 Oh boy, today's episode is amazing, Dr. John Deloni. He just wrote a book, it just dropped, Building a Non-Anxious Life. This guy is a best-selling author, he's the host of the Dr. John Deloni show, he's also a great friend of ours. I don't know if the boys and I have told you recently, but we love you, buddy, and we appreciate you. We appreciate you. We appreciate you. We appreciate you. You're one of our favorite people, and you treat us so incredibly and connected us. I've got one more idea, one more idea. This situation, so we want to get you some, man. Yeah. It's amazing. We'll put it up, dude. Oh, it's a minute? Yeah. It's a protein bar. It's a great time to have you. Shut up, dude! What's the matter with you guys? Holy smokes! I saw you thrown around the Jackson down the show. Dude, my Jackson, man! It's almost like… Kali! That one spoke to me and I was like, oh dude. Guys! Yeah, yeah. This means the world, man. Can we hug? I'm not putting this down. We're just going to hug with it. That's awesome. Get out of here. Jackson's man. I was just going to see you. I don't think it's weird if you want to interview Holia, dude. I'm not going to. Now you have to play us a song. Y'all can do your own little shit. Guys, thank you so much. Extremely insightful, but down to earth. He communicates in a way that's understandable and effective. When it comes to mental health, navigating your life and your relationships, this guy is the man. So we know you're going to love this episode. Today's program, give away the original MAPS program, MAPS anabolic. If you want to win that program, leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. We also have a sale going on. MAPS bands half off and the hardgainer bundle half off, both half off. If you're interested in either one, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes the show. John, welcome back. Thanks, man. It's good to see you guys. One of our favorite people for sure. And I do want to share this on the podcast. You were so incredible and gracious to me. We came and saw you at a massive event and I told you I was struggling with some stuff. You took me backstage, sat down with me and talked with me for like an hour, man. That was incredible, very impactful to you. So I appreciate that. Your book, I don't think it could have come out at a more perfect time. The title is The Non-Anxious Life and all the data on anxiety is showing that it's getting worse. It's getting worse in every age group. Is that why you wrote the book or why did you write the book? Who's it for? I mean, to be honest with you, that wasn't the goal, right? I wanted to write a book on parenting. I think a lot of parenting books aren't that great. I wanted to write a book on making friends when you're 40 because there's nothing out there for us. And a couple of years ago, I was on air and somebody was calling about anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. And I finally said, hey, anxiety is not your problem. Anxiety is just trying to get your attention. You got this other stuff in your life going on. And I took the headphones off and my co-host Dave took the headphones off and he looked at me and he goes, he needs to write that down. I'd never heard that. And I thought everybody knew that. So I wrote a teeny tiny little 60 page book and it shot out from underneath us in a pretty wild way, right? And so as we sat down with the team, they were like, hey, the world's gone mad. And I didn't want to, I want to keep talking about anxiety. I'm kind of tired of talking about it. As I was writing this, I realized why about halfway through my wife and I had a confrontation. I checked into a hotel and I realized, oh, I'm not living this. Like I don't want to deal with this because I'm heading down a bullet train. I've been down before myself where I was such an anxious mess. I almost blew up everything. And so it became more of me lecturing society because I'm so smart and more like, hey, I'm pulling up a bar stool and like, like pour me one too because we got to figure this out. And yeah, it's a mess. What was that process like? Cause that's a vulnerable. It was hard because I like, that's what I do, right? I tell everybody how to do it. And it was hard when my wife said, I'm watching my husband die right in front of me and chasing all this stuff. And I don't know what to do, but I love you and I don't know what to do. And that was a humbling, that was a humbling moment. What is it about anxiety that makes it so addictive? It has to be right because we know we don't like it. We know it's not good for us. It causes us to, or at least in the way that we experience it or how we... Addictive or crippling? Well, it's crippling, but it's also, it feels addictive. It feels like we're shaking it out. There's kind of like some chicken or egg in the literature. And I don't like to get caught up in that and who comes first. But there's an idea out there that you get addicted to the cortisol and the adrenaline. You get addicted to your body's chemical response. There's also out there, you get addicted to your numbing device of choice. Your body will spin up the system so it will get that drink. So it'll get that food. It'll get what it wants downstream. Either way, I don't care. Judd Brewer has done some great work on it. You get addicted to the ramp up and you get addicted to the deceleration, if that's even a word. You get to the off ramp and you just get in that cycle, man. And when we have this constant stream of you're not okay, you're probably going to die. It's all coming down. The economy is going to do this. Man, your body's just getting it 24 seven, 365. You say you don't care which one it is as far as which one came first. Is that because you're not even really addressing the root