The Dr. John Delony Show - How Do I Stop Being So Critical?

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A husband hoping to stop being so critical of his wife - A wife sick of being belittled by her husband - Why belief is a cornerstone of mental health Lyrics of the Day: "I Like Texas" - Pat Green Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Hallow Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Building a Non-Anxious Life Anxiety Test Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. I wrote in about how to be more respectful or be a better husband, be nicer to my wife. Found where there's been a few occasions where I've corrected her in front of people. She's probably trivial. This type of criticism is almost always about you, not her. What up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. So grateful that you've joined us.

You're spending some time with us today talking about your mental and emotional health, your physical health, your marriage, your relationships, kids, whatever you got going on in your life. Shows about real people trying to figure out what's the next right step so much nonsense out there there's so much chaos out there there's so much bad news out there and people are either just stuck or they are hitting the gas and spinning their tires in the mud and just making the hole

deeper and deeper and deeper and on show, we just say stop. Let's turn the lights on. Let's turn the music off. Let's stop the dance. And let's figure out what can we do next to make this situation a little bit better. Let's head towards hope. If you want to be on this show, give me a buzz.

1-844-693-3291. Or go to johndeloney.com slash ask ASK. And it's holiday season. Go get the questions for humans cards. They may be sold out by the time this is out at johndeloney.com. Thanksgiving, Christmas, grandparents and kids, grandparents and kids.

And of course the couples decks for those of you who are like, I don't know if I want to be married to you in 2024 or dating anymore. We got you. We got you. All right, let's go out to West Palm Beach, Florida and talk to Buck. What's up, Buck?

Good morning. Good morning. What's up? Good, John. How you doing? We're getting it done, man. How about you? Partying in my living room right now,

which is not true, but okay. How can I help, man? Big fan. I want you to know this is like talking to family, by the way. We're huge, huge fans of you guys, of your whole team. Well, I appreciate you letting me be a part of your fam, dude. That's awesome. Absolutely. I wrote in about how to be more respectful or be a better husband, be nicer to my wife And that's, I guess that's a big thing and we'll drill down into it Yeah, it usually takes a lot for a man to pick up the phone and make that call So what's been going on? Uh, you know, like most recently it's just been kind of like

nitpicky stuff like cooking or, um, uh, you know, I've, I've found where there's been a few occasions where I've corrected her in front of people on, you know, probably trivial stuff or details about stories or stuff like that. And, you know, in my mind, I'm like, you know what? There's a little Jiminy Cricket that should be in there that should filter this stuff before I say it out loud. And I think maybe he's broken or on vacation. Wow. Yeah. So here's my hot take.

This type of criticism, and really most all criticism, is almost always about you not her it's this idea that you're chasing a feeling of what you will feel like when everything in your world is perfect or specific to her you're chasing a feeling of what you're gonna feel like when she does everything right when she cooks the meal exactly right what you're going to feel like when she does everything right, when she cooks the meal exactly right and you sit down and eat it and she gets the details of the story just right and her body looks just right. These little nitpicky, the little nitpicky things or the big things, right?

Criticism is almost never about the other person. It's about you. And it almost always stems from the fact that you don't like your life. Dang. Okay. Tell me I'm wrong. I can see that.

No, no, no. I can see that. I can definitely see that. Why don't you like your life? Gosh. I think it's been, and I'll just say this, she and I have just say this. We, you know,

she and I have both been in recovery from alcohol for the last year ish, nine months actually, uh, for me. So it's not fun anymore. You're, I mean, you're the, the smoke is cleared. You're in the grind out phase, right? We are, we are absolutely. And, um, and that, you know, again, that was like a thing we've been together for five years and, you know, and that was a part of our entire, you know,

existence together up to this point. And so it's like, now we're figuring out like how we, how we work moving forward. And so there's, you know, that's a lot, there's a lot of stuff to deal with. There's a lot of things maybe that I'm sure that I haven't dealt with in my life throughout my life. The same goes for her. But then I think. But hold on, she's, she's not on the phone. So let's just deal with you.

And you're probably pretty good at feeling like I need to work on a thing. And then you bring everybody in on that because it's all of our fault. Fair? Fair. Yeah. I want to just deal with you. Okay. What is it about you that you don't think you're enough when you're sitting down at the table?

