I Tested 2 Paths to a Purposeful Life and Here's What Worked with Alan Lazaros

What does it take to turn adversity into a powerful catalyst for change? Join us as we explore this question with our guest, Alan Lazaros. He shares his remarkable journey from personal tragedy and a near-fatal car crash to a life dedicated to personal growth and leadership. Alan's story, alongside reflections on balancing success and fulfilment, is a testament to the transformative power of facing challenges head-on. We delve into personal narratives of overcoming life's toughest hurdles, revealing how such experiences can illuminate the path to a more meaningful and aligned life.

Discover the profound difference between fleeting happiness and lasting fulfillment as we dissect the complex relationship between success and personal satisfaction. Through heartfelt discussions and candid reflections, we highlight stories of resilience, such as overcoming career dissatisfaction and personal loss. Alan and I share insights into how self-awareness and personal responsibility are the bedrock of meaningful change, offering a fresh perspective on crafting a life mission that aligns with one's true values and aspirations.

As we journey through these stories of transformation, we emphasize the importance of authenticity in relationships and the powerful impact of self-improvement. Explore embracing the hero's journey, with its smaller transformative experiences, and gain inspiration to lead a life full of purpose and empowerment. Whether it's a reflection on personal growth, the crafting of a successful mission statement, or navigating the complexities of relationships, this episode offers valuable lessons for anyone seeking to integrate success with fulfillment in their own lives.

Key moments in this episode: 
05:11 Alan's Early Life and Challenges 
10:25 The Turning Point: Near-Fatal Car Crash
17:56 The Happiness Framework
25:28 Harnessing the Drive Within
31:35 Setting Realistic Goals for Success
35:34 Aligning Actions with Values
43:22 Final Thoughts on Adversity and Growth

How to reach Alan:
Website: https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelUniversity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/

Chapters

• 0:00 Becoming a Revolutionary Man
• 5:11 Life Transforming Second Chance
• 13:55 Success and Fulfillment Integration
• 18:07 The Path to Fulfillment and Wisdom
• 29:23 Crafting Your Mission Statement for Success
• 39:51 Navigating Authenticity and Adversity
• 46:52 Empowering Conversations in Self-Improvement

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Now picture yourself you're at rock bottom, filled with regret, searching for answers. It's in these moments of profound hardship that true transformation begins, and you might face solace in unexpected places A powerful book, or maybe there's inspiring talk that reignites or drives and illuminates your path forward. As men, we often grapple with the balance between success and fulfillment, and discovering one without the other often leaves us incomplete, and so today, we're going to dive into how you can harness these challenges for improvement and become a revolutionary man that you are totally destined to be. So now, before we get into today's episode, let's also come to grips about one thing, and that is inevitably.

Speaker 1: 0:42

There will come a time when you will hit a wall, whether it's a marriage that's not working, a career or business that's stagnated, or maybe your personal life is just flatlined. So if you're dealing with any of these, or a combination thereof, and you're finally fed up with where your life's at, then allow me to help you get clear about what needs to be done, how to do that so that you can get on living the life you were meant to live. Just go in today's show notes and book a clarity call today and let's get your life back on track, and with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 3: 1:16

The average man today is sleep walking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 1:47

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, Alan DeMonso. As you reflect on a moment in your life when you faced significant adversity, how did you experience, or how did that experience shape you to who you are today, and what steps did you take to rise above it? Then I want you also to consider your current path. Are you achieving balance between success and fulfillment, or are you sacrificing one for the other? So what changes can you make to align your life with true purpose? As you ponder these profound questions, consider your journey. How have the life-altering situation shaped you? For me, it started with a downward spiral into depression and finally waking to the truth that I didn't want to really admit to myself that I must take responsibility for my past, present and future, and it was in that moment that things changed, just like it did with today's guests. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Alan Lazarus experienced profound loss early in his life, with the death of his father at age two, and at 26 he survived a near fatal car crash and found himself at an all-time low, questioning his life choices and his directions, and this crisis led him to discover inspiration through Bronnie Ware's book the Top Five Regrets of the Dying man I love that book too and a TED Talk that he saw by Tony Robbins, and this really encouraged him to embrace a heart-driven but no-nonsense approach to self-improvement, and Miles committed himself to a journey of personal growth and development. Today he leads a global team of 21 people and is nearing 10,000 hours of experience in speaking, podcasting, training and coaching. His mission is to help others become both successful and fulfilled. Welcome to the show Alan.

Speaker 2: 3:41

How are things, my friend? That was a hell of an opening. Strong work on that. You put a lot of work into that. I really Welcome to the show, alan, how are things? My friend used to hear these people that sounded like they had it all figured out, and now I've become one of those people who's starting to sound that way. I definitely don't have it all figured out, but I'm here with you to help each other and your listeners figure out how to become their own hero. Yeah, essentially, and I think that's really important?

Speaker 1: 4:19

Yeah, sure as we. We totally believe in the hero's journey and that we're all on our own personal hero's journey, and within that, within the greater one between life and death, are many smaller ones. And so my opening question for you today, Alan, is to enlighten folks a little bit about your story. Tell us about the defining moment for you in your life that really changed the course of your destiny, and tell us what you did to get through it and how that experience has shaped you into the man you are today.

