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My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything.
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It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you re never going to be enough.
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Our brand new book, The Greatness Mindset, just hit the New York Times Bestseller back-to-back weeks.
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And I m so excited to hear from so many of you who ve bought the book, who ve read it, and have finished it already, and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book.
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If you haven t got a copy yet,
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You ll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward.
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This is the book I wish I had when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life.
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10 years ago at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life and the book I m glad I have today for myself.
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Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get your copy today.
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Again, lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get a copy today.
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Also, the book is on audible now, so you can get it on audio book as well.
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And don t forget to follow the show.
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So you never miss an episode.
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If you re anxious, it often means your body s working perfectly.
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It s letting you know.
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I ve identified something in the ecosystem or a number of things that you re not safe, you re not okay.
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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.
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We numb it, distract, we run away from it.
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And then our house burns down around us.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.
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Very excited about our guest.
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We have the inspiring Dr. John Deloney in the house.
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Good to see you, sir.
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Thank you.
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Welcome to the show.
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You are a double PhD and a mental health expert who works with a lot of people who are struggling.
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People who are hurting, suffering, and struggling with
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things they re aware of or things they re not even aware of but they know something is stuck inside of them and you help them really understand the anxiety, the suffering and the struggle or the stuckness in them.
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You help them be aware of it and you help them have steps on how to break free of it.
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So I m so excited that you re here.
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You ve got an amazing new book out called Building a Non-Anxious Life.
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It s available right now and
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I m curious, what do you think is the root of anxiety for people?
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Is it a societal thing?
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Is it a family history thing?
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Is it they have too many options?
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Is it that they have no options in their life?
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Is it that they have bad self-talk?
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What is the root of anxiety and how can we be aware of that so that we re not thinking that we are bad or wrong?
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But this is actually something that a lot of people deal with.
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So the true honest answer to your question is yes.
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Yes, anxiety is simply a smoke alarm in your kitchen letting you know that something s on fire.
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And it can be your back bedroom could be on fire, your bathroom could be on fire, your couch could be on fire.
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It s just letting you know there s smoke in the house.
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And so I love that you how you answer ask that question because
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If you re anxious, it often means your body s working perfectly.
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It s letting you know.
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I ve identified something in the ecosystem or a number of things that you re not safe, you re not okay.
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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.
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We numb it, distract, we run away from it.
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And then our house burns down around us.
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And so there s a new conversation happening in mental health circles, which is we spend 150 years telling people that their bodies are broken.
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Their minds don t work right.
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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.
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And so I think anxiety could be, like Dr. Wendy Suzuki says, it can be a friend.
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It can be a loud and annoying friend and a crippling friend, but somebody trying to get your attention for the good.
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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 because I m anxious about something, I feel like something s off, and it s almost becoming chronic now.
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It s happening for weeks, months, years.
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How do they get out of that?
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I know there s lots of different tools, but how do they eventually get free of anxiety, or do we always have some level of anxiety?
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So what I don t want to do is live in a house without a smoke detector.
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I don t want to be in that home.
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It s not safe.
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And so I m not going to go to war with anxiety.
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What I m going to begin to ask myself is this.
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Why does my body keep identifying things in my ecosystem, in my environment, in my relationships that tell me I m not safe?
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And that s the question we ve got to answer.
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So I ll say it this way, and it s a little dramatic and a little bold.
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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.
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If your body is letting you know that, I think you re about to get fired.
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If your body s letting you know, hey, you got six figures of student loans and a mortgage and two car payments.
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It would be failing you if it let you sleep all night.
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It would be failing you if it let you sit fully present in an intimate moment with your romantic partner.
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It d be failing you because death is at the door.
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And so instead of, I need to figure out some hacks to sleep throughout the night.
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No, you re waking up at 2.30 in the morning because your body s doing its job.
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You re not safe.
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The goal is to try to figure out, okay, what s my body identifying that s not safe?
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That s the work.
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You ll sleep.
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You ll sleep.
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you will be able to wake up without coffee or have coffee because you want it, not because you have to have it, right?
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Your body will take care of itself most of the time.
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There s some outliers, right?
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There s some medical conditions, there s some outliers.
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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.
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Right.
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Would you say that addictions in our world are highly linked to anxiety?
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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.
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Numbing it.
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I can t hear it very loud.
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Numbing it.
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That s right.
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I m going to Netflix my way through it.
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I m going to drink my way through it.
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I m going to pornography my way through it.
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I m going to text somebody I m not married to to feel that aliveness.
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I m going to go around it.
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I m going to distract myself from, what is that alarm trying to tell me?
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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.
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Why is it so much easier to drink?
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sleep with multiple people, chase work accomplishments and work longer hours, smoke, do drugs.
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Why is it easier to do that than to have a vulnerable conversation?
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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.
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Over years, some people do, of addiction to numb and anxious thought.
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I don t think we have a picture of what you just said looks like.
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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.
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Wow.
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Or saying, I hate that you re going through this.
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I m not going to try to solve it, but can I hold your hand?
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Son can hold your hand.
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Daughter can hold your hand.
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Spouse can hold your hand.
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We don t have a picture of that.
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We do have a picture of the man at the bar having a drink.
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We have the man on the motorcycle.
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The man shooting up.
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We have those images.
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And so I think there s a default setting that says, okay, I feel this way.
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I don t have a picture for it.
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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.
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Right.
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And open their hearts again.
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Yeah, it s hard.
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But that s a powerful, brave move.
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Because there s no model for it.
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The only model is run.
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The only model is flex.
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The only model is achieve.
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Get that dollar amount.
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And that s the picture we got.
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So I don t fault anybody for going to it.
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I used to when I was younger, like, why are you drinking?
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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.
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Let s, let s solve that.
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Wow.
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And that s a different approach.
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You ve been doing this work for what?
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A couple of decades now, right?
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From academic, you know, research side to actual clinical, working with people, sitting down.
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I was a dean of students.
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And so I was a professor.
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I was also a dean of students.
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I was sitting with people all day, every day.
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From students, you work with adults now as well.
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You work with single people, couples, people who ve been married a long time, people who ve been married and divorced a lot of times.
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What do you feel like is the biggest thing causing people to be anxious today at this time?
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Is it around money issues?
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Is it around purpose?
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Is it around the fear of like the world is crumbling or war?
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What is the biggest cause of anxiety today?
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I would have to, I mean if I m being honest, it d be cool to get a good clickbait answer.
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I think there s two or three things.
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One of them is, you ve heard that we re in the attention economy.
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I think that s a very flowery way of saying that.
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We re in the distraction economy.
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Don t look.
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Don t look at reality.
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Don t own reality.
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And don t take ownership for your life.
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Right.
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But your body s always solving for reality.
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Your body knows that your marriage is falling apart.
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It knows.
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It feels it intuitively.
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It knows you are two inches on that couch, but 2,000 miles away from them.
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Oh my God.
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It knows it.
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And I can be on my iPad, and my wife can be on her phone, and we can be scrolling, and we re married, and we re this close.
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But our bodies know that gulf is 1,000 miles.
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Our body knows if your boss has started to send projects to that guy.
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Your body knows, hey this isn t looking good, right?
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Your body knows that every four years you get one vote.
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You get one ping-pong ball toss, that s it.
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And so it realizes how little control you have, no matter how much news I consume and how much I comment on things, your body knows you don t have a lot of control.
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And so I think we don t choose reality.
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The second thing is we ve constructed the loneliest generation in human history.
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And again, your body would be failing you if it let you sleep with as lonely of a world as we ve constructed.
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Wow.
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You got nobody watching this side, nobody watching this side, nobody watching the kids, nobody getting food, it s all on you.
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And our bodies are not designed for that.
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It s exhausting.
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Hasn t evolved over bajillions of years to get to right here.
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It s probably exhausting and draining.
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At all the same time.
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But, you know, it sounds like society has created an environment for us to step into that lonely environment
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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.
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Isn t that right?
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That is our mission of today.
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My granddad, he passed away a few years ago, but he was born in the early 1900s.
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They gave him cigarettes when he was a kid because cigarettes calm kids down, right?
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And then they realized, oh, I think we re going to kill off kids, right?
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And there was, you know, if you go back and look at the 70s and 80s, there was this big, wide, stop smoking, stop smoking, stop smoking.
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That was the, hey, y all are all smoking, quit smoking, right?
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I think that s where we are.
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We handed all these little kids devices.
