Mental Health Expert: The #1 Secret To Achieving ANYTHING You Want

Graham Stephan
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John Delony
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Jack Selby
Healthier happens together. CV's Pharmacy Oak Street Health, CV's specialty. Signify health and aetna are part of. CV's health eligibility, and services vary by location. Individual why do you think people are struggling so much today?

Graham Stephan
Anxiety's on the rise. Depression is on the rise. A lot of unhappy marriages and relationships. We've pathologized human experience. The number of students over the years would come sit in my office and say, my dad passed away, my granddad passed away.

John Delony
My dad just moved out on my mom, my mom cheated on my dad, and I'm depressed. And I would often say, no, you're not. You're really sad. We just have so many duct tapes and pills and alternative whatever. Instead of just teaching people how to sit and grief, you have to act differently.

You have to change the things that you do on a daily basis. You can't just think your way into being healthy. You have to change how you live. Just created a world that our bodies can't live in. Man, we've created a disaster.

Jack Selby
John Deloney, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. You have a really interesting story. So you did crisis negotiation for a very long time. What was the one call that still stands out to you this day? I did crisis response for years with police departments and with my students.

John Delony
The one that comes to mind when you ask that question was a year or two ago on the Dave Ramsey show. Dave and his daughter Rachel crews were taking a call from a woman who was asking, should she sell her house? That call quickly devolved into Dave asking, are you safe right now. And if you're not, like, give me a signal. And she indicated she wasn't.

I just happened to be walking by and to go use the restroom by the studios, the call screener. She yells, get in here. And that ended with me on the headset with this woman walking her through, her husband trying to steal her kid. A very abusive, scary situation, to the point that I looked over and the police were coming, and I took my headset off, and I said, I think this woman's gonna die. And it was a terrifying, harrowing moment.

And I'm a big guy, so in previous crisis situations, I get involved. This one was just on the phone, and it was just walking her through. You need to get your baby. You need to get out of the car, you need to keep walking down the sidewalk. And she's like, he's chasing me.

And it was. It was a. It was a harrowing thing until the police got there, and all we had was her number. And so we're calling police department to police department, and they were amazing, patching us through, and it was another state, and so it's multiple jurisdictions, but ultimately they got there. And we've got some great feedback on the back that she's safe, she got the care she needs.

She's transitioned her life. It's pretty amazing. So what is a crisis negotiator, and how do you get into that? I wasn't a crisis negotiator. That would be like a hostage negotiator.

That's what my dad did. He was a SWAT team guy, and so they worked directly with the police department. What I did was a part of a small team called the victim services unit. But essentially, the police show up, and somebody has passed away. Let's say there's a child who's died.

They have to work that scene homicide back. They have to assume the worst and go for, like, what happened here. Right. That's really tough on a mom who's weeping because her child's passed away. So my job was to come in and sit with mom, or my job would be to show up with the policemen and say, your husband's been in a car wreck and he has died, and here's what's gonna happen next.

And most of us don't even think about what happens if there's a body in your home. Like, how does that body get out of. Right. And so there's a process to walk through and making sure people have resources and stuff. So I'd show up to homes, I'd get a text on my cell phone, and it would just say 187 or 1087 and it would have an address.

And 1087 was the police code for someone's died. It could be a two year old. It could be a 16 year old. It could be an 88 year old. And you show up and whisper a quick prayer in the parking lot, and you walk in the house and you're on.

Jack Selby
It seems like you can't even console somebody in that state. What is your aim then? Is to just bring them back down to a sane level? I wouldn't say a sane level. So I'm thinking of a situation where it was two or 03:00 a.m..

John Delony
A. Boyfriend and girlfriend had been drinking all night, and they got in a little tiff, and he'd bought a new gun. And while she went to the bathroom, he walked outside and died by suit. And as you can imagine, it's a chaotic mess. And she ran out and saw him and tried to help, but it was.

I mean, it was just a disaster. And so when we get there, she's on her knees in the front yard at 03:00 a.m., screaming, covered in blood. I mean, it's a terrifying scene. And so, yeah, there's no peace. There's nothing I can say that she can't absorb information.

My goal there is to get her to have a moment of peace. And so for her in particular, we locked arms and we walked down the street, and we count the cracks in the sidewalk and we count the tree. And what I'm trying to do is get her body here, right? And only then can you say, you need to go to this hotel or you need to call your mom or you need to call your dad. You need to go take the next steps.

But until then, when you're in full fight or flight, man, you can't hear, you can't see. You're just reacting. What are the credentials needed to become that? Why should people listen to you in particular? I mean, I've got two phds.

I have a three legged stool for wisdom, right? Do you have the academic knowledge, you know what you're talking about? And I think there's a lot of people in our world that have an experience, and they want to sell that experience, right? They went through a divorce. They're, you know, they got sober, and they think their particular path is the path, and they want to tell everybody about it and create a course and sell it, right?

So I think, a, you have to know what you're talking about, and b, you have to have walked with a lot of other people, because you're experiencing is just your experience, right? And a lot of other people have different experiences to the same end result. And then I think the third thing is, you have to have gone through some stuff yourself, right? You have to know what that weight feels like to be in that situation. Why do you think people are struggling so much today?

Graham Stephan
It seems like anxiety is on the rise. Depression is on the rise. A lot of unhappy marriages and relationships. What's going on? Just created a world that our bodies can't live in, man.

John Delony
It's. We've. We've created a disaster, and then we blame the human body for not being able to respond to it. And so we've pathologized, like, normal human existence, man. Made it a cancer.

Graham Stephan
Do you think it's social media that's contributing to this? Jonathan Hyatt's new book is pretty compelling. You just look at the map. It's like, we started giving kids cellphones in seven 8910, and then everything is just skyrocketed. So it's easy to say, man, it looks like we did this, and then this happened.

John Delony
But he's presented some pretty compelling data that, no, it's causal. This caused that. Why is it so bad? It's multifaceted. I think at the end of the day, we've taken kids childhoods away from them, and we've encapsulated their worlds in these little boxes.

And the box is designed to loop you and to catch you, and that's just not an existence, especially for a developing brain. So are we finding that people are struggling more being younger or that older people are also having the same issues? Cause I'm curious if it's something growing up on social media or if it's just exposure to it. No, I think you're asking an important question that I would say my mental health research community is kind of wimping out on. We don't, in our culture, like to tell adults, you shouldn't do something.

We like to say, like, you do you, bro? And, like, whatever you feel like, we. Like, we don't like to say, hey, what you're doing is dumb, right? Even as, like, a mental health professional, you're not allowed to tell some. Theoretically, you're not allowed to tell your client, you shouldn't do that, right?

You have to be like, well, how does that make you feel? And like, why can't you say that, though? Why can't you just say, I think. It'S a backlash to somebody imposing their particular set of values on somebody. I don't know.

Graham Stephan
I think it depends on the con. Like, Jack and I had a really good discussion a week ago and I was telling Jack, like, hey, this is going on and what do you think of it? And Jack was like, well, how do you feel? And I told Jack straight up, I'm like, hey, if you tell me this is stupid and dumb, that'll put it in perspective to me that, hey, you know what, this is pretty dumb. I'm going to let it go.

John Delony
I think that's why you're seeing coaches like this idea of coaching. It is quickly. I had a professor ten years ago, nine years ago, say, therapist, y'all better be careful because coaches are coming for your job. I think what happened was doctors had the highest credibility in the, in the helping professions and so every graduate school wanted to medicalize the training so that it would add some sort of pseudo credibility to it instead of training people to sit with hurting people and just say, my God, are you okay? I wouldn't do that.

Right. Instead of that, it was very clinical, very separate, very diagnostic. And I think we have lost the soul of a lot of our mental health engagements. And so coaches are showing up and saying, I'll tell you, like, you give me x number of dollars an hour, I'll tell you exactly what I think. And I think that's what people are desperate for.

Graham Stephan
So you think that can be a better approach just to tell it like it is or do you think it's better to medicalize it or what's. I have benefited from both. I have benefited from some gnarly stuff from my past. Sitting with a trained master therapist. I call her my oracle, but she's amazing.

John Delony
And yeah, she was very, very skilled. And I've also, I particularly have not returned to a few therapists. My wife got up and walked out of one once. She was walking through really gnarly miscarriage losses and the therapist leaned forward and said, when's the last time you took some you time? Have you tried like a warm bath and a cup of tea?

My wife just got up and walked out. Right. Because it was so, it was so pandering. And then there's times I call a coach, I've got two, and I've got a theological coach that asks big picture questions and he kind of walks me through and then I've got somebody that's more of a business coach that I reach out to and say, I need to think through this problem. And he's able to say in my house, I would not do that.

Or I see this opportunity wide. How can you not see this? Let's talk through that. That's really interesting to try to balance placating somebody and just giving them the cold, hard truth. And which one is actually more effective at bringing them down to a stable level?

Well, and I think that's the art of it. There are some people that call into my show that I take the guess and think I need to tell them right now, you need to get out of this relationship. And then others, it's more important that they discover it for themselves. Like, oh, man, I'm worth more than this. That's super interesting.

Jack Selby
I want to get more onto the medicalization, if that's a word, of mental illness, but we'll get onto that in 1 second. Cool. First of all, I want to ask the difference between medically diagnosed mental illness. So, like, anxiety, depression, adhd, versus general life anxiety, and how do you know which one you have? Because although the data shows that more people have anxiety than ever and depression than ever, is that, like, medically diagnosed?

And even what is the merit of this medically diagnosed anxiety and depression? Take a hat tip from doctor Peter Attia, the great Attia. He started speaking, this is a while ago, more about emotional health. As a guy who lives in that world, I asked him, I was like, what do you mean, emotional health? You keep saying emotional health.

John Delony
And he said, man. Joy, laughter, relationships, fun, like sadness. And I thought, oh, you're reclaiming humanity. Right? So there is a distinct difference between a mental health disorder and an emotional health challenge.

Right. And so I do believe that we've pathologized human experience. The number of students over the years would come sit in my office and say, my dad passed away. My granddad passed away. My dad just moved out on my mom.

My mom cheated on my dad, and I'm depressed. And I would often say, no, you're not. You're really sad. And we don't have a psychology for that. You're supposed to be sad, right?

Your dad just left. Your dad blew up your family. You're supposed to be sad. Everything you're anchored into is now splintered. You should be right.

And I think we are rushing so quickly to take away an uncomfortable feeling. And, man, we just have so many duct tapes and pills and alternative whatever instead of just teaching people how to sit and grief. While we're on the topic of emotion, I recently sprained my ankle really badly playing basketball, and I had to book multiple appointments just to get it checked out. Going through this, I realized just how hard it is to get ahold of a doctor, let alone finding a new doctor that accepts new patients and your insurance. Well, that's where Zocdoc comes in.

Graham Stephan
Zocdoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare highly rated in network doc near you and instantly book appointments with them online. All you have to do is download the app, type in the problem that you're experiencing, select your insurance, choose the date that you need an appointment, and then click find care. Zocdoc then gives you a list of doctors in your area along with the times that they're available. Every doctor on Zocdoc comes with real patient reviews, so they're a reliable source when it comes to finding the right fit. And once you find the right doctor, all you have to do is pick a time that works for you, fill in your info, and then you're good to go.

Jack Selby
It's really that easy. Just go to zocdoc.com ice to download the Zocdoc app for free. And once you do that, you can find and book a top rated doctor today@zocdoc.com. Iced. Zocdoc.com iced.

Thank you so much, Zocdoc. And back to the episode. So do you think medical anxiety is overprescribed at this point? Oh, absolutely, yeah. And I've been diagnosed with medical anxiety, and it was exactly right.

John Delony
There was a season when I was on anxiety medication. My alarms were so loud and I ignored them for so long. They were so unregulated that I needed to go do something so that I could do the things that I needed to do to be well. If medication is not the answer, what do you do instead? And how can you tell that it is medication worthy versus not medication worthy?

I'll leave that final diagnostic to a medical doctor and sitting with an individual client. I would hate for someone to listen to this and be like, oh, yeah, dude, cool, right? I would say, as a generalized statement, medication almost never cures anxiety. When I'm anxious. And maybe that's the.

The, in the small sliver I can add to this global conversation is that when you're anxious, your body's probably working perfectly. That's not the issue. The issue is it's to identify something that's not okay in your world. Right? We're just looking at your beautiful fish tank out there.

If an alarm on your phone goes off, that alarm, letting you know the ph is off in that water is not the problem. And you just deleting that app doesn't solve that. All your fish are going to die. That's anxiety. Anxiety is the alarm on your phone.

The real question is, what's wrong in the tank? We got to go fix that thing, right? And so I think that most of us have grown up in a culture. Follow your passion, yolo. Do whatever you want.

There's a free country you can say and do, like, whatever, and we don't like to live with the ramifications of our choices. And so we call it anxiety, and then we numb it away. So I've actually found that analogy to be incredibly helpful for myself. Like, if I were to take an anxiety test, maybe given to me by a psychiatrist or something like that, I could check all of the boxes that would say, oh, you have anxiety disorder, or whatever. But when I started thinking about it in terms of, like, this is just an alarm, that means my body is functioning properly and I should actually fix the house in the fire, rather than just, like, remove the batteries from the smoke alarm.

Jack Selby
Then it actually reduced my overall anxiety, which obviously sounds so intuitive. One thing is like, I hate bookkeeping, absolutely despise it, and all the time I'm, like, late, and I'm anxious because of this, right? And so what I like to do with my anxiety is maybe I'll go for a walk or I'll do something like that. Just calms me down. But it doesn't actually solve the root issue that's causing the anxiety in the first place.

So, although I could check every box that shows I have anxiety disorder, it actually fixed it by not taking any medication. And I've never actually been diagnosed with that or anything, just by actually solving the root cause of the problem. So I found that to be incredibly helpful in my own. It's awesome. And we may have talked about this previously, but I don't believe the DSM, like the Diagnostic and Statistics manual, the bible for mental health diagnostics, that really served two purposes.

John Delony
One, to allow researchers to talk to other researchers. So if you're studying depression in California, you're studying depression at the University of Rhode island. Y'all could apples to apples these studies and talk. And it was designed for clinicians to talk to insurance companies to tell them, here's what I'm doing, and here's my treatment plan. Here's the.

The stack of. Of symptoms. This person has to call them even symptoms, and this is what I'm going to do about it. It was never designed to be released to the Internet for all of us to google the middle of the night. The best way I could say it is, I asked one time, I was meeting with one of my mentors, this is just a year or two ago, we're having dinner.

And I said, can I ask you, like, a question I should probably know the answer to? And he goes, sure. And I said, is odd real oppositional defiant disorder, kids, right? Acting out? And he smiled and goes, yeah.

And then he goes, and you've never seen it. I was like, what do you mean? And he said, odd is not your kid throwing a tantrum and punching a hole through the sheetrock. Odd is. You ever been in a psych ward with five or six grown adults trying to hold a 6th grader down?

And we can't. That's like. And so he walked me through. Most of us, we google it. I've got that, I've got that, I've got that, I've got that.

And then you go work in a psych ward and you see depression or you see anxiety clinically, and you're like, oh, I don't have that. That was the most common thing that my, when I would take people and walk them in and help them get checked into a psychiatric facility, within one or two or three weeks, they'd be like, whoa, I'm okay. I'm not this, right. Or they would say, I'm glad I'm here. I need to get the help.

But often it was, oh, I thought things were bad, right? Do doctors have a financial incentive to prescribe medication? Because it seems as though a lot of doctors are very quick just to say, all right, you have this. Let's prescribe this. Just kind of throw these medications at problems.

That's the takeaway I got from doctor Tia, who lives more than behind the scenes in that world. And I think the incentive may be less about prescribing medication, but it may be more. I got 15 minutes with you. And 15 minutes is hard to sit down and say, dude, tell me about your dad, tell me about your mom. Tell me what's going on.

That. Where are the fires in your home? I don't have time for that conversation. You hurt here. I can help with that hurt.

And we sign it and move on. And I think doctors, because of, again, this democratization of information, which isn't bad, I just. We're not using it right. I think doctors are faced with a tough choice, which is doctors. Patients come in and say, I have x, I want y, because they get all those ads for all those pills all day long, and they have all the smiling families on them, the same as you go buy beer because they have the great commercials, right, or whatever.

And so a doctor is faced with a choice, and the choice is, I'll just make you happy, or I have to say, no, I'm gonna lose you as a patient. Cause you're gonna go find somebody else. So we have a recurring guest on the podcast. Doctor K is his name, and he's very much in favor of, like, trying out eastern practices before we go western. And his definition of western is, it's popular based, meaning they do a big study, perfect, of a thousand people.

Jack Selby
Oh, you have depression, or you have depression symptoms. Take this pill. And maybe a plurality of them are actually solved by this pill. However, you also have a majority of them that aren't. And so we use that, and we give it to individual cases, and we assume that they fit the mold.

Although what he says Eastern teaches is that you actually have to look inwards and see what it is. Exactly. Kind of similar to the smoke detector and the house analogy that you give. And for me, it was important to find out, no, my smoke detector is broken. That was a.

John Delony
That's another layer. Right. And my smoke detector was. Was going off about nothing, about ridiculous things. And so I needed to go get that tinkered with so that I could begin to do the things I need to do to get well, like you mentioned.

