Next Level University

A Simple Mindset Shift That Matters A Lot (1923)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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In this episode, Kevin and Alan explain the difference between preferences and principles and why sticking to your core values matters more than you think. Through personal stories and practical examples, they show how aligning your actions with your principles can help you achieve your goals and live with integrity.

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Show notes:
(2:16) The value of small actions
(3:53) Living a principle-centered life
(6:05) Real-life principles
(9:51) Preference Vs. Principle
(13:49) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(16:43) How principles influence success
(23:28) A single principle can change your life
(24:14) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

🎙️ 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.

Kevin Palmieri

so Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, kevin Palmieri, and.

Alan Lazaros

I'm your co-host, Alan Lazarus.

Kevin Palmieri

I'm your host, kevin Palmieri, and I'm your co-host, alan Lazarus.

Alan Lazaros

At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers. Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life, love, health and wealth.

Kevin Palmieri

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 Lazaros

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

Kevin Palmieri

Welcome to Next Level University. 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 1,923, a simple mindset shift that matters a lot. So it's a simple mindset shift, so this episode will probably be a little bit quicker than normal. But Alan sent me a screenshot last night or this morning and he had, I think, $16.75 of credit card reward and he sent it to the bank account. He said every little bit counts and honestly, five years ago if I saw that, I'd be like, dude, what the hell are you doing? Like 17 bucks? 17 bucks, I mean, what are we going to do with $17? We can actually do a fair amount with $17.

The value of small actions

Kevin Palmieri

But a simple mindset shift that mattered a lot to me was there's the principle versus the reality. So the principle of saving a dollar or saving money wherever you can is drastically different than the reality of what it actually looks like. The principle matters way more than the reality usually does. Another example of this I guess the IRS is paying more mileage for people who get to track their miles, like 70 cents per mile. Now, I don't know. I think it was 65 before, and I was talking to Taryn, because Taryn tracks her miles for work, and I said, oh, it looks like it's going up. And she said, well, my company pays me, so the government thing, I don't know.

Kevin Palmieri

And I was literally thinking to myself well, I mean myself. Well, I mean, if it's only going up five cents per mile and you drive a hundred miles, that's only five bucks. And I was like, well, if you drive a thousand miles, though, that's 50. I mean, if you drive 10,000 miles, that's 500 bucks, that's a lot of money. So it's, the principle matters more than the specific. That's really something that I I'm definitely guilty of not appreciating in the past as much as I do today. Is that landing? Is what I'm saying? Landing, you think, definitely.

Living a principle-centered life

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, I think one of the one of the things Kevin and I have learned a lot from each other over the years and one of the things that I think has always baffled is probably the wrong word, but confused you is why I'll spend extra time making every little thing on Canva perfect. Yeah, and I live a very principle-centered life. I don't care if it's $1,600 or $16. It doesn't matter. It's the point of being resourceful. That is a principle that I do, no matter what. And this can be a bottleneck at times, like if you, there's a playful saying of if you trip over dollars to save pennies. That's not very intelligent, but a principle-centered life.

Alan Lazaros

There's a bunch of different paradigms and there's a book called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and it's a really, really, really, really good book. I mean, it's just important. And Stephen Covey was great. He was one of the early productivity thinkers of the day I want to say 70s, maybe 80s, but anyways. So he talks about how everyone has a paradigm We've talked about this in the past and the paradigm is what's your belief in life? And there's a bunch of different ones. Some people believe life is about work. Some people think life is about family. Some people believe life is about having fun. I talk about how I grew up in. My mom and stepdad had a pleasure-centered paradigm and so unconsciously, they believed that life was about having as much fun as possible. And I think that's actually a terrible paradigm to choose. And I definitely did some of that. As I mentioned in the last episode, I ran amok for a time and let it ride, as they'd say, and I did have a blast, but on the other side of that is usually massive pain and suffering. But now I live.

