The Dr. John Delony Show - What's the Best Way to Deal With a Narcissist?

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that gives you real talk on life, relationships and mental health challenges. Through humor, grace and grit, John gives you the tools you need to cut through the chaos of anxiety, depression and disconnection. You can own your present and change your future—and it starts now. So, send us your questions, leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291, or email [e-mail]. We want to talk to YOU!   Show Notes for this Episode   My mother-in-law is a narcissist I hate my higher-ed job and don't know what to do Teaching Segment: The only things you can control are your thoughts and actions How do I raise my son to be a man in a culture that distorts true masculinity? Lyrics of the day: "You've Got a Friend" - James Taylor   tags: narcissism, hate my job, career, masculinity, toxic masculinity, parenting, raising a son   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.

Hey, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Today we are talking about having a relationship with a narcissistic mother-in-law, talking about controlling your thoughts and actions in a terrible job situation, and finally, how to raise a son in a toxic, masculine environment. Stay tuned. Hey good people, I am John and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show. The show for you, about you, and with you. We are talking about your relationships, your relational IQ, your mental health, parenting, being a good friend, that annoying PTA mom who used to just be stuck in the school building and now she's on Zoom calls in your living room with a beach background. All of it. Everything

is B-A-N-A-N-A-S. And so if you want some truth, you want a second opinion, I'm here to talk with you. Give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. You can also email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. Leave your number. Give me a brief description of your question, what's going on in your life, and we will get back in touch with you and set up a time for us to talk. So far, the show is going awesome. We've got emails from all over the world. We've got calls blowing up our, I don't know what you call them, answering machines now? Is that what we call them?

Yeah, voicemail. We've got calls on the voicemails. It's really been a remarkable response. This is exciting time for us. And so I just want to kick the whole show off going, wow, back to my home state of Texas with Brad. Brad, good morning. How are you, man? Hey, John. Thanks for taking my call. Hey, thanks for reaching out. What can I do to help, man help man yeah so i'm having issues with uh my mother-in-law there's uh so you're the one right i'm the one you're the one so man what's going on the my main question is is whether or not our relationship is salvageable. So when I first came into the picture, my wife let me know ahead of time that her mother was never going to approve of me, and that was going to be true with any guy that she chose. So I kind of had some forewarning about what was going on there.

We had an okay relationship for the first couple years of our marriage, and then it went downhill very quickly when we packed up and started moving away from where they lived. So we now live about three hours from the mother-in-law. We almost never communicate with her, and when we do, tensions are very high. What are we tense about? The main issue with her is that her daughter doesn't come visit her on a weekly basis or call her every day to talk about their lives. And is this now suddenly your fault? Yes. My wife used to call her very frequently, and it would end up leading to my mother-in-law telling her that she's not a good daughter, that she's not being the person that she thought she was going to be when she grew up. I've heard her tell her daughter that the only reason she had kids was so they could be there for her when she was older and take care of her. And to another extreme where she's threatened to do self-harm to herself if interactions don't continue.

Wow. So I kind of stepped in and told my wife that we need to not have a relationship with a person that's going to try and manipulate us in that kind of a direction. How did your wife receive that? She's fully on board with my thoughts. She doesn't approve of or appreciate the way that her mother treats her or myself. We have a really great relationship. Everything about the last four years of our lives has been pretty amazing. So she's fully on board with having rational conversations with her mother if they can. We've tried to suggest going to counseling with her mother, and her mom would

say that we could only go to counseling if it was a friend of hers and on her timeline. So we threw out that as an option. But now it's getting to the point where when we do visit, it's not about seeing her and interacting with her daughter. She just wants to occupy time just for the sake of occupying time, but there's no meaningful interactions. It's kind of tense the whole time. Gotcha. So how can I help you, man? So is there a way that we could approach her and try and have an interaction with her where we say we want to try and fix this and go to counseling where we can kind of get her mind off of only going to

a person that she knows that's a friend of hers and getting something that's more more professional based. I, based on what you're telling me now, no. I think one of the great misnomers of our current ethos, right, the language we toss around just in our communities and our neighborhoods these days, the word narcissism gets thrownused a lot. I think most people are just exhausted or there x y or z that's somebody who is so totally absorbed in their planet in their universe that everyone else is a tool to get what they want so again i'm not in a position to to do diagnosis that sounds more narcissistic than most anything I've heard recently. And so when you're dealing with somebody who is a narcissist or who is totally absorbed in their world, what makes them happy, what makes them feel good, to the detriment of the people around them, especially to their kids, the sad reality is no. There's not a lot you can do there because everything's going to be about control and power. And the more your wife, her daughter grows up and the more your wife, her daughter exerts her own independence and falls in love with a guy like you who cares about her, has her own family, her own jobs, her own friends, the more that power gets fiercer and tighter and sharper.

