When You’re Overwhelmed Do You Lower The Goals? (1876)

Feeling overwhelmed by the very momentum you’ve worked so hard to build? In today’s episode, Kevin and Alan reveal their effective 3D Plan, a simple way to handle the pressure of progress. They also share insights on “Lonely Land,” the in-between stage where old routines don’t fit, and new ones feel challenging. Listen in to learn how to stay on track and keep moving toward your goals.

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Show notes:
(2:45) The “Lonely Land” framework
(5:40) Self-coaching strategies to maintain momentum
(6:54) Small distractions and focus
(10:51) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(14:42) Juggling momentum without losing progress
(16:13) Sustaining growth
(19:21) Outro

🎙️ 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

Kevin 0:00

there's so much going on , I have so much momentum . I don't want this much momentum . Then we stop doing the things that got us the momentum and the downside is you don't see the result of that negative result for six months . How do you know if what you do is going to slow down momentum ?

Alan 0:19

Delete , delegate , double down , and that always works . And then you inevitably get more momentum after that , and then you get overwhelmed again . Being overwhelmed is part of growth . That diamonds are created by pressure , but don't , don't let it break you essentially .

Kevin 0:39

Welcome to next level university . I'm your host , kevin paul , mary and .

Alan 0:44

I'm your co-host , Alan Lazarus .

Kevin 0:47

At NLU , we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers .

Alan 0:53

Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life love health and wealth .

Kevin 1:00

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 .

Alan 1:15

Self-improvement in your pocket , every day , from anywhere , completely free .

Kevin 1:22

Welcome to Next Level University anywhere , 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 wealth . Today , for episode number 1,876, . When you're overwhelmed , do you lower the goals ? So Alan's working hard , Everybody's working for the weekend . You know the song we're working on the weekend , but Alan's working really hard and he's putting more on the court , as he says , than he ever has before . But usually with that comes overwhelm and potential burnout . And we were talking about that before we did today's episode and alan had kind of a breakthrough .

Alan 2:13

That he thought would be valuable to share with everyone . So we're going to do that now . In the book identity shift which we are reading in book club by anthony trucks , there's the one of the parts of the shift method is sustain and it talks about the six types of failure , and we're actually going to go through that in book club . So I'm not going to get into that . That's not what this episode is about , but that's what made me think of this . I was preparing for book club earlier today at 5 am and then I went back to bed because I was exhausted 69 sleep score not great , not proud of it , not proud of it .

The “Lonely Land” framework

Alan 2:45

But we're in here , we're doing it we're doing it doing it and I was thinking earlier today about why we go back to old world . So emilia has this really cool framework where it's a mountain and it's split into three parts the top of the mountains , the new world , the bottom of the mountains , the old world , and then the middle part is called lonely land . We've talked about this in the past . Lonely land is when old world is where it's comfortable and old friends , old family , old circumstances , old job , old basically it's where you're totally comfortable , where you're totally capable and in the frame of identity shift you are the type of person that can easily . So I'm going to use a metaphor here . So Kev , if he were to , you know , bench press 50s , that would be really easy . No problem , no big deal , sure .

Alan 3:33

Then you go into lonely land . Lonely land is imagine you go into a new gym . That's now you're . You go from a big fish in a small pond to now a small fish in a huge ocean . Big fish in a small pond to now a small fish in a huge ocean . Now you feel lonely because you're too far ahead of your past friends , persons , places , things and ideas to fit in there and you have to grow . So you have to leave that small pot or that small nest or that small gym , whatever it is . And then you go into this big gym and now there's all these other people that are so far ahead of you . So now you're in lonely land , you're , you're too far ahead of the people behind you , but you're not good enough yet , capable enough yet to keep up with the people ahead of you . And that can be a really scary place and a lot of times what people do in that stage and I've seen this with my clients over and over and over again because whenever I see them in lonely land or in the suffering stage , I always say okay , don't fall back to old world , don't go to the doom loop , don't stop believing in yourself . You got this , you can do it , we can sustain this . You just got to stick with it . And so I do this same thing with myself . I coach myself all the time and in my head I say things like like how can I do this instead of I can't do this instead of . Okay , I'm doing Kevin . And I just crunch some numbers . I crunch some numbers with Kev earlier . I think it's 54 podcasts , trainings or coachings on average over the last four weeks , 54 per week . So that's what you're looking at 200 plus in the last month of podcasts , coaching sessions and trainings , and this is the most I've ever done . Now there's two options there's I can't do this . I gotta . I gotta dial it back , and that is sometimes . You gotta do that . I'm not making that wrong . Okay , sometimes you gotta do that .

