Men on the Path to Love
Relationship coach Bill Simpson offers stories and wisdom, to inspire men be the best version of themselves in relationship and live the life they love.
Men on the Path to Love
BONUS Alan’s Story: Transforming Trauma Into a Life of Global Impact
What happens when childhood trauma meets unwavering determination? Alan Lazaros's remarkable journey answers this question with raw honesty and profound insight. He overcame a childhood of loss, divorce, and family financial stress. As a young adult, he experienced a life-altering moment that made him question everything.
From the outside, he appeared successful, but on the inside, he was unfulfilled. His search for answers led him to a powerful realization—personal development was the missing piece.
Now, as the Founder and CEO of Next Level University, a Global Top 100 Podcast with over a million listens across 175 countries, he leads a global team helping others reach their unique version of success with his no BS approach. Alan has come a long way on his path to love and he’s here to tell his story to inspire us all. Check out Alan's Story: Transforming Trauma Into a Life of Global Impact.
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Hi and welcome to the Men on the Path to Love podcast Bonus episode Alan's story transforming trauma into a life of global impact. I'm Bill Simpson, your host In this bonus episode. My guest, alan Lazarus, is a true embodiment of resilience and transformation. My guest, alan Lazarus, is a true embodiment of resilience and transformation. He overcame a childhood of loss, divorce and family financial stress, and, as a young adult, experiencing a life-altering moment that made him question everything. From the outside, he appeared successful, but on the inside he was hurting. His search for answers led him to a powerful realization Personal development was the missing piece. Now, as the founder and CEO of Next Level University, a global top 100 podcast with over a million listeners across 175 countries, he leads a global team helping others reach their unique version of success. With his no BS approach, Alan has come a long way and he's here to tell his story, to inspire us all. So stick around, you just might learn something. It's the Men on the Path to Love podcast. Welcome Alan to Men on the Path to Love.
Alan Lazaros:Thank you for having me Honored to be here, and I don't take it lightly to be here. Thank you for having me.
Bill Simpson:Sure man, I appreciate you taking the time to share with us and you've got quite a story. You've come a long way in your young age and I really like for you to share your story with my listeners. I think they would be inspired by what you've been through and where you are today.
Alan Lazaros:The first thing, and thank you for that. The first thing to understand, I think, is so I'm 36 now. I didn't understand any of this at the time. I think a lot of times you hear podcasters they say this is where I was, this is where I am now and this is sort of what made the difference, and I understand why that is. I think stories are very inspiring. But the first thing to understand is I didn't get any of this until way later. I always think of it as you watch a movie when you're a kid and then you see it again as an adult and you go oh okay, now I get it.
Bill Simpson:That's what they meant.
Alan Lazaros:That's what they meant exactly. So in hindsight all of this is clear. At the time it definitely wasn't Okay. So the three main parts, sort of, of my story the first one started very tough Lots of adversity. My birth father, john McCorkle, died in a car accident when he was 28. So this was 1991. I was two, I was only two then.
Bill Simpson:We have that in common. I lost my brother at 28 in a car accident as well and in the same year lost my mom to a heart attack. So I feel you on that. So go ahead. I'm sorry.
Alan Lazaros:No, whoa, that's a lot of sudden loss in a very short amount of time.
Bill Simpson:Absolutely. I was 13. You were a little bit younger than that.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, well, I think in some ways, you know, I didn't really know my dad much. Obviously I did a little. I was two and a half, almost three, but my sister had it harder because she was six. She knew my dad. That was her best friend, right so birth father John McCorkle. He had a big Irish Catholic family. He had five siblings. It was Jim Joe, john Jane, joan Jeanette.
Bill Simpson:All the Js...
Alan Lazaros:All the J's. And when he passed away. And when he passed away, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, older sister. That was six. Mom was 31. She met my stepfather, steve lazarus, so my real last name is actually mccorkle, my birth birth last name okay and I took my stepfather's last name around age I think, six or seven, something like that.