And then eventually it will move on to something else. So the thing I would recommend, a couple things would be this. Number one, I would recommend getting with your wife. And this may sound cheesy or lame, but I would recommend sitting down and having what I would call some sort of grief ceremony, some sort of grief process. And what we're doing here is we are letting the fantasy of mom's going to be this awesome supportive grandma for our kids someday. She's going to like, you're going to be the brother or the son she never had, and everyone's going to be welcomed in just to really sit down and let that fantasy go. And what happens is, especially with kids, is they are grasping onto these tiny moments, these tiny glimpses, because your mom's going to have conversations with your

wife that are lucid and clear. And she's going to check in and say, how are things going? She's going to say, wow, that's really great. And it's so tempting to go, there she is, there's my real mom. And then to forget all of the hurtful things and the harmful things and the painful parts, right? And then as somebody who just loves his wife and is tired of seeing some other person hurt his wife, it's going to cause a division with you and your wife. And so it's good to get together, get on the same page and just grieve the loss of this fantasy. The second thing you got to do is to recreate or to build new boundaries for what it's going to be. And y'all decide together with some sort of accountability. We're going to call once a month and it's the right thing to do. It's mom. And we're going to call once a week, twice a week, whatever number is good for y'all. We're

going to visit only at Christmas and we're going to visit for 24 hours. We're going to get a hotel. And if mom says you can't come, then we're not going to come, but that's going to be our boundaries that y'all create on your own. And then you really, for a year or two, have to stick by them. And that's where you can be supportive and you can hold your wife when she cries, because it's going to be hard. And you can be frustrated with her mom and call your buddies or call your counselor and say like, hey, my mother-in-law sucks and she's beating up my wife verbally and emotionally. But don't take that out on your wife because remember, that's her mom, however painful it is. And then in a couple of years, you're going to find new strength as a couple. Either your mother-in-law

is going to get on board or she's not, man. And that's going to be her journey and her battle to fight, not y'all's. If you want to go to counseling with you and your wife to kind of create this new world together where you realize fantasy's over, it's gone, this is going to be the way this is. And you can invite your mother-in-law, but man, forcing her to come or there's not some magic thing you haven't said yet. so as i'm saying that how does that land with you that it's kind of the direction that i i was leaning when i last talked to my wife on things that we need to do and i think she would be on board with that kind of a plan. There's one other angle, and I'm not sure if we can go into that. Go for it.

Go for it. Got a minute or two left. Go for it. Okay. She has one sibling, and the mother has realized that she can play with my wife that she's not allowed to cut her mother out of the picture because then her sibling will take the full brunt of the mom, and they don't want that. They're afraid that if my wife cuts her mom out of the picture, even to the extent that you mentioned, that she will do some self-harm, and her sibling doesn't want to be the person that has to handle that.

Is her sibling still living at home? No. Okay. So her sibling has to make those same boundaries and have those same hard conversations with herself, with her partner, if she's with somebody else, if she's got a husband in the picture with her, it'd probably be good for your sister and her to get in a room and to have unified boundary conversations. If I've got a family member who is using self-harm as a weapon, if you don't do this, I'm going to hurt myself. Anytime a family member, a friend, a coworker uses that threat, I call 911, I call the police, and I call in the Calvary because I'm not going

to be beholden to somebody else using that as a manipulation tool or as a way to drag me around a neighborhood. And at the end of the day, if your mother-in-law chooses to self-harm chooses to not get help chooses to not accept the love that's been extended by you and by your wife and by her sister on the terms that you guys put forth right that's your mother-in-law's decision if your mother-in-law is not well she needs to get help and she needs to get help on her own. If she's got a husband still in the picture, that's his responsibility to partner up with his wife. So I'm not in the business of abandoning parents. I don't think that's well and healthy. At the same time, I'm not a proponent of kids getting abused for the rest of their life by folks who do not know how to say I'm sorry,

