586 | How the Top 1% Achieve Personal Growth and Professional Success

On today's episode of the Chris LoCurto show, we're exploring how top leaders find success by digging deep into understanding themselves and living with above average intentionality. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are.

Question for you. Have you ever wondered how top leaders and achievers actually find success? Or do you picture that?

That person who seems to be fairly stress free or seems to be happy most of the time or even all the time, and you ask yourself, how in the world do they do that? Well, that's what we're going to dive into today.

So right off the bat, I'm going to tell you that the key to being in that considerably less stressed out life and happier life is understanding yourself at a new level.

It's focusing on deep growth, deep personal growth, which will obviously lead to deep professional growth. And so that's what we're talking about today.

So why is this so important? What? Why is it that there's this need for deep personal growth?

Well, because that is, the absolute way that we make decisions in life is based on our the things that we've experienced in life, the things that we talk about, like our Root System, how we make decisions at work, how we make decisions in marriage and family and parenting and I and whatever it is, friendships.

Every bit of our decision making process is personal, and we need to really recognize that. And if we're going to have less stress, if we're going to choose to be happier, then we've got to understand the things that are holding us back.

We've got to understand the things that keep us from being the person that we want to be, that keep us from having the life that we want to have.

And you might have a phenomenal life. You might be super happy, you might be super successful, but there's still things holding you back.

There's maybe a plateau that you're experiencing in your personal work, maybe in your marriage, maybe in your, your friendships. There's something that's holding you back, and you know it.

You've experienced it. For some folks, you absolutely know something's holding you back.

And there's struggles and there's pain and there's difficulty in relationships and difficulty in moving past things and moving forward with better decision making.

All of those things are possible. All of those things are things that we experience. Right. And here's the deal it's okay to be where you are.

The key is, we don't want to leave you there. You should not want to leave you where you are. The focus should be, how do we get you into a better place and into a better position, right where you are making better decisions for life?

And some of those decisions may be healthier relationships. They may be more time focusing on more important things. They may be less time focusing on things that aren't as important. The key is understanding how do you view life?

How do you view decision making, how do you view relationships, how do you view everything and then recognizing where those aspects are good or where they're bad, where they're healthy or where they're toxic.

The Root System: How Past Experiences Shape Our Lens (00:04:03)

So the first thing that we have to do is we have to understand our own lens, right? Everybody, every individual, has a unique lens which they view the world through. And this lens is always shaped by past experience.

Here's the deal. There's never a time the lens that you view the world through isn't shaped by something in the past. It's impossible, right? You don't have a fresh new lens that pops up every second, and you view the world differently.

Everything that you view the world through is a lens of past experiences, past beliefs, past values.

On top of that, that lens is created by impacts, core impacts in your life, effects from things that have happened with parents, siblings, friends, schooling, leaders, all of this stuff and a lot more.

We call this the Root System. And the Root System, our belief is the lens that you view the world through.

Impact on Leadership Style (00:05:17)

So how do these past experiences influence you, like maybe in your leadership style?

Well, for example, if you faced a lot of criticism growing up, you might be incredibly sensitive to feedback as a leader, that might be incredibly difficult for you to receive.

If you received a lot of criticism, say, from authorities, male or female authorities, you might be bent against somebody who is exactly that. If you struggled with male authorities in your life, you will probably still struggle with male authorities to this day.

You'll continue to do so until we adjust that, figure that out, and work our way through that and out of that so that you have healthy decision making processes.

Same thing with if it was a female authority figure, right? Or multiples. Right. There may be multiple people in your life that in the authority, affected you in a negative way. What if somebody was just controlling in your life?

Right? What if you dealt with a lot of narcissism in your family? Then you're probably somebody who's decently submissive. If you grew up with what's called a grandiose narcissist, then you're probably pretty darn submissive.

Um, if you come from a family of narcissists, um, maybe you're, you know, maybe you're the scapegoat. If you don't understand what that means, that's something.

A scapegoat is somebody that narcissists attack, dump all of their crap on, blame them for all of their problems, um, continuously tell them that.

That they're the issue and they're what's wrong. And. And I, the person that they argue with like crazy and try and control and manipulate so that they can feel more powerful in the situation, I can tell you it is.

It's a lifelong struggle. And if you don't know how to overcome these things that I'm talking about, then it's something you live with and you make decisions from for the rest of your life.

Control and Submissiveness (00:07:27)

Maybe you've been abandoned in your life. Maybe you have a fear of loss, right?

As an adult, if you were abandoned as a youth, as a child, if you were abandoned anywhere along the line, you may have this fear of loss that at any time, you're going to be abandoned again, you're going to be rejected, right?

If you were, if you grew up in a household where you were never good enough, maybe you had parents you were never good enough for, then guess what?

Fear of Failure (00:07:57)

You're going to have a massive fear of failure. That is going to be common. That's very understandable. Now, it doesn't mean that every single person who has a fear of failure, because that is every single person, everybody has some level of fear failure.