Because let me give like a 30,000 foot view. And what I'm going to say is embarrassing, okay? Just a shameful thing in my life. I am an embarrassment to Texas males everywhere, the entire stereotype when it comes to grilling, I'm terrible at it. I forget. I burn it. I put like this beautiful raw piece of meat in front of my family. I'm embarrassing at it. And so cooking is about eating.

And I'm terrible at it. When my wife's gone, my son and I eat something that he has named Hank and Dad mush. That's everything in the fridge that's left. My wife didn't criticize me and just sit there and poke and poke and poke because for her, cooking is about eating. She went and became the best griller I know. I have a hard time buying a steak at a restaurant anymore because she's so good at cooking it. And so instead of telling me how much I sucked and what a loser I was, she wasn't chasing a feeling because she likes her life. What she wanted was to eat well. And so as a partner, she took that part of our relationship on.

And so that's something as simple as cooking or as simple as getting a story right. You, though, don't like you. And I'm wondering if nine months into being sober, you're just tired of standing on the street corner without any clothes on. Gosh. I mean, that could absolutely be true. And again, there's, you know, still like, because we're in a step program i'm not i haven't really really you know gotten into the weeds into me it's been you know it's been on the surface and it's been okay you know we're flying this plane sober for you know doing it but you're nine months in do me a favor talk directly into the phone for

me um you've been doing this for nine months now and i'm not talking about going spelunking back to your childhood and all that i'm asking about the little things do you treat your body with dignity and respect do you work out you Do you go for walks? Do you only eat garbage on purpose, not just as a way of life? Yesterday was Halloween, and I kind of went out with and you know you have value to them just because you show up, not because you have some special skill? I do. I have a group of men that, you know, like core group of men that are close friends that we, you know, we speak often and we speak about these things too. Actually, I had a call this morning with one of them after Halloween. Often this idea that I don't like my life or I don't like the role I'm playing in my own story, I don't like how I feel exposed like this, can often be dist down to, I don't trust me yet,

or I don't tell myself the truth. And that can be all the way out to addiction. That can be to pornography, but that can also be things like, I'm going to go work out tomorrow. And then you don't, I'm going to start eating right tomorrow. And then you don't, I'm going to be really nice to my wife. I'm going to keep my mouth shut tonight. Cause I'm always poking at her. And then you don't. And so you get nice to my wife i'm gonna keep my mouth shut tonight because i'm always poking at her and then you don't and so you get the criticism of your wife but beneath that you know that you can't even trust you and that usually is what sends people on their tailspin either that or they're trying to protect themselves from something i had a um it hasn't come out yet um but I recently had the comedian John Crist on the show interviewed him.

And it was a pretty extraordinary conversation. He was way more open and vulnerable than I expected. And he mentioned something that I've only heard people in inpatient recovery say, and it's very true. And he was talking about somebody that he was in recovery with who had been just tragically sexually abused. And he said that she was very clear. Alcohol saved her life. up with plan C because plan A was torture. Plan B was I can save my life with this thing. And now this thing is killing me. So I'll ask you, what was alcohol protecting you from? I think you were drinking because it worked.

What was it working to help you with? I think it was keeping, you know, the, again, like the real conversations between she and I, those at bay. Right. And I mean, if I'm honest, I almost feel like I'm protecting myself from my wife. I don't know if that sounds strange or not. Not at all. Because she can hurt you real bad if you go all in. Right.

Yeah. You've been burned before? Well, I've been, I was divorced, but it was my, it was my choice, you know? Yeah, but you had a picture of what your life was going to look like and that picture collapsed. Right, right. Yeah. And, you know, her go-to has been to bail, you know, when things get tough or when things get seedy or, you know, our conversation, she's like, well, you know, we should probably separate. I'm like, well, I disagree. You know, I'm like, that's not the, that wasn't the plan, you know? And so my guess is y'all have some sort of dance where you are terrified of somebody leaving you. So you leave first, or you duct tape over those feelings and you squash them down with alcohol, with Xanax, with whatever you need to do. And she is tortured yet needs to learn to head into the

storm, which for her is, I've got to lean towards this discomfort, this uncomfortable conversation I can't bail every time. Because she leans back, and your alarms sound. And that makes you poke, and that makes her alarms sound, which makes her retreat more, and then you get louder, and then the whole dance goes and goes and goes until one of you has the courage to say, I'm not dancing anymore.