Speaker 2: 4:48

So you had mentioned this already and really well articulated it it's. There's a lot of mini ones, there's so many things that shape us. In some ways, everything shapes us or helps us reorient, but there was one main one that shifted everything forever for me, and that's a very clear leaving of the old world and embarking into the new world, so to speak, in the hero's journey. As you mentioned, my father passed away when I was two years old. He was 28. I had an older sister who was six. I had a mom who was 31, stay-at-home mom and I had a stepfather from age three to 14. So my real last name is actually McCorkle. My dad was John McCorkle. He was from a big Irish Catholic family and Jim, joe, john, jane, joan, jeanette. There was six kids. He was one of six, all J, and when he passed away and my stepfather came into the picture, he was friends with my dad.

Speaker 2: 5:38

We stopped associating with the McCorkles, unconsciously because we were being the Lazaruses, and so I playfully refer to three to 14 as boats and BS. So my stepdad motorcycles, snowmobiles, ski trips. We had boats and deep sea fishing and we had a yacht. We had another apartment building. This is late 90s, early 2000s. Economy, booming dot com bubble in the 90s in the US and he worked for a company called Agfa that did hospital computers. So we did very well financially.

Speaker 2: 6:08

But my mom and stepdad didn't really get along well and so when I was 14 years old, my stepfather leaves. He takes his entire extended family with him. I have yet to see a single one of them. I've not seen or spoken to any of them since I was 14. I did talk to my stepdad on Facebook Messenger a little bit, but haven't seen him in person since that same year and I didn't know this at the time. So the important piece of this is I started doing some therapy in my 30s. I started reflecting on my life a lot and I've rewatched the movie of my life. So I understand a lot of this. In hindsight it's very important to understand. I didn't know what the heck was happening back then. But so I'm 14 years old and stepdad leaves, takes his entire extended family with him. That same time my sister moves out, older sister with her older boyfriend understandable. My mom gets in a fight with her sister, my aunt Sandy, and my aunt Sandy ostracizes us from my mom's side. So didn't understand this until my thirties. But I lost three full families by the time I'm 14. It's just me and my mom in that house.

Speaker 2: 7:04

Now, on top of that, when my stepdad left at 14, he got the apartment building and the yacht, we got the house and the dog and he took 90% of the income with him. So we went from upper middle class for me ski trips, boats and all that kind of stuff Dreamcast, xbox to I get free lunch at school. Now, because our income is so low, I am shopping at Salvation Army. We're not going to starve, but my mom trades in her BMW. She gets a little Honda Civic and it's a different life for sure.

Speaker 2: 7:33

And so I went from I can't wait to go to college. My dream college was WPI, worcester Polytechnic Institute. It's like a mini MIT in Massachusetts and it's $50,000 a year. And that was back then. So I went from I can't wait to get in to. Even if I do get in, I don't know how I'm going to go because I don't know how we're going to afford it. So I just did the only thing I knew how to do. So I now understand the four trauma responses fight, flight, freeze and fawn. So fawn is one that I adopted.

Speaker 2: 8:02

I was a did fight behind the scenes, aim higher, work harder, get smarter, and a lot of achievers will resonate with this. I became this uber achiever of okay, the past is painful, the present is painful, the future is going to be painful if I don't do something about it because I don't have a trust fund to look forward to or really a family to protect me or save me. So I'm going to have to do this thing, became the man of the house at 14 years old, so to speak, and so I did. I bootstrapped. I aimed higher, work harder, get smarter. That was my trauma response and I got straight A's through all of high school. I have a award behind me called the President's Award and it's signed by George W Bush and I got 189 in honors English, luckily by George W Bush, and I got 189 in honors English, luckily it was awaited. But basically you have to get straight A's through all report cards for all of high school and I that's 16 report cards straight. So I did that. I got into my school and I got enough scholarships and financial aid to go, which was huge.

Speaker 2: 8:55

I got my computer engineering degree. I got my master's in business, which was really quite difficult the engineering more than the business and then I went off into corporate. So it's 21st century. I'm a computer engineer with an MBA, master's in business. I did super well and I went from a broke high school and college kid to whoa. I make a ton of money now 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, 125, almost to 180 in my early twenties. And, courtney, my rent is 500 bucks a month. I don't have a mortgage or kids. I bought a 2004 Volkswagen Passat for $5,000 cash. I paid off 84 grand worth of debt in a single year and I invested all my money because, in my mind, getting wealthy was the answer. So I invested $150,000 into a Vanguard account. I picked the tech companies that I thought would win in the ETFs and I just was achievement oriented. Tons of high school friends, college friends, corporate friends, partied too much and too often Achiever, just trying to get wealthy and having fun.

Speaker 2: 9:55

26 happens. I'm working for a company called Cognex. I sell industrial automation equipment into manufacturing facilities all across Connecticut, vermont and Western Massachusetts. Those were my territory. And I'm up in New Hampshire my little cousin not drinking, not partying, nothing like that. We're playing Call of Duty. This is the only cousin actually that ever came back from my mother's side to this day. His name's Jeff. He has a little son named Dan. So Dan was my little cousin second cousin technically, and he was with me.

Speaker 2: 10:23

And this is when I got in my car accident. I'm driving to TGI Fridays looking down at the GPS. It's a dark winter night in 2015. The snow banks were covering the yield sign. I was supposed to yield and I ended up on the wrong side of the road in a three-way intersection. And I look up and I see in front of me what I thought was a Mack truck Biggest, brightest lights I'd ever seen. So two things saved my life. One, it was not a Mack truck and if it was, there's no question I would not be here. It was a lift kitted pickup truck A lot of those up in New Hampshire.

