Dr. John Delony: 6 Daily Choices to Break Free from Anxiety & Boost Wellness | Mental Health | E365

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I look at anxiety as a good thing.

It's an alarm system in your kitchen.

Your smoke detector is annoying.

It can ruin your evening when it's going off, but it also will save your life.

Dr.

John Deluny is a best-selling author, a mental health expert, and the host of the Dr.

John Deloney Show, where he helps millions navigate anxiety, trauma, and life's toughest situations.

What are you worth?

What's your worth?

We answer the question, what are you worth in our culture with a number?

It's insanity.

The problem with men not feeling like they can open up, they just want to keep going and going and going.

Men are socialized from the age of two to shut up and just go on do the next thing.

For all of human history, men were able to share who they were, but they did it shoulder to shoulder doing things.

Those things have been taken away.

Your 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s will be built on the foundation you built at 20 and 30.

The mental health community has failed dramatically telling people that mental and emotional health is getting all the right thoughts in the right order.

That's false.

If I would give 30-year-old entrepreneur who has dreams of success, I would tell them

Yap fam, ever feel like your anxiety is running the show or your relationships are falling apart and you don't know why?

Well, today's guest, Dr.

John Deloney, is here to help you take back control.

Dr.

Deloney is a best-selling author, mental health expert, and the host of the Dr.

John Deloney Show, where he helps millions navigate anxiety, trauma, and life's toughest situations.

With decades of crisis experience, John brings raw honesty and practical tools to our hardest conversations.

In this episode, we'll dive into why anxiety is often a warning sign, not a lifelong sentence, and how small daily choices can help you feel calmer, more focused, and in control.

We'll also explore the power of real connection and how to build a life that actually supports your peace.

And Yapam, I want to know what's one daily choice you'll make to support your mental health?

Drop your thoughts in the comments below and make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're new to Young and Profiting Podcast.

I think you guys are going to absolutely love this conversation with John.

So let's dive right in.

John, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

What's up, Holla?

Thanks for having me on.

I'm so excited for this conversation.

I feel like the topic of anxiety is so important for entrepreneurs because we're highly anxious people and there's lots of reasons why entrepreneurs tend to have anxiety or think they have anxiety.

So let's take it back to 2010 when you actually realized that you had anxiety and you were quite burnt out.

And so it seemed like you were living the perfect life.

you had a beautiful family and everything like that, but everything came crashing down for you in 2010.

So talk to us about those moments.

I think they start really when I was young and trying to figure out what's my role going to be on this little planet we're on, this little rock we're floating around on.

And how can I fulfill my role in my family?

How can I make my little mark on the world, right?

And I think like all of us, I just did the thing that was in front of me, like go to school and go be successful and then go get married and then do your best to have a kid and then try to make as much money as you can and then get this job title and this job title.

Ultimately, what started out as small little cracks in the foundation and I tried to solve those things by making more money and getting promoted again and buying something bigger and doing the next thing that the world told me was going to make me okay.

And it didn't end well.

And I guess I'll say this.

You and I, all of the people listening, we all know those big stories, the big crashes, right?

Like you blow your business up.

That didn't happen to me.

For me, it was over the last decade as I've sat with people sitting behind closed doors, especially young entrepreneurs trying to figure out what to do next.

It's not the big, huge explosion that makes the headlines.

It's these quiet young men, these quiet young women, these new dads, these business owners that have big dreams for themselves that just roast out and nobody ever sees it.

They just burn from the inside out.

And so.

I had a young baby and I had a wife that I cared about that we had grown a thousand miles apart from each other.

So I had to get well.

I had to figure out what's going on while we were still flying down the highways.

I had to change the oil on the car while it was still moving.

And that in and of itself was its own adventure, right?

But it started with me getting in a car and driving three hours away and sitting with a buddy.

He happened to be a physician.

I just said, hey, I'm at the end of my rope, man.

And that was the first time I ever opened my mouth and said, hey, I'm not okay.

And it's been a long, steady figuring out why that happened and how that happened and what happened to me and what happened to my marriage, what happened to my friends, and what happened to our culture.

It's landed me here.

I think you call this white knuckling, right?

Getting by through life, just pretending that everything's okay and it's like very performative.

You're just like performing instead of really listening to what's going on in your body.

Why do you think that so many high achievers and entrepreneurs white knuckle themselves through life like this?

And how can you tell if that's what you're doing?

Our culture places no value on the why.

Why Why are you doing this?

I want to start a business.

Why?

I want to be my own boss.

Why?

I want to make this many millions of dollars in this amount of time.

And I'm haunted by that Michael Jordan series.

I think it was called The Last Dance on ESPN when they walked through the Chicago Bulls.

I remember Michael Jordan sitting in a hotel room and the greatest basketball player of all time just signed this bajillion dollar contract.

He was the guy, still is the guy.

And I remember him looking at the camera sitting in a hotel room, and they were talking about how he couldn't go out in the lobby and use the bathroom because there were too many people out there.

And he looked at the camera and he said, You don't want this life.

And I remember exhaling and saying, Yeah, what's all this for?

For six pieces of cloth hanging in a gym somewhere so that people talk about you and you're dead.

And I remember watching that video and seeing he doesn't have anybody in his life not on his payroll.

And I remember just saying, Why?

And so our culture does not place any value on the day in and day out lived experience of our human lives.

It just has this metric that keeps moving.

And for me, I just dialed all the way down to this.

We answer the question, what are you worth in our culture with a number?

It's insanity.

What are you worth?

What's your worth?

What's your business worth?

What's your net worth?

And the answer to the question, what are you worth is never a number.

It's who do you love and who loves you?

Period.

And we've just gotten out of order.

We're trying to hack our way to this sensation, this feeling.

And so I guess how you know you're there is eventually your body will start to shut you down.

For me, I had to take chemicals to wake up.

I was loaded up on a thousand milligrams of caffeine just to get out the door.

And then I had to take chemicals to go to sleep.

And then I had to take chemicals to have fun.

When you start having to augment your just human existence, basic human ups and downs, that's when your body is telling you, hey, I'm about to shut the door on this whole thing.

And eventually your body will say, I quit.

I'm out.

And that's burnout.

Wow.

And I want to talk about medication and what you think about that related to anxiety and things like that.

But first, let's talk about masculinity and the problem with men not feeling like they can open up.

I feel like this is much more a problem with men and then also really high achieving women who might be leaning into their masculine energy, right?

We just want to keep going and going and going and not really listening to ourselves.

So talk about that problem and why it's so dangerous.

I'll reverse engineer that question.

It's dangerous because it'll kill you.

It's dangerous because look around at our culture.

Other than like Scott Galloway, there's nobody writing blogs on the plight of men.

And if you look at the suicide statistics, if you look at the mental health catastrophe that is men, if you look at the loneliness, the joblessness, the incarceration rates, men are not thriving.

There's a few at the very tip, tip, tip, top.

And we like to point at all them and say, look at that.

But men are socialized from the age of two to shut up and just go on and do the next thing.

And nobody cares about how you feel.

Stop whining, stop complaining and just go, go, go, go, go.

And so all men are taught at a very young age, how you feel about a thing, the things going on inside your chest simply do not matter.

Nobody cares.

And as that message has accelerated through our culture, you've seen what I would call catastrophic job loss.

Technology has taken away jobs that traditionally men have done.

And men have also been blamed over the last 50 to 100 years for every single solitary problem on the planet and so i think in mass men have gotten the message we don't need you we don't want you you're a burden to all of us if you can't sit still in a classroom at the age of six then we're going to say something's wrong with your brain and we're going to dope you up and we're going to blame you for wanting to move or wanting to go outside or wanting to have experiences right and so i think men in large have gotten the message that the world doesn't want them around so there's just been this detachment from the world Then we're going to either stay at home and play video games, or we're going to start just lighting stuff on fire.

