Your Anxiety Is a Smoke Alarm, Not a Broken Brain | Dr. John Delony

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So the true, honest answer to your question is yes. Yes. Anxiety is simply a smoke alarm in your kitchen letting you know that something's on fire. And it can be your back bedroom could be on fire, your bathroom could be on fire, your couch could be on fire. It's just letting you know there's smoke in the house. And so I love that you— how you answer— ask that question because If you're anxious, it often means it— if you're anxious, it often means your body's working perfectly. It's letting you know, I've identified something in the ecosystem, or a number of things, that you're not safe, you're not okay. And in our culture, we're so uncomfortable with that alarm system that we race up, we climb up, we pull the batteries out, and it gets quiet, and we go, ah, we numb it, distract, we run away from it. And, um, Then our house burns down around us.

Interesting.

And so I'm— I, I— there's a, there's a, a new conversation happening in mental health circles, which is we spent 150 years telling people that their bodies are broken, their minds don't work right. What if their minds are working perfectly and the world we're constructing around each other is telling our bodies you're not all right anymore? And so I, I, I think anxiety could be like Dr. Winnie Suzuki says, it can be a friend. It It can be a loud and annoying friend and a crippling friend, but somebody trying to get your attention for the good.

When someone is feeling a sense of overwhelm and their anxiety is heightened throughout the day, or they feel like, I can't get any sleep 'cause I'm anxious about something, I feel like something's off, and it's almost becoming chronic now, it's happening for weeks, months, years, how do they get out of that? You know, I know there's lots of different tools, but, but how do they eventually get free of anxiety? Or do we always have some level of anxiety?

So what I don't want to do is live in a house without a smoke detector. I don't want to be in that home. It's not safe. And so I'm not going to go to war with anxiety. What I'm going to begin to ask myself is this: why does my body keep identifying things in my ecosystem, in my environment, in my relationships that tell me I'm not safe? And that's the question we got to answer. So I'll say it this way, and it's a little, a little dramatic and a little bold. If your body has identified you're lonely, if your body has identified— and you know the great Bessel van der Kolk, Body Keeps the Score— if your body is letting you know that I think you're about to get fired, if your body's letting you know, hey, you got 6 figures in student loans and a mortgage and 2 car payments, it would be failing you if it let you sleep all night. It would be failing you if it let you sit fully present in an intimate moment with your romantic partner. It'd be failing you because death is at the door.

Wow. Right?

And so instead of, I need to, I need to figure out some hacks to sleep throughout the night. No, you're waking up at 2:30 in the morning because your body's doing its job. You're not safe. The goal is to try to figure out, okay, what's my body identifying that's not safe? That's the work. Not because you'll sleep. You'll sleep. You will be able to wake up without coffee or have coffee because you want it, not because you have to have it.

Right.

Your body will take care of itself most of the time. There's some outliers, right? There's some medical conditions. There's some outliers. Most of the time, if you solve for a healthy environment, if you solve for a healthy you, your body won't sound the smoke alarms because there's nothing on fire.

Right. Would you say that addictions in our world are highly linked to anxiety?

I think addiction is— so going back to the analogy about the smoke detector, addiction is getting up on a ladder and duct taping a pillow over that alarm, numbing it. I can't hear it very loud. Numbing it, right? I'm gonna Netflix my way through it. I'm gonna drink my way through it. I'm going to pornography my way through it. I'm gonna text somebody I'm not married to to feel that aliveness. I'm gonna go around it. I'm gonna distract myself from What is that alarm trying to tell me? Because it's often easier to— I don't say easier, it is a safer path sometimes, especially in the beginning, to just have another drink than to sit down with your wife and say, I think we have to rebuild this thing or it's over.

Why is it so much easier to drink, sleep with multiple people, chase work accomplishments and work longer hours, smoke, do drugs? Why is it easier to do that than to have a vulnerable conversation. When anytime we have a vulnerable, courageous conversation, it's almost like it doesn't fully go away, but we feel a lot better and a lot more safe when we do that one action over years some people do of addiction to numb and anxious thought.

I don't think we have a picture of what you just said looks like. I don't think most people, particularly men, don't have a picture of another man in their life sitting down and saying the words, I was wrong.

Wow.

Or saying, I hate that you're going through this. I'm not going to try to solve it, but can I hold your hand? Son, can I hold your hand? Daughter, can I hold your hand? Spouse, can I hold your hand? We don't have a picture of that. We do have a picture of the man at the bar having a drink. We have the man on the motorcycle, the man shooting up the— we have those images. And so I think there's a default setting that says, okay, I feel this way. I don't have a picture for it. That's why men who learn how to be vulnerable, that's why women who have been through, especially women who have been through abusive situations, who are willing to tread into scary territory and be vulnerable again and potentially get hurt again.

Right. And open their hearts again. Yeah, it's hard.

But that's a powerful, brave move because there's no model for it. The only model is run. The only model is flex. The only model is achieve. Get that dollar amount. And that's the picture we got. And so I don't fault anybody for going to it. I used to when I was younger, like, why are you drinking? Now, man, it is pulling up a seat and saying, man, what happened in your life that the best way your body's figured out to get through every day is that? Let's solve that.

Wow.

And, that's a different approach.

You've been doing this work for what, a couple of decades now, right? From academic research side to actual clinical working with people sitting down.

I was a dean of students. And so, I was a professor. I was also a dean of students. So, I was sitting with people all day every day. Yeah.

From students, you work with adults now as well. You work with Single people, couples, people who've been married a long time, people who've been married and divorced a lot of time. What do you feel like is the biggest thing causing people to be anxious today at this time? Is it around money issues? Is it around purpose? Is it around the fear of like the world is crumbling or war? What is the biggest cause of anxiety today?

I would have to— I mean, if I'm being honest, it'd be cool to get a, like, get a good clickbait answer. I think there's 2 or 3 things. One of them is you've heard that we're in the attention economy. I think that's a very flowery way of saying that. We're in the distraction economy.

Yes.

Don't look. Don't look at reality. Don't own reality. And—

And don't take ownership for your life.

Right. And— but your body's always solving for reality. Your body knows that your marriage is falling apart. It knows.

It feels it intuitively.

It knows you are 2 inches on that couch but 2,000 miles away from them.

Oh my God.

It knows it. And I can be on my iPad and my wife can be on, on her phone and we can be scrolling and we're married and we're this close, but our bodies know there— that gulf is 1,000 miles. Wow. Our body knows if your boss has started to send projects to that guy. Your body knows, hey, this isn't looking good, right? Your body knows that every 4 years you get one vote, you get one ping-pong ball toss. That's it, right? That's it. And so it realizes how little control you have. No matter how much news I consume and how much I I comment on things. Your body knows you don't have a lot of control. And so I think we don't, we don't choose reality. The second thing is we've constructed the loneliest generation in human history. And again, your body would be failing you if it let you sleep with as lonely of a world as we've constructed.

Wow.

You got nobody watching your— this side, nobody watching this side, nobody watching the kids, nobody getting food. It's all on you. And our bodies are not designed for that.

It's exhausting.

Hasn't evolved over bajillions of years to get to right here.

So it's probably exhausting and draining.

At all the same time.

But it sounds like society has created an environment for us to step into that lonely environment. But also we have an opportunity as individuals to create community and to be courageous and reach out, even if we might get burned or people reject us or whatever. We've got to keep building that community within ourselves and around us. Isn't that right?

That's— that is our mission of today. My, my granddad, he passed away a few years ago, but he was born in the early 1900s. They gave him cigarettes when he was a kid because cigarettes calm kids down, right? And then they realized, I think we're going to kill off kids, right? And there was, um, you know, if you go back and look at this, at the '70s and '80s, there was this big wide, um, stop smoking, stop smoking, stop smoking. That was the, hey, Y'all are all smoking, quit smoking, right? I think that's where we are. We handed all these little kids devices.