Speaker 2: 10:53

The second thing that saved my life is the 2004 Volkswagen Passat. I used to call this car the tank. It was a really heavy steel trap of a car and the entire front is completely smashed in, but the frame stayed, the airbags deployed. Him and I were good physically. He hurt his knee on the airbag. I hurt my face in the airbag. We were banged up, but nothing drastic.

Speaker 2: 11:15

So, physically, I was okay, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, though my dad died in a car accident when he was 28. I've seen pictures of his car, so this was my quarter life existential crisis. This is the second chance my dad never got, and so my little cousin was fine. He was tweeting about it that night. I was completely messed up. I just I lived a life where I saw someone who had passed away at 28. And I saw what that did. I saw that, what that did to my mom, my sister, what that did to my family, and I just thought to myself, like that really could have been it. So this is the second chance your dad never got and you're going to do something different.

Speaker 2: 11:55

And so I just was filled with all the regret all at once. All the feedback, all the choices I made. Did I take the right path? Was I even conscious of it? Did I hang out with the right people? Was I as virtuous as I could have been? Am I proud of myself? Would my dad be proud of me? All of these existential questions. And ever since then, I started wearing this North Star around my neck, and it reminds me of this simple quote that is corny but so true, which is you can't see the stars during the day. They're always there, but sometimes it takes the darkness to see clearly that which you simply could not within the light. So I was in the dark and I saw some stars that I never noticed before. So what a coincidence.

Speaker 2: 12:37

I find Bronnie Ware's book, the top five regrets of the dying, while almost dying and in regret, not a coincidence. That book was always there, but I was ready for it at that moment and that's when and I actually have these flashcards right here and they I always carry them with me, and one of them is the top five regrets of the dying. It's all tattered and it's nasty, honestly, at this point, but they have all five of the regrets. So, bronnie Ware I actually have since interviewed her, which was really cool. I fanboyed hard on that interview. But the top five regrets of the dying is a book. She worked in hospice for eight years. She worked with the terminally ill and she noticed over time that all of the terminally ill people had these similar regrets. I wish and I wish I had lived a life true to myself and not what others expected of me was the number one regret of the dying and I definitely had that regret, and so since then and the best way I can describe it now and you mentioned this in the opening I was very successful prior to this, to my 26 year car accident, but I was deeply unfulfilled, and that's obvious in hindsight.

Speaker 2: 13:40

Then I flipped the script. I went all in on personal development, I went all in on self improvement, I went all in on fitness. I was happy, healthy and productive, but then I went broke. So now then, I was fulfilled as hell but unsuccessful, which also sucks, to be completely honest. So then I fast forward. Now, nine years later, I'm now finally in a place where I'm both successful and fulfilled, and I can honestly, authentically say and hopefully many of your listeners can too, and if you can't, you can get there I want my future to be an amplified version of what it already is. That's how you know you're in alignment is when you want your future to be an amplified version of what it already is, and that's where I've finally gotten, and that's the integration of both success and fulfillment. I've actually come to realize that I think success is easy and I think fulfillment is easy. I think it's very difficult to do both simultaneously.

Speaker 1: 14:26

I would completely agree with you. What a great story. Thank you so much for bringing that more context to the intro, because I think part of the and we talked about coming on today's show. The purpose of this show was really to highlight the average and ordinary guy doing extraordinary things, and we all need, and we all go through some our own version of our own hero's quest that it doesn't need to be really deeply profound changes that happen for us. That's why I talk also about maybe it's marriage that's not working.

Speaker 1: 14:55

There's lots of things that affect us in our lives, right, that can be very devastating.

Speaker 1: 14:59

For me, it was getting divorced and having to lose everything when I was 30 because I had married my high school sweetheart and at the time I thought that was the one and the only. And when so much was invested into that and then that piece ends, the struggle back can be quite painful. And what I really appreciated about your story is that you also talked about you can't have one without the other Right. So a life of success very similar to my early days, and then all about fulfillment. As you think that's the answer. Then I just got to be more fulfilled. The reality of it is that we need to have both show up in our life, and that's why, when I saw your story, I really wanted you to have you on the show today, alan, because it's everybody's story, just with the different circumstances, but that is everybody's story. So tell me what, how, now that you're at this stage in your life, how? What is you finding is the difference that you're having between fulfillment versus happiness.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, so I do agree. It's everyone's story and one of the reasons why okay, I grew up in an environment that I playfully refer to as the boulevard of broken dreams, and I used to be too much of a coward to talk about this. I am trying to lean into my truth, and my truth is that I looked around. I saw really unhappy human beings. I saw really unfulfilled human beings. I would actually say that more than unhappy, because on the surface, a lot of times they looked happy, but they were profoundly unfulfilled. They didn't love their careers, they didn't love their wives or their husbands they don't even like each other half the time, nevermind love each other seriously. And so I looked around as a kid and I thought to myself this looks awful and I'm not kidding, maybe it's me being a weird engineer I looked at it and I thought to myself this, it's gotta be better than this. This doesn't seem like it, this can't be it. And I remember marriage scared the hell out of me because I saw a lot of really unfulfilling marriages. So I was scared of marriage for the longest time. But anyways, and and now I'm with someone who I 100 000 intend on I'm excited for marriage, but when I was a kid, I was like hell. No, this looks terrible, and a lot of young men can relate to that, but anyways.

