The Dr. John Delony Show - Is Marriage Still Worth It? (With Dr. Arthur Brooks)

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

On today’s episode: -        John talks with happiness expert and Harvard professor Dr. Arthur Brooks about marriage, cursing and the three things he requires of his children.  Next Steps: 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards  💭 John’s Free Guided Meditation  🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch 💭 Teaching the Science of Happiness 📝 Arthur Brooks’ Instagram   Connect With Our Sponsors: Need to talk to someone? BetterHelp is virtual therapy when it’s convenient for you. Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. These are the BEST sheets and towels in the world. Get up to 40% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth.   Getting lots of spam calls? DeleteMe can clean up your online presence for you. Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe.  Find peace every day. Hallow is the simplest way to slow down and get your head right for the day. Go to Hallow for a 90-day free trial.  I have Helix Midnight mattresses in EVERY bedroom in my house. Get 20% off when you visit Helix Sleep and take the sleep quiz to see what you need!  I took Thorne supplements way before I worked at Ramsey. Stoked that we can work together now! Get 25% off for LIFE at Thorne.    Head over to Poncho Outdoors to try the best outdoor performance shirt for yourself!   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big news. New dates for money and marriage getaway just dropped for Valentine's Day weekend, 2026. Get tickets at ramsysolutions.com slash events to get away with your spouse in Nashville, Tennessee. Ultimately, relationships that are successful, they start with all this incredible passion. But by the end of a couple of years, where you want to get is from passionate love to what we call companion at love. What about the reverse when somebody says we were friends for a long time? Friends on the love zone? Very rare.

Usually what happens is that one is in love and the other isn't. What in the world is going on? Hope you are doing well. I'm not going to lie, dude. It is bonkers out there. And where is out there? Everywhere. Everywhere in the club.

But I'm super glad that you are with us. and man, it just, it makes my heart full every time. Hop on here, and we have so many listeners joining us from all over the world. It's amazing. Thank you so much for being with us. All right, this is super exciting. Last year, one of my top shows of the year was when we had a good friend of mine and guests, Dr. Arthur Brooks.

He is the happiness goat. He's written a book with Oprah. He has a weekly column in the Atlantic. He teaches at Harvard. He's an amazing guy. And it's one of the top shows of the year. And so I asked him to come back and we take a swan dive into things like happiness and fitness and marriage and a whole bunch of other stuff. I don't really even understand because he's super, super smart.

Just kidding. I kind of understood it, but also kind of not. He literally is one of the best guys you will meet and one of the smartest minds out there today in the public sphere. And he is back. And we talk about just a million different things. can't wait for you to be a fly on the wall actually don't be a fly on the wall just pull up a seat pull up a seat to this conversation it's one you're going to want to listen to a couple of times there's so much good stuff from this and let me just say this um i mentioned this in the show but i want

you all to know after my first show with arthur um i made some significant changes in my life when it comes to nutrition when it comes to my spiritual life when it comes to just some daily practices and i'm gonna be honest i've lost a lot of weight um my spiritual life is better than It's been in years. My marriage is great. Like, I implemented some of the things that we talked about, and this conversation was very similar. Like, I had some great takeaways,

not just to think about. I did have those, but things I could do differently in my life. So I can't wait for you to hear round two of my conversation with my great friend, the one and only Dr. Arthur Brooks. Help me with this question. Why do we keep gravitating towards this thing? this thing called marriage we are a parabonded species

we're parabonded species we're like wood storks you know and and it's we wouldn't necessarily have to be a parabonded species tell me what parabond is for right from me and crayon that a couple gets together and they they want to be faithful to each other naturally they naturally want to be one to one and they want it to last and their dream is for that's the person you're looking at as you're taking your

dying breath that's how humans are wired okay now not every culture has done that sure not every society has been successful in that but that's the natural proclivity of homo sapiens i think that's the i mean there's all this stuff about polyamory and that's all nonsense i mean there are certain people who are different than the norm there are certain people who have different psychology and maybe even different biology when it comes to that but the vast majority of people are one-to-one pair bonded and they wanted to actually last that is wired into us as a species that is also, I believe, metaphysically a matter of natural law. And so even, by the way, in an offshoot of this,

is that 97% of people, including young people who are the most emancipated, progressive people morally you can imagine, 97% say that adultery is morally wrong all the time. Now, that's way higher than the number of people who say that a prostitution is wrong. Right. So people believe that, you know, people want to be one to one, and they believe that cheating's wrong, is the bottom line. And they believe those things so strongly

that they want to memorialize that union. That's called marriage. Now, there's one step that goes further that I think that people have a natural sense of the metaphysical, because, again, the prefrontal cortex, the wiring of the brain is very interesting. If you interviewed Lisa Miller in Columbia, so she's the best psychologist, neuroscientist,

neuropsychologist, on faith experiences. She talks about what actually happens in the brain with faith experiences. We have a sense of the divine. We just do. There are no, certainly according to anthropologists, there are no organized civilizations that we've ever had any evidence of

in human history that didn't worship. We didn't all worship the same thing in the same way, but we're made to worship. And one of the things that people feel about their marriage, they want it to be magic. Now, love is a right hemisphere thing where all the ineffable mystical things happen in our brains. And one of the things that we feel

is that that pair bond, that union, is an intent of the divine. And that's what you and I believe is Christian Minton, by the way. Because we believe that the reason that divorce is unnatural is because you're pulling apart, you're tearing apart the ability.