Oh man.

We handed all these little kids screens. We handed all these kids 24 hours a day of great programming. It's not bad, it's good stuff. There's good stuff out there. Um, and then they— we, we quietly created a group of kids that don't know how to interact with each other.

Yeah, I remember growing up, so I grew up in the '80s I was born in '83, and I remember growing up and it was like video games was the devil, right? It was like back then, it was like, you got a Nintendo, you're gonna be like brain dead, right? You're just on this. And it was like you spent an hour a day on there, and parents were like freaking out about an hour a day sitting in front of playing Mario Brothers, right? Or Duck Hunt or something, whatever it was back then.

Duck Hunt.

Yeah, Duck Hunt, Mario Brothers, and my Street Fighter. It was like

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, the greatest game of all time.

Tecmo Bowl, right? It was like Oh my gosh, you're gonna like be brain— it was like, oh, this is horrible for kids, right? And that was very little. I feel like I had a— I got my first cell phone when I was 17, and I was like the first kid in my high school to get it, right? But it was like the— you had to push 3 buttons just to get a letter out. It was no smartphone. It was like you're just calling people, you're not actually like on a screen scrolling and going through stuff. So I feel like I kind of missed You know, I got lucky because I was outside playing sports after school all day until 8, 9, 10 o'clock whenever my mom would call me in. So I got a lot of outdoor physical activity, but I also felt very alone because I was lonely most of my childhood. So there would have been some comfort in having online friends or some type of groups online that would have helped me feel more seen and heard. So I see the benefit there. But how have You've seen with the parents you're working with and maybe their children, how have you seen the struggles of parents and kids with the use of devices where it's probably harder and harder to pull a device away from a child now? What have you seen that's been the biggest struggle with that, with the family dynamic, parents and kids on screen so much?

I think, I think the Device conversation has actually become a distraction.

Ooh, what's the real conversation?

2 things. One, our parents trusted the news.

All right.

They trusted the news. Local news wasn't a publicly traded company. They trusted that man or woman in that seat to say, hey, here's what's going on in your community.

Real journalism, right? Yeah.

And so that same nervous system wiring has been hijacked by news that is infotainment, that's designed to freak you out, get you to stay and not turn away. And so what I think kids are responding to, to be honest with you, you know this, like you do interviews all the time too. It's very rare that you or I get surprised, like didn't— wasn't expecting that question. I was doing an interview during the middle of COVID and somebody asked me a question. A lot of people are worried about masks and kids. Is it going to hurt them? Is it going to help them? Is it— is it helping more than it's hurting? All that. And I was surprised by the way somebody asked a question. It's one of those things that when you're live, you're live, right? And so my, my rule is if I get surprised, I'm just gonna— I'm gonna answer the truth. I'm gonna go with my gut and we'll figure out what happened, right? And so, um, somebody said, is this a 100-year problem? Have we destroyed a generation of kids by making them wear masks? And I said Kids are resilient. But here's where my, my gut answer came from. And afterwards, I think— said, I think I'm right. I think what has destroyed a generation of kids is the rage and anger and out-of-controlness of a generation of parents. Kids absorb tension in their home.

Mm-hmm.

Kids understand that mom and dad would rather scroll than talk to them. They would rather stare at their phones at the Little League game instead of cheering them on. They'd rather go to war against that high school kid who's a ref in the game. Right. What are we doing? Right. And so I think this has become a sanctioned Xanax for children. That's what the— because let me tell you this, a connected parent will win almost every time. If a kid, a kid, a child has to choose between some— and a dad on the floor,

eye to eye, listening, connecting. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a tough— that's a tough thing to beat. But kids know when you'd rather be doing something else.

Right.

And so I think the device is about— is I'm pathological in my house. My kids are out of the conversation with cell phones. So I'm— They don't have cell phones? No. Goodness, no.

How old are your kids?

I have a 13-year-old who's in 5th grade. He was the only one. Right. And so—

The only one without a cell phone. So he's getting— he's feeling like, am I missing out?

We've had some hard conversations like, Dad, I'm being left out. And he's right. And I've made some—

My friends are texting each other. They can't text me. You know,

and I've made some concessions. And when his friends come over, every one of them hands my wife their phone and their parents are like, they love it. Right. And so it's both amazing. It's both. Yeah, right. But I've told my son, you're right. And so I'm going to— I'm going to figure out some ways we can connect. But I can't give you the whole world. I can't let every company and predator— I can't give them access to your bedroom.

Wow.

And so there's that. But I think the bigger picture is that means I have to parent. That means I got to go to counseling and deal with my anger and my anxiety and my rage so that I can sit with my 13-year-old and say, how's your day? And he's not trying to prop me up. That's a different level of work, man. That's another game. It's a different game.

And you're, you're in the mental health, you know, teaching and training world.

Yeah.

But it doesn't mean you're exempt from having to do the work yourself.

No, it means I got to be first in line.

Right.

If you're gonna be a person of integrity.

Sure.

Yeah.

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What was the biggest thing that you had to face internally over the last few years once you started to realize this, as your kids are getting older and you're like, oh, you know, I need to step up in a different way? What was that thing that you needed to face within yourself?

I mean, Sitting down, there was a moment my wife and I had a confrontation in my little basement gym, and I left the house and checked into a hotel when I was writing this latest book. Really?

Like a, like an argument or some type of—

Yeah. The way it went down was I've worked in education for 20 years, which means I've worked for nonprofits for 20 years, and I've been on salary and working on call 24/7, 365, hospitals all night. You get up the next morning, you go back to work. That's just the job and you get a paycheck. This whole, if you write another book, you'll get paid again. If you go do the speaking gig, this is a whole new world. And it was exciting and wild. And I didn't have an off switch. I didn't know what that meant. But I did know that that kid who grew up pretty poor with a dad who was a police officer and a minister, like, oh, we're gonna have groceries all the time. And so you hit the gas and you start looking for esteem and book sales and all these things. It's an old cliché. And what happened, I— my manager called and said, hey, we got these 2 speaking gigs you really wanted. And I was cheering in my basement, cheering like, yeah! My wife came downstairs, she says, what are you cheering? She was smiling like, what are you cheering about? I said, I got this one gig and I'm pretty sure we got the other one. And her way of dealing with conflict, she's very wise and she usually will step back. And plus I'm a lot, right? She'll step back and we'll circle back and she'll say, hey, Like, I want to talk about what happened yesterday. She didn't do that this time. She stepped into my space, which is rare. And she said—

Your gym is kind of your sanctuary or like your safe space.

Kind of. Your man cave. And I'm super excited. I'm all sweaty. I'm cheering. And she said, I'm watching my husband die.

Oh.

And she said, the pie piece for how much I love you and the pie piece for how much money you make is full. And then she said, you could take these speaking gigs. Great. I'm not gonna hold you back. But do not say this is for me or for the kids or for our legacy. This is for your ego.

Wow.

And then she said something that floored me. She said, John, we have enough. And Lewis, I didn't have a psychology for that word. I didn't know what that meant. I was a poor kid who was trying to prove myself. And I don't have 2 PhDs because I'm just super smart.

No, it's because you wanted to prove yourself.

I wanted to prove myself. My sister was smart. My little brother was smart. And I was a dumb jock. I'll show you You write. And so you just keep going and it's never enough. And so I went and checked into a hotel with this, this manuscript. And as I went through it, it was like, you're not living this, you're not living this.

Your book manuscript that you wrote.

That's right. I was halfway through.

You were writing it.

