Next Level University

Choose A Battle You Know You Can Win (2061)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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When success feels foreign, forge your own way. In this episode, Kevin and Alan unpack the quiet danger of setting goals that don’t fit your current belief in yourself. They explore the mismatch between popular goal-setting advice and what actually works when you’re still building confidence. You’ll hear stories about overcoming fear, adjusting expectations, and why your “challenge-skill sweet spot” matters more than aiming for the stars.

Learn more about:
Free 30-minute Business Breakthrough Session with Alan - https://calendly.com/alanlazaros/30-minute-free-breakthrough-session?month=2025-04 
Free 30-Minute Podcast Breakthrough Session with Kevin -
https://calendly.com/kevinpalmieri/free-30-minute-podcast-breakthrough-session-with-kevin

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NLU is not just a podcast; it’s a gateway to a wealth of resources designed to help you achieve your goals and dreams. From our Next Level Dreamliner to our Group Coaching, we offer a variety of tools and communities to support your personal development journey.

For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on Instagram, Facebook, or via email. We’re here to support you in your personal and professional development journey.

Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/

Facebook ✍
Alan: https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
Kevin: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.palmieri.90/

Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

LinkedIn ✍
Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-palmieri-5b7736160/
Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/

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Show notes:
(3:51) Advice from people with high belief
(7:25) Bad advice from successful people
(9:36) Losing to learn and get better
(13:32) Next Level Dreamliner: The planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(16:06) Mastery mindset and speaker stories
(20:30) Skill-based goal setting explained
(22:34) Find the right challenge for your current level
(24:34) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

I was on a podcast today as a guest and the host and I had a spirited gentle debate, slash disagreement. He was talking about how most people don't set goals that are big enough and I said, with all due respect, based on our anecdotal evidence of coaching many, many people, I think most people who tell people to set goals have way more self-belief and they're actually misaligning them and misguiding them.

Alan Lazaros:

I always say if you aim too high, you are going to get repeated humble pie. If you aim too low, you won't grow. Everyone has their own unique sweet spot challenge skills sweet spot and it changes as you get older and older and older. It changes as you progress. Beginners and novices are different, novices and professionals are different, and so it changes for everyone. So it's very difficult and very important to understand this.

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 today for episode number 2061. Choose a battle you think you can win. So, technically, this is the second time we did this, because we did. We had a real. We chose a battle we couldn't win. Yeah, we lost the previous battle, alan's wife. I was Jeff. We had nine minutes to record the episode. It was a whole thing. I had to cancel the podcast. I was on. It's a whole thing. But here we are for take two and this one's going to be better.

Kevin Palmieri:

Okay, I was listening to Upstream a book by Dan Heath that was recommended to me by Alan, and I was getting out of my car today, after the gym, got home, parked the car, getting out and the last thing I heard was something along the lines of this If you're doing something new, if you're focused on progress, if you're outside of your comfort zone, choose a fight that you really believe you can win. And I had this moment where I was like that might be the best way I've ever heard that put. If you're somebody who is feeling stuck right now, you most likely should not try to reroute and uproot your entire life. You should probably pick the first battle you think you can win. Then when you win that battle, I can pick a different one and it can be a bigger battle and if you do that for long enough, eventually you have really big battles that you can win.

Kevin Palmieri:

But it's really easy to get lost with the advice out there that is being given to you by people who have super high self-belief. I remember in the beginning I would see people that were quote unquote successful and I remember thinking they don't understand me. I can tell by the advice that they are giving other people that they don't understand what it's like to be somebody who doesn't believe in themselves, and that has been a thing that you and I have been working together on for the last eight years. So I just felt like, yeah, we've talked about this a lot, but that was a breakthrough for me, and if it's a breakthrough for me, I assume somebody else out there will take something from it as well.

Alan Lazaros:

That's changed my life. When I go on other podcasts, that's one of the things that I articulate to some of these guests, some of these business owners. They really don't have any idea what it's like to not have really, really, really high self-belief.

Kevin Palmieri:

You were on the show. Alan the dude is a former Marine, a former boxer. He is a he's like a world renowned metal artist who has had like his metal art show Is his name Len. No, it was Richard Sharpen. The Spear is the name of the podcast. You were on it, I think, and again, it was a great episode, like great dude, but it was like you have so much self-belief you don't even know how much self-belief you have you have so much self-belief Like it's super high, but no one tells him that how much self-belief you have.

