Perfectionism Isn’t Helping You (Or Anyone Else) (2440)

In this episode of Next Level University, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros challenge the way most people think about perfectionism. It is not always about caring too much or wanting excellence. Sometimes, it is fear wearing a more respectable outfit. They break down the hidden fears that keep people from launching, growing, speaking up, or stepping beyond the identity they have outgrown.

From fear of failure to fear of judgment to the pressure of belonging, this episode looks at why avoidance can feel logical when it is actually emotional. It is a grounded look at self-awareness, identity, confidence, and the invisible social limits that shape what people believe they are allowed to become. If “I’m just not ready yet” keeps showing up, it may be time to interrogate the suspect.

_______________________

Book Alan’s Business Breakthrough Session. Your first 30-minute coaching call is FREE. Learn how to prioritize success and let your quality of life become the byproduct. - https://calendly.com/alanlazaros/30-minute-breakthrough-session

Join the "Next Level Fitness Accountability Group" – Reach out to Kevin or Alan on Instagram:
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/

Join our private Facebook community, “Next Level Nation,” to grow alongside people who are committed to improvement. - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700

_______________________

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, check out our website and socials using the links below. 👇

Website: http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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/

_______________________

Show notes:
(2:20) Finding the fear underneath perfectionism
(7:22) Why do people avoid launching
(8:19) Fear, belonging, and perceived danger
(12:41) How peer groups shape your limits
(14:33) Breaking out of the social box
(16:19) 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) I have known you for a long time and the topic, the theme, the point of today's episode is going (0:07) to be based on what I thought you were, that I have learned over thousands of episodes and (0:14) who knows how many hours with you, that I have learned that you are actually (0:19) probably the opposite of, but I hope some questions will be able to add value to people (0:24) out there who are dealing with what we're going to talk about today.

Alan Lazaros

(0:26) So I have no idea what we're going to talk about today, but I hope you'll be able to tell me. (0:30) He said he wanted to, I guess, surprise me or surprise the listeners, or I don't know what you're doing. (0:37) And I don't know if I like it.(0:39) I'm kidding. (0:40) No, I'm excited. (0:41) I have no idea what to expect.(0:42) So my opening is going to be atrocious.

Kevin Palmieri

(0:44) Welcome to Next Level University. (0:47) I'm your host, Kevin Palmieri. (0:49) And I'm your co-host, Alan Lazaros.(0:52) At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven, but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.

Alan Lazaros

(0:58) Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life, love, health, and wealth.

Kevin Palmieri

(1:05) 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

(1:21) Self-improvement, in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, completely free. (1:27) Welcome to Next Level University.

Kevin Palmieri

(1:33) Next Level Nation today for episode number 2,440, we are going to paint Alan into a corner that he cannot escape from. (1:40) Here we go. (1:41) Now, I have a question, and this question is based on, I think it's really hard to help people with something you haven't experienced.(1:52) Yeah, for sure. (1:55) How do you help somebody who self-identifies as a perfectionist? (2:00) I don't know if we've ever really talked about this, and if we have, it hasn't been for a long, long, long time.(2:06) But I realize it's very easy to create a trampoline moment where somebody's like, yeah, I overthink it, I overthink it, there's the fucking mic. (2:12) I overthink it, I overthink it, and I'm just like, just don't. (2:15) No, that's not advice.(2:16) You can't give that advice. (2:19) Where do you go?

Alan Lazaros

(2:20) Help them identify the fear. (2:23) I'd go to the core of what are you ultimately afraid of, and typically everyone's afraid but not of the same thing. (2:34) So can you give me top three buckets?(2:37) Yeah, so the number one is failure. (2:41) Just pure failure and embarrassment. (2:44) I think the majority of people are, at least the people I've coached, I'm going to say people statistically speaking, I think the majority are just really, really afraid of looking less than, looking dumb, looking silly, looking bad, like embarrassment, being a failure, you know, that kind of thing.(3:06) Yeah, yeah. (3:07) So that's number one. (3:08) Number two would be, and this is the rare one, but it's definitely a thing, is fear of shining, fear of being more than, fear of being too much.(3:21) Fear of being too much is probably the best articulation that I can do in this moment. (3:28) Yeah, you're just too fucking much for people. (3:30) It's just, you have to dial down constantly because you're so much.(3:36) That's rare, but it is a thing, for sure, for certain people. (3:40) And then the third one would be, I guess, fear of not being, I think some people are really, really afraid of judgment. (3:53) And I thought I was, and I definitely am, of course, but not nearly as much as I thought.(3:59) I've met some people where judgment just fucking kills them. (4:03) And it's like, honestly, you are so controlled by other people's judgments of you. (4:12) And I thought I was, and I definitely was to some extent, everyone is to some extent.(4:15) Everyone has all three of those to some extent. (4:17) But which one's your big one? (4:19) Mine is the too much is the big one.(4:21) But some people are absolutely crippled by judgment. (4:25) They cannot stand the fact that some people are going to hate them, villainize them, dislike them. (4:33) And yeah, so those are the three main ones, I would say.

Kevin Palmieri

(4:38) We in 2019, you and I lived in Florida for a month. (4:44) And the reason we went down there was to make courses, like, yeah, we're going to make courses. (4:49) And I hammered mine out.(4:50) I recorded mine. (4:51) You recorded yours, but you never finished it. (4:55) I thought you didn't finish it because you were a perfectionist.(5:00) Is that why or no?

Alan Lazaros

(5:03) No. (5:05) Uh, I think unconsciously, you knew it was dumb? (5:11) No, no.(5:12) I think one of them was just, I was just very naive. (5:18) Like, I really believed that people cared about fitness as much as I did. (5:22) And more importantly, knowledge and expertise.(5:25) I had no clue, like how little people actually want to learn the fundamentals and how boring that is for most people. (5:33) My pillars were the five fundamental pillars of natural fitness, sleep, hydration, nutrition, training, and mobility. (5:38) All of those are free, by the way, you know, except for a gym membership, but nobody cares.(5:44) Right. (5:44) And my coach at the time, his name was Alex, he said, the reason you suck at marketing is because you're, you think people think like you do, and you're a freak of nature. (5:55) And he said, Alan, nobody cares.(5:57) And I was like, but the fundamentals, man, the fundamentals, right? (6:00) It's like, no one's going to buy that book. (6:02) It's unfortunate.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:03) Some people will.

Alan Lazaros

(6:04) Some people will.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:05) You know, you know something interesting? (6:06) This, and again, this is very anecdotal. (6:08) I post a picture on social media every day of my story of me in the gym, essentially, right?(6:14) Every day. (6:15) Nice. (6:16) I posted one of abs for the first time.(6:19) It got six times the amount of views on my story. (6:25) Same. (6:25) I post a picture every day of me shirtless almost.(6:28) Usually my back, flexing my back or my butt, whatever, side chest. (6:32) Six times the amount of views just because they were abs. (6:35) And I was like, oh my God, how interesting is that?

Alan Lazaros

(6:39) Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:40) Very interesting. (6:40) That makes me sad. (6:41) So that means I'm going to be dumping them out.

Alan Lazaros

(6:43) That's great.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:44) Well, I'm going to have to dump them out more.

Alan Lazaros

(6:46) Yeah. (6:46) True. (6:47) I mean, if that's your goal with holding on to the conversation, give the people what they want.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:51) Yes, please.

Alan Lazaros

(6:52) I've been talking about your abs, but strong work, by the way.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:55) I appreciate it.

Alan Lazaros

(6:55) Because abs aren't as easy as they used to be.

Kevin Palmieri

(6:57) This is my next thing. (6:58) I don't know. (6:59) Please.(7:00) This, I don't know if I can do this because it feels like very strange. (7:03) Well, I might just start doing my videos with no shirt on in the kitchen. (7:08) What if that's the thing?(7:10) Do what you got to do. (7:11) I don't know if I want to, but I kind of do, like I kind of. (7:14) If that's authentic to you, man, do it.(7:17) I feel like it's way more authentic than not, I would say. (7:21) Okay, good. (7:21) Perfectionism.

Alan Lazaros

(7:22) The perfection thing, perfectionism. (7:26) What I would share with someone is there's a reason you're not launching and it's not rational. (7:34) You're avoiding some emotional pain somehow.(7:37) One of those three fears is stopping you from launching.

Kevin Palmieri

(7:43) Okay. (7:43) Give me, and again, I know this is not, this is not going to cover the full spectrum. (7:47) Those are the three buckets.(7:48) So it was shining, failure, judgment, right?

Alan Lazaros

(7:52) I think you should start with the big one, which is failure. (7:55) Yeah. (7:55) Fear of failure and embarrassment.(7:57) I think it's judgment. (7:59) No, no.

Kevin Palmieri

(7:59) I think it's you. (7:59) Yours is judgment. (8:01) No, no.(8:01) I think everybody's boils down to judgment. (8:03) If you shine, you get judged. (8:05) No, but, but the, okay, yes, but it's too simple.

Alan Lazaros

(8:11) Too simple. (8:13) Yeah. (8:13) Because one of them is based on, um, it all comes down.(8:19) One thing I will say, they all come down to perceived danger. (8:22) Well, that was going to be the next thing is perceived danger. (8:25) Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri

(8:25) What's the fear?

Alan Lazaros

(8:25) Fear of failure means you're going to be left behind. (8:27) Fear of shining too much means you're going to be attacked. (8:31) And fear of judgment is you're going to be ostracized from the tribe.(8:34) So all of them come down to the primal need for tribal belonging, uh, that we associate with. (8:41) If we get ostracized from the tribe, we die essentially from an evolutionary perspective.

Kevin Palmieri

(8:46) And then all of those come from most likely something childhood or throughout life.

Alan Lazaros

(8:50) For sure.

Kevin Palmieri

(8:51) Yeah. (8:51) Absolutely. (8:52) Yeah.(8:53) Yep. (8:55) Commonality. (8:56) Parent.(8:57) Okay. (8:58) Shining. (9:00) Give me that.(9:01) Again, I know it's all blanket statements. (9:02) What do you mean by give you that? (9:03) Like, what is the root cause?(9:06) Simplest form.

Alan Lazaros

(9:07) I know it's impossible because there's typically, typically the person is extremely gifted and was around someone deeply insecure at a very young age that would feel shame when you shined.

Kevin Palmieri

(9:22) I have several clients going through that right now.

Alan Lazaros

(9:25) Nice. (9:26) Okay. (9:26) So what's a good example of this?(9:36) Typically when you're a kid, you are gravitate towards what you're praised for. (9:41) So being smart in school academics with all my awards, uh, was, was very, uh, celebrated, but being smarter than my mom and stepdad was not celebrated, like challenging their terrible decision making paradigm was not okay. (9:58) Um, and so I got to shine in school and be celebrated and safe versus at home whenever I tried to like leverage that intellect for any level of good, uh, constructive future building, it was not received well.(10:12) So you basically get conditioned to only shine in certain arenas. (10:18) And this is also why some of the best performers on earth are so fucked up internally because they, uh, never really worked on the stuff, right? (10:30) And this is an extreme example and I don't necessarily want to associate myself with this, but it's an extreme example that everyone knows Michael Jackson, like his dad was like fucking saying, you know, and, and he didn't really have a childhood and, and he, he had a lot of mental health issues, uh, and I don't want to go near any of that with a 10 foot pole quite frankly.(10:50) But what I will say is he obviously wasn't afraid to shine on a stage, but he obviously was afraid to shine in other regards. (11:00) So, uh, my goal with achievement and all this is, is how do you take the benefits? (11:11) So I was celebrated big time for academics.(11:13) You, it didn't matter if you did or didn't kind of, I mean, not to the same extent, right? (11:18) Sports. (11:18) Mine was still has the baseball that I have the first grand slam I ever hit.(11:23) She still has it on her mantle. (11:25) And I wish, and again, I do wish parents understood and some do obviously, uh, like the implications, whatever you praise for and punish for is absolutely fucking wiring your child. (11:39) Um, I'm so excited to have kids because I'm going to study this and I'm going to, I want to, you know, create the most, uh, incredible human beings possible for lack of better phrasing.(11:52) And then there's goals underneath that and whatever. (11:54) But the point is, is it's going to be challenging to like, okay, how, how is my daughter or son going to feel with Emilia and I as their parents? (12:06) Like, how the hell are you supposed to fill those shoes?(12:10) And exactly. (12:11) And we're so, but, and then they're going to live in comfort because we obviously are successful, but like, I want them to be gritty as fuck. (12:20) Right?(12:21) So, so how do you create optimal challenges to get them? (12:24) But anyways, we're off topic now. (12:25) Super.

Kevin Palmieri

(12:26) And Hey, it was you. (12:27) I had nothing. (12:28) You hear they're hammering outside right now in the leaf blower.(12:30) I don't know if you can hear it. (12:30) They are absolutely just, I can hear it.

Alan Lazaros

(12:33) Not terrible though.

Kevin Palmieri

(12:33) They are hammering it.

Alan Lazaros

(12:34) Okay. (12:34) Barely. (12:35) Uh, judgment and failure.(12:41) I'll talk intellectually about this. (12:43) Yeah, please, please. (12:44) Uh, typically you don't want to be, typically this has to do with peer group.(12:49) So, so everyone has sort of, and I think that this is, it's a metaphor, so don't take this too literally. (12:57) Imagine a floor, a ceiling and walls. (13:00) The floor is, and it's all based on your peer group.(13:04) It's known as your reference group. (13:05) So the five people who spend those time with blah, blah, blah. (13:08) It's really kind of like you're Dunbar's number, which is like five, 15, one 50, but your tribe.(13:13) Okay. (13:14) That's why it's good to be in the NLU community. (13:16) Cause you're, you're just gonna, we're just going to raise your set point.(13:19) It's going to be safe to fly. (13:20) It's going to be great. (13:21) Um, or terrible depending on who you are.(13:23) But the point I'm making is no one wants to be a failure in their peer group. (13:27) Meaning if your peer group, let's just say hypothetically, I'm gonna use numbers and income for this. (13:31) If your peer group all makes 50 K a year and you only make 25, you feel like a failure.(13:40) And so you feel like a failure. (13:41) That's bad. (13:42) So you're going to bump that up to 50 at least.(13:44) You'll probably be around 40 most likely. (13:46) Okay. (13:47) If, if the top end of your peer group is 80 and you get to 120, you're going to sabotage to try to get back to your peer group.(13:57) That was me. (13:58) I was making like 200 grand a year. (14:00) I was way more successful than my peers by a significant margin.(14:03) And I would still like hang out in their parents' basement with them. (14:06) And I just didn't understand that I had to fly away. (14:13) That's all based on wounding though, right?(14:16) Belonging and wounding. (14:17) Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri

(14:17) For me, that was never the issue. (14:19) I was like, no, well you were fearful of, I remember saying to you, like, Hey man, uh, what the, why, what are you doing? (14:26) Why are you like hanging out in these people's parents' basements?(14:29) Like what the fuck are we doing here? (14:30) Because that was safe. (14:32) I know.(14:32) It's what you know. (14:33) Yeah.

Alan Lazaros

(14:33) I couldn't logically was like, no, no, there was no logic. (14:35) What are we doing? (14:36) Very unintelligent.(14:37) Yeah. (14:37) Yeah. (14:37) But so, so we all have a floor of failure, a ceiling of success, and then we're afraid of judgment.(14:44) So the walls are judgment. (14:45) The floor is failure and the ceiling is success. (14:47) So we're all in a box, a social fucking box.(14:50) And it's, it's really the hardest thing in the world about achieving dreams, in my opinion, is breaking out of that fucking box. (14:58) Okay. (14:59) Pause.(15:00) We have one minute.

Kevin Palmieri

(15:02) I think we should pause there and do a part two. (15:06) Okay. (15:07) Because I don't want you, number one, I don't want you to be late for your coaching call.(15:09) Number two, I want to make sure that we wrap this up with a bow. (15:14) Yeah. (15:14) What is the box you're in?(15:16) That's where we're going to, we'll start the next episode with. (15:18) Nice. (15:19) Because it is.(15:20) It's not, that's the thing.

Alan Lazaros

(15:21) It's a manufactured fictitious box that has been created by most likely you and your peer group have co-created this and it's, it's got you stuck in some capacity and it's going to be massively painful, especially socially to break out of it.

Kevin Palmieri

(15:36) When, when you are, you have a friend group, you've invested a lot into that friend group. (15:42) That is where you belong. (15:43) You've said no to other friend groups to be in this friend group.(15:46) You want to stay in that friend group. (15:48) Yeah. (15:48) So you, you essentially try to do, ah, you know what?(15:51) Take a toke of this. (15:52) See what happens. (15:52) Ah, fuck it.(15:53) I'll take a toke. (15:54) I will take a toke. (15:55) Let's see what happens.(15:56) Good things can happen. (15:57) Hey, I'm getting a promotion. (15:59) I feel like, I feel like if you took this course that I took, you might get a promotion too.(16:03) It's like, fuck it. (16:03) Okay. (16:04) We're going to, we'll go into that.(16:05) We'll go into that. (16:06) All right. (16:06) Allen's coaching, next level fitness accountability group, next level nation, all this stuff, all the NLU things.(16:11) If you want to be in a group of people who are trying to get to the next level, super focused on it and want to help you raise your own standards, NLU is the place. (16:19) As always, we love you. (16:20) We appreciate you.(16:21) Grateful for each and every one of you. (16:22) And if you are as committed as you say you are to getting to the next level, make sure you tune in tomorrow because we will be here every single day to help you get there.

Alan Lazaros

(16:28) Keep leveling up to reach your full potential. (16:31) Next level nation.

Kevin Palmieri

(16:33) Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. (16:36) We love connecting with the next level family.

Alan Lazaros

(16:39) We mean it when we say family. (16:41) If you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. (16:45) Everything you need to get ahold of us is in the show notes.(16:48) Thank you again. (16:49) And we will talk to you tomorrow.