And that's what we're seeing all around us.

And so I think it's baked into us culturally.

And for all of human history, men were able to share who they were, but they did it shoulder to shoulder doing things.

And those things have been taken away.

And so it's just be quiet or type on a computer, tell the computer, tell the keyboard, you know, how you feel about something.

And those little ecosystems are created.

So it's a whole bunch of things happening all at the same time.

And I think it's a worst case scenario for every inhabitant of the planet.

And then I think for women, they've been told, hey, the only way you can experience joy and success in this world is to interact with the world like men.

You got to drink like a guy.

You have to sleep around like a guy.

You have to play these boardroom games like men.

And there's been a quiet drop off, rather underreported, of women getting to be CEOs and just saying, this this is stupid.

What are y'all doing?

I gave up all of my life to play y'all stupid game and this is what it is.

Y'all sit around a table and try to out earn each other.

This is not a life, right?

And so I think it's all at the same time, but I think we've all just been given a really ugly script about what success and joy and purpose is.

And it's costing us all our very souls.

As you're talking about this, I'm thinking about the men in my life.

And I've got a lot of successful entrepreneurial men in my life.

And I actually feel like they're quite healthy in the way that they interact because I do feel like when you're a leader, you lead teams, you often know how to lead yourself, right?

And so they are meeting up with their guy friends, they are playing poker or going golfing or whatever.

But I feel like it's this tier of younger men who are still lost playing video games, haven't found themselves, or not necessarily successful, and they haven't yet been able to get to that different level of self-awareness.

So, what advice do you have to the 30-year-old, the average person listening to the show is a 30-year-old male millennial who might not be an entrepreneur yet, but isn't ambitious.

What's your advice to them to make sure they don't fall into this trap?

I'm 47.

I'm an old man now.

If I could sit down with my 30-year-old self, I would look him in the eye and say, I know you feel like going all in with my wife.

and co-creating a world together.

I know it feels like you're going to sacrifice quote unquote, you time, the things you love, your dreams.

would tell them, you have no idea what's coming when you're knocking on 50, what your life will feel like.

I would tell myself, I know you think kids are going to ruin your life.

It's extraordinary.

I know you think you're missing out when you're 30.

Be quiet and just take on two jobs, three jobs.

Keep saying yes to hard projects and new experiences.

And your 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s will be built on the foundation you built at 20 and 30.

And so I think we love the Instagram pictures of the guy who's been in the gym for 10 years.

We don't love the pictures of the day in and day out.

You're exhausted and it's five.

It was me this morning, 545 this morning.

The last thing on earth I want to do is go lift weights, but I want to be able to roll around with my grandkids.

I have a nine-year-old daughter.

I want her to see me running alongside her at her little fourth grade cross-country meet.

I can only do that if I'm getting in and putting in the work.

And I speak to big stages all over the country at big corporate corporate events.

I recently started a few months ago at a local comedy club here going up and doing 10-minute segments so I can get better at bringing joy to people.

Those hours aren't wasted, but we keep being obsessed with what we think the finish line is going to feel like instead of finding the joy in that adventure.

It's so cliche at this point.

My 30-year-old self, by the way, would be rolling my eyes at myself right now.

It's those long, thankless midnight hours that you put in in your 20s and 30s.

It's those relationships you invest in that end up ROIing in a way that you could not fathom.

And you can't see them on a spreadsheet.

And so you got to get out and do stuff.

You can't just be isolating yourself with video games and on the computer and things like that.

If I would give a 30-year-old entrepreneur who has dreams of success, I would tell him, be in your home as little as possible.

Go be out laughing with people, having coffee with people, having experience, putting yourself out in weird situations.

Take a class, go dancing, go take jiu-jitsu classes, go try stand-up, go put yourself in situations that are going to make you uncomfortable and where you can be around other people doing their craft.

It will lift up every part of your life.

And when you're 65 and you're sitting with a group of people who gave their souls to a dollar amount, you will realize, oh, I've got a rich life well lived.

So you've mentioned that you speak on stages and you recently said on stage, or you've said on stage in the past, I don't have anxiety anymore.

So that's a really hopeful statement for a lot of people listening in who feel like anxiety is something that they can never get rid of.

And you've said you straight up don't have it anymore.

So talk to us at a high level how you did that.

And then, of course, we're going to unravel it and go through detail.

Well,

I hope I didn't say it that boldly.

I still get anxious.

I guess what I would say is this.

I think our framing, our discussion around anxiety is out of whack.

I look at anxiety as a good thing.

It's an alarm system in your kitchen and it's a smoke detector.

Your smoke detector is annoying.

It can ruin your evening when it's going off, but it also will save your life.

And so I think in our culture, we have a story that is, if you're uncomfortable or if something is painful, then it must be eradicated.

We got to get rid of it.

And so the way I look at anxiety now, when I start to feel anxious, is, what's my body trying to protect me from?

Because it's detected something in the world that's not safe.

And that's not a bad thing.

I don't like it.

It doesn't feel right.

But man, so if I did say that on stage, I was probably spoke a little too boldly, but I lived a very anxious existence because I outsourced my feelings to a paycheck.

I outsourced my feelings and my health to business metrics and to achievement metrics and to performing with people instead of being with people.

being over people instead of being with people.

I don't live that life anymore.

And underneath all that, I took a bunch of steps to create a non-anxious life so that when I do get anxious, that means something's on fire.

I'm going to go deal with the fire.

I'm not just going to climb up in my kitchen and take the batteries out of the alarm and call it good because my house will burn down.

When you say signals, what are some of the signals that people have when they have anxiety?

If you put your head down on your pillow and your brain takes off and starts racing, if you snap awake at 2.42 every morning, or at 5.15 every morning and your eyes are wide open and your heart's racing, if people slowly stop wanting to be around you because you're an electric presence if you are walking around thinking if they would jest and i don't care who they is and i don't care what jest is but if you've distilled the world down in very simple cause and effects that you think you've got the answers those are usually signs that your body's trying to get your attention If you think you have identified the reason the world is falling apart, if the world would just listen to you, if you think essential oils will cure cancer, like if you start coming up with these crazy, if you spend more time on conspiracy theories than on trying to be healthy and trying to do the next right thing for your relationships and your job, that's usually a sign that your body's starting to implode on itself.

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I recently spoke with Dr.

Caroline Leaf.

She's way, way, way smarter than me.

She's so brilliant, right?

She said some really cool things on this interview.

It was just a few days ago, so it's really fresh in my mind.

And she was talking about how it's really dangerous to identify yourself with these mental health conditions.

So like, I have anxiety, I have ADHD.

And she thinks it's just a really dangerous trend that people are latching on to these identities.

And you also say something similar in your book.

So talk to us about why it's not that healthy to identify with certain disorders and maybe how that can make us more addicted to these disorders in itself.

Well, that's one of the chief curses of our time is that our identity becomes these labels that we're given.

You have anxiety, you have depression, you are depressed.

It becomes the way we enter into every room and it becomes the lens by which we view the world and we're told we're broken.

And so if your house is on fire and your smoke detector is going off, nobody would say your house is broken.

They would say your house is working perfectly.

It's on fire.

And so I think it's changing the language.

I love, he's an old psychiatrist.

He's passed away many years ago, but Dr.

Glaster, William Glaster, said he wouldn't let his patients say, I have anxiety or I am anxious.

He would make them say, I am anxieting or I'm depressing.

I am compulsioning, right?

My body is doing these things in an effort to take care of me.