Real-life principles

Alan Lazaros

Stephen Covey talks about a principle-centered paradigm, which is someone who has deep-rooted beliefs that they stand by no matter what. And there's that really famous quote of you don't really fully know how to live until there's something for which you're willing to die, and that seems really irrational, but it means you're all in on something. And so this podcast Kevin has playfully said sometimes I think it's annoying because I'll ask you a question and you won't really give me a straight answer because I'll sort of give you maybe the deeper philosophical understanding of principles. To me, principles are everything. Principles are like me, going into Kevin's brain and reprogramming it, and one example of a principle is being resourceful, and so I'll give you an example.

Alan Lazaros

So Emilia will literally not kill a bug in our house. She will ask me to grab a jar spider and get the spider and then put the spider outside. You know, the birds eat the spiders. The spiders kill, eat the flies. It's a circle of life thing, it's a principle.

Alan Lazaros

Should she waste her time not killing a spider? It's who she is. She's a principle-centered human being. So she'll never litter, never, no matter what. No littering. She has to override her principle-centered paradigm to not go pick up other people's litter. We'll be going for a walk in our condo complex and she'll go out of her way to pick up everybody's litter. And she'll go out of her way to pick up everybody's litter. And it's I appreciate and adore that about her because she will never, ever, ever, ever, ever go outside of alignment with her principle. And to me I think that we admire and respect that a lot, particularly someone who has very positive, constructive, virtuous principles.

Alan Lazaros

I've tried really hard. Like monogamy is a principle, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. There's no circumstance. No circumstance, no matter what happened. Will I ever lie to emilia? Will I ever cheat on emilia? No matter what happens. There is no story, there is no, oh well she did and oh well you know she was none. It's over. And and when you, when you have principles you're willing to die for, you end up living a really good life.

Kevin Palmieri

It went a little bit heavier than I was going. I was just talking about $17 cash back.

Alan Lazaros

Well, that's one of my principles, that's fair.

Kevin Palmieri

Also do your cats murder insects.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, it's how real she. Every single night we bring tucker out in the basement downstairs. He has a little poopy spot under the deck and she always waits for you're just stacking dumps up under the deck, of course, oh interesting. What do you, what do you mean? I don't know he has a leash that is attached to inside and we we let him out. He has a little staircase. How often do you pick it up? Once a month, maybe we don't go back there, so you are.

Kevin Palmieri

You're stacking turd under there, Brother we have a condo complex. I'm going to come over to Alan's house. It's raining out. I got to get under this deck here, so I don't get wet.

Alan Lazaros

You never come through the back, just snacking.

Kevin Palmieri

We don't have many guests. So you're animals.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, do they murder bugs? Yes, so Tauriel, real quick. She waits every night when Tucker goes out there's a little crack in the door so the leash can get out there. It's one of those retractable leashes that he can go all the way out if you want. But he's still on the leash and tau waits for a moth because there's a floodlight right out there that the moths are attracted to and she cannot wait for a moth to try to come in and she'll just I mean, she's, she's amazing, she'll jump six feet fudge doesn't say fudge looks around, he looks at the ceiling and if he sees like a bug on the ceiling he starts screaming.

Kevin Palmieri

And then I have to like pick him up, try to get him to the ceiling, yeah, which maybe is a little cruel. I don't know, these are like little flies, maybe it is.

Alan Lazaros

It's one of those things that Tao wants me to get her a mop.

Kevin Palmieri

And I don't.

Alan Lazaros

I don't, but I do for fudges.

Kevin Palmieri

Fudges are good. You do what you gotta do, man, I'm not gonna judge you.

Alan Lazaros

You broke into my place, you know, but then again that means you don't have a principle.

Kevin Palmieri

And that's okay. No, no, I definitely don't. I would say it's a, it's a preference more than a principle.

Alan Lazaros

Yep.

Kevin Palmieri

Dude, that's a conversation I would love to talk to you this episode too. There's a big difference between saying there's only 15 minutes for me to work out, it's not worth it, and saying there's only 15 minutes, but I can get something done. Those are two very, very, very different mindset around stuff.

