank goodness we were not. No, I didn't have to strut my stuff out there. I did dance my face off. Not well At all, nice. So we ate and we had dinner and we had cake and we had all that and we were at the venue until like 11.30 or close to, yeah, probably 11.30. 11 or 11.30. And then we took a bus back to Foxwoods, which was like 45 minutes away, so I think we got there around like 12. By the time, everything was said and done, I think we got to the hotel at 12. And everybody's like yeah, we're going to go down to the bar, we're going to party, we'll gamble, we're going to be up all night. It's going to be awesome.

Speaker 1 6:01

And I was like I don't know if I'm going to be able to hang. I do not know if I'm going to be able to hang. So Taryn went to see people and I said I'm going to go upstairs, I'm going to take this stuff upstairs, I'm going to see how I feel, let me take, let me. I don't want to wear my tux anymore. Like, let me take. You know, let me take stuff off. So, and I looked at myself and I had a very real conversation with myself where I said look, if I go downstairs, it's going to be abandoning myself for what other people want me to do, and I don't think they care enough about whether or not I'm there to make this worth it. I don't think it would be worth it. Yeah, I'd like to, and I think it would be fun. Tomorrow there's like a brunch and I'm going to feel like garbage if I stay up all night and I don't want to do that. So I ended up laying down watching boxing and then I ended up falling asleep and I guess Tyron was down there for like another hour. Next day I woke up great, awesome, I felt great, I packed, and then we ended up going to this brunch. That's why I wanted to do this episode because it was a balancing act in two separate occasions, where one I knew it meant the world to Matt for me to be there and I wanted to be that person. I wanted to. I wanted to make that night memorable because he's never going to have another 35th birthday and, more importantly, he's never, hopefully, going to get married again engaged.

Speaker 1 7:17

When it came to the second part of going to the wedding, it was look, I'm not super close to most of the people that the bride or groom have.

Speaker 1 7:26

Like, they all had their friends from college and people I didn't know most of the people, so I'm not necessarily going to be missed. Yeah, I would have loved to hang with the family and tear it up and party, but I knew that I would regret it more than I would regret going, more than I would regret not going based on the fact that I would have ended up staying up all night. So that's just an example of I think sometimes we're afraid to be selfish and other times we are overly selfless. Where are you in that equation and what end could you work on for a better overall experience? If you know, like when I go to parties, I always get sucked into doing something I don't want to do. Okay, you're probably too quote-unquote selfless if the second you get there, you're already figuring out how you're going to get away. I'm not going to say that's selfish, but maybe you're on that.

Speaker 2 8:17

That end, there's a my, my cats can hear. So Emilia and I both have offices on the top floor and my cats are definitely doing what I refer to as storming the keep in Emilia's office. I can just hear them hammering the. We have these little knobs that like fling and they're trying to, so I'm pretty sure emilia's coaching calls are getting completely distracted based on they're still going. That's my bad. I let them out. It's what we call free range. So they were supposed to be nap time and I brought tucker to the bathroom and now my cats are hammering into emilia's office during a coaching call. So I'm sure that's lovely for her. So where did I want to go with this? There's a lot of different personality tests. A lot of people know about Hexico, um, myers Briggs. There's disc assessment. There's all these different personality tests that there's tons of them, uh, but anyway. So there's one that there's a statistical sampling of agreeableness. Have you ever heard about agreeableness in the research?

Agreeableness vs. disagreeableness and how it impacts personal and professional life

Speaker 2 9:28

I don't know so there's something called conscientiousness, there's agreeableness. There's a couple other ones that are really big, that tell a lot about you Introvert, extrovert, that kind of stuff. Okay, so agreeableness if you're very, very agreeable in this statistical sample set you basically, if you're too, if you're not careful, you'll be a pushover. If you're disagreeable, you usually are someone who is very good at taking care of themselves but doesn't have a lot of people like them. A lot of people don't like them, and the truth of the matter is is all of us have a natural inclination on one end or the other. So if you were to look at the research, you'd see that, statistically speaking, females tend to have higher agreeableness on the extreme end and males tend to be very disagreeable on the extreme end, especially in their teenage years, which is why a lot of males end up getting incarcerated when they're young, because as soon as they hit the teenage, puberty and the testosterone spikes, they basically just go off the rails for lack of a better phrasing, and they're very aggressively disagreeable, so to speak. You and I a little different. There's four trauma responses fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Fawn was my big one, which is basically appease, agree, appease, agree. And again, I wouldn't consider myself disagreeable, I mean overly agreeable, especially not at this stage, but I would say I went through phases. So everyone out there, the value that I want to bring to this episode even though this is very different, the setup we've got going on here is where do you fall on this bell curve of agreeableness versus disagreeable? Someone who's disagreeable is someone who it's just like it sounds.