Alan Lazaros:Steve Lazaros was my stepdad. He was in my life from age three to fourteen and this was during the 90s sort of dot-com bubble and I playfully now refer to that part of my life as boats and bs and my mom and stepdad liked to party and they didn't get along and that's a polite way to put it on a public medium at this stage. And so from the outside in we looked like very wealthy, born and raised in Massachusetts dot-com bubble, the us largest economy in the world, like it looked. You know, boats and ski trips and snowmobiles and we had a yacht and it looked awesome from the outside in, but from the inside out it very much was not, and that's probably where I'll you know. Leave it.
Alan Lazaros:Well, I get it, I mean, and so many people see that and think that, oh, they've got, you know living the life, and they have no idea what's going on behind the scenes 100 and everything looks not everything, but most things look very different from the inside out than from the outside in Sure, and I think that's one of the timeless lessons that you just learn over time, but anyways. So stepfather leaves at 14. And we go from boats and ski trips to. I get free lunch at school now because our income is so low.
Alan Lazaros:I look right and so I look into the future and I think, okay, and this isn't conscious, this is subconscious or unconscious. But I look into the future and I think, okay, and this isn't conscious, this is subconscious or unconscious, but I look into the future. Okay, no dad, no generational wealth, no trust fund. We are in some trouble here and I'm kind of the man of the house. So 14 was the hardest year of my life and I did not really get this at the time. Three main things happened when I was 14. Stepfather leaves, takes 95% of the income with him, him and his entire extended family. He takes them with him. I to this day have never seen or spoken to a single person from my stepfather's side Grandma Joan, grandpa Joe, all of them gone.
Alan Lazaros:I haven't seen or spoken to a single one. Stepdad I have talked to a little bit on Facebook Messenger but I've never seen him in person. Talked to him a little in my 20s, a little in my early 30s. Same year sister moves out with her older boyfriend understandable. Same year my mom gets in a fight with my aunt Sandy, her sister, and she ostracizes us from that side of the family and we don't associate much with the McCorkles anymore because we're the Lazaruses, trying to be the Lazaruses. So birth father's side gone, didn't see or speak to them almost at all until 14. Stepfather's family leaves. I to this day have only seen or spoken to two human beings from my mother's side.
Alan Lazaros:So the abandonment I mean just another level of abandonment, right? So there's four trauma responses there's fight, there's flight, there's freeze and there's fawn. Fawn is the one I learned in my 30s. So I had two trauma responses to all of this adversity. The first one was fawn. Just become this sort of social coward, low self-worth, tons of self-belief, I'll get into that. But like low self-worth, just don't lose any more friends and family. Be a chameleon, fit in. Do whatever you have to do to not lose love.
Bill Simpson:Not to be abandoned. Exactly and when I lost my mom in that same, you know, I was 13. And then she actually left when I was eight and then died at 13. I didn't see her in between those times, so I suffered through that abandonment issue as well.
Alan Lazaros:My goodness, yeah, and you don't know that that's happening at the time.
Bill Simpson:Maybe you did, I didn't, I didn't know. Yeah, this is only in hindsight, because we're resilient as a kid. We're not aware, right.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah Well, you're just trying to survive, you're just trying to figure it out.
Alan Lazaros:I mean you think your problems are real problems and then you have trauma and you don't even know it and all this stuff. So hopefully as adults, we all learn how Obviously. That's why your podcast is so important. Because, coming back to love, particularly for men who don't maybe do the inner work as much in culture, I coach a lot of men and women in business now and been coaching couples for four years and I've come to realize that women tend to be more intrinsically aware, because my sister had a diary since she was a little kid. I didn't get my first journal until I was 26. So for the men out there, we got to do the inner work and I appreciate it and it's worth it.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, it is. It's really important, and you can't solve your problems with external achievement, despite all my awards.
Bill Simpson:Yeah right exactly.
Alan Lazaros:I tried, I tried. So that was the second trauma response. Back to my point. So it's fun, social coward. There's two worlds I think we all live in. I think there's the real world and the social world. And the social world I became this sort of don't lose love, don't get abandoned guy, friends and family. I think goodwill hunting is kind of a good metaphor for that. But behind the scenes, when no one was around, it was aim higher work harder, get smarter. I became this driven name higher work harder, get smarter. I became this driven just so driven super achiever and I went from I hope I get into my alma mater. I actually just got back.
