Next Level University

Logic Vs. Emotion (1980)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Emotions can cloud judgment, but rationality brings clarity. In this episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros explore the power of rational thinking and why emotional decisions often lead to setbacks. Alan explains different levels of rationality, while Kevin shares how he shifted from emotional reactions to logical decision-making. They also break down real-life examples, like wedding planning and business coaching, to show how thinking practically leads to better results. If emotions have ever held you back, this episode will help you gain clarity and confidence in your choices.

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Show notes:
(3:23) Three levels of rational decision-making
(6:18) A logical approach to wedding planning
(10:36) Why accuracy leads to better choices
(12:12) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(14:03) How wealthy kids often think irrationally
(18:38) Fear and emotional decision-making
(21:05) Journey from emotion to logic
(22:59) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

Especially if you feel like you're overly emotional and I don't mean that in a talking-down-to-you way, I don't mean it that way but if you feel like you're over-emotional and you get stuck in emotions and it stops you from operating and doing things that you want to do, I think that's an opportunity to lean more into rationality. I'm not saying you ever have to be as far to the polarity as Alan is, because I don't know if you could polarity, as Alan is, because I don't know if you could and so people who are afraid to look like an idiot.

Alan Lazaros:

Unfortunately, they end up learning less because they're constantly trying not to look worse, which inevitably makes you worse, because when you're playing basketball and you're not afraid to look terrible, you just get better much faster, whereas if you're constantly concerned about not being good enough, you won't dribble with your left, you won't pass the ball, you won't, whatever it is.

Kevin Palmieri:

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:

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, 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 1,980, I talk a little bit about rationality. I was on a podcast, shout out to Josh. I was on his podcast five years ago and I was back on his podcast today, nice, and it was wild. What a good dude, just a good human.

Kevin Palmieri:

And we were talking about how I said I think one of the biggest things that really jeffed me in life was assuming that if I got all the things that caused me trauma when I was young, felt like went out and brought those home, I wouldn't have any trauma anymore, just like go away. So when I was young I felt insignificant, we didn't have money. I went and tried to accomplish those things, assuming that my life would get better. And it didn't. And I said I don't know if that's a hyper rational way to think about it. I think it kind of is like, rationally, when I was young I didn't have these things. These things created a void. If I go acquire those things, the void will go away. I feel like that's a hyper-rational way to think about it. Would you agree with that, or at least rational.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, I think, baseline rational. I think there's levels to rationality. Next level you. So level one is I didn't have these things as a child. They caused me pain not having those, so I'm going to go't have these things. As a child, they caused me pain not having those, so I'm going to go get those things and it will solve my pain. That's level one, rational. Level two rational would be okay. So those voids were a lot deeper than I originally thought. Getting those things isn't actually going to solve the, the internal void.

Alan Lazaros:

And then level three would be okay having money, because I didn't have money growing up. This is just hypothetical. Having money would solve a portion of it, but not all of it and I think that would be hyper rational which would be just super accurate.

Kevin Palmieri:

Rationality is just accuracy but what's the difference between being rational and then just being emotional and wrong? What if that was just me? That was emotion, not rational.

Alan Lazaros:

It probably was.

Alan Lazaros:

It was probably an over swing. So money caused pain growing up. Not having money caused pain growing up. Therefore, I'm going to go get rich to solve that. That's hyper, that's an overswing. Rational would be the center point. Rational would be okay.

Alan Lazaros:

Not having money really sucked and it did cause a lot of pain. So let's make sure that we set ourselves up to have consistent income and a career that's sound and a solid retirement. But money's still not everything. Okay, we talk about drive to five all the time. So the drive to five is a everything's a spectrum. There's no right or wrong. There's zero to ten, and I actually did an analysis recently which was really fascinating.

Alan Lazaros:

So there's a couple that we coach that's having a wedding and they are concerned about going over budget on the wedding and we broke down a statistical understanding of how much they can expect probabilistically I don't think that's a word, but statistically in terms of wedding gifts. And I said, okay, on the low end, some people will not give you any gifts. On the high end, some people will give you thousands of dollars. Okay, you're having 175 people come. All right, let's say the average is 100. That means that some people will do 50.