Yeah. How do you know where the anxiety is coming from? Because sometimes you could just feel anxiety, and you could say, oh, it's this thing, but it's really not. It's not that thing. It's maybe something deeper than that, or maybe it's something unrelated to that, that you're attaching to something else.

Graham Stephan
How do you figure out where that's where the smoke alarm. There's smoke. I think there's five or six, seven things that all of us experience on a daily basis that kind of began to ask yourself, man, when's the last time I exercised? When's the last time I got out in sunlight? When's the last time I was with friends that I didn't have to perform for?

John Delony
And I think you just start slowly digging into, like, what's the state of my finances in my job? And then it's like, well, of course, dude, if you owe a bunch of money and you have nothing in retirement and you have a mortgage, and suddenly you get an email at work, it's like, hey, over the next six months, we're going to start contracting our workforce. Your body would be failing. You if you weren't anxious, right, that would be insane. You might lose your house, you might lose your food, right?

Those are basic survival things. And that's not anxiety's fault. That's not something you need to go medicate away. That's something you need to address those challenges. Do you think there are any malicious or selfish intentions for the over prescription of medication or over diagnosis of mental disorders?

Jack Selby
You said this on a podcast and I found this very, very interesting and I looked into it a lot more. You said medical health professionals wanted to be a part of the medical establishment in terms of getting paid. So does another and so forth. So we all know what we're talking about and can report that to the insurance companies and get paid. Then the Internet happens and that becomes something we can just Google and get.

Then it becomes the way that we talk to each other. Oh, you're sad, you're depressed, you're anxious or spung up, you have anxiety disorder. It becomes a label and then just off to the races. It doesn't make sense that large scale, all of our bodies are failing us at the same time. For the first time in human history, right?

John Delony
That was the big aha moment. Was sitting in a nerd lecture at a university and the guy was talking about ADHD and the genetic links, right? And epigenetics and how those switches go on and off. And he said, by the, it was just an aside. And he said, by the way, this can't possibly be an entirely genetic issue because that's not how genes work.

They don't all flip on at the same time. And that means it's got to be environmental. And that was the light bulb. Like, what if all these kids that suddenly have ADHD across the western world, what if their bodies are right? What if they are just responding to two parents that are either absent or they are working 90 hours a week and theyre shoved in a school system that is like, what if their bodies are alright?

Youre correct. What does that mean for us? And that was a way more terrifying thing for me systemically than everybodys a little bit anxious. What if theres an alternative to that? Instead of its these factors?

Graham Stephan
What if the factors have a consideration to that? They push people in that direction, but people watch others around them. They tend to mimic effect. Yeah. So if they see, wait a second, a third of my class is a little anxious.

A third of my classes, they have ADHD. A third of my class is doing this. I think they're more likely to take on those behaviors like it seems as though almost mental illness is something that's really. I don't want to say it's celebrated online, but people will post their stories or issues and get a lot of praise and support. It's incentivized.

Incentivized in ways where if somebody said, hey, my life is great right now, I couldn't be happier. I have a great relationship, a great job. People will say, well, I have this and I have this because you're lucky. So it seems like there's this weird incentive where it's like, the worse you post about yourself, the more support you get versus if you have your life together, it's almost dismissed 100%. And I think we can look at that through two lenses.

John Delony
I tend to look at that through a little more compassionate lens versus, like, a moralistic or character issue. Children are designed to lean into adults that are safe. And if the adults in their lives, whether they're teachers or mental health professionals or whoever, a teacher aides, whoever they happen to be around, get a steady diet of, here's a disorder, here's a disorder. These disorders are on the rise. Look for these behaviors.

Look for these behaviors. And you see a kid in the back tapping, right? I was always moving my leg and always tapping stuff, right? When I was a kid, it was Delaney. Shut up.

Settle down. Right? I would have loved some more compassion, but I fast forward and think of my son, who's a middle schooler. He's tapping, and he has a teacher that gently puts her hand on his shoulder and says, hey, this is a safe place for you. I'm glad you're here.

And his body goes, whoosh. It has now got a biochemical reinforcement that it can get connection through movement and being itchy, because that teacher is compassionate and kind. And you do that over time, right? You get to high school and they ask you, do you have anything that we need to know before you take this test? Like, it really.

It's tough for me to take tests. Well, how about we just double the time for you? Would that be a gift? And you're like, yeah, right. And so all these things in order to help folks, and I've worked with students with special needs for my whole career, right.

And I fought for their ability to go get those, those. Those things. But I think over time, your body responds to, where is the compassion and kindness coming from? And because it's not coming from these other traditional places, we. Our bodies are designed to be surrounded by aunts and uncles and weird cousins and a tribe of people that is gone.

And you have a kid who finds himself or herself going under the bus by themselves because mom and dad are already at work. If mom and dad are even in the house anymore. Is it 40% of kids born to a single family household? Biologically, that's madhouse. And it's not cool to talk about, but it's a madhouse.

And so you take this kid and an adult puts her hand on their shoulder and say, you're safe here. Yeah. And you build over time and incentive, and now you've got an Internet ecosystem that if you win, well, clearly you didn't just do it on your own. It's because you had some sort of fill in the blank. Or clearly it's because of these other factors, not just because you worked real hard and got lucky.

And then the other side of it is, yeah, like, man, well, I've got this, this and this and this. Everybody pat you on the head. It's heartbreaking. And, man, it was about three years ago, it was working with the team I have now. There was a light bulb that came off that was like, man, I refuse to participate in a world that tells you this is all you're ever going to be.

I'm just going to pat you on the head. You go to the corner, we'll take care of it. I refuse to do that because it's not true. But how do you change that? Because it seems as though if your reward system is a victim mentality and that you're praised by that, how do you go against the grain and say, I'm gonna give up all of this praise and choose to ignore it?

Graham Stephan
It seems like a very counterintuitive thing to do. It's hard. I think what we're lacking desperately is a picture. That's why I think your show is valuable. I think that's why these conversations are valuable.

John Delony
I think it's why my show is successful. I thought people wanted to listen to my show cause I was so smart. And I thought, like, yeah, it's growing. Cause I'm so. They're not.

That's not why they're there. I'm not that smart. They've never seen a big guy with tattoos sit with somebody who's hurting and be like, man, I'm so sorry. Like, can I just sit with this for a second? Right.

So I think where people are desperate for a picture of what it looks like, what's a picture of hard work look like? That's why people flock to the red pill world, right? They've never seen a picture of a masculine guy going to lifting weights. That's why they flock to you guys. They've never seen their dads didn't teach them about money.

And you're like, no, I'll teach you. Right? And I think that's why this ecosystem exists and it continues to do so well. But people don't have a picture of what that looks like in their house. They hear it and they hear it and it's like, you know what?

This woman, this teacher of mine, she loves me. I'm going to go there. I think one of the reasons I listen to your channel is because I like to think if I know these situations ahead of time and I hear your responses, I could fix them before they would even happen. Like, I know some of your situations are kind of extreme. And so I'm not like, you know, thinking, oh, that's going to happen.

Graham Stephan
But I like hearing about potential pitfalls to watch out for and hearing that, like, oh, this marriage is failing because the partners aren't putting in the time with each other. It's the kids are taking all their time and focus away and they're both working and they haven't connected themselves. And so I like to take those little bits and pieces and say, okay, how can I imply that to my own life? I love that. And some things relational, you can't hedge.

John Delony
Somebody's mom's gonna get cancer, right? Somebody's dad's gonna die, there's gonna be a car wreck. And so I think you do those things really to, it's almost like a retirement fund and a cash account, right? You do those things so that when the storm hits your load, you can withstand that storm. But you know what?

Graham Stephan
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Jack Selby
Oh, and Graham, Yahoo. Finance also makes it incredibly easy to stay on top of your financial goals by giving you powerful tools like customizable watch lists and interactive charts. Its really no surprise that Yahoo. Finance is the number one finance destination with 90 million users visiting their website every single month. So if you're like us and you want the most comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand that's behind every great investor.

Yahoo Finance.com. That's the number one financial destination. Yahoo Finance.com dot. Again, Yahoo Finance.com dot. Thank you so much.

Graham Stephan
Enjoy. And now let's get back to the episode. Another thing you mentioned that I really like is choosing your hard in the sense that, like, if you wake up 500 pounds, getting up out of bed, exercising, that's hard, but then not doing that is also hard. So you have to choose which hard you want because they're both going to be hard. It's saving money.

John Delony
Yeah, saving money is hard. It's the worst, right? Like, I want to buy that thing now. And also waking up and being 65 and you have nothing is really hard. And so you got to pick which one is going to bring you to peace and enjoy.

Jack Selby
There's obviously a lot of controversy around mental health. And it seems to a lot of people dismissive when someone says, oh, anxiety disorder is similar to a smoke alarm, even though it could be an effective thing. Why do you think it is so controversial to so many people? It's become an identity. It's who I am.

John Delony
Because if I'm not this, then who am I? Right? And I think it's become a label. And when you start messing with people's labels, man, it gets, it gets dicey. And if you're a young child and you're told you have this thing, this is the shape of your life for the rest of your life.

They sit in the seat and they buckle in and that's. They head on down that track. And then you got some guy coming along and it's like, no, I was in that track, too. And it's not true. And the other side of it is like, I've got OCD.

That's what was one of my earliest diagnostics, okay. And so I've had to work through not healing from, like, my body responds to stress in certain ways. I don't fight myself. When I check the locks at night, it's annoying, but I go check the locks a few times, then I go to bed, right? And.

Or I'll text my wife from, from being out of town. Did you check the garage door? She. Or she'll text me, like, prophylactically. She'll be like, john, door's locked, right?

I don't fight it. And then there's other things. Like, I need to be on time to work, right? And so there's other times I consciously exhale. I can't go back up and check the oven again.

I gotta get in the car and go to work. And I live with that discomfort. And then it dissipates. My body knows, I trust. That's so easy.

Graham Stephan
Cause there are doorbells now or not doorbells. There are door locks now that you can check from your phone. I know, but if one of your things is tech surveillance, then that's one of mine. So. I don't like having fun.

Everything is on Wi Fi now. Like, even your refrigerator, you could tell, like, oh, that's on Wi Fi. Oven, I'm sure, is on. My wife tells me I was born in the wrong century. Why do you think it's so important that people have identities like this that they latch themselves onto?

Oh, I am a person with blank or. This is a quirk of me. And this is. Why is that so important for people? You know, it goes back to a thing, and I don't have any science about it.

John Delony
It goes back to a thing Tony Robbins said a decade ago, which is, our culture's addicted to problems. We meet each other problem centric. It's very rare that I enter into a world like I did today, where you are showing me this incredible thing that you've created out, like, that you've built over three years. You met me with joy. Isn't it beautiful outside?

Come look at my. That's very rare. You said that. I did. I said you came during the best time in Vegas because it was so nice outside.

Most people are like, keep with how hot it is. It's so cold. Like, right? My uber driver. Lovely guy, but greeted with, man, you're lucky on this one, dude.

Cause usually that's how we in. That's how we say hello. Right? You walk into the office and you just say, man, how was your weekend? You hear what's going on overseas?

You should read the tweets this week, right? That's just how we got started. But you started it when you walked up, you said, oh, what a beautiful. Maybe I started, it's just grass across the street, I'm like, yeah, man, that's grass. And someone like, you will probably use it, like, ooh, that's a good psychological mechanism.

Like a tool for the tool belt. I've just worked hard over the years because my natural disposition is worry and anxiousness. And the great Amos Tversky, the psychologist, said, worry is an absolute waste of your life. He says it's stupid because if the thing you're worrying about comes true, you actually experience it twice. Once you when you fret about it, and once when it comes true.

And I was like, yeah, that's dumb. And so for a decade, I've been working to reset the default setting to walk outside and be like, man, it is super hot. I'm gonna get to sweat all this crap out. Like, it just instantly goes to what's the most joyful way I can experience this thing. And then if I get hit by a bus, I'll deal with that when I get hit by a bus.

Jack Selby
That's a great frame of mind. I know for a fact, like, if you're going to work and you hit traffic on the way to work, the likelihood of you talking about that is, like, 50 times more than if it's wide open roads. But if somebody shows up to work and you're like, how's the drive in? And they say, dude, it was amazing. Like, there was no traffic.

John Delony
I just sang really loud, like, four. Cool. Katy Perry, even you. Just saying that makes me happy. But at a workplace, people would be like, idiot.

Like, oh, yeah, must be nice. Must be nice to drive, right? And that's our response to people who present with the best possible situation. But is that just human nature? It might be.

I feel like it has to be a good point. I mean, like, psychologically speaking, bodies are wired to look for the tiger coming at us. Yeah. I gotta say, there's, like, an evolutionary reason for, like, talking about problems more than we are celebrations. The other thing it could be is that the people who celebrate too much maybe put a target on themselves that they're a threat to others.

Graham Stephan
But isn't that madness? Isn't that madness? Like, a tribe, right? And one. One person is, like, single handedly being like, yeah, I slept with all these women and I hunted the tiger and I did this.

Jack Selby
Then there's gonna be a revival. Objectively, would be the threat to everyone else below them. And so it's almost like if you talk about your problems, you're seen as more of, like, one of the guys. Well, but here's the challenge, and I love the great conversation. I think it's the cancer of this madness, of this individualistic.

John Delony
What we're trying to do is not real. I have a life philosophy, and I didn't come to it existentially. I came to it. Just practically have a guy. I didn't read a single article about COVID I didn't understand I couldn't read all of that virology.

I did have a friend who's a cancer researcher that uses viruses, too, right? And so I called her. I was like, what do you think? I'll ask you, like, hey, man, off air. Like, what do you think I should do with this money?

Why? Because you have it and you actually do it. We're so obsessed with what about me? And I think that's just such an insane burden to carry. I will never research air conditioners because my friend John King is the CFO of an air conditioning and heating and plumbing company.

I literally text him, I got to get a new air conditioner. What should I get? And he says, where are you? And he says, get this one. I don't waste a second researching it because that guy knows that stuff, and I love him and he loves me, and he knows my kids, and I love his kids.

And similarly, if you said, hey, Deloney, I would. I put my money for me and my family here. Who do I think I don't know anything about? Why would I. Who do I think I am, right?

I email or text George Camel on weekends and say, hey, dude, I've got this account. I need to move it. Where should I move it? And he'll say, I'd move it here. That's his world.

I don't know. Right? And so I think we're so obsessed. I wish someone would come out and be like, I kill all the tigers. My bent is, dude, I need to learn from that guy, not that guy, right?

And I think it's just shifting. I want to be with you, not against you, man. This isn't about me winning. This is about us winning. You mentioned somebody in your book.

Jack Selby
You said it was a student of yours named Laura, who was brilliant, hardworking, hilarious, and who was going to change the world. However, after a diagnostic confirmation, she now just has anxiety. She came into your office, and you guys had a really interesting exchange. You feel like you've had this conversation millions of times with different people who believed they had such bright futures, and then all of the sudden, they were diagnosed with someone, and that rocks their world. That's my.

John Delony
I think all practitioners need to be careful about diagnostics. I've had a good discussion with Jordan Peterson about this. Like, there is something important about naming the dragon. There's something important about saying, you're not crazy. Here's what your body's doing, and here's it.

Does it with a whole bunch of other people. They call it social norming, right? You're not nuts. There's a, this is happening everywhere. But I want to be very careful about saying, and this is forever.

And this is your, this is your card, right? This is, you have a cap on you forever. Instead of saying, hey, your body has, is responding to stress in these ways. Here's where it's going to be tough. Here's where you got to keep your eyes open, and here's where it might be magic for you.

Right. Somebody who is a little bit anxious might make an incredible attorney. And if you fall into the trappings of trying to make partner and working 90 hours a week and not taking care of your body, never going outside and drinking at every event, it'll bury you. Right. So it's both.

And I want an attorney who overthinks through things and over worries on my behalf about things. I want that, but I want that person to be healthy with that bend. Right. So I think it's a matter of, oh, you've got this, like, that can bury somebody without context. What do you think the importance is of being spiritual or religious or having friendships in terms of overall fulfillment and happiness?

I just blurbed a book from an experimental psychologist, and that's the first time I've seen somebody, I know it's happened for all human history, but it's the first time I've seen somebody say, all the psychological literature out there gets right up to the door and says, those with a religious practice, those that plug into something bigger than themselves, financially, emotionally, relationally, psychologically, everything trends up. Now, of course, there's abuse and all that, but on the whole. And. But they never go through the practice because it kind of unwinds the idea that there's nothing beyond. Right.

There's nothing bigger than us, that, that self actualization is the goal. That self actualization is the goal. But do you think maybe, maybe that could be because people lack purpose? And I think religion gives people both a purpose and a community, and those two things contribute a lot to happiness. Like, if someone has a community and purpose in their life, would that be the same as having religion in their life?

I don't think it's borne out. I did have a theologian. He's a professor. He was challenging the data that says church is declining in America. And he's like, no, it's not.

