Next Level University
Confidence, mindset, relationships, limiting beliefs, family, goals, consistency, self-worth, and success are at the core of hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros' heart-driven, no-nonsense approach to holistic self-improvement. This transformative, 7 day per week podcast is focused on helping dream chasers who have been struggling to achieve their goals and are seeking community, consistency and answers. If you've ever asked yourself "How do I get to the next level in my life", we're here for you!
Our goal at NLU is to help you uncover the habits to build unshakable confidence, cultivate a powerful mindset, nurture meaningful relationships, overcome limiting beliefs, create an amazing family life, set and achieve transformative goals, embrace consistency, recognize your self-worth, and ultimately create the fulfillment and success you desire. Let's level up your health, wealth and love!
Next Level University
#1620 - Dealing With Trust Issues…
Trust is the foundation of any strong relationship, whether personal or professional. But what happens when that trust is broken? Can it be repaired, and if so, how? In today’s episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros delve into the delicate art of rebuilding trust, navigating betrayal, and fostering growth within relationships.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Group Coaching - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Next Level Live - Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 (10:00 am to 4:30 pm) https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
______________________
NLU is more than just a podcast; we have many more resources to help you achieve your goals and dreams.
For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇
Website 💻 http://www.nextleveluniverse.com
_______________________
Any of these communities or resources are FREE to join and consume
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Next Level 5 To Thrive (free course) - https://bit.ly/3xffver
Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/
Next Level Monthly Meetup: https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/
_______________________
We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on Instagram, Facebook, or via email.
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
_______________________
Show notes:
(2:22) Working through trust issues
(4:22) You can’t keep bringing it up negatively
(8:02) Jenga tower metaphor: Aligning words with actions
(11:34) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
(14:23) Potential trigger warning
(16:14) Self-worth from an authentic place
(19:03) Knowing what you have
(20:32) Building trust and self-value
(27:53) Outro
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. Excuse me, we hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1,600, and no, I did it again 1,619. I don't know why I keep doing that this week the three core wounds a very deep, very hyper conscious and very vulnerable episode, I would say. Today, for episode number 1,620, dealing with trust issues, I was looking back, alan, at one of our old episodes and I think this was in the early, maybe 50, 60, 70s, 80s and we did an episode on trust and I don't remember what we talked about, but the whole episode was on trust and I think it was called small talks trust and I had something happen a few years ago that gave me a new perspective on Advice around trust, practice around trust, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:Somebody came to me one time and said, hey, I need some advice and I said, yes, shoot. And this person at the time was very, very close to me and they said my partner has been talking to someone else in just displaying Behavior that has definitely broken my trust. They said I don't think anything has happened physically in Terms of cheating or anything like that, but my trust is definitely broken. What do you think I should do? And I said do you want to be with this person or do you think this is kind of the last straw and it's time for you to move on? And they said, no, I, I've invested a lot of time into the relationship and I really care about this person. I really love this person. I just don't know if I'll ever be able to trust them again. And I said this is what I would say to you, and I don't know if anybody else is gonna tell it like this you have to be okay with having trust issues until you don't anymore, because I don't know if there's any way around that. I think communication is super important. So I think if you sit down with your partner and you say, look, I understand You've taken ownership, let's say that's happened. I understand you've taken ownership of what's happened here. I'm taking ownership of my end. But I do need you to know that I am going to be working through trust issues until I'm not anymore and If I don't get a text back, that's probably gonna trigger me. If I Don't know where you are, that might trigger me, even though it never used to before. I'm probably gonna ask you where you're going and who's there more often than I ever have, because now I have grounds for fear and and I have grounds for lack of better phrasing paranoia. And I said here's the real question Are you willing to go through the discomfort until you get over that, however long that takes? I don't know how long that's gonna take Depends everybody's different.
Speaker 1:Everybody has a different level of investment. Everybody has a different level of care. Everybody that has a different level of love. How much have you already painted a picture of your future with this person? That's all dependent on this.
Speaker 1:But here's the, here was the thought, and this is my early, early, early next level nugget. Particularly in a relationship and Alan, I know you can speak very, very deeply to this if there is a level of trust broken, I Think you have to have very, very, very powerful, vulnerable communication amongst the two parties. But one of the pieces of communication has to be it's probably gonna take me a meaningful amount of time to recover from this in Whatever that means. And then here's the other thing too, and this is what I told that person. I said you can't keep bringing this up if You're okay with working on this relationship and you're signing on the dotted line to say this is what happened. But I want to move forward.