Alan Lazaros:

Like, 50% or lower, will do 100 or less, 50% or higher will do 100 or more, and we broke down the statistical sample set of how much money they're going to be able to make up so that they can have rationality in their wedding planning, because they have a whole floor plan and they I mean it's a whole thing, they're, they're crushing it. There's spreadsheets, it's great, and anyone who's planned a wedding it sounds like a whole fucking thing and you're just basically spending a bunch of money the bus and catering and all this stuff and you need to understand, okay, are we? So let me rationally break this down and have high degree of certainty that, okay, if we put this $5,000 on a credit card, we're going to be able to pay that back right after the wedding because we're going to have gifts from the guests that come to the wedding, and I think that's just a hyper rational approach to wedding planning, whereas most people planning weddings lose their minds because they're very dramatic and they get very scared and scarce and freak out that it's over budget.

Kevin Palmieri:

Are they going to sell their stuff that they get?

Alan Lazaros:

No, but there's monetary gifts.

Kevin Palmieri:

You know that. Well, I think it's a percentage. Yeah, of course, right, of course. Depends on what's on the registry. Is that a wedding registry, baby registry? Something like that, exactly, but the Depends on what's on the registry. Is that a wedding registry, baby?

Alan Lazaros:

registry, yeah, something like that Exactly. But the point is is they'll make some money and they're most likely. That here's the low end, here's the high end, here's the most probable. And then let's make decisions based on those numbers. And I think one of the reasons why rationality is so near and dear to my heart is because, irrational, you essentially almost guarantee that you can't achieve the outcomes that you want. So, for example, my irrational fear is being hated.

Kevin Palmieri:

But if I'm always afraid to be hated, I'm not going to be able to live a life. That's true. Why is that irrational? Isn't that hyper rational? Well, I'm not always hated, no, but isn't the fear of being hated super-rational? I don't think that's irrational.

Alan Lazaros:

I think it's irrational if it's inaccurate. So if I unconsciously believe that if I say, hey, I'm an engineer and I'm type A and I'm an achiever and I don't really want to spend time at barbecues, it would be irrational for me to assume that everyone's going to hate me for saying that. It would also be irrational to assume that no one's going to hate me for saying that, like if you and I were constantly oh, we're going to lose all our listeners if Alan says that that's irrational, it's wrong, it's inaccurate. But to assume that we can just jump on the mic and say whatever we want without any consequences is also dumb.

Kevin Palmieri:

How do you measure the closeness to the polarity?

Alan Lazaros:

Measure everything, so listens. So we track listens every day. You track listens every day. I look at your sheet and so we're at 1.17 million listens across our podcasts. We're averaging a certain amount per day now and if those increase, I would try to look for evidence as to why that might be. If they decrease, I would look for evidence as to why that might be and then, if I was irrational, I would assume oh, that one episode where I opened up and was courageous, that we lost a bunch of listeners. That might be true, it might not.

Alan Lazaros:

It's very hard to live in a world where you kind of can't measure the truth, one of the things. I'll be brief about this because I know we're gonna go soon, but I can't stand the fact that there's no direct competition in our space. Everything's so goddamn subjective. I believe that our podcast is extremely valuable, like unbelievable. The amount of time and effort that we put into making sure this helps people as much as humanly possible each day is very high. But it's subjective, so it's very hard to measure that Like we can't go out. Hey, listener who has been listening five years, let's measure how much success you've achieved with or without our show and then let's go into fairytale land and find out what you would have achieved without our show. It's impossible to measure, so it's very.