Let's get to the bottom of why my body thinks this environment I'm in isn't safe, this relationship I'm in isn't safe.

This.

business I'm running isn't going to hold water.

That's a much healthier way to view the world instead of viewing ourselves with these labels that are the challenges we have.

It's a silly way to do life.

But also the other side of it is none of us, you and me are not allowed to go to a party.

And when someone says, hey, how's it going?

We're not allowed to say, you know what, things are actually going really good.

My romantic life is going well.

My kids are healthy.

My job's doing great.

Because then we walk away and people go, ugh.

The only way we're allowed to enter a room is to say, well, you know, times are tough or did you see the tweets or, you know, what's happening with AI is going to take my business.

So we're really fighting.

We're not allowed to be people of peace or people of joy or people of optimism.

We have to be people of pessimism and sarcasm.

That's the air we all breathe.

We are stamped with labels that tell us what's wrong with us.

I just reject that wholeheartedly.

I do want to ask you about medication because you brought it up earlier.

I had an ex-boyfriend that was on antidepressants for like 14 years.

I didn't find out about it until like six months into the relationship.

He's addicted to these antidepressants.

He was a great guy, but he couldn't get off them.

And when I asked him why he got on these antidepressants to begin with, it all happened because he didn't get a promotion once.

This guy's like a brilliant guy, top executive at a Fortune 50 company.

And it's because one time, 14 years ago, when he first started his career, he didn't get a promotion.

He was upset about it.

And then his doctor put him on antidepressants.

And now he's been stuck on them.

And so I always felt so sad for him because that just feels like everybody faces adversity.

You've got to figure out how to get over it and build that mental resilience because you can't always be perfect.

And now he's just addicted to this medication and can't get off it.

So talk to us about how you feel about medication.

And have you heard similar stories like this?

I've got a pretty nuanced view of it.

I'll talk globally and then we'll get really specific.

We've created the loneliest generation in human history ever.

And we've also pathologized, we've made wrong or a problem to solve any uncomfortable feeling or any quote unquote bad feeling.

And so I often would have students come into my office and say, I'm depressed.

My dad just walked out on my mom and has a whole other life he's had.

And I would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe you're struggling with depression right now, but What you just described to me is sadness.

You're sad.

We have no permission to be sad.

We have no permission for grief.

And the human biological being is not designed to experience grief by itself.

That's why every major religion for all of human history has gatherings that take place.

That's why they have this thing called confession in some shape, form, or fashion.

It's been co-opted into tell us the bad thing you did.

That's not the origin of confession.

The origin of confession is, oh man, you two.

Here's what happened.

And that's all gone.

And so when your friend found himself without the promotion, if you're a crushing killing executive, you're not allowed to grieve.

You're not allowed to say out loud, I really wanted this thing and it didn't happen.

You're not allowed to say, I went all in and at this particular moment, I wasn't good enough.

Or I went all in and they picked somebody else.

When that happens, you're supposed to be sad.

You're supposed to not want to get out of bed for a few days.

You're supposed to just want to go eat junk food.

Those things in and of itself are part of the human experience.

So yes, it's easy to run to a doctor, you crank off a series of symptoms, and they'll write you a script and you head out the door.

And they get your copay, and then they bill your insurance for as much as they can get, and your insurance fights them for all that.

And in the meantime, you are duct taping over that uncomfortable feeling.

And I think that's been a great tragedy.

On the other side, I ignored anxiety for so long

that my alarm system was dysregulated.

It didn't work anymore.

It was going off all the time.

And so I'm also really open that anxiety medication did not cure my anxiety.

It did, however, turn the alarms down enough so that I could go talk to a professional, so that I could go sit with a group of guys who are also struggling and say, hey, guys, me too.

And so I am a big believer in the right medication for the right moment.

And I also think that, man, how often do we hear that guy's guy's a narcissist?

No, that guy's an idiot.

He's a jerk, right?

He's a complete and total scumbag.

We've normalized these diagnostics as insults or discomfort as I've got depression or, man, I'm really worried about the economy.

So I have anxiety.

And so we just use those words all the time.

If you have major depressive disorder, medication will save your life.

If you are having a really ugly experience, a sad, grieving moment, if a loved one passes away, if your loved one cheats on you and leaves you, if you get passed over for something that was going to change your life professionally, if you're an entrepreneur and your business gets eaten up by AI or your neighbor's business or whatever the thing is, I really want people to sit, A, with a community.

And sometimes in these days and A, it's just one other person, two other people.

And then just give yourself permission to grieve and be sad for a while.

And then if you're unable to do the next right thing, then medication can play an important role, but it in and of itself doesn't quote unquote solve the problem.

And I think that's the big thing.

It helps to be a great bridge to get you from here to there.

And so, man, if somebody needs anxiety medication for a season, that's awesome.

But the research says that stuff works if you do that and you do these other things.

And we have to be honest about.

Exercise is really powerful.

Sunlight and community and friends and laughter are really powerful.

Journaling is is incredibly powerful.

Like these things that are not quick fixes, but do have life-altering benefits to them.

I'd much rather see somebody start there, especially if they're under the care of a good counselor, a good therapist who's walking alongside you.

There's a whole other side to this.

That same medicalization of every uncomfortable feeling.

especially in the entrepreneur space is how we've landed with the madhouse amounts of entrepreneurs who are taking Adderall, Ritalin, that are finding themselves at capacity biologically.

You got to sleep.

You got to go hang out with people.

You can't work on your business 24-7, 365 for 14 years.

Your body will say, I quit.

And so when you start taking amphetamines to amp you up and you're taking speed all day just to get through the next thing, it will help you, no question about it.

And it will cost you everything on the back end.

And so if you spend a lot of time around folks who struggle with various forms of addiction, whether it's alcohol or Adderall or sex or whatever it is.

The dirty secret is those things really work.

They're amazing until they take everything from you.

And so it's being able to forego the short-term benefit of, yeah, it really helps.

I got to do this thing and not get to do this thing with, hey, that's going to cost you everything in the end.

And so let's get to the bottom of why you're struggling, get to the bottom of capacity, and let's build a life over the next 10 or 20 or 30 years that's sustainable.

So let's dig deeper on that.

I know you talk about becoming a safe person, living living a peaceful life.

I'm assuming that's what you're talking about when you're saying, hey, you can't just be like work, work, work, work, work.

You also have to build in some balance.

Can you talk to us about what it means to be a safe person in that regard?

I guess the best example I can give you is just a personal one from my life.

My show took off.

So you have to understand for 20 years I was in education and universities.

I was a nerd.

I didn't have social media or anything when I started doing this.

And then all of a sudden it took off out from under me, right?

In this wild way.

And suddenly I'm all over the place.

My big dirty secret after having a top five mental health and wellness show was, and it was mostly on parenting and relationships, is my own little daughter wouldn't hug me.

She wouldn't be in my presence.

I made her feel unsafe.

And I remember going in to hug my daughter when she was probably five or six.

And she was like, no, she ran off.

And I just started crying.

I was sitting at the kitchen table.

And my wife, who was Dr.

Daloney long before me, she's way smarter than me.

She said, have you ever considered that her little tiny body, her tiny little five or six-year-old body has identified you as not safe?

And I got pretty upset.

And I said, I don't yell, I don't hit anybody.

I don't swear in front of these kids.

Like I'm a good dad.

And she goes, no, no, no, no, you're the best dad I've ever seen.

And you have a nuclear reactor in your chest and we can all feel it.

And that was what ultimately drove me to see a therapist here in Nashville.

And I sat down on her couch and I was like, all right, here we go.

And it was six or seven months of really gnarly

work.