don't understand what parent-child relationships are supposed to look like, don't understand what intimacy is, don't understand how their feelings hurt, and they weaponize those things. So, this will be a hard transition for your wife. It'll be a hard transition for her sister because there is one person on earth who was put here to love them, and that's their mom. And their mom has taken that most important thing for their brain, for their heart, for their spiritual life, for everything, and weaponized it and used it as a tool, as a weapon. So, it's going to be hard. And so, again, start there. Start with getting your wife out of the house. Y'all go have breakfast together. I say that all the time. I love having breakfast for hard conversations,

but go have breakfast and say, I love you. I'm not going to talk bad about your mom, but I want to begin creating a, our own boundaries as a couple. I want us to have some sort of miniature funeral for the fantasy that was, and I want to invite your sister to it. She can join us too, because we all need to be on the same page. And we're just not going to let mom continue to emotionally abuse us into our new homes, into our adult life, into our kids, et cetera. We'd love to have her involved.

But at this point, she's choosing not to be there. So man, Brad, thank you so much for the call. We'll be thinking about you. After you have this mini ceremony, after you have this funeral for the fantasy, I want you to call me back. I want you to let me know how it went. I want you to let me know how your wife's conversation

with her mom went. Keep up with me. And I like to stay plugged in on this one. This one's going to have some tentacles to it and it's going to take some time to process. But I tell you what, man, I hope that every guy listening to this loves their wife like you do,

is invested in having a great marriage, and is invested in being a partner with their wife as they wrestle with their own baggage, their own demons, their own parents trying to hurt them. So what a blessing, man. You're a stud, dude. I appreciate you. Let's go back to the phones. Let's talk to Sue in Seattle. Sue, how are you this morning? I'm doing well. Congrats on your new show. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us here at the very beginning. You are in on something big, right? Is that what you say when you're trying to get somebody to invest like an Avon or something? Like you're an early adopter, Sue. This is going to be huge for you. So how can I help? What's

going on? Well, I wanted to talk to you because you've worked in higher ed. I have. I've been invested in my job for now 13 years because of the dream of free college education for my daughter. Ah, yes. I just dropped her off, and I thought I was going to feel really relieved and be really excited, but I got home and all I could think of is, okay, 45 months to go to sit through this job that I've learned that I'm kind of really sick of. Now that I've been on this debt-free journey, I'm two years away from being debt-free. I've been really dreaming about what can I do next? I've been thinking about what my

other possibilities could be. And now I'm feeling a little like, God, I'm really kind of stuck in this thing because her tuition is tied to doing this job. I can't quit. I can't move on to a better thing. And even when I do get out of debt, I'm still going to have to continue to do a job I really don't love anymore. So what do you do for your school? Give me a ballpark. I work in the career center. I work in the career center, and I work with students and employers. So that is a thinkless, challenging job. For those of you who don't know, career centers and admissions folks and development folks, folks who raise money, those are the three positions on a college campus that no matter what is going on in the world, they are judged by a single number at the end of a calendar year.

You either succeeded or you failed. If you're an English professor, you are helping folks learn to write, learn to read, learn to think broadly, learn to think deeply. But there's no centralized metric that you can post up that you have to put up for the world to see whether you succeeded or failed, right? I was a student affairs guy, so I was always dealing with after-hours things, hard things. And how I judged my job or how people judged my job was – it's amorphous, right? Are we helping students learn these out-of-the-classroom experiences and things? A career services person is, how many of our students got jobs? You failed, right?

What a tough, tough job. I've known some extraordinary career services folks, and they are always under the gun there. So what part about your job do you love? Oh, God. Or maybe none of it, man. It won't hurt my feelings. Maybe none of it.

Maybe you're just sick of the whole thing. I have bright spots. I have a thing of sending out an email message to students about an opportunity and seeing somebody take action on it. Like when somebody actually went through to the next step and applied to that opportunity and then gets the job. I love that part. And I love being able to get from behind the scenes. I have new software. I can actually tell if that happened. That is a thrill. Sure.

I love that piece. And I'm actually kind of thinking I like the direct marketing of those opportunities, being able to do the A-B testing of the messaging and seeing which kind of messages actually respond to. And I'm loving that I'm getting to do a career virtually and doing it jointly with other schools. I'm actually kind of excited about that possibility. What part of your job do you hate? You just, just every second, you're like, man, I think I'm going to set myself on fire. Just to feel the heat. Like, what's that part of your job? Oh, there are folks that I know I've raged about.