It doesn't mean that everybody grew up feeling not good enough. But I would tell you, especially after having done, you know, we've done over 500 Next-Level Lives, a lot of that fear of failure comes back to how you were raised as a kid.

Those that are confident and that don't worry about failure. And, you know, most people, and I'm. I'm going to say most people, I think I'm kind of an anomaly.

But I would say most people that grew up without that fear of failure had strong parenting and were allowed to take risks and felt comfortable in taking risks.

You know, for me, while I was able to take risks in things physically, like racing and skiing and playing football and all that kind of stuff, there was a lot in my life, wherever I was not good enough, I was the problem.

I was the issue. I was the scapegoat. I was, you know, I was the one that was always blamed for somebody else's problems. And I can tell you that creates a heavy fear of failure. Praise God.

God worked on me for many, many years to overcome that. And when I say overcome, it still crops up all the time. It's just we have processes of how to work through it.

That's the stuff we teach is how do you overcome these things? How do you change this? What does that look like? You know, that's a big part of Next-Level Life is what are the tools?

So that when I face that fear of failure, that I can actually get over it quickly, that I can battle the negative self talk, I can battle the lies, I can get to truth, and I can move forward, change my decision making, right, change my outcome.

So however you experienced life growing up, these things, good or bad, they could be phenomenal, they could be terrible. These are the things that are in your Root System.

This is the lens that you view life through, and this is how you make decisions. You've heard us talk about surface level responses. There's a lot of things that people do. Submissiveness, fear of loss, fear of failure, control, manipulation.

There's a lot of things that people respond with because of what happened in their Root System, and this keeps them from being their authentic self.

If you've ever felt like you are not being your authentic self, and I'm going to say I'm pretty darn sure everybody listening to this has experienced that at some point has recognized that that's because there's a part of you that is continuing to respond with these surface level responses due to what's happened in your Root System.

Digging Deep (00:11:06)

Until we understand that, until we dig deep and we get personal without getting ridiculous, I mean, some people are usually concerned that they don't know what they're going to discover.

And it's like we're not going to discover anything that you don't already know about you, right? But some folks are concerned that they're going to be feeling shameful or super guilty because they don't want to look at things.

The crazy thing is, is that very concern is the thing that holds a person back from overcoming junk. Think about it. Those things are living in your subconscious.

They're probably living in your conscious as well. Those decisions that you're making are based on things that you've probably experienced, that have pain, that may have loss, that may have guilt or shame.

And you need to go through a process where there is no guilt and no shame attached to it.

A process where you can trust, that you can get to the bottom of this stuff come to a good understanding, realize why you make decisions the way you do, and then have a process of how do you fix these things? Right? What do you do about it?

So when you look at the most successful people, when you look at the most high achieving folks, they all have something in common.

The willingness and the desire to dig deep, deep personally. Not to create more pain, not to relive experiences, not to go through guilt and shame, but to come to understanding so that they can make better, higher quality decisions.

That's how you do it. That's how so many people become successful. And that's why this is something I want everybody to hear. The reason why the top percentage is so small is because it's tough.

It is difficult. It's something that people have to decide. I need this more than sitting in my crap the rest of my life. I need this more than, you know, being worried about if I'm going to, if I'm going to struggle or if it's going to be tough.

You need to be able to dig deep to get to personal growth. Why? Because those are the areas that are holding you back.

And until you do, you may be struggling on trying to understand why you seem different from everybody else. Or maybe you view things differently than, than most people do.

Like, you know, if you grew up, let's say you had a personal belief of, you know, being a hard worker. Maybe you have a phenomenal work ethic and you work really hard, and worth was applied to how hard you worked.

Maybe you grew up in a family where if you didn't work hard enough, you weren't good enough. Maybe you grew up in a family where you were only praised when you were working to the level that the family felt you were doing a good enough job.

Well, guess how you're going to see your team members. You are probably going to be not only a hard worker, but you're probably going to be somebody who works more than you should.

You're probably going to be overworked, which will be something that you have done to you. But you're probably also somebody who looks at team members and goes, why in the world do they not work as hard as I do?

Why in the world can't they work as hard as I do? No consideration to personality style, no consideration to experiences that they've had in their own lives.

But what you do is you look through the lens that you've experienced in your Root System and you apply that to those around you.

Why don't they do what I do right? And the crazy thing is, is because the world is crazy about, you know, admiring people who overwork, right? People that work like crazy amounts of hours.

I used to be one of those people the world thinks that's so great. What you don't understand is that's incredibly unhealthy for long periods of time. So there's a really good chance you believe in your mind because the world applauds it.

That because you're overworked, you're overwhelmed, you, you know, aren't spending much time with your family, you're not getting to family vacations throughout the year, that this is a good thing.

And I don't know why everybody else doesn't do this. And you haven't understood that a good amount of life is passing you by. Now, listen, I am never going to be the person who tells you not to bust your butt.

For those of you that have been with me for any decent amount of time, when it's time to work, bust your butt, get it done. You know, I have a really good work ethic and I run, run, run and get things done.

