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
#1801 - What Does Self-Love ACTUALLY Mean?
Do you ever wonder what it truly means to love yourself? Is it about taking it easy, or is it about pushing yourself to achieve more? In this episode, Kevin and Alan explore the complex balance between self-care and self-discipline. They discuss how self-love isn’t just about feeling good but also about making choices that align with your goals and values. Whether you're someone who tends to be too hard on yourself or someone who needs a nudge to get moving, this conversation will give you a fresh perspective on how to genuinely care for yourself.
Links mentioned:
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For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇
Website 💻 http://www.nextleveluniverse.com
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Show notes:
(1:44) The concept of self-love and its polarities
(3:14) Balancing present and future self-love
(5:45) The dangers of extreme self-perception
(9:08) Aligning self-love with goals and values
(10:58) At NLU, we want you to win! So, we're giving tools and resources to ensure your success. Join our Monthly Meet-up every first Thursday of the month at 5 PM. https://bit.ly/3yL3Jfq
(11:21) Changing perception or behavior
(16:12) The importance of being honest with yourself
(18:58) Outro
the way that you feel like it's showing up in your life. You're not going to be changing the behavior and it's dangerous. But on the other end, let's say you must have, you must go to the gym seven times a week in order to love yourself. Maybe it's time to change the perception of what that means to you.
Speaker 2:If you really do love yourself, you are most likely more fulfilled. You are most likely taking really good care of yourself. You are most likely investing in yourself. You are most likely keeping the promises you make to yourself. You are most likely in alignment with what you value and what your goals and dreams are.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, kevin Palmieri, and I'm your co-host, alan Lazarus. At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.
Speaker 2:Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life love health and wealth.
Speaker 1:We bring you a new episode every single day, on topics like confidence, self-belief, self-worth, self-awareness, relationships, boundaries, consistency, habits and defining your own unique version of success.
Speaker 2:Self-improvement in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, completely free.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Next Level University completely free. Welcome to Next Level University, 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 will. Today for episode number 1,801, what does self-love actually mean?
Speaker 1:I had this written down as a topic for a long time. I don't know where it came from, I don't know why I originally wanted to do it, but Alan and I were talking about this yesterday and I think the reason why is because there is there's always polarities. So there's one polarity that says you should. You should not love yourself until you accomplish all of your goals. And then there's the other polarity, which is you should love yourself, no matter what, no matter what your behavior is, no matter what your standards are, no matter if you're letting yourself down or you're not, no matter what, you should love yourself.
Speaker 1:And with everything, as with everything, I believe and again, this is just my opinion. This is not a fact, but this is my opinion based on what I've learned is, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I now believe more than ever that true self-love is a juggling act of doing what is best for you now versus what is best for you eventually, because, in a way, what's best for you now is also determining what's best for you eventually, and it's this whole thing. This is my example. If you have been crushing something, let's just say it's a task and you're getting to the stage of burnout. Can you hear my dog? Yeah, 100%, I apologize for that. No, it's all good.
Speaker 2:It's all good, tucker is having an interesting morning. Apparently it's Tucker's home too.
Speaker 1:That's true, you know it's probably his home more than anybody else's.
Speaker 2:He's probably wrestling his sisters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cats are quiet. That's another plus. Yeah, it is true.
Speaker 1:Not always though Sometimes they're not. If you're doing something at a very high level, let's say you, I don't know. Let's say you're a business owner and you've worked 17 days straight, a day of self-love for you might be saying I really need to prioritize my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. I'm going to take a day off. But if you haven't worked at all in the last 17 days, a form of self-love might be saying you know, I really feel like I've been letting it ride. I need to do what's best for me in the long run. Today, and I think fitness again, I know we've been talking about it a ton, but I think fitness is a really good example of this. I don't want someone to go to the gym as punishment to beat themselves up. I think exercise is a really good suggestion of self-love. I don't want you to do it because you hate yourself.
Speaker 2:That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:But sometimes the self-love thing is actually pushing through the resistance that's in front of you. And just because the resistance is uncomfortable does not mean it's not a form of self-love that's really going to therapy for you. With self-love, even though it absolutely sucks, that is self-love. It just might not feel like it because it doesn't quote-unquote feel good, just like there are things that feel really good that aren't self-love. It's not. It's probably not going to be self-love for me to get hammered every night. It's definitely not.