Alan 5:21

If I was super sick or something went horribly wrong or something was wrong with the house or whatever , I would , I would dial back , but right now , everything's pretty sound . My relationship's strong . I just asked emilia how we're doing . She said we're very strong . She said the me's are struggling , but the we is strong . Nice , yeah , that's exactly what I . That's exactly what

Self-coaching strategies to maintain momentum

Alan 5:40

I said .

Alan 5:40

Um , but I , in my own head this morning it's 5 am I'm prepping for book club , I've got to be on a call with Kev at 10 . I'm exhausted and I'm sitting there going and I'm behind on getting back to my clients and I'm sitting there going . Okay , am I going to be able to sustain this ? How can I sustain this ? And that's what it is , instead of go back , instead of you know what ? Because I do it and now , remember , I aspire to this run rate . This is what I want . So make sure it's what you actually want .

Alan 6:08

But this is what I want , and in the book by Anthony Trucks he talks about how , when you do something and sustain it long enough , it becomes normal . And the idea here is I want Allen 3.6 , I'm going to be 36 November 17th I want Alan 3.6, . This to be the new normal , and I know I'm a couple of weeks away from being able to do this . So , instead of I can't do this , ask yourself the question how can I do this ? And then just see what comes up . And I have this thing called the 3d plan . I do this with my clients all the time . The first D is delete . Is there a person , place , thing or idea that I can delete ? Maybe for me , youtube shorts . Alan , get the F off YouTube . Seriously , brother

Small distractions and focus

Alan 6:54

, what in the hell ?

Kevin 6:54

right so . I have a Same thing , though , I'm telling you . When you spend less time on Instagram , less time on Facebook , less time on all the other places , youtube seems like a really good place , like I don't know .

Alan 7:04

This video is here too yeah , oh , I wonder what this person's saying about . That's the short about , and you know what it is too . I actually am listening to our shorts on there , and then it goes right to the next one and all of a sudden I'm lost and it's two , three four , five minutes it's gone , and then all of a sudden I'm distracted , so you know what I've been doing .

Alan 7:23

I actually have a course online . I'm going to that instead because there's nothing else but the training course , so that's been helping a ridiculous amount there's certainly yourself a little throat punch , like you're gonna get three minutes in .

Kevin 7:34

give yourself a little hadouken to the throat . Take , take it right out of flow . You'll be back in , you'll be good to go , no time .

Alan 7:39

That sounds good , but instead of I can't do this , how can I do this ? And you will come up . So the first D is delete . The second D is delegate . Is there anything that I can delegate ? Is there anything that I can automate ? So we have feeders that are automated that drop the food for our pets and you only have to fill them once every two weeks instead of every single day . So that helps little things like that . I think they're what ? 25 bucks each or something . By the way , this is totally random and totally off topic .

Alan 8:04

Let's do it already yep , for the first time ever . Yep , I've been waiting for this for 10 freaking years . Okay , you know where I'm going with this emily and I get out of the gym last night and there's a feature . I open my app . And there's a feature . I open my app and there's a feature called Summon . Oh , my car Came to you . Came to us .

Kevin 8:25

It was the coolest freaking thing ever , man .

Alan 8:28

It was so awesome . What am I , James Bond ?

Kevin 8:31

What a weird time to be alive .

Alan 8:33

Yeah , it came to us , and then it applauses when it gets there .

Kevin 8:37

Like from the speakers . Yeah , there's a fart option . You use that one . How many ? Be real . How many times you use that one ? We haven't we . What do you mean ?

Alan 8:46

no , no , we only did it once , we only did it once . I literally it says you can applause , it can , it can do lights , it can do you can't , you make it fart whenever .

Kevin 8:57

Or only when it delivers the vehicle to you .

Alan 8:58

I feel like that's kind of a cog in the system . I did this last night . The coolest thing smart car you know we used to have for the millennial plus amongst us . We used to have flip phones that weren't smart . They can text , but they couldn't do much else . That is what old cars are . This is a smart car . It is so freaking cool man it drove to us . It's awesome .

Kevin 9:20

But anyways , what does that have to ?

Alan 9:21

do with anything . Automate made me think of it . So the first D delete . Second D is delegate , if you can , and the third D is double down . Double down on the things that are the most meaningful and the most profitable and the most important to you the core values , and for me it's fitness . Right now is a big one I want to double down on . That's why we went to 45 minutes .

Kevin 9:42

And that's been hard too . Brother is jumping back to 45 minutes .

Alan 9:45

Yeah , go ahead .