But I've come to this place in life of realizing when I need to shut that off, that my worth isn't in how much I accomplish in a day, that my worth to my family isn't.

Did I work, you know, 16 hours today? That's not my worth to my family. My worth to my family is my relationship with God and my relationship with them after that, it's what I put on the table.

So when you get to this place of understanding, you know, you might not even know that some of the stuff that you're experiencing that's stressing you out, that's causing you overwhelm.

You might not even recognize that that is something that's coming from your Root System, that that's something that's holding you back, that there is a healthier way to still continue to work hard, but to still have life as well.

Now, when the ox is in the ditch, get the ox out of the ditch. If you need to bust it for a period of time, that's great, but it shouldn't be a long term goal.

You will always hear me say, I go against these supposed thought leaders that are always screaming, you know, that you've got to go and bust it like crazy.

You know, get up at 04:00 in the morning and work three jobs and spend 30 minutes with your family and forget what your kids names are. The hustle is never going to be something you hear me preach, because it's detrimental.

The hustle is not great in the long run. The hustle for a short period of time might be something that's beneficial. Busting it for a short period of time definitely is something that's beneficial.

But creating a lifestyle built around the hustle is stupid. It's ridiculous.

And listening to and following somebody who tells you that you need to go and spend your entire life trying to build something so that you can be successful in the world's eyes and the rest of the time your family is paying for it.

Sorry, you're never going to hear that from me. You have time each day to go bust it like crazy with the hours that you have now. I don't work an eight hour job.

I don't know any entrepreneurs that really do. But I tell you what, I don't work 14, 16 hours anymore. I don't do that right. I bust when I can. I get things done. I move on.

I spend time with my family. I love on my wife. I love on my girls. That's the important thing.

Overcoming Stress and Overwhelm (00:18:45)

So what about overcoming stress and overwhelm? This is something that an incredible number of leaders face, and leadership just comes with stress. Just listen.

That's not something that we're going to get, you know, we're not going to get rid of this stress is going to be a part of leadership.

But what happens when it's fully stressful and full of overwhelm? That is a colossal waste of your time. So something that you have to understand is that you have a pressure on you as a leader to perform both at work and at home.

The question is, what pressures are you putting on yourself? What decisions are you making and why? What fears are holding you back? What things are keeping you from being able to take risk that are, you know, that's calculated?

What's holding you back from being able to make great, phenomenal decisions? What's holding you back from being able to cut things off when you need to because it's the smart thing to do instead of holding onto them forever, right?

When. When are you going to shoot the golden calf? When are you going to kill that sucker so that you can move on to healthy decisions? Right?

There's a whole lot of crap that we deal with as leaders that we have no clue is actually coming from the experiences in our past, from our Root System.

There's so many decisions that we make or decisions that we don't make.

There's so much work that we're putting on ourselves and pressure that we're putting on ourselves and overwhelm that we're experiencing because we're not learning, we're not doing a deep dive on what should I do differently?

What do I need to know about this? How should I manage stress and how can I do it without guilt?

Managing Stress without Guilt (00:20:42)

You know, one thing I love about what we do is we have a lot of folks that come and do events with us that come from guilt and shame and fear backgrounds.

And it- it just makes my heart so happy that they come to us because they're looking for a leadership program, a coaching program, a personal coaching program that helps them to overcome that guilt, shame and fear.

Folks, as somebody who comes from that background, it sucks.

And you do not need to live in that anymore. So I will tell you, if you're dealing with a good amount of stress or guilt or shame or fear, then you've got to learn how to put in practical tools, practical methods like time management strategies, recognizing that every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

Where do you need to be saying no when it comes to managing your own time? If you're like me, man, I grew up being the yes man.

If somebody asked me, can you help me do this over here? Oh, absolutely. I'll take care of you. Can you help with this? Oh, absolutely. I will definitely do that. Can you come over this weekend and move my house? Yes, I will be there.

Move me out of my house. Heck, if they asked them to move the house, I'd probably figure that one out, too. Can you come and do. Oh my gosh. My entire life I was that way and I'm still decently that way.

But it doesn't overtake the more important things in my life. I am glad to help people out. I am glad to do things for folks.

I spend incredible amount of hours not on the clock coaching and helping people to make their lives better, their marriages better, their business is better.

Just personal questions that they have. What about this especially around God stuff? Why? Because that's important. Especially the God aspect.

If I can spend time helping somebody get closer to God, I'm going to do it. You know, if I. No matter what it takes, I want to find a way to do that.

The key is that I'm also somebody who has healthy boundaries on my time. There's plenty of time that nobody gets to get into. There's time with my wife every single morning.

Bible study, time with her, time with good coffee that we have together, time with my daughter, my youngest daughter. I want more time with my older daughters. I would love that.

But time with my youngest daughter, who's five and just special daddy daughter time and family time at nighttime, you know, things that have to happen, quality time needs to happen with my family.

It is more important. So there's time that people can't get into. Right? I put those healthy boundaries in place, setting healthy boundaries with people.