cause and it's like it's not the argument to be had? I've had a, I say I don't care for two reasons. One, I have had a humbling last 36 months, last three years. I spent 20 years in academics. I spent 20 years having lunch with some of the smartest minds in the world. And then getting out of that ecosystem, out of the university ecosystem and sitting with single moms and truck drivers just want to be better dads. I've realized, dude, I've been talking over people for 20 years. And if I sit down with it, with the dad who's just saying, I don't, my dad left and I want to be this thing called the dad. I don't even know what it is. And I'm like, well, the studies say he's out. Can you help me right now, please? Right. And so for me, I don't like the studies are important because it informs the advice you give, right? And it informs how you pull up a seat next to somebody. What I'm finding is most people, most of the time, they know the next step. It's so terrifying to go alone. So you just sit with me while I tell my husband, I know you've been cheating on me. Will you sit with me while I, the doctor tells me I got cancer and we figure out what comes next. And so that's the first one. So that's more of a personal thing. The second one is it doesn't matter. I mean, the root cause, how we get out of this system is going to be the same, whether it's X or Y. It's, let's change the ecosystem and the alarms will stop ringing, man. Is it solvable? Is it something that you can work with and is the right term build a different or better relationship with? Or is it something you can make go away? Yeah. So the analogy I use, and I tried to distill them all down into a picture. I can give somebody from my son who's 13 all the way up to somebody in a nursing home who's never dealt with. So the picture I like to paint is anxiety is just a smoke detector in your kitchen. That's it. And in our current ecosystem, we've created this world where we're so afraid of discomfort. Everything, we've pathologized any negative anything. You should be heartbroken if your mom passes away. You should be heartbroken if you get dumped. But we have a pill for that. We have a solution for that. It's a 12-point program to get rid of that feeling. And so we've created a world where when we feel anxious, when those alarms go off in our kitchen, we climb up on a ladder and pull the battery out. And then we say it's solved and the alarm shuts off. It does, man. We can shut the alarms off with any number of drugs, any number of behaviors, but then your house burns down around you. And so what I want to do is say, what if we dealt with the fires in the front yard or in the back bedroom or in the kitchen or in the bathroom? The alarms will go off. And by the way, I don't want to live in a house without a smoke detector. I don't want that world. And so anxiety plays an important role in our lives. It's letting you know, hey, your body's detected, you're not okay. You're not safe. Let's figure that out. Not go to these wild gymnastic links to shut the alarms off. Just so we can connect with people listening right now, because this is me, by the way. I have issues with anxiety for sure. And I've only recently realized that I have issues with anxiety. And I don't like negative feelings. I don't like feeling bad. So I'll do things to make myself not feel those feelings, whether it be reach for a substance or a void or ignore or distract. What are the more common ways that people or behaviors I should say that people use to get away from bad feelings? What are they like pulling the battery out? Like what does that look like for most people? Yeah. So there's a lot of literature out there that say women are infinitely more anxious or infinitely more depressed, if you will. I happen to think depression and anxiety is on the same trend line. But that's a whole other podcast. But when you look at, as Terry Reel did the great work to look at, if you look at the prison population, that's mostly men. And if you look at violence interactions, that's mostly men. What if anxiety responses look different across genders? What if they look different given a set of genetics? So I think for you and me, anxiety may look like a common way to pull the battery out, may look like going to the gym, flexing on somebody feeling powerful. Like they call it the one up position. Like where can I rage and flex? For my wife, it might be shutting the whole system down. It might be that heart rate won't stop. And so I'm going to go eat. I'm going to go just scroll mindlessly. I'm going to distract myself. For some, it's another drink, another drink. For many, it is that feeling of aliveness. I'm anxious when I walk home into my house because your body knows that your marriage is falling apart. So I text that woman back that I work with. And like, I haven't crossed the line, but my heart rate goes up a little bit as though I was dating again, right? And I chased that sense of aliveness. And then you end up doing stuff that you never planned on doing, right? But you just start heading down this path. Some people go to work for 140 hours a week and they try to out-achieve it, right? They try to keep moving down the hallway away from that alarm until that fire moves to the next room, to the next room. And it'll eventually burn your house down. So it's any number of things. And that's where I think the diagnostics aren't super helpful because do you have anxious thoughts that you can't control? Do you have no thoughts at all, right? I mean, it looks different for everybody. And I think that's why it's hard to play whack-a-mole with it. And so what if we just stop talking about the alarm system? What if we start talking about let's fix our lives so that our lives are whole and can handle what's