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We handed all these little kids screens.
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We handed all these kids 24 hours a day of great programming.
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It s not bad.
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It s good stuff.
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There s good stuff out there.
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And then we quietly created a group of kids that don t know how to interact with each other.
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Yeah, I remember growing up.
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I m 40 now, so I grew up in the 80s.
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I was born in 83 and I remember growing up and it was like video games was the devil, right?
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It was like back then, it was like, you got a Nintendo, you re going to be like brain dead, right?
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You re just on this.
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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?
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Or Duck Hunt or something, whatever it was back then.
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Duck Hunt, yeah.
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Duck Hunt, Mario Brothers, and like Street Fighter.
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It was like... Mike Tyson s Punch-Out!
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The greatest game of all time.
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Yeah, Tecmo Bowl, right?
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It was like...
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Oh my gosh, you re going to like be brain… It was like, oh this is horrible for kids, right?
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And I was very little.
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I feel like, you know, 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?
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But it was like you had to push three buttons just to get a letter out.
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It was no smartphone.
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It was like you re just calling people.
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You re not actually like on a screen scrolling and going through stuff.
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So I feel like I kind of missed, you know, I got lucky because I was outside playing sports after school all day until eight, nine, 10 o clock, whenever my mom would call me in.
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So I got a lot of outdoor physical activity, but I also felt very alone because I was lonely most of my childhood.
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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.
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So I see the benefit there.
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But how have you 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?
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What have you seen that s been the biggest struggle with that, with the family dynamic, parents and kids on screen so much?
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I think the device conversation has actually become a distraction.
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What s the real conversation?
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Two things.
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One, our parents trusted the news.
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All right.
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They trusted the news.
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Local news wasn t a publicly traded company.
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They trusted that man or woman in that seat to say, here s what s going on in your community.
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Real journalism.
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Right?
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Yeah.
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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.
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And so, what I think kids are responding to, to be honest with you.
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You know this, like you do interviews all the time too.
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It s very rare that you or I get surprised.
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Like, wasn t expecting that question.
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I was doing an interview during the middle of COVID, and somebody asked me a question.
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A lot of people are worried about masks and kids.
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Is it going to hurt them?
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Is it going to help them?
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Is it helping more than it s hurting all that?
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And I was surprised by the way somebody asked a question.
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It s one of those things that when you re live, you re live, right?
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And so my rule is if I get surprised, I m just gonna, I m gonna answer the truth.
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I m gonna go with my gut and we ll figure out what happened after later, right?
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And so somebody said, is this a hundred year problem?
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Have we destroyed a generation of kids by making them wear masks?
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And I said, kids are resilient.
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But here s where my gut answer came from and afterwards I think I m right.
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I think what has destroyed a generation of kids is the rage and anger and out of control-ness of a generation of parents.
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Kids absorb tension in their home.
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Kids understand that mom and dad would rather scroll than talk to them.
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they would rather stare at their phones at the little league game instead of cheering them on.
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They d rather go to war against that high school kid who s a ref in the game, right?
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What are we doing, right?
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And so I think this has become a sanctioned Xanax for children.
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That s what the, because let me say this, a connected parent will win almost every time.
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If a kid, a child has to choose between some, ah,
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and a dad on the floor.
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Eye to eye, listening, connecting.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That s a, that s a tough, that s a tough thing to beat, but kids know when you d rather be doing something else.
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Right.
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And so I think that the device is as bad as it is.
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I m, I m pathological in my house.
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My kids are,
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are out of the conversation with cell phones.
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So I m a weird parent.
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They don t have cell phones.
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No, goodness, no.
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How old are your kids?
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I have a 13-year-old who s, in fifth grade, he was the only one, right?
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The only one without a cell phone.
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So he s feeling like, ah, am I missing out?
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We ve had some hard conversations.
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Like, Dad, I m being left out.
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And he s right.
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My friends are texting each other.
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They can t text me.
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And I ve made some concessions.
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And when his friends come over, every one of them hands my wife their phone, and their parents are like, they love it.
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And so it s both, it s both.
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But I ve told my son, you re right.
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And so I m going to figure out some ways we can connect, but I can t give you the whole world.
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I can t let every company and Predator, I can t give them access to your bedroom.
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And so there s that.
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But I think the bigger picture is that means I have to parent.
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That means I gotta 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?
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And he s not trying to prop me up.
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That s a different level of work, man.
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That s another game.
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It s a different game.
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And you re in the mental health, you know, teaching and training world.
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Yeah.
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But it doesn t mean you re exempt from having to do the work yourself It means I gotta be first in line right if you re gonna be a person of integrity sure What was the biggest thing that you had to face?
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Internally over the last few years once you started to realize this as your kids are getting older and you re like, oh I
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you know, I need to step up in a different way.
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What was that thing that you needed to face within yourself?
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, um, 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.
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SPEAKER_00
Like a, like an argument or some type of,
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the way it went down was I ve worked in education for 20 years, which means I ve worked for non-profits for 20 years.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I ve been on salary and working on call 24-7, 365, hospitals all night.
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SPEAKER_01
You get up the next morning, you go back to work.
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SPEAKER_01
That s just the job and you get a paycheck.
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SPEAKER_01
This whole, if you read another book,
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SPEAKER_01
You ll get paid again if you go do the speaking gig.
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SPEAKER_01
This is a whole new world and it was exciting and wild and I didn t have an off switch.
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t know what that meant.
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SPEAKER_01
But I did know that that kid who grew up pretty poor with a dad who was a police officer and a minister, we re going to have groceries all the time.
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SPEAKER_01
So you hit the gas and you start looking for a steam and book sales and all these things.
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SPEAKER_01
It s an old cliche.
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SPEAKER_01
And my manager called and said, Hey, we got these two speaking gigs you really wanted.
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SPEAKER_01
And I was cheering in my basement.
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My wife came downstairs and said, What are you cheering about?
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SPEAKER_01
And I said, I got this one gig and I m pretty sure we got the other one.
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SPEAKER_01
way of dealing with conflict, she s very wise, and she usually will step back, and plus I m a lot, right?
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SPEAKER_01
She ll step back, and we ll circle back, and she ll say, hey, I want to talk about what happened yesterday.
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SPEAKER_01
She didn t do that this time.
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SPEAKER_01
She stepped into my space, which is rare.
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SPEAKER_00
And she said- Your gym is kind of your sanctuary, you re like, we re safe space.
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SPEAKER_00
Your man cave.
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SPEAKER_01
I m super excited, I m all sweaty, I m cheering.
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SPEAKER_01
And she said, I m watching my husband die.
2
SPEAKER_01
And she said, the pie piece for how much I love you
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SPEAKER_01
And the pie piece for how much money you make is full.
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SPEAKER_01
And then she said, you could take these speaking gigs.
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SPEAKER_01
Great.
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SPEAKER_01
I m not gonna hold you back, but do not say this is for me or for the kids or for our legacy.
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SPEAKER_01
This is for your ego.
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SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
And then she said something that was, it floored me.
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SPEAKER_01
She said, John, we have enough.
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SPEAKER_01
And Lewis, I didn t have a psychology for that word.
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t know what that meant.
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SPEAKER_01
I was a poor kid who was trying to prove myself.
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SPEAKER_01
And I don t have two PhDs because I m just super smart.
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SPEAKER_01
No, it s because you wanted to prove yourself.
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SPEAKER_00
I m trying to prove myself.
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SPEAKER_01
My sister was smart, my little brother was smart, and I was a dumb jock.
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SPEAKER_01
I ll show you, all right?
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SPEAKER_01
And so you just keep going, and it s never enough.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I went chucked into a hotel with this manuscript, and as I went through it, it was like, you re not living this, you re not living this.
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SPEAKER_01
Your book manuscript that you wrote.
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SPEAKER_01
That s right.
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SPEAKER_01
I was halfway through.
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SPEAKER_01
You were writing it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so 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,
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SPEAKER_01
I ll order one too.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s figure this out. 
2
SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
When was this?
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SPEAKER_01
This is within the last year, year and a half.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, this isn t long ago.
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SPEAKER_01
And
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SPEAKER_01
I m here, right?
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SPEAKER_01
We have the book, I ve got the radio show, I ve got the stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s almost like the floor keeps, like, okay, now you re ready for the next level.
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SPEAKER_01
And now you re not ready for the next level.
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SPEAKER_01
If you re willing to put the work in, I think the paths open themselves up.