Alan Lazaros:I was telling you I just got back from an entrepreneurial panel at a class at my alma mater that I graduated from WPI. It's like a mini MIT in Massachusetts. It's an engineering school, and I hoped to get into wpi because it's a really hard school to get into. That was my dream. I wanted to be an engineer. Fifty thousand dollars a year and this is back then. Wow, so I went for my hope I get in to. Even if I do get in, I can't go because my stepdad's gone and we don't have the money to afford it right. So social coward fawn, trauma response, fight. It was aim higher, work harder, get smarter. I got straight a's through all of high school bootstrapped my way. I got an 89 in honors english. My only b luckily it was weighted because it was an honors class and I got.
Alan Lazaros:I have a letter signed by george w bush uh, behind me called the president's award, which basically means you get straight a's 95 or above gpa for all 16 report cards, all four years of all of high school. Oh, and I was the obnoxious kid at the award ceremony that just kept going up for all the awards and didn't have to sit down.
Bill Simpson:Here he comes again.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, exactly yeah, people love that guy, right, but anyways. So I get all the scholarships, financial aid. My mom helps out a bit too, takes a little out of her retirement to help me out. Get, get into WPI, become a computer engineer, and then I get my master's in business and I'm off to the races. So I did the traditional path.
Alan Lazaros:I did the preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, college, corporate, and when I got to corporate, I was used to being broke in high school and college after my stepdad left. So I started making all this money. I went from 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, 125 to 180. And I'm used to being broke, so I have low expenses. I mean, I drove a 2004 Volkswagen Passat I bought in five grand cash. My rent is 500 bucks a month. I don't have any kids. They're a mortgage. I'm living on a lake with my girlfriend, courtney at the time, and I'm making all this money.
Alan Lazaros:I paid off 84 grand worth of college debt in a single year, which I so pumped about. I just wanted to be debt free and I put all the rest in the vanguard account for different tech companies and, uh, that was growing actually tremendously. Because this is, I graduated college in 2012 with my bachelor's. My master's was 2013, and this is when the economy was coming back big after 08, particularly in the us, and I worked for a bunch of different tech companies and for a computer engineer with an MBA combo. In the 21st century, every company, most companies, need engineers. They need people that are good with tech. So I was very sought after I still am, and so 21st century, right place, right time, low expenses and I just crushed it in corporate in terms of external success.
Alan Lazaros:Then I got in my car accident. So I'm 26. At the time, I'm externally very successful, but internally unfulfilled because I hadn't worked through a lot of the stuff that we've talked about Sure Abandonment and all that, yeah, and I get in a head-on collision my fault, wrong side of the road, my fault and fortunately the Volkswagen Passat is the safest car ever. So thank you, volkswagen. I mean I used to call this thing the tank, german-engineered steel trap of a car. The tank, yeah, and so the entire front end is completely smashed in all the way, but the frame stayed, the airbags deployed, me and my little cousin, one of the people that came back from my mom's side we were okay physically and again rattled for sure, but physically no permanent damage, and the other person was in a lift-kitted pickup truck. They were totally fine as well. Luckily they were pissed pissed at me, because it wasn't his truck, I guess, but that for me. My dad died in a car at 28, suddenly, and I'm 26 at the time, really realizing that I hadn't faced all this stuff.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, the wake-up call.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, existential crisis wake-up call. This is the second chance my dad never got. Yeah, the wake-up call. Yeah, Existential crisis wake-up call. This is the second chance my dad never got Right. So for me, I mean, I just turned it around. At this point I had been drinking a little too much and too often. Cognex was the company I worked for inside sales and then outside sales and I managed Vermont, Connecticut, Western Massachusetts. Their motto was work hard, play hard. My motto was work hard, play hard. Mont, Connecticut, Western Massachusetts. Their motto was work hard, play hard. My motto was work hard, play hard. And my mom and stepdad grew up with a lot of partying, so I grew up with alcohol around me.
Alan Lazaros:So that's the part of my story. I'm now five, yeah, so five years sober now kind of started quitting drinking 10 years ago after that car exit.