Alan Lazaros:

The world is hyper irrational, unfortunately and Kev says it's because I'm hyper rational that I think that. But when I say hyper irrational, what I mean is just very inaccurate, like so, there's people out there that believe the world is flat. They're very irrational, they're very inaccurate. It's not flat. That's been proven. We've measured it Many times Exactly, and so why does it matter to be accurate? I talk about this Because if you're inaccurate, you can't make effective choices. If you buy a home that the basement is leaking and the roof is moldy and you spend $1.5 million on it because you thought it was world class, and then you move in and you have to spend $150,000 on the roof and another $150,000 to fix the basement, you made a terrible choice based on inaccurate thinking. Thinking is the most important thing on planet Earth, because human beings are the only animals that can do it. Really, you've never seen a bear like planning its day I'm not familiar.

Kevin Palmieri:

I haven't spent a lot of time out in the wilderness, so what they do in their spare time I'm not sure but I'm willing to bet? They're probably not. Yeah, they're probably not planning their days. What?

Alan Lazaros:

what is your take?

Kevin Palmieri:

because, again, I'm I love your hyper rational, I think you're, you're hyper rational.

Alan Lazaros:

it's my essence, it's your, it's your essence, it wasn't your essence? It still isn't.

Kevin Palmieri:

Okay, not as much.

Alan Lazaros:

That's why it's better for you to sell it than me, because I can't imagine a world where I'm not trying to think more accurately.

Kevin Palmieri:

I just think awareness is the start. I don't. You've got to figure out where you are right now On a scale of 0 to ten. How rational are you? How, what's it? What's another good? Accurate, but like grounded, tethered. What's another good word for rational? Because I think the definition dictates the experience, often like rationality, logical logical, logical, perfect logical.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, deductive reasoning does again I. I don't want to come off pretentious, but I do want to just be me just as anyone I know I don't do you know what deductive reasoning means uh, yes, but the sherlock holmes. But I didn't at the beginning okay, so your video looks like shit, thank you. And the reason why is because you have not yet done a done enough deductive reasoning to find out the root cause of your shitty video, correct, and when you do find the reason why it sucks, you can now solve it.

Kevin Palmieri:

I may jump out the window first, honestly, well, you know hello, hello, hellolu listener.

Alan Lazaros:

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 and daily habits. We hope you enjoy it. The link will be in the show notes.

Alan Lazaros:

All of us have problems, right, we have. Look, my left knee hurts. Okay, my, this happened. Okay, I'm wasting time, okay, I'm, but the world is all just problems. Problems and opportunities are the same thing. So we have an opportunity to get a new $5,000 client. Well, the only way that we can do that is if we solve a problem. Okay, what's the problem? We have to figure out a way to do this giant scope of work for them. And, by the way, we're solving their problem for $5,000 a month. The moment that's not worth it to them. They're going to can us, and they should should.

Alan Lazaros:

I just live in a world where I don't understand. One thing that I'll share too, really briefly, is I do systems thinking and blah, blah, but ultimately clients come to me. They say I want to achieve this goal and I say, okay, you have to do this, this and this to achieve that goal. And they say, well, I don't want to do that. And I say, well, then you can't achieve the goal. I just there's no world where you get to achieve things without doing the things necessary to achieve them, and I think that that's very irrational for them to think they could. And this is why kids of wealthy families tend to be very irrational, because they didn't actually do what was necessary to build the generational wealth. It's like, uh, we live in a very wealthy country, so we have benefits just from where we were born, and we're very irrational about that if we're not careful about it.

Alan Lazaros:

Like you have running water, I do. Everything's great, we have beautiful streets and sidewalks, and people are like, oh well, I can't believe our sidewalks aren't. It's like, well, some places don't even have sidewalks. You're very entitled, like why do you get sidewalks? Has anyone ever actually unpacked? Why Someone has to pay for those? Okay well, who pays for that? Well, the government, okay well, who pays for that? Okay well, taxes Okay well, who pays for that? The upper, Unfortunately, okay well, who pays for that? Okay well, the people who make the jobs? Okay well. Who makes the jobs? Well, the entrepreneurs. Okay well. Why does that work? Okay well, the government, legislative, judicial. You have to understand everything in order to understand how it all works. Otherwise, you're the chess piece instead of the chess master.

