Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2177: How to Build a Non-Anxious Life With Dr. John Delony

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with national best-selling author, mental health expert and host of The Dr. John Delony Show, Dr. John Delony. Anxiety is NOT your problem. Anxiety is just trying to get your ATTENTION. (2:15) What makes anxiety so addictive? (4:19) How anxiety is a smoke detector in your kitchen. (6:54) How to identify bad behaviors. (11:04) Your body would be FAILING you if you didn’t recognize you were lonely. (14:22) The quiet life of desperation. (17:09) Practice by SHOWING up. (22:33) Learning how to shift and become a safe house. (25:08) Go first and just be weird. (29:01) How we are communicating and NOT connecting. (38:27) The dangers of self-diagnosing yourself. (42:02) Stopping the ‘shame spiral’. (46:35) The steps to building a non-anxious life. (50:57) #1 – Choose reality. (51:42) #2 – Choose connection. (55:35) #3 – Choose freedom. (58:26) #4- Choose mindfulness. (1:01:41) #5 – Choose belief. (1:03:22) A major turning point in his life. (1:03:30) One of the greatest curses of modern masculinity. (1:09:40) The BIG difference between loneliness and solitude. (1:13:59) What do I need right now? (1:16:43) Finding your purpose when things slow down. (1:19:47) His favorite things about what he does. (1:24:20) Don’t let your kids hurt your feelings. (1:25:46) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 30% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** October Promotion: MAPS Bands | The Skinny Guy 'hardgainer' Bundle 50% off! **Code OCTOBER50 at checkout** Learn how to Break Bad Habits and Overcome Addiction | Dr. Jud Terry Real Homepage Mind Pump #2132: Six Reasons Men Today Are Weak Mind Pump #2092: How To Cultivate Amazing Relationships With Adam Lane Smith The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture – Book by Gabor and Daniel Mate Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Dr. John Delony (@johndelony) Instagram Website Dr. Jud Brewer MD PhD (@dr.jud) Instagram Terry Real (@realterryreal) Instagram Adam | Relationship Psychology (@attachmentadam) Instagram Esther Perel (@estherperelofficial) Instagram Jordan Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson) Instagram Dr. Gabor Maté (@gabormatemd) Instagram Paul Chek (@paul.chek) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, Dr. John Deloney, he is a number one best selling author. He's a mental health expert. He's the host of the Dr. John Deloney, he is a number one best selling author. He's a mental health expert. He's a host of the Dr. John Deloney show,

it's an amazing show, it's where we found him. And since 2020, he has served at Ramsey Solutions. This is where he teaches on relationships, mental health, healthy leadership, and emotional wellness. He also spent two decades in crisis response, literally walking people through severe trauma. He holds two PhDs in counselor education and supervision and in higher education and administration.

He's also a very, very, very cool guy. We love him. His advice is incredible. He just wrote a book. It just dropped yesterday called Build a Non-Ancient Life. I felt like he was talking to me as I went through this book. So we know you're going to love this episode. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor seed. This is the world's best probiotic. There are no others that come close.

So if you want the benefits of a probiotic, go with seed. Check them out. Go to seed.com forward slash mind pump, use a code mind pump and get 30% off your first month's order. We also have a sale this month on some workout programs. Our band program, this is resistance training with just resistance bands, is 50% off. And then we have a hard gainer bundle. For those of you that have trouble building muscle and strength or have a really slow metabolism and you want to speed it up, this bundle of programs is for you. That bundle is also 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnisproducts.com, click on the one you want, and then use the code October 50 for that discount.

All right, here comes the show. John, welcome back. Thanks, man. It's good to see you guys. One of our favorite people, for sure, and I do want to share this on the podcast. You were so incredible and gracious to me. We came and saw you at a massive event

and I told you I was struggling with some stuff. You took me backstage, sat down with me and talked with me for like an hour, man. That was incredible, very impactful too. So I appreciate that. Your book, I don't think it could come out at a more perfect time. The title is the non-inches life.

And all the data on anxiety is showing that it's getting worse. It's getting worse in every age group. Is that why you wrote the book or why did you write the book? Who's it for? I mean, to be honest with you, I didn't, that wasn't the goal, right? I wanted to write a book on parenting. I think a lot of parenting books aren't that great. I wanted to write a book on making friends when you're 40,

because there's nothing out there for us. Uh-huh. And a couple of years ago, I was on air and somebody was calling about anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. And I finally said, hey, anxiety's not your problem. Anxiety's just trying to get your attention. You got this other stuff in your life going on.

And I took the headphones off and my co-host Dave took the headphones off and he looked at me and goes, he needs to write that down. I'd never heard that. And I thought everybody knew that. And so I wrote a teeny tiny little 60-page book and it shot out from underneath us in a pretty wild way, right? And so as we sat down with the team,

they're like, hey, the world's gone mad. And I didn't want to, I want to keep talking about anxiety. I'm kind of tired of talking about it. As I was writing this, I realized why? About halfway through my wife and I had a confrontation, I checked into a hotel and I realized, well I'm not living this. Like I don't wanna deal with this

because I'm heading down a bullet train I've been down before myself where I was such an anxious mess. I almost blew up everything. And so it became more of me lecturing society because I'm so smart and more like, hey, I'm pulling up a bar stool and like, like, pour me one, two, because we got to figure this out. And yeah, it's a mess.

What was that process like? Because that's a, it was heart-bulnerable. Yeah. It was hard. Because I, like, that's what I do, right? I tell everybody how to do it. And it was hard when my wife said, I'm watching my husband die right in front of me and chasing all this stuff. And I don't know what to do, but I love you. And I don't know what to do. And that was a humbling moment. What is it about anxiety? It makes it so addictive. It has to be, right? Because we know we don't like it.

We know it's not good for us, it causes us to, or at least in the way that we experience it, or how we- Addictive are crippling. It's crippling, but it's also, it feels addictive. It feels like we're shaking it out. There's some chicken or egg in the literature, and I don't like to get caught up in that.

Sure. And who comes first? But there's an idea out there that you get addicted to the cortisol and the adrenaline. You get addicted to your body's chemical response. There's also out there, you get addicted to your numbing device of choice, and so your body will spin up the system so it will get that drink. Wow. So it'll get that food, it'll get what it wants down the stream. Either way, I don't care. Judd Brewer has done some great work on it. It's, you get addicted to the ramp up

and you get addicted to the deceleration, if that's even a word, you get to the off ramp and you just get in that cycle, man. And when we have this constant stream of, you're not okay, you're probably gonna die, it's all coming down, the economy's gonna do this. This, man, your body's just it. 24, 7, 365. You say you don't care what you want it is

as far as which one came first. Is that because you're not even really addressing the root cause and it's like it's not the argument to be had, like I've had a, I say I don't care for two reasons. One, I have had a humbling last 36 months, last three years. I spent 20 years in academics, I spent 20 years

having lunch with some of the smartest minds in the world. And then getting out of that ecosystem out of the university ecosystem and sitting with single moms and truck drivers, just wanna be better dads. I've realized dude, I've been talking over people for 20 years. And if I sit down with a dad who's just saying,

my dad left and I wanna be this thing called a dad, I don't even know what it is. And I'm like, well, the studies say he's out. Can you help me right now, please? Right, and so for me, I don't, like the studies are important because it informs the advice you give, right? And it informs how you pull up a seat next to somebody.

What I'm finding is most people, most of the time they know the next step, it's so terrifying to go alone So will you just sit with me? Well, I tell my husband. I know you've been cheating on me Will you sit with me? Why while I the doctor tells me I got cancer and we figure out what comes next? And so that's the first one so it's that's more of a personal thing the second one is it it doesn't matter I mean the the root cause how we get out of this system is going to be the same, whether it's X or Y. It's, let's change the ecosystem and the alarms will

stop ringing, man. Is it solvable? Is it something that you can work with and is the right term build a different or better relationship with? Or is it something you can make go away? Like you. Yeah, so the analogy I use and I tried to distill them all down into a picture I can give somebody from my son who's 13 all the way up to somebody in a nursing home who's never dealt. So the picture I like to paint is anxiety is just a smoke detector in your kitchen. That's it. And in our current ecosystem, we've created this world where we're so afraid of this

comfort, everything, we've pathologized any negative, anything. You should be heartbroken if your mom passes away. You should be heartbroken if you get dumped, but we have a pill for that. We have a solution for that. We've got a 12 point program to get rid of that feeling. And so we've created a world where when we feel anxious, when those alarms go off and our kitchen, we climb up on a ladder and pull a battery out. And that, and then we say it's solved and the alarm shuts off. It does, man.

We can shut the alarms off with any number of drugs, any number of behaviors, but then your house burns down around you. And so what I want to do is say, what if we dealt with the fires in the front yard or in the back bedroom or in the kitchen or in the bathroom, the alarms will go off. And by the way, I don't wanna live in a house without a smoke detector. I don't want that world. And so anxiety plays an important role in our lives. It's letting you know, hey, your body's detected,

you're not okay, you're not safe. Let's figure that out. Not go to these wild gymnastic links to shut the alarms off. Just so we can connect with people listening right now, because this is me, by the way, I have issues with anxiety for sure. And I've only recently realized that I have issues with anxiety.

And I don't like negative feelings, I don't like feeling bad. So I'll do things to make myself not feel those feelings, whether it be reach for a substance or a voider, ignore or distract. One of the more common ways that people, or behaviors I should say, that people use to get away from bad feelings. Like pulling the battery out, like, what does that look like for most

people? Yeah, so there's a lot of literature out there that say women are infinitely more anxious or infinitely more depressed, if you will. I happen to think depression, anxiety is on the same trend line, but that's a that's a whole podcast. But when you look at it, as Terry Reold did the great work to look at, if you look at the prison population, that's mostly men. If you look at violence, interactions, that's mostly men. What if anxiety responses look different across genders? What if they look different, given a set of genetics, genetics, right?