Your completion with your wife is the way that she understands God's love and you understand God's love. God's love for you is transmitted vis-a-vis your wife. Correct. That's how people feel about it. Even if they don't have the theology behind it, that's Genesis,

That's Genesis 2. You know, that's the Yahwistic understanding of God is that man is made to be with woman and vice versa. And they're one flesh, and it's his rib. You know, and that's real stuff. And that's a visceral metaphor for actually how we see it. And we only understand God when we have this holy vocation. And most people, that's how we feel.

So the point is that for whatever reason, if you're religious you're not religious people are wired to feel that and they want to make that as official as they possibly can whether they're religious or not okay yeah and that's just the natural state of being for homo sapiens for the vast majority of homo sapiens and there's anomalous stuff i mean we in my church we have priests that are celibate and there's some people who believe that they can be but that idea is i'm going to sacrifice this thing it's a sacrifice right yeah yeah and then there and then there's some people who believe you can be in love with you know, you know, 15 people in a bicycle at the same, I don't know, whatever, right, but that's not the norm. That's just not the way people are wired. This is natural. This is natural law. This is how people are meant to be, most people. That's a much more complex, yet a much simpler answer than I was thinking. Yeah. There's just a gravitational pull towards this thing. This is human anthropology. Yeah. This is basic human anthropology is that we're not, we're not supposed to be alone. we're not supposed to we're not lone wolves we're wired to complete each other and we're wired for love and if you're going to pull apart a culture a society it would be to question that very architecture after that's what you go after that's what you go after if you if you want to reorder everything you start with you start with couples you pull them apart you pull them apart you you attack romantic love you attack merit

love that's how you do it okay but there's also the other side of that so um gosh and i've lost the author's name but i was recently reading um basically an anthropological account of marriage and i think that the title of chapter was when love ruined marriage and it was the sense of that's eli finkel right possibly that maybe that probably is eli yeah it was a but it was a what my takeaway was this there are things you have to do to fuel this thing and to keep this thing going, right? And if you just rely on how this thing feels, especially in a world that we've dropped humans into

that we're not designed to live in, this world of over-stimulation, over-abundance, there is some left-brain things you've gotta do. I've got to, I've got to attune to this thing and pay attention to it through action. Totally, it's not all romance. And so Eli Finkel wrote the all-or-nothing marriage. That's it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And his stuff is great. His stuff is really, really interesting and really good. And here's the interesting thing about how marriage is supposed to work fundamentally. There is an ignition process for falling in love, right? And it starts with sex hormones. That's why people want to be attractive to each other. Like sexually dimorphically attractive to each other, like red lips and not you. And biceps.

And why? Why? I mean, it's completely anachronistic. The reason is because that elicits a biological. response in the potential mate that then quickly goes into the neurochemistry a stimulation of catacolamines in the brain most notably norepinephrine and dopamine for euphoria and anticipation of reward and that's when you know i guess i think her text i think i just got a text from her it's like it's a text right right but that anticipation of reward has to do with dopamine and norepinephrine i skipped the final

once because I thought the woman who's now my wife was going to be walking across campus at a certain time and I thought I bet I can get to that final 30 minutes late I'm going to go that's it that's it that's it because you were basically the norepinephrine in your brain was giving you a sense of euphoria at the thought from the dopamine of the anticipated reward right and that's step two step three is a big drop in serotonin and this happens a few weeks into a relationship typically and that the reason for that is because it and it looks like depression by the way because depression is associated with, you know, ruminative sadness is associated with low serotonin levels

because you need to ruminate on the other person. This is how you bond. And that's when you send 100 text messages like a moron. And like guys who are 70 years old will exhibit this adolescent behavior because their serotonin levels are in the tank. The ventralateral prefrontal cortex is highly stimulated because you're ruminating the other person.

And you want to... I've never done this. Me neither, never, never. And then the last step, is true bonding to the other person, and that's associated with vasopressin and oxytocin, right? That's when it's like, you're my kin, I'll defend you, you're my only person.

And that's where you want to get. And that's this bonding. Ultimately, relationships that are successful, they start with all this incredible passion, this heat, this heat. But by the end of a couple of years, or certainly five, where you want to get is from passionate love

to what we call companionate love. yeah companion at love is best friendship yeah not only friendship but it's best friendship that's a tons of oxy's and by the way there's still sex and there's still passion they're still fighting but well yeah well that's i mean like marri a spaniard man it's also you're fighting it's like 10,000 fights later still love each other but but that's really important to keep in mind because if you don't have that if you don't do the work to actually get to companion at love you'll break up and hate each other why because you were never even friends you were never even friends and so you realize you loved each other

but you don't like each other and so the goal is to have loving plus liking and liking really comes later because that's your friend that's your mate that's your that's your what about the reverse when somebody says

we were friends for long time friends on the love zone but then we become I guess it's very rare it's very rare in the literature it's very rare and usually what happens is that one is in love and the other isn't

it's an asymmetric thing and typically a man is in love with a woman and the woman's not in love with the man but she likes the guy because he's awesome and he brings her a latte. And he's sturdy and stable and he listens to her troubles about all her, you know, the jerks that she's dating and what that is is an asymmetric love relationship and he's whole pining away, hoping to get out of the friend zone. Sorry, it's very difficult to get out of the friend zone.