Alan Lazaros:

You have so much self-belief Like it's super high, but no one tells him that I know, I know. Yeah, but you did, I did. Did he know? Did he know that he has high self-belief?

Kevin Palmieri:

No, I don't. Even after I said it, I think he was like yeah, I feel, you know, I believe in myself a lot.

Alan Lazaros:

I, I know, I know, I know Vulnerable episode for me. Two sides of the same coin. Kevin and I drive to five. Both perspectives will be of value. Yin and yang Insert metaphor here. The whole picture.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, I'm done. I had no fucking idea, man. I'm telling you the only reason. I know this when I go on a podcast and it's for achievers, they'll say, hey, my podcast is for achievers. I was like perfect, fuck, yeah, awesome, let's do it. What does that tell me? People who have high self-belief? Yeah, pretty much.

Alan Lazaros:

If you don't have high self-belief, you don't identify as an achiever. I've been in rooms where I said who here identifies an achiever? And no one raised their hand and I was like, seriously. But now I understand. Everyone thinks they're right, which is why everyone's wrong, because what is constructive for one person is destructive for the other. If I set low goals, that would be terrible for me. I would get too arrogant too quickly. It would be big fish, small pond. I won most of the basketball games that I played in pickup basketball in my small town. That got to my head. And then I was in Venice Beach and I got reverse dunked on by someone in sandals who played D1 for UConn. That was important for me. That was that changed my life. That changed my perspective and my life in a good way, in a very good way. I think that self-concept and self-belief and self-efficacy is what it's known as in psychology is the most important understanding of self.

Alan Lazaros:

I don't know why I say important in such an interesting way, when I go on these podcasts, I find myself trying to explain this to the host, because they'll say things like well, you got to aim super high, and I'll say, yes, but it depends, and you and I on the previous episode that was nine minutes and my wi-fi kicked out multiple times. So far, so good. By the way, yeah, everything's with this. I feel good about this one same same. I did not feel good about the last one me either. Let's talk about a challenge. Let's do this in nine minutes. The thing that we were talking about on the last episode that did not work out that was a battle we lost is how many people at the top of an industry tend to be the speakers or the leaders. So whoever has the most credibility sometimes has the worst advice sometimes has the worst advice.

Kevin Palmieri:

What if it's as simple as if you pick a room of 100 people. What if the top the five people who believe the most in themselves, have a much higher likelihood of being successful? Then they're the ones that get asked for advice and they're giving advice to the other 95 people who don't need to hear that. They actually need to hear drastically different stuff, because if they hear the right stuff, they actually can unlock within themselves what they're supposed to be doing.

Alan Lazaros:

I do hope that you can elevate yourself to a place and when I say hope, we're working on it, it's not just hope, but I didn't think of a better word. I do believe that when you and I continue to earn our way to success, I feel like you'll have a stage, literally and metaphorically, to talk about this, Because I didn't know this until you told me Kevin, way back eight years ago. He'd say dude, that doesn't make any sense to someone like me. And I said what do you mean? He's like I don't believe in myself like you do, so that's dumb. And this is something I used to say.

Kevin Palmieri:

I was guilty of this. What you're talking about with that? To say I was guilty of this, what you're talking about with that host, I was guilty of this. I was too, because I listened, because I tried to be more like you. I'm as guilty of this as anybody, for sure.

Alan Lazaros:

100 but I didn't know. I don't know why you were doing it with all the love, because I thought I thought I was wrong.

Kevin Palmieri:

I thought I was wrong I mean again, all these people were successful. I, they must have the answers that I don't, and they did. They had some, but the answer is the equation is different, so the answer is different, so everything's a little. I mean it's. It's a different recipe, so all the ingredients are different.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay. So I would say the the best way to get better at chess is to go lose a bunch of chess. That is how I get better. I just I want to go and play someone better than me and lose so I can learn what they did to beat me. I remember when I used to be a semi-pro gamer, I would purposely play really good players when I was trying to have fun. I would actually set up, create a new account and go back to so.