So I think for you and me, anxiety may look like a common way to pull the battery out, may look like going to the gym, flexing on somebody, feeling powerful, like they call it the one-up position, like where can I rage and flex? For my wife, it might be shutting the whole system down, right? It might be that heart rate won't stop. And so

I'm going to go eat, I'm going to go just scroll mindlessly. I'm going to distract myself for some. It's another, it's another drink, another drink for many. It is that feeling of aliveness. I'm anxious. I'm anxious when I walk home into my house, because your body knows that your marriage is falling apart. So I text that it is that feeling of aliveness. I'm anxious, I'm anxious when I walk home into my house because your body knows that your marriage is falling apart. So I text that woman back that I work with. And I'm across the line, but my heart rate goes up a little bit

as though I was dating again, right? And I chase that sense of aliveness and then you end up doing stuff that you never planned on doing, right? But you just start heading down this path. Some people go to work for 140 hours a week and they try to outachieve it, right? They try to run, keep moving down the hallway away

from that alarm until that fire moves to the next room to the next room and it'll eventually burn your house down. So it's any number of things and that's where I think the diagnostics aren't super helpful because do you have anxious thoughts that you can't control? Do you have no thoughts at all? I mean, it looks different for everybody, and I think that's why it's hard to play whack them all with it.

And so, what if we just stop talking about the alarm system, what if we start talking about what's fixed our lives, so that our lives are whole and can handle what's coming? Because there's always something coming. Let's talk about the work and working out one, because of all the ones that you just listed, I find that to be probably one of the more challenging ones to figure out, do I have a bad relationship with this, or is this healthy, because those things obviously

are positive, right? You've got to go to work to feed your family, working out and exercise is healthy for your body. But I do think that we actually see this a lot in our space. In fact, some of the people that I think we most admire in the fitness space, or the most famous for the way they look, have found a way to get famous from this issue that they have. They've buried themselves into their physiques and they're so good at it. They can present that. And outwardlyly they look like they have it all figured out. But inside, they're probably a terrified child.

So how does somebody, how do you tell somebody or how do you help somebody become aware that this thing that you claim to be healthy for you isn't that healthy? How do they know? How do they become aware of that? Is this a behavior you continue to do despite negative outcomes also? Oh. And so, working out is almost always good for me. And a few days ago, I wasn't feeling great, but I got to get my workout in and I fell off a cliff, right?

And I ended up sick, like it wasn't smart. And my wife said, oh, so you're being classic John again, huh? Where, and often when you're with somebody in tight spaces, you can see somebody heading down a road before you get there, right? But it's the same as like having really great friends and colleagues and coworkers that are women or that are handsome guys.

You all are great friends, and then y'all start texting. And then your spouse comes home and you flip your phone over. Now I'm continuing something that I know is gonna have negative ramifications, but I'm down another road. So I think all behaviors are that way. There's something fun about getting with your buddies and getting a couple of drinks

and kind of putting your nutritional ideas in a box and throwing it in the ocean and just getting chips in case it out. That's cool. There's also the, when you're to find yourself doing it by yourself, right and doing it again and then doing it again And so I think it's some it all those behaviors can have some good to them It's when you do them despite the fact that there's some negative consequences How much value it because you mentioned your wife that's addiction by way

So that's that's the definition right right? I think that I'm seeking for, because when you think of work and working out, there's such a fine line there, right? Of like someone. And I think what I see when people struggle with it on either one of those is you do a good job of justifying those two. Other addiction. Other addicted things, sir.

It's hard to justify. Like, oh, well, yeah, I just got to do a line of coke every day. Like, there's a reason. Because it makes me a better, no, it's real. But you can do a lot of, but if your, but if your drug is achievement, if your drug is busyness, I've got a pastor in town in Nashville that says if busyness is your drug rest will feel like stress. Yeah.

And so, a line of coke, the thing about coke is it works for a while, right? So, if you've got a big project, dude, let's gonna get you this accolade and this stamp and you've identified achievement and money as you'll figure out a way to make Coke make sense for you for a while, right? So we'll figure out a way to justify anything, right? That's where I think it's important to have other people.

And you're just gonna ask that. Because you mentioned your wife and we're constantly told, don't listen to anybody, just listen to yourself. Stupid. Yeah, so because how do you not have your wife point that? This is happening to me in my relationship where my wife will point something out and I just want to deny it. No, you don't know what you're talking about. And I'm like, wait, this person really cares about me and loves me. Maybe I should listen. And that helps with awareness. Like, how important is it to listen to people

who are around you that you care about that you trust? Man, I'll say it this way. Your body would be failing you. If it recognized, you've got nobody looking over your right flank and your left flank. You've got nobody watching over the hill over there and it let you sleep all night. It would be failing you.

Your body would be failing you. If it recognized your lonely and let you have a deep, private, intimate time. What's somebody you care about? It's not time for sex, it's time to not die. And so you hear people popping up at 3 a.m., night after night after night. That's your body working exactly as it's supposed to.

It doesn't want you asleep because it's identified threats everywhere, right? And so we've created the loneliest generation of human history. You all talk about, I mean, we know this. And then we're surprised that our bodies alarms are ringing off the hook all the time. And then you dump that, I don't call it bro science,

but you dump that, then you don't let her talk to you that way, but it's insane. It's insane. It's insane No Navy SEAL goes to war by themselves No football team goes out there without coaches up in the box the eye in the sky watching to see what you can't see That's insane none of us do that in any other parts of our life except when it comes to you don't know me bro She does know you and she's watching her husband die right in front of her He does know you that's your best her husband die right in front of her.

He does know you. That's your best friend. And he said, man, I don't like where this is headed. And so I think it's madness to do life. And I think there's circles, right? There's in my life, this is from an exercise a counseling professor gave us that, man, it sent me off the rails. I've identified six people.

And if you think about like a box, I put on my kitchen table. I got five men in my wife, and I've given them permission. You speak in. You see something from afar, you see something up close. I've given you permission to call, and say you're not all right.

And then there's a peripheral, right? There's another 20 to 30 guys, y'all are in that. If you called me and said, has all you post something, take it down. It's not right. I would trust you, you've earned that trust with me, right? And so I would say, let's talk about it, but I trust you guys, man, y'all are see,

because you don't want ill for me, right? And so I think we've now got 500,000 followers on Instagram. We let everybody speak in. And so now the cool over correction is, it's just me, bro, you do you, and I just think that's a terrible way to live, man. It's a nonsensical way to do life. You mentioned that we're the loneliest generation.

When I think about that, we can look at the data and there's definitely growing loneliness and anxiety and everybody. But I mean, just from personal experience and also from what I've read, the two types of people that I see struggling with this are men over, let's say middle-aged men. We just don't go out and make friends. We just don't. Men are terrible at this. And stay at home moms because they're with kids all day long and they don't go and talk

to anybody. And what are the strategies? There's a reason why if you get together with the old guys, everybody just tells the old football stories over. And when you're around a group of veterans, they just get around and they tell the old, remember, win stories. Like, a couple of my closest buddies on Planet Earth,

we were in a high school band together, we were gonna make it, man. We were incredible. And then we like took it into college. When we get together, we were gonna make it, man, we were incredible. And then we took it into college. When we get together, all we talk about is remember that show, remember that time you jumped off the thing, here's the deal. For almost all of us, that was the last time

we were part of something bigger than ourselves. And then I'll send me turn 40. And you had a kid, you got married, you moved away, and then Ned Flander's next to me in his loafers and black socks, pulling his trash can out to the curb. He's like, hey, man, we didn't do a concert together. We didn't go shoulder to shoulder against that other team and the high school championship together.

We didn't go to war together. And we don't have a plan B for that. And so we shut it down. We shut it down, man. And that's that quiet life of desperation. We land the plane in our own living room. And our kids learn, don't say that because dad gets mad. And then suddenly they become responsible for the emotional regulation of the adults in their life, which is not their job. Don't say that mom gets mad. Don't do that, man. That's going to piss. And so they learn to make little internal lives of their own. And

they in the whole system starts over again. Do you think that we find ways to cope or patch it up that are probably not the healthiest, for example, we did have the so I don't know, maybe a month or two ago and we talked about video game addiction and oh boy, don't make that mistake. Oh, we said a lot of things on there that people do that aren't great. Video games was just one of the points. We got all the negative hate we got was for video games. Yeah. Like and it and obviously like a lot of guys were like don't touch my

video games. And so and what I came to mind right away, I have for I used to game when I was younger and folks I gained all the way and played video games till my late 20s. And how did that make you feel that I'm scared just kidding. My older friends let me know. You know what I'm saying? That's when I finally woke up and realized, okay, I do have to kind of grow up a little bit, which by the way, just me saying that's going to piss off a lot of people.

I know. Hey, it triggers a lot of people for sure. And, you know, I'm gonna get us all in trouble. Hey, I know, I'm gonna put it on you. I'm coming. John said it, not me, so. I'm alright. There's this, and I get it because they're,

like you just said, that literally, like you just cry probably all of our lives. I know for sure Justin, I can really connect to that. Like we're friends move away. We had this great thing together. For sure, I was laughing too. Yesterday I was on the phone with an old high school buddy and of course he brings up like, you know,

football and basketball stories from high school. And I was just like, really? We're fucking 40, so we're still talking about this. But that just highlights that. And I think that a lot of those guys, including myself at one point, find other comrades online. And then we get together on Call of Duty.

And we feel like we're accomplishing something important together, but we're probably really not. It's level four. Yeah. Okay, so go with me here. And this is a working theory. So it may fall apart. Okay. We were talking about it in the car yesterday. Okay, so go with me here and this is a working theory. So it may fall apart.

Okay. We were talking about it in the car yesterday. Okay. I think we don't have a road map and this word gets beat to death and I understand that and I understand it, especially with me and the instantly roll the rise. I get it. We have no road map for what entering into a vulnerable

relationship with somebody else is. And if somebody looks at you and says, I'll take a bullet and go first. Somebody says, I'm gonna hit that guy so you can run by me with a ball. Call it what you want. That's a vulnerable relationship. I'll put myself out there so that you can get this thing

and we can all win, right? Without that roadmap, we've created a world where we try to have B without doing a here's what it looks like What's gambling? That's participation without ever getting on the field Hmm. I don't have to work out. I don't have to build camaraderie I don't have to fail. I don't have to hit in the mouth I just sit in the casino and I get just flooded with dopamine without all the other

Participation that's video games. Let's don't all get in our cars and get in a room and solve a problem. Let's don't go over to Justin's house and help him with his plumbing. We're going to figure it out. There's going to be stuff everywhere. We're going to level one, level two. Let's just sit in our house and put our little thing. That's pornography. Instead of sitting with somebody and saying, it's gonna feel weird. There's a human in front of me, right? We're making eye contact. There's sounds, there's, it's, it's, it's, you're Adam, right?