I have some very, very controlling, some narcissistic, um, even grandiose narcissists in my life that I have to put healthy boundaries in place with because my life has been serving them, my life has been submissive to them.

My life has been the scapegoat. So I have these people in my life that have recognized, oh, I can control this guy, let me step in there.

And I've been having to put in healthy boundaries for a very, very long time. Another thing I do which is super important, and yes, I'm going to throw up my caveats with this because I hate what this has become.

You know, self care, you should have self care. However, big caveat. I do not agree with this message that is coming from a lot of these women thought leaders.

That is, the world is on your shoulders. Everybody looks to you to solve everything for them. It is this horrible message. I'm not saying you're not being submissive to some people to the extent that they're taking advantage of that.

That is not what I'm saying whatsoever. What I'm saying is this concept, this lie that the world is on your shoulders, folks. The world isn't on anybody's shoulders. Nobody's.

You have a limited amount of people in your life. You have a limited amount of situations in your life. The world is not on your shoulders. You don't take care of everybody on the planet.

You don't take care of everybody around you. Now, I'm not saying that you don't do a lot. I'm sure. I am positive that you do a lot. But the message gets so exaggerated to push a point, and that point is you have to put you first.

You need to take care of you. You need to think about you, you, you, you. And then it becomes incredibly selfish. Why is this a problem for me? Because selfishness leads you away from godliness.

There is nowhere in scripture that God tells you to be self centered. There's nowhere in scripture that God tells you to be selfish instead of, he says, to love others as you love yourself. Right?

So you do have to have self care. You do have to have inner work. You do have to have a level of love for you. But nowhere does God say love yourself. So stinking. Well.

And then if you have time, throw some love out to other people. That's not what he says. Love others as you love yourself, take care of you and take care of others as well.

There's a phenomenal thing that happens when you are not focused on you, when you're not selfish and self centered, when you're focused on serving properly in a healthy way, other people.

You can't focus on all your problems, you can't focus on all your issues. You don't live in victim mentality. You don't live in this place where woe was me.

So if you're going to manage a lot of stress and a lot of guilt and shame, then to do it in a healthy way is to focus on doing the things that make you healthier.

That's the self care. It is not. Oh my gosh, I've got to get four massages in this week and I've got to go spend time alone and ten coffee shops and that's not it.

Do the things that help. One of those things. The thing that you should start with is time alone with God in prayer. You should be. Now listen, I think you should be spending a lot of time in prayer with your family.

You should be spending a lot of time in prayer with your spouse. I think you should be spending time in God's word with your family. Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God.

So faith comes from the word of God. Faith comes from the word of God. Not your feelings, not your opinions. Faith comes from what God tells you. So you should be spending time with your family on that.

But where's your personal relationship with God? Right? Where's the time that you're spending with him? Self care starts there. Self care of, hey, I. I need time to myself to recover.

I am somebody who can do a lot for folks. But boy, I'll tell you what, my battery runs out at some point and then I need time to myself. And it's amazing how time to me can be walks on the farm, you know, almost always.

I will tell you, I almost never need time alone. I rejuvenate well with time with my wife, my best friend on the planet. We can't stand to be apart from each other.

We love being together all the time. And praise God, I'm so glad that I have that in my life. But every now and then I just need a walk. I need something, right? Or go do some fun work.

That's just for me, something that I enjoy, right? Working on heavy equipment on the farm. I love that kind of stuff. So what does self care look for?

And all the women out there going, yeah, I can't wait to do that. Listen, whatever that self care is, it needs to start with time with God. You need to check and see. Does time with a spouse actually rejuvenate you?

If not, then you probably need to look at time. What time blocks can you take for yourself to fulfill aspects of this healing, this care that you need?

But please understand, don't allow that time to become selfish and self centered. Right. Taking time to go get a massage is not selfish.

Taking a time to go get an incredible number of massages all the time, you know, because the world is so on your shoulders and you've got to go do all these different things just for you and spend all this time with, uh, you know, going to different parties or whatever, I don't know what the crap parties is.

Probably not a big part of self care, but all this stuff because you're so stressed out about the world being on your shoulders. If the world was on your shoulders, then we need to put healthy boundaries in place.

That is self care. Let me say that again, because people don't understand this a lot. Setting healthy boundaries is taking care of you. Saying no is taking care of you. Just don't do it.

To the extent that you write off the world and you're not serving and loving the way that God wants you to. Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully that's not something.

If you're offended by that, hey, hit me up. You know, feel free. [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you, but I'd also love to hear how I didn't put that message out there well enough.

Because nowhere in there am I saying you can't take care of you. Nowhere in there am I saying you're not having to deal with a lot of stress.

What I'm saying is, don't listen to those people who are telling you it's all about you, because if you do, then it will become all about you.

Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high quality communication to make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life.

It all starts with having great communication. The best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with whether it be at work, whether it be at home.

The best way to do that is to go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team today. Get it for your family members today.

As you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate. Go to chrislocurto.com/store today.