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SPEAKER_00
Where were you most anxious in your life during that time?
2
SPEAKER_00
What was that anxiety running through your head?
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SPEAKER_00
That I m not enough, even if 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.
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SPEAKER_01
I preach all the time about reality.
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SPEAKER_01
I preach all the time about health and healing, dealing with your old traumas and all this.
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SPEAKER_01
and do that in number one best-selling book, Lewis.
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SPEAKER_01
All my dreams came true.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you hit the road.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you re doing a podcast and you go to this meeting and you got this interview and you do this.
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SPEAKER_01
You re on the road.
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SPEAKER_01
And I looked up and I remember I was in an SUV when the head of publishing had his cell phone.
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SPEAKER_01
We re going to a book signing and he handed it back behind and handed it to me.
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SPEAKER_01
And he said, number one, this is my last book.
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SPEAKER_01
He pulled over.
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SPEAKER_01
I feel good.
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SPEAKER_01
It was awesome.
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SPEAKER_01
We pulled over.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, Dave Ramsey calls me first call and he s like screaming.
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SPEAKER_01
All right.
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SPEAKER_01
I called my mom and I called my wife and then we pulled over at 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.
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SPEAKER_01
They didn t know.
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SPEAKER_01
And I felt weird because I was like, Oh, I haven t talked to you guys in nine months.
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SPEAKER_01
He s my best friend on the planet.
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SPEAKER_01
I skipped all of our monthly meetings.
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SPEAKER_01
I skipped our phone calls because I was on the road.
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SPEAKER_01
I was doing this.
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SPEAKER_01
And I realized I had gone back into old patterns of isolation and loneliness and trying to think my way through things.
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SPEAKER_01
I d started skipping workouts.
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SPEAKER_01
I d started.
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SPEAKER_01
I put the extra fries on there and it was slow.
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SPEAKER_01
And I started reading a lot of comments and internalizing that stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
And you keep going down that path and suddenly your body quietly starts sounding the alarms.
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SPEAKER_01
And I found myself an anxious mess.
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SPEAKER_01
And it was my wife, who had been down the road with me before, who was like, man, I remember this guy.
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SPEAKER_01
Because her body starts saying, you remember last time he did this?
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SPEAKER_01
And so I think it was all of it, man.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think anybody that wants to snake oil it and say, it s just this one thing or just this one thing, I think that s too reductionistic.
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SPEAKER_01
We ve created a chaotic life and we try to call it normal.
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SPEAKER_01
And then we re out there playing whack-a-mole with symptoms, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And so I think it s tackling it head on, walking into the anxiety and saying, all right, I m going towards the alarms.
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SPEAKER_01
What s on fire?
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SPEAKER_01
Let s figure that out.
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SPEAKER_00
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?
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SPEAKER_00
What commitment have you made and she made to support you guys over the last year and a half since then?
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SPEAKER_01
So I m actually busier now than I was, but it s an intentional busy with the finish line and it s in the seasonality to it, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
When you, if we were to go into winter and the meteorologists were like,
2
SPEAKER_01
We ll let you know when warm s coming.
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SPEAKER_01
It would be a disaster.
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SPEAKER_01
Or that crazy heat wave we ve had this summer.
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SPEAKER_01
It s different when you know.
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SPEAKER_01
come March, the sun comes back out, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And so in July of this year, we knew there s a book coming out and book comes out this fall.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to be on the road.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to be busy.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s start putting relational deposits in the account.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s be fully present with kids.
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SPEAKER_01
Let s not be on the road for the next two months.
2
SPEAKER_01
That means we re going to sacrifice some money.
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SPEAKER_01
That means we re going to sacrifice some X and some Y and some Z. I want you to come on a little bit early.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to pick the kids up from school when I can.
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SPEAKER_01
It s these little bitty things that are not the big flashy things.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not Instagrammable moments.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not highlights.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not awards.
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SPEAKER_01
It is leaning over with my seven-year-old daughter and saying, you want to play dominoes?
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to dominate you.
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SPEAKER_01
And she says, bring it, old man.
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SPEAKER_00
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
And she s seven, and we play dominoes.
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SPEAKER_01
There s no Instagram story there.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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SPEAKER_01
But there is a hug right before she goes to bed that says,
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SPEAKER_01
right?
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And that is what will buy me three months on the road.
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SPEAKER_01
People still have to go get deployed.
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People still have to go do crazy things.
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They have to go build businesses.
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Look at the world beneath that.
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SPEAKER_01
But you have to know, we got to do it in seasons.
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I got to do it with intentionality.
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SPEAKER_01
And we have to stay connected to other people.
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SPEAKER_00
I love the idea of seasons because as an athlete, that s how I lived my life for so many years.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s how I ve tried to design my life in the business world as well.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like around big seasonal moments.
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SPEAKER_00
We just had a big event this last weekend.
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SPEAKER_00
Which looked amazing.
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SPEAKER_00
It was amazing, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
The time we filmed this.
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SPEAKER_00
And there was a ramp up period.
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SPEAKER_00
And I remember telling my team, you know, I m sure they re listening out there for two months leading up to it.
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SPEAKER_00
I go, this is the playoffs, guys.
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SPEAKER_00
This is our Super Bowl.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s going to be a little bit more time right now.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s going to be intense.
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SPEAKER_00
And, you know, leading up to the week of, it s going to be less sleep.
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SPEAKER_00
So make sure you get rest now.
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SPEAKER_00
We got, you know, we get Fridays off every other week, leading up to it to make sure you ve taken time to recover your
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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SPEAKER_00
And then there ll be a come down and a recalibration and things like that.
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SPEAKER_00
But I think it s important to have that seasonal mindset.
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SPEAKER_00
And the interesting thing is, your wife said to you, we have enough.
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SPEAKER_00
Is that what she said?
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SPEAKER_00
Something around, we have enough.
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SPEAKER_00
And this will be for you wanting to make more.
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SPEAKER_00
You wanted to have your ego or being on stage or whatever it might be.
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SPEAKER_00
That s interesting, because a lot of people don t think they have enough.
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SPEAKER_00
What made your wife say or believe that you as a family have enough financially?
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SPEAKER_00
And whether you did or not, what made her believe that?
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SPEAKER_00
And why do you think she said that?
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SPEAKER_01
A couple of things.
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SPEAKER_01
We both grew up with not a lot.
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SPEAKER_01
And so the quick story is my dad was a homicide detective and a Swat hostage negotiator.
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SPEAKER_01
He was an awesome guy who spent his whole life serving the community.
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SPEAKER_01
He d put on his bulletproof vest when there was a hostage or when there was a bomb threat and he d go in.
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SPEAKER_01
But he wasn t making much probably.
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SPEAKER_01
And there was also seasons we didn t have enough groceries, right?
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SPEAKER_01
He would put the debit card in and there was no money in the account.
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SPEAKER_01
He was just hoping that he could pay the late fee so his kids could eat.
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SPEAKER_01
And that memory is like burning your psyche.
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SPEAKER_01
I will not, if that s what the public thinks of public service, I m out.
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SPEAKER_01
I m gonna go be safe through titles and money.
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SPEAKER_01
I m gonna go get it, right?
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SPEAKER_01
But then you became a teacher though, so.
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SPEAKER_01
That s right, that s right.
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SPEAKER_01
But Dean of Students made good money, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And so I got taken care of there.
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SPEAKER_01
And we ran and we ran and we ran.
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SPEAKER_01
And we started following the, what if we,
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SPEAKER_01
We ve got to decide what we do tomorrow, not the bank.
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SPEAKER_01
And so for years, I drove a $3,000 F-150.
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SPEAKER_01
That s great.
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SPEAKER_01
At 94.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean.
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SPEAKER_01
That s awesome.
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It was wild.
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SPEAKER_01
My wife drove a used Corolla forever.
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SPEAKER_00
It wouldn t die, Louis.
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SPEAKER_00
My first five years in LA, I drove a $4,000 car in 1991.
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SPEAKER_00
And I rode it and I was like, I don t need some flashy car out here.
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SPEAKER_00
It s mine.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I own this thing.
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SPEAKER_01
So you expand that out to, what if we just didn t, if we can t afford it, let s don t buy it.
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SPEAKER_01
We don t have credit cards.
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SPEAKER_01
And what if we bought a house that the mortgage person laughed at us and said, but you qualify for this.
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And it s like,
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I d rather get this sucker paid off.