And he said, it's just at Crossfit, and it is guys getting together and watching the fights, and it is Internet communities about like coral reefs, right? I mean, it's, people are still getting together and trying to figure out how to share and do life together. I do believe there's something behind the curtain, though, and I think purpose and community lead you to that thing. And I think I would rather people give it a shot than to try to deconstruct it before they get there, if that makes sense. That's fair.

Jack Selby
That stuck out. I've never been to church, not in my entire life. I'm 25 years old. I thought you went with Ryan. I did go.

I went for the first time about a month or so ago, and the one thing I remember from my experience at church that still has a lasting effect wasn't necessarily like they went over some story of Moses and everything, and, like, all of that, all of the readings, none of that really stuck out to me very much. But the main thing that stuck out to me and provides me with lasting, like, joy. And just something to think about when I'm alone is you had a huge group of people that were all celebrating something bigger than themself, and I feel like my entire life, and a lot of viewers, I'm sure you guys can attest to this. You grow and you live in a hyper individualized society where everyone is solely focused on themselves. But finally, when you have a group of people that do something on behalf of someone else or for some other purpose, for some reason, that just feels good.

And I think that's probably why a lot of people, when they have kids, it's, like, the most joyous and fulfillment and just, like, provides a purpose for you greater than yourself. I've taken a lot of flack for that on the. On the, uh, with the Internet folks. Right? Um, I didn't know what.

John Delony
I didn't know until I held a kid. I thought I knew what love was. I was incredibly in love with my wife. I was incredibly in love with my life. I was incredibly in love with my faith and my.

I didn't understand it, though, right? And, like, a. It was so shapeshifting for me that I was scared to have a second kid because I was afraid I wouldn't. There's no way I could love like this. And I didn't realize there's just another chamber opens up, right?

And it's like, no, no, you can go, like, love's bigger. The challenge is you can't roi it on the front end. Like, you can't. Like, the math doesn't work, right? Oh, you're gonna lose all your money.

You're gonna lose all your time. You're gonna lose all this stuff. And so. And the challenge with having a kid is. You don't.

You can't be like, all right, I'm gonna trade that fund. Right? That was a bad mutual fund. You can't. You're stuck with it.

I had one. It was a monk I spent two years with. Hes amazing. He was a bioethics professor. Hed leave in the summer and go live in a monastery.

Hes an amazing man. But he said thats why you have mentors ahead of you. For when you are swinging on a vine through the jungle and your vine runs out and you let go and you dont see the other vine coming, but you do see those guys up there, those men and women up there that have gone before you, and you realize, okay, it's coming. And you're just free falling, and you're like, oh, God. So I, to me, that's what the path is.

I do think you're exactly right. It's every. All of it is based on RoI. And what about you? And what about you?

And what about you? And how do you protect you? And I think we are missing oxygen when we do that. It's like breathing through a. Breathing through a piece of cloth and you just miss all that air.

Let me ask you this. Why? What has been about going into church or just never occurred to you? It's never occurred to me. My mom, she grew up jewish, my father grew up Christian.

Jack Selby
It just never, like, they stopped being religious when they got together. And I've never really had experience, and. I'm sure mine is the same. My mom grew up jewish. I grew up Christian.

But I'm sure you didn't grow up with any, like, religious principles, values. Did you ever attend church or anything? Or mass? No. So, like, there's some weird generation.

I think that, like, for some reason, it's fading out. Maybe there's just distractions and technology. Who knows what it is? I'm sure we could probably trace it to something eventually, but, yeah, I do see a lot of people becoming less and less religious. But I also notice a concentration of the happiest, most productive and positive people, at least in my experience.

This is purely anecdotal. They happen to be religious. That is just a coincidence. As a guy who's gone to church my whole life and person of faith, I think I've got to wear that blame. I think on a large scale, churches got really interested in fighting other churches.

John Delony
Instead of feeding hungry people care of widows, instead of putting the government out of business with caring for the least of these, we got mad at each other about who said what and how? And I think it's been a wild distraction. And for a younger generation of people who watch their parents just fight and be angry and be upset all the time and watching rage news all the time, I don't want that. Right. I don't want to be a part of that.

And so it's just easy. A plus b equals c. When in terms of, like, you have a whole generation of people being like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go lift weights, right? I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to, I'm going to make an incredible, beautiful fish tank. I'm going to put my energy in making money. Right. Because I know how that works. I totally get that.

Jack Selby
It's so funny because a lot of the things that we're discussing are so controversial. Pro church, anti church mental health drugs, prescriptions, not prescriptions. People's personal experiences, people's interpretation of data. What the data, actually, all of this stuff is so controversial. And I know for a fact people are going to leave so many different hate comments.

John Delony
Yes. I don't feel like it is 100%. This is so controversial. And for those of you that want to leave these comments, let's do it in an instructive or a constructive way, and let's have fantastic conversations in the comments. I'm very excited to see what the pro and con side of the arguments are for all of these different things.

Jack Selby
That is a formal invitation. Well, I appreciate that. I mentioned on a show and then the person who cuts my show into tiny little clips and puts it on social media, I posted something. I was talking to a mom who called into the show, and she was just talking about, she was kind of in a desperate moment, like, we're spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars we don't have on travel sports. And I said, as a guy who played the early iterations of travel sports, I ran track in college for a year.

John Delony
Like, I get it. My whole life has been athletics. And then I was a coach for my first job out of high school. I made out of college. I love sports.

I'm all about it. And the, the statement I made was travel sports are destroying american families with money time. They've made the kids the epicenter of this home, and a kid can't bear that weight. That's not the kid's job, and it's not the parents job to do whatever the kid wants all the time. My kids want to eat ice cream and eat Twinkies 24/7 man, it's my job to not do that.

Right. Regardless of what they want. That's part of being a parent. The comments were so. It was wild.

Like Mark Cuban reached. Like, those who live in sports know that the data's on my side. I'm right. And my buddies who are collegiate trainers are telling me, dude, we're seeing 18 year olds with joint overuse injuries that you see in the elderly because they've been a pitcher since they were six and they did baseball in the fall, in the winter, in the spring and the summer, and they had pitching like wildness. You know, Michael Jordan was famous for putting a basketball down at the end of the season and not picking up a ball until the seat.

The preseason started again. He played golf, he played baseball, he went running, he did other things, which is great for your body. All I have to say is the comments were so individualistic for me and my family. This was best. Don't ever say this again.

You take this down. And so I think when you're talking about religion, when you're talking about medication, when you're talking about these things that are highly personal, either you got hurt real bad or they saved your life, or your marriage was falling apart and you had a kid who was good at baseball and it brought your family back together. Amazing. But I think it's important to not take your personal experience and cast it on everybody and say, this is the truth. That's an experience you had and that's amazing.

That's awesome. Talk about your experience versus this is just the way all churches are bad. No, there was a guy at your church that was evil and hope that dude's in jail. This episode is brought to you by Bumble. So you want to find someone you're compatible with, specifically, someone who's ready for a serious connection.

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Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the podcast. So, staying on the topic of controversy. Oh, good. There, there was a very popular tweet that happened.

Jack Selby
This was probably a couple of months ago. Someone was basically providing a lot of reasons why therapy is not a good idea and why it hurts people. Right, right. And obviously, I'm sure this person would not argue therapy is bad for everyone, but a lot of the times it's used as a weapon and it can become like a plague in your body as therapy. Some of the arguments they made was a lot of people, people treat whatever their therapist is saying as dogma, and they listen as though it is like, you know, undeniable truth, and they think that's an issue.

Another argument was that they equate going to therapy as being a good person and doing the right thing when most of what is needed is actually done outside of therapy rather than in therapy. So, like, okay, I checked that box. I made progress on whatever issues that I'm suffering from right now, and then they go back to therapy next week and they kind of just forget about it in the meantime. And it doesn't actually attack the problem because they think they are. So here's what I would say to that one is there's some excellent points made, no question about it.

John Delony
I think the mental health community of which I'm a part of, we have told people for 150 years that mental health is all the right thoughts in the right order. And I think we have largely thrown out, especially in the last 20 years. You have to go do differently. You have to act differently. You have to change the things that you do on a daily basis.

You can't just think your way into being healthy. You have to change how you live. If the thing you do to work on your mental health is an hour a week, we talk about this in church all the time. If your commitment to your faith is 1 hour a week on a Sunday with a donut and a cup of coffee, that's not a faith practice. Right.

It should infuse how you live. Similarly, same with mental health challenges or emotional health challenges. And so there was some critique that was right on. My concern with it is. And it's a.

This. The culture rewards sensation, and the culture rewards dogma and opposite dogma. Right. My challenge with it is it's similar to if you were struggling with alcohol. If I come in and get rid of all the alcohol and you don't have a.

I don't have a plan to help you get to aa. I don't have a plan to have a medical provider here to help you detox. I don't have these other things. I'm afraid that there's gonna be a swath of people that pull their kids out of counseling, and the kid has no other resource in the world. You got two busy parents who are looking for ways to cut costs, and all of a sudden, this person comes out and goes, therapy's kind of ridiculous for certain kids.

Well, sweet. Now I'm not taking my kid now. Now that kids got nobody, anytime somebody just takes their arm and wipes off a table and is like, this is all stupid, I want everybody to pause because sometimes it got that way because the systems weren't set up right. Do you think everyone should try therapy at some point, or do you think there should be an issue to go in to specifically work on? Man, that's a great question.

I'm just gonna go with my gut on this one. Is that okay? I have a rule that if I'm asked a great question and I don't have, like, a formulaic response, I'm just gonna go with what I think is true in the moment. I think most people need a group of really close friends that they can lean on and talk to, and that will show up with food when they're hurting, will sit with them and say, yeah, me too. We don't have that.

We just don't have it. It's gone from our culture. And so if you don't have that then, yes, having a neutral third party that you can talk to and do life with, even if you have to pay for it, is critical to survival. Right? You need a therapist the same as you need, like, a joint to reconstruction.

Graham Stephan
Do you worry that those people maybe have an interest or might be biased for you to do one thing over another? Versus a therapist who would be assuming they're qualified for good. That would be a total neutral third party. I know some people who are close will say that they know what's best for you, but then maybe sometimes people say, let's just say you're having a relationship problem, but your friend hates your boyfriend. He's like, yeah, you guys break up.

John Delony
It's a piece of shit. Versus a therapist, looking at the situation and saying, hey, well, maybe it's this and maybe this, and you should reconsider these things. Well, a therapist might say, every time you talk about your boyfriend, you light up. And every time you talk about your boyfriend, your shoulders drop and you relax. Let's talk about your roommate.

How's that relationship? Right? And then you're like, well, my roommate, right? And so a good therapist is going to watch the language. Like, you know, behaviors of language, like your body, mood.

Like, tell me about this stuff. And I'll also say, man, if your closest three or four or five friends are all telling you the same thing. Recently, my manager, Cody, he was like, I don't know what's going on in your life, dude, but, like, you're not being your normal self and you're being a jerk to be around. You're complaining about everything. And I literally, he's younger than me.

And I was like, whatever. Wait till you grow up and have. Right? Well, then a week later, my wife was like, hey, man, can we talk? She's like, I don't know what's going on.

And I was like, okay, now I trust Cody with my. I trust that guy as a friend, as a business partner, trust my wife with my life, with everything. All right? Now I've got two data points. It's probably me, right?

I need to go to the mirror. I need to go to the mirror. And that's just not having any ego in it. I want to be well and whole, right? I think it's why you have close people.

Jack Selby
Final controversial talking point. Sweet. Is anxiety all logical anxiety, aka caused by lack of working out, poor work life balance, no support systems, etcetera? Or is there a true, like, genetic anxiety disorder that gets passed on? Here's the way I explain genetics and anxiety.

John Delony
The three of us all have our own house. And in that house, every house has a basement. And in my basement, I do motorcycle repair. And in your basement, you make candles. And in your basement, Jack, because you were doing this earlier, you just have a yoga studio, and you just do yoga all the time.

And let's say that house catches fire. All of our houses catch fire. My house is full of lubricant, flammable things. Lubricants, oil, gas. And my house will explode.

Your house would smell really good when it burned to the ground because it's full of all these fragrance. Fragrances, right. And yours would just gently settle into ash. That's genetics. The fire is the important thing here.

Right? And so some people, like me, are more bent towards a more anxious response to things. Some people. My son, for instance, when things get wild, he gets real slow. It's amazing to watch.

He's going to have to just keep an eye out in life. When he gets hit, when he gets fired, when somebody breaks his heart, that his. His body might lean towards just shutting the door and isolating, everybody acts, everybody responds. Death, different. That's why the.

The genetic argument isn't as important as what's your body trying to do to keep you safe, and then what are you doing to stay healthy? At 26, I was hired as an associate dean of students at a university. Way over my head. Way over my head. And within a few years, it was like, man, you're gonna be a college president someday.

And I was like, that's right. You know what I mean? I raced through, got a PhD, thought I was all smart. I was an arrogant idiot. Like, you're gonna be a college president.

You're gonna be a college president one day. You're gonna be college president one day. Good at speaking, right? And then I spent the next decade working with college presidents, and I realized I don't want that life. The closer I got, the more budget responsibilities I had, the more personnel issues, the more I would get more anxious and more anxious.

And I had to look in the mirror and say, this may not be the job for me, or I'm going to have to hire this job. Very different, right? I didn't want to deal with my limitation of, man, I can do this job. It's going to cost me a lot. And we don't like that.

We don't like the other side of the cost equation in our culture. We just want to. To head forward. We don't want a social media where some guy says, I think travel, sports are killing you. And somebody goes, well, not in my house.

You shouldn't say that. Right? Instead of going, hmm, my house. They were great. And I'm on to the next post.

We don't like that, man. We don't like the other side of that, that equation. That makes sense. That does. Yeah.

Jack Selby
I really liked that, that house analogy. Everyone's predisposed to respond slightly differently to different stimulus, right? How do people know that? Is it just intuitive at that point that they know I react like this and therefore I should do this. I'm not good enough to parse that out of myself.

John Delony
Okay. When I get emotional or I get responding to things or reactive, and I'm not learning, I'm not thinking very clearly. That's why you need a community of people. That's why you need a therapist. That's why you need somebody to go.

Every time you talk about this, you get real short of breath. Or like, my wife, I say like, hey, dude, I'm gonna write another book. She's like, you're tough to be around when you write because we lose you for nine months. Even when you're walking around the house, you're not with us. You're in, you're in the clouds somewhere.

And I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm present with the family. And she's like, I promise you. Right. And she's exactly right.

And so I think you have people around you that hold a mirror up for you. It's a gift. One of the most fascinating things from our discussions that always sticks with me is some of the crisis stories, because that is so different than anything 99% of people experience in their day to day. And what you've gone through and what you've seen people gone have, what they've gone through is just, I feel like it would bear so much trauma and make such a strong impact. Why do you think you are perfectly fit for that position and what type of person is?

I can only tell you my experience. It's been my experience that somebody sees a dead body and somebody naturally leans in or somebody naturally turns away. And I'm sure there's more to it than that. That's just been my experience. And the first time I showed up to a scene, it was, how can I help?

Right? It was a leaning into it. And I remember the first time I helped a policeman clean brains off of a bathroom wall before a mom got home to see that her kid had died by suicide. I called my dad, and it was late, and he was a homicide detective for years. And I was like, hey, this just happened.

And his first words out of his mouth were, you should not have seen that. I was like, I know it was tough, and we talked through it, and I had an amazing supervisor, so I don't know that I'm perfectly suited for it other than when things get super chaotic in that moment, I get real still, and some people do and some people don't. I get real anxious afterwards. It's when I'm laying in bed at night going, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness. But in the moment, it just. It just is what it is. I don't know if that's training. I don't know if that's over and over and over again.

I don't know what that is. But which crisis had the largest effect on you? Maybe one you still think about to this day, even though it occurred years ago. I was in a. At a university where there's an active shooter, and that was a.

That was a trying, scary situation. My students were hiding, and I was a safe voice for them, and they didn't come out. And it wasn't until everybody got the all clear that students were coming out of every nook and cranny. It hit me. Like, I was in such protection mode.

Right. Take care of everybody mode, that it was. It was pretty terrifying. And it wasn't in our particular building. We were on the university campus and actually got the call and went to the building because I knew my students, my law students would be there late.

But it was a harrowing deal. I remember texting my supervisor, saying, hey, where's this guy? And I thought. I thought they'd had him by the shooter. And the text I got back was something to the effect of all caps, this is.

This situation's live. And I was like, oh, man, that haunts me. When you get those thoughts in your head and you're still thinking about it, what do those thoughts look like? I call them lightning bolts. There's moments like there's.

And it happens to all of us, right? But there's an image of a mom busting through a door when she got a call that her child was dead, right? She's coming in. Or a mom hugs you in a certain way when their child is dead. It's a different hug.

It's a hug of desperation, I suppose. Someone's about to fall off a bridge. That's how they hold you in a really tight, all body way. And it's very unique to that. That situation.

Um, those that pops into your head and I think what was revolutionary for me, it's great. David Kessler, he's the world's grief expert, in my opinion. He's the one that really hammered home for me. His book, finding meaning, is a grief masterpiece, but talks about in that moment, you have a choice, right? Parents who bury their child and they.