Speaker 2: 17:13

So there's this conversation in my early 20s that I'll never forget, that I had with my mom, and she said to me once and this was a little bit of an argument, but she said why does it matter to be, why does intelligence matter so much to you? Why can't it be enough to just be nice? And I remember, in my early 20s I was trying to figure it out and I was very intelligence driven, and I remember thinking that's a fairly dumb question, but my truth was what's the difference between a smartphone and a dumb phone? A smartphone is more capable, and so, to me, intelligence allows you to make better choices. You have to know better to do better, and if you're uneducated and you don't know any better, you don't really have a choice, and that's so unfortunate. And so now, my company, we are trying, and you are trying, to help illuminate some of these things that we weren't taught in school, some of these things that no one talked about growing up, some of these things that you didn't know, that you wish you understood at the time. And so, to answer your original question about happiness versus fulfillment.

Speaker 2: 18:07

The truth underneath all this is, I think happiness is the wrong metric. It's what does that even mean? Does anyone even know what that means? It's the pursuit of happiness. Okay, are you happy? I would say yeah, overall. Okay, zero to 10, how happy? I don't know. Eight, probably, okay. How do you get more happy If I had a nicer car? I just it's not the right metric.

Speaker 2: 18:28

There's something about fulfillment that you can. It's a deeper level than happiness. Happiness is yeah, I had a blast this weekend. F than happiness. Happiness is yeah, I had a blast this weekend. Fulfillment is I'm proud of who I am at my core and I am growing and contributing in alignment with my life's calling. There's just a if you want to live a profound life, a deep life, a fulfilling life, you have to measure the right thing, and it can't be happiness, because happiness is actually, I think, mistaken for pleasure. And so I have this thing called the happiness framework that I teach in my group coaching program, and the happiness equation is essentially three things. So what we call happiness is actually three things, and I'm a computer engineer so I love formulas.

Speaker 2: 19:09

So the first one is joy. Joy is being in the moment, enjoying what you do, and it is possible to be enjoying yourself while doing something hard. That's the key distinction. You can be sweating your butt off playing basketball and still enjoying it, even though it's brutal, okay. The second one is the trap, I think, which is pleasure. Pleasure is the donut. Pleasure is all of the things in life that feel good in the moment, that are usually detrimental long-term Cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, all of these things that are pleasurable but usually are not actually good for us long-term. And so that's what I think most people say Are you happy? Can you fill your life with the most pleasure possible? And I just think that's a dangerous thing to believe. Third part is fulfillment. So you've got joy, pleasure and fulfillment.

Speaker 2: 20:03

Fulfillment is the one that I believe comes from challenge and adversity and growth and contribution. I think that fulfillment comes from and I always use the Stairmaster as a good example For pleasure. I use donuts, donuts no matter how many you eat, you're never fulfilled, even though they're delicious, right. And then the first one, joy. I use basketball sweating You're still enjoying yourself, even though it's hard. But I use the Stairmaster for fulfillment because we all know if you've ever been on that Stairmaster, I don't care who you are, I don't care how much money is in your bank account. It's awful.

Speaker 2: 20:38

But when you get off that thing and you're sweating bullets, you feel fulfilled because you climbed towards something challenging, you got better, you did something meaningful. And I think that you don't know you love something because you always want to do it. I think you love something or someone because you're always glad you did. So you're never going to want to get on the Stairmaster, but you're always going to be glad you did, and I think that's a good metaphor for life and that's what fulfillment means. So that's the difference between happiness and fulfillment. What most people call happiness, they actually mean pleasure. Fulfillment is something deeper and more meaningful, and I think fulfillment is about meaning and I think happiness is more about yeah, surface level pleasures.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Yeah, one is more fleeting. Happiness to me is about is a fleeting thing Because I just use the analogy of the donut I'm happy maybe in the moment, but then maybe there's some regret that comes after that, but the fulfilling piece is something that stays with us much longer. And we were talking about a few other things earlier, and one of the things I noticed I wrote down here was we had a conversation in our men's group about what's more important knowledge versus wisdom and we came to the conclusion that neither is more important. We need them both. To your point about intelligence and being nice having knowledge allows us to take steps forward.

Speaker 1: 21:57

Wisdom comes after we've experienced something, but if we didn't have one without the other, it would be a challenge. Could you have lots of knowledge and maybe gain some wisdom through reading books, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries? 100%, you can gain it, but the depth of true wisdom to me, I believe, is through experience. It's through that understanding and embodying what happens in our life, and I think some of your story sounds a lot. You've gained lots of wisdom from those experiences the mirroring of that near death experience for you in the car accident and hearkening back to your father and I'm interested also in how that relationship while you didn't have very long with your biological father, and how the second, your stepdad how that relationship also shaped you. Like you talked about, hey, when your parents split up, that it put you into this drive for success because of the situation you're in, but how has the relationship shaped you and now potentially maybe you becoming a father? So I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 23:06