Alan Lazaros:Thank you so much, thank you. And just didn't realize that my normal wasn't normal and this is when I went inward. So before I went from externally successful and internally unfulfilled to I flipped the script. I went all in on fulfillment, fitness, happy, healthy, productive, this model fitness competitor, fitness coach. Start my own company, alan Lazarus, I'll see what you'll never learn in school but desperately need to know. I found personal development. I found self improvement. I found personal growth and mental health and coaches and mentors, and now I have a therapist and I just went all in on me, investing in who I am as a man, and I went broke.
Bill Simpson:Hmm...
Alan Lazaros:I liquidated, yeah, I liquidated all the assets and I started my own company and I went broke. And so now I'm fortunate in my thirties to have kind of come back to center, where I'm now both externally successful and internally fulfilled, which is very hard to do. And the reason why is because what is meaningful work is rarely what the economy pays the most for right, not always, but rarely, and that's what I was teaching the entrepreneurs earlier today. So that's kind of I think the moral of the story is external success matters, but internal fulfillment matters more. Learning how to succeed is critical, but learning about yourself is more critical, and you have to constantly do both.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, so that's probably what I would say Well, and you know, with you saying that makes me think of you know, my approach to helping men in relationship is it starts with yourself. We start with self-compassion, we start with really being good with yourself and doing the internal work and then taking that to your relationship, versus trying to fix the relationship without even looking at yourself.
Alan Lazaros:Exactly. And if you think about that now and that seems so obvious now, sure, but back in my 20s, early 20s, I didn't understand, because I was the conscientious sort of achiever numbers, math and science. I call it STEM science, technology, engineering, mathematics, business and finance. So IQ, eq, was secondary, but I also had developed EQ because I became a sort of social chameleon as well. So I was sort of well-rounded-ish, but I didn't understand why. I sucked at relationships and for me, success has always felt fairly easy. It makes a lot of sense to me, like business and all that kind of stuff. What never came easy was relationships for me. Like I'm not an easily likable guy. I think I triggered a lot of people. I think in mathematics and I know that I speak in very absolutes and certainties and a lot of people have trouble with that. But I had to get to know myself. I think self-awareness is alarmingly not taught in schools.
Bill Simpson:And especially with men. I mean, we just don't have time for that. We just, you know, just keep on going, because we don't want to look at what's underneath the surface and we keep the blinders on and we go for success because that's how we've been conditioned and that's what we should be doing. And then it builds up, builds up, builds up, builds up, and then there's your crisis. And then what? You're either going to wake up or you're going to keep repeating the same pattern.
Alan Lazaros:The wake-up call for me was the car accident. And, yeah, I didn't know I was on autopilot, but I was way more than now. Again, I've always been sort of an existentialist and I've always questioned things and I've always tried to learn. I've always been eager to learn, but I wasn't facing the trauma, I wasn't facing the abandonment stuff. I definitely wasn't self-aware to the extent I am now in terms of, like, the amount of alcohol I grew up around. Okay.
Alan Lazaros:So this is a good metaphor that I use when we coach couples. We always use this metaphor. So imagine metaphorically, again, hypothetically, let's imagine your partner grew up in California and you grew up in Massachusetts. Okay, okay, in California there are earthquakes, right, so that's normal In Massachusetts. If we have an earthquake, everyone's losing it, like what the hell is going on.
Alan Lazaros:So I grew up in an environment where the Richter scale because my mom and stepdad didn't get along very well fighting was pretty normal. Raising your voice, storming out, slamming doors, like that was pretty normal. So when I got into relationships with other people emilia, her mom and dad they've never fought in front of her, literally never. So I have never not seen couples, you know, sort of fight and that kind of thing. So you, your normal is not normal and everyone has a different richter scale. So what if my two on the richter scale? Because I I took her to a family gathering once and she said, alan, I can never do that again like that was. That was terrible, right. And I'm sitting there going what, what do?
Bill Simpson:you mean, what are you talking about? Yeah, what are you?
Alan Lazaros:talking. That was. I said that was a t for me growing up, right, but it's all relative to what you're used to, and so I realize now how unbelievably toxic some of the environments that I grew up in are, and now I don't do any of that stuff anymore, so I've kind of yeah.
Bill Simpson:So did you act out in relationships that way? Were you a yeller and all those things that you were modeled?