Speaker 1:I said next time you have an argument, you can't bring it up, you can't use this against this person because you're quite literally saying this is what happened, but regardless of what happened, I want to be together. So you can't use this as ammunition or a low blow in the future, because that's not constructive and that's not gonna help anybody. And you already signed up for it. You said that I'm willing to go through the struggles that it takes to overcome that. So I Just remember, after having that conversation with that person, I Think it just allowed them to look at it in a different way. And again, I'm not a relationship guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that's an important piece of it. Are you willing to be uncomfortable and rebuild trust with this person? Is it, is it worth all of the work that's gonna come with that? I think that's a really good question to ask.
Speaker 2:The reason I was laughing at the beginning, kev, and for those of you might have heard me in the background, I didn't even know you to be definitely, you, definitely. I know I didn't.
Speaker 1:I was. I thought I was notice.
Speaker 2:No, I was in flow. I Strong work, strong monologue. So the reason I was laughing isn't because of the reason you thought, which is or at least that I thought you would have thought but it's a whole rabbit hole. I was laughing because you said back in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, and I had this moment of we weren't alive.
Speaker 1:Episode is 50, 60, 70s and 80s.
Speaker 2:That was funny the way you said that. My mind was like wait a minute, kevin. We weren't around in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Speaker 2:No, no, we were not, my good sir, although technically the late 80s I was born in the 88s, Kevin was born in the 89s, but none of that is relevant to trust or this episode, but I needed to call that out. I appreciate it because I thought it was hilarious. So Kevin and I way, way, way back I think the first within the first 10 episodes we've ever done together. Kev comes to my house We've told the story before. We went down into my basement and we actually used my pool table, my billiards table, as the podcast table and he had these podcast arms and we did an episode on relationships back then and Kev came high.
Speaker 1:That was high. Yeah, had a little, I don't know what it was a little weed pen and I thought it would help my podcasting skills. That felt pretty good. I think it went okay but we just didn't know that much. That was the problem. The weed wasn't the problem. The problem was lack of knowledge.
Speaker 2:Lack of knowledge, lack of awareness, is the issue. So we had a healthy debate. Discord about Kevin starts the episode hey Alan, what do you think is the most important thing in an intimate relationship? I will never forget this. I said hey, kev, trust by far the most important. Trust is the bottom of the pyramid. Trust is what everything else is built on top of. And he said, nope, I disagree, I think it's communication. And then that was the episode and it never saw the light of day because it was a real piece of shit, but anyways. So I am pumped to talk about this because I actually do obviously believe that trust is the foundation you build everything else on top of.
Speaker 2:And when Kevin had mentioned what he did earlier of Alan I know you can speak deeply on this what he's referring to is the relationship talks, coaching stuff. So Emile and I have spent the last three years now coaching couples and the trust piece is the bottom of the pyramid, and we use the analogy of a Jenga tower. I've used it on this podcast, but I think it's a really powerful analogy. The Jenga tower is your relationship, and every time you break trust with your partner, when you say you're going to do something but you don't. There's big trust breaks and there's little ones, but they're all important. And if you break trust too much and too often, too frequently, you will the whole Jenga tower will fall. And if the Jenga tower does fall, like in Kevin's example, you have to decide do I want to build from scratch? And that's really what it is. And that's why I think you were mentioning intuitively. You can't keep bringing that up, you can't keep throwing that in their face, because that's not constructive and I like the word constructive and destructive, because destructive is keep making a promise that you know you can't actually do and then break that promise. And now your partner trusts you a little less. And most of this is unconscious or subconscious, it's not. It's happening behind the scenes constantly, even with little things. You said you do the dishes. You didn't do the dishes. You said you'd make the bed. You didn't make the bed. So these there's little ones too and if those get swept under the rug long enough, you're basically taking Jenga blocks out of the Jenga tower over time and then the whole thing can topple.
Speaker 2:But in the context of Kevin's example, the reason I like constructive versus destructive is destructive is breaking promises, breaking trust, saying you'll do things, words not meeting, actions, being dishonest, going behind your partner's back, potentially being unfaithful, different things like that Emotional cheating, physical cheating, you name it. If you do get into a position where you want to rebuild and you want to stay with this person in Kevin's example, then you need to focus on constructing a new Jenga Tower, and that turns the whole conversation to something not only constructive I've said that word 8,000 times now but to something that's more positive, something that's more future-oriented, something that's empowering and exciting and hopeful. And so that's really. What it comes down to is you have to choose, and we've been in situations where we've had really tough conversations with certain couples who were on the brink of divorce or on the brink of breaking up, and that's happened at least a dozen times over the last three years. And those conversations are hard, but it always starts with listen. The past is the past and we can learn from it.