And one of the reasons is because you're not going to run the neurochemical cascade in reverse. Right. It doesn't work that way. You're not going to suddenly, you know, I was like, wow, I went to step one after knowing each other for four years. Very unusual. that right there is the biochemical reason i think dating apps ultimately follow themselves because

you never get those moments well you're not courting is not intended to work that way you know you're not supposed to adjudicate or to you know curate your relationships yeah for on the basis of if they like trump right and they think you know NBA basketball is okay and they like saracha and want to move to austin i mean that's these are not these are you know they're not quite the criteria for actual the other thing is by the way that on the dating apps it's so shallow and superficial which you get about a person that 10% of the guys get all the action right because the guys that i mean women find 80% of men disgusting men find 20% of women unattractive and so that asymmetry per se means that 10% of guys get turned into dark triad narcissists because they get all the action

they got a roster of women that they're getting and the other 90% are going dry Because they can't have, there's no questions, there's no personality, there's no depth, there's no reason to fall in love with a guy if he doesn't pass the looks good on the dating profile. Are you this tall, you make this much money, and I'm off. This is how it's messing up dating and courting

in so many fundamental ways. That's why, by the way, that relationships that start on the apps, some of them are great. But on average, when marriages occur pursuant to meeting on an app, they tend to be less stable and they feature less attraction. because they're less likely to actually go through the cascade in the right direction and go to passionate, companionate, best friendship. It's a problem.

It's a problem. When you mediate any relationships electronically, you're going to have trouble. You are, because we're made to be in person. That's why you and I could do this electronic, we could do this virtually. It wouldn't be as good because we're getting oxytocin right now through the eye contact. That's how you get eye contact and touch how you get true human connection with your friends and especially your family. All right, it's Cozy Earth time.

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Trust me, you're going to feel the difference the very first night. That's cozyearth.com slash deloni, and use code Deloney to say 40% off your entire purchase. Sleep cooler, lounge lighter, stay cozy. All right, so I want to talk about a couple of these controversial ideas you put out, okay? All right. You have a controversial idea, and I usually don't read from these, but I got it, and we're talking about this new book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. controversial idea of managing yourself so here's what I wrote past 25 but more like past 50 years the cultural

ethos is you do you and the rest of culture workforce love relationships houses of faith all these ideals are supposed to bend around whatever path you feel like going on the challenge is as we all have seen around us in the last couple years that isn't traffic in reality and so one of the meta ideas I've taken from your work is this idea of going to war with ourselves is not helpful and neither is living hedonically living just how you feel right I don't feel like working out well then don't I don't feel like this relationship anymore well then end it right so how do you explain this idea of managing yourself to a culture that's been taught you do whatever you want and the world should bend to you the world's lying to you and the world's lying to you because

we've gotten into the we're listening to the the big lie that mother nature tells us now here's the mistake that people make i have natural urges and i want to be happy so if i follow my natural urges i'll be happy that's wrong that's what every major philosophy and religious tradition is always taught that you actually have to stand up to your natural tendencies mother nature has only two goals for john deloney and arthur brooks and everybody watching us pass on your genes and survive another day so that's all mother nature wants happiness well-being love these are divine goals and they require that you understand your natural proclivities and not fall prey to them look if we act like animals we'll live like animals that's the bottom line you can live like your dog you can live

like a golden retriever somebody put something tasty in front of you just eat it okay what about the other side of that though which is i just heard a great um uh debate on the other side of this which is if we we have these natural proclivities but we can just dream them away And you can't do that either, right? You have to recognize the fact that these things exist and they exist for a reason, that you're hungry because you need nutrition and that will help keep you alive, that you're attracted to your wife because in evolutionary times you need to have an attraction to your wife, you need to have a sexual urge such that you'll propagate the genes.

I got that. The whole point is understanding when it's healthy and when it doesn't serve you and when it doesn't serve society, You know, what it doesn't serve the, not the physical truth, the metaphysical truth. Because we are. I mean, this is the most amazing thing. We're the only creature. I mean, even if you're not religious, you recognize that we have a prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain, the C-suite of our brain right behind our forehead. That's 30% of your brain by weight.

That's the magic of the human brain that makes you different than every other creature. And it gives you knowledge. That's the difference. That gives you divine knowledge. And here's divine knowledge. Even if you don't believe in God, this is metaphysical knowledge. You're going to die. you're alive and you're going to die

you'll cease to exist here well here that's a funny thing about it because you know you're going to die but you can't conceive of the cessation of existence that's this weird thing and that's why people freak out all the time that's why a lot of scientists believe we invented religion so that we could solve that conundrum yeah I'm going to die but I'm not going to cease existing because I'm going to go to heaven right I happen to believe that's truth but the whole thing about that

is that we have an antenna to the metaphysical that's what our brain is actually attuned to do and that being the case means that we can also understand our urges and understand when they don't serve us and know that we want more happiness and love by standing up to our urges and that's self-management and that's an incredible source of empowerment for human beings And that to me, the, if there's been one word is I've tried to step back now that I'm not teaching anymore and I'm in this new ecosystem, I've tried to come up with the word of, I know, I know, of the cultural moment. And the only word I can come up with is disempowerment. Yeah, totally. It's this idea that either you can't just go over in the corner patch on the head, we'll take care of you because you're, whatever you've done, whatever's happened to you, whatever variables we want to stick on you. you're not going to be able to, we'll take care of it for you. Or the other side is like there is no breaks to freedom. Just run as fast as you can.