Speaker 2 11:15

I'll give you an example. I was on a podcast recently and this was an old radio show host. Old is relative term. He's in his sixties, early sixties, and he's he grew up in radio and the dude's been doing radio for a really long time. He's interviewed. He said I've interviewed 2000 plus people. You're amazing. I was so grateful. He was very kind and this dude sounded like the, uh, the. He had the similar voice to the dinosaur on toy story. I actually ended up telling him that. I said I hope you're not offended, but your intro sounded exactly like the dinosaur on Toy Story. But anyways, so awesome. It's positive talk radio, it's great. The whole thing was awesome.

Speaker 2 11:49

But he kept so. He kept embellishing a little bit. So we have a 21 person team. He'd either remember it wrong or embellish.

Speaker 2 12:01

I think it was more the embellishment and again in radio, every, every story it deserves a little embellishment is the kind of some people have that and I've had that in the past. I talk about how I really did you know four laps and then I ended up saying five, that kind of thing. So I got to be careful of that because I want to be very, very honest, but anyways. So I said we have a 21 person team and all this different stuff and all throughout the episode he kept saying the numbers wrong. And at this stage in my life listen, no one's 100 honest and no one's 100 dishonest. If I had any dishonesty in me as a, as a young man, I'm done with that like I'm. I'm just Honest as much as humanly possible like it is. Kevin's been on 2634 episodes. I think it's probably a little more than that now, cause last time I looked, but I'm not going to say 3000 and and the old me probably would have been would have been more okay with embellishing more, and I think that's a trait for young men in general, by the way, but anyways.

Speaker 2 12:57

So uh, he kept saying well, you have a 30 personperson team and you have 3,000 episodes. And I'm just like I corrected him the first time, right, because he said something along the lines of how many episodes we have. Yeah, it was the episodes. He said, well, you guys have surpassed 2,000 episodes. And then there was a commercial break. It was one of those shows and I can't tell if he forgot or if he's just embellishing. I think it's the second one.

Speaker 2 13:22

And so the first time I said, listen, I gotta, I just I gotta correct it. I'm sorry, I'm very big on this. We have 1700, maybe 25 episodes at this stage, and I think even that was slightly over at the time because I think we were headed there. But he's like, oh, no worries, and we just kept going on with the conversation. Then all of a sudden, I have a 30 person team and I make, and it's okay, what are you? This is just a radio show, where that's the thing. That's fine, all right, fair. I can't keep correcting this guy, right, because he's not. He doesn't mean any harm by it. He's just embellishing a little bit on the radio, like I think that that's natural and it's not, like he's saying 60, 000 when it's actually you know, whatever. So, uh, if he rounds up a little bit, it is what it is.

Speaker 2 14:02

So my point is is that if I was very disagreeable in that moment, I would have broken rapport in the interview and he would have been not only embarrassed and the interview wouldn't have been as good for anyone listening or for him and this was a nice guy. He didn't mean malintent for anyone listening or for him. And this was a nice guy, he didn't mean malintent. Now, if I was fully agreeable, I never would have even said the first one. So when he first said 2000,. I corrected him. That was me being slightly disagreeable. The old me probably wouldn't even have mentioned it. He's the host and I'm going to just be here as a guest and I'm not going to have the courage to bring it up and it makes me look better. So whatever, right, these days I'm not for that anymore. Now I feel like I'm more centered and I'm more disagreeable because I think I'm overcorrecting from being too overly agreeable in the past and I've talked often about this and I'll go briefly with it with it.

Speaker 2 15:01

But if you had dominant caregivers who might have been deeply insecure and what I would refer to as a puffer fish, you might be overly agreeable at the expense of yourself and, I think, our community again, a lot of our community members, my clients do struggle with the appeasing thing and not putting themselves first and peer pressure that kind of thing. So much, in fact, that we try to leverage it. 10 pound in 10 week challenge. If you're, if peer pressure works on you, why not pressure you in the positive direction by choice, rather than being peer pressured in a negative way? And so everyone, for our listeners, anyone watching or listening to this ask yourself where you think you fall from zero to ten on agreeableness.