That casket closes, that image will pop into your head 20 years later. You have a moment, you have a choice. When that moment happens, am I going to meditate on that and go down that rabbit hole? And your body will respond, somebody cheats on you and you have an image of her or him with somebody else that you can't control, that it pops into your head. What you can control is, am I going to dwell on that and think about that?

Or you see the little ticker tape, us economy about to go into a free fall. You can go down a rabbit hole or you can think, no, it's not. I know the principles, or it is, and I'm protected, right? It's the decision, am I gonna meditate on those things? For me, there's a constant refrain, I wasn't safe then, but I'm safe now.

Graham Stephan
Does that change your belief on human nature to see so much destruction and negativity? No. Cause it's always surrounded by infinitely more compassion and joy and people showing up to help. In fact, it's always a. Another one that haunts me is showing up to a scene where I think he was 19 or 20, maybe 21 year old young man had died by suicide.

John Delony
And he took such amazing care so that those who loved him, who were going to come have to deal with the aftermath, would have so little mess to deal with. And I thought, my God, if you could only see how much you actually love the people around you and in turn were able to receive how much they loved you. The person was so careful and kind and thoughtful about how they were going to pass and they weren't able to see. You're not a burden. Right?

You are actually loved that much too. And so those haunt me, right. But there's so much compassion and so much love that shows up after those situations often that it's overwhelming. Do you think it's healthy to be exposed to those sort of tragedies? It has been for me.

I think the culturally, culturally we have a problem. And I think. I think pornography is similar, is you've got young people that have, or 19 or 20 have never held hands with somebody, but they've seen 10,000 hardcore sexual acts. There's a distortion between what your body experiences when you waste a whole movie just trying to get your finger next to somebody's finger to see if we're going to hold hands or not. And then just having your whole hedonic sensor blown with going to the wrong website.

Similarly with death, I think we've seen 8 million John Wickes killings, and our parents didn't let us go to our granddad's funeral because they didn't want to scare us. Right. So we've never been in a room with a dead body. We've never been at a collective grief moment. We just watch it on the news and watch it on the news and watch it on the news.

And so, yeah, I think the exposure, I think I always tell people, take your kids to a funeral. Kids need to be a part of that and feel it and see that, because what they learn from that is this is scary and terrifying and awful, and the adults are crying. Then the adults go to dinner and the adults go to bed, and the adults wake up. And so together we can get through this. Have you ever not known what to do in a crisis?

Jack Selby
Maybe you showed up and you were just completely stumped by it. And what did that look like in. My world, back when I was like, when I was doing patrol work, you always have a partner. There was two situations where, in my house we went through three miscarriages, and the third one was an ectopic pregnancy, and it ruptured and almost killed my wife. She got pregnant a fourth time, and that's my daughter now.

John Delony
I walked into a scene, and it was a mother explaining. It was a really gruesome, caustic situation, but she was explaining to her four or five kids that dad had died by that day in a really awful way. And I walked in and there was little kids playing. And as the first time in my whole life, my body said, get out of this room. And I didn't.

I was like, no, I must. I'm good. It's like, get out of this room. And I told my partner, I got to go. And her name's Janice.

She's amazing. She was like, you can't leave. And I was like, I have to leave. And then out in the parking lot, she said, I never seen you like this. You go home, all right?

And then a few weeks later, I showed up to another scene, and it was a hospital. And two, two daycare workers had taken a van full of infants and had gone to do something and taken them back to the daycare center and left two of the infants in the very, very back seat in 100 degree weather. And I showed up to a 19 year old mom and a 19 year old dad and an infant that was probably not going to make it. And again, my body was like, I had an infant at home. My body's like, get out of this house.

Get out of this hospital. And so I. Then it's my job to tell my supervisor I can't do any more baby calls for a while. And now I could go back and do them, but at the time I had an infant at home, I experienced a lot of loss of my own at the house. And so, a, you always go with somebody else.

Go with a partner, and b, don't be afraid to say, I can't. I can't right now. Unless you're in the military on a mission or you're a police officer and you're responding to save someone's life, just the bravest thing you can do often is say, me being here is going to cause more problem to the situation that's going to help. And this skill that you have to bring people off of a ledge, for lack of a better term, have you ever employed that in a situation that wasn't necessarily a call? Maybe you're like, at the grocery store or something and you see somebody.

Oh, always. Yeah. But, I mean, it's not, I think we. The training is really human 101. Right?

Like showing up and showing somebody that I hear you and that I see you. Can you hear me? It goes back to counting cracks in the sidewalk and counting trees. What I'm doing when I do that, somebody as simple as I drove up to work, this is about two years ago, and there was a small car, and there was like eight bodies leaning into this car. And so I just knew something was going on in that car.

And I parked and ran over to the car, and somebody was having a panic attack in the car. And I asked everybody to back up because the worst thing when someone's having a panic attack is having nine faces in your face, right? And I asked the woman who's having a. She couldn't breathe. And I said, will you hold my hand?

And she said, yeah. And I said, will you get out of the car? She said, yeah, she got out. And I said, this is gonna be weird, but will you take your hand and put it on my chest for a second? And she goes, yeah.

And we walked around the parking lot, and within just a few minutes, it was whoosh. And then she get embarrassed. I was like, don't be embarrassed. Like, your body is trying to keep you safe. It took off on you.

That counting is telling your body, get out of your fight or flight. Get out of your reactive. We're here, and we're okay. Right? And so I think that helps if somebody spun up at a grocery store.

I don't know why that guy's so mad. I'm not gonna fight you. Right? I don't know why you're so mad. You're not gonna talk to her like that.

How can we solve, like, what's. How can we solve this? Oh, that guy cut in line. Well, let's deal with that, right? And it's just a matter of bringing a room down.

But that's when you show up to somebody and they're. They've crossed a line, and they think the world will be a better place and they'll stop hurting by not being here anymore, getting through that reaction system and saying, no, no, no, I see you, and the world's not gonna be better without you here. That's just. That's human 101, man. You tell a story quite often about how your daughter would not hug you.

Yeah, man, you guys did your homework. Good for you. I think I've only told that, like, on two or three different shows. That's good for you guys.

Yeah. It started out as kind of a funny thing. My older son, he's 14 now, is very, like, very compassionate, very, like, touches. Touches an important thing for him. And my daughter wasn't.

And I did not understand how therapeutic and healing a hug from a daughter is. And I've talked to other dads of daughters, and, like, bro, it's wild, right? And also, it's not my daughter's job to heal me. Right. So it's that weird.

I love it. And you feel better when your daughter's, like, daddy and runs and hugs you. And also, it's not her job to make me feel better. That's my job. Right.

And so it started out as kind of a funny thing, and it's kind of attention thing, and she'd be like, no, dad. And she'd run away, and it's kind of part of our game, but I didn't like that game, right. And long story short, it built up and built up and built up to where I knew something wasn't right. Developmentally, this is. This got weird, right?

And I know enough about child psychology to know something's not healthy here. And it was my wife, who's brilliant, was doctor Deloney way before I was. She's the OG. She said, you know, you're always talking about neuroception, right? This radar that is scanning the environment 24/7 for threats, for things that aren't okay.

What if her teeny, tiny little girl, six year old girl body has identified you as not safe? I was like, that's insane. I don't ever yell in my house. I don't swear at my kids, right? I don't hit my kids.

Like, there's nothing to be scared of. And that's when my wife said, oh, John, you've got a nuclear reactor in your chest. Like, all of us can feel it, right? I was like, what are you. I think my response was like, what are you talking about?

Right? Um, but I called B's. I was like, no, I don't. I don't have a nuclear reactor. I'm like, a nice guy.

And she's like, you're a controlled guy. Like, it's there. So I was like, whatever, dude. So I went to someone in, in Nashville who was a, like, probably the best therapist psychologist I've ever met, and I plopped down and was like, I've got a nuclear reactor in my chest. And that ended months later with me saying some things out loud that had happened when I was a kid that I told my wife, I've been with my wife for a quarter century.

She didn't know. I just never told anybody. And I didn't understand the way I will. All I like to teach about traumas, your body just puts little gps pins and things that happen when you're a kid. It good stuff, bad stuff.

And when it starts to detect we're getting near that gps pin again, it will sound the. It'll sound the alarms, man. The job is to keep you safe. And so my body had. Was tough to be around.

And after, after months of that, dude, it was the way the quote unquote story ends, which is not an ending. She's eight now, and it's amazing, but I was doing something on, on the ground. I was trying to get something out from under a chair or something, but I was on all fours and she just bombed me, jumped off something, grabbed me really tight and wouldn't get off. And I said a sentence out loud. I said, josephine, get off me.

And then I started laughing and I was like, no, don't. Get off me. Right, right. And I realized, oh, we hug all the time. Like, she's running and jumping and climbing all over me.

And it was this. I'm safe, right? And people at work notice, like, are you cool, man? Like, you seem super chill. And it was just this letting go, man.

Jack Selby
So when you say you had a nuclear reactor in your chest, what does that mean? Like, you were just high strung? I think it was. My wife calls it, used to call it Sunday afternoon dad or a sleeping bear, like a Sunday afternoon dad. Everybody knows dad's on the couch.

John Delony
He's kind of half asleep. There's a ball game on. Everybody in the house kind of knows, don't go in there. Don't go wake up dad. Right.

You know what I mean? And when I say that, most people are like my dad, right, it's just that sense that in that room, it's not okay. And I didn't want to be Sunday Afternoon dad, so I didn't go turn the ball GAme on. In fact, it was probably worse. I just plopped in the middle of everybody.

But I was still that Sunday afternoon dad. I still was that bear. And so I think it's a body that's just waiting for the next thing, right? Always waiting for the next thing. And if trauma happens to when you're a little kid, you're always waiting for the next thing.

You're always waiting for the next Thing to come. And other people pick up on that, and it comes across as guys. And that guy's a jerk. That guy's high strung. He was always reactive.

But, man, that challenge is way, way, way upstream. This is a very specific question, and if you don't want to answer, we can always out. But you had a call on the SHow that I did hours of research into. Wow. I could find updates.

Jack Selby
I tried so hard to find. Like, I was in Reddit threads. Like, old. It was bad. Like, old face, like, you name it, I was there.

I'm just, I don't want to say too much because I don't want people to do it, but it was a call, and it was a father that was calling about four weeks after something catastrophic had happened in his house. He had two kids, two sons that went and planned to kill the mother. So his wife as well as his younger son. This is early, early on, huh? I, like, looked up court records.

I looked up everything. I could not find updates to this very specific call. And it is so fascinating because this guy, this father, was a victim as well as someone who was a father to, you know, two kids that had gone on attempted murder. Do you know anything that happened in this case? And then I found there are so many people that are curious, too.

John Delony
The only thing I don't like about my show is I'm always asking people, will you call me back. Will you call me back? Will you call me back? Will you call me back? We've never staged a single call, ever.

And I always am like, okay, what happened? What happened? What happened? Very few people circle back. They just are embarrassed or they get blown up or it's.

We have had people reach out and be like, whoa. Somebody at my church recognized my voice, even though I changed the state and changed the name. And, like, can you take it down? Right, that call. Um, and if I remember correctly, it's a dad with three kids and a wife, four kids.

Two of the kids are like, let's kill mom. They go to kill mom, and little brother's there or something like that. And so get. Somehow gets hurt or whatever to hit with a baseball bat. That's a sensational call.

That will happen to almost none of us. Right? All parents go through a thing where one of their kids does a thing, and you find yourself not liking that kid, and you have another kid that's getting straight a's and you have one kid that's causing problems. And so I love the fact very few people will get 23 andme and find out their dad was the local priest, and they kept it. The priest and their mom kept it a secret for all these years.

That will happen to almost nobody. But the number of people who reach out to the show and say, dude, I did 23 andme and found out my dad's got, I got kids, I got brothers and sisters that I didn't know about. Like, I got. That's pretty common. Or more importantly, what do you find out?

What happens when you find out your dad's not who he thought you who you thought he was? He had a secret, his own secret, pornography addiction. He had a big gambling addiction. He didn't have any retirement at all, or he had $5 million you didn't know about. Right?

I think the universality that's inside those sensational calls, I love it when people reach out and be like, I saw the title and I was like, that's not going to apply to me. And suddenly they're calling their husband and being like, I'm so sorry, right? I'm not cheating on you with nine guys, including your best man, but I'm about to cross a line with somebody at work, and we need to talk. Right? And I love that they're able to find their story in these big, sensational stories.

Recently, somebody called, and as we dug into it, they called for one thing. And I remember getting real still. He's like, do you have a plan to take your life? And he said, yeah, I do. And just so happens I do work with, behind closed doors with a behavioral services team in the state where this guy lived.

And I said, if I get you connected to an inpatient group today, will you go? I said, you gotta go. If you don't, I'm gonna call 911. I'm not giving you an option. You're going somewhere today.

And he said, yeah, I'll go. How do you deal with publishing calls like that? That can open them up to a lot of negative comments, like, let's just say someone's on the edge. Maybe they're just. Just mentally depressed.

Graham Stephan
Maybe they're going through some stuff. But to put their call online and then have them potentially read the comments about them and have those comments just be nasty. Well, in this particular case, the guy did. We'll always tell them, don't read the comments. Like they're.

John Delony
Don't read them like, this is, you and I had a human experience. As much as we could on the phone. Don't read the comments. People don't understand what you're going through. I don't fully know your story.

I got nine minutes with you. Are people really gonna listen? I mean, some will, some don't, but I feel like it's a morbid curiosity in a car crash where it's like, don't look, but everyone looks. This particular story that I just told you, the guy reached out, and the comments were so beautiful and so amazing. And he said, I've not felt this loved in a long time.

And so it worked the other way this time. Okay, but do you ever come into. Situations I always tell people, don't look at. I mean, don't. Yeah, I mean, and the.

The request to have the show taken down has gone way down. But early on, especially, people would ask, like, whoa, I gave my name and my. My place. I didn't know my husband listened to the show. He just came home, was upset.

Graham Stephan
And so that's how often that happens, because it seems like you could change a name. We change names and location almost all the time. If Jack were to call in and I listen, I would know. It's Jack complaining about Graham. I work with this guy.

Jack Selby
He's the high profile finance youtuber.

Graham Stephan
Definitely not Graham. My name is whack from Vas Lagos. And no, I mean, it happens. I don't know how much we've kind of. We prep people on the front end enough to say we're not gonna take it down.

John Delony
I think we've taken out a few, and they were pretty, pretty dire situations. So on your channel, your most successful videos tend to be relationship based. Why do you think it is that most relationships are failing? People are unhappy in those relationships. Yeah.

I'll echo William Glasser. He's a famous psychiatrist from the day that kind of swore off psychiatry, but he said he could fix marriage relationships in one or two sessions. And we kind of said it flippantly. And I remember in grad school, I was like, who does this guy think he is? And here's what he said.

He said, we think in pictures, but we speak in words. And if you can align the pictures, you can get people aligned. And so the analogy I made up about that is, if my wife comes to me and is like, hey, you and me, Friday night, hottest date of your life. Let's do this. And then she kind of winks and flirtatiously and walks away.

Dude, Monday night, I'm thinking about this date. Tuesday. I'm wondering, like, what I'm going to be wearing and for how long. What she can be wearing by Thursday. I'm wondering, like, where the helicopter is going to land, all that stuff.

And then Friday, I go home from work, I shower, I put on a suit, I get all gussied up, and I walk out, and she's in running shorts and a t shirt. And I'm like, what are you doing? She's like, what are you doing? I said, you said, we're going on a hot date. And she's like, yeah, dude, it's seven tacos for $7 at the Taco hut, right?

And then I get mad, and then she gets mad that I'm mad. And we both said date. And I had a picture that looked like this, and she had a picture that looked like that. And so I think most people in relationship, you hire Jack. Like, I want you to be the co host.

Your job is to kind of be cool, but ask the hard questions, be way better looking, have amazing hair, right? But you have a picture of what this, what he's going to be doing, and he shows up, and his picture of what you told him is just different because y'all both said co host, and he had a picture of co host. And I think we need to do a better job of saying, here's. Here's what I have in mind. Here's what this looks like.

Even with my kid, I remember telling my seven or eight year old, my son, when he was young, he would kept talking and talking over some adults, and I said, hey, will you be cool. And then I just started laughing. I was like, yeah, you don't really know what that means because you're eight, right? Here's what this means. And so we just launch words at each other.

Make sure you vote right. Well, I got a picture of what that looks like, and you do too. And now I find out you voted the wrong way. And now we're fighting. We just gotta align the pictures.

And then if we have a true disagreement, then we'll have that disagreement, but most of us don't. How much do you think current culture going online and society is affecting relationships. Today that's destroying it? In what way? Well, have you ever had a fleeting thought about somebody you dated or somebody had a crush on when you were in middle school?

And you're like, no, I never had a crush on. I think for all of human history, you wonder what happened to so and so. Well, now I can just pull out my phone and find out, and then I can reach out to her and say, how's it going? Here's my cell number. Give me a call.

And now we're off to the races, right? So we've injected these things that have never happened before in human history. And we also, man, I don't. We don't have the psychological capacity to deal with every tragedy going on, every corner of the world, all at the same time. And we're considered cruel and not compassionate if we're not up to the minute on every tragedy going on.