I mean, like raged. I had to storm out of the office and stop my way around a building before I could go back and actually talk to people. That was about just dealing with regulations and getting approvals to do things that just make common sense. But I have to go through this process to make something happen. Common sense does not always drive decision-making in higher education, right? No. So here's the back out.

Here's the 30,000-foot view, and I'll simplify it for you, and I'm going to put you on the spot. Is that cool? Yeah, absolutely. So I want to think about this on a couple of hundred-year scale and then a very, like, right to second scale, okay? If we were to back out a couple of hundred years and think about the— and what I'm going to do is not fair, by the way, and I know that, so just bear with me here. If we backed out a couple of hundred years and looked at the general sacrifices people have been willing to make over the years for their kid, for what comes next, and then i fast forward to the absolute ridiculous challenge you have of a single score

metric job that is that is dependent on there's very few things you can control right the economy is in the tank students can't even come in and meet with you this a a new generation of student who just thinks you've got a magic drawer full of jobs, right? Like, hey, I'm graduating. Where's my job? And who doesn't always pay attention in class and doesn't know how to do resumes, just basic things. And you're judged on did you get him a job or not, right? So that's tough.

But it's in the air conditioning. You're good at it. You can grind it out, like you said, for four years, and then your daughter can ride off into the sunset or your son can ride off into the sunset. That's one side of it. The other side of it is playing a 10-year, 20-year game the other way. And the reason I – when I think about it that way, I think, does your kid have to go to this school? Is there another school that is free in your community that can do community college? Is there a state option in the area where your son or daughter can, y'all can sit down and

work out the finances of it and say, I can't do this job anymore, or I've got a great opportunity, I'm transitioning, but this is going to cost us tuition. And that's a hard conversation for you to have, of course, but it's also a remarkable moment for your kid to see their mom thinking about themselves, planning, and the natural consequences of stuff, right? So I don't think any of those options are bad, but it's kind of an either or, right? That you're going to grind it out, you're going to work really hard,

and you're going to say, I'm going to make it one of those little chains, and I'm going to spend the next four years doing this job, but also building what's going to come next. Like you would tell a sophomore who comes in to see you. Or, yeah, get an exit strategy sooner rather than later, and get out, and let your son or daughter know, hey, this is time for me to make my move, and this is going to mean you're probably going to have to change schools. Yeah, we had the hardest conversations already, and she already had to make a compromise on school. She ended up bad.

Okay. My school is part of tuition exchange, so she got to go out of my school, basically, but what she wanted to study is not available nearby where we're at, unfortunately. But I'm committed to grinding it out. What she wanted to study is not available nearby where we're at, unfortunately. Okay. But I'm committed to grinding it out. I just need some strategies to be able to survive it without, you know, wanting to kill my colleagues and just be a better person in general. Because I'm committed I'm going to have to do the next four years, and I'm going to have to be sanguine about it. So I would recommend this inside of a school ecosystem. And you know, this,

if you love working with students, if you love the marketing part, if you love the collaborative part, if you like working and reaching out and other universities and having partnerships, which schools all across the country are having to do right now because it is just a sideways hurricane doo-doo storm right now out there in higher education. There's students everywhere. They're not showing up in some schools. Some schools are canceled.

Some schools are online, all that. So schools are having to partner together like never before. I want to recommend that you start scouring your own institution for places where you can transition inside your institution. I want you to scour your local area where you wouldn't have to move, where you can find opportunities that are going to be able to jump institutions in different positions that will get you, that will still have the tuition exchange, but will have several years. I'm not a huge fan of people just resigning themselves to the next four years is going to be awful. Or the next four years, I'm going to have to just suffer. Even when it's for a greater good, sometimes we got to do that and that's life. But if there's

other options, I really want you to explore that. And then I want to tell you this story that happened today, and maybe it will speak into the next four years. And this is a conversation not with your colleagues, not with your bosses, not with your child. This is a conversation you can have with the mirror. So I live about 30 minutes from work. I live out in the woods, literally in the woods. And I drove into work today and I'm notoriously behind. I love talking with people. I like just staring off into space. I like writing. I was up at before 4 a.m. this morning trying to finish a book here that we're trying to get out.

