Is THIS Something You Can Change About Yourself? (1912)

What if staying humble during success is more challenging than persevering through setbacks? What if you could embody the confidence of a champion while staying grounded like an underdog? In today’s episode, Kevin and Alan explore their struggles and strategies for balancing humility with self-belief. Discover how childhood experiences shape self-concept, why mindset matters more than circumstance, and how setting the right goals can transform your journey. Tune in to learn how to thrive through both success and setbacks.

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Show notes:
(2:15) Humility in success Vs. Belief in failure
(3:52) Why mindset is the key to overcoming obstacles
(6:24) Childhood experiences in shaping self-concept
(10:34) Confidence of a winner, humility of an underdog
(11:38) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://bit.ly/4eE5RF5
(16:58) Strategies for goal-setting
(21:32) Motivating factors
(22:59) 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 Palmieri 0:00

it's almost like you have to set small. You have to set bigger goals in the short term. I have to set goals I can achieve in the short term. Stretch but achieve. It's almost like you have to set goals that you just. It will force you to stretch but you almost never will accomplish them and then, when you get close, you have to reset.

Alan Lazaros 0:20

What if I'm as humble as someone who thinks they're a loser and believe in myself as much as the sure thing, as much as the person who's Like the team that everyone's betting on? What if you have the confidence of that team with the humility of the underdog?

Kevin Palmieri 0:39

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.

Alan Lazaros 0:53

Our goal with every episode is to help you level like confidence, self-belief, self-worth self-awareness, relationships, boundaries, consistency, habits and defining your own unique version of success. Self-improvement in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, completely free.

Kevin Palmieri 1:22

Welcome to Next Level University from 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 1,912. I'm not exactly sure what the title is yet, because I haven't fully chosen the title, but we're going to talk today about for you specifically as a human being walking this planet, floating around the planet, crawling around the planet, whatever it is that you're doing. We have some younger listeners who are probably crawling still, shout out to the—we have some children that listen to the podcast with their parents.

Alan Lazaros 2:04

I think that the podcast is on in their vicinity. Yeah Well, they're listening with their little ears. Can you imagine a little three-year-old? Air your date.

Kevin Palmieri 2:15

No, I don't think that's Intelligence, self-awareness. I feel like they'd probably be saying the swears. No, they'd be saying the swears before they said anything else. Their first word Next level, next level, next level. Two words, technically. Is it harder to stay humble during success or is it harder to maintain belief when you're losing? I like questions like this because you most likely are closer to one end than the other. Alan would self-identify and say I struggle with I. Alan struggle with staying humble during success. I self-identify with when we are losing. I feel like we are losers Less now than ever, less now than ever.

Alan Lazaros 2:59

But I really think.

Kevin Palmieri 3:00

That's the point, right, that's the goal in the whole journey is number one. You become aware of what your natural tendency is, one of the reasons I used to think and I still do, but I used to think self-belief was everything. If you didn't have self-belief, everything was. Jets my hair like super wonky. Right now, what's happening?

Kevin Palmieri 3:21

I still think it's of so much importance because if you are someone like me who at the beginning of this journey, would try something and you, let's say you built momentum. It went well. Your first whatever it is your first podcast, your first speech, your first coaching call, your first piece of artwork, your first page of your book whatever it went really well. And then the next time you did it, it went horribly wrong. And then you immediately think, wow, I suck, I can't do this.

Kevin Palmieri 3:52

Unfortunately, if that's the mindset, it doesn't really matter what you're doing, because that mindset's going to follow you forever. On the other end, if you're someone who, when you start winning, you think everything's going to be easy and you don't have to do anything anymore and you lose the humility to do the stuff that got you there in the first place, you're always going to wonder why you only reach a certain level of success. And the big point I want to make very quickly in this episode is it's not as much about the thing that you're doing as the way you're doing it. If you have the mindset that if I'm losing, I can't do this, you're going to quit everything and just jump from one thing to another thing to another thing, when in reality it's the approach more than anything. And it's the same on the other end. If you think or if you feel like when you get results it's really hard for you to stay humble, you're just going to jump from thing to thing to thing when, in reality, the mindset is the issue more than anything else.