coming? Because there's always something coming. Let's talk about the work and working out one because of all the ones that you just listed, I find that to be probably one of the more challenging ones to figure out, do I have a bad relationship with this or is this healthy? Because those things obviously are positive, right? You got to go to work to feed your family. Working out and exercise is healthy for your body. But I do think that we actually see this a lot in our space. In fact, some of the people that I think we most admire in the fitness space that are the most famous for the way they look have found a way to get famous from this issue that they have. They've buried themselves into their physiques and they're so good at it, they can present that and outwardly they look like they have it all figured out but inside they're probably a terrified child. How does somebody, how do you tell somebody or how do you help somebody become aware that this thing that you claim to be healthy for you isn't that healthy? How do they know? How do they become aware of that? Is this a behavior you continue to do despite negative outcomes also? And so working out is almost always good for me. And a few days ago I wasn't feeling great but I got to get my workout in and I fell off a cliff, right? And I ended up sick, like it wasn't smart and my wife said, oh so you're being classic John again, huh? And often when you're with somebody in tight spaces you can see somebody heading down a road before you get there, right? But it's the same as like having really great friends and colleagues and coworkers that are women or that are handsome guys, y'all are great friends and then y'all start texting and then your spouse comes home and you flip your phone over. Now I'm continuing something that I know is gonna have negative ramifications but I'm down another road. So I think all behaviors are that way. There's something fun about getting with your buddies and getting a couple drinks and kind of putting your nutritional ideas in a box and throwing it in the ocean and just getting chips and quesoed out. That's cool. There's also the when you'd find yourself doing it by yourself and doing it again and then doing it again. And so I think it's something, behaviors can have some good to them. It's when you do them despite the fact that there's some negative consequences. How much value, because you mentioned your wife. That's addiction by the way. That's the definition of it. I think that I'm seeking for, because when you think of like work and working out there's such a fine line there, right? Of like someone, and I think what I see when people struggle with it on either one of those is you do a good job of justifying those two. Other addictive things are hard to justify. Yeah, I just got to do a line of coke every day. Because it makes me a better... No, that's real obvious. But if your drug is achievement, if your drug is business, I got a pastor in town in Nashville that says if business is your drug, rest will feel like stress, right? Yeah. And so a line of coke, the thing about coke is it works for a while, right? So if you've got a big project due that's going to get you this accolade and this stamp and you've identified achievement and money as you're like, you'll figure out a way to make coke make sense for you for a while, right? So we'll figure out a way to justify anything, right? That's where I think it's important to have other people in your life. I was just going to ask that, because you mentioned your wife and, you know, we're constantly told don't listen to anybody, just listen to yourself. Stupid. Yeah, because how do you not have your wife point that out? This has happened to me in my relationship where my wife will point something out that way this person really cares about me and loves me. Maybe I should listen and that helps with awareness. Like how important is it to listen to people who are around you that you care about that you trust? Man, I'll say it this way. Your body would be failing you if it recognized you've got nobody looking over your right flank and your left flank. You got nobody watching over the hill over there and it let you sleep all night. It would be failing you. Your body would be failing you if it recognized you and let you have a deep, private, intimate time with somebody you care about. It's not time for sex. It's time to not die. And so you hear people poppin' up at 3 a.m. night after night after night. That's your body working exactly as it's supposed to. It doesn't want you asleep because it's identified threats everywhere, right? And so we've created the loneliest generation of human history. You all talk about that. I mean, we know this and then we're surprised that our bodies' alarms are ringing off the hook all the time. And then you dump that I don't call it bro science, but you dump that they don't let her talk to you that way. That's insane. It's insane. No Navy SEAL goes to war by themselves. No football team goes out there without coaches up in the box. The eye in the sky watching to see what you can't see. That's insane. None of us do that in any other parts of our life except when it comes to you don't know me, bro. She does know you. And she's watching her husband die right in front of her. He does know you. That's your best friend. And he said, man, I don't like where this is headed. And so I think it's madness to do life. And I think there's circles, right? There's in my life this is from an exercise the counseling professor gave us that man it sent me off the rails. I've identified six people and if you think about like a box I put on my on my kitchen table. I got five men and my wife and I've given them permission. You speak in, you see something from afar you see something up close. I've given you permission to call and say you're not all right. And then there's a peripheral, right? There's another 20 or 30 guys that y'all are in that. If you called me and said, I saw you post something, take it down. That's not right. I would trust you've earned that trust with me, right? And so I would say let's talk about it but I trust you guys, man. Y'all are because you don't want ill for me, right? 