Like, like, like, like, you, let's just bypass all that, and let's just go straight. And so we've created this world where we're trying to hack and end around the hard, uncomfortable, complicated thing that is the beautiful hole on the other side of it. And we just, it's hack after hack after hack, man. John, this is kind of a personal question too,

but connected to what you're saying is how do we, or how do I get comfortable with being uncomfortable? How do I get comfortable or develop a relationship with bad feelings where I don't instantly avoid or you know detach or numb. So how would you answer that question if I asked you, hey like squatting hurts, how do I, but I want to do squats. I know the answer to that. Practice, practice, yeah. Okay. And you practice with somebody that you trust. And so my wife and I have had to create a language man, which is, I'm invulnerable here, or a story I'm making up is,

and she sent me something hilarious yesterday, which was, it was like an Instagram meme and somebody texted their spouse and said, hope you have a great day, and then a few minutes later. And I saw the way you tied your shoes this morning and I feel like you really mad at me. Is that true? Right? She was like, sorry, that's me, right?

It was a funny exchange. But I can see my wife head out the door in a certain way and shut the door with a certain vigor and I just start making up stories. Oh, she's just going to be mad today. After I'm a one working like that, I could just say, hey, story I'm making up, you slam the door on the way out. I did something and she can say, I really had diarrhea and I'm making up, you slam the door on the way out, I did something, and she can say, I really had diarrhea,

and I'm trying to get to it. Right? It can have nothing to do with me, but it almost never does. But so we've had it aside in our house, and dude, any couple, it could be, do problems, we get naked, and we sit across tables. There's like, it's all already awkward,

so there's no problem, we're do than this, right? You hear some couples will sit on the same side and they'll put the problem in the table. I don't care what it is. Call them up with something that says, I'm gonna practice this. I'm gonna do squats with no bar first. I'm gonna do squats with a stick, I'm gonna hold it.

Then I'm gonna move to the bar, then I'm gonna slowly start adding weight to this thing. And that might be the story I'm making up is, which turns into, hey, a few years ago, and I'm still hanging onto this to, hey, I had some abuse and I was a kid, I never told you. I mean, you build yourself up to it. And then you get to a place where,

she's so right or die. He's so right or die, He's so right or die. Your buddies are so, I don't think there's anything that any one of you all couldn't bring to the other guys and say, hey, I need to step away for a few months. I'm struggling with X and y'all didn't know it. I'm sorry. You'd have to get over the initial,

why didn't you come to us earlier? I feel like you lied to us. But then there's the, we got your six, we'll be here, right? And I should practice and practice and practice. And I think you only practice by showing up, man. You've got to keep showing up and showing up and showing up. Often do you notice that like a lot of the negative side of anxiety is caused by like the stories you just are creating out of your own mind about situations or events that occurred. And you don't really communicate well enough to realize that there's really not a problem

that you're creating a problem in your own mind which then perpetuates this sort of angst feeling. I used to think that was the cornerstone was if I can stop making up stories and there's a component to that. The more we learn about the nervous system, the more I realize, I'll make up a story not about my man, but I'll pretend it's him. Dad pulls up the driveway and I'm six, and I just know it's smarter for me just to finish what I'm doing and go in my room and shut the door. It's safer in there, or I hear dad drive up, and I'm gonna go just be an ass.

I'm gonna say look over here so he doesn't start whaling on mom, right? Your body puts a GPS pin in that, in that car driving up the driveway, game on, then here we go. And then you fast forward 30 years and your wife drives up and you find yourself without even thinking, I'm just starting to fold up, wipe my hands on a head into the bedroom, head into the bathroom, shut the door, pull my phone out and I still

have 25 minutes. That's not a story. You're not like, you're not weak of character. You're not weak of morals. Your body has said, not safe. I detected it for you and detected it. And we're going to head out. It's, it's beginning to become aware. And that's, man, you hear the word mindfulness. We kind of think of an old dude on a cloud with a beard, like sitting like that. It's just being curious. John, I've read this from the neurological standpoint because you mentioned the nervous system.

It literally circumvents the frontal lobe. Rational thinking. Yeah, so the part of the brain where I'm aware and I can act out rationally, that comes online after the feelings happen. Your body doesn't want you asking, I wonder if that's a really sweet, petable tire. You just want you to run, man. People are taking fight.

We'll figure out if that's petable later, right? It can't take that risk. And so, man, if your mom and dad weren't safe, or y'all had been talking attachments recently, which I love. Yeah. If your body attributes attachment A to that relationship, that's going to follow you until you get curious and say, how come every time my wife, somebody I know who loves

me, how come every time my co-workers show up, guys I love, and we run with, what about always, why does my body start to head south, let's stop it there, and that's the work, man, let's practice. To use the squat analogy, just because we have listeners right now that have heard me talk about this, let's talk about this. You develop a recruitment pattern and that's your default recruitment pattern and the more fatigued you are, the more you're going to rely on that recruitment pattern, the more stress you're under, the more that that old recruitment pattern is going to come out.

The only way to break free of it, if it's one that's, let's say, hurting your knees or your back, is to start slow and retrain a brand new recruitment pattern to the point where it becomes your default. Is that similar to what we're talking about where you're trying to get that? Let's get this CNS to react differently. It's gonna, I have to take some time practice

and get it to the same thing. And I think I'm not one who blames everything on social media. I just don't think the data's bearing that out. But you can only scroll through so many times to see David Goggins just be like, just cool, snap. You're right. Yeah. It's cool to know what the human body can do.

That's awesome. Like I'm tired. No, you're not. Right. That's important. Sure. But it's equally important. If you want your kids to want to come home, like when they're teenagers,

if you want to be a safe place for them to land, when they get sideways in their life and they're gonna get sideways, man, that works. Learn how to re-shift and become a safe house is important, man. Let's get even more tactical to what kind of Saul was asking, because, okay, I'm a 40-something-year-old man, say I have, I don't have any friends other than my call of duty game that I play. I recognize, I hear you out, I recognize that I need to do better about building relationships.

I'm, whether I believe it or not, subconsciously I'm terrified to do that. I'm terrified to like, I don't have any desire to go to some nightclub with the music and like, do something like that. I don't want to, I don't have any desire to go to some night club with the music and like, do that. I don't want to go on some weird website that links me up. But I know I have people. I have people that I know that I like. Let's use you for an example. Let's say we live in the same town.

Does that look like, okay, I need to do this. So I start really small to the squad analogy and it's like, I'm going to call John and see if he just wants to have a cup of coffee with me. Is that like, what are the tactical steps? The two things I've figured out and guys, this isn't, there's no data on this that I can find. This is John Deloni trying to figure out, move into a new state when he's 40.

Okay. And, I had some ride or dies and I'm all by myself. Right, this is me trying to figure it out. The two things I'd tell you to do is go first and the second one is just be weird. That's it. Hey, you three guys, grab whoever you wanna grab, grab your kids and come over to my house,

whatever you got left in the fridge, every Monday night, we have clean up fridge, night at my house, you got half bottle wine, you got half of a weird casserole that I don't even know, like what's, we'll eat it. If it's not, but we're all gonna make, and I'm not cleaning my house, just come over. Two of y'all won't come and it will be awkward

and then maybe the second time, a couple of y'all will come. And then in a few months, we'll connect. You two y'all who's like, ah, I mean, y'all are cool, but like, we'll connect and that's just, it's just an organic process that way. I think we put so much pressure, we're so obsessed with ROI for every second and every minute. By the way, you get into like the alarms ringing. We've got calendars

in our lives that are so stacked. And if you get five minutes off meeting one, your week can't recover. And so it does mean I've got to go, kind of, you know, people come in and say, my heel hurts. And then you wash them squat and it's like, well, that starts in your neck, my friend. Like you are under that bar in a weird way that is compressing this and your body is overcorrecting here and moving here. Anxiety's the same way. If you owe somebody $500,000 in mortgage and cars and your investments that you leveraged here to try to beat the interest rate gap over here.

Your brain would be failing you if it let you sleep all night because it knows if Sal says one thing and it goes out in this show gets canceled, there's no rent, there's no food, there's no cars, it would be failing you, right? If your marriage is falling apart and you can sit two inches from each other on the couch, but your body knows your 2000 miles away. It's gonna sound the alarm to you solve that problem. And so, again, I think you're, we're always trying to solve over here,

the problem's over here, man. Yeah, I wonder too, if it's like, like we don't even, maybe we don't value it as much as we should, right? Like the building, like building that, starting that. I think, you're, our culture says you can't.

I know. So it's happening when you're a kid, feel the wrong color in the wrong place, feel this, you can't. I gotta come save you. And I feel like, so I don't feel like this is something I struggle with, but I still think I could be better.

Right, I think all of us, if relationship building in real life, in person, solving problems with other men that are like-minded that I like is that extremely valuable to our health, even I can do better. I can do more of that, and I have a buddy who's probably, and we had, it's a mutual friend of ours, probably lives 15 minutes from my house,

love his wife, love his kids, he's one of the best human beings. Every time I see him, I have a good time. Yet, we find excuses of why we're so busy all the time to not connect because of our calendars this night. And yet it's so easy to just, and it's like, if I really listed out like the things that filled my soul,

that made me healthy, that made me a better dad, made me a better husband, made me a better husband, made me a better human. For sure, having relationships with people like that be like, yet somehow I justify the lawn being mode or the thing I need to read for the podcast episode. We're like all these other things, somehow still making a above on my list. Yet I know that.

What is that? Here's the bigger picture. The greatest gift you can give your kids is not going to every single T-Bull game. The greatest gift you can give your kids is to be a non-exas presence in that living room. And so if it means skipping a soccer game once a week to go help your neighbor fixes fence and y'all laugh like crazy and he's got cheap beer and pizza and y'all laugh and it out. And the fence is kind of wonky in certain places. And you come home to smile on your face and that nuclear reactor right here is down a little bit.

And your kid comes home, how to go? Dad, I crushed it. It's not an excuse to abandon your kids. It's not what I'm saying. To end up at like cheers at the moment. No, you're probably hitting it right on the head right now. So good. We are so obsessed with, what are they gonna think?

What are they gonna think? What are they gonna think? The greatest gift you can give your kids is you go have friends. Cassiopo did all the work, man. You can look at the loneliness data, dude. It's brutal. It's brutal. Problem is, there's no money to be made

off-solving for loneliness. I'm so glad you said that because... It's all the money, man. As a dad, all of us are dads in here. That's another one of those things that you could easily do. Like in my head sometimes I think nothing is more important than my wife and my son.