Alan Lazaros 4:50

I watched a movie on Netflix oh no, it's based on a true story 1936 Olympics. A young man who lost his father when he was 14, based on a true story and they beat the record in Berlin and he was like the ultimate underdog in the whole film. Super inspiring. They did a really good job. You'd never think a movie about crew would be awesome.

Kevin Palmieri 5:17

Oh, it's about crew.

Alan Lazaros 5:19

Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri 5:20

Like the boys in the boat.

Alan Lazaros 5:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Nice, that's the one. Did you see it like the?

Kevin Palmieri 5:26

boys in the boat. Yeah, that nice, that's the one. Did you see it? I've seen it. Yes, it is a good movie. I beat you with a inspirational movie, taran. It was taran's idea. It's a great idea it was.

Alan Lazaros 5:32

It was awesome, yeah, yeah, it was awesome and it was super inspiring and I the reason I bring that up is because I feel like sometimes I've lost my underdog. I think that's a real problem and to the point of this episode. Do you struggle to believe in yourself when you're losing or do you struggle to stay humble when you're winning? I feel like it's all built on self-concept. So Kevin's self-concept when he was younger was I'm a loser, and again I'm overgeneralizing. Was younger, was I'm a loser, and again I'm overgeneralizing. It's not just I'm a loser, right, well, it was a piece of it In general. Okay, in general, let me just oversimplify for a second. Mine was I'm a winner, no matter what the obstacles are. Kevin's is I'm a loser, almost no matter what I do. That's just unconscious.

Alan Lazaros 6:24

It's something that your brain if you study this, the neuroscience of this self-concept starts happening the first time when you look in a mirror. It's anywhere between age two and five you start to see yourself in the mirror Like, oh, this is me. Like little babies. When they first see their reflection, they go wait a minute and they touch their face oh, this is, this is me. And then your self-concept and a lot of. There's a lot of research. We talked about the self-worth theory.

Alan Lazaros 6:50

There's a lot of research that talks about how your self-concept determines a lot of your success not all of it, but a lot of it, and this is why a lot of the saying of you can't teach an old dog new tricks exists, because in the neuroscience, a child and when you were younger, you basically looked around and you saw yourself and you compared yourself to the world around you and you looked at your environment and you looked at the world and you determined, somehow unconsciously I'm kind of a loser, I think. Am I? Am I not going to be a doctor? Am I not going to be successful? Am I not going to be an astronaut, like that kind of thing and again weizing, whereas with me I had the opposite, I had the I'm gonna maybe be president one day, or I'm gonna start my own company one day. Maybe I can be like steve jobs and and that's all.

Alan Lazaros 7:42

Built on this self-concept of I am the type of person that can blank, blank, blank. And the truth is, is that whether you're accurate or not, like whether or not I could have been president or not, or blah, blah, blah, blah? What matters is, do you believe that you are someone who can achieve what you want if you want? Because if, if Kevin believed he was a loser on any level, why would he go for doctor. If you don't believe it's possible, you would never even shoot for it. In hindsight now you believe that if you really wanted to and put in the work and had the right mentors and and and you believe you could be a doctor. I do today. Yeah, yeah, okay. What if seven-year-old Kevin had that as an option? You know, even when you were an all-star baseball player, sort of by accident, you didn't even know, you just were good, but you thought you got lucky. Imagine if you had a coach or a mentor who actually got you to believe that you could play d1 or or that you could be in the mlb. You might have been able to. I mean, who knows right, maybe you've been a bench player, whatever, the still point is you could have made some good money and you know it could have been awesome. The point is is that all possibility is predicated on self-concept.