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And so you look around and you don t owe anybody anything.
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Enough changes.
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The algorithm for enough is different.
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SPEAKER_01
And beyond that, you know this, there s, they call it mailbox money in our world, but you set up some things so that we re gonna be okay.
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SPEAKER_01
Some residuals coming in, some stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
There s some things on the calendar, we re gonna be okay.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s for any job.
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SPEAKER_01
That s a paycheck coming in, that s a sales cycle that they pick something up.
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SPEAKER_01
And I don t think what she was referring to with enough was a dollar amount though.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
And John, your kids don t love you because of the stages you re on.
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They love you because you re their old man and they just want you.
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Because you re playing dominoes for an hour a night or you re going to a baseball game and you re present.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not because you re traveling that weekend for a gig.
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SPEAKER_01
My buddy invites me to some fancy deer hunt, and I say, I ll go, but my son comes with me, and he s 12, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Right, that s cool.
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SPEAKER_01
And they re like, ooh.
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SPEAKER_01
So I think the enough thing was way less about ambition.
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SPEAKER_01
My wife knows who she married, and she knows that.
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Yeah, you re driven.
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SPEAKER_01
And I like being in the middle of the mess.
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SPEAKER_01
Of course.
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SPEAKER_01
It wasn t about dollar bill.
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SPEAKER_01
It was about love is right in front of you, and you re doing everything you can to avoid this.
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SPEAKER_00
On a scale of 1 to 10,
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SPEAKER_00
How much do you believe you are enough?
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SPEAKER_00
10 being the fullest amount, one being zero.
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SPEAKER_00
So this is about six months ago.
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I haven t told this one publicly, you ready for this?
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SPEAKER_01
So about six months ago, my same counselor I ve been working with, she s magic.
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SPEAKER_01
And I work in the mental health world and she s incredible.
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SPEAKER_01
And she said, I want you to make a fist.
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I want you to put it in your chest and I want you to say the words, I love this guy.
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SPEAKER_01
Louis, I couldn t say it.
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It was wild.
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I was like, I m not saying that.
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At first it was, I ain t doing that.
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SPEAKER_01
And then it was like,
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SPEAKER_01
I can t do that.
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SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
I was like, dude, I m a grown man with a show.
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SPEAKER_01
I can say whatever I want.
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SPEAKER_01
I couldn t say it.
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SPEAKER_01
You couldn t say, I love myself.
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I love this guy.
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SPEAKER_01
This guy, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And our mutual friend, Sal DeStefano with Mind Pump, I remember in private conversation, he said, John, you can t hate yourself in the better shape.
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SPEAKER_01
You can t go to the gym every day because you hate your body and expect that to be something you can sustain.
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SPEAKER_01
You go to the gym every day because you value you enough that you re worth an hour.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
That you re such a good steward, you re going to invest in that body.
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SPEAKER_01
Not that you re so disgusting that I m going to work this off.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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SPEAKER_01
And so similarly, you can t heal your marriage.
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SPEAKER_01
You can t heal your relationship with your kids by hating yourself into it.
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SPEAKER_01
You have to say, I m worth being loved.
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SPEAKER_01
And so six months ago, I would have given you a zero.
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SPEAKER_01
Come on.
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SPEAKER_01
I m giving a zero?
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t believe it.
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SPEAKER_00
You didn t believe you were enough?
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SPEAKER_00
I didn t believe it.
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SPEAKER_00
I d never asked that question.
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SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
I thought I can do a bunch of things pretty cool.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
I can play guitar.
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SPEAKER_00
I can write a book.
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SPEAKER_01
I m like, no.
3
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Can I sit with somebody without, I bought into the lie, which is a common male lie that my only value is utility.
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SPEAKER_01
What can you do?
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SPEAKER_01
What advice can you give me?
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SPEAKER_01
And my wife was like, will you just sit with me?
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SPEAKER_01
Will you just sit here?
3
SPEAKER_01
Right?
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SPEAKER_01
And so now I d tell you it s nine out of 10.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I ve got value.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I m worth being loved.
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SPEAKER_01
I m still figuring out what that means and how to do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I know it s true.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_00
Six months ago.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
That was quick.
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SPEAKER_00
How old are you now?
3
SPEAKER_00
I m 45.
3
45.
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SPEAKER_00
Two kids.
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SPEAKER_00
Married for how long?
3
SPEAKER_00
21 years.
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SPEAKER_00
21 years.
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SPEAKER_01
Great parents who are still married.
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SPEAKER_01
They re 50-something years.
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SPEAKER_01
Friends, career.
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SPEAKER_00
None of that matters.
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SPEAKER_00
But you didn t have the skill set, the tools, or the ability to say, I love this guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, and beneath that, and you and I both, we ve talked about this privately, trauma disconnects you from yourself, right?
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SPEAKER_01
It does.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s what it does.
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SPEAKER_01
So childhood abuse does, that s what emotional abuse does, that s what sexual abuse, that s what poverty does.
3
SPEAKER_01
it subtracts you from yourself.
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SPEAKER_01
And so you could do all the stuff, you could have all the metrics.
3
SPEAKER_01
And still not feel lovable.
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SPEAKER_01
But you know you re not.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s interesting.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because that wouldn t happen if you were.
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SPEAKER_01
And so you connect that thought and you heal that.
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SPEAKER_01
And then it s somebody asking that question, you say, oh man, I need to get some new skills because I know that to be true.
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SPEAKER_00
The interesting thing, when I learned how to
3
SPEAKER_00
I 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.
3
SPEAKER_00
A lot of my life.
3
SPEAKER_00
It didn t hold me back from being driven to prove I was enough, like you said, but I still didn t believe it.
3
SPEAKER_00
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.
3
SPEAKER_00
Didn t solve it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Didn t solve it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, I need the bigger goal, the bigger thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let me go prove more that I can do something and maybe then I ll feel loved.
3
SPEAKER_00
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.
3
SPEAKER_00
When I started to heal and integrate my whole self with the emptiness inside of me and integrate them so I was feeling whole.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I was feeling worthy and deserving of love from me and others.
3
SPEAKER_00
But really, if we don t learn to love ourselves, it s hard to fully love from others as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
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.
3
SPEAKER_00
I felt more peace than I ever felt in my entire life internally.
3
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My body started to relax, you know, and it took time to integrate that.
3
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It didn t happen overnight.
3
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It was like, it would relapse and I d feel triggered and anxious, but then it s like, okay, let me keep integrating.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I did that for a few years and it s been the most peace I ve ever felt.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I want the world to feel this peace.
3
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It doesn t mean I don t have challenges and stress and pressure filled moments, but I have the awareness to give back to safety internally.
3
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And that is a it s one of the greatest gifts I ve ever given myself.
3
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And I want everyone to have that gift.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
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?
3
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How can they truly get to a place of I am enough?
3
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I think saying the words out loud, I don t think I m enough.
3
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And we don t say that out loud.
3
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And I think there s a reason why every major faith tradition throughout human history has a confession component.
3
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And we ve taken confession to mean, say the things you did bad.
3
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That s not the original intent.
3
SPEAKER_01
The original intent was, here s me, do you still love me?
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
And somebody saying, I hear you and I see you, and I still love you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s the intention.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so it s starting with telling somebody,
3
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Well, I can t even say that.
3
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That was the day, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was the day.
3
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And if I back up, you re talking about that feeling, that feeling.
3
SPEAKER_01
Here s what healing was for me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I remember a few months out, my counselor asking me, how have you felt?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, I know this not to be true,
3
SPEAKER_01
But I feel a season of depression.
3
SPEAKER_01
I feel low.
3
SPEAKER_01
And she smiled and said, this is what normal feels like.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is what well feels like.
3
SPEAKER_01
You ve been so spun up for so long.
3
SPEAKER_01
So at war with yourself and everybody.
3
SPEAKER_01
Here s how this played out in my house.
3
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So here was my big dirty secret.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have a mental health show.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve got two PhDs.
3
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My wife has a PhD.
3
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She was, she was Dr. Delaney way before me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m working with kids and
3
SPEAKER_01
My daughter wouldn t hug me, Lewis.
3
SPEAKER_01
She wouldn t hug you?
3
SPEAKER_01
Nope.
3
SPEAKER_01
Four, five, six year old.
3
SPEAKER_01
At first it was fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was a funny little game that we would play.
3
SPEAKER_01
She s like, no dad, no hugs.