Speaker 2:But you guys have to decide, both of you, whether or not you actually want to be together, and if you do, we need to start constructing a new Jenga Tower in this analogy. And then the question becomes how do you actually do that? And you do that by starting small, just like how you build a habit and you start a fitness journey. You start with one workout and then two, and then three, and then four, and over time you start to really build your body and your self-trust up. The same thing is true in an intimate relationship, and if you keep on breaking trust every time you rebuild the Jenga Tower, you're just not going to ever be able to eventually repair it, because unfortunately, it can take 10 years to build the Jenga Tower and it can take one day to knock the whole thing down. So you got to be really intentional with this.
Speaker 1:Just the importance of the fact that it's going to be extremely challenging. It will probably it would probably be harder to rebuild the Jenga Tower than it would be to build it the first time. Yeah, you know certain things, but you also now are questioning things. Maybe you weren't questioning in the beginning. I think that's an important thing. And then you hear you've probably heard this a lot I just trust people too much. Maybe, or maybe you just trusted the wrong person too much. Maybe you just let the wrong person in your life. I don't know. I don't know what the statistics are. I don't know what the data is that says how many relationships end in cheating or end in. Yeah, I guess infidelity, I think, is the more professional word for that, for cheating. But that's the other thing too. Just because someone in your past because I know, I don't know I always I was really Alan usually laughs when I tell the story I was really trustworthy because I was a serial monogamous.
Speaker 1:I had a bunch of long relationships. My first serious relationship, I think, was like five years, and then my next one was three and then it was a year and a half or two. So, like I was always in relationships. So my first partner, my first girlfriend. I had no trust issues. She had guy friends. We were in high school. Everybody has guy friends in high school. I'm not. You hang out with your guy friends. I'm not a big deal, and most of them were scared of me, so I wasn't really. I wasn't really worried about it.
Speaker 1:Next partner was the one that emotionally cheated on me. Yeah, after that my next partner had a lot of friends, and many of which were guy friends, and that was super hard for me. That was so, so, so challenging for me. But I thought to myself I think this is a really good test. I think this is a really really good test for me. There was a piece of me that wanted to be in that relationship because I knew it would test me and that helped me rebuild the trust. And here's the other thing too, and potential trigger warning. Just please stick around for the explanation, because I know it's going to sound somewhat hardcore. At that point I realized that if this person is the type of person that would break my trust, almost nothing I'm going to do is going to stop that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very powerful, mature realization. It's really hard. I've had that before too. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. I just don't want it to happen and me not know about it. Yeah, that was an honest conversation I had with myself in my mid to early 20s, of course, where it's like if you're going to get cheated on, it's going to happen, because I got cheated on in high school. I just don't want to get cheated on and not know it.
Speaker 1:That's the hard part. It might happen, but I don't know if there's anything you can do to stop it from happening.
Speaker 2:The only thing you can do is be the best version of yourself.
Speaker 1:I almost cheated one time In high school. I came very, very, very, very close to cheating and I've been there and I couldn't do it. But I had the situation, it was all planned out and I was like I can't, I feel like such a piece of crap, I cannot, I cannot do this and I was immature and I didn't know.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't know how to be in a relationship, but I also knew. That's always been one of those things for me where you can never erase the check mark. If you do once, you do it, it's there forever. And I didn't. I'm not. There are certain things I'm not willing to ever do that will stay there forever like nope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same, I can't do that last thing, and again this.
Speaker 1:This is where I was gonna lead into, but then we went down a good tangent there my belief To Alan's point of I want to try to be the best version of me I can possibly be when I started really leaning into that, not from a place of ego. It would be Good luck finding someone who can treat you as well as I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah because if you do decide to go do something and this is not, this is nothing to do with Tara, this is not my, my wife. This was before Tara was around. If you ever did decide to go Do something, I think you would be on the losing end of that. I would be too. I would be hurt and I'd be lonely, and you know the people I was dating before. But can?
Speaker 2:we go into that briefly. I know it's important because it's self-worth from an authentic place, non-ego place, in other words, that's what believing your a catch is, and I and I think that that's a good thing if you actually are developing I would agree yourself as a Jenga Tower, so there's sort of three Jenga Towers here, getting a little complex. But you have you, you have your partner and then you have the the we is what we call it it the we University and the we is the Jenga Tower that you build with your partner. But, kev, you had your own Jenga Tower and so you know, how do you know the difference between a mansion and a shack?