Speaker 2 15:39

If you're 10 out of 10 agreeable, you basically are a pushover, just calling a spade a spade. You do everything for everyone else and you never do anything for yourself. You struggle to hold yourself accountable to much of anything and you really struggle to go to the gym when someone's not there waiting for you. And if you're disagreeable all the way at the zero end, you most likely are extremely, extremely lonely. You most likely are alone on Friday, saturday nights and that's a struggle bus for you. You most likely have a lot of people who dislike you and maybe you hold really high standards for yourself and maybe you take care of yourself really well, but I bet you a lot of people on the other end of the distribution consider you very selfish, and so the truth of the matter is, like all things in life, it's a choice, but you can't make the choice unless you actually think hyper consciously about where you fall do you?

Speaker 1 16:35

when you were the type of person that was just down to do anything, like I imagine you were I'm not saying you're not fun now, but fun in a different way did you consciously want to go do the other things? Like if somebody said like okay, we're gonna go to the bar and then we're gonna go here, then we're gonna go here and then go back to this person's place. Then we're bar and then we're going to go here and then we're going to go here and then we're going to go back to this person's place and we're going to go back out and we're going to go here and then tomorrow we're going to get breakfast and then we'll go here and then we'll do this. I after like the second thing. I'm like I'm out, I don't want agreeable and overly agreeable and overly agreeable and I'm going to have to abandon myself. I won't even do the first thing because I'd rather just not break rapport later on. Did you actually want to do it or was it peer pressure? And belong.

Speaker 2 17:24

I appreciate the question so much and I think there's so much value in it. My answer is I will find a.

Speaker 1 17:29

We'll find out in the answer.

Speaker 2 17:31

I think there is a ton of value in the question.

Speaker 1 17:33

Will the answer be as valuable? I don't know yet. I think the answer will be even more valuable.

Speaker 2 17:37

Here we go. I love the question because I think those are the things to analyze in life. I really do, and I hope everyone out there asks the same question to themselves. The answer that I have is I did want to do it and I this is another thing that I didn't intend on bringing up in this episode, but I do think it's super valuable.

Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy:

Speaker 2 17:56

One of my clients recently behind the scenes in a coaching session, she said you said something to me recently that really rocked me in the best way and I. Here's what I said. I said you have a lower set point than other people in terms of your energy and your. So I don't. I don't. I'm not a clinician, I'm not certified to say this, so please don't take this out of context and put it anywhere. Not that you probably would, because no one cares, but I just don't want to say anything that that is not, uh, understood in the context of my awareness. All right, some people aren't are, let let's say, zero to 10. So, just like agreeableness, there's also energy levels. So I tend to be very intense. I fly high most of the time and when I'm down and out, I need to pick me up like caffeine or whatever, I would say when I travel with Kev, kev has trouble keeping up energetically. Because you have a lower set point, you're just naturally more sad than me, and and that's okay. I've really started to study a lot of this, not only in my clients, but I need to know this about my clients too. So I have one client who flies really low, so she feels like she has to really put on a show when she's in public, and this is the whole introvert, extrovert thing too.

Flying high or flying low?

Speaker 2 19:09

So does, does, does. Does social settings drain you or do they? Do they uh, feed you? And so for me, social settings would feed me, I think more than most, and I think I had a naturally high set point. So Amelia and I I had an ex-girlfriend I've told this before but she said dating you is like dating a Stairmaster, and she was being playful, but I understand what she was trying to say said dating you is like dating a Stairmaster, and she was being playful, but I understand what she was trying to say. What she was trying to say is you're like the Energizer bunny, you're never not on. And the truth is, is that's? I wouldn't say I'm never not on. I think that's ridiculous. But I would say, compared to a lot of people, I have a naturally higher set point where I would exhaust most people. Now why am I saying that? I'm not trying to talk about me? I would like for everyone to understand where their set point is and I think you can raise it or decrease it slightly based on what you work on or don't work on. So we've talked in the past about some people love to work and then they need to focus on R&R. Other people need to focus on work and actually their R&R is fine. I think this has a lot to do with it.

Speaker 2 20:18

Where do you energetically fly? Are you flying high? Are you flying low? So to answer your question, kev, I always wanted to do all that stuff and I always really enjoyed myself. That was actually the problem.

Speaker 2 20:32

I had a freaking blast in my youth. We talked some college stories. Earlier, kevin and I have spoken at my, my old fraternity. He heard some funny stories Like I was always all about it let's, let's go and let's live. I was so good at that. I had hosted parties. We went to parties. We. I was just. I was played basketball with the basketball kids. I waited, lifted weights with the lifters. I was a runner. We did a beer mile on a whim in college, like I did all of it and I was so well-rounded because of it and I learned from a lot of different people. I've met people from all over the world at college and I've been to all the fraternities and I partied at all of them and I did a lot of socializing and for an, an engineer, that was very rare.