And I ended up telling my wife stuff that happened to me when I was a kid that I had never told a single soul on the planet.

And I'll never forget months after that, wrestling around with my son.

And my daughter came and she's always the protector.

She'll come and just swinging like a hurricane.

She's awesome.

But I remember the words coming out of my mouth, Josephine, get off me.

And then I stopped for a second because I had never said that sentence before.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, don't get off.

Don't get off.

Let's just keep.

But now I can't keep her off of me.

I'm a human jungle, gym for her.

And so what I had identified in her as she won't, she can't, she doesn't, I realized, dude, it was me.

And what I want all entrepreneurs to know, if you will switch your metric from I got to crush, crush, crush every second of every minute of every day to I will become the most sturdy, peaceful presence in every room I walk into, which means My personal finances are okay.

My personal health is okay.

My personal relationships are okay.

My spiritual life, whatever that looks like is okay.

Your ability to work, your ability to earn will be so much greater than being a kinetic, always on the go presence.

And so, yeah, for me, it is, I am solving for peace.

People gave me such grief online when I paid off my mortgage that was at 2.7%.

And mathematically, they were right.

I could have made 5% in a high-yield savings account.

But very few people know what it's like to put your head on your pillow and know that nobody can take your house away from you.

And that extra edge of peace sends me into the next business meeting and the guy who I'm negotiating with says, I want this.

And I can smile and go, I don't need that because I don't have a house payment.

And then they go, all right, we'll make this deal, right?

It changes every fiber of your being.

So yeah, for me and my family, I don't solve for ROI anymore.

I solve for peace.

And I work more now than I have ever worked, ever.

And I'm busier than I've ever been, but the return on that is infinitely greater.

Is getting to this piece related to your six daily choices?

Yeah.

I mean, I was really taking all the neuroscience and all the nerd stuff and then my own experience.

I mean, walking alongside people for two decades and my own experience and saying, if I could distill this all down and make it very simple, what are the six places I would start to build a non-anxious life?

Let's go through them quickfire style, but first talk to us about the biology of your body, when you're a safe person and a peaceful person and a non-anxious person versus when you're an anxious person.

And then we'll go through the six.

The biology is if you are constantly cranking through adrenaline all day, every day, right?

And we don't have to get too nerdy, but if you are constantly in fight or flight, onto the next deal, onto the next thing, got to get up, crush it, go.

Your body can do that for a while.

Those chemicals were designed for very tiny short bursts to keep you from not dying.

They were not designed to keep you alive.

Here's the best example I can give you.

If you pour Drano down your sink because there's a clog, if you do that once every four or five years, it'll eat that clog and it will open up your drain.

If you wake up every day and just dump Drano down your drain, it will eat through all of your pipes in your house.

And so it's not designed to be the lifeblood that flows through your plumbing system all the time.

And so same with these stress hormones.

They're not designed to be your operating strategy.

And then when you run out of those, when you move on to four energy drinks a day and Adderall and maybe a little cocaine at night, like when you start buzzing through all these things to keep you going, going, going, the crash just gets bigger and bigger.

And I promise everyone listening, that crash will come.

Okay.

So we want to avoid the crash.

We want to live by your six daily choices.

So I'm going to rattle each one off and then you give me like a 30-second summary and then we'll do follow-ups on specific ones.

So let's do choose reality.

Our whole world is based on avoiding reality.

I'll pay that off later.

Our marriage is fine.

That's just how teenagers are.

I can eat this now and it'll be fine.

I don't have to exercise.

I'll just take this pill.

Everything is about avoiding reality.

The problem is your body is always solving for reality.

Your body knows that you're lonely and it would be failing you if it let you sleep all night, knowing you don't have anyone to call in the middle of the night if you need something.

Your body would be failing you if your romantic partner walked through the front door.

Your body knows y'all are 6,000 miles apart from each other, even though you're both sitting on the same couch.

You're just both both scrolling Instagram on your own devices, right?

Your body would be failing you if you owe money to investors and you owe money to a mortgage and you owe money on a depreciating asset, which is the stupidest thing you can borrow money on, which is a car.

It would be failing you if it let you sleep all night, knowing that one wrong turn in the economy, they take your house, they take your job, they take your food.

Your body would be failing you if it let you sleep all night.

And so when I say choose reality, there's something powerful and harrowing for most people to pull out a yellow pad, not an Excel sheet, pull out a yellow pad and write down, who do I owe money to?

What is the state of my romantic relationships?

Write down two, three, five, seven friends that I could call at 2 a.m.

that would show up at my house and say, I got you.

If you don't have that, then that's where you're going to start.

You've got to choose reality with how safe is your body.

Okay, choose connection.

Yeah, it goes back to we've just created the loneliest generation ever.

And I just said it, I mean, your body would be failing you.

Think back to 10,000 years ago.

If you woke up on the plains of Kansas and your tribe had left you and you're just all by yourself, you're going to die.

You're going to be eaten by something.

You'll die of exposure.

You'll die of starvation or whatever.

And so we've got built in biological mechanisms designed to keep us together.

And we have outsourced all of those to these digital boxes.

We have.

two mile long text threads from old high school friends that are mostly emojis and funny memes.

And we have a whole bunch of networks and we have Zoom conferences with our mastermind groups, right?

Whether we want to believe it or not, dude, I had a great conversation last night, great conversation with ChatGBT.

I was trying to work through two different therapeutic modalities and I kept thinking I was onto something.

Chat GBT and I had a great conversation.

The problem is my body knows that's not connection.

That's just transferring information.

And so communication is not connection.

There's got to be in person.

I know that person.

I'm seen by that person.

That person knows all my warts and they're going to still love me anyway.

And then we can go, whew, exhale.

And now I'm going to go do life well, like rambunctiously, right?

Only then can I do that.

But if you are lonely, if you don't have four or five people, two or three people you can call, your body's going to sound every alarm it has because you're not safe.

That is such a huge problem, I feel like, for our world right now.

It feels like it's getting better.

COVID times was worse.

There is a beautiful rejection happening.

My son is 15 and I'm watching his friends.

They walk into our house and people say I'm a Luddite and that's fine.

Like I'm living a cave, but they walk into the house and they all drop their phones in a basket.

That's just one of the rules of our house is teenagers.

I want them to hang out with each other.

And our house has almost become a drug for young people.

They'll all pile into the house, drop their phones, and then they go do silly, ridiculous teenager things.

And I don't like all the things they're doing, but they're having human experiences and literally their body craves it.

So I get texts and phone calls from parents saying, Thank you for doing that, for holding the line on those phones.

So it's happening, but I think it's because it just feels better to be with somebody than to be scrolling and have all these, what I would call pseudo relationships, these digital relationships.

Okay, next one, choose freedom.

Yeah, that goes back to asking yourself the hard question, who owns you?

And I don't care who you are or how sophisticated your math is.

If you owe somebody money, especially a bank or an investor, they decide what you're going to do tomorrow, not you.

If you don't owe anybody anything, then you can walk away from an abusive relationship.

You could walk away from a scumbag who's yelling in your face or screaming at you.

You can move to go help an aging or ailing, sick parent.

But if you owe somebody, they decide what you're going to do tomorrow, not you.

And we don't have a psychology for that in our country.

It just seems madness to think that way.

And that's where, like, for me and my house, we're going to solve for peace and we're going to solve for freedom.

I want to be owned by as few people as possible.

And then they're also additionally to that choose freedom.

We can kind of nerd out in the book a little bit, but clutter.

We're not designed for all of the crap we have.

We're not designed for all the noise that we have.

We have so much stuff, so much information, so much data.

Data is a news annex.

I just need to go have another cup of coffee.