3
SPEAKER_01
but it became a thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Where she would like go hug your wife?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, she would hug and I d come in and I d kiss her on the head and she d throw a big old, stop, don t.
3
SPEAKER_01
Really?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you gotta understand like, I don t yell.
3
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I don t beat my kids.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t swear in my house.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s, I m a pretty boring laid back guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at first it was funny.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it was like, I need to figure this out.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it started to really bother me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And my wife, one day in her very calm, quiet way, as she does, she s so wise.
3
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She said, you re always preaching about neuroception, that scanner that s all
4
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scan in your environment.
4
SPEAKER_01
Am I safe?
4
SPEAKER_01
Am I safe?
4
SPEAKER_01
Am I safe?
4
SPEAKER_01
She said, what if that teeny tiny six-year-old little girl, her body for some reason is saying you re not safe.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I said, I don t yell.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t, I don t.
4
SPEAKER_01
She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
But then nuclear reactor in your chest is alive and well.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that was that in combination with our conversation was, I m going to talk to somebody.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I said a sentence a few weeks ago that I had never said before, which was, will you get off me?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because now I m her jungle gym.
4
SPEAKER_01
So healing 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.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m still figuring out what that feels like.
4
SPEAKER_01
45 years, man, of fight or flight.
4
SPEAKER_01
but my daughter feels it, and she s all in.
4
SPEAKER_01
And her body says, that guy s safe.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s my home base now, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I m with you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wish everybody could feel that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I could feel that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And let me tell you this too.
4
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You mentioned this doesn t solve the world s issues.
4
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had a cousin who passed away suddenly, several months ago.
4
SPEAKER_01
And somebody I loved, he was goofball.
4
SPEAKER_01
He was kind of out there, but I loved him.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because 15 or 20 years ago, my wife and I said, hey, we both grew up with not a lot.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s do the work.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s become a Corolla family so that we don t owe anybody any money.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s gonna be awful.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna have to forego vacations.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna have to forego fancy things.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just last year, she said, hey, could we get furniture in the house that matches?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, after two decades, it s time, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So what if we created a world we didn t owe anybody, saying my cousin dies?
4
SPEAKER_01
I bought two plane tickets, not because I m rich, but because we don t owe anybody.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve worked hard.
4
SPEAKER_01
We flew out of Houston.
4
SPEAKER_01
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.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I had the privilege of being heartbroken and sad, but I wasn t anxious.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t anxious about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, we ve got to travel to his funeral, and I can t afford to take the time off of work, and I don t have any money.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve got to put these on credit card so we can travel.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had the privilege of not being anxious, but just being really sad.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think in our culture, we pathologize life, normal things.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re supposed to be heartbroken if you get dumped.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re supposed to be brokenhearted if someone you love passes away.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s life.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what if we create a world that wasn t anxious so that we could fully experience this tough stuff and we could fully experience my seven year old girl leaning across the table and goes,
4
SPEAKER_01
I m coming for you old man.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then she puts a double five domino down and it s game on, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_01
What if we could fully be there?
4
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That s, that s the non-anxious life.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
I can t remember that s exactly what you said, but why do you,
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you need to change, this system needs to change, everything needs to change to fit my feelings and protect my feelings.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why do you think that is happening more so?
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve clipped the strings.
4
SPEAKER_01
Esther talks eloquently about this.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve clipped all of the common strings that bind us together with a common story.
4
SPEAKER_01
For however long you think the earth has been around.
4
SPEAKER_01
Our relationship to our gods told us what we re gonna wear, what your role is, whose job is what job, what our values are, what you do and don t do.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s been tons of oppression.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying it s all great.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m just saying that s the way it works.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then we cut all the strings.
4
SPEAKER_01
None of that s real, guys.
4
SPEAKER_01
If it can t be randomized, controlled, double-blind studied, it s not real.
4
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t exist.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so, as beings created to worship,
4
SPEAKER_01
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.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re a pharaoh.
4
SPEAKER_01
You will bow before me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we have a whole generation of people saying, no, you bow before me.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, you bow before me.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then you get chaos, which is what we have.
4
SPEAKER_01
Instead of saying, what if we all just went to the moon?
4
SPEAKER_01
Can we figure that out?
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s go to the moon.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what if we said, how can I love you today?
4
SPEAKER_01
Instead of, this is just how I m wired.
4
SPEAKER_01
I give answers.
4
SPEAKER_01
One of those ways you re gonna end up sleeping outside by yourself, one of those ways creates warmth in your home, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And so what do you want?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, what do you want this thing to feel like?
4
SPEAKER_01
What are you doing, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I often ask this question, does that feel good?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, great quippy response, like great grenade, sarcasm, you know, cynicism, good job.
4
SPEAKER_01
That feel good?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Did it?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is that what you re going for today?
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you feel powerful for a minute?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, what are we doing?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or do you wanna be connected and you wanna be whole?
4
SPEAKER_01
You get to pick, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
Connection, wholeness, peace, I believe comes from service.
4
SPEAKER_00
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 deflecting all of your needs to feeling peaceful and whole and healthy.
4
SPEAKER_00
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.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s something for me that has really flipped in the last 10 years.
4
SPEAKER_00
10 years ago, prior to 10 years ago, I was more about how do I look good?
4
SPEAKER_00
How do I win?
4
SPEAKER_00
How do I succeed?
4
SPEAKER_00
How do I, you know, be right as much as possible?
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was very unconscious.
4
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t like,
4
SPEAKER_00
I was conscious of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was survival mechanism.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was like, I need to win.
4
SPEAKER_00
I need to be right.
4
SPEAKER_00
I need to make more.
4
SPEAKER_00
I need to look good.
4
SPEAKER_00
I need to have this image and ego, you know, shape the way I want it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I just realized that wasn t a happy life for me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe some moments that seemed happy, but it wasn t really fulfilling until I said, it s gotta be collaboration over competition.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I can still compete in certain ways, but it can t be for someone to be less than.
4
SPEAKER_00
It needs to be for me to compete to get better and serve better.
4
SPEAKER_00
But collaboration over competition, service over self,
4
SPEAKER_00
That is what s brought me a lot more fulfillment.
4
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean it s always easy.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s challenges, but it s brought me much more meaning and fulfillment.
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you think is the biggest cause of pain in relationships today?
4
SPEAKER_00
Me over us.
4
SPEAKER_01
Really?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Me over us.
4
SPEAKER_01
How I feel right now.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or how you made me feel.
4
SPEAKER_01
Not, my body responded when you did this.
4
SPEAKER_01
I need to deal with that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or, I ve got some hard choices to make.
4
SPEAKER_01
You did it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You did it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s me over us.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think, and 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.
4
SPEAKER_01
She was talking to a couple who had experienced infidelity and she said one of the greatest challenges couples experience is
4
SPEAKER_01
They want to, I just want to get back to the way things were.
4
SPEAKER_01
And she likened it to, you couldn t go on September 12th and sweep up all of that dust and glass and steel and rebuild those towers with that stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
They fell.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have two choices.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can walk away and let nature take it back over, and it will.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or you can hire some experts.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can excavate that.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can design, build, grieve, come together, and build something beautiful, a nod to the past, but something going this away that s hopefully stronger.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those are your two choices.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what you had is over.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I ve taken that into my own home.
4
SPEAKER_01
My wife and I, right now, we ve never been parents of an eighth grader and a second grader.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a new marriage, and so we re gonna build something new.
4
SPEAKER_01
It ll have a lot of the features of the old one, but this is new, because eighth graders stay out later than second graders, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
We re used to going to bed at nine o clock.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ain t doing that anymore, because I got to pick them up, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So we have a new marriage.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you keep saying, I just want to get back to the way it was, I just want to get back.
4
SPEAKER_01
you end up dragging each other back.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so if we put, we said I do, then us becomes number one.
4
SPEAKER_01
And 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.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it sounds self-serving, but it s not.
4
SPEAKER_01
I got to do these things so I can be whole, so I could show up for what we re building new.
4
SPEAKER_00
On your show, the Dr. John Deloney show, you have a lot of call-in aspects as well, where people are calling you, you re coaching, they re telling you their challenges.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve been doing this for the last few years now.
5
SPEAKER_00
What is the big reasons for struggle in relationships or causes of divorce that you re seeing lately?
5
SPEAKER_00
I know kind of historically what that is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it more financial burden?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it more, um, is there infidelity or people wanting more to like sneak around?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it a lack of intimacy?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it,
5
SPEAKER_00
family dynamics of the other families.