Alan Lazaros 8:52

And it's funny that you bring this topic up, because when I was watching that film this past weekend, I was thinking to myself you know, he's such an underdog. He has no family, his dad left him, his mom died when he was young. Like this, dude is the ultimate underdog and he's a beast. But I miss that because now I'm successful and I'm a CEO and I have a master's, and I miss. When I was younger, nobody believed that I was going to be anything and I used to talk about these big goals and dreams and I literally would get laughed at. And now I know why. I mean it is kind of crazy, but miss the.

Alan Lazaros 9:32

And to bring it back to the original point of this episode, if you do struggle to stay humble when you're successful, you're on my end. You probably believe in yourself a lot. If you struggle to believe in yourself when you're down and out, you most likely have a self-concept like Kev's. And that doesn't mean we don't struggle with both, because I know some people that are actually, uh, don't believe in themselves and actually when they start winning they do. They do struggle with humility as well. But the last piece of this monologue here is how can we get the strengths of both sides? Let's answer that question for a second. Get the strengths of both sides? Let's answer that question for a second. What if I'm as humble as someone who thinks they're a loser and believe in myself as much as the sure thing, as much as the person who's like the team that everyone's betting on? What if you have the confidence of that team, with the humility of the underdog? To me that is like my dream, right there.

Alan Lazaros 10:34

That's my dream. That's who I want to be. What if you have the confidence of that team with the humility of the underdog? To me, that is like my dream, right there. That's my dream. That's who I want to be, that's who I used to be and who I need to get back to, because now that we're winning and all that, I just I don't know, I don't. I'm not into winning as much as I am to like grinding.

Kevin Palmieri 10:46

I've noticed yes, yeah, I've noticed. I don't know, I don't know, how do you get both? You set a long-term goal that you can never accomplish. Done, done, that's done. That's something.

Alan Lazaros 11:06

And then short-term milestones that get you there but never get you there.

Kevin Palmieri 11:13

Yeah, would it be short-term milestones that make you feel good about yourself? It doesn't really work. That's why it's so hard I don't know outside of having two people. I don't really know how to do it.

Alan Lazaros 11:26

You've expressed in the past how challenging it has been to work with me, because you feel like I purposely choose the harder road at all times.

Kevin Palmieri 11:31

Yes, I hate it, I can't stand it.

Alan Lazaros 11:33

Well, that's, I think that's why, with love, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching.

Kevin Palmieri 11:36

Fair Next level nation. What is happening? If you've thought to yourself, I want to try coaching, but you don't really know where to start, group coaching would be a wonderful place for you. That's really why we created it in the first place. We start a new round every 90 days. So if you're hearing this, go to the website nextleveluniversecom and we have the landing page where you can actually hold your spot right now. Even if there's a group going on right now, you can still lock your spot for the next one. The biggest thing that we've seen is, as we get closer and closer to the date, unfortunately, some people end up missing. The group fills up and they can't do it, and then they end up regretting that. So please head over to the website. The link will be in the show notes and we would love to see you there.

Alan Lazaros 12:22

I think one of the reasons why is because the easy road never creates the most growth, and long-term growth is what ultimately matters and well, we were.

Kevin Palmieri 12:32

we were talking about this behind the scenes. We were talking about how, at some point, we have to give alan, we have to like hide money from alan. Yeah, so he doesn't know that there is any? Yeah, and for me, I need to know that there is, because I don't really Like right now I couldn't tell you how many. We've gotten a lot of NLPS clients over the last month and a half two months. If anything, that makes me want to get more clients, not stop yeah.

Alan Lazaros 13:05

For me. It makes me a little more complacent, not a lot, I'm not just complacent, but it does it makes me a little. It's a little less of that. I need to fight for every dollar. I need to fight for every moment I need. There's something about being an underdog that I I think I'm trying to stay in alignment with, and I think that's messing up your ability to feel abundant which we're gonna figure that out.

Kevin Palmieri 13:30

What we're gonna do, we're gonna give.

Alan Lazaros 13:31

We going to give Kev a big enough salary to where he can be abundant while I'm still an underdog.