And if there's a wall in front of you, we're going to blame the wall. Just keep going. And it's madness on both sides. But at the end of the day, it's disempowering. Yeah, that's the reason, by the way. There's a rebellion forming why so many young guys are reading the Stoics. Yeah. That's why Ryan Holiday stuff is so popular right now.

I mean, Ryan Holiday is like a cult figure. and what is he doing he's he's talking about marcus aurelius he's like you get at this new crazy thing it's called seneca seneca the elder i mean it's a you know epictetus and and all this he's bringing back these greeks and romans from you know 2,000 2,500 years ago um and and people are eating it up why because they know it's a lie they know the modern currency is totally counterfeit they know that it's not in their interest and they're being sold out why by whom by people that want to productize them when somebody's trying to make you into a libertine because they want you not to have control of your appetites and when you don't have a control of your appetites you're

going to spend 14 hours frittering it away on social media you're not going to have the courage to ask a girl out on a date you're going to just do this on an app are you going to spend money you don't have you're not going to make progress you're going to pretend that gaming is real progress as opposed to real progress in life right now don't kill me i know gaming is fun within limits but 10 10% of gamers, by the way, have a chronic set of behaviors that is inhibiting their ability to function, which is no joke. Well, take that away. Put like, hey, Arthur, there's a game on. I'll give you five bucks if they win. It has turned into... Yeah, exactly. So gambling. Gambling is taking the place of playing sports. That's right. And so what we find is that we have a society where we are being productized vis-a-vis our neurochemistry.

And what it's doing is is turning us into beings that cannot stand up to our own urge. That's why people think, by the way, interesting, for the first time since we've been keeping data on this, young men are now more likely to be religious than young women. So that being the case, then I think that what you and I have an opportunity to serve as our apostolate, you evangelical guys, like I say, mission. Catholics say apostolate because it's a harder word, you know?

It's like... Screw up everything, make it more complex. Our apostolate is to get the spirit of rebellion. bellion against that with more young women today because they need to stop being productized. They need to stand up to that. And their brains are being productized by the tech world. And the people who say that they're victims. They're not victims. Are you kidding? They're the domesticating. They're the civilizing force in our society. Right, right. The heartbeat of the whole. Who would you and I be? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without our wives. Oh, nothing. Are you kidding?

We'd be like out in a ditch drinking together right now or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing. nothing but that's the point that's the point women need to understand the empowerment that they deserve to feel and they had they deserve to have relationships where they're not used where they're adored where a guy would fight a tiger for an elevated yeah that's that's what that's what they deserve is the whole point and they're not getting it because they've been monetized by predators as men have yeah and that's that's the other thing that i've i've come into the last 24 months is this sense of um no one's writing blogs about it and it's not it's uncouth to say i don't know a father absent maybe you that thinks they're doing a great job i don't know a father i don't know

a husband that thinks like i know i'm getting this thing down none of us i mean look you're going day to day and it's it's it's it's mono-o and so none of us even though that that objectively has kids who are doing well well we're still like ah i screwed it up again exactly exactly yeah it's actually probably pretty healthy if you think you're a great father i'm suspicious well that and that's you know it's it's um i i spoke at a at a large church recently for father's day and the pastor before i went up said hey every mother's day pastors across the country get up and go mothers y'all are crushing it y'all are overburdened and then every father's day is like dad you suck you only to step it up and he's like please don't do that and um but it was just the sense of i don't know that anybody

surround objectively and says, we're doing a good job. I think that my grandparents thought they were doing the best they had with what they had. And that tells me there has been a commoditization of individual people and groups of people that if I can make you feel bad, then I could sell you something. Yeah. Well, I don't think my dad ever asked himself if he was being a good dad. And I think that's a good thing. I think that he just did what needed to be done. He loved me and he was a great example right he did he he fathers being a good father a lot of it is showing up and being a good man it's sort it's really interesting i mean you know the greatest service you can give your sons as a dad you know the and and you'll say i've heard you say this you

know this but i'm making sure love their mom really well love their mom really well yeah it's just you wanted the number one job being a dad love their mom be the best spouse possible yeah it's it's amazing and so and so the result is that it's kind of easy to discount that but the truth the matter and by the way number two is have your kids see you on your knees in prayer see it like like my dad's really strong he would never be on his knees in front of a man no he's but there's something bigger than he said that he will submit to something greater he will love abundantly one person faithfully every day right and and when you talk trash about mom he's like don't talk about mom that way that's right that's right that's my wife dude yeah yeah this is like team parents that's

against team Rugrats. That's right. And he submits to the master. Those are the two greatest gifts. And so, okay, yeah, so maybe in church, they're not valorizing that in the same way because you don't see the service in the same way. But guys, that's the service. That's it.