We can't hold all that. So it makes it very hard to be present with somebody when you're just buried by the weight of the world. There's something that you said that phrased that in a slightly different way that really resonated with me, which was like. Like, would you let 7 billion people in your family room? Well, you do it every morning.

At six in the morning. Yeah. On your phone? Yeah. It's access to all of these other things that don't actually impact you.

Jack Selby
But they say that they do. There's a former Navy SeAL who recently said, and he's a cyber guy, and he's like, man, when you give your kid a smartphone, you're not giving him the world, you're giving the world to him. And a seven year old can't compute. Waking up in the morning and opening a phone and getting the opinions of 7 billion people on what he should be doing and why. And who am I to say I'm any different?

John Delony
Yeah, it's too many voices, too much mess, too much chaos. We're not wired for it. So what do you think the biggest. Problems are in relationships? When people call in, what's the issue?

Graham Stephan
What's the most common problem that people. Say they have agency and boundaries. Last night, sitting at the table with a group of people who listen to the show, somebody didn't have the courage to tell their mom, I can't take care of you like this anymore. They don't know how to set a boundary. They don't have permission.

John Delony
They've been responsible for the parents emotions for so long, and they don't know how to. They don't know what to do next. And most people have been told, as we talked about earlier, all you are is this or this or this. And they don't understand that they can be so much more, and they just need permission to leave. They need permission to say, you can't talk to me like that.

You can't hit me anymore. And most people don't. Don't know that. Have they have that kind of agency? What about in romantic relationships?

Oh, man. There's all kind of problems with those. Yeah, but, I mean, it distills down to, here's a conversation I had. So back when I had a large staff, I invited the dean of the business college to come talk to my team. And his name was doctor Lydl, brilliant guy.

And he was a business professor, and he was a dean of the business school. He comes in and begins to talk about his family's core values and their family strategic plan. And I. I was like, oh, geez, this guy. Leave it to a business professor to ruin family, too, right?

And so I interjected, and I said, you have a strategic plan for your family, like your wife and kids and stuff? And here's what he said. He goes, how long do we vision cast strategic plan, five year plan, job descriptions for our jobs. And I remember he ended with this sentence, for our businesses, for things that don't matter. And then we just go home, and we just kind of do dad like our dads did, or we don't do dads like our dads did.

And we kind of are married like our parents were married, and we kind of just fall into what they did. And so I think the largest challenge to modern relationships is a lack of intentionality, is this idea that I don't know how to do this. It's kind of like being on a plane a few times and being like, I can fly this. That's how we treat marriage. Like, I've seen a marriage or two.

I can do that, right? And we don't study it. We don't research it. We don't dig into it. We don't figure it out.

We don't come up with practices. We just like, try to be married. And then we say stupid stuff like, well, that marriage just ran its course. No, it didn't. We just quit.

Like, y'all stopped. And so I think people, we're not, we're not myself include, we're just not intentional. Like we should be on something that matters this much. A lot of people call into your show on the brink of divorce. Why are most divorces initiated by women?

Jack Selby
And what have you noticed to be the number one cause of this? It's a modern, it's a modern concept, and it's economic viability. For all of human history, women weren't allowed to work. My mom, in 1970, when she married, my dad was not allowed to sign a mortgage in the united states. That's my mom.

John Delony
This isn't that long ago. My mom was not allowed to have a checking account without my dad's signature in 1970. Right. I think it was 73 when that changed. And so for all human history, women were tied economically to the men in their lives.

And now all of a sudden, six or seven out of ten college graduates are women. Like the, they're crushing men in multiple categories. And so now they can't, don't have to put up with that crap anymore and they can leave. And so, yeah, when, soon as, when that happens, culture by culture by culture. Esther Perel has talked about that a lot.

Like his cultures, as it begins to balance out. Women are out, man. They leave because they can. I heard in a conversation between, I think it was you and Jordan Peterson that women initiate the divorces because they're more likely to respond to negative stimuli. They're more likely to talk about the negativity, to bring that to discussion or whatever, whereas guys are more sort of saying, whatever, it doesn't matter.

A futility, right? And I think that's a lack of tools. It's a lack of skills. Again, for all human history, men didn't have to be good at relationship. There was no such thing as no fault divorce.

It just was right. And so I didn't have to learn this thing, and no one had to listen to her talk about the things that were burning up inside of her. It just was. And now all of a sudden, men are being tasked with, you have to learn some new skills, man. It's a new time.

I don't want to roll back women's contribution to the workforce and education, all these important places. But that means men have to learn new skills and men have to learn to say, don't just say the words. It is what it is. That's not a good answer or whatever. She no.

Learn to say out loud. Here's what scares me. Here's what I want. Here's something I need say those things out loud. That's bravery and courage.

Not just, oh, whatever, dude. See, I heard that women initiate more divorces on average, and I think it's so, it's almost like 50 50, but it's, like, slightly skewed for the women in response to things the guys are doing. And so that could be like, maybe the guy is cheating on her or maybe the guy is abusive or maybe this or that initiating the divorce, but he is culpable for the divorce happening, if that makes sense. Maybe. Maybe.

I mean, again, it goes back to their initiating because they can now, right. And for all human history, they couldn't. That wasn't a part of the deal. Why do people cheat in relationships? How can you prevent your partner from cheating on you?

Jack Selby
Graham has a very interesting story about this. We were having this discussion right before the podcast. Do you want to say? Yeah, yeah, I'll say so. I was cheated on in a prior relationship, but I told Jack, I don't see that as being, like, 100% her fault.

Graham Stephan
I honestly think it was 50 50. Tell me about that. I could have been a better partner. We broke up initially because I said, I think we had dated for almost a year. And I went to her and I said, I don't think you're the person I want to get married to.

And obviously, that was a huge shock. And so we broke up up. But then we got back together afterwards, and I thought, well, you know what? Like, we did get along great, and let's just see how it goes. But I think that that broke it so much that when she did it, like, it wasn't a surprise to me, if that makes sense.

So that's why I kind of think it's a 50 50. I'll lean on Esther Perel. This is kind of her world, but her explanation of a sense of aliveness or walking death, if you will, and I'll walk you through how she got to it. And I love how she got to it. And it resonates a lot with me.

John Delony
She kept seeing over and over what you would call great marriages. Married. They're raising kids. They bury parents together. They, like, she held the house down while he went to law school.

And now he's holding the fort down when she's going back to med school. They did life together, and then one of them steps out, right. And it was often not because I didn't love you, and it was often not because our marriage wasn't going great or going. I wouldn't say great, going really good. It was this sense that I'm not.

I'm dead inside. I'm a lot. I'm not alive anymore. It's this slow, quiet life of desperation. And then somebody at work thinks your jokes are hilarious.

And you feel that flame reignite just a little bit. Somebody writes you back. That was an amazing email. Keep those coming. And you start crafting your emails kind of with her in mind or him in mind, right.

And it's just a slow. You know, that you've heard that old. You just turn the wheel one degree and it turns all the way around. Suddenly somebody else makes you feel a little bit more alive. And so this stepping out of the marriage is about feeling alive again.

And so you're in, like, can we repair? Can we find spark again? And are we committed? I like what she says. You practice safety when you're dating.

Are they going to answer the phone? Are they going to show up when they said they were going to show up? Is this person how they respond when they get. Someone cuts him off in traffic? Does he freak out and smash the steering wheel?

Or does he exhale and kind of laugh a little bit? You're practicing safety and safety can't. It can, but it's hard to coincide with desire. Right. It's that tension.

I'm really attracted to this person. I'm all over them. I'm emotional. But we're practicing safety. Once you establish safety, that.

That eros, that eroticism goes away. And so how do you practice desire over 510, 2030 years? It becomes, eh, we got along. That's cool. Let's give it a shot.

I mean, that doesn't sound erotic. That doesn't sound like desire. That sounds like you're here. I'm here. Let's go get something to eat.

Graham Stephan
Yeah. Right. But that's why I think the. It's in aliveness. Yeah.

Yeah. Not all the time, but in a lot of time, I think both parties usually have some responsibility. And usually, I think cheating is in response to something in the relationships that's not working. And I would say ultimately, it's one or both of us have agreed this is just the way this is going to be. And we're not talking through seasons we're not talking through what's coming up.

John Delony
We're not talking about how can I love you today? We're not talking about, we're talking about I just got to do this and I got to do this. And you become great co managers. You become great co podcasters, right? And you stop saying, like, why do we even get into this in the first place?

And what is it about you that I just love? And here's something. Recently, I did, and I don't think y'all know that I did this. Going back to what doctor Lytle said, every year, my wife and I now do a strategic plan for our marriage. And we talk about our finances and we talk about love and we talk about how we're raising our kids, and we talk about all these goals that we had.

Had we do. This year, I spent some time in personal reflection, and I went, huh? If you were to ask me what are the two most important things in your life, I would say my wife and my two children. And I would say my faith. And then you would say, how much money have you spent over the years on mental health stuff?

And I would say probably $150 to $170,000, including all my schooling and everything. And I havent spent a penny on the other stuff. And I was like, man. So I hired a theology professor from a local university, and we meet once a week and hes giving me a course. I said, I want you to design a course called faith 101 for a semester.

For me, im sure to go all the way back to zero. And I want to be able to tell my 14 year old in very simplistic terms, heres why I believe what I believe. And then I asked my wife, I want a syllabus from you. Shes an old professor. And I said, I dont know what podcast you listen to regularly.

I dont know what songs youre listening to all the time in your headphones. I dont know what books youre reading that really sparkles. I want you to make me a syllabus. And she said, this may be the most vulnerable, scary thing you've asked me to do because what if you don't like me? At the end?

I was like, I may think your books are terrible, but I'll like you. And so I'm committed this year to read these books that she outlined. I want to get to know my wife, not just like, where do you want to eat tonight? Or what color of your eyes? I want to know.

Here's what's been bringing you mystery and joy and laughter and fun. Even if I disagree with it, I think that's a great entry point. That's fascinating. I heard on some podcast you may know your kid likes reading a lot and you don't like reading, and they read these boring fiction things that you're not interested in whatsoever. You feel some sort of a disconnection with your kid, you can go and you can what seems to be a waste of time and spend hours reading this book that they're so fascinated in and then surprise them with a question about the book that only a reader would know.

Jack Selby
And this can, like, refoster that connection. Yeah. So me and my son go back and forth, and it's tough sometimes when I get this really weird science fictiony something or other, and I don't really understand dinosaurs and lasers or whatever. And I made him read the comfort crisis. He finished Jonathan Hyatt's book before I did.

John Delony
He grabbed the anxious generation, and I was like, okay, tell me all about it. And he goes, that's what you've been telling me for years. I can't have a cell phone. I mean, he just kind of rattled it off, but he doesn't even know what he's absorbing. But more than that, he is absorbing.

My dad values me with his time. My dad read this book, too, and I love that interaction. On the topic of keeping relationships going for an extended period of time, you talk about cultivating desire and safety. So, like, those are two things that you juxtapose with one another. You say kind of crassly, but also honestly, it's like you go to the most safe person in your entire life.

Jack Selby
It's like no one wants to kiss their mom, no one wants to make out with their mom, even though that's kind of like a horrific sight. And the fact that we're all kind. Of like mildly throwing up in our stomachs thinking about that, it's because they're the safest possible person, and they're kind of like, it's light on a spectrum. How can you make sure that you continue to balance desire as you keep a relationship going? Because safety will usually be there if you spent enough time with someone.

But how can you practice desire? I think people have to get to a place where they say out loud, here's what I want. And I hear the phrase a lot. My husband needs sex. And anytime somebody needs something energetically, that's a maternal response.

John Delony
Like, my kids need food, my kids need clothing. And so if I'm married to somebody and I get home and I've worked a full day, and my kids need this and this and this, and then my husband needs this and this. It goes on a checklist as a thing, a series of things to do. But if I get home and my husband wants me, my husband desires me, and I get home and my wife desires me, that's another ballgame. And so I always want to keep from slipping into that.

You're my mom. Roll. Going back to boundaries, going back to intentionality, man. The number of calls I get on my show, and I'm like, dude, you're your husband's mom. He's a child for you.

And she's like, oh, my God. Yeah, of course you don't have sex with your kid. Right? How do you differentiate that when, let's say they have a traditional relationship where the husband goes and works the wife cleans the house, cooks the food, aren't those just motherly tendencies to begin with, even though that's maybe more of a traditional gender role? It's a maternal energy to care.

Right. To take care of the home. Right. And again, this is over generalized. Everybody chill.

It's cool. But, like, yes, it's a maternal energy, right? And. But there's a nurturing, and then there is desire. Right?

There is, like, this is my role here at the house. You go out and kill the animal and bring it home. I will cook it and prepare it. Right. We lump all that into make sex a chore, right.

Instead of making it a way that we come together and connect. And we've also turned sex into. Every sexual encounter has to be a superb. And when you're with somebody for a long time, you're gonna have a bunch of, like, it was good. It was fine.

We connected. It was. It was awesome. It was. It was meh.

And then you'll have ones that are like, that was a disaster. Right. And if you're together on the same team and you're building something for the future, you're able to laugh, you're able to roll off, be like, what happened there? And then some are gonna be spectacular. But I think we're so feelings driven.

Like, that was a. It was a wild night, or wasn't that great of a night, what happened? Right? But going back to what you said, like, it goes back to the intentionality. Here's these.

I gotta get these tasks done. I gotta get these tasks done above those and beneath those. I see you and I desire you. I want you, versus. I got another task on that list for you, right?

Does that ring true? Yeah, but I guess. Why are so many men undesirable? What do they do to make themselves undesirable? I think for many women, the man in their house is just another.

Just another mouth to fit, feed. Richard Reeves writes on this great in his book of boys and men. It's a masterpiece that men have cashed out. They've cashed out, man. A lot of the traditional jobs are gone.

A lot of the traditional roles are shifting and changing. They found themselves without skills. And that's why the Andrew Tate's of the world are so popular, because it's. It gives somebody something to be angry at and to point and deflects on instead of saying, okay, I need to learn some new skills. But I think largely, men have been told, you're the problem for everything in the world.

Your jobs are slowly going away. You're not going to college. The guys aren't getting educated. These programs don't work for men, and they're just kind of quitting. And so I think going back to your original divorce and economic, like, women are like, dude, I'm either out, literally, I'm gonna file or I'm out.

Like, this is whatever, just another mouth in the house. That's fascinating. I think it was you that mentioned this, or maybe it was someone else. They said, you ask a man what his ideal day looks like, barring maybe he having kids or something like that, and he just wants to sit on the couch and eat potato chips and watch the game. You know what I mean?

Graham Stephan
Like, if you leave men to their. Own devices and provide them with everything. That'S what they just want to do. But I feel like the reason for that is because it's so opposite of what a lot of guys do on a daily basis, which is going work a job they really don't like. They're expending a lot of energy at that.

It could be physically demanding. So what's the opposite of that? That they don't get to do often, which is watch tv, lay on the couch, be uninterrupted, and eat potato chips. I feel like if you do that, then it might look different. But there's also, like, addictions.

Jack Selby
Like, you can get addicted to video games and other things that are just so enticing that you just continue to do it all the time because you don't have these other responsibilities due to lack of skill or something like that. But I think what you just said is super key is we just give the first part of that equation that you laid out there as a given. It just is you just go work a crappy job that you hate, that you don't want to be there at, and we just say, that's the way that is. And I just wholeheartedly reject that. I think we create lives to where that's the only way we can keep our lexus in the driveway and in our ex house and yada, yada, yada.

John Delony
So I have to go do this thing that's killing me. And the only way I can balance the teeter totter of my life is I go such a miserable path for most of the day that I just smash the other side of that teeter totter and I do nothing. Which, by the way, if always sounds good. Nobody feels better after doing nothing. You don't ever have 9 hours on the couch watching tv, eating potato chips, and just getting up and be like, that was awesome, right?

No, you feel worse and then you realize, oh, I got to do this thing. I'm late on this thing. I should have got this repair, and the whole loop starts again. It's not settling for a, and it's just rejecting the whole equation. To wrap up the conversation about cultivating desire in long term relationships, there was something that you've quoted a lot of books.

Jack Selby
I'm going to quote a book that I read in stumbling on happiness, which is the way that you can cultivate desire or make something good, is two ways, scarcity and novelty. So, for example, let's say one guy goes and he deploys, and then he comes back after six months. That first time seeing your wife again is going to be amazing. There's going to be so much desire and happiness and joy. But if you're with your wife 8 hours a day, every single day, seeing them again, maybe after coming back from like, a one day trip, it's just not very exciting.

Right. And then the other one, novelty, is like, you can have, you know, a right balance of scarcity or whatever, but if you do the same thing every single time, you're not going to be learning and adapting and growing with your wife. It's very hard to do the same thing. It becomes stale. To continue to date after you get married is a very important, I think it was you that actually said that.

It's like a lot of people, they date, then they get married and they stop dating. The game's over. Yeah, right. It's kind of like getting to the major leagues. People think, if I can just get to the major leagues, just get to the major leagues, and they don't realize, no, when you get there.