Speaker 2 21:12

That said, I always wanted to do that but unfortunately, because I was so good at it, I think it ended up being extra detrimental to me. Just because I can party all night and still ace tests doesn't mean I should. Just because I can be friends with everyone doesn't mean I should. Just because I can be friends with everyone doesn't mean I should. Just because I can be good at basketball and snowboarding and Video games and, and, and, and and doesn't mean I should. So if you're resonating with anything I'm saying you most likely, just because you can, everything becomes an option. But when everything's an option, it's very easy to not maximize your potential, whereas when you feel like you have lower self-belief and lower energy levels, you usually don't want to do much anyway. So you almost have an advantage in saying no, whereas for me I never had that.

Speaker 2 22:04

And so for me I have to force discipline and force systems and structure on myself and I have to create a give up list because otherwise I will go all in.

The importance of discipline and focus

Speaker 2 22:14

If I'm going to go all in on something, it's going to be this podcast, coaching, speaking, training and writing, whereas in the past I've been all in on snowboarding and basketball and video games and partying and all these different things. And so, to answer your question, I wanted to do it, I always wanted to do it, I always loved it. That was the problem, and unfortunately, it wasn't until after my car accident, when I finally had a big enough mission to where it forced me to actually say no. And so high goals are my cheat code, because they force me to say no and they force me to do what's actually best for me. And so now I'm a little bit of a hermit, uh, but not that's by choice and through massive discipline. I mean I could run amok easily. For sure. There's a part of me that's truly jealous of the fun that you've been having lately, genuinely now in the future.

Speaker 2 23:10

I'm going to be grateful for the choices I made, and that's really the question you asked originally, which is which one am I going to regret more? I think that's the best question to ask.

Speaker 1 23:20

It's a challenge because even when I was younger well, maybe we won't even talk about like 21-year-old Kev because that's like a new, that's a new thing but when I was on the road working a ton and I was always in other states, like we would go out to the bars all the time but I all it always had to revolve around alcohol, like I'm not interested, I don't want to go out, just to go out, like if I'm going to go out, I, if we're going to go to the bar, I'm not just going to be sober, if I'm going to be sober, I just stay home. I don't want to go to the bar anyway. But I think a big piece of it for me was social anxiety. I think I'm really good with people. I talk to a lot of people and I don't know if anybody that just met me for the first time would say that Like oh, he has social anxiety, but I feel like I probably do, and when you drink you don't have any.

Speaker 2 24:20

I think that's the reason it works. You and quote, unquote, one of our old friends, mark metri. You were in his book called the uh, screw being shy and you interviewed him for that. I didn't resonate, resonate with that book at all. I actually bought it and I was reading it because I wanted to hear you and at reading it I was listening to it and I wanted to support mark. But I remember listening to that book going this is not for me at all.

Speaker 1 24:35

I think it's an anxiety overall thing.

Speaker 2 24:37

Well for someone who's out there listening, and can you give the polar opposite of what I just described? Because what's it like on the other end? Because maybe some people should say yes more. I need to say no way more in my honest opinion.