Speaker 1:That's not self-love because it feels really good in the moment but it's not what's best for me right now and in the future. So I thought it'd be an interesting conversation to have because, again, I think that's what we're trying to do at nlu is we're trying to take the polarities of grind your face off and don't see your family, and if it's meant to be, it'll be. The truth is somewhere in the middle and the truth is personal for everybody. Alan should work less, a little bit, probably. He should probably take more time to sit around and think, but there are a lot of people out there that do need to work more.
Speaker 2:So the polarities and it all depends on who you are and your goals. We've talked about that. One of the things that I've been doing a lot lately and this is becoming such a big part of the homework I always give homework at the end of every call, even if it's something small. I would say your homework this week is to look at people, places, things and ideas from this frame and to see what comes up. It can be as simple as that or it can be an actual assignment, one of the assignments I've really asked clients to do a lot lately, and by a lot I'm thinking three or four times. There's a book called daring greatly by bernie brown and she talks about prerequisites for self-worth, for no, no, prerequisites for worthiness, and we did an episode on this probably two or three weeks back yeah but I had another client actually reach out with his list and anonymously.
Speaker 2:It just was an impossible game. He and I'll just give you an example. He wrote out the list and there's one, two, three, four there's probably 20 things on here. These are the prerequisites. What, what I need to be worthy Perfectly groomed face, no acne. Need to be bigger, $10 million in the bank account, all this stuff. There's two on here that really struck me and I told him this and shout out to you if you're listening, I know you are, it's on his tracker Need at least $10 million in the bank and can't step on anyone's toes. I said, dude, is it possible to achieve a goal that large without ever stepping on anyone's toes?
Speaker 2:Probably not see the problem with this self-love stuff, and I don't mean that in a negative way. I actually think self-love is super important, important, way more important than I used to think, because I think that I got the wrong idea of it, because a lot of the people that were preaching self-love were on the far end of. Regardless of whether or not I ever work out, I'm going to love myself the same that kind of stuff, and I think that's just not super constructive because I think we all have standards. We need to hold ourselves to Two things. One okay, emilia and I are in love. If Emilia were to not treat me well, not talk to me well, not respect me and she doesn't, by the way, she's the most incredible person I've ever met in my entire life, actually, but let's say hypothetically, let's say hypothetically she were to stop taking care of me, stop supporting me, stop speaking kindly to me, stop respecting me, start disrespect, start getting drunk on the weekends, start neglecting her responsibilities. Would I still love her? And I think yes, actually definitely In terms of the unconditional love part, but would I be able to stay with her? No, I would have to leave. And again, that's a huge hypothetical. But I think the same goes for ourself.
Speaker 2:Self-love is. Think of someone you love everyone. Think of someone you really, really, really love how you treat them. Do you want them to take it easy on themselves all the time and just let their responsibilities go and let themselves get out of shape? No, you want what's best for them. You want them to work out consistently and you want them to read more and you want them to succeed at work and you want them to feel fulfilled and you want them to challenge themselves. Yes, you want them to take care of themselves when they're sick and yes, you want to. So that's the way that I view.
Speaker 2:Self-love is how do you start taking care of yourself in the way that you would take care of someone that you love? And if I took care of myself as well as I would take care of Emilia, I think that that would be tremendous self-love. And the thing is is I don't agree with, like if Emilia comes to me and says, hey, I'm really struggling with this, do you really? What do you think? I'll usually tell her the truth about. I'll always tell her the truth about what is the most constructive.
Speaker 2:And so the self-love piece how do you take care of past self? You mentioned therapy. That's taking care of past self. How do you take care of current self? Maybe it's R&R. And then, how do you take care of future self?
Speaker 2:Stay in alignment with your dreams and goals. Staying in alignment with your goals and dreams is a form of self-love. You're not going to love. You know what it is it's. How do you optimize to actually love yourself authentically?