Those are your two core competencies. And if you do that, it's okay if you die. The other day, my son and I were running. He's a cross-country stud, and I'm not. I'm an old man now. And so I'm trying to keep up. You're old man. I'm trying to.

I'm trying. I'm like, you'll be president of the United States. I know, it's good. It's a toupee. So we're running real hard, and we're at the point where he's kind of talking and was head turned, and I'm in dead mode. Like, I know this is going to cost me three or four days of my life after this, but I'm going to get this time. And out of nowhere, this woodchuckie beaver squirrel thing shoots out of the road. Barment.

Yeah. And I let one fly. A swear word fly. Isn't that fom? No. All right. It wasn't the mother load. That's right.

I got back And so this is the disclosure I have a terrible mouth But it's conversational When I get angry, never swear I get real calm 99% time when I get scared I never do

This thing just jumped out We got back And my son We're all sweaty and hot and exhausted And he had his hands on his knees And he stood up and he said Dad, I never heard you say that word before I've never heard you say a bad word

And I was like well Oops Here you go man My streak is I made it 15 years and he laughed I laughed and anyway you have an excellent article in here

about mindful cursing and when I was a kid my diet of what I would call mind food consisted of mostly punk bands and Pantera and scary movies and I remember one time my dad heard me swear

and he said you know kind of read me the right act And I said, I can't help it, dad. And he said, I've never heard you swear in front of your grandmother. I've never heard you swear at church. That's not true. You can. If you choose it, you can.

I remember exhaling like a 14-year-old, and I was like, actually, that's fair. All right. So you write this. Swearing is negatively correlated with conscientiousness and agreeableness. People don't want to be around it. Researchers have found that doctors who curse in front of patients are seen as less trustworthy and less experts than those who don't. But profanity was associated with less lines. and deception so people hear somebody swear and we immediately assume that's probably trustworthy i think

like joe rogson like i believe that guy our comedians like i believe them because because they're swearing research shows that swearing alleviates discomfort of social stress yeah there's a guy who worked really hard to not swear all the time it's conversational i told you my wife can tell what generation i friend i'm speaking to right it's like calling a friend from for mexico and you just start speaking spanish my wife's like oh i know who those friends are just because it comes out without thinking talk me through mindful swearing and i guess as a as a guy of a person of faith and person of intellect yeah yeah it's it's it's not like a buffoon if you have a policy if you're going to have a policy have a policy against cursing okay and the reason for that is that it

it it never really helps very much and it can actually hurt a lot and people are funny because they're making a decision to swear usually a couple of seconds before am i going to say that cuss word I said that customer and then it comes out but it's also very interesting that you know that neurophysiologically it's a phenomenon that cursing that's involuntary

so this voluntary cursing we decide to curse and you're going to put it for a form of expression in a conversation or this involuntary cursing and most people do both involuntary cursing

is actually not produced in the same hemisphere of the brain as voluntary cursing involuntary cursing so it was a neural problem when that a problem necessarily well yeah for you well but yeah for sure so interestingly you find that you know some people who serve from

turret syndrome that's a that's a phenomenon that's occurring in the right hemisphere of the brain and and some people they'll curse involuntarily when they have Tourette and and your involuntary cursing will come basically from the same part of your brain as a tick and so that's a different kettle of fish and that's a different issue you know trying to discipline that then just don't make the decision what is it it's um where is this a romans 13 111, I can't, somebody's going to correct me because, look, I'm Catholic. I outsource my Bible rating to professionals that the, don't, don't make plans to sin. Yeah.

Just, and, you know, okay, stuff happens, right? But don't make plans to sin. It's also very interesting. When people fall off the, they're alcoholic and they stop drinking and then they fall off the wagon, they almost, according to the data, you've seen this too, they almost always plan to fall off the wagon. There's a plan behind it. Friday after work. I'm going to go. And people say, I don't know what happened.

honey, I just kind of had an affair. No, you didn't. You planned it. You planned. So it's the same thing with little things. I'm not saying that cursing is like having an affair. Obviously not. I mean, these are different to nature and magnitude.

Don't plan to sin. Just don't plan to do it is what it comes down to. And that's basically the right policy to it'll stand you the best day. Poncho is back as a supporter of this show, and I'm super jazzed about it. If you've seen me on this show or on stages across, the country, I'm almost always wearing poncho shirts. I got one on right now. I wear a poncho when I'm fishing in the Gulf, and I was wearing poncho shirts all weekend while I was mowing my little miniature farm out here in Nashville. I'm telling you, you should wear

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slash Deloni right now and check out the selection of my favorite shirts like the Laramie and the Buffalo. Right now, new customers get $10 off your first purchase when you sign up with your email. That's $10 off at poncho outdoors.com slash deloni. Poncho is the best. Go check them out. So I had this moment with my son where it was in sixth grade, maybe seventh grade. He came in and he called a family meeting. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you're for real. Oh, no. But he sat down me and my wife literally.