Social anxiety and coping mechanisms

Speaker 1 24:54

I think, if you know it's aligned, you should say yes and just again, I'm not going to tell you what to do. It's beneficial for me to do things that that are safe from the perspective of you kind of know who's going to be there. You know there might be some uncomfortable moments, but you know who's going to be there. You know there might be some uncomfortable moments, but you know you're going to grow through it. But it feels like to your point, it's like I have to pretend more that I want to be places when in the back of my mind I'm like thinking I'm counting down the minutes of when can we leave, but it's more I'm exhausted by the minutes of when can we leave, but it's more I'm exhausted by the end of it. Just meeting so many people and shaking so many hands and being introduced to so many people and trying to remember so many names, it's just exhausting. It's exhausting. I think that's one of the reasons live events are so hard for me, because not only are we the quote-unquote center of attention, but I want to make sure everybody there feels appreciated. And it's exhausting to go up to everybody and hug them and say thank you so much. It's just exhausting. Again. Great problem to have Privileged, to have the overwhelm that comes with that. But yeah, I think it's one of those things where it's very easy just to stay home and be by yourself, especially if you don't get lonely. I don't really get lonely, so I'm not. I don't resonate with that. I couldn't tell you the last time I felt lonely, I have no idea, maybe the last time Taryn was like away for a couple days, but it was a good lonely. It was like, oh, I really miss my wife, like that's awesome. Good, it's a good remembrance, it's a good appreciation, it's a good reminder. So yeah, I think it's just I don't know. Meeting new people has always been hard for me, always. It's always been hard. That's why I didn't want to go to the island party. That's why I didn't want to go to networking events. A lot of it was just because I didn't know what it was going to be like no-transcript. And I think when you do it long enough, you figure out what your flow is Like. You figure out I don't know how do you start a conversation with somebody you've never talked to before, like what's that like, how do you do it, what's your flow like? And then eventually that gets more comfortable and then eventually you're getting introduced to people shaking hands and making people laugh and it's your first time meeting them. But again, it's just like everything else we talk about and I know we get to jump here in a minute. When you convince yourself you can't do it, then you just fall into the identity of, well, I'm shy. And then you never practice the behaviors of somebody who isn't shy, and then you get shy results and then you think you're shy and you get shy results and you think you're shy. And then you have years and years and years of unconditioning yeah, and years and years and years of unconditioning yeah, and years and years and years of lack of practice.

Speaker 1 27:40

This journey being a podcaster and a speaker and a coach and a quote-unquote public figure is the best thing ever, because it forces me to do things I don't want to do. Yeah, it's the best, it's the best necessity of all time. Can you push that too far? Yeah, right. And then I need to seek solitude for a couple days or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 27:56

But, yeah, when we got home last night I told Taryn. I said, hey, I think she fell asleep. She was exhausted, but I was like I'm going to play video games with Matt tonight and I'm just going to sit in my office, I'm going to set up my PlayStation and just hang with Matt for a bit. And then she fell asleep. So I stayed out in the living room for a while. I needed to recharge and be alone. I just needed to be by myself. Even I had a moment of I was like I don't even know if I want to play video games, I might just want to sit in front of the TV and turn off. I had that moment and I was like well, I do, I want to virtually hang with Matt. So, yeah, a deep one.

Personal growth through public engagement

Speaker 2 28:37

I think it depends someone who. So one of my clients. That was a big breakthrough for her because she always wondered why it seemed so easy to everyone else. Number one it seems easy to everyone else because everyone else is pretending it's easy, right, and everyone's putting on a persona to some extent, to some extent right. Everyone's different behind the scenes than in front of the scenes. That's just facts and I think you're better off just accepting that. And I think the extent to which you're not different is actually the amount of your emotional, physical, spiritual, mental development. Your personal development set point, I think, allows you to stay more centered. You just sway less in private versus public. I think that's at least what I've deduced and I can tell that with podcast hosts and stuff it's like, oh okay, you're really turning. I mean, you're going from a four behind the scenes to a 10, and you're over swinging. We don't need to put on a show here, we can just have a conversation, right. But we did the same thing in the beginning.

Speaker 1 29:24

So that's exactly what it is. I used to scream the intro. You better take your AirPods out before I do the intro. I'm going to blow your eardrums.

Speaker 2 29:32

People used to have to turn down the show at first, before Kev.

Empathy, different energy set points, and the risk of burnout

Speaker 1 29:36

But here's the thing you had to turn it on because your natural energetic set point is just lower, yeah, and you don't know who you're supposed to be. Now it's very different. It's like I still try to bring energy and I think, if anything, I'm higher energy than I've ever been, especially on other shows. I definitely put it on a little bit more for other shows, but I it feels right now, yeah, it doesn't feel like I'm faking it, it feels like I'm just going, I'm just giving it a little bit more of what I have where on this it's different, it's not. I know you're gonna hear us today and you're gonna hear us tomorrow and you're gonna to hear me, so it's not, you know. And on a podcast you say the same thing. I tell my story almost every time. So it's very much like I'm trying to make sure my story actually lands, because if I just I can never get lost in like, oh, I just told this story four times.

Speaker 2 30:31

No, no, you can't. I don't ever want that, and same with any artist or performer. I'm sure taylor swift gets sick of some of those songs, right she's performed them.

Speaker 1 30:41

I would venture a thousand times, probably ten thousand times the again.

Speaker 2 30:45

I know we got to go, but I also love this topic we do have to go the.