These are the questions, right, these are the ones. I didn't understand this until my 30s, like I had mentioned, but I didn't realize that I had a I don't want to necessarily say abandonment issues, but I would say at 14, losing sort of three families by then and the McCorkles, by the way, my birth father's side. They welcomed us back with open arms, but they I looked just like my dad, so it was like them seeing the ghost of Christmas past kind of thing, and I've enjoyed bringing them back into my world a lot, but we're not super close. I had a very unique experience in the sense that all the scaffolding was ripped out from under me by the time I'm 14. And not even even that's me sugarcoating, I mean, it was just awful, let's just call it spade here and I think that because I had high self-belief, I was able to. There's something called an ACE score, adverse childhood experiences and there's a test you can take and I have a very high ACE score and there's a lot of statistics that show that people with high ACE scores, adverse childhood experiences, lead to early mortality and I think one of the reasons why I've ended up climbing out of this is self-belief, because there's a lot of people who've gone through a lot of really hard things and instead of it constructing them into something bigger, better and more powerful, there's a concept called anti-fragile, where the more you attack something, the stronger it gets. And for some reason, that is what my experience has been overall, even though I definitely took some negative paths and alcohol and all that too Overall I've become more mature, more experienced, more powerful, more confident, more capable over time, even though there was tons of ups and downs.

Speaker 2: 24:38

So, to answer your original question, my relationship with my birth father really I don't remember much of it. My relationship with my stepfather I don't think he ever really wanted to be a father. I felt like, if anything, maybe I was a nuisance most likely, and I'm sure that made me want to chase significance more than what was probably constructive, and I think that my achievement orientation was probably partly due to feeling insignificant or unlovable. And now it's almost like that chip on my shoulder. It's still there, but now I don't let it control me, and I told this to my business partner. You had Kevin on a year ago you mentioned, and Kevin didn't have a father either. So we both realized that we're becoming the male role models we never had. That's become our hero's journey, so to speak. But I told Kevin this one time. I said, dude, you have a chip on your shoulder. You always have, so have I, and that's okay, we're driven. You don't do 1,750 episodes if you're not driven without missing a single day. But I said don't take off the chip, just don't let the chip drive you. You drive the chip. That's the best way I can describe it is. I have a chip on my shoulder for sure, but I don't let the chip run me anymore. And I think there was a time in my life where the chip was running me. And now I.

Speaker 2: 25:49

Actually, when I started healing and doing more therapy and healing the relationships that I have with other people, healing the relationship with myself and really digging into all this, I actually was afraid I was going to lose my drive. I was so afraid of that I'm not kidding I thought I was going to end up lazy, to be completely transparent, and if anything, it's gotten bigger and that's been scaring the hell out of me. I was already very ambitious. As a matter of fact, I want to be very vulnerable here. You had mentioned at the beginning of the show ordinary people who do extraordinary things.

Speaker 2: 26:18

One of the biggest fears that I have is that everyone out there listening or watching is going to know that I was not ordinary. And as I've coached all these people from all over the world and 10,000 hours and blah, blah, blah, it's become very evident that I'm on the very, very statistical anomaly. I think in numbers and I think in statistics and I think in mathematics and I'm an engineer. So it's become very obvious to me that I'm I'm on the very far end of every bell curve, almost every bell curve, and so I'm not an ordinary.

Speaker 2: 26:50

That's the scary thing to say, is I'm not actually ordinary and that's actually been the hardest thing to own, to be completely honest, because people who are weirdos, who are statistical anomalies, they don't feel lovable and they don't feel relatable and they don't feel likable. I've never felt like a likable guy. Kevin is the opposite. Kevin's likable. He identifies as an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things. I don't identify with that at all. I feel like I've been given gifts that most people don't have, quite frankly, and because of that I have a responsibility to do something with it and I used to squander that potential seriously, which was not okay. But at the end of the day, my relationship with my stepdad, I think, amplified a drive in me that now I've been able to harness in a fulfilling way. This is the best way I could answer the question.

Speaker 1: 27:35

Yes, yeah for sure way is the best way I could answer the question.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Yes, yeah for sure, and the reason I like to ask that question, especially when we get into talking about the fathers and stuff, is that it manifests in a way differently for all of us and it's our, becomes our coping mechanism and how we cope with it shows up so different.

Speaker 1: 27:51

And yours was about just the drive for success, and if we're not careful, that drive for success can lead to lots of pain elsewhere, as you also indicated, and so I'm always curious to see the transformation of my guests' mindset and on their journey from that and recognizing that while that's still there's still it's great to have drive and continue to have drive and, as you suggested, not allowing the driver that chip on your shoulder to own you, but you to own it.

Speaker 1: 28:20

And so that's about integrating the lessons that you've learned and that shows wisdom and being extraordinary means we come to that realization at some point in our life. It doesn't mean that we've got it all figured out, it just means that we figured a few things out and we're able to channel it for good versus for not so great choices, and I've seen that with a few guests in my life as well, that are in the show that their initial choices were not great and they did fall into addiction and some incarcerations and lots of different things. That just how we decided to frame that story, and so you've done a great job with tweaking that story and making it work for you a lot of your work.

Speaker 1: 29:01

Obviously, alan is dealing with peak performance and when you talk about how we can become, how we can become even better at what we do, and so tell us about maybe you're working with clients who are not at their peak levels and how are you helping them come together in all aspects of their life health, wealth, love and how are you helping them shape their lives?

Speaker 2: 29:23

I just got a big smile on my face when you were talking, because that's one of the things that I'm very proud of. There's a lot of things Kevin will always ask are you proud of us? And my answer is yes, as the men we've become, I would say in success. No, and he's the opposite. He's proud of us as men, but he's really pumped about where we've gotten right 1700 episodes. For him he's very impressed and that's great and that's to me.