Alan Lazaros

Let's have this. I think this is a. I know this isn't where you intended to go, but preference versus principle.

Alan Lazaros

Very rarely is it Very rarely is it Preference versus principle. That has got to be one of the biggest differences. Seriously, dude is going to the gym is exercising a principle or is it a preference? That one distinction will change your entire life. Emilia and I decided it was a principle. We're going to exercise it. That's a principle. We're never missing on that. There's other principles. Recently I've focused more on profitability, revenue. Otherwise we were going to go out of business. Basically and I know that's a principle. Now I can feel that I'm different. I now understand the downside of not having that be a focus. If you're the CEO of a company, for anyone out there, you have to focus on revenue. It doesn't mean that that's the only important thing, but if you don't, you're going to go out of business.

Kevin Palmieri

Most likely.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, and I now have that as a principle. And money's not bad, profitability is not bad. It's actually necessary in order to create positive change in the world. So people talk about mindset all the time. What is mindset? Mindset is just a set of principles. It's a set of paradigms, it's a set of I.

Alan Lazaros

In coaching, I'm trying to help people understand the unconscious principles that they have. So you have a principle of generosity, and every principle has a downside, potential downside, and so you tend to be overly generous. You'll give way bigger tips and I think some of that is is great and I think some of that is reckless. And yeah, and I think that generosity is a luxury that you have to earn, but that's all principle base, and so one of the reasons I'm so boring is because everything's you are boring as shit. Hello, 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.

Kevin Palmieri

The link will be in the show notes. Now that I now the fact that I know that you have a like a turd farm under your deck, I'm actually pretty, I'm pretty engrossed by that.

Alan Lazaros

That's like it's not as bad as you think. Man Tucker's a little Pomeranian chihuahua.

Kevin Palmieri

You gotta poop once a day.

Alan Lazaros

That's 30 turds under there. We we have a condo complex where they do uh, all the landscaping.

Kevin Palmieri

It's awesome, huge fan they're not picking up the turds no, but they do leaf blow and you think that just it's like a tumbleweed, like a turtle weed, it just floats, it just goes down into the woods dude.

Alan Lazaros

Turds are soil man. That's how it rolls.

Kevin Palmieri

That's going to be the quote from today's episode.

Alan Lazaros

Turds are soil man. Where do you think Animals go to the bathroom?

Kevin Palmieri

they go outside. I've never seen one do it. I don't think they even do, brother. It's biodegradable.

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

Alan Lazaros

I don't even think they do it the first rainstorm that poop is Going to be soil.

Kevin Palmieri

You're fine. It's just funny to me to imagine you At the end of a night like just unleashing tucker to go poop under the deck.

Alan Lazaros

All right, buddy, see you in a couple minutes have fun, throw on the floodlight, the girls go to the bathroom and we do bathroom b-a-f-r-o-o-m. All of us together every night. Bathroom, bathroom time. I take a dump down there too, well done. Well done, well done, that was good.

Kevin Palmieri

Is there anything else we're missing? So again, I know Alan and I are kind of not talking about the same thing. We are. I'm talking about it at a very much higher level. But that's new to me. It's new to me that I would say, well, it doesn't really matter that much, like, well, that that 15 cents, that $15, that dollar 50, whatever it is, it doesn't really matter that much. Now I really I can tell that I'm thinking differently about that over a long enough period of time, because now it's always. I literally, again, I'm not sponsored by any of these companies or anything. I literally had been drinking ZOA for like a year and a half and then when I went to Washington for podcast movement, I got like these, the ghost drinks, the energy drinks, yeah.

Alan Lazaros

They'll be real, real good up front. But then what do you mean? The less clean energy? I like ZOA better.

Kevin Palmieri

Well, let me tell you why. I went on Amazon. It was $1.15 cheaper for those things, so I switched. I went from ZOA to Ghost, did you, and they taste better. Fair, am I going to die though?