500,000 followers on Instagram. We let everybody speak in. And so now the cool overcorrection is it's just me bro, you do you. And I just think that's a terrible way to live, man. It's a nonsensical way to do life. You mentioned that we're the loneliest generation and when I think about that we can look at the data and there's definitely growing loneliness and anxiety in everybody but just from personal experience and also from what I've read the two types of people that I see struggling with this are men over let's say middle aged men. We just don't go out and make friends. Men are terrible at this and stay at home moms because they're with kids all day long and they don't go and talk to anybody and what are the strategies? There's a reason why if you get together with the old guys everybody just tells the old football stories over. And when you're around a group of veterans they just get around and they tell the old member wins stories. A couple of my closest buddies on planet earth we were in a high school band together we were going to make it, man. We were incredible. And then we took it into college. When we get together all we talk about is remember that show remember that time you jumped off and think here's the deal, for almost all of us that was the last time we were part of something bigger than ourselves. And then all of a sudden we turned 40 and you had a kid married, you moved away and then Ned Flanders next to me in his loafers and black socks pulling his trash can out to the curb he's like, hey, we didn't do a concert together. We didn't go shoulder to shoulder against that other team in the high school championship together we didn't go to war together and we don't have a plan B for that and so we shut it down. And that's that quiet life of desperation we land the plane in our own living room and our kids learn don't say that because dad gets mad and then suddenly they become responsible for the emotional regulation of the adults in their life, which is not their job don't say that mom gets mad, don't do that man dad's gonna get pissed. And so they learn to make little internal lives of their own and the whole system starts over again with them. Do you think that we find ways to cope or patch it up that are probably not the healthiest for example we did episode I don't know maybe a month or two ago and we talked about video game addiction and oh boy don't make that mistake. Oh we said a lot of things on there that people do that are great. Video games was just one of the points. All the negative hate we got was for video games. Like a lot of guys were like don't touch my video games man. And so what came to mind right away I used to game when I was younger and I gained all the way and played video games until my late 20s and... How did that make you feel that? My older friends let me know and I'm saying that's when I finally woke up and realized okay I do have to kind of grow up a little bit which by the way just me saying that's going to piss off a lot of people. I know. It triggers a lot of people for sure. And you know... I'm gonna get us all in trouble. I'm gonna put it on you. There's this and I get it because like you just said you describe probably all of our lives. I know for sure Justin I can really connect to that and everything together. For sure I was laughing too. Yesterday I was on the phone with an old high school buddy and of course he brings up like football and basketball stories from high school and I'm just like really? We're fucking 40 some years old. We're still talking about this. But that just highlights that and I think that a lot of those guys including myself at one point find other comrades online and then we get together on Call of Duty and we feel like we're accomplishing two zombies together. Go with me here and this is a working theory so it may fall apart. We were talking about it in the car yesterday. I think we don't have a roadmap and this word gets beat to death and I understand that and I understand especially with men they instantly roll their eyes. I get it. We have no roadmap for what entering into a vulnerable relationship with somebody else is and if somebody looks at you and says I'll take a bullet and go first and hit that guy so you can run by me with a ball. Call it what you want. That's a vulnerable relationship. I put my stuff out there so you can get this thing and we can all win, right? Without that roadmap we've created a world where we try to have B without doing A. Here's what it looks like. What's gambling? That's participation without ever getting on the field. I don't have to work out. I don't have to build camaraderie. I don't have to fail. I don't have to hit in the mouth. I don't have to go to the casino and I get just flooded with dopamine without all the other participation. That's video games. Let's don't all get in our cars and get in a room and solve a problem. Let's don't go over to Justin's house and help him with his plumbing. We're going to figure it out. There's going to be stuff everywhere. We're going to have level one, level two. Let's just sit in our house and put our little thing. That's pornography. We're making eye contact. There are sounds. If you're Adam, right? Let's just bypass all that and let's just go straight. We've created this world where we're trying to hack and end around the hard, uncomfortable, complicated