John Delony
Like, this is when the game starts, right? Or you guys, like, if we could just get to 500,000 subscriptions. It's when you get to 500,000, then you start getting different guests, and then the scrutiny gets bigger, and then the comments get, like, it. Like, oh, this gets heavier. Right.

I also think that you have to be careful about not making marriage about what I get. It's about what we are building. And scarcity and novelty are ways to add excitement and energy and fun into a thing. But there's also long periods of just showing up. And, like, there's times when you go to the gym and your trainer's like, dude, we're doing something totally different today.

And you're like, oh, my gosh. And he puts you through it and you actually do it, and you, like, like, get done, and you feel all jacked up and you're super sore the next day. It's awesome. Can't do that every time you go. Some period.

Sometimes for months, sometimes for years, I just gotta go to the gym. Right. And you're just going through it and going through it and going through it. And in our culture, we tend to in those periods relationally, like, oh, it must be dead, or there's no spark left or what I write, and I think it's a balance of both. And if you're constantly adding novelty and spice and spark, at some point that the house can catch on fire, that's a lot of spark.

Right? And if you just let the whole thing go out, you end up what we were talking about earlier. Like, I just feel dead in my own house. So I think it's finding this balance. And all that balance starts with me.

Do you have a weekly get together with your spouse just to say, how we doing? Like, let's talk through our budget this week. Let's talk through, like, how can I love you this week? Who's taking the kids to school? Like, what does that look like?

What does. What does your week look like? Now I've got seven different podcasts, plus my own show, plus I co hosting this other show. I'm gonna be wiped out. How can I love you this week?

This is gonna be a week, like, for, like, probably less romance. I'm gonna be exhausted when I get home. Can we just hug and watch a show? Can we just sit by each other and read books? Awesome.

Then the following week, I'm gonna have hardly nothing. I'm gonna come home jonesing for a connection. Game on. Right? It's that, to me, is the intentionality and then you can rappel off the side and be like, cool.

I'll add some novelty. I'll add some spark. I'll add some. We'll do some of those fun things. Does that make sense?

It all stems from, are we gonna be intentional about this? And that just sucks, because that's not how Hollywood builds marriages. Now, why do so many people say that marriage is hard? Cause it is. What's hard about it?

We're selfish beings, man. And we think we have pictures of what marriage was gonna. I think I used to think it was. We had a picture of what marriage was gonna look like. I don't think that anymore.

I think we thought marriage was gonna feel a certain way. Same as making a million dollars. I think we all thought it was gonna feel a certain way. I remember one of the top ten or 15 moments of my life was when the driving in a black suv with the head of publishing handed me his cell phone in the back of the car. We were going to a book signing, and Dave Ramsey's on the phone yelling, you're number one.

And I was like, what? And he's like, you did it. You're number one. And he's going, whoa. And I was like, yeah.

Thank you for your help. You did this, man. He's like, no, no. It just holds me. Hung up the phone, and I was like, yeah, dude.

I called my mom. I called my wife. I went to a book signing, and because I'm a part of that giant Ramsey organization, there was a line out the door. We're so so. And then I got to my hotel room, and the door shuts, and then you go take a shower, and you're like, number one.

All right. And I had this fan. I don't. I didn't know what I thought, but I thought it would just feel different. Different.

And I thought a million dollars just shows up in your checking account. I thought there was, like, the number one book fairy just drops a million dollars in your account, and then you get the next day, and you're like, back in line in southwest, waiting the TSA line, and your life just keeps going. I think we do that with having a kid. I think we do that with our jobs. We do that with our.

When I hit milestone x, we think it's gonna feel a certain way, and it doesn't. So you think people are going into marriages feeling like they're gonna be different? It's that. It's the curse of the Renee Zellweger, Tom Cruise, like you completely. I think I'm finally going to be whole.

And then you realize, like all great counselors will tell you, all great psychologists will tell you that wherever you go, you go with you, right? You get married, and you have this wild wedding, and you have a great honeymoon, and you get home, and then it's Monday morning, you got about to work, and you're back in the same car. People just didn't have that expectation because I feel like everyone says, or you hear a lot of people say marriage is hard, but you never hear people say, friendships are hard. So what's the big difference between maintaining a friendship and maintaining a friendship with your wife or husband? Cause I don't think we have, when I'm with my buddies have this expectation that I'm going to be complete in some way.

I know Todd and I know John, and I know they vote differently than me. And I know we have different economic thoughts, and we get together and argue, and we both like to watch the fights, and we both love each other's kids, and we both love our wives. And I've done life with those guys. I don't have an expectation of it's going to feel a certain way when it comes to marriage. Like, no, it needs to feel.

I need to feel like I'm a king. I need to feel like I'm great. I need to feel like I'm complete. I need to feel like I'm whole. I need to feel like I'm safe.

Often somebody else can't give you that. And so you go through this, this illusion. It's a happily ever after. They never tell you, we never asked the question, what happens after you win? But that sounds like two people who are incomplete in their lives get together thinking the marriage is going to solve something, and it doesn't.

Graham Stephan
Versus two people who are just complete on their own coming together. Do you think that that's a difference? No, because I think that person would be coming saying, oh, nothing's going to change. And it all changes, too, right? I think people aren't honest about it.

John Delony
I was going to feel different. Cool. What's the biggest change about getting married? Graham's getting married. I'm getting married this year.

Okay. And I question how that's going to change the relationship. That makes sense. Cause I feel like you know everything. We're gonna continue to work just as hard as we have.

Graham Stephan
We're gonna continue to have ups and downs. I've never considered it hard. There's absolutely times you're frustrated, angry, sad, whatever. But I would never say it's hard. And so I'm curious what a marriage would do differently in that situation.

John Delony
I think it's a. You're probably more differentiated than most, right? You're more thoughtful and think through very logically all these different emotions. I think where it gets hard is you get a call that your mom's very sick and she's got 48 hours, and your wife. I'm making something up completely.

Okay. Your wife has heard you talk about you and your mom don't have a great relationship. Relationship. And then you get a call that your mom's sick and she's got maybe 48 hours. And you say, I've got to finish this interview.

And suddenly your wife thinks, that's your mom. And you think, I've told you we're not close. Like, we have been estranged for a long time. And then she starts to ask, who is this man I married? Is he going to leave me?

Right. And so suddenly those kind of things will happen over and over and over and over again. And it happened through COVID. It really split up a lot of folks because the government said, do one thing thing. And you might know your spouse was kind of anti government.

Like, they always rant about whatever. Or your spouse was super compliant, like, whatever the speed limit is. They described the speed limit, but suddenly, like, I didn't know you. Right. So those things happen.

And that's that. That's where it gets hard. Or you'll say something in a moment when you won't realize your wife was reaching out to you for something. She might carry the label wife differently than she carries the label girlfriend or you. The first time someone's like, oh, this is my husband.

Husband. You might go, right. Like, it. All of it just shifts and changes, and at the same time, it doesn't feel like we think it's going to. So I think it's all a matter of coming back and saying, month one, this feels exactly the same.

Cool. You too? Yeah, it feels exactly the same. That's not really kind of anticlimactic. Awesome.

Same team. Same team. What's our budget like this week? How can I love you this week? And it's continuing to come back to that well over and over and over.

It's like going to the gym so that you look up 25 years from now and you can still bend down and pick up your niece and nephew. So what are the things that couples could do to ensure that they stay together? A decide, we're gonna stay together. I wish there was something more sexy and, like, five steps to I have to decide this will never end. And come hell or high water, we're gonna figure this out.

And then the second one, I think, is intentionality. I don't know intentionality as a psychological practice. I know as a physical practice, we get together once a week. I won't call you if I'm gonna spend more than x dollars on a thing. Light therapy.

The other day and I called my wife and said, at this point, we don't need to call each other, but I said, I'd like to buy something that's obnoxiously expensive and it's a health and wellness gadget that may or may not work. What'd you get? It was just a juve, like a big red light therapy thing that I can sit and meditate in front of. She's like, oh, geez, sure. But it was.

We budgeted for. It was planned and all that. But how much was it even? I don't know. It was 1500 bucks.

At this point in our marriage, we don't need to make that call. But that's just part of our rhythm, right? And I never want to get out of the rhythm of we're touching, touching base, touching home base, touching home base. What scares you the most about getting married? Honestly, my biggest fears are not really relationship based.

Graham Stephan
My biggest fear is not. And I've been totally upfront with Macy about this, too. But not being able to pursue dreams and passions, not being able to express myself and not being happy in what I'm doing day to day, those are my biggest fears. And so I was telling her, and we've had so many great discussions, too, about what we expect from a relationship and this and that. But my thing is, I don't want to ever have to feel like I'm held back from pursuing something.

And my things are usually like, hobbies and work are the two things that I get a lot of joy and fulfillment from. And when I get really into something, it's just like, it's all I want to do. And so that might be the aquarium. Like, it's never going to be like, oh, I want to go out with all the buddies and stay at 03:00 for me, it's like, hey, if I had this really cool hobby, like, I just want to be able to do that. And like, hey, if I'm on this cool project, I want to be able to focus on this product.

Like, that, to me, brings me a lot of joy. That's my biggest fear, is not being able to have those things. But that's with or without a relationship. That's just me. I'm, you know, I'm a.

My own. I think that's one of the reasons why I was, like, always just saving so much money, because for me, I want to have those options to be able to do the things that I really enjoy. Whatever shows up. Exactly. So it's less about, like, a relationship thing and more about, like, how could I design this lifestyle where I'm able to pursue the things that really make me happy and fulfilled?

And again, it's all work and hobbies, really. Sure. Is there a chance that fully committing and going all into another person like this fills the gap that maybe a hobby was filling? I've been 100% committed. Like, that's how I feel.

Like, I'm not gonna get. I can't possibly get more committed than I am now. Like, I'm 100% in, and I'm gonna stay 100% in. So it's very cool. It's hard for me to say that I would be more committed getting married.

I'm like, I'm gonna be just as committed. I would challenge you to leave space for the opposite effect, that maybe now I can do something I've never been able to do, which is to share some of this with somebody, and it will magnify my joy or love for it. I thought I was into. Let me think. Save it this way.

John Delony
I thought playing guitar, I've got guitars. I collect them. I love it. I love picking up a song on the Internet and trying to learn to play. In fact, this year, I started one of my goals, and I didn't do it.

I was supposed to do it last year. Didn't do it. Supposed to do this year. It's not going great. But I wanted to go learn the ten.

My ten favorite weedle. Dd eighties metal hair, guitar solos. And now that YouTube's out, you can just play by play, step by step, note by note of them. And that's awesome. I like sitting in my basement.

I have a room where I write and do all my stuff and play guitar. I love doing that. It can't compare to jamming with a band, right? With a group of people in a room making music. And so I can get that apprehension, like, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to do husband stuff, and it's gonna take away from aquarium time.

The other, other side of that might be maybe aquarium time, maybe become amazing and maybe become connected time. Maybe she gets her own aquarium, or she starts acting. We do the. So who knows, right? But it can be both.

And it could be an optimism for I'm always haunted and inspired by that old Brene Brown quote. Whatever you go looking for in the world, you're sure to find. I always want to think to myself as a way to shift how the lens, the glasses I'm wearing to see the world, not where's my time being taken from, but where can this accelerate and make this thing more pleasurable and more exciting and more joyful, if that makes sense. It does. It's just a frame for experiencing the world.

Okay. But good on you, man. That's good. It's good that you even know that out loud. And you're way ahead of the curve.

But you said those things out loud. Said them out loud. Most people would just keep them quiet, get married, and then get frustrated and then not say anything and then resent. I think both of us are, like, so committed to making it work that we, like, looked up all these statistics on saying, like, all right, you get married at this age, you're less likely to divorce. You have, like, this.

Graham Stephan
You're less likely to, like all of these things that, statistically, we know. We could, like, you know, dwindle some of this down and then work on a lot of things ahead of time to, like, know what we're getting into. And that's the big capital I, intentional, right? Yeah. And y'all have done it in your own weird, statistically driven, nerdy way, but y'all have been highly intentional together, so good for you.

John Delony
That's awesome. Something that I've always had trouble with navigating because he'll come to me and ask me questions, what should I do in this situation with. With my fiance? What should I do in this situation? How should I respond to this?

Jack Selby
And it's really hard, because I would respond completely differently than he would respond. Give me an example. So, for example, unfortunately or fortunately, I could be potentially more combative in conversation. So, for example, I will contend an idea that I do not agree with, whereas he will be a little bit more avoidant. He just doesn't care about the other person.

Not seeing that he's right enough to, you know, to push that and to be like, hey, here's why I'm right, or whatever. He doesn't care enough. He'll just be like, whatever. I just want to avoid this. I always thought it's like, fundamentally, it just seems like you're planting a very bad seed.

You know what I mean? This can come up in the future, but after years of talking to him about it, it's like, been the biggest wake up call to me. Like, news flash, everyone's different, you know? And for him, maybe he genuinely doesn't care. And for me, that's been, like, the hardest pill to swallow.

When I'm trying to navigate how to help him out with something is the fact that I just think fundamentally, this is how human nature is, this is how I am, this is how I expect other people to be. But in actuality, maybe he genuinely is just like, eh, you know, I guess. My response to that is I tend to see the big picture and I'm like, how's everything going overall? Is this a big deal? No.

Graham Stephan
Do we have a difference on this? Yes. Can I convince her? No. Can she convince me?

John Delony
No. No. So it's fine. But, like, in the big picture, control, you can control. Let's move on, kind of.

Yeah. It's like, hey, overall, we have a great life. We're happy together, we want to be together. We're not. No one's leaving, right?

Graham Stephan
Like, this little thing doesn't matter. And we could blow it up into something big, but it really. It's so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that I just kind of think it doesn't make a difference in my life. And I would say going full circle, this is why that very beginning conversation is important. This is the root of why mental health practitioners don't tell people, well, here's what you should do.

John Delony
Because some people are like, I wouldn't let anybody talk to me that way. And some people are like, it doesn't matter. And so there is a. An important part of therapy is finding out, well, what does matter to you, and is that serving you well? Right.

And so y'all just approach problems differently. That's good. It's good that you know that about yourself and more importantly, that you're honest about your partner. Like, this is. These are the things that get me fired up, and these are the things that.

These are the hills I'll die on. Do you have more hills that you'll die on than him or much fewer? Probably much fewer. Yeah. I think that overall, if everything is good, I'm happy.

Graham Stephan
And so if there's, like, little tiny things, it just doesn't. It doesn't get to me. There's. There's little things that'll get to me short term, but you give it, like a day, and I've just moved on to something else. I'm not just talking about relationship problems, I'm just talking, like, a little work thing.

I come to jackal. Hey, this happened. Blah, blah, blah. It's really annoying. But then a day later, I'm like.

John Delony
Hey, you know what? This is stupid. It doesn't matter. Not a big deal. How do you address uncomfortable topics with.

Your partners, for example, directly go right through them. I don't like that you've been gaining weight, for example, not finding your partner attractive, you know, so you say just straight up. No, I like the wisdom. Don't ever use the word you in a, in that type of conversation. I'm struggling with being attracted to you right now.

I'm worried about your health. That is different than you did this. Because when soon as you say you, I have to build a wall to protect myself. You just came swinging. I got it.

Block. I got to block your punches. If I say I'm struggling with this, which is the real truth here, I'm worried about you, which is the real truth here. That's an invitation. And it might be a scary, hard, uncomfortable invitation, but anytime somebody goes, you've been acting crazy, man.

You're off to the races now they have to defend themselves versus, I feel like I'm not being heard in this house. Like, that's me. Right? And now let's have that conversation. It's fascinating.

Jack Selby
You talk about the difference between invitation and commands, and you said it would be a gift to me if you did the dishes rather than I don't like that you don't do the dishes after you eat your food, which is just a funny way of phrasing it. And it is fortunate, unfortunate. I err more on the side. I feel like, in my gut, that it's unfortunate that you have to play a game, but you know what? Have conversations.

John Delony
But it's not a game. It's hospitality. Does that make sense? It's. It's, it is.

We have such an individualistic culture. Everything is about me, and so if I want a thing, it all begins with, you have to make my thing happen. I don't think. I don't see as much as a game. It's just a.

It's just a new language. We had a divorce lawyer on James Sexton, who's fantastic. He gave a great example. He said that you reward good behavior that you want to see more of. And so in that case, the dishes.

Graham Stephan
You could say something like, I absolutely love it when you do the dishes. And then afterwards, we have all this time together and sharing, like, the benefit instead of, I don't like it when you don't do something. I like this when you do this. And this makes me happy and excited and all these great things. And that rewarding good behavior does a lot better than shaming bad behavior.

Or by bad behavior, I mean something you just don't like. Well, I think one's an invitation. One's kind of. Yeah, one is. I really feel loved when x, y, and z.

John Delony
Who's not gonna lean into that? Right? I want to do that more. What questions should you ask to your partner before you decide to get married? When I'm talking about faith and finances, I think those are important conversations.

How do we solve problems? Because there is going to be inevitable conflict. How do we come to the table? I think you have conversations about kids. Even though all of that's going to change, you have no idea how that journey is going to look like.

And I'm not saying everyone has to have the same faith. What I'm saying is we need to have a set of anchored values. I often will just distinguish between values and beliefs. I want my values anchored and in for the Delaunays. One of our values is we believe in God.