Alan Lazaros

No, no, I think you're fine. Oh, Am I going to die, though? No, no, I think you're fine. The reason why Zoa green tea extract very clean form of caffeine. It's a cleaner high, for lack of a better phrase.

Kevin Palmieri

I go to the gym right after, so I don't really care.

Alan Lazaros

Well, yeah, you might not notice.

Kevin Palmieri

Here's one thing you have a principle of being I've taken some caffeine before I've taken some probably pretty bad caffeine. I used to hammer white monsters like they were going out of business.

Alan Lazaros

Yeah, no, there's certain. Obviously, certain things help others, that's, but you have a principle of being on time. That's a principle. Yes, it's, these are.

How principles influence success

Alan Lazaros

You've heard people say well, you've got to turn your shoulds into musts. Yeah, yes, agreed, but how many musts can you have? And your musts are determining the quality of life. Seriously, I am constantly trying to reevaluate but 2025 is coming up, obviously, in case anyone didn't know and, uh, I'm reevaluating my new must. I told kev I need permission to be a few minutes late for you because I'm doing other things, that I'm never just chilling while you ever do, never. Uh, I have certain principles. That principles run me.

Alan Lazaros

I think a lot of people. I always say this to my clients. I don't say it on air for lack of better phrasing. I probably should. I always say this to my clients. I don't say it on air for lack of a better phrasing. I probably should more. I always say amateurs, listen to their feelings. Professionals, never, ever, ever listen. Let me rephrase this Amateurs listen to their feelings. Professionals run the system. It doesn't matter if you're tired, it doesn't matter if you're, it's irrelevant, it's completely irrelevant. And and now can you take that too far and completely burn to the ground. But and you can't have 50 principles that are all musts you can't exercise every day. Okay, mobility not a must, it's a preference, exercising every day is a is a the mind, and I think principle versus preference is a very powerful reframe for 2025.

Alan Lazaros

Everybody ask yourself what are the things that are principles for me? Like maybe you never, ever, ever, no matter what, will ever flirt with another person. Maybe that's a principle. Maybe you'll never lie, can't lie. Maybe you omit truth or don't say the whole truth, but you'll never lie to someone's face when they ask you to. Like we all have principles. The problem is they're all unconscious. We need to get them up here and then reprogram them, and that's one of the reasons why most of us don't achieve our goals is that our principles aren't aligned with what's required to actually achieve the goal. One of the reasons you and I aren't more successful is because we have principles that make it harder to succeed.

Kevin Palmieri

Well, if anybody wants to buy the company, slash. I don't know cigarette companies or whiskey companies that want us to run some ads. Shoot me a message, Kevin, at nextleveluniversecom.

Alan Lazaros

I'm fielding all.

Kevin Palmieri

I'm fielding all. I'm fielding all.

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah no, that's something. Somebody said that to me the other day. They were like wait, did I I heard you talk about on an episode where you, you said you don't do ads, and they said what do you mean? I said we don't. We don't do outside ads. We ever talk about stuff. It's our own stuff, it's our own products, our own services, and they're like is that the best way to do it? And I was like probably not. No, no, probably not, but that's what we decided early on and we, we said it once and then from there it was like there's really I don't mean this in an arrogant way there's no. The Rock could message me right now and say I'll give you a million dollars a month to promote ZOA and we would say, no, I don't, I just don't. That's not how I want to do it. That's it's against the, it's against the principle. It doesn't matter if, or a million dollars, it's the principle, it's not specific.

Alan Lazaros

And there's reasons underneath that. I want to share this. I think this is an awesome episode. That means hopefully people will like it, we'll see. I listen to certain podcasts. Ten years ago I started getting into self-improvement and podcasts and Tim Ferriss' show was one of my favorites and there was a couple others, and now Brendan Burchard's show. Again, I still respect Brendan's work, but his show is hot garbage. It's all ads. It's so brutal. The first six minutes is like hey, there's no Tim, there's no way you those, all those different food services and all the different. It's like I've heard more different types of caffeine. You're going to die of a caffeine overdose. Oh, you know, every morning, the first thing I know you're full of it. You've sold out. We talked about this on group coaching. Like people who sell out. Does that mean you think you and I talk behind the scenes? We'll keep it behind the scenes, but you, you talk about people who you think sold out. What does it mean to sell out?