I was writing. I was in the middle of it. And then I got to work on time. Not on time. I got to work before on time, which if you know me, super rare. I agree. I walk in. I sit down. I get all my stuff out. I got to work before on time, which if you know me, super rare. I walk in, I sit down, I get all my stuff out. I start to work again on this book. And my wife calls and says, I hate to tell you this, but our son went out to the car this morning with her keys

and left them in the back of my truck. And she had to get my daughter to school. She had to get herself to a writing event this morning, which meant I had, and I had an hour till we went on set this morning till we started recording. That meant I had to race to my car, my truck, jump in, drive 30 minutes the other way,

drop off a set of keys. Oh dude, the well guy is there. And I had to talk to that guy for a second, drop, jump back in my truck, drive back here and get here just in time for James and Kelly to say, Hey, we're about to, we're about to go live. And then we were rocking and rolling. Why did I tell you that annoying story? The whole time I had this well in my soul of my stinking kid doesn't pay attention he's just through life he's like a balloon just floating around like bouncing off of things he's got the greatest heart he's brilliant he's comically smarter than I am but he just is like through life and I was thinking I'm'm going to set up this.

And then I would stop and say, no, dude, it was an accident. And then I drive another couple of miles. And then I would think, you know what, dude, I'm going to get that kid. I'm going to tell him. And then I have to exhale and say, all I can control in this moment, all I can control is my thoughts and my actions. And what I have is I have an hour drive ahead of me, 30 minutes one way, 30 minutes the other. I'm going to have to get back to work, go straight into the recording studio and get on the air.

And I can be all fired up and my heart rate can be high and I can go bananas or I can let this go, man. I am going to have a conversation with my son tonight. I'm not going to be mad about it. He didn't do it on purpose. We are going to talk about paying attention. And I get to choose my response to that. And I realized in those moments as I was driving, I've been practicing this for five years since I spent some time with a man named Randy Harris there in Texas, who's a monk, who taught me how to be mindful, who taught

me how to start this long journey of flexing the muscles of controlling my thoughts and my actions. And I get to decide how I respond to this stuff. I get to respond, whether I just smile and say, I don't know what's going on in your life, man. That's not about me. And so Sue, I'm telling you this to tell you this. I'm telling you this to tell you this. That was a little bit redundant. I'll tell you that long story to tell you this. It could be that the next 12 months, the next 24 months of a really hard job, a thinkless, painful, frustrating job that has a higher purpose right now, you are helping folks navigate a messy job situation. And that's a gift to have a good career services person. You are helping your kid go to school with free tuition. That's a big deal. You're setting them up. That's a legacy move on your part. But it could be a moment for you to get with a counselor, to get with a group of women there in your community that say, you know what, we're going to practice for the next 12 months, controlling our thoughts and controlling our

actions. We're going to learn how to exhale when somebody gets in our business we're going to learn how to literally heap coals of kindness on frustrating annoying faculty members on jerk employers who show up late or don't even show up at all students who are don't pay attention and respond to emails, ridiculous administrators. We're going to turn that corner. And in 14 months, in 30 months, in 40 months, I want you to circle back and say, I worked on my heart. I worked on my responses. I worked on my thoughts and my actions. And now I'm a person who can bring calm to chaos.

I'm a person who can bring laughter to hard situations I'm, just a person of joy Because I chose to And this could be one of those moments. Um, I make fun of crossfit a lot It's a great workout program, but just the yeah, dude This could be one of those crossfits for your soul for the next 24 36 months And so sue I say go for it Um, and if you And if you, again, if you have to call your kid

in a couple of months and quit, I fully understand. I left the industry. It got big for my heart. It got too much for my soul in a season. And I was blessed with an awesome opportunity to transition out. But I get the, just can't do it anymore.

I get it, I get it, I get it. So blessings to you, Sue. When you decide what you're going to do, circle back and give me a call. I'd love to hear how it's going. And thank you so much for the call. And let's circle back to Cincinnati. And circling back, I guess we're in Seattle. So we're going to go east to Cincinnati and talk to my man, Bill.

Bill, how are you? Hey, John. How are you doing? I'm doing outstanding. How about you? Doing great, great. Thanks for taking my call. I want to say I'm really happy you've been brought onto the Ramsey team, and I've really benefited from your YouTube videos and what you've done on the radio.

So thank you so much for that, man. Man, thanks, brother. I appreciate you. I'm still figuring out how YouTube works, but they tell me that if I keep plugging away, I'm going to learn how to do it right. So thank you so much, man. How can I help? Totally. Well, I've been married for about seven years, and we have a one-and-a-half-year-old son.