And so it came— it quickly turned from a, here's what you need to do, to me getting a bar stool and pulling up and being like, hey guys, I'll order one too. Let's figure this out. And so that was hard because it was a matter of like, you got to go see. And you and I, like we talked off air, I had to go. You challenged me privately. And I had to go see a trauma counselor and have some conversations I had never had. Wow. When was this? This is within the last year, year and a half. I mean, this isn't long ago. And like, I'm here, right? We have the book. I've got the radio show. I've got the stuff. And the— it's almost like the floor keeps like, okay, now you're ready for the next level. And now you're ready for the next level. If you're willing to put the work in, I think the paths open themselves up.

Where were you most anxious in your life during that time? What was that anxiety running through your head? That I'm not enough, even though my wife says we have enough, or what was the—

Well, it was one of those— so I preach all the time about connection and friendship. I preach all the time about reality. I preach all the time about health and healing, like dealing with your old traumas and all this. And dude had a number one bestselling book, Lewis. All my dreams came true. And then you hit the road, and then you're doing a podcast, and you go to this meeting, and you got this interview, and you did this.

Speaking gigs and this. Yeah.

You're on the road. And I looked up and I remember I was in a, in a, in an SUV when the head of publishing had his cell phone. We were going to a book signing and he handed it back behind and handed it to me and it said number 1. This is my last book. He pulled over.

That would feel good.

It was awesome. We pulled over. Dave Ramsey calls me, first call, and he's like screaming, all right! I called my mom and I called my wife. And then we pulled over to a liquor store and we got some champagne and we had it in plastic cups in the car, went to the book signing, and then I went home and I waited for all my buddies to call. And they didn't call. They didn't know. And I felt weird because I was like, oh, I haven't talked to you guys in 9 months. These are my best friends on the planet. I skipped all of our monthly meetings. I skipped our phone calls. I— because I was on the road, I was doing this. And I realized I had gone back into old patterns of isolation and loneliness and trying to think my way through things. I'd started skipping workouts. I'd started I put the extra fries on there and it was slow,

right?

And I started reading a lot of comments and internalizing that stuff, right? And you keep going down that path and suddenly your body quietly starts sounding the alarms. And I found myself an anxious mess. And it was my wife who had been down the road with me before who was like, man, I remember this guy. Because her body starts saying, you remember last time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think it was all of it. And I think anybody that's— that wants to snake oil it and say it's just this one thing or just this one thing, I think that's, um, too reductionistic. We've created a chaotic life and we try to call it normal. And, um, and then we're out there playing whack-a-mole with symptoms, right? And so, um, I think it's tackling it head-on, walking into the anxiety and saying, all right, well, I'm going towards the alarms. What's on fire? Let's figure that out.

Well, what was the Conversations you've had with your wife since then, since that moment where you went into the hotel and kind of started doing that work, what commitment have you made and she made to support you guys over the last year and a half since then?

So I'm actually busier now than I was, but it's an intentional busy with a finish line, and it's— and the seasonality to it, right?

Right.

When you— if we were to go into winter And the meteorologists were like, we'll let you know when warm's coming. It would be a disaster. Or that crazy heat wave we've had this last summer. It's different when, you know, like come March, the sun comes back out, right? And so in July of this year, we knew—

There's a book coming out.

And book comes out this fall. I'm gonna be on the road. I'm gonna be busy. Let's start putting relational deposits in the account now. Let's be fully present with kids. Let's not be on the road for the next 2 months. That means we're going to sacrifice some money. That means we're going to sacrifice some X and some Y and some Z. I want you to come home a little bit early. I'm going to pick the kids up from school when I can. It's these little bitty things that are not the big flashy things.

It's not Instagrammable moments. It's not highlights. It's not awards.

It is leaning over with my 7-year-old daughter and saying, you want to play dominoes? I'm going to dominate you. And she says, bring it, old man. And she's 7 and we play dominoes. There's no Instagram story there, but there's a hug right before she goes to bed that says, right? And that is what will buy me 3 months on the road. People still have to go get deployed. People still have to go do crazy things. They have to go build businesses. Look at the world, we need that. But you have to know we got to do it in seasons. I got to do it with intentionality and we have to stay connected to other people.

I love the idea of seasons because as an athlete, that's how I lived my life for so many years. And it's how I've tried to design my life in the business world as well. It's like around big seasonal moments. We just had a big event this last weekend.

Which looked amazing.

It was amazing. Yeah. As you know, at the time we filmed this and there was a ramp-up period and I remember telling my team, you know, I'm sure that they're listening out there for 2 months leading up to it. I go, this is the playoffs, guys. This is our Super Bowl. And it's going to be a little bit more time right now and it's going to be intense. And, you know, leading up to the week of, it's going to be, Less sleep. So make sure you get rest now. We got, you know, we give Fridays off every other week leading up to it to make sure you've taken time to recover. You're working hard, but it's like, all right, let's make sure we're dialed in and know that then it's going to be a lot for a week.

Yeah.

And then there'll be a comedown and a recalibration and things like that. But it's— I think it's important to have that seasonal mindset. And the interesting thing is Your wife said to you, we have enough. Is that what she said? Something around, we have enough.

We have enough.

And this will be for you wanting to make more, you wanted to have your ego or being on stage or whatever it might be. That's interesting because a lot of people don't think they have enough. What made your, your wife say or believe that you as a family have enough financially And whether you did or not, what made her believe that? And why do you think she said that?

Um, a couple of things. We both grew up with not a lot. And so, um, and the, the quick story is my dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator. He was an awesome guy who spent his whole life serving the community. He'd put on his bulletproof vest when there was a hostage or when there was a bomb threat, and he'd go in.

But he wasn't making much, probably.

And there was also seasons we didn't have enough for groceries, right? He would put the debit card in and there was no money in the account. He was just hoping that he could pay the late fee so his kids could eat, right?

That memory is like burning your psyche.

If that's what the public thinks of public service, I'm out,

right?

I'm gonna go be safe through titles and money, right? I'm gonna go get it, right? But

then he became a teacher though,

so that's right, that's right. Um, but dean of students make good money, right? And so I got taken care of there.

Yeah.

And we ran and we ran and we ran and we started following the— what if we got to decide what we do tomorrow, not the bank? And so for years I drove a $3,000 F-150.

That's great.

A '94. I mean, it's awesome. It was wild. My wife drove a used Corolla forever. It wouldn't die.

Dude, my first 5 years in LA, I drove a $4,000 car.

1991.

Yep. And I wrote it and I was like, I don't need some flashy car out here. It's mine, you know? Yeah, I own this thing,

right? So you expand that out to what if we just didn't— if we can't afford it, let's don't buy it. We don't have credit cards, right? And what if we bought a house that the mortgage person laughed at us and said, but you qualify for this? And it's like, I'd rather get this sucker paid off. And so you look around and you don't owe anybody anything. Then enough feeling— enough changes. Right, the, the, the algorithm for enough is different.

Interesting.

And beyond that, you know this, there's— there's— they call it mailbox money in our world, but that you set up some things so that we're going to be okay,

right? Some residuals coming in, some stuff.

There's some things on the calendar, we're going to be okay. And that's for any job. That's a paycheck coming in, that's a sales cycle that they pick something up. And I don't think what she was referring to with enough was a dollar amount though. I think it was, I'm watching you try to prove to me that you're worthy of being loved, and it's not over there, it's right here. Wow. And John, your kids don't love you because of the stages you're on. They love you because you're their old man, and they just want to— they want you.

Because you're playing dominoes for an hour a night, or you're going to a baseball game and you're present. It's not because you're traveling that weekend for—

My buddy invites me to some fancy deer hunt and I say, I'll go, but my son comes with me. Right. And he's 12. Right.