I just need to look at the the numbers and get some more to,

it's madness.

It's madness.

And so choosing freedom is about unhooking from all these other voices that are telling you what you have to be doing and then say, as for me and as for my house, we're going to decide what the next step is.

And the only way you can do that is the hard, ugly work of choosing freedom.

Yeah, fam, I have to say, one of the coolest parts of my career is that it takes me all over the world.

I've had the chance to travel for interviews, speaking speaking gigs, podcasting conferences, and I've stayed in some seriously stunning Airbnbs.

And these Airbnbs always make me feel at home.

They're so thoughtfully designed.

And I just love the experience of Airbnb.

And that actually inspired me to start hosting myself.

And if you've ever thought about becoming a host, but you felt like it was too much to take on, like you can't take on another side hustle.

I know a lot of us are entrepreneurs, side hustlers.

Maybe you think like, I can't just take one more thing on, but I do have this space.

I want to do it.

Here's the good news.

You don't have to do it all on your own anymore.

There's new solutions for that.

That's where Airbnb's co-host network comes in.

For hosts who are always on the go or live in a different state than their property and might not have time to manage every little thing, you can team up with a local co-host who can handle guest communication, on-the-ground support, and more.

This way, the stay runs smoothly, even when you're not around.

Whether you've got a vacation home or just an extra room, turning it into income is easier than you might think.

If you want to start on Airbnb, but you're busy like me, find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/slash slash host.

I was always wondering, what is your connection to Ramsey Solutions and how do you fit into this bucket?

And that instantly snapped for me right now, because part of living a peaceful, non-anxious life is making sure you don't owe anybody any money and living debt-free and having financial freedom.

The original way I stumbled into Dave was years ago.

I didn't know who he was.

I knew he was just a guy that sold books and had a radio show, but I got sick of all these different people calling me every day saying, you owe me, you owe me, you owe me.

My wife and I made a great salary.

She was a tenure track research professor.

I was a senior leader at a university.

We made more money than our parents could have fathomed and we couldn't breathe.

And so I came to him out of desperation.

Then as I got into the biology of how anxiety works, it's like, oh yeah, your body would be failing you.

if it let you sleep all night, if you're not financially independent, if you're not on your own.

Here's the reality of that.

We don't talk about this enough.

I was the dean of students at a law school and the truck I drove was $3,000.

My colleagues laughed at me.

My students would laugh at me and it was laughable.

The car I drove was ridiculous.

My wife was a fancy pants, nationally renowned researcher in her little nerd segment that she studied.

And she drove a used Corolla.

We lived in a tiny, tiny house.

I remember our mortgage person, the woman who did our mortgage at the bank, was one of my wife's college roommates.

And she laughed at me.

She's like, what are y'all doing?

And I was like, hey, I would rather live in a much smaller house in this side of town and get this stupid thing paid off than have this bank always own me just for the sake of having a spare bedroom that very few people ever wandered into.

It was just a trade I made.

I meant we had to go to the park sometimes.

And instead of having our own park in our backyard that we couldn't afford, but and by the way, then we ran into other people and then we met their dogs and then we ended up with dinner partners.

We ended up having a whole richer life because of that.

But we've just created our own cruise ship inside of our own little encapsulated life and we can't afford it and our bodies are screaming at us 24 7 365 and so it's not pretty it took 15 years for us to get there by the way it didn't happen overnight but it was just chipping away at it and chipping away at it and chipping away at it and i tell you what man I struggle to get to 10 o'clock before I fall asleep most days.

So it's just after being on ambient for years.

And so it's just a blessing.

And this ties into choosing health.

You were just talking about sleep.

We've just gotten so stupid.

We're just dumb.

And I say that like, this is the pot talking to the kettle here.

We treat our cars better than our bodies.

We do.

We change the oil.

We get the cars washed and cleaned.

We vacuum them out.

We take care of them.

We just don't take care of our bodies very well.

And by the way, I've struggled with disorder eating my whole life with body dysmorphia.

I go the other way.

I work out too much.

I'm too restrictive with what I eat.

So it's not even about obesity.

It's just about this idea that we can just ignore our bodies one way or the other and that still accomplish what we want to accomplish, be the husbands and wives and fathers and community members and citizens that we need to be.

And we can't.

You can't get mad at your car for breaking down if you don't take care of it.

And the same thing applies to our bodies.

And so probably the most.

common questions I get on my show revolve around sexual dysfunction, revolve around young men and ED, young men and pornography addiction, young men and social media addiction, young men and just rage and anger.

And we live in a little sliver of history where there's doctors that'll talk to you.

We can go see somebody.

It's just, it's the new courage is choosing health, choosing peace and saying, okay, I'm in a lot of pain or my body's not working like I want it to or like it should be at this age.

I'm going to go talk to somebody and that appointment will be awkward.

My wife always rolls her eyes and she's like, you don't know awkward appointments, John, but those appointments are going to be awkward.

And I'm going to go choose hell on the other side of that so that I can show up for who I want to be in my life and in my business.

I know that you often talk about sex shaming and people not really being able to talk about sex and how it's ruining relationships and things like that.

Talk to us about what's going on there.

I'm wrestling with a hypothesis.

Is it okay if I just throw it out here?

I think we overuse the word need a lot when it comes to relationships.

And when I say to my wife, I need this, I need this, what I'm doing is I've got a cinder block that I'm holding and I'm handing it to her and say, it's your responsibility to make me feel X, Y, or Z with whatever that is.

The truth underneath that question is really, here's what I want.

And very few people can answer the question, hey, what do you want?

If you want $10 million, if that's your answer, okay, what is that going to get you?

Time?

Is it going to get you freedom?

Is it going to get you laughter?

Is it going to get you an opportunity to go fishing more?

Like, what do you want?

And in the bedroom, what do you want?

And what do you want to try?

What do you think would be fun?

Where is play?

Where is joy?

Where is laughter?

And our culture so idolizes sex that every encounter has to be the Super Bowl and fireworks.

I think it's the great Esther Perel that says, most of the time, most meals are.

You open the fridge and see what's in there, right?

And we somehow say, well, then that's bad when it comes to sex.

Well, then that's bad when it comes to intimacy sometimes you just make out and fall asleep sometimes you got nine minutes and like are you in i'm it right yet they all have to be this big extravagant and i think that's this performative side of things and so if i can't talk to the person that i've made humans with my wife and i have created people together if we can't talk about our money If we can't talk about, hey, I have a dream for X, Y, or Z.

I have a picture of what our life could look like.

If I can't talk about sex with her, then my relationship is not nearly as strong as I want to believe it is.

And so I think it's A, getting the courage to ask myself, hey, what do I want?

And why do I want those things?

And then having the courage to look at somebody that I care about and say, hey, I'm putting this on the table.

And that requires people to choose curiosity over judgment, right?

To ask the question,

wow, why do you want that?

Versus, that's sick or you're gross.

gross, there's something wrong.

Like, let's engage in a playful, thoughtful, deep conversation that's curious-based instead of judgment-based.

And then we can begin to explore some of these things.

And it really takes all of the drama out of sex.

It really does.

Okay, let's go through the last two.

So, choose mindfulness and choose belief.

Choosing mindfulness, mindfulness just turned into this whole, it's a whole thing.

Michael Easter has written about it.

He's the best, one of the greatest guys behind closed doors you could find.

He just wrote a great piece on mindfulness.

Here's how I'll describe it.

It's not an old man on a cloud with essential oils.

Mindfulness is simply the gap between stimulus and response.

What just happened and what are you going to do next?

Ryan Holiday talks a lot about that in his world.

Like, this just happened.

What are you going to do?