Kevin Palmieri 13:37

Do you think that there's an opportunity in growth in that, just like you could say to me well, kev, it doesn't matter that we're losing. You still have to believe in yourself. It's like you know. Thanks, man, appreciate that.

Alan Lazaros 13:51

Thanks so much for that breakthrough, and it doesn't matter that you're winning alan, you still have to stay humble.

Alan Lazaros 13:57

Yeah, yeah, I yes and yes and no. Well, I'll never be as scarce as I was growing up. Yeah, growing up, when my stepdad left, I we had, literally I got free lunch at school. When you get free lunch at school, it's basically Massachusetts saying, hey, you have no money, we're going to make sure we feed you at school. And I remember shopping at Salvation Army. I mean, we didn't have any money, we didn't even know how we're going to keep the house and I miss that somewhat, like I miss what that created. Let me reframe. I don't miss that. That was awful. It was honestly terrible, like my childhood was so alarmingly bad in hindsight, but what it built in me I'm very proud of.

Alan Lazaros 14:43

I've never had such self high self-worth in the sense of last week we were with family for Thanksgiving and I guess two weeks ago, and I just had this moment of. There's something about me that's so different because I only have my mom there. I don't have any other family, and that's why that movie resonated so deeply. Because he doesn't have a family. This is it for him, like he doesn't have anything else. There's nothing but the boat that I I I feel that so strongly with NLU, like there is nothing else. Obviously there's Emilia in my little family now, which is a whole different level for me, but I remember when it was you versus you, versus what's possible, and no one thought you'd actually do anything Like that, and I just feel like I've lost that a little bit. But enough about me. Let's bring this back to the listener. How do you have work ethic like an underdog with the belief of someone who maybe has a high self-concept?

Kevin Palmieri 15:51

Well, you've got to figure out what end are you on first, and then, what do we have to do to work the other side? I think that's in a nutshell. I think that's the simplest answers. Okay, right now, every time you take an L, you feel like it's the end of the world. Okay, let's focus on taking smaller Ls, Because if the loss you're taking is bigger than the belief that you have, I'm telling you it's easy to pack up and go home.

Kevin Palmieri 16:16

This is not for me. This just isn't for me. And then, on the other end, if you're somebody who loses, what I would say to you? If you and I were behind the scenes and you said Kev, the goal, we have to have the most successful, impactful, self-improvement company on the planet and to change the world in the way we want to change the world. That's never going to happen. So we're always up against this massive goal that we're going to be chasing forever. And even if it does happen, well, you could do it better and more consistently. All that, yeah, the infinite game, the infinite game. Yes, Infinite versus finite. That's there.

Kevin Palmieri 16:58

It's almost like you have to set small. You have to set bigger goals in the short term. I have to set goals I can achieve in the short term. Yeah, Stretch, but achieve. It's almost like you have to set goals that you just it will force you to stretch but you almost never will accomplish them and then when you get close, you have to reset. So I'm going to get, I want to get, I want to have 30 clients that I coach every month. Awesome, cool. That's not enough. It probably needs to be 45. Because that way you'll actually suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer, and then you'll get to 42 and then you'll burn down and I don't know, maybe again, I don't think most people statistically are on that end, but I think it's long-term, short-term thoughts on all that.

Alan Lazaros 17:41

Well, what's underneath all this and I love this conversation is motivation. What ignites Kevin is winning. What ignites me is losing. So we're just trying to. We're trying to manufacture, we're not manufactured, that's the wrong word. So we're just trying to. We're trying to manufacture, we're not manufacturing, that's the wrong word. We're trying to create the formula for maximum motivation.

Alan Lazaros 17:58

I don't, I don't like not being ignited, I don't like feeling lazy, I don't like it. It's like that guy in that film. Again, he's doing the boat with his mentor on, he's working late nights, he's early mornings, he's working harder than everybody else. That's who I am Like, that's who I am at my core. I don't like hanging out. For me, it's like, uh, there's something that happens.