That's cool.

And they're like, cool. So, I think the enough thing was way less about ambition. My wife knows who she married and she knows that. Hey, you're driven. Yeah. And I like being in the middle of a mess. Of

course.

It wasn't about dollar amount. It was about love is right in front of you and you're doing everything you can to avoid this.

On a scale of 1 to 10, How much do you believe you are enough? 10 being the fullest amount, 1 being zero.

So this is about 6 months ago. I haven't told this one publicly. You ready for this? So about 6 months ago, my same counselor I've been working with, she's magic. And I work in the mental health world and she's incredible. And she said, I want you to make a fist. I want you to put it in your chest. And I want you to say the words, "I love this guy." Lewis, I couldn't say it. Really? It was it was wild. I was like, "I'm not saying that." At first, it was "I ain't doing that," and then it was like, "I can't do that." Wow! I was like, "Dude, I'm a grown man with a show. I can say whatever I want." I couldn't say it.

You couldn't say "I love myself."

I love this guy. This guy, right? And our mutual friend Sal DeStefano with Mind Pump. I remember in private conversation, he said. John, you can't hate yourself into better shape. You can't go to the gym every day because you hate your body and expect that to be something you can sustain. You go to the gym every day because you value you enough that you're worth an hour. Wow. That you're such a good steward, you're going to invest in that, in that body. Not that you're so disgusting that I'm going to work this off, right? And so similarly, you can't heal your marriage You can't heal your relationship with your kids by hating yourself into it. You have to say, I'm worth being loved. And so 6 months ago, I would have given you a zero.

Come on.

I'm giving a zero. I didn't believe it.

You didn't believe you were enough?

I'd never asked that question.

Wow.

I thought I can do a bunch of things pretty cool, right? You can play guitar.

I can do well. Yeah,

yeah, I can write a book. Am I enough?

Wow.

Yeah. Can I sit with somebody without I bought into the lie, which is a common male lie, that my only value is utility. What can you do? What advice can you give me? And my wife was like, will you just sit with me? Will you just sit here? Right? And so now I'd tell you it's 9 out of 10. I think I've got value. I think I'm worth being loved. I'm still figuring out what that means and how to do that, but I know it's true.

Wow. 6 months ago.

Yeah, that was quick.

How old are you now?

I'm 45.

45. 2 kids. Married for how long?

21 years.

21 years. Yeah.

And great parents who are still married. They're 50-something years. I mean, I got a brand new career. None of that matters.

You didn't have the the skill set, the tools, or the ability to say, "I love this guy."

Well, and beneath that, and and you and I both we've talked about this privately. Trauma disconnects you from yourself, right?

It does.

And that's what it does. So childhood abuse does. That's what emotional abuse does. That's what sexual abuse, what poverty does. It's— it, it, it subtracts you from yourself. Wow. And so you could do all the stuff, you could have all the metrics

and still not feel lovable.

But you know you're not. Yeah, it's interesting because that wouldn't happen if you were. And so you connect that dot and you heal that, and then it's somebody asking that question, you say, oh man, I need to get some new skills because that's— I know that to be true.

The interesting thing, when I, when I learned how to Truly believe that I am enough. Because I think one of the root causes of anxiety for me and self-doubt and insecurity was believing that I was not enough for a lot of time, a lot of my life. It didn't hold me back from being driven to prove I was enough, like you said, but I still didn't believe it. It's almost like when I would accomplish things, I would get angrier the next day because I still didn't believe I was enough.

Didn't solve it.

Didn't solve it. So I was like, I need the bigger goal, the bigger thing. Let me go prove more. that I can do something and maybe then I'll feel loved. And it really wasn't until the last few years when I started to heal those memories of the past that caused me to think and believe that I wasn't enough. When I started to heal and integrate my whole self with my— the emptiness inside of me and integrate them. So I was feeling whole. So I was feeling worthy and deserving of love from me and others. But really, if we don't learn to love ourselves, it's hard to fully love from others as well. So when I was able to love the different parts of me— not saying I'm perfect or I have it all figured out, I make mistakes still— but like accept the different parts of me and love them and not shame and make them wrong, I felt more peace than I ever felt in my entire life internally. My body started to relax. Yeah. You know, and it took time to integrate that. It didn't happen overnight. It was like it would relapse and I'd feel triggered and anxious, but then it's like, okay, let me keep integrating. And I did that for a few years and it's been the most peace I've ever felt. And I want the world to feel this peace. It doesn't mean I don't have challenges and stress and pressure-filled moments, but I have the awareness to give back safety internally. And that is a— it's one of the greatest gifts I've ever given myself, and I want everyone to have that gift.

Yeah.

What do you think it will take for people to fully believe they are enough, no matter the mistakes they've made, the challenges they've been through, the trauma they've had, the breakups they went through, the, the bad things they've seen or done? How can they truly get to a place of, I am enough?

I think saying the words out loud, I don't think I'm enough. And we don't say that out loud. And I think there's a reason why every major faith tradition throughout human history has a confession component. And we've taken confession to mean say the things you did bad. That's not the original intent. The original intent was, here's me, do you still love me? Wow. And somebody saying, I hear you and I see you and I still love

you. Wow.

Right? That's the intention. And so it's starting with telling somebody, Oh, I can't even say that. That was the day, man. That was the day. And if I back up, you're talking about that feeling, that feeling. Here's what healing was for me. I remember a few months out, my counselor asking me, how have you felt? And I said, I know this not to be true, but I feel a season of depression. I feel low. And she smiled and said, this is what normal feels like. Really? This is what well feels like. You've been so spun up for so long. so at war with yourself and everybody. Here's how this played out in my house. So here was my big dirty secret. I have a mental health show. I've got 2 PhDs. My wife has a PhD. She was Dr. Delaney way before me, working with kids. And my daughter wouldn't hug me, Lewis.

She wouldn't hug you?

Nope. 4, 5, 6-year-old. She'd— at first it was fun. It was a funny little game that we would play. She's like, no, Dad, no hugs. But it became a thing

where she would like go hug your, your wife.

I'd come in and I'd kiss her on the head and she'd throw a big old stop, don't.

Really?

Yeah. And you got to understand, like, I don't yell, I don't beat my kids. I mean, I don't swear in my house. I mean, it's— I'm a pretty boring, laid-back guy. And at first it was funny, and then it was like, I need to figure this out. And then it started to really bother me. And my wife, one day, in her very calm, quiet way, as she does— she's so wise— she said You're always preaching about neuroception, that, that scanner that's always scanning your environment. Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? She said, what if that teeny tiny 6-year-old little girl, her body for some reason is saying you're not safe?

Wow.