Right. And then I end up on the phone with you. Right. So here's plan number one. Just like you did in the first couple of months in AA, I want you to take your wife somewhere out to eat, get out of the environment in your home. And I want you to look her dead in the eye, probably write this down so you can read it. And I want you to tell her, I have been treating you like I'm better than you. And I criticize and I poke and I blame because I'm scared. And I'm sorry. And that ends right now. And then I want you to look her in the eye and say, I may stop myself halfway through a sentence at a party. I might get up and walk away for 30 seconds

or for 30 minutes. I will come back, but I refuse to be disrespectful to you. I'm not going to criticize you anymore because criticism's about me, not you. We both know you're not a great cook. Awesome. But I want to eat, so I'm going to learn how to cook or we're just going to have a season of takeout

until we figure this out. Right? Right. Now, accountability is different than criticism. Accountability is a partnership accountability is when i call my friend lane norton and i say hey i'm gonna try to lose this much weight i'm gonna text you every week and he goes i got you or my friend jordan syatt hey i'm gonna i'm gonna send you pictures of the scale once every few weeks and if you don't get one holler at me that's accountability accountability. That's not criticism.

That's somebody agreeing to walk alongside me as I get better. In your wife's case, hey, I'm going to really make an effort to learn how to cook. I want you to be honest with me every meal.

And you go, are you super sure? Right? Like, I'll walk alongside you. That's different than just bombing and criticizing and criticizing and bombing. And that's step one, coming to her and saying this ends. Step two is making a plan to get up, stop the cycle when you start criticizing, when you start poking, when you start

throwing little grenades, not big ones, little annoying ones. And the third one is, what do you need to do on a daily basis to regain trust with Buck and to start feeling alive in your own home again? Spoiler alert, you can only feel alive. Gosh, I hate saying this because I wish there was another way. You can only feel alive through vulnerability, period. You have to be willing to say, ah, here's what I need. Ah, here's what I want from you. Can you help me meet this need? It might be sexual. It might be friendship wise. It might be go for a walk. It might be, I want to lose some weight. It might be any number. I want to get another job, any number of things, but you got to be willing to put it out there. And she might say, oh, thank God. Yes, I'm in. Or she might go, I ain't doing that. And they are going to live with

that tension and that reality, but you're avoiding it. Avoidance, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. You've done some really amazing work being nine months over i'm super proud of you ma'am that is really hard especially doing it with somebody else that you live with y'all are radically changing the dynamic of your home and that's hard it's impressive both of you need to take the next step which is what do you need from me so that you can be whole and help me with what I need and So then I can help you And we're going to walk alongside each other

Building a new marriage that way You got this my friend I'm going to send you two copies of building a non-anxious life I want you and your wife to read that book together. It'll give you a roadmap, not for addiction. You keep going to your meetings. Absolutely don't stop going to your meetings. It's going to give you all a roadmap to begin to build a house where you all trust yourselves,

you trust each other, and you build a home of peace. And for your body, dude, peace feels scary right now. But you keep practicing, practice. Proud of you, man. Start respecting your wife. Stop criticizing. You live a life worth living. We'll be right back. All right, let's go out to Birmingham, Alabama and talk to the sun will come out tomorrow to talk to Annie. What's up, Annie? Hi, John.

How are you? So good. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. Awesome. What's up? Well, my question for you is how can I talk with my husband about the way that he communicates with our children? Tell me more.

He can be very demeaning at times and belittling, especially to my daughter. She will be 10 later this month. And I have noticed a change in her behavior recently, and she's come to me in confidence and told me that, you know, it really hurts her feelings the way that he speaks with her. Give me an example. So, say she's trying to make herself a sandwich, and she makes a mess. So instead of telling her, okay, it's time to clean up the mess, you know, don't forget to put your dishes in the dishwasher,

he just loses it. I can't believe you made this mess in the kitchen. You know, why does it take you so long to clean up afterward? Those kinds of things. And he talks to you this way, too. Otherwise, you wouldn't be calling me. He does. Yeah.

When's enough enough? Put your kids aside for a second. When's enough enough for you? I'm not sure. Here's the deal. He is dramatically unhappy with his life. He doesn't like him. He doesn't like how he feels.