Kevin 9:45

I can imagine I've been exercising . I do my tracker and it tells me how long I did the workout for . 44 minutes is like my average , but I don't do it seven times a week . That's probably five to six times a week , but 45 , I can imagine . Doing it every day is the whole thing , especially if you're walking .

Alan 10:04

Walking sucks yeah , when we're talking to the t-walk thing we talked about the last episode it . It goes by quick sometimes . I'll say what's the time ? Because she does it on her watch and it'll be . She'll say , uh , it feels like we're almost done . She'll be like 17 minutes and we have .

Kevin 10:23

What are you going to do in the winter ? I don't know . You're just going to walk in the snow .

Alan 10:27

Yeah , man , I don't like it Every single day . Brother , I'm going to get you . You know what I'm thinking . It's really cool about this .

Kevin 10:41

What snowshoes for your birthday ? I have , I have nice boots . I'm gonna get you some snowshoes . I'm gonna make you're gonna make them personally yeah , a couple tennis rackets yeah , I think I'd rather you focus on some of your priorities .

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

Alan 10:51

Hello , hello , hello . Nlu listener . Thank you , as always , for listening to next level university . Real quick . I just want to jump in and let you know about the Next Level Dreamliner . This is a journal that I use every single day . Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time . It breaks down your dreams into goals , milestones and daily habits . We hope you enjoy it . The link will be in the show notes . You know what you can get me for my birthday . Yeah , yeah , focus , focus . You know I'm kidding .

Kevin 11:22

When I find it , when I find it for me , I'll find a way to send it over from me to you as well .

Alan 11:27

As for anyone listening , all I want for my birthday is to grow NLU and for everyone to reach their potential .

Kevin 11:34

That's what I want for my birthday .

Alan 11:36

I love that , but ultimately , back to the 3d plan is instead of I can't do this , how can I do this and then go to that 3d plan ? You can do that forever . I mean , you , you'll find stuff you can delete . You will , so we used a word .

Kevin 11:51

I think I used the word when I was doing the intro to this in the beginning of momentum . What can I do ? For I just had a funny joke come up in my head . Why don't we test the theory to see how funny it is ?

Alan 12:06

Well , when I thought of deleting things , trust me , you'll find something to delete . So , for example , I stopped showering it's actually true for a little while .

Kevin 12:16

I didn't shower for like three days , yeah . But you , you , when you shower , you're meditating , you're doing yoga in there .

Alan 12:24

I don't know if you get sculpting yeah , I paint if you're sculpting in there , I learn and I I yeah I , I'm doing like every other day now showering just yeah , just because it's also apparently better for your skin as well , hair as well I don't wash my hair .

Kevin 12:42

That's the other reason I do that too . Shout out to the , shout out to the ladies . I I guess most you don't do your hair every day . It's like cool . There's a reason . I didn't know .

Alan 12:52

Natural oils , I guess got to yeah , you don't do that . And , by the way , with now that I have longer hair , long shout out to the ladies I understand not fully .

Alan 13:03

Emilia has the most beautiful head of hair and she always jokes like I'm gonna , you know , shave this off . I'm like , no , I love your hair . Um , if you really wanted to , you could . She's like , I'm kidding , I love my hair too . Uh , but to the ladies out there , the amount of effort that goes into hair care , I know it , I don't understand fully . Yeah , yeah , yeah , but I've got enough hair now to wear it , you understand more than you used to I understand more than I used to . I'll tell you what .

Kevin 13:28

Men have it easy . That's all I'm saying . What would it take to get you to spike it up straight up and then take a picture of it for the socials ?

Alan 13:41

It wouldn't take much . I'm just not going to do it , so I guess nothing .

Kevin 13:44

What could we do to kind of meet somewhere in the middle and maybe get you to do it ?

Alan 13:49

I don't know if that's an important use of time .

Kevin 13:51

It'd take like three seconds .

Alan 13:54

Well , I'd have to do it at the end of the day because the ladies out there and or the men with long hair , you'll know this If you don't get the hair right , your whole day is thrown off .

Kevin 14:02

That's why I wear a hat now , that's a thing , exactly .

Alan 14:04

That's why this thing doesn't even come off . This is glued to my head , I sleep with it , I shower with it .

Kevin 14:10

This is it . This is who I am now . Okay , Momentum . What we're saying here is when you have momentum , the natural tendency and desire is to take momentum away . It's like there's so much going on . I have so much momentum . I don't want this much momentum . Then we stop doing the things that got us the momentum and the downside is you don't see the result of that negative result for six months . How do you know if what you do is going to slow down momentum ?