And I said, I don't yell. I don't, I don't. She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that nuclear reactor in your chest is alive and well. And that was that in combination with our conversation was I'm gonna go talk to somebody. And I said a sentence a few weeks ago that I had never said before, which was, will you get off me? Because now I'm her jungle gym. Okay, so healing in my house, I'm still learning. Kind of like being on a boat all day and you get on the land and it's kind of wobbly. I'm still figuring out what that feels like. 45 years, man, of fight or flight. But my daughter feels it and, and she's all in. And her body says, that guy's safe. He's my home base. Wow. Right? And so, I'm with you. I wish everybody could feel that. I could feel that. And, let me tell you this too. You mentioned this doesn't solve the world's issues. It doesn't. I had a cousin who passed away suddenly several months ago and somebody I loved. He was goofball. He was kind of out there, but I loved him. Because 15 or 20 years ago, my wife and I said, hey, we both grew up with not a lot. Let's do the work. Let's become a Corolla family so that we don't owe anybody any money. It's going to be awful. We're going to have to forego vacations. We're going to have to forego fancy things. Just last year, she said, hey, could we get furniture in the house that matches? And I was like, after 2 decades, it's time, right? Yeah. So, what if we created a world we didn't owe anybody anything? My cousin dies. I bought 2 plane tickets. Not because I'm rich, but because we don't owe anybody. We've worked hard. We flew out of Houston. I got to go up to his casket when the room was empty, and I got to say what I needed to say, and I got to cry. Wow. And I had the privilege of being heartbroken and sad, but I wasn't anxious. I wasn't anxious about it. Well, we got to travel to his funeral, and I don't know, I can't afford to take the time off of work. And how are we gonna— I don't have any money. We gotta put these on credit card. So we can try out— I had the privilege of not being anxious, but just being really sad. And I think in our culture, we pathologize life, normal things. You're supposed to be heartbroken if you get dumped. You're supposed to be brokenhearted if someone you love passes away. That's life. But what if we created a world that wasn't anxious so that we could fully experience this tough stuff and we could fully experience— My 7-year-old girl leaning across the table and goes, I'm coming for you, old man. And then she puts a double 5 domino down and it's game on, right?

Wow.

What if we could fully be there? That's, that's the non-anxious life.

Wow.

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Why do you think is the— you mentioned this about people caring more about their feelings and wanting the world to evolve around their feelings, something around that. I can't remember if that's exactly what you said, but why do you think, feel, or see that there seems to be a trend of Narcissism, self-interest, and my feelings and my beliefs are the things that matter most. So you need to change, this system needs to change, everything needs to change to fit my feelings and protect my feelings. Why do you think that is happening more so?

We don't have— we've clipped the strings. Esther talks eloquently about this. We've clipped all of the common strings that bind us together with a common story. For just for however long you think the earth— however long you think the earth has been around, our relationship to our gods told us what we're going to wear, what your role is, what— whose job is what job, what, what our values are, what you do and don't do. There's been tons of oppression. I'm not saying it's all great. I'm just saying that's the way it worked. And then we cut all the strings. None of that's real, guys. If it can't be Randomized controlled double-blind study, it's not real. It doesn't exist. And so as beings created to worship, whether you're an atheist or not, as beings created to be in service of something, if there's nothing to be in service of other than the self, then you are the supreme ruler of your world. You're the center of the universe. You're Pharaoh. You will bow before me. And we have a whole generation of people saying, no, you bow before me. No, no, no, you bow before me. Then you get chaos, which is what we have. Instead of saying, what if we all just went to the moon? Can we figure that out?

All right.

Let's do that. Let's go to the moon. And what if we said, how can I love you today? Instead of, this is just how I'm wired. I give answers. One of those ways you're going to end up sleeping outside by yourself. One of those ways creates warmth in your home. Right? And so what do you want? Like, what do you want this thing to feel like? What are you doing? Right? And I often ask this question, does that feel good? Like, like, great quippy response, like great grenade sarcasm, you know, cynicism. Good job. That feel good? Yeah. Did it? Is that what you're going for today? Do you feel powerful for a minute? Like, what, what are you— what are we doing? Or do you want to be connected and you want to be whole?

Yes.

You get to pick, man.

Connection, wholeness, peace. I believe comes from service. And I believe first comes from service to self in creating wholeness, not neglecting self and being empty all the time and just only serving others and, you know, deflecting all of your needs to feeling peaceful and whole and healthy.

Right.

But then in that journey, giving to others, helping others, being of service, contributing to something greater than self, a mission, a vision, a family, a community, a goal, you know, going to the moon, whatever it is. believing in something and others and giving to them.

Yeah.

And it's something for me that has really flipped in the last 10 years. 10 years ago, prior to 10 years ago, I was more about how do I look good? How do I win? How do I succeed? How do I, you know, be right?

Yeah.

As much as possible. And it was very unconscious. It wasn't like I was conscious of it. It was just—

That's your body playing defense.

And it was survival mechanisms, right? It was like, Stephen, I need to win. I need to be right. I need to make more. I need to look good. I need to have this image and ego, you know, shaped the way I want it. And I just realized that wasn't a happy life for me. Maybe, maybe some moments that seemed happy, but it wasn't really fulfilling until I said, it's got to be collaboration over competition. And I can still compete in certain ways, but it can't be for someone to be less than.

Yeah.

It needs to be for me to compete to get better.

Yeah.

And serve better.

Yeah.

But collaboration over competition, service over self, that is what's brought me a lot more fulfillment. It doesn't mean it's always easy. There's challenges, but it's brought me much more meaning and fulfillment. What do you think is the biggest cause of pain in relationships today?

Me over us.

Really?

Yeah. Me over us. How I feel right now or how you made me feel. Not my body responded and you did this. I need to deal with that, or I've got some hard choices to make. You did it. You did it. It's me over us. I think, and this this would go back to the question you asked earlier. It was a watershed moment when I heard Estelle Pearl talk about the 9/11 towers analogy. She was talking to a couple who had experienced infidelity. And she said one of the greatest challenges couples experience is they want to— I just want to get back to the way things were. And she likened it to, you couldn't go on September 12th and sweep up all that dust and glass and steel and rebuild those towers with that stuff. They fell.

Wow.

You have 2 choices. You can walk away and let nature take it back over, and it will. Or you can hire some experts, you can excavate that, you can design, build, grieve, Come together and build something beautiful, a nod to the past, but something going this way that's hopefully stronger, right? Those are your 2 choices, but you're— what you had is over. And so I've taken that into my own home. My wife and I right now, we've never been parents of an 8th grader and a 2nd grader. This is a new marriage. And so we're gonna build something new. It'll have a lot of the features of the old one, But this is new because 8th graders stay out later than 2nd graders. That's right.

Right. Right.

We're used to going to bed at 9 o'clock. I ain't doing that anymore because I got to pick him up. Right. So we have a new marriage. And if you keep saying, I just want to get back to the way it was, I want to get back, you end up dragging each other back. And so if we put— we said I do, then us becomes number one. Wow. And that's a— that's not a popular thing. But, I know I got to exercise, I got to eat right, I got to get some sleep so that I can show up for us. So, it sounds self-serving, but it's not. I got to do these things so I can be whole so I could show up for what we're building new.

On your show, The Dr. John Delony Show, you have a lot of call-in aspects as well where people are calling you.

It's all call-in. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. You're coaching, they're telling you their challenges. You've been doing this for the last few years now. What is the big reasons for struggle in relationships or causes of divorce that you're seeing lately? I know kind of historically what that is. Is it more financial burden? Is it more— is there infidelity or people wanting more to sneak around? Is it a lack of intimacy? Is it family dynamics of the other families? What is the main cause of friction in Relationships or marriages today?

I think if I'm looking at symptoms, it's going to be money and infidelity. Really? Some scale of infidelity. Yeah. Some version of—

And people are calling in and telling you about this stuff, right?

Wild stuff. Yeah. Underneath it, I think it's a broader picture. Terry Real talks about this beautifully. The world changed and men just want things to go back to the way they were. And women want men to do new things without a new set of tools.

Give me an example.

And so you've got—

how is the world changing for men and women today in relationships that you're hearing about?

I watched it in my house. It was growing up. I'll give you this good example. So my dad's a homicide detective. He's a bad dude. He's a smart man. He's very fair and very kind and also a good guy. But he's also right a lot. You don't win arguments with a hostage negotiator.

He's got a good— he knows how to build a case. He can build the evidence around a case. So my mom grew up

in this culture that Christian women had no business going to college. You have a job and a role, and this is it. At 41 or 42, she went back and took her first— and she didn't go back, she went— took her first community college class. Wow. And my dad, everybody had been supporting her. You should go, you should go. She finally did it. Then the next semester she took another one, and then she had one professor say, you're real smart. No one ever said that. She went again. At 57, she graduated with her PhD. At 63, she got tenured at a university. And this past summer at 70-something, she did her last summer at Oxford.