Alan Lazaros:

Starcraft 2 is just an example, but I'll go quick with this. They had ranking. Most games have ranking. They gamify the game and you start with I don't know bronze, and then it's silver, and then it's gold, and then it's diamond, and then it's super diamond, and it's just like this whole ranking system and eventually you become a grandmaster and then you only play the best on planet earth and it's not fun anymore. It's. This is fucking brutal If I suck, if I suck for even a millisecond. I mean there's something click rate. Your click rate has to be 400 clicks per second, or per minute, rather, in order to even be at that level. And you, if you've ever seen this on twitch and people that are pro gamers, you can't fuck around. I mean, that's a very competitive e-sport, not a sport. I can't call it a sport. It's an e-sport.

Alan Lazaros:

However, I would purposely create a new account, like I'd have a friend come over, we'd play 2v2 all night and we'd create new accounts so we could just stomp on newbies and and it was awesome, we never lost a game. It was just we'd win 100 in a row, just have a blast, just stomping people, and then, when we got to Diamond and Grandmaster and all that Master and then Grandmaster, we started losing again. But I remember every time we lost, I would go back to what they did Because we would have a strategy right. This is called a real-time strategy game by RTS is what it's called For the nerds out there you already know this. We would literally get beaten. So we used to use a certain unit Zerglings is what it was called and we would beat everybody. That same strategy we would beat everybody.

Kevin Palmieri:

Zerglings. Zerglings is what it's called.

Alan Lazaros:

Zerglings. Okay, we would do a and we would 2v2 and we'd beat everybody. And then eventually someone stopped it and we'd go how did we just get beaten? How did that happen? And again they used roaches it's another unit in the game. Kevin's going to laugh his ass off on this but then I would say, okay, let's do that. And then we'd do that until we lost, and then we'd figure out what we lost to, and then we'd do that, and, and then we'd figure out what we lost to, and then we'd do that, and eventually you just get so damn good.

Alan Lazaros:

And then I remember I went to a tournament once and we were winning. But here's the problem with the tournament Everyone can watch the games. So they saw our strategy and it only worked for the first few games. So we beat one of the best 2v2 teams in the entire country, but we couldn't only, we could only beat them once, because then they country. But we could only beat them once because then they changed their strategy and we were so not adaptable. We only had one strategy that we just rinse and repeat.

Alan Lazaros:

But my point of all this is I would just lose until I was the best. And I know how freaking pretentious that sounds, but at the end of the day and I said this in the last episode that didn't air if you give a speech to a thousand people and bomb and then go back to the drawing board and figure out why you bombed, and then get back on stage and then do that over and over and over and over and over again, eventually you will be a really strong speaker. I had a speech recently that I very rarely think. I very rarely step off a stage virtually or in person, where I don't think it was awful. This one I crushed it was. I mean, everyone was just blown away.

Kevin Palmieri:

What percentage do you get off and think you did well? I'm willing to bet it's the exact opposite for me. And I think it's supposed to be 97 garbage okay, I don't know if I'm that, I'm probably 90 90. I get off saying like good luck, who's ever, whoever's following me?

Alan Lazaros:

I'm only looking at where I suck, though I know which is. Which is bad if you have low self-belief.

Kevin Palmieri:

I think that's where I'm supposed to look. I think that's where Now, as my self-belief increases, I can't just always look there.

Alan Lazaros:

That's the thing. What do you do now? Are you looking for where you sucked? Yeah, 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.

Kevin Palmieri:

But a lot of it's like I can I don't know. You know you can tell like you hit flow and it's like I hammered that. That was beautiful. That's exactly how I wanted to go. And here are three things that I know I'll do better next time. Yeah, but I, I'm telling you if. If you said yeah, but I'm telling you, if you said, give me one sentence to sum everything up, not everything, all of this. The difference, all the difference is is you either say I don't know how to do it yet or I'll never know how to do it. One is a growth mindset, one is a fixed mindset. That is it for the longest time. For me it was. I will never know how to do that.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, can you explain To me? That's just really irrational. And I'm not trying to be pretentious, I just you could be a speaker. Okay, you and I both decided to be a speaker eight years ago. Okay, let's do speaking, because I think that's one of the top fears in the world it's being a speaker eight years ago. Okay, let's do speaking, because I think that's one of the top fears in the world being a speaker. And I'm afraid of it too, just not in the same way you are. I'm afraid everyone's going to hate me, and I don't. I'm not sure. I mean in Toastmasters, I think a lot of them really enjoyed me, which I was very grateful. So something's changing. I like that. Either that or they were pretending to like me. We'll see.