Alan Lazaros 18:25

And again, for those of you who are out there who really didn't, um, don't, don't know, maybe what it's like to feel like you don't have another choice. Because emilia the coolest part about emilia is she had an option. She chose the harder road even though she had an alternative, and I talked to her about this this weekend. I'm like I didn't have another choice, so I had to like figure this out. And I never talk about it, probably because I'm too scared to talk about how bad my childhood was on a public medium, but I'm just done not talking about it, and I think I'm done not being me, and all of us should be trying to create our own optimal motivation, like, if you're not motivated right now, if you're out there right now and you're not motivated, what? What do you need? To be motivated For me?

Alan Lazaros 19:16

I need a goal that's deeply meaningful. I need people counting on me. I need enough scarcity to know that I cannot take it easy. I can't be the best on the court metaphorically. I don't like. When I was playing basketball, I was always trying to beat someone. There's a guy named Mike in our town who was always better than me and I was always close, but I was never there. I like being an underdog. I don't want to be the best on any court, and when I've gotten older and older and older and older and older, it's been harder and harder to find rooms where people are more ignited than me, people that are more motivated than me, and that's actually really scary to share out loud. But the truth is is I. It's very rare that I'm with someone who's more dialed in than me.

Alan Lazaros 20:06

That's why I love being with Emilia because she's she's ahead of me in so many things that it's so inspiring for me. I don't. I don't personally want to be. It's a weird paradox. I want to be the best and the best version of myself, but I don't like being the best. I don't like being the most dialed, like this time of year. A lot of people are relaxing and for me, I don't like it because I don't have anyone to look to for inspiration as much as know some other times during the year, and so I have to evolve.

Motivating factors

Alan Lazaros 20:35

Ultimately is what this is. However, I also can't forget where I came from and for anyone out there, are you on the end, where you just struggle to believe in yourself, so you need to focus most of your time and effort on just setting up the dominoes that are small enough to knock over but big enough to matter? Or are you on my end, where it's like yo, you need to sit in the mirror and go? You are not even scratching your potential. This is nothing compared to what you are capable of, and then find a way to align that with something that's aligned with your passion and your purpose, and I like that. The whole team is counting on me in a way. I like that the whole team is counting on me in a way, because it helps me. Having Emilia and having our home and having more responsibility and having people counting on me has helped me stay really, really, really motivated, and for me, I'm not fulfilled when I'm not motivated because I do. I would be lying if I didn't share that.

Alan Lazaros 21:32

I think a lot of people are entitled and lazy Not everyone, not everyone but I do think a lot of people in the world have lost sight of suffering. There's a lot of people out there that work harder for minimum amount of money and then I see people that are like, really entitled and they have these great fat salaries for minimal effort and it's like you have lost sight, you've lost perspective on what it's like to to really suffer. And there's people out there that are suffering and I do. I have so much reverence for the people that are out there grinding for for their, for their well-being and for their quality of life. I I don't like the people that show up with generational wealth and and they just they. They've lost sight of what it's like to not eat. They've lost sight of what it's like to not eat. They've lost sight of what it's like to not know if they can go to college. They lost sight of what it's like to not to not know where their next paycheck is coming from or whether or not they can pay their bills. You know, I can just see it all over them.

Alan Lazaros 22:26

It's, it's, it's a level of entitlement that just bothers me when, in reality, I think that the best part of human nature is when you're in your sweet spot of both challenge and humility and self-belief. Kids fired up. Yeah, I had a good weekend. I had a good weekend. I got very inspired this weekend. Kids fired up.

Outro

Kevin Palmieri 22:45

I respect it. I respect it. All right, maybe we'll do a part two, because I knew we only had 20 minutes and it went longer and different than I thought. So maybe we'll do a part two at some point. But Alan has a call. I want to make sure he gets to because Alan's got a lot of clients to coach and we want to make sure we're on time. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you. Subscribe if you want all that happy jazz. And at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We will Talk to you soon. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. We love connecting with the Next Level family.

Alan Lazaros 23:19

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 Palmieri 23:28

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.