We sat down and he said, he, he, he, he's like, I would like to not play baseball this spring and instead I'd like to audition for the school play. And of course, I did theater in college. We were like, yes, absolutely, this was amazing. And we high-fived him, full support's awesome. But when he laughed, I looked at my wife.

I said, but Deloni's played baseball in the spring. And it was this weird. I was so proud of them, excited. Of course, I mean, it'd be awesome. Go to go to theater. And also, I did not realize that I was going to have this little twinge of my granddad played baseball in the spring. My dad did.

I did. And so is there any sort of, like, you're a full professor at Harvard. And a musician to boot. And then your kids come out and they say, hey, I want to go farm. I want to go to the military and I'll work at construction. Obviously, as a dad, you're like, yes, go. be successful and be great but also kind of the brooks we go to college right is that is that is that there not really it's weird i would have thought that it was so not only in my college professor

my dad was a college professor and his dad was a college professor right and so this is what the brooks do an epigenetic expression you know it's academia right i mean this is so so i would have thought you know you're not going to call we worked hard for this but but what happens it's a really funny thing as your kids are going to adolescence. You need to think, we all think. This is the kind of thing that you advise people calling it every day. Well, you tell them, but you're a kid.

But you think to yourself, what is success? What does success actually look like? And I remember there was a time when my son, Carlos, my middle son, who is a Marine, who didn't go to college, when he was growing up in high school and he was not motivated. And every day, it was another crisis.

And I was haranguing him by doing his homework constantly. And finally, I thought to myself, what am I spending 95% of my time talking about with Carlos? Stuff I actually don't care about, but is a proxy for the things that I do care about. The proxy is I think that these represent his success in some other realm. So I'm talking about the thing one or two steps removed. I bet he doesn't understand that. I bet he actually thinks I care about his homework.

Like I give a rip about his math. No, no, no, no. I want him to be a successful person and grow up and graduate from high school, so he'll have opportunities. and they'll have a good family. He'll be a happy person and a productive member of society. That's what I want. I thought to myself,

what do I care about? What do I actually care about? I want a son who's honest with himself and others. I want a son who's compassionate with other people and I want a son as a Christian. That's what I want. And so I sat down with them and said, look,

I'm hassling you about your homework, but I'm making a mistake. I'm making a mistake here because you probably think I care about your homework. He's like, yeah, obviously, I do care about my own work. No, I care about three things. And if these three things happen, everything else is gravy.

Yeah. I literally don't care about, I want you to be good and love other people in the world. I want you to be honest with yourself and other people, and I want you to love the Lord. That's what I want. And then, because you know what, everything's going to fall into place. That's right. Yeah, yeah. A plus C will deal.

Yeah. And again, you and I as Christian men sometimes screw up and the whole thing, but there's always a way when, you're compassionate, honest, and faithful to get back to what you actually want. And he visibly relaxed. And it's our relationship changed. When I finally told him, no, when I finally told myself what I truly want with my son and then told him. Dude, I had the same, my son was coming down, shirt was always on backwards, or he'd have different colored socks on, whatever.

And it was my wife that pointed it out, but 95% of our conversations were, hey, fix your collar, have you washed your hair, fix your shirt, and it had a very similar, I could hear, dude, I'm an old punk rock kick. I care less what you're wearing. I'm more worried about how other people are going to think, you know what, I'm wasting my time. And I sat him down and I told him, I'm releasing you to the middle school wolves.

Like, they will self-correct your clothing choices. I'm not going to lose my relationship with you over this. And as you said, I think the practice of telling him, I've done this wrong. Right. Was way more impactful than anything else. And then I remember telling his friends a couple years later, you all failed me because they didn't change nothing.

They were like, no, I love the guy. Yeah, man, which is awesome, which is awesome. That's actually part of his schick, actually. It's like kind of who is as a person. Well, I realize they want to be around somebody who loves well and is a young, growing man of faith, and who cares for people. They don't care what a socks look like. And that's my baggage, right?

I know. I know, I know. And then, of course, you know, somebody watching us right now is going to ask, so what would you do if he wasn't one of those things? One of the big three, and I don't know. I mean, that's a good question, too, because you're going to love your child no matter what. Well, not no matter what, because, I mean, the first, gosh, the first 20 years of my career working as a dean of students was kids coming to my office saying, I can't go home for various reasons. My mom and dad will let me sit at the kitchen table. But I'm going to love my son. I'm going to love my son. My son robs a bank. I'm still going to love my son.