He thought everything in his life was going to feel different, look different. And if your 10-year-old daughter made a sandwich and unlike any 10-year-old on planet Earth, she immediately cleaned up every crumb. He would criticize how loud she chews. He would criticize the way she walked to the table. She would criticize why I'd use two pieces of ham

instead of just one piece of ham. You know how expensive ham is? Because his criticism and grenade throwing is not about y'all, it's about him. And he's not on the phone. You are. What has it been like in the past when you've said, hey, stop talking to me like that? Or have you? Usually he automatically

becomes the victim and he says things like, oh, well, I guess I'm just trash. Or I guess I'm just trash. Or I guess I'm just not good enough, you know, for you. Man, that's a gaslighting, manipulative young man right there. So I'll ask you again, how long? How long have y'all been married? 18 years. How long has he been doing this? I would say the first eight

to ten years were really good. And things kind of changed after we had our daughter. The focus shifted from just he and I to her. You know what that's called? It's called

adulthood and maturity. You know what that's called? It's called adulthood and maturity. You know what I mean? Like it's not like that's everybody's life. When you have kids, you have kid number one, your marriage changes. It gets weird. Your money's different. Your sex life is different. Your communication

is different. You got to rebuild something new. And if you don't, you go to shame or embarrassment or I don't like my life. And then you either withdraw from humanity and just drink beer and watch Netflix the rest of your life, or you just start attacking people in your life and making your discomfort and your dislike for who you have become in your own life. You make that everybody else's fault. Well, how do I break that cycle for my children? I don't, I don't want them to continue to live feeling like they're not good enough. I know how that feels, but I don't want them to continue into that.

You're probably going to have to have some conversations and take some actions you that scare you to death And probably the conversation starts with I'm going to be real direct with you And if you start saying things like well, I guess i'm just the worst and i'm just trash Then you are opting out of this conversation. I need you to stay present with me Don't whine don't immediately make yourself the drama victim I want to solve this thing for our marriage and for our kids. And if he cannot hear that, then you tell him, we're going to have to talk about next steps until you go get some professional help because you're unable to have an adult conversation with your wife. But you have to be ready for that conversation because you don't like discomfort.

And when he starts his woe is me, that wreaks havoc on your body, doesn't it? It does. Yeah. Who else did that to you in your life? My mom. Yeah. My parents were divorced

when I was six and she left and so my dad raised me was it your job to make sure mom was okay it felt that way yeah was it also your job

to put a smiley face on because dad was sad a lot we had to make things okay even if they weren't that's that's how it felt that's not weren't. That's how it felt. That's not how it felt. That's how it was.

So I'll just tell you and six-year-old Annie, I'm sorry that you were responsible for that because that wasn't your job. Whether they stayed married or got divorced, it was your parents' job to take care of their emotions and their happiness and their grief and their heartbreak. That was never your job. And the same way your 10-year-old daughter feels like she has to walk on eggshells with her dad and that her actions are being scrutinized under a microscope and she has to perform for him, that's not her job either. And you know this, this is why you called, but I'm going to say it out loud anyway. Your kids are desperate for an adult in their life who loves them to step in between this madness.

And it may be that what I, like the conversation prompt I gave you a minute ago, that may be too much. It may be too much. It may be a matter of you sitting down with your husband saying, you have done this to me for 10 years, and I'm watching you do this to your kids. This ends now. And you can go down the, woe is me, I'm just trashed, and that's stupid, and that's a cowardly way to bow out of a hard conversation. You can do that. And if you walk away from this table, then you're choosing to walk away from this house for 30 days while we figure out what's next.

Or you can stay engaged and we can figure this thing out. I think at this point you are closer to the edge of this marriage than you want to say out loud. Is that true? I felt that way for a while. Yeah. Do you have somebody else? No. Okay. No, I love my husband implicitly.

I know, but you also are coming around to understand that you don't deserve this and your kids don't deserve this. And your husband either A, lacks the tools. Every time he reaches in his toolkit, it's empty. And so he just goes to dragging the rest of you all down. In counseling, they call it, there's the one-up position, which is the screaming and yelling and the how dare you. And there's the one-down position, which is the, well, I guess that I'm just the worst ever. I guess we'll just go have that food.

I just won't eat. That's fine. That's a power play too. And like you mentioned, usually it's moms who do that, but it happens with husbands too, especially increasingly. But you have to have a confrontation

is what I'm telling you. Are you safe to do that? Will he hit you? No, he's never been abusive. Not physically. Okay. Will he scream and c? Will he hit you? No, he's never been abusive, not physically. Okay. Will he scream and cuss and yell at you? He may.