Kevin Palmieri:

I just think it's a big ask to understand all of it. You know, yeah it is?

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, it is.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's tough, but if you don't, you're screwed yeah, but most people, nobody gets more rational just to get more rational.

Alan Lazaros:

If they were sold it, they would Like. If you've just become more rational.

Kevin Palmieri:

When we first met, you were just off the rails. Goals, though. That's the goals. It's not I don't want to be. It's not that I want to be more rational, yeah rationality is a necessary improvement.

Alan Lazaros:

More rationality is a necessary improvement, a necessary thing that has to improve for you to achieve your goals. But you won't have goals unless you have self-belief. And if you don't have self-belief, you won't ever end up rational, because there's a pyramid.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, there's a pyramid. There's. It's self-belief, self-worth, and then like eventually, I think you get to rationality.

Alan Lazaros:

It's almost like self-belief is step one. And then setting a goal beyond your current circumstances is step two, and then becoming rational enough to break that down into small incremental improvements or steps. And then you go on that journey and learn oh I was wrong about this, this, this, this and this, so now I'm more accurate about this, this, this and this and this, so then you can set a bigger goal.

Kevin Palmieri:

I think it's the other way, I think you start highly irrational and then you get more rational as you go.

Alan Lazaros:

Agreed, but this is one of the reasons why I've had a hard time articulating to people that it's really good to be wrong. Being wrong means you. It's unfortunately, socially it's not good.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah yeah, yeah, socially you look like an idiot, which apparently is really important. Like looking like not an idiot is really important, apparently. Of course, I feel like I look like an idiot all the time because I just don't care. I'm looking for where I'm wrong always, because that's how I get better. I can't make better choices unless I identify where I'm an idiot, and so people who are afraid to look like an idiot unfortunately they end up learning less because they're constantly trying not to look worse, which inevitably makes you worse, because when you're playing basketball and you're not afraid to look terrible, you just get better much faster, whereas if you're constantly concerned about not being good enough, you won't dribble with your left, you won't pass the ball, you won't whatever. It is, again, dumb metaphor. But one of the things that is really hard for me is the social world versus the real world, because in the real world it doesn't matter if you are sucking in the moment. What matters is that you're learning and growing.

Kevin Palmieri:

But socially it's so devastatingly hard to be a successful business coach and then talk about all the things you're fucking up well, I think it, but for somebody who's struggling with rationality it's kind of the same thing Like if you surround yourself with a bunch of people who are super emotional, it's going to be really hard to practice rationality with them without being villainized.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, and then you or minimize it, identify that you are an emotional person, and then you don't want to be around rational people because they seem mean or cold. Yeah, it minimizes.

Kevin Palmieri:

You don't mean to do this. You and I, we've talked enough. But when it's like, well, air travel is the safest form of travel, it's like that doesn't help me.

Alan Lazaros:

It doesn't. It has to a little. I mean, you're not going to die in a plane. Statistically speaking, I'm not. You're more likely to get struck by lightning tomorrow, but that doesn't matter. That's not the way, that's not the way I think about it, necessarily I'm not going to get struck by lightning I don't, I don't leave the house, I'm not going to get, I'm not worried about getting struck by lightning but it doesn't help at all to know that you're more likely to die in your car than in an airplane.

Kevin Palmieri:

No, by a significant margin. Yeah, but I know that it's not that. No, no, no. It's the fact that if I get into a car accident, I'm in control and I'm on the ground.

Alan Lazaros:

That.

Kevin Palmieri:

That's an illusion, you're in way less control in a car than you are in a plane. In terms of mortality, yeah, I understand.

Alan Lazaros:

I understand Again. Yeah, this is all math. It's just math In my head. If I was to bet money that someone would be alive in 100 years or 50 years and one of them does airplane travel and one of them does car travel, it's every time the airplane would win but it's hard.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's hard to. It's hard to over rationalize when you're in a moment of emotion.