Alan Lazaros:I would say there were times when if I had been drinking too much or something, I think that I would. I'll give you one story. There was one time where I punched a hole in my ex-girlfriend's door. I was so angry and I punched a hole in the door and then I bought her a new door the next day, but that was a moment of okay, so that might've been really terrifying for her. Where I grew up, that was, I mean, that's not even on the Richter scale right, but it all depends on where you grew up and what you grew up around. So, yeah, I unintentionally would trigger people with some of the stuff that I saw growing up that I ended up modeling, particularly the drinking right, so the drinking. But I do want to be honest too, like behind the scenes. I've always been treating people really, really well. I think that I've hurt myself a lot, but I don't I never really hurt other people. If I did hurt other people, it was through hurting myself.
Bill Simpson:Right and that's what people have to realize that when you've grown up in a toxic environment, what goes on in the family, or what went on in the family, is going to show up in your relationship. And when you don't have that awareness, it just repeats itself. The cycle keeps going and you broke that cycle, you became aware and you know now. Well, this is because I'm triggered, because this is how I grew up. And when folks realize that it makes their relationships a lot easier.
Alan Lazaros:Well, what you mentioned about breaking the cycle, that's exactly it, because these are patterns that you saw that became normalized and, honestly, compared to a lot of the stuff I saw growing up, that wasn't even a big deal. So it's all relative and you have to. The first step to solving a problem is admitting you suck Like I. It's really hard for me and I'll share this briefly as well. I remember when I first said I'm an alcoholic and it was after my car accident and people, all the people in my life were like you're not an alcoholic. What do you mean? At this point? I'm very successful and here's the truth. I was not nearly as much of an alcoholic as other people, not even close. It's all based on your own internal standard. I mean, the people who got the most frustrated with me when I called myself an alcoholic, those are the people who really, really have a problem. Sometimes it's the person who is the biggest offender, who is it's the hardest for them to admit any fault.
Alan Lazaros:You ever meet anyone who can't admit any fault with themselves.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, it's the ego man. The ego doesn't want to, it's too fragile, it can't handle it.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, the psychological immune system of just don't look at any self-feedback? Yeah, for me, I think that all the gold is buried where you suck the most.
Bill Simpson:Absolutely, but I also know that.
Alan Lazaros:That's because I have high self-efficacy and I've studied the psychology of this. If you don't have high self-belief like if you don't believe you can change and you have a fixed, At the end of the day, it's the person who is the least in control of their own weight that struggles the most to admit that they need help. And when you have high self-efficacy and high awareness and high intelligence and high competence and high courage and high capabilities and you work on yourself, you have no problem. Like Emilia and I, we've been in a relationship for five years and we've never raised our voice, We've never stormed out, We've never slammed a door.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, I was like we're gonna be together like we've talked about. We want to be together forever. We want to get married. I'll say, like, what do you mean? I broke my brain, right, right. She said well, alan, when someone fights, there's a winner and a loser, and and when you fight, there's no. No one wins. And the truth is, and I need to share this If it wasn't for her, of course we would have.
Alan Lazaros:She is really good at calling out when the decibels are going higher. So if I'm starting to, you know, heat up, she'll be like Alan forehead. You know I'm crinkling the forehead, I'm getting a little angry and I'm like, oh, she's like, let's just take a minute and I will. I'll go sit on the floor because I'm tall, I'm six two. I don't want to overpower her or anything like that. So I think it comes down to self awareness. It also comes down to healing your trauma and understanding your triggers, understanding your core wounds. We can get into all this stuff, but if you're not working on yourself, you're in some serious trouble in a relationship.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, and what you said about Amelia calling you out the key is that you listened and you took it in and you gave yourself that space so you wouldn't escalate. It's trusting your partner's feedback right, so that you listen, because you want them to feel safe, you want them to feel loved, and when you just go off the handle and yell and scream and all that and you know you're just causing so much damage, especially if it's on a repeated basis.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, the amount of damage. I mean this is the the base problem, in my opinion, about why life is so difficult. And I'm not the fluffy, feel good personal development guy who, like, thinks it's all going to work out. I'm I'm, if anything, I'm the opposite. I think that life is atrociously difficult, especially in business. Like, if you want to start a company, you are in some serious trouble, and if you, at the moment you think you're not, you're in even more trouble.