thing that is the beautiful hole on the other side of it. It's hack after hack after hack. This is kind of a personal question too but connected to what you're saying. How do I get comfortable with being uncomfortable? How do I get comfortable or develop a relationship with bad feelings where I don't instantly avoid or detach or numb? How would you answer that question if I asked you squatting hurts? But I want to do squats. I know the answer to that. You practice with somebody that you trust. And so my wife and I have had to create a language man which is I'm being vulnerable here or a story I'm making up is and she sent me something hilarious yesterday which was it was like an Instagram meme and somebody texted their spouse and said hope you have a great day and then a few minutes later and I saw the way you tied your shoes this morning and I feel like you're really mad at me. Is that true? She was like sorry that's me. It was a funny exchange I can see my wife head out the door in a certain way and shut the door with a certain vigor and I just start making up stories. Oh she's just going to be mad today after I'm the one working like that I could just say hey story I'm making up you slam the door on the way out I did something and she can say I really had diarrhea and I'm trying to get to it right it can have nothing to do with me but almost never does. But so we've had to decide in our house we we do problems we get naked and we sit across tables it's already awkward so there's no problem we're doing this right you hear some couples will sit on the same side and they'll put the problem on the table I don't care what it is come up with something that says I'm going to practice this I'm going to do squats with no bar first I'm going to do squats with a stick I'm going to hold it then I'm going to move to the bar then I'm going to slowly start adding weight to this thing and that might be the story I'm making up is which turns into a few years ago and I'm still hanging on to this to add some abuse and as a kid I never told you you build yourself up to it and then you get to a place where she's so right or die he's so right or die your bodies are so I don't think there's anything that any one of you all couldn't bring to the other guys and say hey I need to step away for a few months I'm struggling with X and you all didn't know it sorry you'd have to get over the initial why didn't you come to us earlier I feel like you lied to us but then there's the we got your six we'll be here right and let's just practice and practice and practice and I think you only practice by showing up man you've got to keep showing up and showing up and showing up how often do you notice that like a lot of the negative side of anxiety is caused by like the stories you just are creating out of your own mind about situations or events that occurred and you don't really communicate well enough to realize that there's really not a problem that you're creating a problem in your own mind which then perpetuates this sort of anxious feeling I used to think that was the cornerstone was if I can stop making up stories and there's a component to that the more we learn about the nervous system the more I realize I'll make up a story not about my old man but I'll pretend it's him Dad pulls up the driveway and I'm like six and I just know it's smarter for me just to finish what I'm doing and go in my room shut the door it's safer in there or I hear Dad drive up and I'm going to go just be an ass I'm going to say look over here so he doesn't start wailing on mom right your body puts a GPS pin in that in that car driving up the driveway game on that here we go and then you fast forward 30 years and your wife drives up and you find yourself without even thinking I'm just starting to fold up wipe my hands and I head into the bedroom head into the bathroom shut the door pull my phone out and it's still in 12 to 45 minutes that's not a story that's not a story you're not like you're not weak of character you're not weak of morals your body has said not safe I detected it for you even detected it and we're going to head out it's beginning to become aware and that's man you hear the word mindfulness we kind of think of an old dude on a cloud with a beard like sitting like that it's just being curious John I've read this from the neurological standpoint because you mentioned the nervous system it literally circumvents the frontal lobe rational thinking yeah so the part of the brain where I'm aware and I can act out rationally that comes online after the feelings happen your body doesn't want you asking I wonder if that's a really sweet petable tiger you just want you to run man I was taking fight we'll figure out if that's petable later it can't take that risk and so man if your mom and dad weren't safe or y'all have been talking attachments recently which I love if your body attributes attachment A to that relationship that's going to follow you until you get curious and say how come every time my wife somebody I know who loves me how come every time my coworkers show up guys I love and we run with why do I always where does my body start to head south let's stop it there and that's the work man that's the practice to use the squat analogy just because we have listeners right now that that have heard me talk about this or let's talk about this you develop a recruitment pattern and that's your default recruitment pattern and the more fatigued you are the more you're going to rely on that recruitment pattern the more stress you're under the more that that old recruitment patterns come out and the only way to break free of it if it's one that's let's say hurting your knees or your back is to start slow and retrain a brand new recruitment pattern