And that is a thing you practice, extending that space between that guy just cut you off in traffic.

You just got a bad report.

Your ex-boyfriend just got passed over for the promotion.

What are you going to do next?

next?

And it never occurred to me that my reactivity was a thing I could practice and that a thing I had control over over time.

And so being mindful is exhaling.

One of my former students, a great friend of mine, Jefferson Fisher, says, lead with your breath.

So this thing just happened.

Instead of speaking, instead of reacting, I'm going to exhale and then say, okay, what am I going to do now?

That's mindfulness, right?

And the last one was, choose belief.

This has become unpopular to talk about, although strangely, there's been a wild resurgence over the last two or three years.

For all of human history, people walked out of their caves or out of their tents and they looked up to the sky and said, Dear God, or dear gods, or dear whatever, please reign or my family's going to die.

And in the last century or so, we've been able to run water into every room in our house.

We've been able to push a button and some little guy in skinny jeans will roll up here with a sandwich and say, Here you go, sir, right?

We've gotten so arrogant about our role in the cosmos, and we are biologically wired for belief.

And even the great David Foster Wallace, who's an atheist, he's openly an atheist.

He wrote about every person worships something.

And so, if you don't regularly take a knee to something bigger than you, my family and I are Christian, I'm not going to even tell everybody that's what you got to do, but you got to take a knee to something bigger than you and say,

please help.

And if you don't do that on a regular basis, your body body cannot carry the weight of the cosmos.

It can't carry the weight of the self.

We are self-actualized and we're finding out the self can't hold, right?

And so you have to submit to something bigger than you.

And if you can't do that, here's my promise to you, you will find yourself in submission at some point, whether it's in an AA group, whether it's in a divorce court, whether it's in a hospital, you will submit at some point.

And so practice that on a daily basis and it begins to minimize or push off those moments that you can't control.

So I want to follow up on choose belief.

So you called out how churches sometimes weaponize scripture, like be anxious for nothing against people in pain.

Oh, I abused it like crazy.

Talk to us about that.

I think people have always used scripture and faith and their version of God to try to control people.

I think that's always been that way.

And the way I look at it is you can drink too much water to the point that it'll kill you.

And that doesn't mean water is a bad thing.

That means that application of drinking water was not the right dose, right?

It was not the right application for it.

And so it's backing all the way out and saying, if this person is giving me wisdom and they're walking alongside me, and when it comes to people weaponizing scripture, the fruits of the spirit, what are the fruits on that tree?

Is that person patient?

Is that person kind?

Is that person joyful?

If they're not, then that tree isn't bearing fruit.

And so if people are beating you over the head with that type of messaging, then it's usually not from the core central teaching.

Before you were bringing up the fact that we need to have a decluttered environment, and I kind of want to circle back to more general things that we need to be aware of.

So you talked about decluttering our environment.

Why is that so important to simplify our life if we want to live a non-anxious life?

Okay, so can I tell you what?

This is a silly thing that happened to me.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

There's a great friend of mine.

Her name's Dawn Madsen, and she has a youtube channel called the minimal mom she's brilliant very kind and wonderful so we were talking and she said john every object in your home is having a conversation with you all the time and i was like that's the stupidest woo-woo thing i've ever like i laughed she laughed and i was like whatever so i got home from that trip and i walked into my house and in the basement I've created like a little, I don't call it a man cave, but it's kind of where my wife has said, this is where all your chaos can live.

It's where all my hunting stuff is, all my guitars are, all my books are, everything.

And so I just stood there quietly and I was like, okay, start talking things.

And then I sat there and then I sat there and then I started pretending and then I got all choked up after about 30 minutes.

Cause if I listened carefully, those guitars were saying, are you just not going to play me anymore?

Remember when you were cool?

Remember when you had dreams?

Remember when you wrote songs?

The hunting gear was like, does this make you feel tough?

Is this what this is?

And the books on the shelf were like, hey,

are you never going to read us?

Are you just going to be stupid forever?

Or, hey, you've already read us.

Are we up here?

Just so in case somebody comes over, they'll think you're smart.

And then I went upstairs and I was kind of getting heavy.

And then the dishes in the sink were like, you're just going to walk by?

You're going to be that husband that doesn't help out around the house.

And I started realizing everything in my house is trying to talk to me.

The clothes.

Oh, are you ever going to get back in shape so you can wear us again?

Are you just going to keep us in here for decoration while there's people in your neighborhood that don't have enough clothes?

Everything was barking at me all the time.

And that started a profound conversation with me and my wife and some of my closer friends about, I don't need all this stuff.

And I'm letting this stuff try to tell my story about what I'm worth and what value I have.

And I have imaginary conversations with this stuff and it talks back.

I have stuff in my house that's supposed to tell the world when they come visit, here's who this guy is.

And instead of letting my kindness and my hospitality and my generosity speak for me, I was trying to to get that bookshelf to speak for me and that whatever.

So it was a powerful, powerful, humbling experience.

In the same way we talked about earlier, we outsource our net worth to our mental health diagnostics.

I was also outsourcing my worth to what brand guitar I had on the wall and what bow and arrow I had on the wall and what books I have at my house and what clothes I have on.

And I realized how hollow and shallow that is.

I've never, I spent most of my career in working with crisis stuff.

I've never met with somebody who just lost a child child and they said, hey, you want to go look at the car out front?

I've never sat with somebody who just lost a parent and they were like, yeah, but man, you should see their 401k.

I've never heard that.

I have heard people say, I'll give away everything for five more minutes just so I can say that one thing I needed to say.

I've heard that.

And so it was just a reframe of if you are surrounded by all these voices all the time, your body will sound every alarm it has.

And so it's just beginning to declutter that nonsense and get out of your head.

It feels like that choosed reality part of your six choices.

Choosing reality is mental, taking like a mental inventory of everything going on and all the things that are talking to you.

And then you also need to look at your physical environment and try to declutter that as well.

At least that's what I think of when you were explaining that to me.

Dr.

Amons talked about the failure of distilling the human experience down into symptom clusters that we're going to look back in 100 years and be ashamed of ourselves at how we pathologize the human experience.

We give everybody a label.

I also want to add to that, I think this is my community, the mental health community has failed dramatically telling people that mental and emotional health is getting all the right thoughts in the right order.

That's false.

You have to go take action.

You have to go do things.

Your physical environment matters.

Your relationships matter.

Your financial situation.

I went through all of grad school.

Two PhDs I have, zero classes, none on the effects of financial stress and human flourishing.

I never had that course.

I didn't even have a class on that, much less a course on that.

And then to see, in my work with Dave Ramsey, to see the impact owing people money has on your relationships, on your soul, on your mental and emotional health, it's a huge miss.

And so, yes, part of being well is writing things down and getting them out of your head, the mental thought, the thinking part of it.

But a huge part of it is your relationships and your actions.

What are you going to go do?

You're talking about ChatGPT, and I talk to ChatGPT all the time.

It's like my assistant.

I stopped going to my therapist, and I talked to ChatGPT as my therapist now.

And I actually think it's more effective personally, but you were mentioning how your body knows it's not a real relationship.

So talk to us about your vision of AI and how it's going to impact our relationships and connection.

One, since the overlords are listening, I love AI.

It's the best.

I think a conversation with Chat GPT is emotional pornography.

You can see it and you can experience it, but it is different than being with somebody in a room with the door shut and that awkwardness and the temperatures and the feeling, that human connection you have.

And so, yes, I think it's a challenge for mental health professionals to overcome.