Alan Lazaros:So, like, humility is the most important character trait of all time. In real life, in the social world, no one from the outside in I don't think anyone cares about humility that much. Unfortunately and I know I don't come off as the most humble person, but inwardly, like I was listening to a book this morning on my way to the speech, I was on an entrepreneurial panel with two people that are far more successful than me. I'm taking it all in. I wish I had my notebook. I'm on the panel trying to take notes. You're learning Always. I don't get the arrival thing, like what is this arriving thing?
Bill Simpson:It's no such thing. It's a lifelong process.
Alan Lazaros:Striving, always striving, never arriving. It's an infinite game, right? And I think that's my biggest problem too in this podcasting space and being a business coach and all that stuff. It's. Even after the panel, the professor came up to me. His name's Matt. He said you're selling yourself short. Like you're successful. You're giving them too much credit. Don't devalue yourself, because I said that they're more successful than me. First of all, they are. They're also in their 40s and 50s and they're multimillionaires and I'm very successful too, right, but I don't care about that. Like I'm trying to get better. I don't care about what I've already done, I care about what I'm gonna do.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, I've been there, done that.
Alan Lazaros:Let's go to the next thing 100% and I think that in the social world it comes off very cool to act like you have it all figured out, but in real life that's not a good way to live. What you know is very limited. What you don't know is limitless. And if you can focus more on getting better and less on look how great I am, your whole life is going to get better. And this is why a lot of people in the economy that are very successful end up divorced. Because I think that the confidence and the bravado that it takes to go out there and try to succeed every day, especially when you're unfulfilled internally, ends up coming back home and getting on your husband or your wife or whatever. And I'm trying really hard and I told Amelia this. I tell her this. All the time I said I do not want to be at the top of this mountain, not in love.
Bill Simpson:Yeah.
Alan Lazaros:Good thing.
Bill Simpson:And when you mentioned about getting better and getting better, I remember on my personal growth journey where I was all about being a better person. I'm going to be a better person and I'm working hard and doing all this and I found myself in judgment of others because it wasn't that I was becoming a better person. I was being better than you. I'm better than you because I'm doing this work and you're not, so therefore I'm better and I didn't. It was like one of those light bulb moments where I went at this epiphany like, oh, I'm still in all this judgment because they're not doing it and I am, so I'm better than you. No, that's not being a better person.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, there's no nobility in being better than other people. There is a lot of nobility in being better than you used to be and, ultimately, I think that's why it's important to remember where you came from, because even now you asking me about did you ever yell? And all that it's hard for me to look at some of that. Sure it is. Yeah, holy crap I did Talk about shame.
Alan Lazaros:I haven't yelled or slammed a door, not once my relationship with Emilia. Not a single time have I raised my voice beyond a certain decibel. Seriously, Like she would tell you, not me, you got to hear from her, not me, because I don't think I'm polite.
Bill Simpson:I believe you, man.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like never once. But thinking back to my early 20s, yeah, for sure, of course, right, and I can't even believe that that was normal at any point in my life.
Bill Simpson:So Alan, you've come a long way and my hat goes off to you. At your age, I mean, I started my personal growth journey probably in my early 30s, so you know I was just getting started where you are and I really appreciate the work that you're doing. Tell us a little bit about your next level, university, and what that's all about.
Alan Lazaros:Thank you and I appreciate it, and anyone out there watching or listening. At the end of the day, the world is not as into personal growth as you hope five percent, I think maybe yeah, it's.
Alan Lazaros:it's an alarmingly small amount of people. And I was just out in the world today. I usually work from home, so I'm in my little echo chamber of personal growth, emily and I. We have books all over and you know all this stuff. I got an aristotle quote over here. So it is unfortunate that most people do not do the inner work right, especially men. They tend to not have. I'm proud to be in the small percentage of men with a therapist, so thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's really important. It's really important. But again, I didn't have a therapist for 30 years, right? So I'm not judging, I'm just. I'm just saying next level university is a place where you go to learn how to reach your potential. Nice, next level you pun intended, not not next level who we think you should be?