We believe in something bigger than us. What does that belief look like that has moved all over the place? And I want my beliefs to change. That's why I sit with theologians. That's why I read books.

I want my beliefs to be all over the place, and I want my wife to be somebody. I can go and say, I think I believe this right now. And that's not challenging that anchor, right? That value. One of our values is curiosity.

That means we're always allowed to ask hard questions in our marriage about anything, right? About politics, about religion, anything like that. And it also means we don't land on the same place a lot. One of our core values in our family is not. We will agree on everything all the time.

That's a. That's a recipe for disaster. But one of our core values is curiosity. Ask anything, man, and I'll still love you, even though I think you are a goofball on this particular topic. Right.

Um, but I think a good place to start is family and, uh, discussion of faith practice. What does that look like for you? None. Okay. What does that look like?

Kids and finances. What did, uh. I'm interested to know what Sexton had to say. I think it was just very like, what are our expectations of the relationship? What are your roles?

Graham Stephan
What are my roles? How are we going to do finances?

What families are we going to see for the holidays? I think it's just a lot of the very practical questions, like the everyday boundaries. Yeah. Who's going to take care of the kids in this situation? Who's going to do.

I think it was religion, I think was a big one. How do we celebrate or practice religion? A lot of those questions that I think any premarital counseling would encompass, we'd dig into. Yeah. Mild change of topic here, but do you think gender roles in relationships exist?

Jack Selby
And if so, do they exist for a reason? I do. I think they've shifted dramatically, and we haven't been completely honest about how dramatic that shift has been. There can be a masculine in a feminine role. Right.

John Delony
There are times I take on a feminine role in my house. Right. There's times I'm gone and my wife will take on a more masculine role. She'll have to deal with accountability and correction of our kids. Right.

And there's times when she's gone, I'm a safe place. And so I think that energy will shift and move. I think for, again, as we talked earlier, for most of human history, guys had bigger muscles, and so they did different things, and women had smaller muscles and did different things. And now our economy has shifted to where most of the money is made with our heads and most of the muscle things have been replaced with robots. And so you have an economy that has grown to scale here that is rewarding people who go to college and consider the desk and type and think and solve problems as a team.

And you've got a very individualistic. I do these. These tasks. I shovel coal, I fix cars, I do things, and those jobs are gone. Right.

And so I think there's a shift that's happened, dramatic shift that's happened, and now the roles are a mess. I think they're a mess, and we don't have a way to talk about them inside of our house. The most important thing for me inside homes is that people talk about roles like, as you mentioned earlier, like, who is going to be responsible for x, y and z? And I think I care less about what these societal bell curve kind of roles are. And what did y'all two agree in your home?

What's this gonna look like? And if that role becomes a burden, or if somebody's not upholding their role that y'all talked about, how are y'all gonna come back and repair that? How are you gonna come back to the table and say, I'm not okay? That's way more important to me than the bigger, more instructive ones. What do you think about that answer?

Jack Selby
I like the answer. And I think suggesting the importance of roles is something that's incredibly important, I think. I don't want to improperly give this idea to somebody, but I think it was Ben Shapiro that said, what do they write on your tombstone? It's your roles. It's like father, a great son, let's say a loving husband.

And those are the things that people spend so little time focusing on. But that's your role. That's what they're writing on your tombstone. That's what's actually important. And I think really people figuring out what their roles are and how they can be that role in the best possible way is very important.

John Delony
So for you two, both of you, all as of now, aren't married, don't have kids, knowing they're not going to write world's greatest youtuber on your tombstone. They might, maybe they might, they might. Mister Beast probably has. That's right. Right.

But I hope they don't. Right. Does that motivate you to do something, to inject some sort of action into your lives? Or is that something to just go. I see it as eh.

Graham Stephan
Cause I feel like I'm dead anyway at that point. So as long as they've made a positive impact, I don't care. Okay. I'm more concerned about, like, what can I do now that has a bigger impact than just me. Okay.

And I like to think that the podcast is a way of doing that. Okay, excellent. What do you think? Yeah. The idea of a legacy obviously is somewhat important.

Jack Selby
I don't think that it's the most important thing. For example, the reason why I was saying that the role thing on the tombstone is not because then everyone sees that and like, oh, this is awesome. This guy must have been a great husband or whatever, but it's to challenge your beliefs of how you're spending your time currently. That's right. More so in that category than, you know, being proud of your legacy when your brain isn't working very cool.

When do you make a decision for someone else, if ever? For example, you're in a toxic relationship, you're with your friends, and maybe one of them wants to continues talking to this girl, but you know, it's bad for him. And it's like, yo, like, like, I don't want to be that guy to tell you to break up, but you have to trust me as your, you know what I mean? Like really forcing your ideology on them versus kind of letting them figure it out for themselves. How do you delineate between that?

John Delony
I don't see that as forcing the ideology as much as I'm trying to push you out of the way of a truck, I would much rather somebody push me out of the way of a truck and I get all scraped up, and the truck wasn't gonna hit me, then them not try to push me out, and it does, right? And so my friends know Deloney overloves. All right, I'll call you and say, dude, how's your marriage? You okay? Everything cool?

And then when it comes time to, like, have a hard cut, like, you need to not be with that person. I'm gonna go back to. I don't use the word you there. I'm gonna go back and say, every red flag in my life is going off right now. I'm worried about you, all right?

And I'm not gonna lob a grenade at you, because then you gotta defend yourself. If I think you're gonna hurt yourself or take your life, then I'm gonna interject myself in that situation. But when it comes to, like, a relationship, a marriage, a faith practice, or whatever, I'll say, here's how this is impacting me. And that's sometimes scarier than just to say, like, you shouldn't be doing this. It's easy to throw grenades.

Graham Stephan
Are you happy? Happiness is not a metric that I care a whole lot about. Why is that? Because it's cocaine and fireworks and cotton candy. It's just a byproduct of a.

John Delony
Of us. It's a. It's a sparkle along a well lived life. You don't think that happiness is kind of like the anxiety where it's. It's an alarm that's telling you that things are great, that things are working?

No, because I can be happy just hammering a bag of gummy candy. That's really bad for me. And so happiness is a dangerous, dangerous light to follow. What about joy? Or something more deep?

Joy is. Joy is the path, right? You can. Y'all have probably heard me talk about this. My.

One of the most important stories, things I ever saw was my granddad was 93, and he passed away. He was a world war two vet, raised four amazing kids, my dad and my aunts and uncles. At his funeral, we were at the burial at the. At the graveside, and these guys are out there playing taps with the. With, you know, everyone's going to get a rose and put on the casket.

And my son was really little, and he escaped, and he got out of my grasp, and he ran over and then climbed up on the casket and got one of the roses and put it on top, because he just saw everyone else doing that and he wanted to participate. And it was this really rad four generation. My son is the only Deloney male. Like, he's it, right? He's the last of the last of the line.

And it was all of us were there. There's nothing happy about that moment at all. But it was right. My granddad was 93 years old, left an amazing legacy, defended his country, was a great man, was like active in his church for 50 years. It was right.

That was. There's a deep joy in seeing that legacy connect and that beautiful moment. Nobody's happy there, right? And so I think joy is this underneath. Are we on the right path?

Right. I'm not happy at the gym most of the time. I'm not happy being exhausted and being sore and, like, occasionally I'm happy in there. But if I waited to be happy to go to the gym, I would never go. Right.

But, man, feeling good and pushing myself hard early in the morning, late at night, that's joyful. So it sounds like it's more of a stability and just an overall higher vibration, to put it into terms that. Maybe almost a lower vibration. You think? When I say like, vibration.

Jack Selby
Okay, now I see what you're saying. Vibration, it's a root system. Yeah. Right. It's not a piece of fruit.

John Delony
The fruit comes once a month. I mean, for a month, out of a. Out of a year, eleven months, there's no fruit. But that root system. Vibration.

Jack Selby
In a positive way. Yeah. Okay. In stumbling on happiness, they talk about. That's Dan Gilbert, right?

Yeah. Yeah. How different people have different levels of happiness. So, for example, I think I'm a ten out of ten, right? But let's say we actually plot that out on a graph.

I'm a six out of ten. How can you know if you're truly. If you feel joy, you can convince yourself of anything. I can convince myself I'm happy. You can convince yourself you're angry, right?

But what are you actually? And how do you know what you are? What if you lived your entire life actually just being a six, but you think you're a seven and you just. Didn'T know it could get better, then who cares? I think that's been some of the empire building that's gone on globally, where people move in and try to tell other people, no, you aren't living.

John Delony
Right. We have a better way for you to live. Do it like us. And I think that happens all over the world. And you realize I've talked to some.

Some military folks who are like, what are we doing? Like, we took a perfectly happy group of people living very differently than I'm gonna live, but they're perfectly happy. And we said, no, no, no. This is how you have to do it now we've created a mess. Right?

And so I think the. The notion of, like, what if what. I think that can be a haunting question. I tend to the. The driver, for me is peace.

That was the driver of that whole book. Like, can I put my head on my pillow and just fall asleep? Can I just drink a cup of coffee with my wife in the morning? Can I walk out, walk into my home and feel warmth instead of, here we go again. For me, the barometer is peace.

It's not. Am I at a seven of happiness, a ten of happiness? Because that's just gonna. It's just gonna be a stock ticker. It's just gonna go up and down, depending on whether I've got diarrhea that day.

Right. Or what I ate for dinner that night before, or how good my hair looks. I mean, it's all that stuff is just. And I think we get so, because we can kind of, like the same with people who are so obsessed with market ticks every two or three minutes, they make themselves insane. And because we have such fine tuned microscopes for looking at those things, we miss macro trends.

Right? You can't see the solar system with a microscope. I'm way more worried about the solar system than I am these little bitty tick tocks. I want to see the trend. Right.

Jack Selby
You talk a lot about the. The pathology of discomfort and comfort and about anti fragility. What does that mean to you? And how do you see this as a plague that's affecting people and how they can use this knowledge to better improve themselves? One of the most important books I ever read was antifragile by Nassim Taleb.

John Delony
And he has another book out called Skin in the Game, which may be the most important book I've read in a decade. And I was with Michael Easter last night, the author of the Comfort Crisis. But this idea that in pursuit of a more comfortable, less stressful, less painful life, we accidentally created a world where our bodies just fall apart, right? And our psychology falls apart. We literally have everything.

Now, you can turn your air conditioner on and off, your. Your fake climate, inside your home, on your cell phone, and you could push another button, and food would just show up here. You could push another button, and water would just show up at that. Right? We have all.

Everything and we are as bananas as we've ever been, and so. So reverse engineering that. We've created a world where we go into the weight room, and everyone's taking all the weight off the bar, and we're wondering why nobody's getting any stronger. I think what everyone's beginning to slowly realize is strength happens after the discomfort. Right.

So find the most uncomfortable path to where you're going. What does that mean? Yeah. You don't have to get a PhD to know about counseling anymore. You can read a bunch of books.

I challenge you to go five years with a group of people that are going to. To challenge you and get pissed at you. You're gonna have to write papers for all these different professors, which means you have to learn to speak all these different languages. You're gonna get frustrated. You're gonna get rejected.

You're gonna send papers that get rejected. It's gonna be hard. And when you walk out, you're gonna really know the stuff. Not just here, but you're gonna know it here. You're gonna have to have seen clients and have multiple people watching you see clients, and somebody contradicts you at the other.

All that's iron sharpens iron. It's a refinement process. And so. So I think we have so many easy paths, and I have made it a point. I want to take a more difficult path if I can.

Graham Stephan
Do you think people create problems, though, because their life is so great? I just last night had dinner, and one of the people at the dinner, she said, I've been in Vegas for 15 years. And I said, what brought you to Vegas? And her response was, I'm from Cuba. I'm in Vegas because I was fleeing communism.

John Delony
And we all laughed, and I said, that's maybe the best answer I've ever got from that question. But I then asked, does it drive you crazy being here sometimes and listening to the complaints people have? And she said, you have no idea how hard it is to hear people talk about how great the world I ran from is and have never experienced it. And that was her sentiment. Y'all are creating things to get upset about globally.

I mean, everybody know there's real trauma, real evil. We all know that. But she said, systemic. Yeah, we're inventing things to get mad about. Seems like it's a part of human nature to require adversity of sorts.

Jack Selby
And if you aren't suffering from a roof over your head or, you know, feeding your family or something like that, then you're just gonna. Naturally, in your mind, create adversity. Well, we left the weight room, and we left the farms, and we even left the factories, and we moved into the classroom. And so all of our sparring is intellectual. And so we don't box anymore in PE class.

John Delony
We intellectually spar. And now we have allowed words to hurt us. I even. Let me get. I'd love to get y'all's wisdom on this.

I said something on my show recently, and I don't even remember what it was, but somebody wrote in the comments, how dare you shame me like that? And my first impulse was, I don't have the power to shame you. I'm just a clown in Nashville, like, running my mouth on a podcast. I don't. I don't have that power to speak into your soul unless you open the door and let me in there.

Do y'all? Is that right? Maybe I'm wrong on that. What was the context? Um.

I know I can shame my son because there's a power hierarchy. My boss can shame me. There's a power differential, right? But when it's two people sitting at a table and I say, I think that shirt's stupid, you have a choice. Are you going to care what I had to say about that shirt or no?

I can say, man, you letting your kids have a cell phone is ridiculous. You're going to melt their brains. You have a choice as to, like, I think Delaney's a moron, right? Pass the salsa, or no, I'm going to let that worm its way into my soul. That was an important conversation I had.

I remember. Here's. Here's the story. Here's the story. And then I'd love to get y'all's feedback.

Because of my crisis background, they let me into the. The counseling PhD program. It was like the faculty had to vote on it because I didn't come from a traditional path. I didn't have a masters in counseling, so I came from the outside. I already had another PhD in education, and I had this crisis experience.

And they said, okay, you got to take these courses, but we'll let you into the program. What that made for. For me was a really interesting dynamic, because we had all these mental health professionals who were trained. They're amazing therapists. They were doing work in the communities already.

And then you had me. And so they would. Somebody would ask a question, and I would be like, that's a stupid counselor answer. I don't buy. Or they would all look at me and go, how do you not know that?

That's basic humanity, right? So it made for a good dynamic. Well, I just started my practicum seeing actual clients, and I was stunned at how intimate those moments, how intimate those sessions were and how fast they got intimate. People were hurting, and they were just so ready to lance that boil and say, this is what's happening. And I was like, whoa, we're just going there, right?

And so, again, I'm a newbie figuring this stuff out, and my professor came in and gave a case study. And here was the case study. You see somebody for six months, and one day they walk in, and they just say, you. I did your little exercise on how to ask for a raise, and I got in trouble. I did your other little stupid exercise with my girlfriend, and she left me.

I've given you $3,500. My life's still terrible. You suck. And I just, you know, in our program, we were all sitting in, like, our desks were in a circle, right, as a small group and a little cohort, and I go, ooh, that kill me. And my professor pointed, goes, why?

And I was like, dude, that's. Those sessions are intimate. That would destroy me if I'm working with someone for six months. And they just walked in there like, you. You are terrible at this.

And another one of my colleagues, she's an amazing, brilliant woman. She said, oh, John, they don't get that. I was like, what do you mean they don't get that? She said, john, they don't get that. And I was like, oh, is that one of your little counselor things?

And she said, no, you get to choose who hurts your feelings. She said, people can take away your livelihood. They can take away your life, but you choose who hurts you. And so if your somebody on the street lob something at you, nice hair, nice face, what, I get to decide whether. I don't know, whatever.

I'm not gonna accept. Yeah, now it makes sense. I do agree with you. And so I'm wondering, I can hurt my son because he's looking to me. He's a sponge, right?

My boss can hurt me. There's a power hierarchy there. An abusive husband can hurt a wife with words and vice versa. But on the whole, do I have that power to shame you guys? I think fundamentally, if you just look at data, and this is me just suggesting data, people obviously will be products of their environment.

Jack Selby
People will be shamed if they feel like you've shamed them. Now, is that your fault? And is that their responsibility to respond to that stimulus in that particular way? I think it is. People's responsibility to carry themselves however they deem worthy.

Right? So in the four agreements, people's behavior is not a reflection of whatever stimulus you put on them them, but of themselves. That's like one of the agreements that you're supposed to make with yourself. And I think, like you said, with your kid, as you're younger and maybe more impressionable and you haven't, like, I don't know, transcended that thought pattern or whatever, for lack of a better term, then, yeah, like, people are gonna be like that. But ideally, you always shoot.

You aim to, you know, be impervious to stuff like that and to be responsible for the way that you feel. And I think also preaching that is more loving than preaching something like, oh, yeah, you will be a product of your environment. I think that as I'm hearing you say that, and I'm processing out loud here, it can't happen in a vacuum. You can't get your feelings hurt by what I said unless I've also communicated to you. It's your job to find out what you believe and what you value and what you think about yourself.

John Delony
And if you do the work to root yourself into something, then somebody like me comes on and goes, nice hair. You can go, my hair looks good, I'm good. You know what I mean? And it does, by the way. But you're rooted in something.