If mental health professionals have distilled down therapy into a series of advice transactions, then Chat GPT is going to take that job this is awesome my therapist here in town she's older than me by a decade or two she's an oracle very wise and she said this one day and it was unmooring for me i'm telling you how i think she golf clapped me that's how i remember it but i can't imagine a therapist golf clapping a client right what does golf clapping mean i don't i don't know just going like

with an answer She said, I've been wondering, and I'm right.

You, John, are smarter than me.

And I started laughing and she started laughing.

And she goes, no, but seriously, you've read more than I've read.

You have an answer for every question I have.

And she said, so next time you come to therapy, we're going to sit and we're going to look at each other and we're going to breathe.

And I started laughing and I said, well, since I'm so smart, I know that's not what therapy is.

Therapy is talking back and forth.

And she said, oh, John, you have an answer for everything.

but you can't sit in my presence and be okay with you.

And that is why at this point, I am not concerned about ChatGPT taking over the human experience.

It will give us some great answers.

And I think mental health professionals have sold out to a degree to the right framework and the right six steps and the right, and here I am writing a book with the six steps, right?

But like to what's the advice.

Instead of one of the most profound mental and emotional health moments of my life was when my wife was having her third miscarriage in as many years.

And it was an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured.

And she was in emergency surgery to save her life.

And a cowboy from West, I was in West Texas, a big, tall, six foot three cowboy walked in with his hat on and his boots.

And he sat next to me.

He was a friend of mine.

He said no words.

We nodded to each other.

I don't even know how he knew I was in this 12 by 12 room all by myself in a hospital waiting room.

He came and sat by me.

He said no words.

And then when the doctor came in and said, we lost the baby, but your wife's okay.

I looked at him and he started crying tears that I didn't have yet.

And that was the first time I was sitting by a guy who knew me, who loved me and was with me, not at me.

And if you're with a therapist who is at you with their advice and their you need tos and their why don't have it use, Chad GBT is going to do better than that all day long.

Chad GBT can't sit with you.

Chad GBT is not going to cry with you at your funeral.

And so that's where you can get advice great, but will somebody just sit with you?

And that's what we don't have as a culture anymore.

And it took this buddy of mine who's a cowboy.

And by the way, that's not the only experience.

I've had friends who show up and just will say, oh, I'm here.

I got an old casserole and a half bottle of wine.

I'll sit with you until the sun comes up.

That's the human experience.

And entrepreneurs, they've got their mastermind groups and their bros and they're like, check in, buddy.

You have some guys that just come over and sit with you.

And if you don't have that.

you gotta invest the time and the energy to get that.

And by the way, you can't just put a classified ads for that.

There's not an app for that.

There's just showing up, showing up and showing up and showing up.

Any just advice for people in terms of making more meaningful relationships that aren't transactional?

The two big ones I'll tell you is to have friends who do things that you don't do.

That guy is a middle school English professor.

He's a writing teacher and he also is a children's author.

One of my best friends on the planet is a banker.

Literally, the guy who's the executor of my will is an executive at a bank.

I work for Dave Ramsey.

His whole job is selling people debt.

And my whole job is telling people to not take on debt, right?

So, and he is my closest friend on the planet.

Another close friend I have sells insurance.

Another close friend I have works in HVAC.

So when we get together, it's not this cyclone of recursive conversation about the same topics and the same ecosystems and the same articles.

We sit down and have a drink.

We sit down and watch the fights.

We sit down and go hunting.

We sit down and do whatever.

And we're talking about different things so we can have a broad human experience.

And so for young entrepreneurs, find people who do jobs that you don't do, that are doing things with their life that is different than you that you disagree with.

Find those people because that's the key to a rich life.

Don't own a Mexican food restaurant and just only hang out with people who own Mexican food restaurants.

You're going to all end up making the same meal, right?

And then if there's ever a shortage on queso, you're all going out of business.

Learn how to make other things, right?

And that's number one.

And the second one is go first and be awkward.

Just invite people to a thing.

And if you're an entrepreneur who's had a little bit of success, one of my rules now is I've been blessed over the last few years with the businesses that I'm a part of have done well.

It's been a good couple of years.

It won't be like this forever, but I'm in a little snapshot.

So when I'm going to a punk rock show, I always buy one or two extra tickets.

And I invite a couple of people to go with me.

And if they don't pay me back, I don't ever ask to Venmo me money.

If they do, awesome.

That's great.

But I'd much rather be 85 and have gone to a cool punk rock show with some buddies than be 85 and have gone to a show by myself that I didn't share that with because they didn't have 50 bucks.

And so it is go first, be weird, and just trust if somebody can't do something, maybe they've got stuff going on in their life and it has nothing to do with you.

Have people over to your house.

Go do your weird things, go fishing, go bowling.

I don't know what people do these days, but go do those things and get off the stupid screens and go have shared experiences in real life.

Instead of playing Fortnite, go play paintball.

Instead of playing duck hunt on the computer, I don't know, that just showed how old I am.

Go actual hunting, right?

Go do stuff.

You're more likely to get hurt.

You're more likely to have your heart broken.

You're more likely to be made fun of.

All that stuff is true.

And you're also more likely to have a life worth having lived.

I got to ask you this question before you go.

So you built this incredible brand.

You are a creator entrepreneur.

You've got an amazing podcast.

You've got books.

You've got millions of followers across IG and YouTube.

A lot of people's dream right now is to become a creator entrepreneur like you.

And you basically have owned this category or you're a thought leader in the category of anxiety and mental health.

Talk to us about.

some guidance of somebody who wants to become a creator entrepreneur to build a personal brand like you and who wants to be dominant in a certain category.

Walk them through that.

Oof, how honest can I be?

Can I be super honest?

Honest.

Come on.

All right.

All right.

This, and you live in this world too.

And so you'll know what I'm talking about.

I think the highest challenge of content creators is people trying to create content without truly knowing what they're talking about.

And I came out of nowhere.

And I know that media-wise, my whole life was based around I don't want to be on the internet.

And now here I am.

What an idiot.

But it was 20 years of meeting with people behind closed doors and going to funeral homes and going to psych wards and sitting with people that now allows me to have my show where I sit with hurting people.

And a close buddy of mine, Lane Norton, who's a PhD in nutrition, he's a world champion body, he called me after I wrote my first book and I had a little thing about nutrition in there and he said, hey, quick note, you're wrong.

You're incorrect.

You got out over your skis on this one.

And he's totally right.

And so it was a commitment from that point forward.

I'm only going to talk about things that I know.

That's number one.

So if you want to be a content creator in entrepreneurship, go start businesses.

Go do stuff so that you have true, real experiences.

And I think the wisdom stool has three legs on it.

One, have you done this thing?

Two, do you have real, and I hate to say this, do you have real academic knowledge?

Do you know what you're talking about?

Most content creators, they have an experience and they want to tell everybody about that experience.

And listen, the number of people who write into me and they're like, hey, I cheated on my wife nine times, but we decided to work it out.

And now we have a course on how to be married.

I'm like, dude, you're the last person that needs to tell people how to be married, right?

You have an experience.

You started a business.

That doesn't make you an expert in entrepreneurship.

That makes you an expert on your one thing that you did.

Awesome.

Congratulations.

If you want to tell people about your experience doing that, fantastic.

But until you've...

started a bunch of businesses or spent time with a whole bunch of business leaders and listened to them weep and listen to them win and still not be full and listen to them lose, then you have to know what you're talking about.

And then the third one is, I think it really is helpful to have a lived experience.

We've all had professors that teach you how to do real estate and you're like, hey, why don't you have real estate, right?

Like you've never done this thing.

And so having a lived experience helps.

So that's number one.

Know what you're talking about.

The other thing, this comes from my wife, and it's the single wisest piece of wisdom I received.

I was at a university here in Nashville.