to the point where it becomes your default is that similar to what we're talking about we're trying to get that let's get this cns to react differently it's gonna have to take some time practice and get it to that's it man and and I think I'm not one who blames everything on social media I just don't think the data is bearing that out but you can only scroll through so many times to see David Goggins just be like just cool you're right it's cool to know what the human body can do that's awesome like I'm tired no you're not right that's important sure but it's equally important if you want your kids to want to come home like when they're teenagers if you want to be a safe place for them to land when they get sideways in their life and they're going to get sideways man that works learn how to to re-shift and become a safe house is important man let's get even more tactical to what kind of saw was asking because okay I'm a 40-something-year-old man say I have I don't have any friends other than my call of duty game that I play I reckon I hear you out I recognize that I need to do better about building relationships I'm whether I believe it or not subconsciously I'm terrified to do that I'm terrified like I don't have any desire to go to some nightclub with the music and like do that I don't want to go on some weird website that links me up but I know I have people I have people that I know that I like right let's use you for an example let's say we live in the same town does that look like okay I need to do this so I start really small to the squad analogy and it's like I'm going to call John and see if he just wants to have a cup of coffee with me is that exactly like what are the tactical steps the two the two things I've figured out and guys this isn't this isn't out there's no data on this that I can find this is John Deloni trying to figure out moving to a new state when he's 40 okay and had some rider dies and I'm all by myself right this is me trying to figure it out the two things I tell you to do is go first and the second one is just be weird hmm that's it hey you three guys grab whoever you want to grab grab your kids and come over to my house whatever you got left in the fridge every Monday night we have clean up fridge night at my house you got half bottle wine you got half of a weird casserole that I don't even know like we'll eat if it's not but we're all going to make and I'm not cleaning my house just come over two of y'all won't come and it will be awkward and then maybe the second time a couple of y'all will come and then in a few months like we'll connect you two yahoo is like I mean y'all are cool but like like we'll connect and that's just it's just an organic process that way I think we put so much pressure we're so obsessed with ROI for every second every minute by the way you get into like the alarms ringing we've got calendars in our lives that are so stacked and if you get five minutes off meeting one your your week can't recover and so it does mean I've got to go kind of you know people come in and say hey my heal hurts and then you watch them squat and it's like well that starts in your neck my friend like you are under that bar in a weird way that is compressing this and your body is over correcting here and moving here anxiety is the same way if you owe somebody five hundred thousand dollars in mortgage and cars and your investments that you leveraged here to try to to beat the interest rate gap over here your brain would be failing you if it let you sleep all night because it knows if Sal says one thing and it goes out and this show gets canceled there's no rent there's no food there's no cars it would be failing you right if your marriage is falling apart and you can sit two inches from each other on the couch but your body knows you're two thousand miles away it's gonna sound the alarm till you solve that problem and so again I think we're always trying to solve over here the problems over here yeah I wonder too if it's like like we don't even maybe we don't value it as much as we should right like the like the building the like building that starting that I think culture says you can't I know it's happening to you when you're a kid if you're the wrong color in the wrong place if you feel this you can't I gotta come save you and I and I feel like like so I don't feel like this is something I struggle with but I still think I could be better right I think all of us if if relationship building in real life in person solving problems with other men that are like-minded that I like is that extremely valuable to our health even I can do better I even I can do more of that and I have like I have a buddy who's probably and we are it's a mutual friend of ours probably lives 15 minutes from my house love his wife love his kids he's one of the best human beings I every time I see him I have a good time yet we find excuses of why we're so busy all the time to not connect because of our calendars is that and yet it's so easy to judge and it's like if I really if I really listed out like the things that filled my soul that made me healthy that made me a better dad maybe better husband maybe a better human for sure having relationships with people like that yet somehow I justify you know the lawn being mode or the you know thing I need to read for the podcast episode we're like all these other things somehow still make it above on my list yet I know that what is it here's the bigger picture the greatest gift you can give your kids is not going to every single t-ball game the greatest gift you can give your kids is to be a non-anxious presence in that living room and so if it means skipping a soccer game once a week to go help your neighbor fix his fence and y'all laugh like crazy and he's got