Yeah. I don't mean I'm going to. I'll sit by you while you get sentenced. Yeah. I'll sit with you. But I'm going to love you no matter what. That's right. Including, and it's interesting because there's all this research on the schism between parents and children, which is really. really important for people watching us to understand schisms are almost schisms by which i mean parents and adult children not speaking 11% of mothers with adult children are not speaking to at least one of their kids 25 to 30% of the call to come into this show are about one or the other have cut each other completely heartbreaking completely heartbreaking the number one reason for that is not what people think which is behavioral differences so you know you come home from college and you say this i'm not going to church anymore it's like i'm not going to church anymore that doesn't do it you come home and say i think

i'm gay that doesn't do it right i'm voting for trump or not trump or whatever right that doesn't do it the problem is when the adult children reject the values of the parents so they say i'm not only i'm not going to church going to church that thing that you think is stupid and you shouldn't go to church either that's what leads to a schism gotcha and so the whole point is for parents and their adult children live your life let other people live their lives don't reject their values yeah hang on that that turns out to be and you're gonna be okay you're not gonna like it right that your kid's not going to church but you'll be able to live with it and you'll still have a loving relationship and you'll still have good laughs on Thanksgiving and it's

gonna be okay but the minute that the kid says no no no I your whole way of thinking is wrong right that's when schism starts the declaration or vice versa yeah it's basically rejecting the person as opposed to disapproving of the behavior fundamental difference and that's hard in this current culture when parents have the only identify like their only report card anymore is this thing called net worth and the performance of my child a lot and so if my adult child is not performing right voting the correct way loving the correct way living the correct way then if i've outsourced myself worth to their performance then it's a it's a it's a it's a declaration

a failure on my part and I have to die on that hill right yeah and that's the personalization of the performance of your kids and that's not true love yeah that's not that's it yeah it's a huge problem you know do you love your kid you're using your kid as a zanx yeah yeah right you're also projecting your own autobiography onto the blank screen of your kid and that's just not the right yeah we uncle rico our kids right like uncle rico is a good Napoleon dynamite reference you guys you guys got to play football because I would have yeah and it's a very very easy thing to do And I made that one of my first son. He was in college.

My first son went to college and is a really, really good student. It was really smart and applied. And he was struggling with this thing and struggling with this thing. And I said to him at one point, he said, do you realize how much we sacrificed for you to go to college? And I thought, what did I just say? When that came out? I'm a behavioral scientist.

Fortunately, I listen to myself when it comes out of my mouth, and I can actually do a little bit of analysis, get myself on the couch. But I thought, you know, it's like it's his college. It's his life for Pete's sake. And it's going to be fine. Of course it was. Of course it was.

All right. So I, this time, I've got an advanced copy of the happiness files, which is a compilation of articles you've written over the last few years. Yeah. And A, just your ability to write is so well. To take very complex things and make them digestible for a simpleton is such a blessing. That's what you're doing every day, man. Well, it's like you...

But I can do it conversationally. The art of writing the way you do is... it's a masterful man i appreciate it normally i would leave this at the end but i don't want to i don't want to leave it because i don't run out of time after our last meeting together and we've had a couple of phone calls yeah i need you to know um you can see it we talked about the green room because of your personal influence on me it caused me to exhale a little bit and just be reflective i'm down a chunk of weight good i have re-engaged with faith in a way that's been profound your interaction with me and your influence on me has been profound and it's just it's

helping my wife and my kids and my neighbors so that's great you know that's i mean that's a gift to me well that's a thank you for me that you would tell me that and you know you and i both are followers of the master yeah yeah and that's who's influencing both of us and it's like iron sharpens iron man yeah i mean this is this is really what we're trying to do and it's funny because it was 10 minutes ago that I was your age. And it's funny how your brain changes. I mean, in 15 years when you're my age, there's

a John Deloney that you're going to be talking to who's the next really great leader in this. And we have to reinforce each other because the truth of the matter is that you can't do this on your own. Absolutely. You can't. And you help me, I help you, you help somebody else and let's hold each other up. It's awesome.

Because the truth is the truth. And we have this sacred mission to help other people right but to do that we have to be strong that's right and i think the illusion that i even found myself falling for is that strength comes alone that strength is found by myself yeah and that's just false right that's not right i mean that we are we are aspen trees and there's an illusion of our individuality of the strength and beauty and solitary um a the notion that the tree itself by it i mean it's like a he is like a tree planted by streams of water that prospers and all that he does it's like the first psalm yeah but the aspen tree is connected

to every other aspen tree by a root system that's right the individuality is an illusion there's an illusion of my individuality separate from you john right and you from your kids and all of us from each other and until we strengthen our roots and the way that i strengthen my roots is by talking to you and vice versa well and vice versa but it's important to know just for people watching and listening like um you and i could spend all day talking academics i don't get to do that anymore and so it's fun for me and talking like the gymnastics of it all but i left our interaction home changed my behavior which is awesome and i can't get up at four zero zero every morning like you do four three or four three all four 30 oh four 30 but i gave it a shot but all to say is uh thank you for that

that's great i'm glad to hear it tell me about the journey of your physical fitness um i mean i've been physical fitness guy my whole life and so it's been just a way of being and so it's one of those things that almost i take for granted that like you just wake up and work out um and then i had some great profound run-ins with folks that are friends of mine like lane norton and jaco and some of those guys that hey take it one step further yeah and then that became that became a way of not dealing with other issues, right? It's going to get it to work out.