Finding Balance between Home and Work Life (00:32:40)

So what about this elusive work life balance? You know, the crazy thing is that there really is no such thing, thing as balance if you think in it in a 50 50 kind of way. Right.

It's really, you know, a word you're probably hearing used a lot is harmony. Work life harmony. Right. What does that look like? I still prefer the term balance because I don't think of balance as a 50 50.

I think of balance is the right amount at home, the right amount at work. So what does that look like?

We have had lots of clients that used to be just colossal. Hardworking, overworked, overtired, overwhelmed people because all of their worth came from how much they worked.

And what they started realizing is their life is passing them by. And so because their life is passing them by, they're realizing as they get older, I actually want to enjoy more life.

I don't want to stop working. I don't want to shut it down to a short period of time. But there's more that I want out of life. I don't want my.

I don't want to get to 50, 60 years old and look back and go, man, all I have ever done is worked. You know, the time that I've spent living life is short compared to the time and work.

And again, a lot of the folks with guilt, shame, and fear in their history, in their past, most likely working is something that you are working an incredible number of hours is something that you feel worth from because it was applauded somewhere back there in your past. So what do you do?

You make sure that you do healthy things, like schedule, dedicated family time, and then you absolutely make sure that it's a priority. I will tell you, it's so funny. I'm somebody who can deal with a lot of stress.

I'm somebody, you know, I'm somebody who can work through things, and I have priorities. And it's been a stressful couple of years. It's been a very stressful couple of years.

Most of that has been personal. We've been dealing with my mom with Alzheimer's. That has been insanely difficult. So for all of you out there that have dealt with that. I am so sorry. I had no clue.

I had no clue how difficult that is, man. It's tough. But we've had some. We've had a lot of stress going on. And I will tell you, there's. There's a time, probably about a year ago or so, that my wife looked at me and she said she was totally stressed out.

And she's like, we need four days. I was like, okay, yeah, we can. We can make that happen. She's like, no, no, no. We need four days. In three weeks. We're going in three weeks.

We're taking a four day vacation. Just you and me, nobody else. Okay, well, I got a lot of stuff going on. Is okay if we push that out, like two months? No, it's going to happen in three weeks.

Okay. So just help me to understand, why is it so important that it has to happen in three weeks? One, my mom's available, and two, it has to happen soon.

I need time alone with you, away from everything. It's so. It was funny because I had to. My wife is struggling, and we're going, this is going to happen. I'm going to make this happen for my wife because something is going on.

And being the person that I am, I need to continue to gain perspective. I need to understand why. What is the. The importance of three weeks? And in her mind, it was the soonest we could get away for a four day weekend.

Doesn't matter that we're going to go away for four days. And for me, like I was expressing, hey, we're going to go away for four days, and then I'm coming back to my stress. My stress won't end for, like, two months.

If I could push some of this stuff off, I could be free. I could have you. Nope, it's got to be in three weeks. Amazing thing is, you know, I looked at my wife and I was like, it doesn't matter what I think.

This is something my wife needs. I'm taking care of my wife. We're doing this thing. And I was blown away by how freed up my wife became of spending time just with me.

I mean, the woman I fell in love with. It was like, oh, hey, I. There's. There's aspects of you coming out that I haven't seen in a while. I forgot about that. It was so nice.

It was so lovely to see my wife just unwind, become free, experience a freedom from all the stress that we had. Yes. We came back to a bunch of stuff. We had to keep going and keep moving and keep busting abso-stinkin'-lutely.

But it was amazing to have that time, and it freed her up for a long, long time. In fact, it had been a while. We're probably due again for a good, long weekend, but, yeah, it was fantastic.

You have to do that. You have to be intentional. You have to make sure that you're doing things that create that dedicated family time schedule. It make sure it happens. Like I say, in the mornings, you're just not getting in there, right?

I mean, unless it's an emergency or something like that, or if it's something that we schedule that's different. But we spend our time together. We get up early. I mean, we're usually 05:00 530. We're waking up.

We don't use alarm clocks. We wake up naturally. We wake up naturally. And then we are spending time, coffee, we spend some alone time, we spend some time in scripture, time in prayer.

You know, just things that we have to have. It's just too important to us.

Importance of Deep Personal Growth (00:38:29)

So I want you to imagine as a leader, that if you spend time in this deep personal growth, right? What is it going to do for your professional career?

What is it going to do for your professional life? Think about how every single day, these things that I've been talking about have been affecting what you do for a living. It affects decisions that you make.

It affects how you react to people, how you respond to situations. If you will spend time getting to know you, understand, you understand how you act, react, how you respond, all of these different things, understanding your surface level responses, understanding the lies that you tell yourself, the negative self talk that you hear in your head, the tape that plays.

Understand the impacts that you've experienced from other people in life. If you're able to do this and dig deep, then what you will discover is it will literally change the way you lead your business or lead your team.

I cannot tell you the number of clients that we have had that have come in stuck or overwhelmed or feeling like they've plateaued in their professional career only to learn, do this deep dive on themselves and come out going, oh, my gosh, I can get rid of this.