Alan Lazaros:

You and I both decided to be a speaker eight years ago, and this is something that Brian Tracy says, and Brian Tracy is the most boring personal development speaker in the game. But this dude has some fire. He said if you do not love what you do, enough to at least want to be the best at it, get out of it like you would a burning building. But again, that's probably bad advice for someone who has low belief. He says this excellence driven.

Alan Lazaros:

People at the top of their field always decide in advance to be the best. They don't go into a job and say I'm going to just see how this goes. That's not how a lot of people that are achievers do things. I don't play Starcraft to play Starcraft. I play Starcraft to get to be the best to ever play it, knowing that I might not, but I'm going to at least go for it.

Alan Lazaros:

And like when I was snowboarding or basketball, I never just did that for fun. It was always how do I get better, how can I be the best? And when I saw a friend getting better, I would find out why they were better and all that kind of stuff. It's something called mastery driven. So you and I both decide to be a speaker. I have high enough self-belief to say, okay, I'm going to be a speaker and I'm going to eventually be successful, no matter how long it takes. And I'll just constantly go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get better, how to get better, how to get better, how to get better. I'm going to look at where I suck more than where I win, and I'm never going to stop until that's mindset one, and that's the rare one.

Kevin Palmieri:

What is your mindset? I never intended on being a speaker. That was never part of the plan. We just did a speech. It was like all right, I'm pretty well, I can do that. I'm see, I know it's funny, I'm serious. I never intended on being a lot of the things I am. I never intended on being the podcast guy. What if you decided to be? You would have been so much better off. I don't think I was capable of it.

Alan Lazaros:

Yet Now I can decide certain things. Well, you did decide to be a great speaker now.

Kevin Palmieri:

Now, but not in the beginning. I didn't think I could be. I didn't think I could be. I didn't think I could speak on stage. What an advantage you had A hundred percent.

Alan Lazaros:

Because I was studying speaking, and that's why.

Kevin Palmieri:

I was always so frustrated Like Alan, why don't you just fucking prep Like you just show up and wing it. Imagine if you prepped like I do. Yeah, you'd be the best already. Yeah, I was afraid of success. I think well, and I think when you have super high self-belief you don't really care if you take an l saying, yeah, whatever, I'll just do better next time for me, you know really messed up way I wanted the challenge of not prep it's it's fair I don't.

Kevin Palmieri:

I need the certainty of prepping less now, less now, because now it's like, yeah, I do think I don't prep as much as you used to because it's more of a challenge.

Alan Lazaros:

Right, it's no?

Kevin Palmieri:

I'm more confident that I don't need to. I don't think of it from the challenge. I think of it as I'm. I'm better than I used to be, so I don't need to prep as much, just like I don't know, I don't have a good example of this will be a metaphor.

Alan Lazaros:

I know we gotta go, we should have some time which nice but I like to make it harder, not easier, In the gym. The goal is to make it harder. You and I are very different in this and I'll share this briefly. I never go down in weight, I only go up. So what most people do is they do a warmup set and then their highest weight working set. I never do that. I do a warmup set and then I increase the weight as I get more gassed. Same, and I do that through the entire, through the entire workout, for all six exercises, sometimes seven.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm trying to make it as hard as humanly possible, because that's how growth is a byproduct of making it harder, assuming you have high self-belief. But here's the problem I tweaked my knee, so now I have to be careful. Like I went in, Emilia and I, we were crunched for time. I had an 11 o'clock, so did she. We had a long morning, good things, all this stuff. We had a long conversation about finance and our future in the car and we're like Seems to be a trend today.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, I was gonna say and I'm like we gotta, can it? We gotta do a half hour and then we gotta walk later. She's like, good, let's get in the gym. I wanted to get all six exercises done in 30 minutes with no breaks. I tweaked my fucking knee Because I was trying to get too much done in too short of a time. So then I had to back off a little, but I didn't go down in weight, I just didn't go up as much as I usually do.