cheap beer and pizza and y'all laugh and figure it out and the fence is kind of wonky in certain places and you come home with a smile on your face and that nuclear reactor right here is is down a little bit and your kid comes home how'd it go dad I crushed it it's not an excuse to abandon your kids that's not what I'm saying to end up at like cheers at the bar you're hitting it right on the head right now it's so good we are so obsessed with what are they going to think what are they going to think the greatest gift you can give your kids is you go have friends Cassiopo did all the work man you can look at the loneliness data dude it's brutal it's brutal problem is there's no money to be made off solving for loneliness I'm so glad you said that as a dad all of us are dads in here that's another one of those things that you can easily do like in my head sometimes I think nothing is more important than my wife and my son so like I want to be there if there's free time then that's where I should be it's my family but it's like man I'm doing pretty good as a dad I'm very very present and do a lot of my son you know maybe that's as important or more important for me sometimes be like hey hun like can you handle Max by yourself I'm going to go catch a coffee with Jason because he means a lot to me so that and go spend that time every once in a while or at least once a month right with that person and my son is not going to go where was my dad that one time you know what I'm saying like I missed out on when I'm present all the other times in his life no he'll be he'll open the door and he'll see you with a big smile on your face and you're still and he'll go run at dad right and again it's not at all the time and by the way like some relationships just aren't going to be like two dudes like having coffee it might be I've got my headphones on you got your headphones on let's go let's go lift hey will you help me solve a problem at my house let's go fishing let's go hunting we're not going to talk we're just going to smell bad and sit next to each other and drink coffee like let's go do some stuff so I'm not even saying that that you have to have this little kumbaya spirit no no I get it but you have to I love sitting down talking shop right that's one of my favorite things to do like have you read something that's not for everybody that's fine we just can't say that's not important yeah I mean you know not to go too much on a tangent but this has always been hard for people it's not a new thing I think what's happened is we've eliminated all of the structures and you know just things we've done in culture and society that you know we're done on a weekly basis that always brought us together and I think we might have taken that for granted right we have the whole town you know or the neighborhood goes to church on Sunday or everybody meets here at this particular time to do this thing or the guys after work always have a drink at the bar afterwards and they go home after whatever it's like we've eliminated all these things that we've done culturally for so long probably because we took them for granted didn't realize why we had them and we had them for a reason because it's hard well and I always love to look for when people who have different political ideologies are speaking and they start saying the same thing and so you can take Esther Perrell and Jordan Peterson both talking about we cut all the strings to a common story we cut all the strings to this idea that for all of human history everybody walked outside their tent and they hit the ground on both knees and looked up and said dear god or gods or whatever please reign or my family dies and then 200 years ago we figured out how to ship avocados from Guatemala in the middle of the winter and we figured out how to turn a faucet and water comes out of our homes and we got real arrogant like this is all about me now like I'm the center of my universe right and if you follow all of the psychological theories they're all actualization do this get this use this person for this make sure you've got this and then you can be that shining star in the center of the universe if you go back and read some of the old theories we're here we're self actualized we have everything and the self doesn't hold it can't hold the center it was never designed to hold the universe up so you're talking about a series of practices I think it's deeper than that I think it's a common story a common purpose we're all living for fill in the blank and that's gone and the only thing we have left to live for is us and as David Foster Wallace says you start living for you as a being created to worship you'll worship beauty and you'll never be beautiful enough you'll worship money you'll never have enough you'll worship shiny things it will never be enough shiny things and you can't stop right and so you have to circle back that was the worst chapter to write choose belief you have to decide I'm not the center of the universe and I'm gonna submit to something bigger than me I'm not gonna prescribe it your body is designed to not leave the charge alone it's now starting to really make sense why we're so lonely we have no common purpose yeah because if you look at everything it's almost sound silly at first like we got more money we got more shelter we got so much food safety everything and what's the further the idea that we all today could pull out our magic wand cell phones and the four of us could communicate to a million people right now that's insane evolutionarily that doesn't make any sense but that's not not a substitute that's not we're communicating we're not connecting that's different man that is not I know I'm gonna go in that room and do something hard and Adam's outside and he's got me