So my question is, what are your insights on raising boys and how that would relate to the attack on masculinity we are seeing these days? So define, number one, let me back up. Congratulations on having a little baby. We waited, I think, my wife and I, eight years, seven or eight years to have our first kid. So I remember being where you are, and you are square in the middle of it. And I want to promise you, things get awesome in a bit. They get awesome. So describe the attacks.

What are you talking about well you know they just kind of in the media and this society is talking about this toxic masculinity and so i want to try and raise my son to just be comfortable in his own skin about being a man. And obviously he's one and a half, so he's got a long way to go. But how can I, as a father, be encouraging that, you know, who he is, is okay. And being a man and being a godly masculine man is okay. So let me ask you, man, how are you feeling attacked? What are some things you're hearing in the media? What are some things you're hearing from people that you work with? What are some attacks you're hearing in the media what are some things you're hearing from people that you work with what are some attacks you're feeling personally that you're worried are going to rub off on him um give me some specifics i would say like being the leader

um like not in a dominating way over your house or your wife or anything like that, but as we're called to be the leaders of our houses, you know, there's this, I guess you would say, attack on that. There's kind of, it's frowned upon that men take charge and are looked to as the leaders and being confident, like a man that's confident and bold is frowned upon. Um, I guess those things, and I guess I'm kind of navigating these waters myself too. Um, as a, the, you know, within the past five years, it seems to be really a hot topic. And so I'm kind of trying to even think about it and figure out like, what am I doing that people might say is toxic? And I don't feel like I'm being toxic. I feel like I'm a nice person and I'm just trying to do the best I can. But the blinds are getting so blurred these days with this, you know, so many things.

But especially with just being a man and masculinity, it feels like they're blurring those lines. What do you think? So, man, number one, I want to applaud you for the question. And I want to applaud you for being reflective. And number two, I want to applaud you for being a dad who's thinking ahead. So many of us get so busy, so exhausted, and we just try to get to the next day to the next day to the next day that we lose this intentionality, this moment where we can just pause, whether we're driving or we're mowing the yard or whatever, just to think, man, what kind

of world is my son inheriting? And what can I do right now to participate there? Okay. So here's a couple of things. So I live in the mental health world and the APA, the American Psychological Association, put out a paper, maybe in a year or two, three years ago, on toxic masculinity. And if I was to sum people, to hold hostage people, and to really get people's way. You used a really, really important word that if you can leave this phone call with, that if the listener can leave this phone call with, I will feel like I've done my job for the next six months. You said, I don't want my son to feel like he is over. And that is the main word. When I think of toxic masculinity, for whatever that means, for whatever different group, right? I think of the difference between over versus with. And so if I was to

distill down what I think toxic masculinity looks like is that we force our boys to prove their worth. They do not understand at an early age that they have inherent value just because they're people, just because they're beings, just because they are worthy of being loved. We set them up in conquests and in contests to when you do these things, then you will prove your worthiness. When you do these things, then you will be worthy of fill in the blank, being a leader, being a husband, being a man, being a whatever. This idea that the bigger arms win. And often in nature, that's the way it works, right? The bigger lion wins, man.

And I think that the challenge there is we look around at our communities, we look around at our country. And if we look back the last hundred years, the attack from folks who have not been in power, right, are looking at it and saying, hey guys, y'all have always been president. Hey guys, y'all have always run the finance system. Hey guys, y'all have run fill in the blank of institutions, churches, schools, whatever. And every one of those institutions is a mess right now. And so if I have a job, right, if I've got a business that I'm running and the business is a mess, the buck stops with the leader. And so as a guy, I am balancing two things right now. Number one, this idea of right. What does a head of a household look like? What does leadership look like? Leadership does not look like, head of household does not look like I get 51% of the

vote. I'm more powerful. I'm stronger. I get to decide. What I'm training my son, who's 10 now, is leadership means you get underneath everything and hold it up. Leadership means you go last. Leadership means if there is a fight to be had, you go first. You are the first one to be on the front of the line. And when people are eating or people are showering or people are in need, you go last. And so this idea of not the leaders eat the nicest, the leaders eat what's left. And so it's this idea of submission. And that is a reframing of masculinity for me. Another thing is this idea of being with. I want my son to know that when he is married, when he's got kids, when he is a community leader, when he is a boss, when he's a coworker, his job is not to look for people to have dominion over. It's to look to people to have relationships with. And the most effective way, we say it here at Ramsey Solutions. I work for Dave Ramsey here. Business moves at the speed of trust. And trust is fostered around a table where people eat together, they commune together, they hang out together. It's when people are with.