I can free myself up from that. I can set healthy boundaries over there. I can have a phenomenal marriage. I can be a better parenthood, and I can be a phenomenal leader.

I can lead people ten times better than I ever have because I've now learned these things about things that I'm doing, how I'm responding to people, all that kind of fun stuff.

Your professional success and your overall well being will skyrocket when you do deep personal growth because they are absolutely 100% connected.

No matter how much you think it's not, no matter how much you try to separate your professional life from your personal life, it's 100% connected.

And the sooner you focus on understanding you better, and the sooner you do some deep personal growth and deep personal work, the sooner your professional life will change.

Like I say, we have tons of clients that have become so much more free as leaders, that have become so much more caring as leaders that see things differently, that have greater vision for their business because their identity is no longer in what they do for a living.

Their worth is no longer in how they lead a team. Instead, they recognize that they can be better leaders, they could be better business owners. By experiencing that deep personal growth, it's powerful.

Quite often, these very leaders will spend time on this journey that they're experiencing of growing, seeking feedback. Now, think about this. If I just, as I just said that if you just, you know, cringed inside, oh, I don't think I want feedback.

There's a reason. There's a reason that you don't want feedback, right?

There is such great freedom when you don't have to worry about feedback being something that you're afraid of, that something that you feel like is going to control you or affect you negatively.

There is something amazingly freeing about knowing the people you want to seek feedback from because other people are toxic and you're able to set healthy boundaries.

I don't want your input. I don't want your feedback. I'm looking at these healthy people over here, and I recognize that they actually care about me, that they have my best interest at heart.

These are the people that I want feedback from. It's amazing when you spend time engaging in self reflection. What am I doing here?

When you, when you get to this place of great understanding, when you get to this place of, of growth personally, an amazing thing happens.

You're able to start really looking at yourself, which you may not have been able to do before. A lot of people can't. A lot of people don't like to look at themselves.

They don't like to, you know, be introspective at all. It is amazing when you get to this place in a healthy way of going, oh, my gosh, how am I responding here? Well, that probably wasn't very healthy.

I should take responsibility for that. Oh, my gosh. That's something I used to do in my past. What can I do about that now? How can I see that differently. How can I change that?

It's incredible when you self reflect and realize that you don't listen to other people like you think you should, that you don't lean in their direction like you think you should, that you spend time waiting to respond instead of listening deeply and being empathetic to the thing that they're experiencing.

It's amazing when you get to a place because of this growth process where you realize, I should just care about this person in this moment and try and understand what they're experiencing and try and understand where they come from and what their background is.

Instead of trying to be right about something or battle about something, instead, I want to focus on being as healthy as I can for other people as well.

A Common Objection to Things Like Next-Level Life  (00:44:25)

It's amazing when you can get to a place of looking at something like Next-Level Life and going, that is good for me. It's okay. If I experience that, I should experience that.

One of the most heartbreaking things I started experiencing when I started next level life. Geez, ten years ago, ten plus years ago, somewhere around ten years ago, is the people that would say, oh, well, that's for my husband, that I don't deserve that.

What? Now that's. I'm glad that my wife went through that, but that, you know, that's not something that I deserve. Oh, my gosh. My heart broke.

And I know that there are people that are listening to this right now that think that you don't deserve help, that you don't deserve a powerful program that helps you to be healthier, that helps you to be freer, and that helps you to make better decisions and have better relationships.

Folks, that is a lie from the pit of hell. Getting help is exactly what God wants you to do. Getting stronger is exactly what God wants you to do.

Learning the things that have affected you in your life is exactly what God wants you to do. Learning how to make better decisions is exactly what God tells you to do.

That you should focus on gaining wisdom is exactly what God is trying to convince you to do. So do you deserve it? It's not a matter of deserve. The key is, there's no way on the planet that you don't deserve it.

There's no way on the planet that you're not good enough for it. So it is heartbreaking to me. If that's you, if you are thinking that you have got to scrub that lie from your brain.

It's not a matter of deserve. Would the king of the universe want you to be more whole? Would the king of the universe want you to be healed?

Would the king of the universe want you making better decisions? Yes. Don't worry about deserve. Focus on what God wants. And yes, God wants you to have deep personal growth.

God wants you to be able to overcome junk that you've experienced in your life. God wants you to understand controlling, abusive people that you've experienced in your life, narcissistic people that you've experienced in your life.

So the things that break my heart when it comes to people considering going through something like Next-Level Life is stuff like that, I don't deserve this or another.

One that just breaks my heart is people fearing that they're going to face guilt and shame, right? That they're going to experience these negative feelings and stuff like, oh gosh, I have shame in my past and I don't want to bring that back up.

That's not what the program is about. It's not about reliving shame. It's not about reliving guilt. It's actually the opposite. It's about helping you to get to a place where you can get rid of that crap.

Does it ever fully go away? It doesn't ever fully go away, but oh my gosh, you can overcome a massive amount of it, especially in a short period of time. Do I still have guilt and shame that crops up in my life?