Speaker 2:There are times in my life where I talk about how I didn't love myself because I couldn't look myself in the mirror and say I'm honestly proud of you. I could not look at myself in the mirror and say you're doing all you can with all you have, and that, I think, is the opposite of self-love. I think self-love is living in a way, orienting your life in a way, being disciplined, in a way working in a way where you can honestly look in the mirror and go yeah, I'm proud of you, you've taken really good care of you and you have a big, bright future ahead of you and you've done what you can to maximize the quality of your life and the good that you can do in this world. And if you can authentically say that, I do think you'll be fulfilled. And I think fulfillment and self-love are actually very similar in the sense of if you really do love yourself, you are most likely more fulfilled. You are most likely taking really good care of yourself. You are most likely more fulfilled. You are most likely taking really good care of yourself. You are most likely investing in yourself. You are most likely keeping the promises you make to yourself. You are most likely in alignment with what you value and what your goals and dreams are, and I think that that is what self-love is.
Speaker 2:Self-love is not hey, I'm just going to let myself off the hook all the time. What self-love is. Self-love is not hey, I'm just going to let myself off the hook all the time. Self-love is I'm going to do, say, think, feel and believe the things that are going to make me proud of me. Nlu, listener, what is happening? I just wanted to jump in here and let you know if you want to get to the next level faster. We have a free virtual monthly meetup at the first Thursday of every month. You can connect with like-minded people and become a bigger part of this amazing global community. The link to register will be in the show notes.
Speaker 1:We've talked a lot about. You can change your perception or you can change your behavior, and I think this is why self-love is so hard to accomplish, because I think a lot of us are probably really good at one or the other. You're either really good at changing your perception. So somebody asked me on a podcast recently they said what do you think about the? You live in America and that's, like I think, the most obese, the highest obesity rate in the world. I think the most obese, the highest obesity rate in the world USA it is. And they said what do you think about the positive movement around humans that are overweight, like people making that okay? And I said, honestly, I think, as long as you understand the downside of you changing your perception, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but you can. It's very dangerous if you always change your perception. So a good example of this uh, let's say I have. I have a Friday night and Saturday night I get hammered hypothetically just getting wasted Friday, saturday night talking a lot about that, and I'm not I, I, but just as an example, changing my perception would be. Well, at least it's not Thursday, friday, saturday and I'm still a high performer I go to the gym six times a week. I track my calories the rest of the day. I have a self-improvement podcast. My marriage is awesome, boom, boom. All I'm doing is changing the way I look at the behavior. That's all I'm doing. Yeah, then it's well. You know, I drink Thursday, friday and Saturday. But it's not Wednesday, thursday, friday and Saturday and I'm still functioning and things are boom, boom, boom. Eventually you have to draw a line in the sand and say me changing my perception is no longer serving me. Nice work Now.
Speaker 1:The only reason I brought up the obesity thing not to shame, blame any of that. I don't want that, but I think it's very similar. Where should you not love yourself if you don't look exactly the way that you want to look? No, I don't think it's that cut and dry. Am I that way? Probably more than most people, but I also have. I've been doing this long enough where I have a good relationship with my body. So it's different.
Speaker 1:But I could very easily say well, you know, business has been, it's been challenging and I've been overwhelmed and I'm just changing the perception. Well, of course I don't have the same amount of time to work out. I'm stressed and I emotionally eat, so I don't really want to track my calories, and I could convince myself that that's self-love 100%, 100. And I could convince myself that that's self-love, 100%, 100%. I could convince myself of that, I think, deep down. We kind of all know. So this is all I'm saying. All I'm saying is just be very careful of what you're just changing perception of, because if you spend time changing perception of something, perspective of it, the way you view it, the way that you feel like it's showing up in your life, you're not going to be changing the behavior and it's dangerous. But on the other end, let's say you must have, you must go to the gym seven times a week in order to love yourself. Maybe it's time to change the perception of what that means to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. That's what I'm trying to get to, because the behavior might not be sustainable.
Speaker 1:And it might, you might be doing as much as you can with the behavior.
Speaker 2:What are you?
Speaker 1:going to go to the gym eight times a week.
Speaker 2:Fall down seven times get up eight.