Holy cow.

So it's this wild back half of her life. That's awesome. But in my house, in real time, I watched somebody who hadn't gone to college, who didn't know she had a voice, who was reading this literature for the first time and being like, hey, wait a minute, I think you're wrong.

I have an opinion. Here's my belief.

Here's my thought.

Yeah.

And I think I'm right. Well, that changed the dynamic of our home, right? And my dad is a super forward-thinking guy. He's like, okay, I know you're smart, but this feels like this way. And Texas homicide detectives don't have feelings, right? Right, right. And so it was this— it was them learning together. They've been married 50-something years, and I got ringside seats to, you better learn some new tools, man. Because she's in a world where her voice matters now. She's in a world— and think of this, in 1970 when my mom got married, she was not allowed to get a mortgage without my dad's signature. She couldn't get a bank account without my dad's signature. We think that was 1,000 years ago. That's my mom. And so to grow up in a world where you got to go have your husband sign for you to get a checking account, to all of a sudden you're teaching at Oxford and you're in London by yourself in your 70s, That's a big arc, and it's easy to go, yeah, I should just be that way. There's a lot of relationship, like, okay, I want to— I so badly want to love you right now. I don't know how. I'm out of tools. The tools I have were from the old era when I had to show up and sign for you. Can we learn together? Wow. Right? And there's a humility there, and there's an empathy there, and let's figure it out. And so I think in a world now where we expect everybody to be everything You're a co-earner, you're a co-parent, you're a co-manager. Co-lover. You got to be beautiful until you're 90 because we're going to be sexually active until we're 1,000 years old. You got to be— we have to believe the exact same things about this whole list of things.

It's a lot.

Nobody can carry that.

That's a lot, right?

And so the world shifts. And so if we can always remember us comes first, what does that mean? That means sometimes I tell my wife, I don't know if I believe this anymore. I don't know if I believe this particular thing about our faith tradition. And she doesn't go, she goes, yeah, tell me more about that. And she asks me in a month, hey, what do you think about that? Like, have you been reading on that? I read this book because you told me about that, and I want to walk with you. I read this book. Have you read— let's invite this couple over because they're real smart and they think this way too. Let's hear what they have to say. That's a different path because it's about us. It's not about being right. It's not about me, not about my discomfort. It's about Us.

If you can

keep that in

mind, that's big. When people change their beliefs in a relationship around politics, money, religion, parenting, family, whatever these things are, does that hurt a lot of relationships long term when you had the similar beliefs when you first got together the first few years, but 5, 10, 15 years down the line, uh, we've got some different beliefs that we don't believe anymore? Can you still make a relationship or marriage work with a lot of different beliefs?

Yeah, we confuse values and beliefs.

What's the difference?

Values are what we anchor into. This is who we are. We value everybody's welcome at our table, period. We value curiosity. I just read this thing and this is wild. Let's figure that out. We value community. We value We believe in filling the blank. We value faith. Why in the world would you read a book if you weren't open to having your beliefs changed? That's why you read. That's why you listen to this podcast, because you believed that cupcakes were the best food for you. And then you get a diet expert on here and they're like, that's going to kill you. And you go, my beliefs are different. My values of I want to live a healthy life and be a good steward of my body. We both value that. Cool. We were both told that endless amounts of cardio was the best way to be healthy. We value being a good steward of our body. Hey, I learned a new belief. We got to do squats now. Oh my gosh.

Interesting.

And so I think couples don't make enough space for— I want, I want my wife's beliefs to change. I want mine to change. Our values. That's where you get when I don't value hospitality anymore. Now we got to sit down and figure that out. I don't value family like I did. We need to talk about that. And so, if couples say, here's what— here's who we're going to be. Let's put that on a wall in the house. Boom. We're going to anchor into this. And then, our beliefs, man, I hope those change over time. If I still believed what I believed when I was 18, God help us all, man. You know what I mean?

Why do you think— this is fascinating. I really like this concept of values over beliefs and really allowing your beliefs to be flexible. Or open-minded beliefs, but it sounds like a lot more stronger foundation of values, but loose but flexible beliefs. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Is like, be open-minded to your beliefs being shifted or evolving?

Yeah, I saw this in a way that was really transcendent during COVID So I grew up the last 20 years, my professional life, I grew up, if you will, in the university setting. So I don't remember who it was. I think it was King's College. I'm going to make it up. COVID kicks off and bam, we think— making up a number— we think 35 million people are going to die. Every scientist I knew, and most of the scientists I didn't know, that were epidemiologists, that were modelers, that were virologists, they said, awesome, game on. And they go to their model with their data and the new data and the new data. And then within a couple of weeks, someone goes, boom, we think it's 12 million. And the scientific community cheers. We're less wrong. We are 35 minus 12 million people safer. Hooray. And I had just left the university and gone to a media company, and I was exposed to that whole ecosystem. And I realized politicians and many media outlets don't have a, oh, thank God we were wrong. Thank God. We've got new information now.

No,

if you state it, you got to die on it. If you put a belief out there, it's the end of time. You've etched it in concrete. The value should be we're going to find the right answer. We value truth. I believe this is true today. If I get some new information tomorrow, I should come out with trumpets.

Yeah,

dude, we got new information. Interesting. Because we value truth. We don't value being right. We don't value being first.

Wow.

That's a big difference. And so With my— now there's problems in the scientific community. There's a lot of people sold out. There's issues. But by and large, the picture was when you do a scientific study, you reject the null, right? Like, I want to be less wrong. I want to find out if I'm wrong or not. Not I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure, you know, I was right. Yeah, I'm wrong, right?

Wow.

What a different world that is. It's a different— it's a different way of approaching the world. So I celebrate literally when my wife comes in and goes, I just have been praying over this. I've read something new. I sat with a counselor. last 4 months. I think I believe this right now. The homeostasis of our home isn't threatened by that. In fact, it's celebrated because we are building us. I might have to say we need to build a new marriage around that because it's new, but we value curiosity. We value belief in one another. We value our marriage. We value our kids. And so let's figure that out. But we can't grab onto those beliefs. They'll kill us. They'll drown us. They'll pull you underwater.

It sounds like Most people that get into a dating relationship or a marriage don't have a true value system that they communicate with each other. They're not clear on it. They're not clear on the vision of their relationship. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a lot of people— and I'm— this was my whole history— get together based on chemistry, chemicals, feelings, and it's harder to talk about values. What are 3 things that you think every marriage should do before they get married to set themselves up for the most success possible? Not saying the least amount of challenges, but the most amount of peaceful experience of a relationship they could have, diminishing or lessening some of the challenges that would come later if they didn't do.

I think the first one is you have to have a group of people outside this marriage that you both are committed to helping carry the weight that you bring into the world. Really?

What does that look like?