Yeah, I'm able to crush it usually within 30 seconds. I mean, a long period of time might be five minutes.

When I used to live in guilt and shame, when I used to believe the lies that other people told me, which I took on and would tell myself, it is important for you to understand that not only is it okay for you to go through something that grows you immensely, it's also okay to overcome guilt, shame and fear.

So think about that again. Put this in the context of what God wants for you. Does God want you living in guilt, shame and fear? No, man does. Satan does. Abso-stinkin'-lutely.

The devil wants you there all the time because if he can keep you there, then he can keep you from a stronger relationship with God and healthier relationships with people.

Many times people want you to be there because those very people believe that they gain power by keeping you in a place of guilt, shame and fear.

You've got to get to a place where you want freedom from that. You want to get away from that crap. You want a different life. You want to be a better mom, a better dad, a better individual, a better spouse.

So here's the deal. It's not about reliving anything. It's not about reliving bad situations, traumatic situations. There's no reliving these things. It's not like a lot of people think, oh, am I going to sit on a couch like a counselor's office?

And they're just going to keep asking me, well, how do you feel about this horrible thing that happened? It's not that at all. We don't do that.

In fact, we blow past that and we get to the root of things to help you to understand why we don't spend too much time focusing on the what.

We want to get to the why so that you have freedom in understanding why you make decisions the way you do.

We want to get to that why so we can give you tools to help you to set healthy boundaries. Next-Level Life is designed to help individuals to understand themselves better without judgment or shame.

One of the things that we say in every event is this is a judgment free zone. What does that even mean? Well, think about it. Judgment, 99% of judgment is not biblical judgment. Biblical judgment is, oh, I see.

That person is doing really bad, sinful stuff. I should make decisions to stay away to try and help them, but also keep a healthy distance. That's, that's really how we should be looking at situations.

But most judgment is, oh, look at you. Look at how horrible you are. Look at how bad you are. You're not good enough. You're terrible. That is disgusting. And we've been through it. Joel and I, as facilitators, we come from a lot of that junk in our lives.

So we know why people experience the things that they've experienced. We know why people do what they do. After going through Next-Level Life, you will find out that you will understand that pretty well as well.

It's not difficult to understand it. So there's absolutely no point in looking at somebody and judging the daylights out of them when you're trying to help them. Because judgment makes it all about me.

If I'm going to be judgmental of you, then it really has nothing to do with you. If I'm talking about the unbiblical version that the world uses, you know, the biblical version is a great way of judging things.

Oh, this thing is genetically altered. I probably should not put, I'm going to judge this by saying that's unhealthy and I shouldn't put that in my body. That's great judgment.

But that's not what we experience from people. What we experience from people is the shame. Look at how you are.

There is no point in trying to be judgmental when you're trying to help somebody because there is absolutely no help for that person in that situation. That is all about you 100%. That is about you.

Expectations of Next-Level Life (00:52:30)

So what can you expect from Next-Level Life? You can expect that you're going to be treated with love.

You can expect that you're going to be treated with dignity. You can expect that you will be led according to your personality style.

If you're a high D, we're probably going to push on you and you're going to enjoy that and love it. You're going to be glad that you got the push. If you're a high S, a high C, then we're going to love on you gently.

If you're high I we're going to consider exactly how you receive any kind of push. It doesn't matter what the personality style is, we lean in your direction. That's one of the most powerful things of what we do.

We recognize where to push, where not to push. We the difference, I've had so many high ds that have come through that have gotten a heavy push and like, oh, my spouse could never do this.

It's like, why not? Oh, because man, they couldn't handle this. It's like, well, they're highest, aren't they? Yeah. Well I wouldn't lead them this way. Well, why not? Well, because you need this.

They need a much more gentle process. They don't need the process that you got your id. I have to take a two by four to your head. I need to gently, lovingly kindly lead them.

So one of the things you can expect is your process will be led according to you, your personality style.

That's the power of doing what we do when it comes to personality styles. And by the way, if you haven't done your DISC, go to the store and do it. chrislocurto.com go to the store, get your team on it, get it done.

It's so powerful for you to understand how to lean in people's directions. So what else can you expect from Next-Level Life? You can expect respect, you can expect care, you can expect concern.

You can also expect that when the time is needed, according to you, there's going to probably be some level of a push to help you get through a process.

But Ss and Cs, you're not going to receive. And even Is, you're not going to receive the push that a D might receive. But a D is probably also not going to receive. The depth of length of discussion on some things that a high C would.

Right. It's all led differently according to the person. Everything is led differently. Depending upon who you are. You can expect that it's 100% private that this is between you and the facilitator.

If you want to bring your spouse, bring your spouse. We love it when people bring their spouses, but if somebody asks us, you know, we have a lot of business leaders or business owners that will send people through.

I mean, it's quite common when a business owner goes through that a handful of people will be coming through Next-Level Life because they recognize the power and they recognize that people are bringing their root systems to work every single day.

The thing that you can expect is nobody gets to know about your stuff. Nobody gets to know about your event, if anybody else. How'd the event go?