So I wanna be there, if there's free time then that's where I should be. It's my family, but it's like, man, I'm doing pretty good as a dad. Like I'm very, very present and do a lot of my son. Like maybe that's as important or more important for me. Sometimes be like, hey, honey, that's as important or more important for me. Sometimes be like, hey, honey, like, can you handle Max by yourself? I'm going to go catch a coffee with Jason

because he means a lot to me and go spend that time every once in a while, or at least once a month, right, with that person. And my son is not going to go, where was my dad that one time? You know what I'm saying? Like I missed out on when I'm present all the other times in his life. No, he'll be, he'll open the door and he'll see you with a big smile on your face, because you're, you're still. And he'll go run at dad, right?

And again, it's not, it's not all the time. And by the way, like, some relationships just aren't gonna be like, two dudes like having coffee. It might be, I got my headphones on,'ve got your headphones on, let's go lift. Hey, will you help me solve a problem at my house? Let's go fishing, let's go hunting, we're not gonna talk, we're just gonna smell bad and sit next to each other and drink coffee. Like, let's go do some stuff.

So I'm not even saying that you have to have this little kumbaya spirit. No, no, I give it. You have to, I love sitting down, talking shop, right? That's one of my favorite things to do. Like, hey, have you read something? That's not for everybody, that's fine. You just, we just can't say that's not important. Yeah, I mean, you know, not to go too much on a tangent,

but you know, this has always been hard for people. It's not a new thing. I think what's happened is we've eliminated all of the structures and, you know, just things we've done in culture and society that, you know, were done on a weekly basis that always brought us together. And I think we might have taken that for granted. Like, the whole town, you know, the neighborhood goes to church on Sunday or everybody meets here at this particular time to do this thing or the guys after work always have a drink at the bar afterwards and they start saying the same thing. And so you can take Este Peral and Jordan Peterson both talking about we cut all the

strings to a common story. We cut all the strings to this idea that for all of human history everybody walked outside their tent and they hit the ground on both knees and looked up and said, Dear God or gods or whatever, please rain or my family dies. And then 200 years ago, we figured out how to ship avocados from Guatemala in the middle of the winter. And we figured out how to turn a faucet and water comes out of our homes. And we got real arrogant. Like this is all about me now. Like I'm the center of my universe, right?

And if you follow all of the psychological theories, they're all self-actualization. Do this, get this, use this person for this, make sure you've got this, and then you can be that shining star in the center of the universe. If you go back and read some of the old theories, we're here. We're self-actualized. We have everything. And the sense, the self doesn't hold. It can't hold the center the center was never designed to hold the universe up So you're talking about a series of practices. I think it's deeper than that Hmm. I think it's a common story a common purpose. We're all living for fill in the blank and That's gone and the only thing we have left to live for is us and as David Foster Wallace says

You should live in for you as a being created to worship you'll worship beauty and you'll never be beautiful enough You'll worship money. you'll never have enough. You'll worship shiny things. It will never be enough shiny things. And you can't stop, right? And so you have to circle back. That was the worst chapter to write. Choose belief, you have to decide,

I'm at the center of the universe, and I'm gonna submit to something bigger than me. I'm not gonna prescribe it. Your body is designed to not lead the charge alone. It's now starting to really make sense why we're so lonely. When you look on the purpose. Yeah, because if you look at everything, it's almost sound silly at first. We got more money, we got more shelter, we got so much food. Everything. Yeah, it was a further idea that we all today could pull out our magic wand cell phones

and the four of us could communicate to a million people right now. We can do that. That's insane evolutionarily. Like, doesn't make any sense. But that's not community. It's not a substitute. That's not that's that's we're communicating. We're not connecting. That's different man. That's not, we're communicating, we're not connecting. That's different, man. That is not, I know I'm gonna go in that room and do something hard and Adam's outside and he's got me if I don't make it. I'm gonna tell you a story, my dad told me when I was younger and I didn't get it until I got older and had kids. So my dad grew up very, very poor and Sicily.

Lot of siblings, they lived in like one room, you know, including the donkey that my grandfather had. And this is true. This is true. Very poor. Let's get to say, that's a weird way to talk to about his brother. He had a real donkey when he was real, real. No main job. You know, but when they got older, they found it. You're anointed one. But yeah, then, you know, even eventually got older, but they still were poor, they had like two bedrooms or whatever, so it's like all the siblings share.

And I remember, you know, he came to this country and him and, you know, and my mom built this middle class life for us, and there's four kids, and we had like, we all had our own rooms, our own bedrooms, and we had a kitchen, and we had a laundry room, and I remember my dad saying, you know, I don't like big house, and it was a massive house, it was a normal track home, okay, but to him, it was like, a laundry room and I remember my dad saying, you know, I don't like big house.

It was a normal track home, okay, but to him it was like a lot and he goes, I don't like big houses. I don't like everybody having the wrong room. I said, what do you mean? He goes, man, when I was a kid, we were all together all the time. We were with each other. We had to learn how to, you know, who's going to use the bathroom and I got to sleep like this because you're sleeping on the same bed with me and And then, and he said it just brought us all closer.

Because now I feel like I come home and my son's up in his room, my other kids over there, nobody's talking to each other. And I remember him pointing that out and I remember thinking, you're so silly. Like, what are you talking about? This is so much better. I don't wanna live in one, you know, one cement room,

and, you know, but it makes sense now. Yeah, it won't surprise me in 200 years. We look back and say, the three thousand square foot house, where everybody's got a room, and you take that infant and you put them in a basket and you finally get them out of your room so you can get all of your sleep so you can go out and make all of your money

and that infant's attachment is spun up all by themselves. They're solving for that. That won't surprise me. I think it'd be hard to find causal data now, but I think you're right. I think you're right. Do you think we start going back that way? Do you think we're smart enough creatures

that we start to connect the dots? We're usually like a happy medium, maybe. I am a pathological optimist when it comes to some of that. That's me too, it's like, here it is. It's right in front of us, we can solve it. Yeah. I also am like a frustrated realist. And usually it's everything falls down.

Right. First, four families have to move into that 3000 script-foot house. Yeah. And you find out 20 years later, that was the best years of our life. Right. Right.

And I hate that. But if you look at type two diabetes, we kind of have a map. We're not But if you look at type two diabetes, we kind of have a map. We're not. If you look at, you know, the anxiety and depression literature, now countries are quietly starting to say, frontline is exercise first. And then we'll start doing other stuff later. Let's do that first. I think we have a lot of solutions right in front of us. They just don't make any money. How often, speaking of anxiety, depression, ADD, all those, how often do you think we misdiagnose

or so? It's really common, it's interesting, how often you hear this now. I didn't connect these dots to actually I heard someone else speak on this and I thought, oh, that's interesting, you know what? Now that I think about it, I do hear this a lot, where we say, I have anxiety, I have depression, I have 80, like, oh, we did

someone diagnosed, like, no, I just, like you automatically jumped to this conclusion and you, I almost identify with this diagnosis. And how, one, how is that, is it as common as I think it is and is it on the rise? And then how dangerous is it for you to do that? And then how empowering is it for you to like, almost deny that? Well, so the diagnostic manual, let's take the DSM, right? It's the manual that has all the diagnostics in it. That manual is designed for a couple of things. For researchers to talk to each other,

we're gonna study depression, so we're all gonna have this common, like so we're all of Apple's to Apple's, right? If somebody has this much stuff for this period of time and these series of behaviors We're gonna call that depression so we can all study it cool And it also became the way that clinicians talk to insurance companies so they could get paid You got to stamp this guy with something and then show me what you're gonna do over the next six to twelve weeks And I'll pay you for that right that became That became, that's the model. And then the internet happens, and that diagnostic manual gets released to the wild, and I can just Google it, and then I can say, oh, I've got this thing. You take that on

top of a culture that's obsessed with being problem-centric. Hey, my name is John, I've got my polar disorder and I've got this, and this happened when I was a kid. I'm only about you. It's so true. That's how our culture approaches each other. How dare we say, hey, my name is John, and almost as my wife likes me and my kids are healthy. Because it's like who do you think you are?

Because we live in an age of cynicism and pessimism. That's our currency. That's the air we breathe. And if you have joy and any sort of things are good right now They won't be forever right now. They're good Dude, oh you must be privileged. You must be this you must be we have to come up with a whole narrative for why you're smiling right now Right, right and the third thing is man dr. Brewer talks about this eloquently. I'm a lot more crude We identify ourselves with those stamps, with those labels.

We're proud of them. I have a thing, because if I have a thing, if you Google ADHD, I'm pretty sure my picture comes up. If you Google OCD, I'm pretty sure my picture comes up. Right? Sorry boss, I can't be there in 830. I got ADHD. I can't get this thing in on time.

I got anxiety. So I always tell folks thing in on time, I got anxiety. So I always tell folks it's a context, not an excuse man. And if I just look at my body acting anxious, ADHD kicking up, that's my body trying to get my attention. That's my body's response to chaos, that's my body's response to a lack of safety. Awesome. It also helps me be hyper focused

and be better than anybody at this particular task. It also helps me be hyper focused and be better than anybody at this particular task. It also helps me look out over the hill and see some a threat that might become. It can be a superpower too if I choose to reframe it that way. And because I'm a guy who has pretty gnarly time blindness, I get in the shower at 7.58 for an 8 o'clock meeting and then I get out at 8.15 and I'm pissed at the clock just, right, kept going. And then I got a 45 minute drive and I get in at, you know, at 9. And I'm so mad that everybody else that they're mad at me that I missed at the meeting. It's up to me to get up an hour earlier. That's my job. It's to have three alarms. That's my work, right? It's not to say, I got this thing, guys. I can't do that anymore, man. We can't do that. It's a con.

It's not real. It's time blindness because I've seen somebody use that as an excuse at work for not showing up. It can never be an excuse. Yeah. It can't be an excuse. I do struggle. My wife I do struggle. My wife has a, you experience time differently than the rest of us. Um, I, I, I see you went from me back there, right? I probably, um, if I was honest, it's like the cheapest, I mean, the, the cheapest form of disrespect in my life. And it's a, it's a choice to privilege myself and my time over that room of people waiting on me.