Speaker 2: 29:46

I feel like we're barely scratching our potential, but I am proud of the holistic thing, the health, wealth and love I feel I used to be very whatever smart, type A, definitely the kid that could party all night and still get straight A's in calculus. I was given those gifts, whatever that means. I call it STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, business and finance. I've always felt very capable and for those of you who don't feel that way, don't villainize me please. I understand. I never understood any of this until later on when I started to realize, oh okay, misunderstood like any of this, until later on when I started to realize, oh okay, so I'm. I'm definitely different in that sense and I believe in myself a lot and a lot of people don't and they pretend to, and that's a whole.

Speaker 2: 30:27

Nother conversation, but the peak performance side and the clients that I coach. So I have 24 people on my roster. My youngest is 16. My oldest is 63. The youngest is starting a YouTube channel. The oldest has been in business for 20 years, multimillionaire, right. So all different industries, all different backgrounds, all different countries, male and female, all different cultures, all different ethnicities. I've got a global perspective through the people that I coach and I'm very grateful for that, because I've learned so much about all the different walks of life. It's been really cool. Talk about gaining knowledge and wisdom. That's just been awesome. I've taught, I've been, I've learned more from my clients than they've learned from me collectively. But at the end of the day, all of them want to achieve success, right? They all have their own unique flavor of what that means. So I have one client who wants a $75 million net worth. He's in financial services and, honestly, he can do that. He can. Is he gonna? I don't know, let's dial it in. And then some people they just want a little more success and that's also fine.

Speaker 2: 31:30

What I've learned is that most people I read this stat we were preparing for a monthly meetup. We do monthly meetups every month, and I was preparing for it. I was doing research, and I read a stat that said that only 4% of people ever write down their goals, and only 8% of the people who write them down, only 8% of that 4% ever achieve them, and I remember thinking to myself. That is why, now, one of the reasons and this is scary to share, but I'm trying not to be a coward here One of the reasons that's wild to me is because I've been writing down and achieving my goals since I was a kid, and I always wondered. Everyone around me would talk about their goals and then they'd go to the beach. I didn't understand. Why would you say you're going to do something and then not go? At least try it? And I realized over time they just don't believe in themselves, so they're doing more talking than walking, and, for me, that's not really what I do as much, although I've definitely talked. So the point of all that, though, is I figured out one of the reasons people don't achieve their goals it's because their goals are based on low self-awareness.

Speaker 2: 32:32

Okay, I have clients who come to me I'm not even kidding and say I want to be a billionaire, and I remember I used to be so delusional. I would be like, okay, let's do it, and then we'd create a system of success. Here's the metrics, here's the habits. Let's rock and roll, let's make it happen, let's track your gross revenue, all this stuff. And then eventually I would realize you don't actually want to be a billionaire. You're saying that because you think you're supposed to say it.

Speaker 2: 32:53

I said how many billionaires are there in the world? I remember this conversation with a client of mine. She said I don't know a hundred thousand. I was like 3,200. And I said and how many of those billionaires came from nothing, and it wasn't generational wealth? She said, oh, I don't know. Half of them. I said no way, absolutely not Okay. And then how many of them did it without investors? Zero, so maybe not zero, but come on. So I realized they're actually saying things without understanding the reverse engineering process that goes into it. So I didn't say I'm going to be a CEO of a tech company one day without first reverse engineering it in my mind.

Speaker 2: 33:32

And so my whole life I've been wondering why do people say things and then not do them? It turns out I'm the one with the blind spot. I didn't know I could reverse engineer things easily. That was just a gift that came naturally to me. Strategy it's the chess player analogy. I'm a chess player by nature, Okay.

Speaker 2: 33:52

So what's that have to do with peak performance? You got to start with self-awareness. You're not going to be a billionaire if your number one core value is family and nor should you be. Let's be honest, half the entrepreneurs I know probably shouldn't even be entrepreneurs. If I'm honest, being an entrepreneur, I always joke. I say Leonardo DiCaprio, front of the boat, I'm king of the world.

Speaker 2: 34:06

That's what people think entrepreneurship is. What it really is is him on the side of the door freezing to death. That's what it really is, despite what Instagram shows. And so, at the end of the day, you have to be a certain type of person who is ignited by challenge, fear and uncertainty to be a business owner. Otherwise, you should be an entrepreneur. You should be an entrepreneur, you should be a team member, and that's totally awesome. There's nothing wrong with that right. So if being a mother is your number one core value, don't shoot for billionaire, shoot for a great mother and a couple hundred grand a year or whatever. And then, when you hit that, now up the ante and do better. And then, when you hit that up the ante, I'd rather you start small, build self-belief rather than aim for the moon land amongst the stars nonsense that is built on delusion, and then you're going to keep letting yourself down.

Speaker 2: 34:53

That's the reason those stats are so low because people are setting their goals based on a version of them that isn't real. They're setting their goals based on what they think they're supposed to set. What's cool to say? It's way cooler to say, hey, I'm going to go to the gym seven days a week all year. That's way cooler than to say I'm going to do 20 minutes a day of walking and then see if I can eventually run a mile. See, one of them builds social status, the other one is real. And the real one is the one you'll actually achieve. And then, ironically, if you actually set the real one and achieve it, and then set the real one and achieve it, and set the real one and achieve it, you'll build so much belief that eventually you'll end up with the working out all year.