It was great. What'd you learn? It was great. That's it. Why? Because it's nobody's business but yours. It's nobody's business but yours. It's about you. The Next-Level Life event is about you. It's not about us as facilitators.

It's not about a leader who may send you through. It's not about a spouse. It's about you. Now, if you bring your spouse, it makes it even more powerful. It tends to make it more powerful.

But one. One of the things we say is don't bring anybody with you if you can't be 100% open, not honest, we're not worried about you being honest. We're worried about you being open.

If you feel like. Like some of you may have somebody who's controlling in your life and bringing them to the event, you don't feel like you're going to be able to be you. Well, then don't bring that person to the event.

You just come by yourself. We got you. We'll take care of this. Yeah, but I'm a business owner. I'm a leader. I don't get this kind of help. I own multiple businesses. I've been leading people for decades.

Trust me, this is exactly what you need. We're business owners and leaders, too. We got you. We know where you're coming from. Some people think, oh, gosh, this is going to be some sappy stuff.

This is not what you're thinking. It's not something you've seen on TV.

This is a powerful event that helps you to get to information and understanding yourself so that you can make much better decisions, so you can have healthier boundaries and healthier relationships.

And the great thing is is you're supported through the whole process.

Not only do we support you through the event, but we also have a 30 day follow up where we support you in emails of sending you information and things that you need to hear on a daily basis to help you through this process.

It's powerful. We use incredible tools to help you get to information, but we have even better tools to help you to solve and overcome a bunch of this junk that you've experienced in your life.

So what can you expect afterwards? Well, you can expect that it may be tough, but it's not any tougher than you're already experiencing. You can expect that you're going to be able to look at relationships better.

You can expect that you can see things that you do on a daily basis, recognize them and shift them, make changes. You can expect that you'll have tools to do so.

You can expect that life is going to get better. You can expect that you'll have a actual plan to walk this out, things to do in different areas of your life that will make your life better.

We have phenomenal testimonials from folks that have, again, we've done over 500 individual events.

I think it's like 540 or something like that around that. Now that we've had these amazing positive events, we've got a great client that came through that said that Next-Level Life was truth being unleashed in every part of my life.

And that's in a positive way. That's not a negative.

So folks, what you can expect is you're going to have somebody, a facilitator, me, Joel Fortner, one of us that's going to work with you one on one, unless you bring a spouse with you to get to the most amazing event of your life so that you can have the most amazing rest of your life.

So with that being said, there are some episodes I really want you to check out that you can learn more about Next-Level Life and overcome any fears, any concerns.

That's the big thing for me is I really wanted to be able to reach out to you and say, hey, listen, if you want to understand how to be more successful, it starts with you, you personally. But one of the big things is knowing that you have a place that you can trust.

You can trust the people, you can trust the process, you can feel safe. We would not be able to do 500+ events if people didn't feel safe. If people didn't trust us, people wouldn't show up.

We wouldn't have business owners that send multiple people through if they felt it wasn't safe if they felt it couldn't be trusted.

Additional Resources

So here's some episodes I want you to go listen to.

Episode 261: Inside Next-Level Life: Why You’re Not Where You Want To Be.

So this is where we're talking about how to get to better results in life change. There's no magic pill.

We discussed this with a phenomenal guy, Tim Watson, an amazing dad, amazing husband, and amazing leader. Great episode.

Episode 284: Next-Level Life: What Keeps Us From Freedom

We're talking with Andrea Linkfelter, a wife, a mom, two adorable kids, and a leader who's been through Next-Level Life event and StratPlan with her team as well.

Episode 370, Next-Level Life Interview with Charlotte Miller.

How many times have you told yourself you want to make changes in your life?

How many times have you read a self help book or had energy to change your mindset, then found yourself setting back into your normal routine of an unhealthy pattern of mindset, attitudes and perspectives?

Charlotte is somebody who had her Next-Level Life, and she had been feeling that, just like you, she had those exact same feelings. Powerful interview with her amazing woman.

So go back and listen to those episodes 261, 284 and 370.

So as we wrap up today's episode, remember that investing in yourself is the most valuable decision you can make as a leader. Again, with the caveat. You're not hearing that crazy.

Uh, the whole world's on your shoulders. Everything's about you. That's not what I'm saying. When you invest in you, you can lead better.

When you invest in you, you can lead your business better, your team better, your spouse better, your kids better, and most importantly, you can lead you better.

Next-Level Life is designed to help you understand and overcome the barriers that hold you back without judgment or shame. It's about empowering you to be the best version of yourself in both your personal and professional life.

So if you're ready to take the next step, visit our new Next-Level Life page and start your journey today.

Folks, thank you for tuning in. This is my goal in life, is to help as many people as I can. Our company, our mission, is to help as many people as we possibly can in healthy ways.

That's our goal. So we hope that we're doing that, and we would love to help you. Well, that's all the time that we have for today. I appreciate you. Thank you for being a part of this journey that we are on to help as many lives as we can.

As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life and join us on the next episode.