Juggling momentum without losing progress

Alan 14:42

I think and I really appreciate this question because that's exactly it when I started getting more and more and more demand . I'm grateful for it . Two things in business One is not enough demand , one is too much . I'm grateful to be on the second end . That's really great because it used to be crickets way back and I never want to lose gratitude for that . Great because it used to be crickets way back and I never want to lose gratitude for that .

Alan 15:02

However , to your point , when it keeps going , there is that tendency of I guess I don't need to reach out to as many people , I guess I don't have to answer my dms as well , I guess I don't have to do you know . So you have that tendency and to me , the 3d plan is the the best way I've been able to do it and and the truth is , you will lose momentum . The question is how do you minimize the loss of momentum ? Okay , and how do you double down on the more important tasks ? Because right now so I just got my 27th client . I'm super , super grateful . I'm not going to neglect existing clients to try to go get new clients . That's a good example , because I could spend a lot more time trying to encourage people to coach with me , but I'm not . I'm not going to neglect the existing ones to try to go get more . That's like really stupid , for lack of a better phrase .

Kevin 15:50

I think it's good . I think it's good for you All . Right , what's the takeaway ? So we can get we can get you out of here with Alan's getting ready for book club , a little book club today . Now , I know you're not listening to this on saturday when we have book club , but that's when we are recording this shout out to the book club members , shout out to the four years coming up on four years , new book coming , so make sure you prepare your vote .

Kevin 16:09

I believe the vote is live in next level nation yes , I don't know if it's pinned to the top

Sustaining growth

Kevin 16:13

.

Alan 16:13

If it's not , I gotta do that , uh . But yeah , the vote is in three different books . Okay , uh , takeaway , takeaway . Every time you start to struggle to sustain whatever it is that you're doing , go to the 3d plan delete , delegate , double down , and that always works , and then you inevitably get more momentum after that , and then you get overwhelmed again . Being overwhelmed is part of growth . Diamonds are created by pressure , but don't let it break you .

Kevin 16:47

Essentially , To paint a picture ? To paint a little picture , it would be this you take off , you're a little plane , just a little plane , and you're 1,000 feet in the air . The first time you go up 1,000 feet , your wings can't handle it . The air's a little bit too thin . It's windy up there , it's cloudy , we can't see what we're doing . You have two things you can do . You go down to 750 feet or you go all the way down to the ground . You go down to 750 for a little bit . It becomes sustainable . Then the next 1500 . 1500 . Same thing happens Now . Do you go land the plane or do you go back down to 1000 ? 1000 is higher than where you started . Rinse and repeat that , maybe forever , and then you're in space .

Alan 17:31

Next thing you know you're amongst the stars .

Kevin 17:32

Now you're amongst the stars . Next thing you know you're flying by the moon . Say what's up , moon . You know , on your way to whatever my very eager mother , mars is the next one , right ? Mercury , venus , earth .

Alan 17:49

Mars , saturn , no Jupiter .

Kevin 17:52

You missed Saturn , saturn . My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas . Served is Saturn , right , oh man , you got no idea what's going on in the world . My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas . Served is Saturn , right ? Oh man , you got no idea what's going on in the world .

Alan 18:07

Brother , I didn't even know that mnemonic . What was yours , you remember ? Please Excuse my Dear Aunt Sally PEMDAS of course PEMDAS .

Kevin 18:16

You loved mnemonics , didn't ? You Got me out of my fair share of squiggles , trust me , yeah , nice . Parentheses , exponentials , multiplication yeah , yeah , yeah , I know some shit too , man , nice . All right , we're going to go . My takeaway would be the plane thing . That's what .

Kevin 18:34

As I said , if you are focused and trying and committed to intentionally getting to the next level every single day , make sure you are subscribed wherever you are consuming this content so you never miss an opportunity to get to the next level . I know some days you want to grow , some days you wake up and say I don't want to do it . Today , I'm not feeling it . You get a little notification that NLU just dropped another episode , which we will do every day , and maybe that'll be the gentle kick in the butt that we need . And , as Alan mentioned , he is taking on more clients and you are going to get results for sure .

Kevin 19:09

Can I guarantee what results you'll get ? Well , it really depends on the goals that you aspire to get , but I can guarantee you will get results and you'll have new awareness , you'll be super consistent and hopefully , you'll be the

Outro

Kevin 19:21

most fulfilled version of yourself . As always , we new awareness . You'll be super consistent and hopefully you'll be the most fulfilled version of yourself , 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 .

Alan 19:28

We will talk to you all tomorrow , keep growing into the next level , next level nation thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university .

Kevin 19:39

We love connecting with the Next Level family .

Alan 19:41

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 .

Kevin 19:50

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow .