#1761 - Lessons Learned The HARD Way - Freestyle Friday

Ever wish you didn’t have to learn life’s lessons the hard way? In this Freestyle Friday episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros explore critical personal and professional growth areas we often miss. They discuss trust issues, the importance of intelligent effort, and the surprising benefits of being playful in our relationships. This episode is a goldmine of practical advice, empowering anyone wanting to improve their life. Tune in and take your personal and professional journey to the next level!

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Show notes:
(2:24) People can be good people, but...
(5:08) Time and progress
(7:07) Hard work and resilience
(9:11) Designing the future
(10:27) At NLU, we want you to win! So, we’re giving tools and resources to ensure your success. Join our Monthly Meet-up every first Thursday of the month at 5 PM. https://

🎙️ 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

Speaker 1 0:00

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 1,761, it is Freestyle Friday and if you are new to Freestyle Friday, it is kind of an episode where Alan and I turn off the lights in the studio and we just have a conversation and we don't usually know what we're going to talk about. I don't really know what we're going to talk about. I don't really know what we're going to talk about, but I wanted to start with a question, a question that I think I saw somewhere, I heard somewhere that I thought would be a valuable jump off point for us. Mr alan lazarus, it's happening. What is one lesson that you have learned in life that you wish you didn't have to learn the hard way? Alan just got off of therapy right before this, so this is probably not the best time to ask this question.

Speaker 2 0:56

Quick existential crisis question that I didn't have to learn the hard way.

Speaker 1 1:02

Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 1:12

Okay, the lesson that I learned the hard way was that people can be good people but not be good for you.

People can be good people, but...

Speaker 2 1:32

I would rephrase that People are on a spectrum and it's a bell curve, and if you are of the belief that all people are good, you are naive for sure, because there is manipulative, terrible, self-interested, only pathologic people that will deeply hurt and prey upon you. There are predators, and that is the truth, and you will learn that one way or another and that's the far left of the bell curve. The far right of the bell curve is there are people that are just the most virtuous, wonderful, good-hearted, oriented toward the greatest good people out there, and then there's everyone in between which is not 100% good and virtuous and not 100% vice and not virtuous, and so everything is constructive or destructive. And the lesson that I learned the hard way is that some of the people that might be good people and they might be on the higher end of that virtuous bell curve Are still not good for me.

Speaker 2 2:53

That I learned the hard way over and over and over and over again, and in therapy I've analyzed this a lot, trying to figure out. Just because someone's a virtuous person Doesn't mean that they're not going to try to tear you down, because everyone is deeply insecure and the people who think they're not are actually the most insecure. Ironically, it's one of those paradoxes where, if you admit you're insecure, you immediately are a little less insecure. It's one of those weird things. Whereas oh no, I'm not I mean you couldn't offend me you ever hear someone say that Like trust me.

Speaker 1 3:29

I could.

Speaker 2 3:29

Yeah, I really really could. Oh no, I'm not mad. I mean I'm not, I'm not triggered. Oh okay, yeah, You're not at all. So again, at the end of the day, people that are virtuous and wonderful in their own right might not be wonderful for you, and that's been really hard to learn the hard way, over many, many, many, many, many, many years, Honestly decades.

Speaker 1 3:52

Yeah, I think mine would probably be. Time changes everything, but it doesn't change everything for good, because when I was younger, I just assumed that as I got older I'd get more successful. I just I seriously that was my thought. I didn't understand the strategy to it. I just I just got off a call with, I was just telling you, potential clients or I don't know whatever they may end up clients, they may not. It was a great call. My goal was to add value.

Speaker 1 4:29

We got to the end of the call and they came from one of the Evan events and he's like what question, kev? What question didn't you ask me that you should have Nice, it's a great question. It was a great question and I answered it. It was a great question and I answered it. And then he said all right, what's the last thing Like? What's the last takeaway? Don't pull any punches, Just be very honest with us. And I said you guys will never make any meaningful amount of money unless you start treating this like an effing business. And they both sat back and went whoa, okay, yeah, yeah. And then they both started taking notes.

Speaker 2 5:00

Nice.

Time and progress

Speaker 1 5:02

Because I was of the belief that if we just did this long enough, things would happen. Now, to a degree, you get opportunities potentially, but doing consistency isn't enough. Consistency just isn't really enough. I've seen the same people in the gym every day for three years. Unfortunately, nothing has happened for them. Nothing has happened because they're consistent, but they're not necessarily improving and I look different than I did three years ago. Better or worse sometimes depends on on the month and what's going on. But at least I know that when I'm not making progress, I know why, and I feel like I really learned that the hard way. I feel like I wasted a lot of years assuming that. I mean, even if we think about the journey of how this has gone, I never thought I was going to be successful externally, had the opportunity to be successful externally and I was the most internally broken I had ever been. But I thought that I spent an entire year grinding my face off, just traveling all over the place, staying in sketchy hotels, staying up all night, driving hours and hours and hours, thinking that that year was going to change my life for the better and it did, but not before. It changed my life for the worse, and I didn't understand that at the time. I remember I told you this.

Hard work and resilience

Speaker 1 6:36

I remember one day I was working out in western Massachusetts right next to Six Flags. There's Six Flags in Springfield, massachusetts, I believe. I believe it's Springfield, two hours from where the shop was at the time. So that morning we probably had to be there at 7 or 8. So I probably got to the shop at 4 o'clock in the morning and loaded up the van, drove two hours to the job site. We're like six hours into an eight-hour day and my boss called me and said hey, I need you guys to go to New York tonight because we have an emergency that we need fixed tomorrow and I need you guys there tonight so you can be there at 7 am tomorrow. We had to drive back from the job site to the shop two hours. Then I had to drive to New Hampshire to get clothes because I didn't have. We were going to be there for the rest of the week. I didn't have any clothes. Then I had to drive back to the shop and then we drove six hours to New York and then got like four hours of sleep and then worked an eight hour day.

Speaker 1 7:37

That was my life for a year. Pretty much every week was mayhem like that, but I loved it because I felt like I was making progress towards a meaningful goal and just to have all of that blow up in my face it kind of sucked. Now that grit and grind and all that resilience has really paid off being a business owner. I was thinking of this yesterday. It was like I pretty much work 12 hours a day. Now Monday through Friday is just 12 hour days and it's just kind of normal. Now. It's like I don't even really think about it anymore. It's like, okay, I get up at six and then I work until six at least depends on the day but now that's kind of easy. It's not that hard anymore and I think a big piece of that is because of the misalignment that creates alignment later. But yeah, it's, it's that, it's. I don't know.

Speaker 1 8:27

So many of us fall into the trap of thinking well, I mean, the future is going to be different. You're right, you're right, the future is going to be different, but it's not necessarily going to be different in the way you want it to be, unless you're designing it to be different in the way you want it to be. And and again, we're at this really this really powerful age, where we're in our mid thirties and there's a there's a drastic difference starting to become very, very easy to spot where somebody has put their time, energy, effort, focus and money over the last five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. So that's been blowing my mind too, in sad ways too. Not I'm not not from a judgment thing, but just from like a.

Designing the future

Speaker 2 9:09

You can kind of see things starting to unravel for people right now and that sucks well, there's no such thing as something for nothing, and I think that's another, I don't know. I always felt like that. I understood you can't party all night and not have a hangover, just like you can't work all week, every week, hard toward meaningful goals and not have something good come of it. There's virtue and vice. I remember I was in seventh grade with Mr Hallisey and he wrote two words on the blackboard. Back then it was virtue and it was vice, and we were studying the romans, because I think that was where, yeah, the roman philosophers of lucius, seneca and all them aristotle, socrates, all that jeff palmery there was one jeff palmery back then from your great, great, great, great, great great grandfather who, I believe, once said virtue and vice.

At NLU, we want you to win! So, we're giving tools and resources to ensure your success. Join our Monthly Meet-up every first Thursday of the month at 5 PM.

Speaker 2 10:16

No, but he wrote virtue and vice and I remember thinking, and I remember being very, very drawn to those two words and realizing that that's something. I didn't know what it meant yet, but I knew vice was alcohol, drugs, destructive activities, and virtue was this, this universal moral code, that of the human condition where compassion and love and empathy and hard work and discipline and justice and virtue and all things good, all things constructive, I guess you should say right, I knew that meant something and I remember vividly looking around the classroom wondering why no one else cared. That's like a good metaphor for my life.

Virtue vs. Vice

Speaker 2 11:06

Yeah, you can put that in any class, probably any, any situation, any class just looking around like am I the only one who knows that this is the ticket, this is the? And back then I was surrounded by a lot of people who were just drowning in their vices. I mean everyone think of their worst time in their life. I can think of my worst time alcohol vices, just tons of vices, kev, with your porn challenges, vices are vices, right. I mean making love to the person you love and want to be with and have a relationship with. That's constructive and growth and wonderful. Yeah, with its challenges, is is amazing. Watching porn for pleasure is not going to give you a meaningful life?

Speaker 2 11:45

Very empty, yeah, exactly, it's empty, it's not fulfilling. And so virtue equals fulfillment and vice equals quick fix, expedient pleasure. And I remember knowing that, even when I was really young, because I remember looking around like why doesn't anyone else care about what he's talking about? Right now, this is the answer to life, this is it, this is the power of choices right, virtuous versus vices. So, anyways, the other lesson that came to mind when you were talking, kev, is that everything's relative. I always knew that, and Einstein was always someone that I was fascinated by. But and he did the theory of relativity. So E equals MC squared. The point is I'm trying to transcode here for a second but at the end of the day, einstein understood the theory of relativity, and the theory of relativity is actually very useful in real life, in practicality. So, for example, I was on with a client earlier. His name's Cole Cole. What's up, man? He listens to NLU every day.

Speaker 1 12:48

Cole, what's up, brother Shout out to Cole, cole's 24.

Speaker 2 12:54

And Cole got an aura ring and he's tracking his sleep and he feels great right now. And I said isn't it interesting? Let me teach you this, because I wish I knew this when I was your age. Seriously, what if I said zero to ten? How well do you feel? Because he's like I feel great, I'm killing it, I'm doing 100 days. I think he's two weeks with 100 on his peak performance tracker, his habit tracker, and he's tracking a lot too. I think it's 15 habits plus like seven metrics. So good for you, cole, seriously, but anyways, so he's like I'm feeling great, I'm feeling good, I, I feel like I'm making progress in the gym, xyz.

Everything is relative

Speaker 2 13:28

I said, okay, zero to ten, how well do you feel, holistically, how? And he said eight. And I said isn't it interesting how your eight could be my four? And the reason this came up is because emilia and I we got an aura notification yesterday that said our cardiovascular health, and apparently I have the cardiovascular health of an average 27 year old. So it says minus eight for mine and hers is she was joking, she's like mine's a 29 year old, she's 29. And and so I always knew my calendar age I still am hoping, hit puberty. I'm joking, but I always knew that my biological age was younger than my calendar age. But anyways, the point is is that everything's relative? So what if he thinks he feels great? Everything's relative. So what if he thinks he feels great? But what if him, in five years, that eight is actually going to be a two? So, for example, you know you have a great relationship, right, but that's because you've had a bunch of shitty ones. Yeah, dude, that's the problem in life and I'm.

Speaker 1 14:30

I had a moment today where I was like it's been so wonderful lately Not that it isn't always really good, but just lately there's just been so many laughs and so many giggles and so many jokes and such high energy. It's been wonderful. It's been wonderful lately.

Speaker 2 14:50

It's a great word.

Speaker 1 14:51

Yeah, it's just been wonderful. It's been a wonderful, it's a great word.

Speaker 2 14:52

Yeah, it's just been wonderful. Well, the laughs and the playfulness. I was thinking about this yesterday too. You and I are very more behind the scenes than on the podcast, but even on the podcast, I was watching a speech that talked about play and what play means, because our cats and our dogs our dog, one dog, two cats we eat dinner on the couch in the evening and sometimes we'll watch something on the projector. Sometimes we won't, and the other night we weren't and we were just hanging out and they always, whenever we're there and we're in a relaxed state, which, quite frankly, is fairly rare because we work most of the time they just start wrestling. Do your cats wrestle? Yeah, and in this speech the speaker was basically talking about how play is a indicator that both all parties involved are in the challenge skills sweet spot. They're in the order and chaos sweet spot. They're in meaning things are safe enough to where play can flourish.

Role of playfulness in healthy relationships

Speaker 2 16:00

You know and again, I'm not a gardener but I like metaphors. So let's, let's say kevin and I were to build a garden. Ah, okay, we'd have to protect it from the bugs and we'd have to make sure I don't know the storms don't kill it, and blah, blah. So we'd create a safe environment for the strawberries and the blueberries and whatever else we tomatoes, whatever. That's what play indicates in a relationship when emilia and I are really playful and we sing and we dance and we make jokes, and you and I in our business. When things are overly tense in our business, we stop joking.

Speaker 1 16:36

You don't you actually just say, I think I joke more probably I don't.

Speaker 2 16:39

I think that I, but again, when we're in a good state we can make fun of each other. We can make fun of ourselves, as long as it's not malicious. And you can tell in the energy when it's a dig versus a, you know, um versus a playfulness. That playfulness from from you and taryn, I think that's an indicator of the health of your relationship. I would agree and I've started to really analyze that in my own life as well is, if you can't be playful, there's probably something beneath the surface boiling in you or in her or in our business or whatever it is. And again back to the everything's relative. Kevin's got a 10 out of 10 relationship, I think, compared to most I. I do actually believe that to be true. I think you're on the very, very, very high end.

Speaker 2 17:24

I've been watching marriages my whole life and some of them scare the hell out of me. You have a very positive marriage. That's very, very clear statistically speaking. But here's the thing if I asked any listener watching or listening to this zero to ten, how healthy do you feel today? They would say I don't know. Let's say they said seven, that seven could be a professional athletes too.

Speaker 2 17:50

Yeah, and my therapist right now. She's going through some challenges with her uh shoulder and she's in a lot of pain and she's she's having trouble and she's working on it, but she feels like crap and she can't get her work done and so it's this. It's this interesting thing and this is the lesson is everything's relative and it kind of messes us all up, because you can think you're great when you're not and you can think you're awful when you're great. It's very care.

Speaker 2 18:20

You have to be very careful what you benchmark against. If you benchmark against michael phelps in the pool, you're screwed, you're always going to feel terrible. But if you benchmark against a three-year-old, you're always going to feel like you're awesome when you really aren't, and so that's got to be of the. Everyone's inaccurate with their own identity. From what I can understand and my goal in coaching is to help everyone be more accurate in their thinking, and I've come to realize almost all of us are inaccurate because the benchmarks that we have around us are are total echo chambers that we really struggle to to figure out.

Speaker 1 18:53

Yeah, or you compare to somebody that you don't really know, something or somebody you don't really know, and then, behind the scenes, it's completely different than what you're actually comparing it to, which that makes it a challenge. Alright, we gotta pop, because you and I both have calls in the next three minutes If you want to make sure that you are leveling up every single day, even if it's a little bit. Again, there is no magic bullet. I think the magic bullet is consistency and doing it long enough for it. To compound, we do an episode every single day on all the podcast platforms, as well as YouTube. So make sure you are subscribed where you're watching, subscribed where you're listening, and if you would leave us a review, that would be wonderful, because it would help us help more amazing people like you. What do you have to say?

How benchmarks impact self-perception

Speaker 2 19:33

I just got yesterday my 25th client what do you? Have to say I just got yesterday my 25th client. Youngest is 16 old. Thank you, brother. Youngest is 16, oldest is 63. Uh, everywhere on the spectrum from all over the world, anywhere from someone.

Speaker 2 19:47

Hey, I want to start a youtube channel and I want to be more consistent to hey, I've been in business for decades and I want to scale and grow this thing and I'm a multi-millionaire already. So you do not have to be already in a business in order to start business coaching. I can teach you business in advance. I would love to. So book a free call if you're interested and if you want to grow or scale or start a podcast. Kevin is your guy for business, I'm your guy for podcasting, kevin's your guy and we love to meet our listeners. So, even if that's all that comes of it, even if that's all that comes of it, even if that's all that comes of it, we would love to meet you. Seriously, don't feel bad.

Speaker 1 20:21

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.

Speaker 2 20:30

It's all relative Next Level.