Speaker 2 30:50

I realize this every now and then when life really kicks me in the teeth for lack of better phrasing I get really down, I get really sad, or when I'm approaching burnout. It does give me perspective Sometimes when my state and this is a state, so we all have like a a natural set point state and then we have a fluctuation up or down above that. So imagine you keep your house at 70 degrees, all right, let's say some people are actually at 60, some people are at 80. I'm one of the people at 80 and so me at my saddest is still higher than the people at 60 bringing themselves up right, and so that's why, law of attraction, birds of a feather flock together energy.

Speaker 2 31:33

It's very rare to have someone who's more on the sad end, like kev, emotionally driven, and someone who's more intense and like me. But that's also been the benefit. What I want to say to everyone is when I'm really down, like, let's say, my set point is 80 degrees and I'm let's say I'm at 65 and I'm real sad, I I all of a sudden have empathy for people who think I'm arrogant, people who are like dude, give it a freaking rest, will you like? I get it, but I never think like that normally, so like some people have that how many?

Speaker 2 32:10

episodes you're gonna do, man, like, can you just cool it? Just chill for a minute minute, take a day off, right? What they don't understand is that for me that's not actually needed nor useful. I would. What would I? Even? And? And over time I'm actually increasing that physical, mental, emotional, spiritual development over time to where my 80 is becoming 81, then 82, then 83.

Speaker 2 32:33

And then even at my lowest I might be higher than other people's highest, and this is you can study the research on this too people have a naturally sadder set point or a naturally upper set point, and it's just like the agreeableness too. And so if you have high agreeableness and low, energetic, sad set point for lack of better phrasing for the clinicians listening don't rip my head off on this, um you are in some trouble because you're going to want to agree to things that are not good for you, and so we all kind of have to understand. So, to make this whole thing land for everybody, hopefully, where are you at in agreeable, are you overly agreeable? And you know, by the way, you know, are you, do you say no too much or do you say yes too much, based on your set point. And then the next one is where are you? Are you at 60 degrees? Are you at 70 degrees, which we'll call middle, or are you at 80 degrees, like me? Are you like always on, go, go, go, exhausting everyone around you, like me? Or are you kind of down and oh, and it's sad. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to not be okay.

Speaker 2 33:35

You ever hear that it's okay to not be okay for an a type personality that doesn't land emilia and I. It's sad, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to not be okay. You ever hear that it's okay to not be okay For an A-type personality that doesn't land Emilia and I. It's not okay not to be okay. Like what's going on, let's fix it and let's move forward and it is okay. But we have to like work on that, because if Emilia is down it's so rare it's like what is really going? Like are we? Is everything good, because she's normally right. So again, at the end of the day, different strokes for different folks, but if you have that self-awareness and the awareness that you can't achieve goals, you can't achieve 85 temperature goals when you're flying most of the time at 65 and you and I have definitely really had a hard time with that over the years because you were trying to keep up in the energy.

Speaker 1 34:18

Yeah, yeah, maybe we'll do a part two on that, because I think there's definitely a lot of discussion on that. For sure, I didn't realize you don't know. You don't know until you know you can match someone's energy for an amount of time, but if it's not natural, it's going to burn you out.

Speaker 2 34:33

Well, eventually, you said I can't do this I can't keep playing this way, and I think that's a really good episode. If you want to do that, yeah, we can do that at some point, for sure.

Speaker 1 34:43

Next, on the nation. If you are looking for a group of amazing humans who are into growth, into self-improvement, into bettering themselves, we have a private facebook group called next level nation. We will have the link in these show notes.

Speaker 2 34:56

We'd love to have you there also I get to see on amazon kdp, amazon publishing, who buys the dreamliner. We've got a bunch of different countries because amazon has the different country codes and all that.

Speaker 1 35:09

So nice it's been really cool.

Speaker 2 35:10

So if you've, if you've never used the dreamliner, it's a way to break your big, huge long-term goals into day-to-day milestones, day-to-day goals, inch pebbles so we call them inch pebbles, which is daily habits. I use it every single day. Top three gratitudes most important win, most important improvement, next level nugget top three most important tasks. And then there's a notes section. Check it out and it's I notice it when I don't do it. Now I do it every single day, but sometimes I do it in the evening instead of in the morning, which today, for sure, because I only did, I only filled out like a third of it, but I'll be doing it after this. But I notice when I don't do it in the morning because I'm just more off the rails. So it's going to help you achieve your dreams in a shorter amount of time.

Speaker 1 35:54

Yes, and if this episode helped you achieve your dreams in some way, shape or form, please subscribe on whatever platform you are listening or watching us on. We'd appreciate that very much. Reviews are always welcome, 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.