Alan Lazaros:

I think yeah, because fear is, fear makes us irrational yeah, I'm so afraid to be villainized. I think it makes irrational.

Kevin Palmieri:

And I think it's the same with me, with certain fears. It's like I know it. I know the plane's not going to crash, I know.

Alan Lazaros:

But it doesn't. Yeah, it's like when people say why do you care what people think? It's well easy for you to say you haven't been shit on your whole life.

Kevin Palmieri:

Or when people say well, whatever, Like imagine you have a presentation at school, it's not going to kill you. It's like I know it's not going to fucking kill me. I'm not worried about dying, I'm worried about being embarrassed and being a pariah from my school. I'm not worried about dropping dead. I know that's not going to happen. Shit, I'd rather that happen.

Alan Lazaros:

I just don't have to worry about it All right, you, you gotta go. You have a call, you have a call yeah, I enjoyed this a lot, but of course I did because I love rationality, I know this is.

Kevin Palmieri:

This would be the takeaway I would give to everybody watching. You're listening. Alan is on the very, very, very, very high end of this. So I don't, I don't think it's just try to move a little bit more, especially if you feel like you're overly emotional and I don't mean that in a talking down to you way, I don't mean it that way but if you feel like you're over emotional and you get stuck in emotions and it stops you from operating and doing things that you want to do, I think that's an opportunity to lean more into rationality. I'm not saying you ever have to be as far to the polarity as alan is, because I don't know if you could last question you zero to ten.

Alan Lazaros:

How rational were you when you started the podcast versus now?

Kevin Palmieri:

I was probably like at one. I'm probably. How are things?

Alan Lazaros:

going pretty good.

Kevin Palmieri:

I'm joking in some ways yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

I know that sounds condescending. I'm being playful, I'm good you're good in some ways.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, the ignorance is bliss thing. I know it's a dumb thing. I'm telling you. It's kind of true. It's kind of true. Where are you at now? 0-10? I'd say probably like 7. I don't know. I'd ask you. You probably know better than I.

Alan Lazaros:

Based on this, yeah, way more, way more Significant, I would say that's what's come up the most.

Kevin Palmieri:

But there is also a downside. Now there's a downside in everything.

Alan Lazaros:

There's a downside in everything. Yeah, sometimes it seems more boring, I understand Right, it's less drama, less chaos.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's not as exciting yeah, agreed, but on the other end of that, it's also not as jarring or as wildly detrimental to your future.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, so there are definitely benefits.

Kevin Palmieri:

I just don't. I know when you get super passionate about stuff, it's like you go to the fucking end. Everything's math, it's like. For you it is yes, but whether you're watching or listening, not everything. You don't have to see equations everywhere you go.

Alan Lazaros:

That's me dialed down. That's me dialing it way down. I understand, I understand, I understand.

Kevin Palmieri:

And I respect that, I understand and I respect that.

Alan Lazaros:

I just want to make sure people don't think that's where they have to get to. Yeah, I'm not saying you have to be calculating every single thing. I would say you would benefit from calculating more, though, for sure, fair, that's fair.

Kevin Palmieri:

Absolutely that's a fair. We could slap that shit on a bumper sticker, throw a little NLU logo on it.

Alan Lazaros:

Never will we have bumper stickers no, no, I would not allow it. Bumper sticker self-improvement. Be more rational, or not? Huh?

Kevin Palmieri:

We'll see. Keep your eyes out for the next level. You bumper stickers Fly planes, don't drive. I'm joking, I still. I'd rather drive any. I'd rather drive 12 hours than fly three we almost did that when we were in Florida.

Alan Lazaros:

That was wildly irrational. We almost did that when we were in Florida.

Kevin Palmieri:

That was wild. I wanted to. You were ready. You were ready. Who cares? It was like let's do this alright. Next Level Nation. As always, we love you, we appreciate you. Grateful for each and every one of you at NLU United fans, we have family. We'll talk to you all tomorrow stay Next Level, next Level Nation thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. We love connecting with the Next.

Alan Lazaros:

Level family. 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. You.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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