And that makes me a scumbag dude, I need to fix that. So I can have all the diagnostics, all of this, it can't be an excuse. I wanna ask you something, because you just did something right now that I do all the time and I recognize that this could be a problem. You just said I'm a scumbag right now,

and I think that's hilarious. So I'll tell you if it is. But I do find that, and I find this in health and fitness to where the self-same can actually become a driver in the negative behaviors as well. It can actually fuel the fire. Let's talk about that for a second. Like, because someone may be listening to me, like, oh my god, that's me. Holy cow, I do that stuff. And I'm aware, once you have the awareness of stuff that you do that isn't so great, it's, I do that stuff. Now I'm aware, once you have the awareness of stuff that you do, that isn't so great, I think it's normal and naturally like, well, that sucks, I shouldn't do that.

But how do we stop the shame spiral that then makes us keep doing it? Yeah, that's a thing I need to work on. Yeah. My counselor's been after me, my family's been after me. The people ride into the show and they're like, hey, we love your show, but dude, stop saying that you're an idiot. It kind of debunks. The devalues are opinion of you because you're always talking, you're not treating yourself like you tell us to treat it.

And so, yeah, it's a default setting. It's a lot of suck and I just also, honestly, it's an excuse. It's a way to get out of a situation, right? Instead of sitting in that discomfort with my wife, I can go, I'm the worst. I suck. I'll figure it out. That's easier than saying. All right. Tell me what happened.

Tell me how it made you feel last night. That's a harder thing to sit in that. So it's easier. It's just an offering at me. It feels like it's, or at least for me, it was a, a default because of an insecurity more than anything else, right? Like, like, I remember, I would do the same thing. And it was because I felt inferior, insecure, right?

I didn't finish college. I had around all these people that are really intelligent. So if I say I'm dumb, and I can beat them to the punch. You're pulling their bullet out of their gun. That's right. I can't shoot you with it. So I said, I was notorious for that.

I took me a long time. That's like, what's that eight mile? Eminem does that, right? He's so good. I'm all these things and now you can't wrap against me. Except life's not a wrap battle, right? And, dude, you're the one that told me in a private conversation, and it was a,

it has echoed in a haunting way through my life. John, you cannot hate yourself to getting into better shape. It will never work. I can't tell myself that I suck towards being a better dad because you know, where is that? My son will wear that. My daughter will wear that because they will be the reason why I feel bad need to fix myself.

That's not their job, right? I need to say, dude, I love myself enough to do the things I need to do to give myself peace in this house because I love them that much, right? And this is a good, it's an embarrassing thing. But it's important to stay out loud, all the education, all the success, all the whatever, change the family tree, all that stuff. Guys, this is six months ago, this wound is still fresh.

The counselor that I work with, she's just, she's incredible, but she said, I want you to make a fist and so I did and she said, put it in your chest, like this. And she said, say the words, I love this guy. That's our laughing. I was like, ah, and she's like, say it. I was like, nah, he caught it.

Guys, I couldn't say it. Oh wow. It was so bizarre. It was a weird like, I couldn't even fake it. I think I'm on stages for a living and I couldn't like theater my way through it. It was like, how am I gonna say that? And she goes, that's it.

And she goes, you can do all this other stuff. You can have all these other missions. You can do all the bodywork and N goes, that's it. And she goes, you can do all this other stuff. You can have all these other admissions, you can do all the bodywork and A and B are all this stuff. But your kids know that man doesn't love himself. He's unsafe. They know that. And so it has been a weird, in my church, growing up, my religious tradition said,

if you love yourself, that's sin, right? That's not right. My neighbors and I'm saying neighbors are communities say if you love yourself, that's North-Assistic, that's, no, man, that is you deciding. I'm gonna take care of myself so that I can repel off. You go take care of my family, my neighborhood, my community, my country.

I can only do that if I'm a hole over here. Yeah, I had someone tell me with the whole, the dad thing that, well, good dads don't ask themselves with their good dads. Good dads don't look at themselves and try to improve. So, you know, because I had that same issue, like, oh, I'm not a good dad. Good dads don't say that.

Oh, they don't ask that question. They don't ask that question. They said, bring more beer. That's right. That's right. You came up with some in the book, you put down kind of a structure of things people can do every day to help them deal with anxiety and the things that

cause anxiety or at least the relationships that we have with anxiety improve them. Can we go down the list of what they are? Okay. So what I try to do is this, try to create a roadmap that I could give to my 13 year old. Hey man, here's if you will do these things, if you'll brush your teeth and floss, you're

less likely to have bad breath. And if you do have bad breath, you probably have a tooth infection and you'll be able to know what that is and you can go to a doctor and get it solved, right? So that's the idea here. From my 13 year old and for my buddies with two PhDs who are trying to achieve their way to peace, it's just not coming. The first one is you have to choose reality. And what does that mean? We say it altruistically, we're in the attention economy.

That's a bull crap way to say that. We are in the distraction. Look over here economy. And so, like you talked about it, it's hard to sit in your feelings. Well, Netflix do, they saw that. Like you don't even have to do this no more. They just start the next show for you.

And by the way, I already know what you watch, and I know all the websites you go to, I know you better than you do. You're gonna wanna watch this, and you're just like, all right, I'll watch that, right? Or all the distractions. So choosing reality is really saying, here's the starting line to my marathon.

It's an inventory. What's the state of my marriage? It's like, you tell somebody we're gonna blood test. You tell somebody, let's see how much you can squat, see how much you can bench, let's get a baseline so that we can then figure out where we need to go. That's what that is, man. And that's hard.

It's terrifying. Cause that means you sit down at the table and you say, like, I think she's cheating on me. I sit down at the table and say, my kids can't be on the, they keep walking in the front door and slam the door and they go in the room and shut the door. And I laugh and I go, I just teens, no, that means they don't,

my relationship with my kids, I need to figure out what's going on, right? And so inventory's hard, inventory's scary. Is it recommended that you do that alone in like yourself or that you involve a partner or that, because sometimes I would think that some people have a hard time even accepting their own reality or doing their own inventory. So is it recommended that you use a wife or a husband to support that or it's something you need to learn to do? I think it's similar to, um, I mean, you guys have all three of you behind behind closed doors, I've asked you a questions about exercise.

I've been working out for 30 plus years, right? But I still need a coach to get going. And then you'll give me a roadmap. I use Maps in a Bolic and you'll give me a plan and a roadmap and then I have your number, I can call you and check in if I need to, right? But for me, a guy who knows all about exercise and I know about physiology, I've been lifting my whole life,

I started with a coach and started with somebody. And so if you have a good marriage and you trust your partner, I've been lifting my whole life, I started with a coach, I started with somebody. And so if you have a good marriage and you trust your partner, not to be self-serving, well, that's great. Some people need a coach, some people need a therapist. I think you can start on a yellow pad first, and your body will let you know. Like, what's the state of your marriage?

Oh yeah. I need to have that conversation. I need to call somebody, right? And if you can say great, or not good can, we've worked it out before. That's right. So I think it's different for everybody. Okay. But I think you can never go wrong with, okay, with an objective third party. So that first step is really just like, okay, here's where I'm starting. Yeah. Here's what's going on. It was a state of my life. That's it. Okay. Where do you go? By the way, by the way, that might be an

event the first time you do that If you've never done that before it can be overwhelming right you just get dropped in the ocean Right, once you get to shore that becomes a 30 second check in every day How can I love you honey? How can I love you today? I see right? How can I love you today? You check your watch and see my heart rate variability is good like I'm ready to rock and roll It says don't work out. I feel good, I'm going to go for it. You get to know your body, so over time, it becomes like this really quick. And when something gets sideways, you know it, right?

This is exactly how we communicate fitness. You take it, you do an assessment, a deep dive the first time, you figure out all the imbalances and issues and drivers for why you wanna be fit. You dive into the cycle, like you get a full check in and then the diagnostics later on because you know all that stuff is just a quick check in as I was like, oh, make sure I'm moving or I'm addressing that.

So, very, very, very, I think that you guys have trained people over time, especially the more elite of an athlete somebody is, and they'll tell you, hey, there's a weird thing in the side of my knee and you watch them do one squat, and you're like, oh yeah, like move your foot this way, right? Or whatever the thing is.

And so you get really good, the further along, you take him, I mean, the more you take him and towards the better, you get it. Second one we talked about, you got to choose connection. There is no mental or physical or relational health or spiritual health on a platform of, yo, bro, you do this by yourself. bro you do this by yourself you cannot do this by yourself so you got to have some sort of community some sort of person by the way the data's jarring

that the number of people and depends on 50 to 70% depending on what thing you read have no one to call zero like hey I got gotta take my wife to the ER in the middle then I got nobody. Hey, my wife has no idea that I don't even believe in this church anymore. My wife has no idea that I'm talking to somebody else that I'm struggling with our marriage. And so you can be lonely in a crowded room,

you can be lonely in a bed, you share with somebody been married to for 20 years. You can be lonely in a lot of places, but you have to choose that connection. Sometimes you gotta hire somebody,'ve been married to for 20 years. You can be lonely in a lot of places, but you have to choose that connection. Sometimes you gotta hire somebody, right? It's part of it. Yeah, the data by the way, I think you're familiar with the study

that they compared being lonely to the health effects of smoking to all the cigarettes a day or something like that. It's crazy. It's yeah, how much? It's 15, but I mean, more than 12, okay, so wow. Yeah, but like the, I think that's become the sound bite.

I don't think we fully appreciate just how bad smoking is for you. Oh yeah, right. Goses all death. I mean, like if you look globally, every negative health thing gets. Well, cancer is the cancer, right? I mean, it's just brutal, right?

And so if you, I think attaching it to smoking makes everybody go, oh, we don't do anything about it, right? Because, you know, I think saying there's a there's a link between loneliness and stroke and loneliness and heart attack and loneliness and cancer and loneliness and Alzheimer's just go down the list and bigger than those things because that's hard. Y'all know that like, hey, if you don't get that workout in in 25 years, you might have a heart attack people. Okay, I'll get right on that. If you don't get that workout in in 25 years, you might have a heart attack people. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right on that.

There's something about, I want my son to walk in the door from eighth grade. And maybe we're the only ones that he walks in. And he looks at me after a rough eighth grade day, whatever that even is. And he can't wait to tell me about it because I'm a safe landing spot. That's me. Yeah. I mean, I don't still have downstream. We'll get there. But man, I remember when, so I'm a safe landing spot. That to me. Like, man, I don't still have downstream, we'll get there, but man.