Um, that means there are seasons when my wife— I get home from being on the road and she said, are you going to watch the fights this weekend with your, with your buddies? Because she knows I need to go sit with a group of guys and laugh and be goofy and tell jokes and eat nachos. Even though I'm trying to, you know, take care of my nutrition. She also knows she can't carry all of my am I enough and what about the bills and hey, what about the kids and all of it. I've got to have a group of guys that I can lean on, and she's got to have a group of women that she goes and sits with on a regular basis, and they go do whatever it is they do. We have to have a counselor that I call on and say I need some healing. Hey, by the way, I'm in— I haven't— like, next year I'll have a 9th grader. 9th grade for me was a magic year. High school, huh? 9th grade for my wife was not, right? We will have a different marriage because our bodies will have put a GPS pin in 9th grade and it will be, hey, I'm getting my locker. And I'll go, oh yeah. And she'll go, right? And so it's gonna be a new marriage. It's fantastic, man. And so I think having a group of outside people, the Second one is I would love to see couples sit down and say, what do we value? Not what do we believe, what do we believe, what do we value? What's important to us? And the third thing is having some sort of framework. And by the way, this framework will change probably a bunch, but what's a framework for how we will solve problems? You've heard people say like, we do it naked. We have people who we sit on the same side of the table and we solve this problem. We put the problem in the I don't care what the framework is. I think that the data on most of them is if you do them, they work, right? It doesn't matter. We go to a counselor, great. We go to a pastor, great. Can we agree before we get into traffic how we're going to get out of traffic?

Interesting.

And because you try to— you try to— how are you going to do money? Who's going to do the money? Who's going to do this? That sounds fine and good until it's like that old Mike Tyson. Everyone's got a plan to get hit in the mouth, right? So let's plan. We're going to get hit. Then what do we do? I'm going to make sure I listen to coach when I'm dazed. I'm going to make sure I go back to my training. I'm going to make sure I back up. Like, what have we done here? Do you have a framework for how are we going to deal with challenges when they come?

I love these 3 things. My buddy Jay Shetty talks about a key to a successful marriage or relationship is how well you fight and argue. It's like learning how to repair, right?

How do you come back?

An argument. So it's not a painful argument where it really hurts you, but it's like, all right, we were able to manage conflict in a semi-conscious, healthy way, even though we reacted, but we didn't scream at each other. We didn't say something we're going to regret. It's like we learned how to fight in a loving way.

Right.

We'll learn how to just manage conflict.

We agreed on the rules, right? Yes. There's a lot of UFC fighters going into boxing and they do jiu-jitsu tournaments and they do kickboxing. All those have different rules. We all agree Here's the rules of engagement. Cool. Now, we can get in there and go for it.

Agreements have been one of the best things that have helped me in my relationship with Martha is us creating agreements early on about what works and what doesn't work and what type of relationship we'd like to create together. She's gotten certain things that she wants me to do. I've got certain things that I'm like, hey, this is just off the table. There's no screaming ever. I don't care if I did something so horrible, you can never scream at me and I can never scream at you. We can get tense and raise our voices, but it never should be a screaming match. That just— that means we've gone unconscious. That means we're allowing our egos, our fear to take over, as opposed to curiosity, which is one of our values. Okay, my goal is never to intend to hurt you.

Yeah.

So if you're hurt by something I did or didn't do, be curious about it first. And if I did something really bad out of integrity, And you want to yell at me? Okay, then I broke the agreement, right? I broke the agreement. Then you can do whatever you want, right?

It's like, fair.

But my intention is to be a good man and to love you and to support you. It's not to hurt you.

Yeah.

And so,

but what you're saying there is I'm going to do everything I can for us.

Yes.

And I'm asking you, will you bring everything too?

Absolutely.

And if I can be in service to you in that way, you're in service to me that way, us will always be That will always win. Absolutely.

Yeah.

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I've got a few, a few more questions about relationships before we wrap up. You've got your book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, that is available. You've got Dr. John Delony Show that people can check out on the Ramsey Network, which is, you know, all the shows are amazing over there, but your show is great. It's a call-in show talking about all these different things. You've got amazing stuff on social media, John Delony everywhere on social media as well. But I want people to get your book because it's going to be really powerful. It's got some great stories, lessons, and frameworks to help people be less stressed and less anxious. And I believe when people have less anxiety and more peace, they can make better conscious decisions in intimacy and relationships, career, and everyday life. So I want people to get a copy of that book. I feel like the world has shifted over the last few years, obviously, in a lot of different ways. But there Seems to be more uncertainty coming over the next 2, 4, or 5 years. How can people set themselves up for better love and relationships with all the uncertainty of the economy potentially crashing in the next year, of presidential elections that come and go, of roles continually shifting and dynamic shifting in relationships? How can we set ourselves up for peace and harmony in relationship under chaos over the next 3 to 5 years versus more and more breakup, more and more cheating, more and more divorce?

Man, that's a great question. Out of the gate, I would suggest 2 things. One, come to terms with the person in the mirror. Be a person that other people can Love well, and instead of saying, "How do I keep from everybody breaking? Keep us from breaking up?" Am I a person that people don't want to break up with?

Interesting.

And so, how can I make my life to you know great? Sim to love. Like, how can I make my life antifragile? What can I do?

How can I make my life antifragile?

Antifragile. When things fall down. How can I have created a world where I can stand up? If you don't owe anybody any money and interest rates go up, that's annoying. If you have margin in your financial life and inflation hits you hard, it's really annoying. If you have an emergency fund without a credit card and you just put some money in a bank account, not for if but when something goes sideways and your air conditioner breaks, The most annoying thing is who's got a call, not how are we going to do this, right? Mm-hmm. And I know that sounds madness, like madness with the apartment rents for what they are, the, um, how expensive everything is. I know it sounds wild, but every day, day after day, call after call, I've had the privilege over the last 3 years to listen to folks who just said, I'm out of the system, I'm out of the matrix. I'm not going to go to a restaurant for the next 3 years. I'm going to pay my student loans off. So you know what? I don't care about what the next headline is about student loans forgiveness. They're not forgiven. I don't care. I'm out.

Yeah, I'm taking control.

I'm out, right? I'm not playing the game anymore. And you lose control over me, right? For me and my household, right? So, um, anti-frauders, how do you stand tall? And there's lots of discussions about folks who had cash in 2009 and they were able to just knock on doors and say, hey, like, I can help you get out of this house. We'll go to the bank and do a short sale. I'll write you a check for it. And now that real estate is worth a lot, right? But they were in a position— most of us will not be in that position that we just have enough money just to go knock on doors and buy houses. But how can we do that at the micro level? Do I have enough money that if there's, um, a big recession, do I have a pocket where I can still tip really well? and take care of my waiter at Waffle House because I know he's struggling? Can I do that? Do I have— can I just create a long-standing— what if I started right now with every Monday night we have a couple of families that show up at our house and it's the clean out your fridge night? I'm not cleaning my house for you. I love y'all. You bring whatever casseroles and half a bottle of wine, whatever you got, come to my house. We're going to start that now because I know in a year In 4 years, in 6 years, something's coming. It is. Let's stop pretending it might not. It will. Whatever it is— your mom will get sick, the economy will fall apart, uh, somebody will get elected that you hate, whatever it's coming. What if I had a core group of people already in a rhythm that this is who we are and this is who we're about, this is what we do? What if, right? So it's creating that world, not if but when something goes sideways. Mm-hmm. What would that look like?

I love this concept because I feel like this antifragile life, I feel like more now than ever, people take every little thing so personally. Yeah. Very thin skin.

Yeah.

Everything is an offense. Everything is a bothering. Everything is hurting their feelings or offending them in some way. And maybe it's justified. Maybe it is offensive. But allowing that person to trigger you that much means they have power over you in some way in that moment. You're giving them power. You're giving them your emotions and your reactions, and you're pulling your energy away from a vision, away from service, away from health, away from friends and family into this offends me and I'm going to let it consume my energy for the rest of the day.

And I'm going to tell everybody.

Yeah. And I'm going to infect gossip and this and that into other people about what is personally triggering me. And there's a difference between taking action on something that is unjust and saying, I'm going to act on this. This is unjust and unfair, and this is going to be of service. I'm going to be of service to ending this. And you can do that without things taking you and making you feel so overwhelmed that you are fragile.

Yeah.