Speaker 1: 35:32

Yes, you start with the small thing. I'm smiling as I listen to you talk. Tell this part about peak performance, and one of the very first thing that guys that come into our group I asked them to do is to craft their mission statement, a personal mission statement. For them, I call it a return of the king, and the purpose and their purpose and meaning behind that is for them to get in alignment, just like you're talking about. Oh, I want to be, I want to be a billionaire, but if your values are out of alignment which generally is what's happening, right, it's why we have we struggle in life, we have a misalignment with our values, and then we have beliefs that support those, and so we struggle.

Speaker 2: 36:08

And our actions don't align with it. And when our actions don't align with it, it creates ego and insecurity and ego, and I do a mission statement too.

Speaker 2: 36:17

I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that's so key. You need a North Star to aim at. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be something that can guide you. We all need a North star. If you're alone in the dark in the woods, you need a North star, and I'm so proud that, I'm so grateful that you do that, because I have a mission statement for every single one of my clients, every single one. It's the key piece.

Speaker 1: 36:38

It gives them something to come back to.

Speaker 1: 36:40

So when you're doing your regular check-ins, there's something for you to go back and realign yourself, because that's inevitable we will be, we will come out of alignment. Life happens, but the key of it and I ask my, my clients to redo that exercise annually because we look at our life and I look at them in 90 day uh, sprints, and then, over the course of four sprints in the year, have we become? Have we evolved to the person we aspire to become in that year? And if we've done our due diligence and we've done our work, then we have made steps, we've made progress forward and we focus on one specific aspect of our life, then a rising tide lifts all boats and so other areas of your life will start to improve as well, because you're not the same person, you're a completely different individual start to improve as well because you're not the same person, you're a completely different individual. And so I like the direction of what you're doing with your clients, and it doesn't matter whether they're 16 or 63, it's still about alignment for them Always.

Speaker 2: 37:35

That's what fulfillment is. Fulfillment is being in alignment with your true potential, and that potential is here to serve something greater than yourself, which is the mission statement that you mentioned. I do quarterly. We break down we have this thing called dreamlining. We have a mission statement which is 10 plus years, then we break it down into annual goal and then we break that down into quarterly milestones so milestones and then we break that into daily inch pebbles, so we have daily habits inch pebbles that lead to the quarterly milestones, that lead to the annual goal, which leads to the decade, and the decade forms the tapestry of who you become ultimately and leads you to that mission statement. And the mission statement evolves as you go.

Speaker 2: 38:15

So you and I have very similar coaching programs, and it sounds fortune cookie, but I'll tell you what it works. You can tell when someone's in alignment. You can tell and, by the way, here's how you can tell you're probably insecure around them because they feel like they got it all figured out. I don't have it all figured out, but I'll tell you what. I'm way more in alignment than I used to be, and if you're not and you're off the rails, you're going to be insecure around me, and then I'm going to be uncomfortable and then I'm probably going to ego up to defend myself and then you're not going to like me, you're going to villainize me, not learn from me, and then you're going to stay outside of alignment and I'm going to get more into alignment behind the scenes because no one loves me. That's me being playful, but I hear you brother, I hear you.

Speaker 1: 38:53

I'm sure throughout your journey you've, you must have, had a mentor or two that have really shaped and have left you with some profound knowledge and wisdom, and so my question for you is what's been the best piece of advice you've been given, and how is it still serving you today? Yeah, one of my mentors said this to me one time.

Speaker 2: 39:08

So he ended up he was I can't give that away, but he was the CEO of a billion dollar tech company. I'll just leave it there and I learned a lot from him. And some of the stuff he said I think in hindsight was actually not great for me, but at the end of the day, you got to take the good with the bad. Every mentor either gets better or worse as you get wiser, but he's one of the ones that have gotten better and most of them not so much. But he said this to me. He said Alan, don't ever do anything that feels too unnatural. Now he was very honest with this because he got he ended up divorced, and he said that in hindsight and he was very vulnerable and honest with this too. He wasn't trying to be unkind or toxic. He said I did too many things that weren't natural for me.

Speaker 2: 39:51

And on one hand, I think that's what happens when we want love or acceptance we do something that isn't really us. So, for example, like, if my girlfriend? She doesn't, but let's say hypothetically and this is my future wife right here, I love her. This is my person. I've never been more certain about anything in my life. She's the best gift of my entire life and I'm just so excited for our future and I intend on her being my wife and we've already talked about it. But anyways, I'm going to surprise her because I'm a hopeless romantic. Let's do this. But anyways, back in my past relationships, for me success always came fairly easy when it came to external success, I think that'll be clear to anyone who probably is considering me arrogant on this episode. What never came easy for me was relationships For me.

Speaker 2: 40:35

I'm a computer engineer and I realized very young that when you have a girlfriend and she says, do I look fat in this? And you say yes, at level six out of 10, you're in trouble. So you can't say what you really think, apparently, and that's why a lot of engineers struggle with human beings, by the way, because and we say human beings because we think very robotic, but anyways. So with Emilia it's like if she wanted me to tone down my intensity and not be driven, I'd be screwed, and I had exes in the past that they wanted me to hang out more. Oh, you really need to hang out more, you need to relax. Like I work six days a week, 10 hour days minimum. Every week it's Saturday. This is like noon on a Saturday and I know she's working. She's a type A achiever too.

Speaker 2: 41:19

You have to try to be with someone that wants you to be all of you, and I know that it's not fulfilling for me to hang out, just like it might not be fulfilling for you to work six days a week, 10 hour days. I understand that this is me. I'm being my true self. So the old me used to dial down my true self, try to pretend to fit in, feel like that's the only way I'm ever going to belong, because otherwise I was deeply lonely. And now I've realized that when you do that you screw up the law of attraction.

Speaker 2: 41:49

So the best advice I ever got from a mentor was Alan, don't do anything that feels too unnatural. And I actually think that advice really helped me get out of a relationship where I realized I wasn't being fully my true self, because I think she was deeply insecure about I think she knew deep down that if I was my true self I was going to keep growing and that she wouldn't be able to keep up. And the weird part about all that is I think it's actually accurate. I think she knows that she was not going to be able to keep up, nor would she even want to, and so I'm grateful that we broke up, because, wow, so grateful. Who here can think of a relationship they're so grateful ended Holy crap. But I take responsibility for the fact that I wasn't being my true self in the relationship.

Speaker 1: 42:33

Well, and you honored yourself and you honored her actually in the end, because you weren't forcing something that wasn't going to be natural ultimately and it would have just caused more pain and angst down the road, and so it was a good decision, alan, of everything we spoke about today and maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on what would be the one takeaway you'd like to have.

Speaker 2: 42:54

And it's interesting because when I saw A-L-A-I-N I didn't know you pronounced it Alan. Do you pronounce it Alan as well? All right, we're both a couple of Alans on here. Alan's a very real name and I've never seen it spelt that way before. That's interesting Cool, Because you'd think it would be Elaine. Right, but Alan yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:11

It actually is pronounced that way, but most of the times, unless I have someone extremely French on my podcast, alan is fine.

Speaker 2: 43:18

Well, alan, and Alan Cool. So the only thing that came up when you asked that is this responsibility piece of pre-car accident. Whether you have a high ACE score or not, whether you lost three families or not, whether you had a good upbringing or not, it is your responsibility to make something meaningful of it, because horrible things happen to everyone. People pass away car accidents, injuries, health issues, no matter what adversity is life, and I don't believe in this whole it's all going to work out thing. That's not true. Everyone in high school is optimistic. And then they get to real life and go, oh, this really didn't work the way I'd hoped. And then you either are humble and honest about that and make corrective action, like I, after my car accident, was able to do, or, luckily, after my car accident gave me all the humble pie at once, or you ego up and pretend that it did all work out. And so the last thing I'll say is this there's two camps in life that I've noticed over the years of coaching. One camp is you believe unconsciously that life is supposed to be great, and every time it's not, you think something's wrong with you or the world Usually the world, by the way, that's the victim mindset. The other camp is, I think, much more empowering and I think it's much more accurate. And the other camp is the one I was born into.

Speaker 2: 44:37

That camp is life is suffering, life is awful, life is hard. It always has been, it always will be. It's less hard than it's ever been in the 21st century, but it's still. Despite that, you can make it meaningful, you can make it matter and you can become something magnificent despite that. And every day above ground is a great fucking day Pardon my French if I'm not supposed to swear, but that I didn't, I don't. I can't take credit for that. That's the one benefit of having.

Speaker 2: 45:05

I would not wish my childhood on anyone, but I'll tell you what. That attitude of life is supposed to be hard and despite that it can be amazingly meaningful and fulfilling is so much more accurate, I think, and I see and meet these people one of my exes in particular, who thinks life is supposed to be great because growing up it was and it screwed her life view up because now, every time life's not great, she thinks something's wrong and nothing's wrong. This is just life, this is what it is, and I think that attitude can be very entitled. It's almost like you're entitled to it being great, and then you end up a victim instead of really realizing like I can make something meaningful out of this adversity that's inevitable, because adversity is inevitable for all of us. So that's what I would end with.

Speaker 1: 45:51

I love that. Thank you so much, buddy. I really appreciated our conversation today. You gave us an opportunity to really see that, through adversity, yes, that we can become more than what we were before that.

Speaker 2: 46:09

And if anyone is interested in getting a hold of you participating in your work, what would be the best way for them to do that? Yeah, so we have a podcast called Next Level University, spelled just like it sounds. We do an episode every day. It's holistic self-improvement 1% improvement in your pocket from anywhere on the planet, completely free, every single day. So imagine if you could get 1% better per day. Imagine what could happen in a year or five years, that kind of thing. So we try to be a mentor in your pocket every day.

Speaker 2: 46:28

We also have a website called nextleveluniversecom. The podcast is Next Level University, the website is Next Level Universe, because the person who has the URL we want is charging way too much money, so we decided to make the website the Next Level Universe, which we got monthly meetups. We have a book club. We have a journal that we use every day. We've got Habit Tracker app and all kinds of cool stuff on there so you can check that out and I really appreciate this. Thank you so much for having me. I hope self-improvement continues to spread and I know that you are a part of that. I can tell I really respect and admire that a lot because I think self-improvement and personal responsibility are what is going to make real change in the world, and I'm excited to see this type of stuff that was never taught in school to be proliferating 100% brother totally resonate with that as well.

Speaker 1: 47:19

Once again, al, thanks so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 47:21

Have a great day.

Speaker 3: 47:22

Pleasure well, great day, my pleasure. Thank you for listening to the revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the awakened man at the awakenedMannet and start forging a new destiny today.