I remember when, so I went to Yellowstone, and we were in, I think Wyoming, right? That's one of the states where it goes through, I believe, and I was there with my wife, and I was talking with people living there, and I was like, man, what a beautiful state, and there's all this open space, it's so great, and they were telling me about the state,

and they said, oh yeah, but one of the bad things we have one of the highest suicide rates. I said, what? How could that be? It seems so. And they said, well, a lot of people are so spaced out. They're low. And they connected that to suicide.

And I said, holy cow, that's true. Because if you got people around you, they could, you know, kind of intervene or stop. You don't have to say anything. They know what's going on. So we could see it. Yeah. So you got to choose connection.

The third one is you have to say anything, they know what's going on. So we could see, yeah. So you got to choose connection. The third one is, you have to choose freedom. And I don't mean that in like the, P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P It's this idea and it doesn't play well culturally, but who runs your life? And if a like I said earlier, if a mortgage company tells you like you're going to work tomorrow, okay, I'll state your marriage, I'll care how you feel, you will go to work tomorrow because you owe me. I'll care like if if you're car dealership like you go to work tomorrow, man, I don't care if your boss is beating you down, I don't care if you are under investigation, you will go to work because you owe me, right? Your body knows the cult that nerd words agency or autonomy, your body knows if you're in the back seat of your own life. And so if you look at what you owe, and it's controversial in a weird way,

because the part of your brain that's designed for rational thinking, man, if you have an interest rate of 2.9%, and I can put that cash in the bank right now and make 5%, just in a high yield savings account. Mathematically, it is stupid to pay off my house. I'm losing that gap. It doesn't make mathematical sense. It's medically it is stupid to pay off my house. I'm losing that gap. It doesn't make mathematical sense. It's dumb And I call it a sleep tax or a soul tax your body knows

Someone could take our house This isn't mine until it's mine and so for me that's 3% that's a simple simple equation, right? It's not gonna make mathematical sense, but that amygdala that's spinning, you're not safe, you're not safe, you're not safe, you're not safe, what about this, what about this, what about this? And if you just put yourself in that state of mind, I got a coworker, she paid off her

and her husband paid off 450 grand in student loans. They lived in one better apartment for seven years. They said, we dug this hole, we didn't know, we dug this hole. They lived on air mattress, man. They went all way, they were like, they were all there. Committed. Dude. But this idea that you can't, They dug this hole, they lived on air mattress man, they were all, they were like, they were all there. Committed.

Dude. But this idea that you can't, you can't, government's got value out, you can't. You're too stupid, you're too stupid, we got to come bail you. It's this idea that you're so incapable, someone will kind of come rescue you, right? And you extended out one step further, like freedom from your calendar, right? We talked about that, freedom from an abusive boss, freedom from a mother, and I'll still tell you what you do every Christmas. Like, whether you can afford it, whether your family's exhausted, whether this is the

year to travel, you're coming to Christmas in Nebraska. I don't care who you, like, I gotta go to Nebraska. A few years ago, my wife and I started in September. We send an email out to our families and we say, here's what we're gonna do for Christmas. And we love it if y'all joined us or we're gonna be in your part of the country on this day, if y'all wanna do presents that day, that's awesome.

And if it hasn't worked for you, great. And it's been such a gift because we don't spend money, we don't have to drive to a place we don't want to be and show up pissed off in our family's house. And I'm mad that they invited me. We just say, hey, we're not going to make it this year. And there's some tension, some regret, some guilt.

But man, it just hits peace. And so it's choosing freedom. Who is telling you what you're going to do in your own life that next day? The next one is choosing, we talk about mindfulness. And when I think of mindfulness, I think of two things, man. Curious, you know, awareness. I'm about to do this thing. Why am I about to do this thing?

My wife just left those wet towels in the floor. We just talked about that yesterday. I can just start the story machine up. She did that because she just doesn't appreciate me, don't respect me or I can think, do we just talked about this? For her to do that again, I can imagine what happened in this house.

Today while I was going at work, I'm gonna pick up those towels and I'm gonna get the dishes too. One of those avenues leads to divisiveness and brokenness and stroke and heart attack. And one of those leads to peace and empathy. I get to pick which door I make up. I mean, I get to pick that track. And maybe she did do it on purpose.

This isn't the moment to invent that. It's later on that evening when I say, hey, the story I'm making up is you just left those thousand before, man, just to piss me off. And she can be like, I did that, right? We need to talk about that. Or she'd be like, no, man, I'm so sorry. The kids were vomiting everywhere

and then this happened, this happened. Man, what a different way to live, right? So it's just choosing that I keep reaching for a drink. What is it about that? Or I keep hiding, I keep heading straight to the toilet man and just sitting on there, putting it on, I'm taking a dump and I'm just scrolling for hours, right? Why would I rather be in here? In a place my poo poo and pee pee go, then out with my kids, that does a sound right. That doesn't feel right. And so just be mindful and then health and healing, you know, that you got to do it through

old traumas, you got to get your body in a place where it can operate well. Otherwise, I'll try to get your attention. And that last one is choose belief, man. You got to take a knee to something bigger than you. That's super unpopular. Well, when you were dealing with, because you said, you know, when you wrote this book, you were doing stuff for yourself through this process,

how was that journey doing both at the same time? Did it, was it, I mean, it must have felt very personal but also very cathartic. Or torturous. Both. Yeah. So here's the, I've talked about this in a few other interviews and I don't want to beat the story to death, but my big dirty secret was, and I think you and I, you may have been the first guy told just privately, behind closed doors, my big dirty secret was,

here I have this show, a middle-health guy, I've been doing this forever, sit with parents and Mary just whatever. My daughter wouldn't hug me. She's four, five, and six. And at first it was funny, it was like her little like, gotcha, and then all little kids are trying to grab power in their homes.

And so it became like, oh, dad wants a hug. I can hold that, right? But then it turned into a thing. And then I would find myself, I'm embarrassed to say, I would find myself crying on the way to work. My wife would give me a hug. My son would come up and hug me.

And I'd hold my son's face and I'd say, I love you and I'm so grateful I get to be your dad. I need to say thanks, dad. And he'd be like, oh, good, but I knew. And then I'd reach down to hug my daughter and do, she would do this, Barry Sanders move and dive and turn. And I'd get in my car and be like, yeah, go do a mental health and parenting show

with the guy that won a doddling hug. Wow. And it became a bigger and bigger deal in my house. And it was my wife that finally said, hey, you're always talking about neuroception, right? This scanning that your brain is doing 24, 7, 365, is this safe? What if that little girl's body has identified the man who tells her every day

that you love her, every day that she's brilliant, that she's beautiful, that she can do anything? What if she's identified, you is not safe? And I was like, dude, I don't scream, I don't hit my kid, I can't do any of that stuff. It doesn't matter. She said, John, I can feel that nuclear reactor here. And that's what sent me to sit down with somebody and say some stuff out. I'd never said ever. And a professional, right? And that led the, whoo, I'm not living some of this stuff. I am, I got real real busy and I made different kinds of money

and I got this big best-selling book, all these stuff that I said I wanted. And here I am nine months later and I'm super lonely again. I'm hanging out with my buddies anymore. I'm not calling people back. I'm not eating right anymore. I'm starting to skip workouts. Ignore my wife when I get home

because I'm checking Instagram to see how many followers we got that, like it just happened. And it happened and it happened. and a couple of weeks ago I said a sentence it came out of my mouth and I've never said this sentence and it was will you get off me because now I'm like a human jungle gym to go wow right wow that's amazing nothing changed, except I decided to deal with the nuclear reactor. I sat down with my wife and said, hey, we have to make a regular practice of connection. Us and with our friends,

I have to be intentional about our money. I have to be intentional about these other things. I have to quit pretending that the world revolves around me. It doesn't, man. I gotta go back and figure out faith again for me. What's that look like for our house? What's that look like for me? What's that look like for you?

And my body goes, oh, you're driving again. Whew. Right. And it happens faster now, because I've been doing this for so long, right? Similar, if you've got a shape, you could get back because you know the steps, you know the pain, you know how to get there.

But tell you what, man, having a daughter that now goes off the top ropes, when I'm walking upstairs and hangs on real tight, it's a different kind of deep breath, right? And so you can talk about money and talk about success. You know, oh my daughter, to give me a hug, I'm gonna get home. So wild how something that isn't connected to her

per se is what made all the difference. It was something you had to fix internally. That's nothing really to do with her to change that complete. She was the alarm system. Yeah, so we know that I'm not all right. How many dads and moms have that? There's some disconnect with the kid

or something's going on and they swear it's like this conversation they need to have with the kid or there's something on and they swear it's like this conversation they need to have with the kid or there's something that the kid isn't doing or they're not doing with that and it's like no, there's something inside of you, you gotta fix and believe it or not, they can feel it or sense it.

Well, they even consciously know they are. Well, in my wife, it's about a year ago, she said, what if you, like you want your kids to like you? What if you worked hard at being likable? And I was like, you stopped the crazy, right? But like what if every interaction with my children wasn't like this life lesson that they have to learn?

And what if every time my 13 year old did a 13 year old thing, I didn't treat him like he was a 35 year old employee of mine. But I was like, man, we can't, we're not going fishin' until you get that done, man. I love you, you can listen to your country music and do it, but we're not gonna go. What if I didn't lecture my daughter every time she came out and her hair was sideways?

What if I just a likable guy? And that doesn't mean, I don't hold my kids accountable. That doesn't mean that I don't have standards and values. That means that I'm gonna default to, let's play dominoes together, over a lecture. I'm gonna default to, dude, every interaction is not this or a, it's not an investment in the future, net worth of my kids, intelligence and morality.

Bro, I like it boy. I got a comment on this because a lot of men listening right now can, this is resonating because a lot of us didn't have that kind of relationship with our, that's where you learn it, right, you have it with your dad. And so like I feel awkward with my, especially my teenage kids. How do I connect with my daughters? She's 13, what do we talk about?

Like, what do I do? I don't know, you know, whatever. And my I connect with my daughters? It's 13, what are we gonna talk about? How do I do? I don't know, you know, whatever. And my wife was like, just have her put a phone down and you guys just sit there quietly while you're driving. She's like, that's what I gotta do, create space. And I sported, I got it worked. It works, just opening the space. So, I think one of the great curses

of modern masculinity is that men think they only have value when they have utility. 100%. And we only think we have utility when we have all of the answers or the checklist or the right tool in the toolkit. And it took me a long time to realize, my wife, academically, she's way smarter than me. She was Dr. Deloney before I was. She's published before me.