Now, somebody who's in charge, the boss, if you will, the buck stops there, right? Somebody's got to make a call. And that can be a man and woman. I report to Amy, who reports to Jeremy, who reports to Suzanne, who reports to Dave, right? So I've got two women. I think I've almost always had women leaders throughout my career. The buck stops with them, right? So whoever's the boss boss. But that's less about gender and more about position. So when it comes all the way back to it, I'm talking a lot just to say this. I want my son to know he's got value, that he is allowed to feel feelings, that he is allowed to love deeply, that he's allowed to use words and ask for, hey, dad, can I have a hug?

I want him to know that he is valuable just because he exists. And I want to teach him to use his strength. He is a monster, dude. I think my wife is injecting him with roids on the weekends, dude. He's huge. I want him to use his physical position. He's a big kid. I want him to use that wisely and boldly and strongly, and also not to empower and, I mean, not to overpower and crush people, but to serve people, right? So that's my spiel on masculinity. How does that ring true in your heart when you hear it? That's great. I mean, definitely a lot of good points to reflect on um i really liked especially what you said in the beginning about we sometimes put the earning mark on our boys that if you do x y and z or we expect you to do whatever good at football or win the sports game or something

like that and then you're, you're doing your job then, um, tearing down that wall and just loving them for who they are and not getting caught into that trap. Um, that's a great insight, I think. And here's the other thing that you're just gonna have to hold close to your heart. And that is this. Um, I say this often, and it's just a good saying to put in your back pocket, and it's not by my hand, but in my lap. You are a guy raising a young son in a cultural mess. We owe too much money. We're having to deal with racial reconciliation that we have swept under the rug and not dealt with for years and years and years and years and years. We are dealing with international challenges. We are dealing with weather

challenges. I got family in Houston right now waiting for the second hurricane in like a week to come through. We've got fires raging in California and Colorado. I mean, things are a mess and it's just been dropped in your lap in this little snapshot in history. And so people are going to talk bad about you just because you're you, and you get to decide, am I going to carry that baggage or I'm going to set it down? I'm going to work really hard to be a good guy in my home, to be a good man in my community, in my neighborhood, to listen. When I feel like someone's hurting my feelings, I want to lean in and say,

what can I learn from this? And the rest of them is going to put that nonsense down and raise a son who knows how to love, who knows how to speak up for himself, and who knows how to serve and protect his community. And service comes from underneath and behind. And if you get on that track, if you can teach him to hear when he needs to hear and to not carry other nonsense bricks down. Everyone's going to be throwing rocks at you, man, regardless of what it is you do. They're going to throw rocks at you for who you are, for what you want to be, for the son you want. That's just going to be life, man. It's happened throughout history and it will always happen. I want to know where my values are grounded. I want my son to know he's loved. I want my daughter to know she's loved. I want my wife to know she's loved.

And I want them to see it and feel it in me, not just words. They got to hear that too, but see it and feel it. And brother, Bill, the fact, again, I want to reiterate this, the fact that you are already thinking this through as a dad of a one and a half year old,

man, blessings to you, brother. You are way, way, way ahead of the curve. And so as we wrap up the show today, it's a big deal to me that we go back to some of the great poets of our time, right? These folks who are songwriters, who are imaginative, who know how to think, who know how to take heavy, hard concepts

and bring them down into these little sonnets, right? These little stanzas, a couple of stanzas and a chorus. And that's why every show we end with the song lyrics of the day. Today is a shout out to my buddy Trevor, who back in college introduced me to, not maybe, easily the greatest songwriter in the history of the world, who wrote, I mean, I'm going to say this is the best song ever written, period, full stop. This is from his 1971 record, Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon. This is the great James Taylor and the greatest song ever written. You've got a friend. It goes something like this.

When you're down and troubled and you need a helping hand and nothing, oh, nothing is going right. Just close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there to brighten up even the darkest night, your darkest night, winter, spring, summer, or fall. All you've got to do is call

and I'll be there. Yeah, you've got a friend. This is the Dr. John Deloney Show. you