Alan Lazaros:My business partner, kevin, and I, my co-host. We both grew up without fathers. We both grew up in a small town, small-minded town, and we both came from absolutely nothing. And when I say nothing, obviously we're born in a prosperous country, but we were broke yeah, broke is a joke at one point. No dads and both raised by women. He was raised by his mom and his mima and I was raised by my sister and my mom and we both kind of became the male role models that we never had and I think, unconsciously, that was probably what was driving the whole time.
Alan Lazaros:And now we have 2039 episodes as of today. The only reason I know that as I was reviewing it on the way to the panel earlier, and we have a website called next level universecom, spelled just like it sounds. The podcast is next level university, and if you are humble and eager to learn and you want to earn keyword, earn your way to external success and internal fulfillment, you're going to love NLU, you're going to love Kev, you're going to love me, you're going to love it. If, on any level, you are entitled and want big rewards for minimal effort, you will not like me whatsoever. Good luck, yeah.
Bill Simpson:Good luck with that, right, yeah yeah. Good luck with that, right, yeah. Well, I'm going to make sure I have all that contact information and links to your podcast and all that you're doing, alan. Thanks so much, man. I mean, I feel like we could sit here and talk for hours and I really appreciate what you're doing. Before we wrap up, any last minute words you want to say to our listeners.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, I think all progress starts with personal responsibility. I think it's really easy to point out word and, yeah, I think at times everyone's guilty of that. Sure, the quote that I wrote down recently I'm closing my eyes to try to remember it is when you take responsibility, you take back your ability to respond.
Bill Simpson:I love that.
Alan Lazaros:It wasn't my fault my dad died. It wasn't my fault, my stepdad left, but it is my responsibility to become a great man and to make a life out of that.
Bill Simpson:Yeah, and that's the difference between being a leader, as yourself, versus the victim of life.
Alan Lazaros:Yeah, I met someone last piece. I know we got to go. I coached someone. I had the privilege, the honor of coaching someone who was born with no arms and no legs.
Bill Simpson:Wow. Her name was Pauline. Wow was born with no arms and no legs.
Alan Lazaros:Wow, her name was Polly. Wow, and I coached her for a month and a half and she swims. She has her car set up to where she can drive. I mean, she has every reason to make excuses, yeah, and she doesn't make any excuses she can swim. I know people that don't have half the adversity that she has that are making excuses. So to me it's the most inspiring thing in the world and if you're out there and you have the fortitude inside you to say you know what, I'm going to take responsibility for my life and for my choices and I'm going to control the controllables. I'm going to control what I can control, which is what I say think, do feel and believe. That's what I can control, which is what I say think, do feel and believe. That's what I would end with is yeah, stop pointing outward, it's not everyone else's fault. Like, look in the fucking mirror. And that's where all the change is made is when you look in the mirror and go. You know what? Maybe I do drink too much there you go.
Alan Lazaros:You know what? Maybe I have raised my voice. You know what? Maybe my childhood was atrocious. You know what? Maybe I need to work on me.
Bill Simpson:That's the best place to be right there, and that takes a lot of courage and strength, and where we perceive, especially as men, we perceive it as weakness and man. When you take the courage to really work on yourself, just life's right there for you, man. It's a beautiful thing. So, all right, alan, I wish you continued success with all you're doing. You're an inspiration to me and hopefully, to our listeners today. I wish you the best man.
Alan Lazaros:Thank you, and thank you for doing what you're doing in the world. It's very clear that this is the stuff that I would have needed when I was younger.
Bill Simpson:Well, thanks so much, man. Thank you. And that will do it for this bonus episode of the Men on the Path to Love podcast Alan's Story: Transforming Trauma Into a Life of Global Impact. I'm Bill Simpson, your host. Thank you for listening and thanks again to my guest, alan Lazarus, for sharing his amazing story. You can find Alan's contact information in the show notes story. You can find Alan's contact information in the show notes and if you have any questions or topics, ideas for the show, anything going on in your relationship you need help with, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me through the show notes or just go to my website, menonthepathtolovecom. That's where you can sign up for a free one-hour coaching session with me. It's simple Just go to menonthepathtolovecom you can do it right there on the homepage and remember until next time. Keep your heart open and stay on the path to love.