She's smart. She doesn't need my answers on how to solve this problem. She just wants me. She said it the other night, and I told her, I was like, if you had said that sentence 20 years ago, I think my life would be different. She just said, hey, I know you want to go to bed. Can we watch a lame show? I need to borrow your nervous system. Oh, I'm going to curl to me like a like a puppy and leaned in real close There was nothing sexual about it. It was just ZZ and we watched some stupid show for 30 minutes and she literally got up and was like ah Instead of in the past you'd say I just almost spent more time with you

All right, what do we need to do? What do we fix? You can solve this? Like, what's challenging? Oh, your heart rate's messed up? All right, here's what we're gonna do. You need to take this supplement, you need to do this. Dude, I just need you. I just need you.

I'm so uncomfortable without having utility. That having like a list, right? Our kids are the same way, man. Gabor Mateo wrote a book with his child psychiatrist. I didn't know it existed. He was like my favorite writer. And the name of the book escapes me, but essentially it's this idea that your kids peers

are their most important influence. That is not evolutionarily the right way. That happened when we all left the farms and went to the factories and dumped our kids in a school house and said, y'all co-manage each other. That's not normal. Kids are wired internally to want to be connected to the adults that love them.

And so if your kid is more interested in their kids, I mean, their friends, that's not a normal like, ah, it's just the way it happens when their teenagers know, man, they're filling a gap. And so that means I gotta learn how to connect with my kid. That's my mission. And by the way, there was no YouTube a few years ago, and then they were like, hey, we should probably learn how to do YouTube. And everybody figured it out.

Similarly, I don't know how to connect with my ninth grader. That's the goal. That's the next mission, right? It's more important to figure out YouTube, right? I'm so glad you said that. I'm so tired of people telling me how my relationship with my son is going to be when he gets to be a teenager because of how teenagers are. And it's like, nah, I'm not going to create that same story for myself. I think that's, and it's unfortunate that we've defaulted to that. We just, oh, they're going to be this age. It lets you off the hook.

It lets you off the hook. It lets you off the hook. Yeah, that they're gonna be a certain way when they get to this age and it's like, no. Yeah, I get to create. Common, common doesn't mean good. I mean, it's common for people to be unhealthy. That doesn't mean it's good. And is there literature about how there's a separation?

Yeah. But that separation's in autonomy. That separation is, I have my own thoughts. It's gonna be there in a moment. It's not that I'm not anchored into some man who loves me no matter what. You know, what you said about utility really hits me, because I'm like that,

and I had this huge epiphany with my wife recently, where she gets migraine sometimes, really, really bad, terrible migraines. So bad that she's on the couch covering her head and you're just got ice the whole deal. And when that would happen, I'd give her some meds, give her some water, and I'd get up and do all the shit in the house. I'm gonna clean them, I'm gonna clean them, I'm gonna make sure everything's done so she's a, and recently she had a migraine and I'd just sat with her

and did none of those things. And she's like, that's what I want you to do when I have a migraine. I don't want you to do all this stuff. I mean, here trying to be useful and do things. It's like, I just want you to sit with me while I feel like shit. And I'm like, well, that's really uncomfortable for me, but I think that's what you need. Okay, let's do this. And that's where, like, not to get cheesy. That's where my, like, mindfulness comes in.

Yeah. I'm sitting on a couch. I have my hand on my wife's bare calf. I'm just holding her and I'm watching TV. And I'm like, I'm gonna go do something and I'm gonna go, I didn't get my workout in, I gotta go, I'm just gonna be curious, why am I so uncomfortable sitting with this woman

who said I do? I just saw, that's the problem, it's not hurt, it's not the work, just figure that out. John, how important is it to be comfortable being alone and not distracted? This one is really, really hard for me. Yeah, there's a big difference between loneliness and solitude. Solitude is a spiritual practice. That's important.

Right. Having a season. And again, I think it's something to be curious about. And I think it's something you practice. I was highly uncomfortable being by myself without headphones, without noise, without some sort of distraction. Now, man. And I think, you know, I think that's what fishing,

I think it's what hunting, I think it's what lifting is. It's all to, and we have to wrap it around an activity, which that's fine, but finding a way to be by yourself. And if you're uncomfortable with that, like, what is it about me, I don't like. What is it about me, I'm so uncomfortable with. You know, it's funny, you just said that.? What is it about me I'm so uncomfortable with? You know it's funny you just said that.

So our listeners were like, I brought this up before but I was watching Pumping Iron, I've seen it a billion times, okay? It's great documentary, Arnold's fortune, you know the whole deal. And I've watched this so many times that I'll notice things in the background. I'll notice that piece of equipment

or that guy working out over there. And then I noticed something that I had noticed before, this was maybe a couple of years ago, there was no music playing in the background of the gym. So back then, they didn't start adding music until later. Back then you go to the gym and you would hear just weights clinging and people counting reps.

And I thought, oh, that's weird, that's interesting. So I experimented with it with myself. First I took my phone away, which I'll do that in between sets, right? Oh, got a post something, got to learn this thing for the podcast, put that away. And then I did it without trying to really listen to music. Totally different experience.

I was much more present in the moment without any of the distractions other than the workout and the rest in between sets. And I find if I've got like, slayer, or old dad brains playing, I'm a little more amped. And like I get, I don't say I've got like slayer or old bed brains playing. I'm a little more amped and like I get, I don't wanna say I get a bit of pump, but like my work out's hard.

But if I don't have any, like, and I do it intentionally, if I don't have any music playing, it's a slower, more meditative lift and it's different. It doesn't leave me like, you know what's gonna happen to a slim gym. But I walk out, having worked out hard and I walked to a Slim Jim, but I walk out, I haven't worked out hard, and I walked out a little more peaceful

as I enter back in. You do the work in. A what? A work in, work out, work in. I didn't invent that by the way. I was the whole check taught us that. I was gonna say, dude, you guys got this? We do talk about, though,

all of us share how, I think there's tremendous value in like different music for different minds that's going into a lift. There's a time to put slayer on and go rip that bar off the ground, right? And then there is a time to put Inja on and just, you know, meditatively work through your- It's an incident.

It's an incident. Work through your G-SALT. He does, I listen to all, I love all music in general, but I definitely have different genres for what my body needs. And sometimes it's okay. I think that's what you just said, I don't want the audience to miss that. That is so highly intentional

and you have done the work to be so in tune with your body and you ask yourself the question, what do I need right now? Most of us don't. We are a slave to the calendar, we're a slave to what we owe, we gotta go, what do I need right now? What does my family need this holiday season? That question, that should be the path, man.

And if you get like, you sit with a UFC fighter like as they're leading up, if you know what I'm saying, they're amped, but they're super weirdly peaceful, strangely peaceful. And it's like, I'm going to go get a fist fight with a guy. I'm nervous. I'm going to be on a stage, I'm going to get embarrassed, I can get hurt, but they're not anxious because they put the work in. They're in the driver's seat.

So it's not about not going into hard stuff. It's about I'm driving. It's about, I'm driving. It's not about, I'm about to do a crazy hard workout. I'm going to eat a extra juice today. So I'm going to take this supplement. I'm going to put bad brains on. I'm going to turn up a little too loud to where it's my ears are going to ring because I'm doing this thing today. But if it's everyday just, just, just, just, man, over time your body starts to go, dude, I'm out. I'm out. You're not listening to it. Have you seen how do I explain?

Okay, just for reference to, they give me crap all the time because I listen to so much heavy metal. Yes. And it's the heavy, six o'clock in the morning. Heavy is heavy. Oh, you get this part. I get to ask the truth. Two different effects from it, right?

I can get the ampt and I can get the PR sort of lifting kind of phase with that too, but also it's very relaxing for me. It very much calms me down. It gets me into like a nice focused zone. See, so he says it really does. Like it's like. My guess is that there comes a point, you know, I was telling you earlier,

and I don't wanna make this a diagnostic thing. Some decisions as an example, but depression and anxiety are on the same trend line. Eventually your body tries to get your attention so much and you're not hearing it, it shuts the system off. Right? It shuts it down. And you can't get out of bed. Like, we're going to stay here under these covers, right? And so my guess is making this up, and I'm a guy that, dude, I would listen to it 24, 7, 365, dude, man, until I found the Ava brothers and then my life kind of changed a little bit. But I wonder if you push it so hard so that your body hits the off switch and that's

that relaxation. And I would wonder is there a way to get to that without having to earn the sort of that rest? It's not even that. You forced the rest instead of working into it. Yeah, your body did that as a reaction to Lamb of God over at 6.35 in the morning. A true story by the way. Yeah, we got it. We got it.

He can't eat dairy right now. Now we're going to tell him this about metal. Yeah, one thing is to mean one thing at a time. One thing at a time. We need our host. We need our host, Kelly. Kelly, you guys rip everything out for me that I love. You go back to the calm and athlete.

I don't know if you've ever seen the studies around when they've compared some of the most, the Steph Curry's, the downhill skier, their heart rate in those moments. That's the one common thread amongst all sports in these crazy, what we the one common thread amongst all sports in these crazy, what we would think, like, freaked out, scariest, most of life, their heart rates are like our resting heart rates. In the middle of a game, in the middle of an NBA game, game on the line, championship, about to shoot a free throw to win, the thing that separates

those superstar athletes is their heart rate is like resting. So in those moments, how wild is that? Well, my dad was a, it doesn't surprise me at all. And I. So in those moments, how wild is that? Well, my dad was a, it doesn't surprise me at all. And I, the nerd of me wants to know is that just, because Steph Curry is the guy that's in the gym until 4am taking shots and it's so road at that point, or is there another mechanism that he has a thing we don't have?

Right. They're just down shifts. My dad was, I think we've talked about this before, my dad was a homicide detective in a SWAT hostage negotiator. So if somebody in the city Houston had a bomb, they'd call my old man and he had a mustache, he was a little big guy and he would kind of walk out

and sit by and be like, hey man, what a rough day, like he was that guy, he talked to you on the phone, or if you're gonna jump off a building, he'd be that guy. But I'll say he was a homicide detective. So he walked into situations, there's brains everywhere, there's bodies and all that. And so when I started doing crisis work with the police department,

and I would go in the evenings, we just had a cell phone, and it would just say, 10, 8, 7, and an address. And we'd show up. 10, 8, 7 was just a police code for a dead body. And we'd show up, it could be a four year old, it could be a 40 year old, it could be a 98 year old. Right?