Because a fragile person is unable to take action effectively, in my opinion.

Yes.

And your nervous system is going to get wired up. So you're going to

get— It won't be effective action.

You won't be effective. Right. And you're going to be more exhausted. You're going to be more tired. All these things.

Let's be honest, too. When Martin was— Dr. King was walking across that bridge, he was told with no uncertain terms, you're going to get killed. You're going to get shot today. Yeah. And he walked across a bridge. We don't have a reference point for justice. If you take a stand for that, Now that is, let's cascade crap on everybody so we can take you down at arm's length. You want to get involved, go get involved, but you're going to get hit in the mouth. You got it. Because true justice, walking and sitting with hurting people, you leave some blood on the floor too. That's what that means. And so minimize how many hills you want to die on, right? And be ready to die on that hill when it's time. And that doesn't mean go with your You know, with your big emotions, you go with your training and your data and your years of experience so that you can show up and be effective.

Absolutely.

That's a different world. So that story I told about my wife saying there's enough, I told that on another podcast and it spun up.

What do you mean?

It, it took on a life of its own.

Really?

I, I was stunned by it. I was like, what in the world? I didn't post this. Another podcast posted it and it took off. And then the comments started pouring in about my wife. How dare she? She better back off. Just like a woman keeping a guy down. I mean, it got ugly. And Lewis, at first I got pissed. It was instant. And then you don't get a vote,

right?

I gave my wife a vote. I asked her, when you see me drowning, will you reach in and help? And when I see you, I'll reach in and grab you too. And she saw her husband drowning. She said, I'm watching you die. And so all of the people from the nickel seats saying, oh yeah, you don't get a vote. I didn't give you a vote. Right. And you can say what you're gonna say, man.

Yeah.

But you know who I know is in my corner? My wife.

Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, one of the Four Agreements, which is one of the bestselling books of the last, I don't know, a few decades, is don't take it any personally. Right. And I think what I take away from that is don't let things affect you so much that takes you off your course, off your vision. You know, something might affect you and make you be like, I don't like this. Let's make— let's make a change with it. But don't let it ruin your day.

And also, I've given 4 or 5 people access.

Yeah,

there's some— there's, there's 4 men in my life, 5 men in my life who I've said, if you see me from afar, if you hear me in a room,

yeah,

you stop the— stop the music and you turn the lights up. And you say that's not who we are, right? I've given you permission.

Call me out. Give me that feedback. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. If you see a train coming at me and I'm just singing this, shove me out of the way.

Yeah, exactly.

But other than that, right? Right.

Those opinions.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a politician, man. It's a company trying to make money. Yeah. The news is those are publicly traded companies. Their job is to give me truth. Their job is to get clicks. I'm not going to give you clicks. Yeah, man. I need that for my daughter. I need that for my son. I need that for my neighbors, right? Yeah, I don't get that.

Building a Non-Anxious Life. I want people to get a copy of that. They can check out that. They can follow you on social media. They can check out your show, John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Network. You got a lot of great stuff. I read your other book, which was Own Your Past,

Change Your Future.

Man, that's powerful.

Thank you.

I read that right before I went on your show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, man, this is really powerful. I really like it. You've got this—

Hey, can we say that though? You don't do this very much, and I know you'll probably edit this out. Please don't. People don't know that about you, like that you have people on your show and they don't know that you're the guy that will go be on somebody's show and buy their book with your own money. I would have mailed you 50 of them if you'd asked for them, and you bought with your own money and you read it as you walked into my house. They don't know that about you. That's what makes you special and unique. That's hospitality. Right? That is, I see you and I'm gonna come sit with you. Yeah, yeah, it's out, right?

Of course.

That's not a man coming to war. That's a man coming to say, let's break bread and figure this out.

Absolutely, man.

Dude, that's who you are. That's awesome.

I appreciate that, man. Yeah, I mean, I got this little book at the Barnes Noble. I saw this, your face was right there on the thing. I was like, man, I got to get this book too because I don't think I'd already— I hadn't gotten this book yet. I was like, hey, it's here. I'm going to support you. This one's great as well, uh, Redefining Anxiety. Um, but a lot of great stuff you're doing, man. I really acknowledge you for Get uncomfortable because it's easy to give advice to people. It's hard to take your own advice.

Yeah.

It's harder to do the work yourself than it is to give the advice. And I know you came from an academic background as a dean and double PhD, and you could say, I've got all these things figured out. But for you to have the courage to step into your emotions in a different way and process them in a way you'd never have done before, With your wife, with your family, to your daughter essentially resisting you at arm's length, kisses and hugs for years, to now her jumping all over you speaks a lot about the work you're doing on yourself. Speaks a lot about the inner world that no one will ever see from your show and the books and all these different things, because there's a lot of people that can write a great book but isn't a great human being, and you're doing both. So I acknowledge you for showing up, and it's not perfect, and you've got bad days here and there, I'm sure, but you're showing up and you're doing the work, and that's a beautiful thing, man. That's what, what we can all ask for. So I want people to get that. I acknowledge you for that. I've got 2 final questions. This is called the 3 Truths. It's a hypothetical question. Imagine you get to live as long as you want to live, but it's the last day on Earth for you, and you get to accomplish an experience and live beautifully all the things you want to do. But for whatever reason, on this last day, you have to take all of your work with you. This book is gone. The content you've created is gone. This interview, it's gone from our world. But you get to leave behind 3 lessons to the world. This is all we would have to remember you by. I call it 3 truths. What would be those 3 truths?

Wow, Lewis, that's a great question. I'm gonna— so the 3 truths that I— 2 of them I got from home and one of them I got from my wife. The first one I got from my dad: when it's on fire, you go in. When everybody's running out, you go in. The second one is from my mom: there is no such thing as I can't. There's no such thing as too old. There's no such thing as too far on the margins. There's no such thing as excuse. You pick up a machete, you head into the jungle, and you start carving a path. And I watched her do it. The third one actually is this: it's not from my wife; it's from a buddy of mine who's a mentor, a spiritual mentor, and a psychologist. I went to him once with us with a student problem, and the university wanted to separate the student from the university. And I said, "No, it's my call." The student stays. The university said no. And I went to him as a spiritual mentor and said, hey, here's the situation. And he listened and he said, you're right. And he said, if this is where you draw the line, you're free to go. I want you to know your spirit's going to be light because what they're doing to this young man is wrong. You're free to go. And I felt all good. And he said, but never, never forget, if you leave and walk out that door, All the other students just like him will still be here. If everybody runs, if everybody cancels, if everybody shuts off, everybody leaves the crowds instead of walking to the crowds and whispering, I'm with you, then nothing gets better. And so what if we lived our lives as though we can never move? What conversations would I have? What challenges would I have? So the question, the truth I would ask is, The truth I would leave is it's often better to stay even when it's hard. Let's figure it out.

Probably good relationship advice also, huh?

Almost always.

Yeah.

Unless there's abuse. Right. Of course.

Outside

of abuse,

infidelity, abuse, lies, all that stuff. Yeah, of course. You don't want any of that. But

man, what if we stayed and figured it out?

Yeah. What if we both reinvented? Obviously it takes both of you to do that. You know, it can't just be one. But man, that's a beautiful truth. I love all 3 of those.

What a great question, man. I'll think about that one all the way home. Congrats.

Final question for you. It's been powerful. I appreciate you coming on and opening up. Final question. What is your definition of greatness?

For me right now, my definition of greatness is my kids want to come home. My definition of greatness is my wife and my daughter and my son can't wait to get home because Dad's a safe landing spot after a wild day. And so all of this other stuff is in service to, can I be at peace at my house? That's greatness. Am I a safe place for my loved ones to land?

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