It's got to happen in a context, right? The problem is you can become dogmatic without even thinking. You're being, being dogmatic. There you go. And you're just living your own life, and you can't blame you for doing this.

Jack Selby
You were unaware that this could possibly have an effect on someone else. Is it your responsibility? Probably not. But eventually you find the best way to go, and maybe you'll learn eventually, if this is actually truly the case, that you should accompany that with this idea of figure it out for yourself and try to transcend and be impervious to other people. Yada, yada, yada.

John Delony
So that goes back to that discomfort question. I think if you define to curiosity over judgment, it's great. If you all two say something and I instantly feel bad or feel like shame, then I can lash at y'all and judge you shamers. Or I can be curious, dude, why did my body just respond like that? I think a lot of it is taking criticism or shame from people that you would ask for advice from.

Graham Stephan
And that was a, I forget where I heard that. But it's like, when it comes to, like, any constructive criticism, like, don't take it from the people who you were wouldn't ask for that. And so it just, it's that whole. Cell phone question, right? Like, if you have a problem with me, text me.

John Delony
And if you don't have my number, then I don't care what you have. Yeah, pretty much. Because I think a lot of people throw their own thoughts at something, but if you wouldn't ask that person or trust their judgment in particular, you probably shouldn't be taking their advice for their criticism. And also. Yeah, and the layer to that is, I remember, I mean, I worked at the university, for a different university, forever surrounded by brilliant people.

And I would say, hey, what do you think about this? And that question, to an academician, to a thinker, is, here's what I think. And they can write you a paper on it. Like, here's the ten studies, and here's the this. And I remember asking a buddy of mine, hey, what do you think about X, Y and Z?

And he's like, told me, told me, told me, here's what I think. I think this. And then his kids come running in.

I don't remember what it was, but, like, what do you think about sugar? And it's like this, this, this. The kids like, have, you know, a capri sun and a candy bar. And I'm like, wait a minute. So I realized I was asking the wrong question.

So I just started saying, like, what do you do? You let your kids have sugar, and if they're like, yeah, on occasion, that's all I need to know. Right. What do you actually do? So instead of, like, what do you think about the bond market right now, I ask you, like, hey, what have you done with your money in light of the bond market?

That's what you really believe? That's what you think? I think promoting curiosity rather than like, you know, the gut response to something is just an amazing. And again, some people could be great at giving advice and it's correct, but really bad at implementing it themselves. And I think sometimes when people are removed from the situation, they could give really great advice even though they themselves don't follow it.

Give me an example of that. I just don't. People who. Relationship advice is the cliche. I guess so.

Graham Stephan
Because you're so removed from it that you could give great advice but, like, still have a crappy relationship, but like, hey, the advice is pretty good, and. See how we challenge the advice. Yeah, maybe I would challenge that advice. I don't know any specific examples, but I'm just trying to, like, throw. Yeah, yeah, I much rather look at somebody's life.

John Delony
Okay. Like, showing up here, seeing how you carry yourself, seeing how, like, meeting you and coming into your home validates the parts of you I've seen on your show. Right. It almost begins to complete a picture. Sure.

And so that paints you as a trustworthy person. If I got here and you were like, your house was sketchy and you didn't like, you're like, dude, this is all ruse, man. I'm actually not neurotic at all. Hey, can I borrow $10 for an Uber? I would ask, are you the guy that should be teaching America how to deal with their money?

That would be a question I would have, or you all have had interviews with people or met people that are talking about mindset and joy and kindness and their jerks to deal with. You begin to think like, man, either, right. You're the right person to be carrying this message because I always want to see, that's an old. It's an old, uh, religious tenet, an old scriptural tenant. But you'll know by the fruit, man, you can say, I'm this kind of tree.

This is this kind of tree. I'm this kind of tree. Let's see the fruit and see what. Kind of tree that is to maybe, hopefully pardon you of any of that. I.

Jack Selby
I don't think that should bother you, by the way. What's that? Whatever the comment that, oh, it didn't. But it sparked a. And that's great.

John Delony
You. I think it was you that said this, or maybe it was someone else. Don't want to credit you. You poor. I'll take the credit.

Jack Selby
But it was when someone says something mean to you or something that could be potentially offensive or something like that, instead of going, er, you go, hmm, hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was you. Instead of going, hmm, you go, hmm, hmm. And I think that's amazing thing to teach.

John Delony
Yeah. And I have to do that with the positive stuff, too, because I think it's too easy to get over inflated, man. You rush. This is the best report I've ever seen in this boardroom room to go, I mean, you know. You know what I'm saying?

Like, it's the best book I've ever read. This book changed my. It's the best. It's not right. It's, it's, it's good.

I'm proud of it, and I'm not ashamed to put my face on it. There's some great books out there, right? So I think it's, it's holding both. Of those, curiously, one question I've always loved, and I finally been able to frame it in a way I think is really interesting. Okay.

Jack Selby
Are white lies ever okay? So, for example, if a barista asks you, how are you doing today, and your mom just passed away and you're not doing well, what do you say? Me, personally, I would say today's a really rough day, and I would offer this person a scaffold so that they don't feel responsible for holding me up. So if I went to get coffee, and I'm headed to talk about my mom's funeral, because she just passed, and the person's like, how's your day going? I would say today's a really rough, gnarly day, and I'm super grateful you're here to give me this coffee, because I've just relieved you of now.

John Delony
Suddenly you have to prop me up and fix it, right? Because we're. We're relational beings, right? I don't think white lies are ever wise. I just.

And I get it. There's a social lubricant they make. They. They can lower conflict, especially short term. I just think it's much more instructive to have the conversation you want to have.

I don't remember where the quote came from, but conflict deferred is conflict amplified, especially in those around. The more you just, oh, it's cool, man. Do I look good in this? Yeah, great. The more that goes on, the greater that pressure builds, that it will eventually erupt.

Graham Stephan
But what if, in the pursuit of saying, hey, do I look good in this dress? They just want a compliment. You know, how much of that is simply just. They're looking for a little encouragement, and even if the dress doesn't look good, you don't want to be the one, hey, listen, I hate the dress. How do you.

How do you contend with that? I'm just trying to play devil's advocate. Yeah. I mean, with those that I care about or that I trust care about me, man, I hope you love me enough to be like, don't wear that shirt on stage. And I'll ask my wife, am I okay to wear this t shirt?

John Delony
And she'll say, it's too small. Not an ugly way, in a thank God somebody told me way. Right? And so I think the greatest compliment I can give you is I love you enough to tell you the truth. And if you're just looking for, like, a, do I look beautiful?

And you have to ask for that, then I'm letting you down. I'm not honoring you. So if that's what she needs, she should get that before she asks for it. That's fair. Something that's trending right now is at what level should parents accept their child's quirkiness and uniqueness versus apply corrective behavior?

Jack Selby
So for example, let's say your kid's like a furry, right? And it's like, okay, so I understand you're quirky and you're unique and you should love your kid for what makes them different. I mean, that is, is, you know, what is them essentially? What differentiate, differentiates them from everyone else? Let's say they have a unique sexual interest that you disagree with or they're into furries or whatever.

John Delony
Yeah, yeah. At what point do you stop supporting that and you apply corrective behavior? So let's take like the furry, for example, right? Versus like a therian, right? So like a furry is somebody who as much, again, these definitions shift.

And so I apologize if I don't get it, get it right. Who likes to pretend right to be a raccoon, a bear, whatever, a fox, an ethereum is somebody who will say, no, no, no, I am. I am this, right? I identify as, this is who I am. I want my kid.

And I've talked about this. I talked about this on my show. I want my daughter to have a wild imagination. That's how kids process how the world works. That's how they become victorious in these stories they tell about themselves.

That's how they process trauma. Kids. Kids speak and play. I want that. That's why play therapy is how people do counseling with kids.

You want that wild imagination. And then what? And then what? It's when you allow your child to disregard the social context with which they live in, letting them become the epicenter of your home. Meaning we're not gonna let you go play soccer because you have to walk on 2ft and they won't let you crawl around on the field.

We can't go to that restaurant anymore because they won't let you sit on the table and eat from a, like a dog bowl or a cat, like, whatever. That's when it becomes destructive with your kid. And so I think there has to be some sort, I don't know another way to say this, but some sort of rational adult in the room to say, dude, I want my kids, especially when they're young. I want my kids to dress up. I want my kids to run around.

I want them to have wild imaginations. And when my kids gets to high school like I did, I played dress up. I dressed up like I was this cool punk rock heavy metal guy. And then also, like, I would dress up like I was cool youth group guy. And then I got to college and I grew my hair real long and I tried to dress like pantera because I.

And then I shaved my hair all off and I tried to be all prop. We're all trying on different things and I think that's fine and good, but has to happen in a social context. I can't show up and be like, I'm a metal guy and then show up to church with a, like a profane t shirt on. Then I'm stepping outside of the bounds, right? The only way I can tell you is you gotta have a rational adult in the room to say, we're walking into a restaurant, take off your mask and take off your tail, and we're gonna stand up.

Graham Stephan
Where do you balance that to prevent your kid from getting bullied? Like, let's just say they love this shirt that they're wearing and it's their favorite shirt and they're proud of the shirt. But, you know, if they wear that shirt to school, they're going to get paid on. Yeah, but you also want them to, you know, be themselves and you want them to feel comfortable to, you know, that there's gonna be adversity in the world. I went through.

John Delony
That was Mike with my son. And I ended up fracturing our relationship more than I helped. And like, just to provide some context at the high school I went to, our football coaches would, as a Texas high school football, it's all the stories are true. They would pull our hair down and if it came past our eyebrows, because in home, like, it was like hair couldn't touch your. I mean, it was, this is me.

I'm not that old, right? This isn't a hundred years ago. This is my childhood, right? If you dyed your hair that you're out. I mean, you're just out.

And that wasn't off the team. You're out of the school. I went to a 4000 student high school. It wasn't a little bitty podunk place. It was a giant public school.

And so things have shifted really fast. And my son entered middle school. I've got some scars from middle school things I, I still remember that kids said to me. And so every day, don't wear those pants. Fix your shirt, turn your shirt around.

What about, you know, you got your socks? Have to. It never stopped. And I found myself picking and picking and picking and picking. And I remember the day that I said, hey, I'm going to turn you over to the middle school wolves.

You're my son and I love you. I'm going to stop talking about your clothes, man. If we go to church, I'm going to ask you to put on a nice pair of pants and a nice shirt. If we go to a funeral, if we go out to a restaurant with your grandparents, I'm going to ask you to fill in the blank. And that's me teaching him time and place.

As a culture, we've just thrown time and place out the window. We just. It's oppressive. It's rude. It's not.

There is such thing called time and place. And so. But I quit. And to my dismay, his friends just say, well, that's just him. Like, he wears different size socks and they roll with it.

And they ended up being much more accepting and compassionate and loving, and they poke on him, right, and vice versa. I'm just not going to die on that hill. I will be there. If someone's going to hurt my kid, right? If my kid was really into something and they're going to get beat up about it, or they're going to get bullied about it, I want to be honest about that conversation.

I do think we've hit the pendulum so far, trying to eradicate the world of bullies, which I. That's great. But in the process, we've stopped teaching kids how to respond when they do interact with a bully. We've just said, hey, y'all sit over there. Y'all can't handle this.

We'll go clear the deck for you. Because people in my generation were bullied bad, and so we tried to rid the world of bullies. There's always going to be that guy, and there's always going to be people who are squashing on kids. And so we have to do our best to rid the world of bullies. And also, we have to do our best to sit in that discomfort with our kid and be like, man, I'm sorry they made fun of your favorite shirt.

It breaks my heart. It really breaks my heart. Right? And I'm going to sit with you in that. Not be like, oh, I'm going to call the right.

Because when. When you jump in to try to rescue your kid like that, you're teaching them, you can't. You're not strong enough. You're too weak. You're always gonna be weak.

I'll fight this for you. And there's some battles I gotta fight for my kids, right? But some of them the more important thing is I'm gonna sit with you and say, I'm so sorry. That breaks my heart. Where do you know how to fight this battle?

It's messy. It's messy. Yeah. When it comes to violence, when it comes to physical violence, I'm gonna be pretty out front. Like, I've seen those TikTok videos where the father shows up at the house is recording, is like, you know, your son did this to.

Graham Stephan
In the comments. They're all praising the father, like, yeah, go dad. Go, dad. Um, you know, it's tricky. I had to go to a couple houses as a kid.

John Delony
My dad took me and it was for me to apologize, and so that was the right thing to do. And it's those things, they still haunt me that I would, that I was ugly to kids when I was young. Right? I hate that. I hate that.

And it happened, and I think that was right. I've done that into that phone call, another parent calling saying, hey, I think this thing happened. Let's talk about that. I think that's great, and that's fine. That's how adults should talk to one another, where it crosses the line that somehow, like, I'm going to go macho up.

And that's a strange dynamic, right. And also have to, I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth here. Schools just let crap go now, man. And I used to, there used to be some, I remember my dad saying, I'm just going to call coach because I know coach will, right? I know there, you'll pay for this at some point, right?

And pay for this. It's. That sounds dramatic, but I'll just let coach know this happened. I'll let coach know you didn't turn those assignments in. He'll, he'll take care of it, right?

And there was a little bit that's gone now. That's gone. And so I do understand, if nobody's defending your kid, if you have called the school and called the school and called the school and they're like, well, you know, we're not going to do anything. I get getting to the point where I'm going to come knock on your door and say, hey, what's up? It's when it turns into theater that, that's when people get hurt.

Graham Stephan
What worries you the most about your kids growing up today? They're growing up in a time of highly, highly dysregulated adults. The adults in their lives have gone crazy, and the adults in their lives are raged out, anxious, frustrated, depressed, glued to screens and we have pulled the pillars out of every one of our kids lives. They now believe after COVID doctors are trying to kill you and your teachers are trying to kill you, either because they made you wear a mask, they didn't make you wear a mask. And your churches are just political messes now, which they are.

John Delony
Your politicians are trying to kill you. And so we've given our kids this. How are you going to grow up in that? A buddy of mine, he's a psychologist, he calls it hope sickness. Kids growing up today think they're going to be dead in 35 years or so.

What do they do with that? What do you do with that? And so that freaks me the most out. I heard this recently and it really touched a nerve with me. It was a clip of a man from a stage and he said, I don't want to hear another person say, kids these days have changed, changed because they haven't.

It's the adults that have changed, and that's true. And how do you prepare your children for that? They have to have an unshakable anchor that, come what may, you can always come home and there's not a thing you can do. And that's why I hesitate with that question a little bit. There's not a thing you can do.

There's not a line you can cross that you can't. That I won't love you. You may be unsafe and I can't be in this house, but I still love you. We'll figure that out, right? But I think it's letting them know, and not through words, but it's through showing up and showing up and showing up and giving them a model of, here's what a regulated adult looks like.

Here's how you tip well and take care of a waitress. Here's how you love somebody that you're in disagreement with. Here's what happens when mom and dad get in a big disagreement and how they come back together and repair. I want my kids to have a picture of that. So when it happens in their relationships, they've got a model for it, right?

Graham Stephan
What if people don't have that? Then your next adventure is to go find mentors that you trust. You gotta find adults that goes all the way full circle with when someone says therapists for kids or there's too many therapists and they shouldn't be going, there's some truth to that. And also, okay, what do they do now? If you pull the last thread they got, sometimes the counselor at school is the only person who will talk to them, the only person who will process their emotions with them, the only safe person they got.

John Delony
And it's not ideal. Be awesome if they had a mom and a dad or they had parents who were sitting at home. They don't, right? They don't. All right, John, final question of the podcast.

Ready? Go for it. Where do you get your black shirts from? And is every black shirt exactly the same? Oh, that's a great question.

I am 99.9% sure this is a package of black t shirts from Walmart. And no, I don't think they're all the same. But hopefully my answer tells you I'm not super concerned about. I wear them because they just. It's one thing I remember reading about, you know, some tech, somebody did it and I just thought, thought a mentor of mine we talked about earlier, the guy was a monk.

He just dressed in all black, and he had some spiritual reasons why he did it. And I still don't know why. He never would disclose that. But I just remember that argument about it. Simple.

It just makes things easier. And I thought, man, I got a pretty chaotic mind that can spin up anything for any reason. It just simplifies my life. And I appreciate you. What brand does this?

I mean, you gotta. Oh, all right, let me lean up, goodfellow. So that's target. Target. All right.

Jack Selby
We just left it. A good fellow. It's target. Yeah. You know me, I like my target.

John Delony
I was like a little bit bougie this time, so I got him. Okay, nice. All right, John, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. Really appreciate it. If there's anything else you want to say.

Jack Selby
Guys, get his book, all of his links down below in the description. Thank you for your hospitality, man. You're welcome. Like, coming on, y'all don't get to see that. Like, y'all are, are two kind guys, and y'all are so prepared and professional.

John Delony
It's awesome. It's just refreshing. It's pretty rad. Thanks, John. Appreciate it.

Jack Selby
Till next time. Cool.

Mental Health Expert: The #1 Secret To Achieving ANYTHING You Want | Dr. John Delony

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1: Introduction to Dr. John Delony

2: Analyzing Modern Mental Health Challenges

3: Solutions and Strategies for Mental Wellness

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