It was my dream job.

It was going to set our family up for life.

And she comes from a house of school teachers.

And my dad was a policeman and then a minister and then back to being a policeman.

So we had nothing, neither of us.

I mean, we had everything we needed, but we did not come from stuff.

And then I was like, hey, I'm going to quit all of this and partner up with Dave Ramsey and start being in media.

And she's like, oh, geez.

So here's the piece of wisdom she gave me.

It's proven so wise.

She said, if you create an avatar, if you create some version, like I'm going to be the funny funny guy or the bro guy, if you create some version of yourself, eventually that will run out of gas.

The energy to keep up that persona or that facade or that thing will exhaust you to the point that you're not able to keep it up.

And then I responded with, yeah, I'm going to just be me, bro.

Like, I'm going to be me and authentic and whatever.

I used all the nerd words.

And then she looked at me and she said, hold on, though.

You're weird.

And I was like, what do you mean?

And she said, you're a Texan who's got a lot of tattoos.

You have a counseling degree.

You hunt and you drive a Prius and you go to Sunday school and you've been to Pantera shows for years and years.

Like you're into heavy metal and punk rock music.

She goes, you're a weird guy.

And she said, you're going to have to go all in on you.

And if it doesn't work, you're going to have to go to bed at night knowing America doesn't like me.

I got real quiet.

And she looked at me and said, I'll always love you.

Your kids like you.

Your friends like you.

But you're going to have to go to bed at night knowing they didn't like me.

And that was the wisest piece of information.

And so I just on my shows, I dress like I dress and I'm not polished because I don't, I'm not a polished guy and I don't hate anybody.

And so everybody's welcome on my show.

And I know that makes all different people uncomfortable, but that's just how I am in real life.

Everyone's welcome at the Delonee house and everyone knows that, right?

You have to just double down on being fully you.

And people meet me and they meet Dave Ramsey and they're like, how are you guys friends?

Right.

Like y'all are so different.

But if you distill way, way, way, way down, we both want to help folks and we're both people of the same faith.

But if you distill it down, sometimes he thinks helping people would be to really get after them.

And sometimes I think helping people would be to hug them.

But that core, that's just, I'm going to be this fully myself as I can be here.

And if it works, awesome.

And if it doesn't, I'm going to go to bed at night knowing I didn't put out a false image of myself.

And so know what you're talking about.

And don't be afraid to go be your full wacky, weird self.

And then, maybe, just maybe, it'll set off and work.

Such good advice.

And I have to say, I've interviewed a lot of people from Dave Ramsey, Ken Coleman, now you.

I'm so happy that I had you on the show.

And you guys all really do want to help people.

Like, you guys just seem like you have such a great mission and business in general.

And I just really love having you guys on the show.

I appreciate it.

It's the ethos of this company.

And I have the luxury of seeing Dave at 2 a.m.

with a ball cap on in the basement of a hotel.

And I see how he tips people when there's no cameras on.

And I see how he takes care of people in the hospital that never makes the news.

And so that's just the ethos of Dave.

It's the ethos of his company.

You got to be about helping other people.

This has been such an awesome interview.

I ended my interview with two questions that I ask all of my guests.

So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Call a friend or a person and say these these words.

Hey, can we get together?

I'm not doing okay.

And then go tell the truth.

I love that.

That's probably

a different answer than you usually get.

No, no, no.

I was going to ask you really, the reason why I paused is because I was like, oh, shoot, I forgot to ask them the question about truth telling.

Why do we need to be truth tellers if we want to live a peaceful life?

When I used to teach graduate classes for therapists, I'd always tell them, Rule number one, your clients will lie to you and they won't tell you the full picture.

And I think we just just don't have any place in our world where we can tell the truth.

And if you go see a doctor, if you go see a therapist, if you have a close best friend, if you've got a spouse, you have to be able to say,

here's the truth.

And I think we're dying from that.

We're gaslit on our news.

We're gaslit on it.

Just our whole culture is built around look over here, look over here.

And so being able to just call someone and say, here's the truth.

is a freeing, freeing, freeing thing.

Okay, last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life beyond just bank accounts?

It goes back to if somebody asked me the question on my deathbed, what are you worth?

I'm going to tell them, I'm worth my wife, I'm worth my faith, and I'm worth these experiences I had with these buddies.

And underneath that is it's an old Zig Ziglar quote that Dave quotes around the office all the time.

If you help enough people, you'll never worry about money.

And so.

If your business, the business you're creating, if it profits on other people's losing, your business will fail, period.

It's when Blockbuster put in their revenue line late fees, when they started banking on their customers having penalties, that's the end of their business.

And so if your business is about helping somebody have a better life, a more efficient life, meeting a need in their world, your business will do well.

And so I want that question at the end.

What are you worth to be relational?

And then at the end of that, I want to be able to say, I was about helping people and and I didn't have to worry about money.

John, this has been so great.

Thank you for spending so much time with me.

Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

I'm on the internet at John Deloney, the social stuff.

And you can go to johndelone.com, I guess, for the other nerds.

I'm terrible with the internets.

I still don't fully know.

You can come find me.

We'll put all your links in your show notes.

YouTube, Dr.

John Deloney show.

You can find it everywhere.

Awesome.

We'll stick all those links in the show notes.

John, thank you again for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you for your hospitality.

I'm really, really grateful.

Yeah, fam, I got to give a huge shout out to Dr.

John Deloney for joining us on the show.

And he's got this remarkable ability to make us just pause and reflect, not just about how we're feeling, but why we're feeling it.

And at the heart of his message is a call to choose peace over performance and presence over pressure.

He challenged us to stop white-knuckling through life, clinging to the toxic metrics of success and suppressing those quiet signals of anxiety that our bodies are constantly trying to send.

For entrepreneurs, especially, that message couldn't be more vital.

We often define ourselves by our hustle, productivity, by our net worth.

But as John revealed, true strengths comes not from our endurance, but from our alignment.

What is our why?

What is our purpose?

He taught us that anxiety is not a malfunction.

It's a signal.

It's your body trying to protect you.

Instead of medicating it away or ignoring it, we need to listen to our bodies and honor it and adjust our lives accordingly.

That's where his six daily choices come in, choosing reality, connection, freedom, health, mindfulness, and belief.

These aren't gimmicks.

These are foundational lifestyle shifts that every entrepreneur and every human can use to build a better life.

One of my favorite insights was his challenge to stop outsourcing your self-worth to your net worth.

What are you worth isn't just answered by a number.

It's answered by your relationships, by peace, by whether you're becoming a safe person who can show up with joy and integrity for the people that you love.

From my male listeners, especially, I hope you take to heart his honest perspective on masculinity, loneliness, and the quiet epidemic of men burning out in silence.

And finally, for all entrepreneurs with big dreams, stop isolating.

Get out and do things.

Take those weird classes, make new friends, show up for life with awkwardness and all.

That's how you build a future that's rich in meaning.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.

If this conversation resonated with you, share it with somebody who needs to hear John's message.

Mental health isn't a luxury.

It's foundational to everything else we're trying to build.

And if you listen, learned, and profited, please leave us a five-star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show.

It helps more entrepreneurs discover these life-changing conversations.

You can also watch the full video on YouTube.

And please don't forget to drop a few comments while you're there about what resonated most with you today.

And connect with me on Instagram at YabWithHala or LinkedIn.

Just search for my name.

It's Halata Taha.

And of course, I got to shout out my amazing team.

Specifically, I want to shout out my guest outreach team today, Sham for Khan, Joshua.

You guys do an excellent job.

These conversations would not be possible without you guys.

So, thank you so much for all that you do.

This is your host, Halataha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.