Alan Lazaros

it means abandoned principle, abandon your principle the principle of why we don't advertise on this show is because we're so frustrated with all these people who claim to want to help people, who want to be about self-improvement over everything, and then they say hey, by the way, sorry to interrupt to this broadcast, but uh, did you hear about this kettlebell? It's got a giant gorilla on it and I use it every morning at 4 am. Uh, I have been doing it since I was seven years old. Yeah, seven years old. It's just a giant lie and that's called selling out and I will never do it. And it's way harder to succeed without selling out way harder, for sure.

Alan Lazaros

I remember I asked kevin one time can I put 175 countries in my bio? And you're like, yeah, it's, it's at least that I want to put 180. It could be 180, but we can't do that until we're certain it's 180.

Kevin Palmieri

It could be 200 and 300, 600, 700. We're heard in 700 countries by every person ever on the planet. Every person ever on the planet has heard about us, listened to all of our podcasts.

Alan Lazaros

I had a funny moment the other day. I was with a podcaster coaching them and I had this thought. I was like I wonder if anyone even knows how many countries there are, Because everything's numbers for me. Like when you said heard in 175 countries, does that build any credibility? There's only 195 of them. So we've been heard in almost all the countries, but I wonder if people walk around going, there's got to be at least 500 countries, right?

Kevin Palmieri

I don't know. I mean I don't know. I mean I don't know. I don't think I would know. You asked me a couple years ago. Yeah, so it doesn't build as much credibility as maybe I thought you know.

Alan Lazaros

No, maybe not, because everything's relative. It's. When you talk to a podcaster and you say 1900 episodes, the first thing they say is oh so like micro content? No, no, the average is probably a half hour, probably 25 minutes now.

Kevin Palmieri

But then they go whoa.

Alan Lazaros

But if you say that to a non-podcaster 1900 episodes they'd be like, oh cool. I think it depends. Yeah, because it's all relative. If I say 600 pound deadlift, kev goes what, but if you, but if you don't have reference to what that means.

A single principle can change your life

Kevin Palmieri

Well, it goes both ways too, right, you might hear it and it might actually be way more impressive. Yeah, it might actually be way more. It might seem way more impressive Because I'll tell Taryn, I'll be like, yeah, I squatted 275 today and she's like what's the most you've ever squatted? Damn, more than that. 405? No, 425. Yeah, back in the day, it's all relative. I'm making my way back, I'm making my way downtown, walking fast Faces past, and I'm homebound Da-na-na-na-na-na-na. Okay, all right, we're going to go. Like I said, this is kind of a shorter one because it's the principle of principles versus preferences.

Alan Lazaros

What's your wrap-up?

Kevin Palmieri

My wrap-up, wrap this in a bow for us. Yeah, it's not about the specifics, it's about the principle. Yeah, maybe you're only saving a dollar, but if your principle is to save as much money as possible, I was thinking that recently. Every time At some point I don't know, maybe at some point, but I saw this somewhere online they said every time I spend $5 on something I know I don't need, I invest $5 into something I don't need. That's a really good principle, because you're not going to spend $500 on something useless, because you know you're going to have to invest $500 into something else, and that's $1,000.

Outro

Kevin Palmieri

One principle would change your whole life. That's how I would wrap it up in a bow. Nice job, I would steal yours. All right, next Level Nation. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an opportunity to get to the next level. 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 Stay principle-centered.

Alan Lazaros

Next.

Kevin Palmieri

Level Nation. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. We love connecting with the Next Level family.

Alan Lazaros

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

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host