That's going to solve all my, it's going to solve my marriage problems, my spiritual problems. Oh, you're using workout for that. It became a Xanax, right? And then just I got on the road and I got sloppy. I got lazy about how I am a good steward in my body when it comes to what I consume. And I'm in my, I'm heading in my late 40s now. And so I used to, it's like the, I used to be able to outspend my budget because I could out earn it. and things change catching up things change yeah absolutely so i mean and the reason i ask that is because

you know people might be might be wondering i'm a professor of happiness and i'm super into fitness and people ask what's the relationship so so john's getting back into really good shape arthur's you know serious about working out every day for an hour what's the connection to happiness and well-being and the answer to that is that people who have very high levels of negative affect and that means intense negative mood which is a quarter of the population is above average in positive affect and above average in negative affect high affect people john deloney is a high affect person you're a classic mad scientist that's right and and the result of that is that you actually don't need to do that much to hike up your happiness you need to manage your unhappiness exactly right

and your unhappiness is a gift that high negative affect is a gift because it makes you take a bite out of absolutely everything and you can actually connect with the people who call into the show you're like no no no no no and you're animated and you're interesting to watch and that's one of the reasons you're successful but you suffer it's got a morose site too yeah yeah so that there are good ways to manage your negative affect and they're bad ways to manage your negative affect lots of people watching us right now and they watch your show because they're trying to help manage their negative affect the two worst ways to manage your negative affect are drugs and alcohol that numb you and workaholism which distracts you and that's been my yeah that's been my cocaine that's right behind it now is

internet use is is abusive internet use okay so the two best ways to do it it are prayer, meditation, spirituality, and number two is physical fitness. And it's especially helpful first thing in the morning. Because that's when your negative affect is the highest. You wake up and you're like, oh, you know, all those people are like, it's a great day. It's like they're so annoying. Not me, man. So I wake up. I'm like, right. Here we go again. And it's into the gym. And you hit it and that manages negative affect as effectively as everything else. And then that's when the great thing about being catholic by the way john that's when i go to mass i work out for an hour yeah so i go from 445 to 545 in the gym i take a shower and mass is 630 to 7 okay and then and only then

do i actually administer the psychostimulance aka i drink caffeine i'm not i'm not smoking math and um and then you get maximum dopamine so i can get maximum i can get i can get four hours of clean focus attention creativity by going through that particular protocol which also manages my negative effect and that's a really important thing for people to understand but if you go to that teeter totter you stump that that anticipatory i don't want to get too nerdy you're talking about dopamine now folks yeah yeah you you hold hold hold before you earn all of it before you let it rip totally so and it's awesome well there's a theory about that that's contested in the neuroscience literature about why you should wait two hours before you drink caffeine

so huberman talks about this a little bit it's about the the circulating adenosine in the brain. It's an inhibitory neurotransmitter, neuromodulator in the brain. It keeps you, so you're excitatory and inhibitory neurochemicals. They keep you up and down, they keep you in equilibrium. They try to balance you.

So you get up too hyped up and it brings you down a little bit. Now, the molecule for adenosine, which is supposed to inhibit you and make you sleepy and make you a little bit tired, it looks just like the molecule for caffeine. And so what happens is that when you've got adenosine in your brain, It's got parking spots it goes into. And if you substitute caffeine for those parking spots,

the adenosine doesn't go in there. So caffeine doesn't pep you up. It makes you unable to go down. It blocks your body's understanding how tired you are. And so some neuroscientists believe that you have a ton of it when you first wake up in the morning. It's still circulating. It's why you're groggy in the morning.

And so you try to substitute for all that with the caffeine first thing, but it's still circulating and looking for a parking space, which is why you crash at 2 o'clock in the afternoon if you ever caffeine too early. Let it metabolize, let it go away in the first two hours that you're working out, then have your caffeine. It will be the cleanest buzz you can get, and there's no crash.

I still love morning caffeine. I know. I know. See, we just nerded out on neurochemistry. Sorry. Let's go back to love and faith. There you go. Love and faith.

Man. Well, dude, they're telling me you got a heart out. I said many words. No, it's awesome, man. I love being with you. Thank you for being my friend. Yeah, for real. Likewise.

I've called you for what you're doing. Thank you for helping me. Always, this door's always open for you. I love it. Thank you. I'm super grateful for you. Thank you for the service that you're doing for all of your view as I'm one of them. And I will.

And I read this book by this guy. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called Strength to Strength and I'll link to it. It's a masterpiece that he wrote. But this can be a time at the stage of your career when you begin to put your feet up on the couch a little bit more, lean back a little bit more and just kind of survey the grass you've you've planted and you're not doing that you're hitting the gas and so it's it's impressive to watch i appreciate it you know i'll go

where where the um it's funny you know in the in the beginning of the holy week um jesus comes into jerusalem and he says to his disciples um go get a cult right and like where does go to this house and get a cult and they're going to be like he's going to ask what we're doing with the cult right and he says just say this the master has need of it i'm the cult you're a donkey yeah just the cult right is the donkey the master has need of it yeah is the whole point the master has need of you too yeah thank you for doing it well i like being a donkey right oh man that's good appreciate you donkeys unite that's right all right it's time for a quick word about delete me do you feel like your digital footprints you know your text messages

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That's join deleteme.com slash Deloney. All right. Thank you so much for joining me and my friend Arthur Brooks for round two. guarantee you you're smarter than you were before you started this and if you're like me you got to go back and listen to it a couple more times thank you so much for being with us be kind to each other take care of your spiritual life take care of your family take care of your marriage take care of your bodies and go make the world a better place i love you guys stay in school don't do drugs and that especially includes you kelly bye