5
SPEAKER_00
What is the main cause of friction in relationships or marriages today?
5
SPEAKER_01
I think if I m looking at symptoms, it s going to be money and infidelity.
5
SPEAKER_00
Really?
5
SPEAKER_01
Some scale of infidelity.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Some version of
5
SPEAKER_00
And people are calling in and telling you about this stuff, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Um, underneath it, I think it s a broader picture.
5
SPEAKER_01
Terry real talks about this beautifully.
5
SPEAKER_01
Um, the world changed and men, um, just want things to go back to the way they were.
5
SPEAKER_01
And women want men to do new things without new, a new set of tools.
5
SPEAKER_01
Give me an example.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so you ve got, um, how s the world changing for men and women today in, in relationships that you re hearing about?
5
SPEAKER_00
Um, I watched it in my house.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was it growing up.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ll give you this a good example.
5
SPEAKER_01
So my dad s a homicide detective.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s a bad dude.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s a smart man.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s very fair and very kind and also a good guy.
5
SPEAKER_01
But he s also right a lot.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t win arguments with a hostage negotiator.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s got a good, he knows how to build a case, he can build the evidence around a case.
5
SPEAKER_01
So my mom grew up in this culture that Christian women had no business going to college.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have a job and a role, and this is it.
5
SPEAKER_01
At 41 or 42, she went back and took her first, she didn t go back, she went, took her first community college class.
5
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
5
SPEAKER_01
And my dad, everybody had been supporting her, you should go, you should go, she finally did it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then the next semester, she took another one.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then she had one professor say, you re real smart.
5
SPEAKER_01
No one ever said that.
5
SPEAKER_01
She went again.
5
SPEAKER_01
At 57, she graduated with her PhD.
5
SPEAKER_01
At 63, she got tenured at a university.
5
SPEAKER_01
And this past summer, at 70-something, she did her last summer at Oxford.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s this wild back half of her life.
5
SPEAKER_01
But in my house, in real time,
5
SPEAKER_01
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.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think you re wrong.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have an opinion.
5
SPEAKER_01
Here s my belief.
5
SPEAKER_00
Here s my theory.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think I m right.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, that changed the dynamic of our home, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
And my dad is a super forward-thinking guy.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s like, okay, I know you re smart, but this feels like this way.
5
SPEAKER_01
And Texas homicide detectives don t have feelings, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
And so it was them learning together.
5
SPEAKER_01
They ve been married 50-something years, and I got to wring side seats to, you better learn some new tools, man, because she s in a world where her voice matters now.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s in a world, and think of this.
5
SPEAKER_01
In 1970, when my mom got married, she was not allowed to get a mortgage without my dad s signature.
5
SPEAKER_01
She couldn t get a bank account without my dad s signature.
5
SPEAKER_01
We think that was a thousand years ago.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s my mom.
5
SPEAKER_01
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.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s easier to go, yeah, I should just be that way.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of relationship like, okay, I so badly want to love you right now.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m out of tools.
5
SPEAKER_01
The tools I have were from the old era when I had to show up and sign for you.
5
SPEAKER_01
Can we learn together?
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s a humility there and there s an empathy there and let s figure it out.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I think in a world now where we expect everybody to be everything,
5
SPEAKER_01
You re a co-earner, you re a co-parent, you re a co-manager, you re a co-lover.
5
SPEAKER_01
You ve got to be beautiful until you re 90 because we re going to be sexually active until we re a thousand years old.
5
SPEAKER_01
We have to believe the exact same things about this whole list of things.
5
SPEAKER_01
And nobody can carry that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so the world shifts.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so if we can always remember, us comes first.
5
SPEAKER_01
What does that mean?
5
SPEAKER_01
That means sometimes I tell my wife, I don t know if I believe this anymore.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if I believe this particular thing about our faith tradition.
5
SPEAKER_01
And she doesn t go, she goes, man, tell me more about that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And she asks me in a month, Hey, what do you think about that?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, have you been reading on that?
5
SPEAKER_01
I read this book cause you told me about that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I want to walk with you.
5
SPEAKER_01
I read this book.
5
SPEAKER_01
Have you read?
5
SPEAKER_01
Let s invite this couple over because they re real smart and they think this way too.
5
SPEAKER_01
Let s hear what they have to say.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s a different path because it s about us.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not about being right.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not about me, not about my discomfort.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s about us.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can keep that in mind.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s big.
5
SPEAKER_00
When people change their beliefs in a relationship around politics, money, religion, parenting, family, whatever these things are,
5
SPEAKER_00
Does that hurt a lot of relationships long-term when you have the similar beliefs when you first got together the first few years, but five, 10, 15 years down the line, we ve got some different beliefs that we don t believe anymore.
5
SPEAKER_00
Can you still make a relationship or marriage work with a lot of different beliefs?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we confuse values and beliefs.
5
SPEAKER_01
What s the difference?
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Values are what we anchor into.
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This is who we are.
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We value everybody s welcome at our table, period.
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We value curiosity.
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I just read this thing, and this is wild.
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Let s figure that out.
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We value community.
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We believe in fill in the blank.
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We value faith.
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Why in the world would you read a book if you weren t open to having your beliefs changed?
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That s why you read.
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That s why you listen to this podcast, because you believed that
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Cupcakes were the best food for you.
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And then you get a diet expert on here and they re like, that s going to kill you.
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And you go, my beliefs are different.
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My values of, I want to live a healthy life and be a good steward of my body.
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We both value that.
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Cool.
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We were both told that, um, endless amounts of cardio was the best way to be healthy.
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We value being a good steward of our body.
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Hey, I learned a new belief.
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We got to do squats now.
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Oh my gosh.
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Interesting.
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And so I think couples don t make enough space for,
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I want my wife s beliefs to change.
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I want mine to change.
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Our values, that s where you get when I don t value hospitality anymore.
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Now we ve got to sit down and figure that out.
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I don t value family like I did.
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We need to talk about that.
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And so if couples say, here s who we re going to be.
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Let s put that on a wall in the house.
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Boom, we re going to anchor into this.
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And then our beliefs, man, I hope those change over time.
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If I still believed what I believed when I was 18, God help us all, man.
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You know what I mean?
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This is fascinating.
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I really like this concept of values over beliefs.
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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.
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Is that what I m hearing you say?
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It s like be open-minded to your beliefs being shifted or evolving.
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Yeah, I saw this in a way that was really transcendent during COVID.
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So I grew up the last 20 years, my professional life, I grew up, if you will, in the university setting.
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So I don t remember who it was, I think it was King s College, I m gonna make it up.
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COVID kicks off and bam, we think, I m making up a number, we think 35 million people are gonna die.
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Every scientist I knew, and most of the scientists I didn t know, there were epidemiologists, there were modelers, there were virologists, they said, awesome, game on.
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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.
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And the scientific community cheers.
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We re less wrong.
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We are 35 minus 12 million people safer, hooray.
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And I had just left the university and gone to a media company.
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And I was exposed to that whole ecosystem.
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And I realized politicians and many media outlets don t have a, oh, thank God we were wrong.
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Thank God.
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We ve got new information now.
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If you state it, you got to die on it.
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If you put a belief out there, it s the end of time.
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You ve etched it in concrete.
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The value should be, we re going to find the right answer.
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We value truth.
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I believe this is true today.
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If I get some new information tomorrow, I should come out with trumpets.
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SPEAKER_01
Dude, we got new information!
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Because we value truth.
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We don t value being right.
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We don t value being first.
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That s a big difference.
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There s problems in the scientific community.
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There s a lot of people sold out.
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There s issues.
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But by and large, the picture was, when you do a scientific study, you reject the null, right?
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Like, I want to be less wrong.
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I want to find out if I m wrong or not.
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Not, I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure you know I was right.
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You know when I m wrong.
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What a different world that is.
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It s a different way of approaching the world.
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So I celebrate literally when my wife comes in and goes, I just have been praying over this.
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I ve read something new.
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I sat with a counselor last four months.
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I think I believe this right now.
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The homeostasis of our home isn t threatened by that.
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In fact, it s celebrated because we are building us.
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I might have to say we need to build a new marriage around that because it s new.
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But we value curiosity.
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We value belief in one another.
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We value our marriage.
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We value our kids.
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And so let s figure that out.
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can t be grabbed onto those beliefs.