And occasionally if he was a child, usually, we'd get a heads up, it's a kid, and then there's, you gotta be there 40 year old, it could be a 98 year old, right? And occasionally if it was a child usually we'd get a heads up as a kid and there's, you got to be there so mom, because mom's on her way, that kind of thing, right? And that was my job was to intercept mom before, you know, I remember leaving a house one night, I mean, the wildest thing you can imagine, and I want to over sensationalize it for your viewers, but there was a police officer, mom was coming in and the daughter was there and there was the son had passed away and the daughter said, you will not keep my mom out of this house.

And the police don't want to arrest somebody in that situation. My job would be to meet a mom in the front yard and say, you do not want to go in the house. You don't want that to be the last picture of your son. Let's let the last time you talked to your son be the last, right? So that's the conversation. And she said, you will not keep my mom out of this house. I'm telling you right now, she will go to

jail. It's going to be a mess. And so police officer pulls out a pair of gloves and hands them to me. And he puts his on. He goes, this is you and me right now, buddy. And we went into the back. And then I met and we took care of that situation so that the medical examiner could get in and get that body and get that guy out so that when mom showed up It wouldn't be such a explosive situation. It was a madhouse But I met mom and everything went And I call my dad the next day and said hey, what are you what am I supposed to do if after 20 years of sitting with Students who were suicidal or their parents had just died or what that they kicked out of college, whatever. And now

I'm doing this stuff too in the evenings. What do I do if everything slows down for me in those moments? I think the thing I'm put on earth to do is to get people really bad news in a graceful way. And he said, be really grateful you found your thing, you found your purpose, and you make sure you do it real well, because you honor people, right? And so I think all of us will eventually find that thing that time just slows down when I'm in this, you know, it's that flow state, right? But time slows down for me in this particular thing. And I don't know if it's 20 years of reps, or I don't know if it's just genetic, who knows what it is man. I'm sure there's somebody trying to figure that out But I think it might be what I'm sitting with somebody and they are struggling with the lift and they finally get it and it's

Oh my gosh times up the sessions over right? We're already burned through the session I was so lazy to end with this person whatever it is. I think we all have that Yeah, I think I think it's probably a cross section of all that, right? It's probably something that's changed. Comically, some people probably can get into it faster than others. It's also probably something you absolutely love to do. You lose time in it, you know what I'm saying?

And then you're gifted and you go to it and you've also practiced it. In our culture, we give guys who can make shots, we give them billions of dollars, man, and we give those who put on bulletproof vest, we give them dozens of dollars, right? But I mean, I think we put an economic value on it is not indicative of the worth,

or how important it is, but. John, what's your favorite thing about what you do? Because you have a show very popular, you talk to people, you've written this book, what's your favorite thing about what you do because you know you have a show very popular you talk to people you've written this book what's what's your favorite thing about all this? My favorite thing is I think it's two things one it is painting a picture of providing a model I think most people want to do better most people want to feel better they want to not hurt as much when you better parents they want to figure out what the finance to be better whatever Whatever that is, there's just not a roadmap.

There's no picture of what that looks like. And there's a bunch of dudes on Instagram yelling at them or what their dad did or didn't do. And that's their map. And so I love being able to say, here's a picture of something else. Here's three dudes that are my friends that are as yoked as you can possibly imagine.

And they're really working hard to be great dads and they're like good guys behind closed doors and they have struggles too. It's all of it. Like if there's something about showing that picture which I think's awesome. The second thing is I can't think of a higher honor than somebody walking in the sand.

I don't know what to do next. Can I tell you the worst thing that just happened to me? And not saying, oh, I know what to tell you, but it's, here's a grab a nacho and pull up a seat and I'll sit here with you. And I think that's my favorite part. He's getting in the mud. Awesome. I want to similar to somebody coming in saying, I'm tired of feeling this way. Like, will you help me in the gym? And you're like, I got you. Right. There's something, there's something holy about for sure. I want to go back to your open wound,

not to throw salt on it or anything, but I do think that there's a tremendous value potentially there for a lot of parents that have struggled with connecting with their son or their daughter and thinking it probably is something they're doing, they need to do physically with them and it's something they need to work internally. Can you tell me like like I doubt it was like you went to therapy one time. You made that connection.

Then the next day she was all over you. Was there what was the what was the process like and how did you know like you were on the right track because with their like little baby steps in that direction. Like tell me how that unfolded. So I'll just speak for my daughter. When she was really young, when she was four or five, she was teeny tiny and I'm a big guy and I had muscles.

And so she didn't wanna hug me, you're a we're hugging, and she would get real stiff and try to fight me. And she's a hurricane man, so she would be like, damn, and throw to fight me. And she's a hurricane, man. So she would be like, damn, and throw punches. I mean, she's hilarious when it comes to that. And when it's forward's cute and funny. And it was my wife who one day, again, I feel like I'm always, my wife just like this Yoda character

in my life, but she was like, you know, you're just teaching her that, regardless of what her body feels, that one day some guy who's bigger than her and can physically out muscle her, can have his way. Her body. And I was like, that ends right now. Right?

And I was like, she will know from her old man, who respected her right. So I was like, I'm doing that. So that led to a season of. That's overcorrected. Right. To like, oh yeah. I weigh over corrected.

Way over corrected. What I entered into, I wish I had a better word for this, but I'm beginning to court in my daughter I'm safe and so with that mint was I'm not gonna chase you when you're on We're applying of course we're playing tag of course But when I walk in the door and I say hey baby, how is today? And she walks away. I'm not chasing her. I'm gonna go sit down and be a dad that's a Dad of peace even inside I'm like, oh, yeah, sucks.

I'm going to let her feel I'm a safe presence in this chair. I'm reading a book where I'm talking to her mom. I'm going to treat her mom so well. And I talked to my wife. She's going to watch how you receive me when I get home. And you and I have been together for 25 years, quarter of a century. We already have't figured out. Can you be overly demonstrative for the next few months when I come in? Can you make it a point to

give me hug when I walk in the door? Can you make it a point to grab my face and say, I love you, I'm glad you're home. Because that's going to teach her. That's going to this model. It's going to show a picture for my daughter. But it was a, it was a season of courting. And then it was when she finally would say, Dad, can I get a piggyback ride? I'm so tired. Yeah. I'm going to make space for this.

Hey, can I read you a book tonight? No, mom's going to do it. Can I read you a book tonight? No, I keep showing up and showing up. Too many adults let their kids hurt their feelings. My kids don't have permission to do that. I haven't given them access to my feelings. They, I don't want them to feel that responsibility that if I say this thing, dad gets ex-wise

me. So I worked really hard to not let my daughter hurt my feelings. She's a seven year old little girl, she trusts her body. I want to teach her that that's okay. And that comes at a cost. That means dad is going to say, okay, and I'm a leaf. And she's going to begin to feel that gap. And so it was everything. Just keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing

up, keep courting, keep being a safe place. Hey I'd love for you to go to breakfast for me in the morning. No dad, I gotta be on school. I'll take you. All right dad. And we make that not a, all right what are the five things you're gonna do today? But I'm just gonna bring a coloring book and let's both color. We don't need to talk that much. And then 15 minutes into coloring,

it's like, Dad, there's this boy and now we're off to the races. But it's a, it's a very anti-John program. Because I want like what's maps in a bottle? Like how many squats? What's the order and how much time? And have you heard Slayer's new record? Let's do this. It's the opposite of everything I know. So did it feel like painfully slow as you were going through it or an and or, did you have this moment where literally you were like, oh my God, we've broke through or we've made progress

where you're celebrating with your wife. You remember? I'll tell you how my buddy Trevor explained it. So the first time this is back in 2012 when my buddy who's a doctor said, I think your alarm systems are so jacked up, you've ignored them for so long, they got to be recalibrated, you need some medicine for a season. And I did, I was crying at my kitchen table, I failed my family, what a loser, I'm not taking meds, I whole thing. And I call my buddy who had

taken him. And he said, dude, you think you're gonna wake up tomorrow and just be not depressed. And be like, yeah, he's just not how that works. He tore his bicep when he was lifting. And it rolled up on him and he went and got it surgically reattached and had to go through all that painful. Everything. And he worked in a print shop as a salesman.

And he said he went back to the shop like nine months later, back to the back. And a box started to fall and it reached up and grabbed it. And he said, I grabbed it. It didn't hurt. And he's like, I didn't realize all the therapy, all the stuff. And all of a sudden, then it presented itself. And so for me, I didn't, it was so, the steps were so minuscule. I didn't realize it until I was like, well, you get off me. And then I thought, I just said, get off me. That means that she's on me so much that I'm like, galley, right?

And so it was this, it was a moment that I realized, oh, look how far we'd come. Oh, that's great. But I think we over, I think we over measure, man. I think we over obsess. We don't look at trend lines. We look at the, what's the market do today? What's it doing this minute?

What's it doing this minute? Let's look, what has done the last year? What's it in the last month? What's it in the last hundred years? Let's it doing this minute? What's it doing this minute? Let's look what has done the last year. What's it in the last month? What's it in the last hundred years? Let's give ourselves a picture of what that looks like. You can see a lot more with a trend than you can with this obsession. It's a long game.

Yeah, 100%. John, it's always awesome. Having honest. I always feel like I get so much at a talking with you just from this podcast and before and after. So I really appreciate you coming here. I appreciate you guys. Yeah, and everybody's got to get your book. It's so valuable.

Everything you talk about I think is so valuable to everybody who's listening right now. So important right now. So important. Let me say this and you'll put an edit this out. So please don't. It's important for people who listen, especially in an age where there's such a gap between who people are behind closed doors and who they are like

with their song and dance routine I think you'll for being guys that I call and say can you help right? Thank you for being guys that like I see something funny and I first person I think of is just like There's of all the people I know in the world He'll think this is funny because he won't he likes this and this and this and this and I do too. Thank you all for being guys that are who you say you are behind closed doors and that in this world, you'll know how rare that is. And so for your listeners, it's important to know that these guys really say the arts.

Thank you all for that. Yeah, that's it. I get me in some world. I appreciate that. Huge compliment. Thanks, thanks, Sean. For your hospitality. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

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