Alan Lazaros:

Your level of self-belief, known as self-efficacy, determines how much challenge you can handle in a given moment. The nine minutes with my Wi-Fi not working, that was too much. It was too big of an issue. My wifi cut out two for like three minutes out of the entire nine. That was too much of a challenge for us. And it's not, it's going to be garbage. It's going to be at the expense of the audience, at the expense of the show, you and me. Okay, here's the topic, here's the title Cold opens, boom, let's rock that. 20 minutes we got, we both have. I have coaching in five minutes. You have something that is good amount of challenge. I'm always trying to optimize the right amount of challenge always, and that's why they have the ranking system. You're not supposed to create a new account and then play newbies that you don't get any better doing that well, it's called skill based matchmaking.

Kevin Palmieri:

Now, that's what that is in call of duty skill based matchmaking. You're playing against people who are at a similar skill level to you, so it's the right challenge yeah right, you're saying play people worse, I'm saying play people better if you just started.

Kevin Palmieri:

Well, here's the thing. There's no such thing as skill-based goal setting. That's not what we're told. We're not told to set. Set your goals based on your skills nope, nope, fire. People are telling you to set your goals based on what they think your goal should be or what they create. That, yeah, we can, we can create that. That's trademarked. Don't take that. No, I'm just kidding. Skill-based goal setting. I think that again, I don't know if I like skill-based, but I think there should be things that you don't just pick a goal, you just pick a goal out of a fucking hat. I know that's good, I'll do that. No, no, why don't we? When you go to a buffet, you choose the food that you like. You go to the buffet because it has a bunch of food, but most of the food you like.

Alan Lazaros:

And 20% of it. I do 80-20. 80% is the food I like. 20% I'm going to give this a shot.

Kevin Palmieri:

Fair Good Split test. I think that's very similar when it comes to goals. You should, I think you should at least think you can win, if uh directly connected to the level of self-belief you have right because other. If the goal is to get better, you don't have to win as long as you have a growth mindset ellen I had, I had to do really well the first speech I gave. I'm telling you it would have been drastically detrimental if I didn't. I had to crush it.

Alan Lazaros:

Non-negotiable it was good for you that I bombed it. It was really good Because it made you feel better about yourself.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, it was really good for me, honestly.

Alan Lazaros:

It's good for me every time.

Kevin Palmieri:

Every time you bomb something Because you don't react, it doesn't affect you in a negative way and it gives me a little check mark of like oh okay, maybe I can do this, that's it. Maybe I can't. Now do we need to put in that I prep for seven hours and alan prep for seven minutes? No, it doesn't really help, right?

Alan Lazaros:

it doesn't matter but I was dumb, I prepped more than that.

Kevin Palmieri:

Now, well, I've been humbled enough times I I don't have to lose sleep because I have a presentation tomorrow. That's where I started. I started way down there like, okay, what do I have? I gotta can the entire day. You had a week once.

Alan Lazaros:

It doesn't surprise me went to an event and you're like, dude, I need a week after brother. Yeah, it doesn't surprise.

Kevin Palmieri:

How silly is that in hindsight, though now now, but at the time I'm telling you it was probably it was exactly what I thought I needed. Was it actually actually what I needed? I don't know. But all right, real quick next level lesson for me 13 15. Second next level lesson yeah, choose a fight that you believe you can win and if you lose, you'll be able to get up tomorrow and fight again. When I was training to fight, I had this thought all the time. I'm not gonna win every fight, but I do want to make sure my opponent never wants to fight me again. That was my goal. If you're gonna fight me, you might beat me, but you're gonna say I don't want to do that again. That was always my thought process. I think set goals like that too nice.

Alan Lazaros:

Find your challenge skills sweet spot and recheck in with it when you, when you play someone better than you and you win oh, maybe I'm better than I thought. If you play someone better than you and you lose, maybe you need to go back to the drawing board. I, I think, I think all of us need people ahead of us, behind us and at our level, because it keeps us centered. I can't just win all the time. Anyone who wins all the time gets arrogant. Anyone who only loses is going to have terrible self-esteem. So you've got to find enough wins and losses and I think that we're all in control of that a little more. When I'm flying high, I look at my L's more. When I'm down and out, I don't only look at L's. I tell Emilia I need snugs, I love you, I'm vulnerable, I'm feeling it. Her and I are hard on each other. Only when it's optimal Makes sense.

Kevin Palmieri:

All right. Next, ll Nation. As as always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you at nlu. We don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow keep it next level, next level nation thanks for joining us for another episode of next level university. We love connecting with the next level family we mean it when we say family.

Alan Lazaros:

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

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Kevin Palmieri

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