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They ll kill us, they ll drown us, they ll pull you into water.
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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.
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They re not clear on it.
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They re not clear on the vision of their relationship.
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Correct me if I m wrong, but it seems like a lot of people, and this was my whole history, get together based on chemistry, chemicals, feelings,
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and it s harder to talk about values.
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Um, what are three things that you think every marriage should do before they get married to set themselves up for the most success possible?
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Not saying the least amount of challenges, but the most amount of peaceful experience of a relationship they could have diminishing or, you know, lessening some of the challenges that would come later if they didn t do.
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I think the first one is you have to have a group of people outside this marriage that you both
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are committed to helping carry the weight that you bring into the world.
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Really.
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What does that look like?
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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 buddies?
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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.
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She also knows she can t carry all of my, am I enough?
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And what about the bills?
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And hey, what about the kids?
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And all of it.
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I ve got to have a group of guys that I can lean on.
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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.
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We have to have a counselor that I call on and say, I need some healing.
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Hey, by the way, next year I ll have a ninth grader.
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Ninth grade for me was a magic year.
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High school?
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Ninth grade for my wife was not.
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We will have a different marriage because our bodies will have put a GPS pin in ninth grade and it will be
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Hey, I m getting my locker. 
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And I ll go, Oh, yeah.
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And she ll go, Oh, right.
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And so it s going to be a new marriage.
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It s fantastic, man.
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And so I think having a group of outside people, the second one is I would love to see a couple sit down and say, what do we value?
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Not what we believe.
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What do we value?
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What s important to us?
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And the third thing is having some sort of framework.
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And by the way, this framework will change probably a bunch.
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but what s a framework for how we will solve problems?
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You ve heard people say, like, we do it naked.
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We have, you know, people who, we sit on the same side of the table when we solve this problem.
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We put the problem in the, I don t care what the framework is.
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I think that the data on most of them is if you do them, they work, right?
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It doesn t matter.
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We go to a counselor, great.
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We go to a pastor, great.
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Can we agree before we get into traffic,
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how we re going to get out of traffic.
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And because you try to, you try to, how are you going to do money?
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Who s going to do the money?
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SPEAKER_01
Who s going to do the, this, that sounds fine and good until it s like that.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t like Tyson.
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Everyone s got a plan to get hit in the mouth, right?
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So let s plan.
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We re going to get hit.
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Then what do we do?
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I m going to make sure I listen to coach when I m dazed.
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I m going to make sure I go back to my training.
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I m going to make sure I back up.
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Like what, what have we done here?
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Do you have a framework for how you re going to deal with challenges?
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Well, I love these three things.
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My buddy Jay Shetty talks about, you know, a key to a successful marriage or relationship is how well you fight and argue.
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Yeah.
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It s like learning how to have an argument.
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So it s not a painful argument where it really hurts you, but it s like, all right, we were able to,
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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 were to regret.
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It s like we learned how to fight in a loving way, right?
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We ll learn how to just manage conflict.
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We agree on the rules, right?
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Yes There s a lot of UFC fighters going into boxing and they do jujitsu tournaments and they do kickboxing all those have different rules We all agree.
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Here s the rules of engagement
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Cool.
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Now we can get in there and go for it.
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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.
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She s gotten certain things that she wants me to do.
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I ve got certain things that I m like,
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Hey, this is just off the table.
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Like there s no screaming ever.
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Yeah.
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I don t care if you re, if I did something so horrible, you can never scream at me and I can never scream at you.
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We can get tense and raise our voices, but there s never should be a screaming match.
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That just, that means we ve gone unconscious.
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That means we re allowing our egos, our fear to take over as opposed to curiosity, which is one of our values.
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Okay.
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My goal is never to intend to hurt you.
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So if you re hurt by something I did or didn t do, be curious about it first.
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And if I did something really bad out of integrity and you wanna yell at me, okay, then I broke the agreement, right?
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I broke the agreement, then you can do whatever you want, right?
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It s like, but my intention is to be good man and to love you and to support you.
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It s not to hurt you.
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And so- But what you re saying there is,
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I m going to do everything I can for us.
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Yes.
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And I m asking you to, will you bring everything too?
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Absolutely.
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And if I can be in service to you in that way and you re in service to me that way, us will always be, we ll always win.
6
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
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Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve got a few, a few more questions about relationships before we wrap up.
6
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Um, you ve got your book building a non-anxious life that is available.
6
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You ve got,
6
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Dr. John Deloney 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.
6
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It s a call-in show talking about all these different things.
6
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You ve got amazing stuff on social media.
6
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John Deloney everywhere on social media as well.
6
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But I want people to get your book because it s gonna be really powerful.
6
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It s got some great stories, lessons, and frameworks to help people be less stressed and less anxious.
6
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And I believe when people have less anxiety,
6
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and more peace, they can make better conscious decisions in intimacy and relationships, career and everyday life.
6
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So I want people to get a copy of that book.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like the world has shifted over the last few years, obviously, in a lot of different ways.
6
SPEAKER_00
But there seems to be more uncertainty coming over the next two, four or five years.
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How can people
6
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set themselves up for better love and relationships?
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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 three to five years versus more and more breakup, more and more cheating, more and more divorce?
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Man, that s a great question.
6
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Out of the gate, I would suggest two things.
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One, come to terms with the person in the mirror.
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Be a person that other people can love well.
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And instead of saying, how do I keep from everybody breaking, keep us from breaking up?
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Am I a person that people don t want to break up with?
6
SPEAKER_01
Uh, interesting.
6
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And so, um, how can I make my life to, you know, a great sim to love, like how can I make my life any fragile?
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What can I do?
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How can I make my life anti-fragile?
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Anti-fragile.
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When things fall down,
6
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How can I have created a world where I can stand up?
6
SPEAKER_01
If you don t owe anybody any money and interest rates go up, that s annoying.
6
SPEAKER_01
If you have margin in your financial life and inflation hits you hard, it s really annoying.
6
SPEAKER_01
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,
6
SPEAKER_01
How are we going to do this?
6
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And I know that sounds madness, like madness with the apartment rents for what they are, how expensive everything is.
6
SPEAKER_01
I know it sounds wild, but every day, day after day, call after call, I ve had the privilege of the last three years to listen to folks who just said, I m out of the system.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m out of the matrix.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m not gonna go to a restaurant for the next three years, I m gonna pay my student loans off.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you know what I don t care about?
6
SPEAKER_01
What the next headline is about student loans, forgiveness.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re not forgiving.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t care, I m out.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m out, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
I m not playing the game anymore.
6
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And you lose control over me, right?
6
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For me and my household, right?
6
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So, Antifrauders, how do you stand tall?
6
SPEAKER_01
And there s lots of discussions about folks who had cash in 2009,
6
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they re able to just knock on doors and say, Hey, like I can help you get out of this house.
6
SPEAKER_01
We ll go to the bank and do a short sale.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ll write you a check for it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And now that real estate is worth a lot, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
But they were in a position.
6
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Most of us will not be in that position that we just have enough money to go knock on doors in my houses.
6
SPEAKER_01
But how can we do that at the micro level?
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Do I have enough money that if there s a big recession,
7
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Do I have a pocket where I can still tip really well and take care of my waiter at Waffle House?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because I know he s struggling.
7
SPEAKER_01
Can I do that?
7
SPEAKER_01
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.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m not cleaning my house for you.
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I love y all.
7
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You bring whatever casseroles and half a bottle of wine, whatever you got, come to my house.
7
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna start that now.
7
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Because I know in a year, in four years, in six years, something s coming.
7
SPEAKER_01
It is.
7
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Let s not pretending it might not, it will.
7
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Whatever it is.
7
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Your mom will get sick.
7
SPEAKER_01
The economy will fall apart.
7
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Somebody will get elected that you hate.
7
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Whatever, it s coming.
7
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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.
7
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This is what we do.
7
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What if, right?
7
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So it s creating that world, not if, but when something goes sideways, what would that look like?
7
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I love this concept because I feel like this anti-fragile life, I feel like more now than ever, people take every little thing so personally.
7
SPEAKER_00
Very thin skin.
7
SPEAKER_00
Everything is an offense.
7
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Everything is a bothering.
7
SPEAKER_00
Everything is hurting their feelings or
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offending them in some way.
7
SPEAKER_00
And maybe it s justified.
7
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it is offensive.
7
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But allowing that person to trigger you that much means they have power over you in some way in that moment.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re giving them power.