Okay. I think you prefaced the conversation with, we're going to have a hard conversation, and if you scream and yell, you're out. I want you to go. Can you have an adult conversation with your adult wife? Role play that with me. If you were to say that to him, what would his response be? You've been with him 20 years. You know what he'll say. What do you mean we need to have a conversation about what? I thought everything was fine.

It's not fine. And I need you to sit down and listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you and I don't want you to start defending yourself. I want you to finally listen to the words I'm going to say. Can you do that? What would he say? He's such a wild card.

I don't know. Okay. Sometimes it would be, okay, I'll listen and sometimes it would be, well, you know, I've been at work all day and I don't know what this nonsense is about. Cool. I've been working too.

If right now is not a good time, you tell me when it is, but it needs to be within 24 hours. And if he gets up and won't have the conversation, you can be very clear. Then we're going to have this with a therapist, or we're going to have this with an attorney. You get to pick. And here's what we're doing. If you told me you were unsafe or that you were vulnerable, that he had a chance to hurt you, I would not recommend this. But here's what we're doing.

We're shaking the tree here. He needs to know that his little pity party, woe is me. That game is over. You're not going to talk to my kids. You're not going to make my children fearful in their own home, period. You've been doing it to me for 10 years. It ends now. And my hope is your resolve will be so clear that he'll stand up a little straighter and listen to you. Or when he starts his woe is me stuff, you say, nope, we're stopping that right now. Are you going to continue to listen? Are you going to make yourself a victim in this conversation? Or, well, I guess I'm just trash. You're allowed to talk to yourself that way.

I would never talk to somebody that way. That's a distraction. Let's get back to. And you may need, Annie, you may need to go sit with a professional counselor and practice this conversation. And you've gotten real quiet. Am I scaring you? Is quiet am I scaring you? is this whole idea

scaring you? or are you feeling empowered? I'm feeling like I need to to find that strength I don't know if I possess it but I want to

I think you do I think you do I also understand and I've been there too, where I wanted somebody else in the room with us. I wanted a counselor there. I wanted a professional or a pastor. I wanted somebody in the room to make sure,

A, I was saying things the right way, and B, making sure that the whole conversation stayed on the track, stayed on the rails. When I find myself unable to feel like I have the strength, I always write it down. That way I can go through multiple drafts and I can be very clear about what I want to say. I read it out loud and I will sometimes have somebody else with me.

Does that work for you? I think that could be the difference between being able to do it and not. Okay. I think that's very fair. I also am not a huge fan of the surprise attack. I like adults to act like adults. Right. And so you and me are going to a meeting.

Well, I've been working all day. I'm tired. I'm going to some stupid meeting. Your marriage is at risk. I need you to come to this meeting with me. What? What do you mean my marriage is at risk? I thought everything's fine.

It's not fine. I need you to come to this meeting. I've arranged childcare for our kids. It's at six o'clock. I need you to be there. And we're not negotiating. We're not having multiple like rounds of this. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I've said what I need to say. I'll say the rest of it at this meeting. Can you do that? I think I can. Okay. And if he wants to call, I'd love to talk to him.

Okay. He probably won't, but I'd love to talk to him too. But I'll say this again, and I don't say this to pile on. I say this because you're the adult. Your daughter came to you and said, mom, help me. And she's watching and experiencing your response in real time. And six-year-old Annie is also asking you, how long are we going to do this? And I think it's time to set her free too.

I think you have the strength. In fact, I know you do. Make a very clear plan and get somebody else that's going to be in the room with you. And maybe it's a couple that you all trust. Maybe it's another man

that you trust that's friends with your husband. It could be any, you decide who that is but your kids deserve peace in their own home and you do too and quite frankly so does your husband call me back anytime I'm really interested to see how this one plays out so holler back at me after y'all have this meeting. We'll be thinking about you.