Speaker 2:The the mansion takes a lot more investment. It takes a lot more money. You have to re renovate the kitchen and fix the bathrooms and it's hardwood floors and it's it's it's better materials and it takes more time and effort to build. And when you get to a place where you start feeling like a mansion in this analogy, you kind of know when people go, try to live somewhere else they're gonna regret.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2:This is like a nicer, this is a nicer home. You're not gonna you're not gonna go find a nicer home than this now. That can be toxic, especially when, ironically, the people who say that end up are actually shacks. It's like hilarious. I remember because I've had that said to me in the past, and it's oh, you're never gonna find anyone better than me. Yeah, I don't think that would be very difficult, but assuming in this, kevin was not being a narcissistic or egotistical butthole butthole he. What he really meant by that is I Know how I treat you, I know how rare that is and I know how hard it is to have earned that on a day-to-day basis, and I hope that everyone gets to a place where they feel that way.
Speaker 2:I also feel that way with Emilia. I know I wake up every single day and I'm so thankful, and one of the reasons I'm so thankful is because I've had some really terrible Partners in the past. But the other reason I'm so thankful is because I know statistically that Emilia is just Beyond magnificent in every regard, uniquely suited to be with me, and I know that she feels the same way, and I think that that creates a sense of security that is deeper than hey, I hope I don't get cheated on, you know, and yep, there's the you know again. Sometimes I say filler words, whoops. And I hope that everyone gets to a place where they believe in themselves and their own value enough to where they can hold that non-ego authentic. I Trust myself and I trust my value to where my partner wouldn't want to cheat on me, wouldn't want to leave There'd be no reason to. And I'm not even kidding and I'll just say this Cheating on Emilia or or being any sort of not wonderful to her would be the dumbest decision I've ever made in the history of dumb decisions.
Speaker 2:I mean that would be the dumbest thing ever of all time. I will not screw this up because I know what I have and I'm so grateful and I often joke. It took me 30 years to find Emilia and she's 29 years old. I'm 35 years old. I couldn't have been with her when I was her age because I wasn't ready. I wasn't a mansion, so to speak. I didn't understand emotional maturity and all that stuff. So when you build yourself to a place where you really value yourself and you really like yourself, not from ego, but from a true when your head hits the pillow you are of value. I don't think you'll be as insecure, which ironically, helps you build trust.
Speaker 1:Well and that's the hard thing too is when, when you're thinking about stuff like that, when you're thinking about I'm nervous that this person is Breaking my trust and again, I know we went super specific with relationships, but I think that's probably the the place where trust lives and dies the most. I don't know if we're thinking of I know, in my past at least, when I was dealing with trust issues, I wasn't thinking of I'm afraid this person's gonna go do something because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose what they bring to the table. It was more I'm afraid I'm gonna end up hurt. It was more emotional than logical, naturally, but I wasn't afraid that they were gonna go find someone else and I was gonna lose what they brought to the table. That wasn't it.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a really Well that's a tell right there, I know, because you should be concerned about. I mean you and I, business partners, same deal 100%. I'm not gonna find another kev, I'm not gonna find another.
Speaker 1:I mean that. But same and same, obviously. But there's a couple things. You've told me that and I've told you that, so that's out on the table. We know that and we also own that worth Of. I know you're not gonna find a me and you know I'm not gonna find a you, but I would never use that against you and you would never use that against me. But we do make sure we keep our ends of the bargain up. What are you gonna use it against me, right?
Speaker 2:now? No, of course not. You're funny, I just it's just hilarious because in the past you've made jokes behind the scenes. All safe in the bank account, moved to Mexico? Yeah, I will.
Speaker 1:I told Alan. I said we had a conversation about business recently and I said look, if you ever try to cut me out of this, I know where you live and if I lose this, I'm gonna come. I know where you sleep, son.
Speaker 2:But obviously I was kidding.
Speaker 1:But that I think that's the challenging thing is here If you wanna be a really good partner and hopefully limit the amount of trust issues you have. That's a blanket statement because depending on your upbringing, depending on your traumas, depending on your relationship experience, we're all gonna have different trust issues. But worry about what you bring to the table and if you continue to improve what you bring to the table, the other person would be making a giant mistake ever breaking your trust, and that all comes from the inner work and that all comes from the outer work and that comes from looking in the challenging mirrors and learning and growing and evolving and working on your triggers and insecurities and limiting beliefs. I can't guarantee that you're ever really gonna be able to do something about someone breaking your trust, but if there was one thing I think it would be work so diligently on yourself that if they did it, it would be their mistake. Will it not hurt? Of course it's gonna hurt and of course it's gonna suck and of course, depending on the amount of effort you've put into the relationship and the amount of love you have for that person, it's gonna be terrible.