7
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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.
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And I m going to tell everybody.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I m going to infect gossip and this and that into other people about what is personally triggering me.
7
SPEAKER_00
And there s a difference between taking action on something that is unjust and saying, I m going to act on this.
7
SPEAKER_00
This is unjust and unfair, and I m going to be of service to ending this.
7
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And you can do that without things taking you, making you feel so overwhelmed that you are fragile.
7
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Because a fragile person is unable to take action effectively, in my opinion.
7
SPEAKER_00
And your nervous system is going to get wired up, so you re going to get... It won t be effective action.
7
SPEAKER_00
You won t be effective, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
And you re going to be more exhausted, you re going to be more tired, all these things.
7
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Let s be honest too.
7
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When Martin was, Dr. King was walking across that bridge, he was told with no uncertain terms, you re going to get killed walking across that bridge.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he walked across a bridge.
7
SPEAKER_01
We don t have a reference point for justice.
7
SPEAKER_01
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.
7
SPEAKER_01
You wanna get involved, go get involved, but you re gonna get hit in the mouth because true justice, walking and sitting with hurting people.
7
SPEAKER_01
you leave some blood on the floor too.
7
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That s what that means.
7
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And so minimize how many hills you wanna die on and be ready to die on that hill when it s time.
7
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And that doesn t mean go with your, you know, with your big emotions.
7
SPEAKER_01
You go with your training and your data and your years of experience so that you can show up and be effective.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s a different world.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that story I told about my wife saying there s enough.
7
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I told that on another podcast.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it spun up.
7
SPEAKER_01
What do you mean?
7
SPEAKER_01
It, it took on a life of its own.
7
SPEAKER_01
Really?
7
SPEAKER_01
I, I was stunned by it.
7
SPEAKER_01
I was like, what in the world?
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t post this.
7
SPEAKER_01
Another podcast posted it and it took off.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then the comments started pouring in about my wife.
7
SPEAKER_01
How dare she?
7
SPEAKER_01
She better back off.
7
SPEAKER_01
Just like a woman keeping a guy down.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it got ugly.
7
SPEAKER_01
And Louis, at first I got pissed.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was instant.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then.
7
SPEAKER_01
You don t get a vote.
7
SPEAKER_01
I gave my wife a vote.
7
SPEAKER_01
I asked her, when you see me drowning, will you reach in and help?
7
SPEAKER_01
And when I see you, I ll reach in and grab you too.
7
SPEAKER_01
And she saw her husband drowning.
7
SPEAKER_01
She said, I m watching you die.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so all of the people from the nickel seats saying, oh yeah, you don t get a vote.
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t give you a vote.
7
SPEAKER_01
You can say what you re going to say, man.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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But you know who I know is in my corner?
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My wife.
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Yeah, it s interesting.
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I mean, one of the four agreements, which is one of the best-selling books of the last, I don t know, a few decades, is don t take anything personally, right?
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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.
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Something might affect you and make you be like, I don t like this, let s make a change with it.
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But don t let it ruin your day.
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And also, I ve given four or five people access.
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Yeah, there s some there s there s four men in my wife five men in my wife who I ve said if you see me from afar if you hear me in your room Yeah, you stop the stop the music and you turn the lights up and you say that s not who we are, right?
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I ve given you permission me out.
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Give me that feedback.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Yeah If you see a train coming at me, and I m just singing right back shove me out of the way Yeah, exactly.
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But other than that
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It s a politician man.
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It s a company trying to make money.
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The news, those are publicly traded companies.
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Their job is to give me truth.
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Their job is to get clicks.
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I m not going to give you me.
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I need that for my daughter.
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I need that for my son.
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I need that for my neighbors.
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I don t get that.
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building a non-anxious life.
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I want people to get a copy of that.
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They can check out that.
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They can follow you on social media.
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They can check out your show, John Deloney Show on the Ramsey Network.
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You got a lot of great stuff.
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I read your other book, which was... Oh, Your Past, Change Your Future.
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Man, that s powerful.
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Thank you.
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I read that right before I went on your show.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And I was like, man, this is really powerful.
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I really like it.
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You ve got this... Hey, can we say that, though?
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You don t do this very much, and I know you ll probably edit this out.
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Please don t.
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People don t know that about you.
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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.
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I would have mailed you 50 of them if you d asked for them and you bought it with your own money and you read it as you walked into my house.
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They don t know that about you.
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That s what makes you special and unique.
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That s hospitality.
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Right?
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That is, I see you and I m going to come sit with you.
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We ll figure this out.
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Right?
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Of course.
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That s not a man coming to war.
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That s a man coming to say, let s break bread and figure this out.
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Absolutely, man.
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Dude, that s who you are.
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That s awesome.
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I appreciate that.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I got this little book at the Barnes and Noble.
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I saw this, your face was right there on the thing.
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I was like, man, I got to get this book too.
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Cause I don t think I d already, I hadn t gotten this book yet.
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I was like, Hey, it s here.
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I m going to support you.
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This one s great as well.
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Uh, redefining anxiety.
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Um, but a lot of great stuff you re doing, man.
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I really acknowledge you for,
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Getting uncomfortable, because it s easy to give advice to people.
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It s hard to take your own advice.
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It s harder to do the work yourself than it is to give the advice.
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And I know you came from an academic background as a dean and double PhD.
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And you could say, I ve got all these things figured out.
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But for you to have the courage to step into your emotions in a different way and process them in a way you never have done before,
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with your wife, with your family, to your daughter, you know, 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.
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Speaks a lot about the inner world that no one will ever see, you know, 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.
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And you re doing both.
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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.
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You re showing up, and you re doing the work, and that s a beautiful thing, man.
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That s what we can all ask for.
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So I want people to get that.
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I acknowledge you for that.
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I ve got two final questions.
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This is called the three truths.
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It s a hypothetical question.
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Imagine you get to live as long as you want to live, but it s the last day on Earth for you.
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And you get to accomplish and experience and live beautifully all the things you want to do.
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But for whatever reason, on this last day, you have to take all of your work with you.
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This book is gone.
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The content you ve created is gone.
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This interview is gone from our world.
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But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world.
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This is all we would have to remember you by.
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I call it three truths.
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What would be those three truths?
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Wow, Louis, that s a great question.
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Um, I m going to, so the three truths that I, two of them I got from home and one of them I got from my wife.
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The first one I got from my dad, when it s on fire, you go in, when everybody s running out, you go in.
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The second one is from my mom.
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There is no such thing as I can t.
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There s no such thing as too old.
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There s no such thing as too far on the margins.
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There s no such thing as excuse.
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You pick up a machete, you head into the jungle and you start carving a path.
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And I watched her do it.
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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.
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I went to him once with a student problem and the university wanted to separate the student from the university and I said no.
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It s my call, the student stays, the university said no.
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And I went to him as a spiritual mentor and said, Hey, here s the situation.
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And he listened and he said, you re right.
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And he said, if this is where you draw the line, you re free to go.
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I want you to know your spirit s going to be light because what they re doing to this young man s right.
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You re free to go.
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And I felt all good.
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And he said, but never, never forget.
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If you leave and walk out that door, all the other students just like him will still be here.
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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.
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And so what if we lived our lives so we can never move?
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What conversations would I have?
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What challenges would I have?
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So the question or the truth I would ask is,
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The truth I would leave is, it s often better to stay even when it s hard.
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Let s figure it out.
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Probably good relationship advice also, huh?
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Almost always.
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Yeah.
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Unless there s abuse.
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Right, of course.
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Outside of abuse.
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Infidelity, abuse, lies, all that stuff.
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Yeah, of course.
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You don t want any of that, but.
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Man, what if we stayed and figured it out?
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Yeah.
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What if we both reinvent it?
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Obviously it takes both of you to do that.
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You know, it can t just be one, but man, that s a beautiful truth.
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I love all three of those.
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What a great question, man.
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Thank you.
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I ll think about that one all the way home.
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That s good.
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Final question for you.
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It s been powerful.
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I appreciate you coming on and opening up.
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Final question.
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What is your definition of greatness?
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For me right now, my definition of greatness is my kids want to come home.
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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.
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And so all of this other stuff is in service to
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Can I be at peace at my house?
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That s greatness.
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Am I a safe place for my loved ones to land?
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I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today s show with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as add free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast.
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If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend.
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Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes.
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I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better.
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And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.
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And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.