We'll be right back. Hey, good folks, let's talk about hallow. All right, I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about though is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially

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or you can connect with friends, with family, a prayer group, or some other community that you choose. And this way you can share prayers, share meditations. You can even share journal reflections to grow in your faith together with others. And with Hallow, there are other ways you can personalize the app. They have downloadable offline sessions

and links ranging from one minute up to an hour, and you can listen where it works for your schedule. You can choose your guide, your background music. You can create your own personal prayer plan and more. I've made it a personal point to begin my day every single day with the Hallow Meditation on the scripture of the day. It's a discipline and it's a practice,

and here's what I'm learning. As with anything of importance and meaning, prayer takes intentionality, practice, and showing up even when I don't feel like it and even I don't want to. This is discipline. Sometimes you do this by yourself and sometimes you do this with a group

and Hallow helps you with both. Download the number one prayer app on planet earth, Hallow, right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show get three free months when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, welcome back. So we are wrapping up the six daily choices series. It's a series. If you're just now catching up, it's a series that walked through the six daily choices to building a non-anxious life. And it's bigger than that. It's this new way of doing life.

The way culture has told us that everything's about you. You're the center of the universe. If something makes you uncomfortable, they need to change. That needs to be fixed. The rules of basic universal laws, they don't really count anymore if you're uncomfortable, if it's not real, right? In this anxiety that's just pulsing through all of us. So we've gone through a series and we sat down with an amazing film crew and we filmed these six daily choices. And today is the final one.

It's the one that I went back and forth on to leave out of the book. It's the one that I felt most uncomfortable writing because I knew I had to put it in there and I was going to make everybody uncomfortable. And it's the one that I've gotten the most feedback from positively. And in fact, normally I would kind of unpack it a little bit. I'm not going to do that this time. Here's what I'm going to say, because I want you to listen to the depth and the breath of this conversation. Everything in our culture, everything has pointed us over the last hundred years and accelerating in the last 20 years to this idea that you can be self-actualized, that if you get all of these things, if you get all safety and food and water and connection and all these

things, then you will one day be a shining beacon on the hill. The universe will one day revolve around you and what you feel and what you think and your truths. And what we're all finding out in real time is that the self was never intended to hold the center can't hold you my friend are never designed to hold up the universe and so a cornerstone of building a non-anxious life of giving your body peace is

stepping back and taking a knee. Taking a knee to something bigger than you. Some call it a higher power. Some call it God. Some call it nature. Whatever you want to call it. But it's this idea that I'm going to back up. Just like our ancient civilizations did. They looked up to the sky and they said, dear God or gods, please rain or my kids will die.

And now we have a faucet in our house or a couple of them. We've gotten real arrogant. Like we're running things around here. And our body knows that's not true. So turn it up a little bit. If you have the ability to find a private space to listen to this final daily choice, do that. If you have an opportunity to watch it on YouTube, do that as well.

This is the last of the six daily choices to building a non-anxious life. It's choosing belief. Check it out. So this is the one that's going to get me in trouble. Because it's easy to tell somebody, hey, you got to be healthy. Hey, you got to deal with past hurts. You got to deal with your relationship challenges and loneliness.

But we've entered a space in our culture where it's not cool to say, hey, if you want to live a non-anxious life, if you want peace, you have to choose belief. You have to choose to believe in something bigger than yourself. This idea of I don't believe in anything, that's a modern privilege. All of human history until just a couple hundred years ago, people walked out of their tent, they walked out of their hut, they walked out of their cave, and they looked to the sky, and they said, dear God, or dear gods, please reign or my kids will die. There was an innate submission to a higher power, something that operates the cosmos.

And then we got real smart. We started solving some of these issues that have plagued humanity for all of human history. Lack of food, winter, how do we eat? Ah, now I got a cell phone, I just push a button and food shows up at my house. Clean water, just turn that nozzle. And we started deconstructing us, the way we think about things and feel about things. And we created this idea that the goal of human existence is self-actualization.

If you get safety and you get security and you get food and you get relationships, the world will then revolve around you. And here we are, you and me, we have everything and we're spinning out of control because this self was never designed to be actualized. The self was never designed to hold up the burdens of the universe. And now we worship the thing that we think will save us. We worship our political party. We worship our physical health.

We worship our money. As the great David Foster Wallace says, "'We are beings created to worship.'" And Foster Wallace was an atheist. This wasn't a religious statement. This was a fact. And what we're all finding out, you and me and all of us in real time, they don't hold. They're not going to save us. Building a non-anxious life is about surrender, about taking a knee and saying, I can't hold up the universe.