Speaker 1:Well, you could go. You could go twice a day, but at what? Even to that point of that client, when you have $10 million in the bank we're talking. How long is that going to be? That's going to be a minute for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'll be another 30 years, 20 years at least, so maybe the perception is the thing there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, real quick. So I know we got to jump. According to the World Obesity Federation, global Obesity Observatory observatory can't read Nice, strong word. American has the highest percentage of obesity, at 70.29%. No, and they're going through the different types of nationalities, by the way, but it is America. Yeah, so I looked it up, it is. Yeah, it's America.
Speaker 1:I mean it makes sense the access to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the fast food industry, all that. Access to that which country has the highest obesity rate? America, for sure. Access to that. Which country has the highest obesity rate? America, for sure. Yep, okay, so we have confirmed that. I like Googling stuff.
Speaker 1:The only reason I even brought that up is because I think it's very easy to change your perception around the way you look and sometimes that's For someone who's obsessed with a gym and they have to have a 12-pack in order to have any self love you should probably change your perception of what being in good shape means. But on the other end, if you're somebody who is struggling to walk up the stairs and you're struggling to play with your kids and you're struggling to do that type of stuff and you know it's not good for you, it might not be. Changing Perception is probably not going to be serving us anymore.
Speaker 2:I know this sounds overly simplistic and it sounds I'm going to make it sound way easier than it is, but it's almost like you really have to try to be as honest with yourself as you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was on a coaching session yesterday with someone and she cried probably three or four times on the call just because she was finally being honest with herself. It was really powerful. I wasn't making her cry, she was just sharing all the stuff that she hasn't been honest with herself about, and I just think honesty with self is the hardest thing sometimes, cause sometimes you just have to sit there and go, you know.
Speaker 2:I have kind of been letting that ride. Huh, it sucks, it sucks, but and then what do you do, you? You have to change. You have to feel the pain a little bit and and then you have to change. And if you don't believe in yourself like, that process is much harder. But everyone's had the moment where their partner, their intimate partner, comes to them and says listen, this, this is not Doing it. Like you keep saying you're going to do x and you're not, or whatever it is. I mean, we just did a relationship talks event yesterday and we talked about that. It's. You have to pay the piper eventually. So don't wait till rock bottom to change. Try to change proactively on the micro day-to-day so that you don't end up with these massive, catastrophic bankruptcies or divorces or whatever it is. And ultimately, that's hopefully what NLU is helping everyone do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard. It's a very hard thing to work through because it's very personal. It's very personal. I don't love myself as much as if I'm not going to the gym, not because of the way I look. It's because of the effort I'm putting into improvement. I want to improve. It's important to me to improve. I think that's the goal of being a human is to improve. What's a core value? It's a core value.
Speaker 1:And if I want to impact as many people as possible. I have to be valuable enough to actually impact, lead by example. So that's a big piece of it too. All right, cool. I'm glad we did this episode because again, there's a lot of different stuff out there and I think that what our goal and what I think makes NLU different is we try to live somewhere in between the polarities, even if we're on one end. Alan's exercised every day for 20 years. At some point that'll happen You're not there yet, but at some point that'll probably happen.
Speaker 2:Small panic attack ensues in Alan's head yeah, I'm going for it. Yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but you're on that polarity.
Speaker 1:You are on a polarity but you do not advise people to live on the same polarity, and I think that's very, very important okay.
Speaker 1:If you are focused on getting a little bit closer to the next level, or to the next level and then closer to the next level. After that next level, make sure you are subscribed on whatever podcast platform you are listening to us on and on youtube, if you are watching us there and if you are looking for a coach to help you get to the next level one. Alan Lazarus is still taking on new clients. It is wildly affordable. It's week to week. You don't have to sign a year long contract or any of that. Anytime there is a product or service that is delivered to someone, either the client or the producer of the product or service has to take the risk.
Speaker 1:We take the risk because we believe in what we do, so very much, much so. We'll have alan's link for a 30-minute call in the show notes below. 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. Please reach out. Thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university. We love connecting with the next level family we.
Speaker 2:We mean it when we say family. If you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. Everything you need to get a hold of us is in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.