Speaker 1:But at least you know the grass can be greener for you, because if the person is the type of person to cheat or break your trust, are they the person that deserved you in the first place? Probably not, and again, I know this is hyper logical, but I think it's really good advice. If you're in a balanced place, if you just went through a break up, maybe that advice doesn't help, but the best thing to do is work on you. That's why think about some of our favorite movies. I'll be Alan for a minute. Think about some of our favorite movies. The character gets their heart broken and then they go on this grocery.
Speaker 2:They make it look like a montage, though. Yeah, well, of course it takes all of a sudden, they're on the treadmill they're cleaning their house.
Speaker 1:They're killing their work. It's months and months and months, condensed into cut three minutes. But sometimes, if you end up losing something that you really, really value, you say, well, I don't ever want that to happen again. What can I do? Go learn, grow and evolve, so hopefully that lands. That's my. That monologue at the end was my next little note there's a deeper thing there too.
Speaker 2:This is a different episode. Maybe we'll do it at some point. But once, if you do get cheated on or you do get broken up with a lot of times, that's when your deepest fear gets realized. And then you stop. You stop playing not to lose, you start playing to actually win, because when your fear happens, all of a sudden you're not afraid of it anymore because the worst already happened. And that's why you said, when you had that breakup, part of you was relieved because you knew you couldn't sustain it anyway?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew it was gonna happen eventually.
Speaker 2:And so after that, all of a sudden, you're kind of freed up to rebuild yourself. And that's the whole Phoenix from the ashes type of thing, Very last piece. My next level nugget is, if you haven't listened to the episode yesterday, 1619, that's the three deeper wounds that get poked, and if there are trust issues happening, there's a good chance that either one your partner is not hearing you and you have courageously communicated these issues and that kind of thing, or two your wounds are getting triggered. So what were they? They were rejection, betrayal and abandonment. And then I talked about unlovable and not capable enough. Which one of those is getting triggered by these trust issues, even if it's a little thing. And that's my next level nugget to check in on. And then, yeah, how do you improve from there? Have you on?
Speaker 1:Have you on today. I'm gonna go back and look at old episodes and bring up some of those topics again.
Speaker 2:I'd say, we can probably do a better job.
Speaker 1:I would say so yeah somebody asked me the other day. They said how do you come up with seven episodes a week? And I said sometimes, usually it's what I'm doing and what I'm living. I try to come with stories. Sometimes I'll just look at old stuff that we did and I know we think differently than we did back then, so we'll be able to talk about it differently.
Speaker 2:It used to be at least a couple of times a week. Kevin would say I was on a podcast the other day and so it's not going on podcast anymore like I used to.
Speaker 1:Pretty soon, maybe, watch your words. I'm just saying a couple months, I'm not a couple of months Hopefully they ask some good questions, we'll get some good episodes.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will.
Speaker 1:If you have not yet joined our Facebook group Next Level Nation and you're looking for a place where you feel supported, a place where you can be yourself, a place where you can be vulnerable, a place where you can grow, next Level Nation is the place. Link will be in the show notes, as always. We would love to have you there.
Speaker 2:Every single day of 2024, which I believe is 51 days actually, as of today, I have used this Next Level Dreamliner. I'm showing it on YouTube. I just ordered today 30 copies for Next Level Live 30 people in person, 30 people virtually. If you come in person, the link will be in the show notes. You will be getting one of those 30 Dreamliners. If not, the ticket price is lower for the virtual. The ticket price for the virtual is $47. The ticket price for the in person is $97 and you get lunch and it's going to be bomb. We cannot wait to see you there. It is going to be nothing short of the most valuable day we can condense into one day in the last six years of this company.
Speaker 1:We hope to see you there. This wild journey we have been on Tomorrow for episode number 1621, does fulfillment require struggle? We talked a lot about fulfillment in a recent group coaching session. There was a common thing about fulfillment, at least for you and I, when we were talking about it. I want to talk about that. We haven't talked about fulfillment in a minute on the podcast, so we will do that tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you. At NLU, we do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Keep building trust. Thanks for watching.