There's a higher power than me in action. Choosing belief comes in two important parts, letting go and anchoring into the source. For all of human history, God's decided what you wore, what your roles were, who did what and why. Yes, there was oppression. Yes, people got squashed. But the point was there was a unifying story. And in the last few years, we've clipped all the unifying stories. We've untethered ourself from the source. And when you let go and you're not anchored in, you become a balloon or a feather lost in the wind. On the other side, if you anchor in and you don't let go,

you become a source of political division and tension, trying to die on every hill. It's a way of pretending that you're not holding up the universe, but you're still trying to hold it with all your might. So you have to anchor in. You have to believe in something bigger than yourself. And for my science friends, it's got to be bigger than the scientific method. We've worshipped that for the last few hundred years.

And for my deeply religious, passionately religious friends, it's got to be bigger than the scientific method. We've worshipped that for the last few hundred years. And for my deeply religious, passionately religious friends, it has to be deeper than your sets of rules. We're talking about the source. We're talking about God. We're talking about the love that moves through the universe and holds all things together. And as a science nerd, I don't want that to be the case. As somebody who spent my whole life trying to use my intellect to solve why I had such a gaping hole inside of me, I don't want it to be the case. I want to have all the answers and I want to have it figured out. I just know this to be true. You have to anchor in to something bigger than yourself, to a higher power power and you have to let go. So about a year ago, I got an email from my boss. My boss said, hey, I got us all tickets to go skydiving.

Who's in? And quickly, the reply all came through, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. And as a matter of spite, I immediately responded, I'm in. Send. Except I'm so scared of heights, I don't like going up second story staircases. When my son gets up on a chair to change a light bulb, my heart stops. I hate heights, but I said I was in. And the whole flight up in this old tankard plane

with duct tape on the inside of the plane, it was duct taped together. And then came the fateful moment when they slammed the door open. I held on to the former special forces guy that was tethered to me. And before I could answer, he jumped. And in that moment, we were free falling.

I let go. And I opened my arms up, enjoying the ride, tethered to somebody who's going to keep me safe. That's belief. Back 10 years ago when I wasn't well, I spent a year with a man who was both a bioethics professor and a part-time monk. He said, John, so often sarcasm and pessimism present as wisdom and joy and optimism and peace present as foolishness, as nonsense.

We have an, oh really, culture. And it's much easier to knock their building down than it is to build our own. And so we live and breathe sarcasm, pessimism. You know it's all coming down. You know it's not true. And we pretend that joy and optimism and peace and belief are stories for children, are myths of the old age.

And I'll ask us just to look around. What has our sarcasm and pessimism got us? The most anxious generation in human history. I know the idea of choosing belief is heavy. There's religious trauma that you may have gone through. There are religious systems that have burdened you and beat you down. There are scientists and mentors and thinkers who have laughed and scoffed at the idea of a higher power. It's just silly. It's for children.

But one thing I know to be certain, if you make you the center of the world, you will collapse under the weight. Choose to set down sarcasm and pessimism. Choose to set down intellect, solving everything. Choose to rest in a higher power. Choose to say, I surrender. I can't hold it up any longer.

It's not an excuse to stop living your life, and it's not an excuse to cash out, and it's not an excuse to not go be ambitious and try to solve some of the world's most vexing problems. We need you. I need you. But I'm asking you to do it anchored in. Anchored into a higher power.

Anchored into God. And this is belief. And this is the path to a non-anxious life. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point.

In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, we are back. And Kelly, otherwise known as funruiner.com.net.org slash gov, handed me the lyrics of the day. And as we record this show,

the Texas Rangers are up on the Diamondbacks three games to one. One game away. And if any team can have a catastrophic failure, similar to how they ended the regular season, it's Kelly's beloved Texas Rangers. You are so bitter, and it's so fantastic. Oh, my gosh. I hope the team they went and bought just implodes.

Arizona, I'm rooting for you. Much like the Astros. Listen, listen, lady. But I'm going to take it like a champ. We did lose. Gosh, to the Rangers of all teams, man. Song's called I Like Texas Rangers

Rangers That's the Kelly version Of the Pat Green classic Well from Delhart to Del Rio And out El Paso way I've been doing fine on Houston time When the sun sets on the Copano Bay From way up where the Red River flows

On down to the Rio Grande I was born a little native Texan kid And I'm proud to say from way up where the Red River flows on down to the Rio Grande, I was born a little native Texan kid. And I'm proud to say, go Houston Astros! We'll see you in 2024. Woo! Pat Green! Diamondbacks, let's do this. Let's do this.

Love you guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Down with the Rangers.