if I if I don't make it I'm gonna tell you I'm gonna tell you a story my dad told me when I was younger and I didn't get it until I got older and had kids so my dad grew up very very poor in Sicily you know a lot of siblings they lived in like one room you know including the donkey that my grandfather had this is true this is true very poor I was gonna say that was a weird way to talk to about his brother a real donkey when he was real real young but when they got older the cell was born the anointed one and even eventually got older but they still were poor they had like two bedrooms or whatever so it's like all the siblings you know he came to this country and him and you know and my mom built this middle class life for us and there's four kids and we had like we all had our own rooms our own bedrooms and we had a kitchen and we had a laundry room and I remember my dad saying you know I don't like big house it was a massive house it was a normal track home okay but to him it was like a lot and he goes I don't like big houses I don't like everybody having their own room I said what do you mean he goes man when I was a kid we were all together all the time we were with each other we had to learn how to you know who's going to use the bathroom and I got to sleep like this because you're sleeping on the same bed with me and then and he said it just brought us all closer because now I feel like I come home and my my son's up in his room my other kids over there nobody's talking to each other and I remember him pointing that out and I remember thinking you're so silly like what are you talking about this is so much better I don't want to live in one you know one cement room and you know but it makes sense now yeah it won't surprise me in 200 years we look back say the 300 3000 square foot house where everybody's got a room and you take that infant and you put him in a bassinet and you finally get him out of your room so you can get all of your sleep so you can go out and make all of your money and that infant's attachment is spun up all by themselves right and they're solving for that that won't surprise me I think it'd be hard to find causal data now but I think you're right I think you're right do you think we start going back that way do you think we're smart enough creatures that we we start to connect the dots or these are like a happy medium maybe I am a like a pathological optimist when it comes to some of those like here it is it's right in front of us we can solve it yeah I also am like a frustrated realist and usually it's everything falls down right first and four families have to move into that 3000 square foot house and you find out 20 years later that was the best years of our life and I hate that but if you look at type 2 diabetes we kind of have a map if you look at the anxiety and depression literature now countries are quietly starting to say front line is exercise first and then we'll start doing other stuff later let's do that first I think we have a lot of solutions right in front of us they just don't make any money how often is it like anxiety depression, ADD all those how often do you think we diagnose ourselves it's really common it's interesting how often you hear this now I didn't connect these dots till I actually heard someone else speak on this and I thought oh that's interesting you know what now that I think about it I do hear this a lot where we say I have anxiety I have depression I have ADD oh did someone diagnose no I just you automatically jump to this conclusion and you I almost identify with this diagnosis and how one is it as common as I think it is and is it on the rise and then how dangerous is it for you to do that and then how empowering is it for you to almost deny that so the diagnostic manual let's take the DSM right it's the manual that has all the diagnostics in it that manual is designed for a couple of things for researchers to talk to each other we're going to study depression so we're all going to have this common like so we're all apples to apples right if somebody has this much stuff for this period of time and these series of behaviors we're going to call that depression so we can all study it cool and it also became the way that clinicians talk to insurance companies so they could get paid you got to stamp this guy with something and then show me what you're going to do over the next six to twelve weeks and I'll pay you for that right that became that that's the model and then the internet happens and that diagnostic manual gets released to the wild and I can just Google it and then I can say oh I've got this thing you take that on top of a culture that's obsessed with being problem centric hey my name is John I've got bipolar disorder and I've got this and this happened when I was a kid it's so true that's how our culture approaches each other how dare we say hey my name is John and on most days my wife likes me and my kids are healthy because it's like who do you think you are because we live in an age of cynicism and pessimism that's our currency that's the air we breathe and if you have joy and any sort of things are good right now they won't be forever bright now they're good dude oh you must be privileged you must be this you must be we have to come up with a whole narrative for why you're smiling right and the third thing is man Dr. Brewer talks about this eloquently I'm a lot more crude we identify ourselves with those stamps with those labels we're proud of them I have a thing because if I have a thing if you google ADHD I'm pretty sure my picture comes up if you google OCD I'm pretty sure my picture comes up right sorry boss I can't be there at 8.30 I got ADHD like I can't get this thing in on time I got anxiety so I always tell folks it's a context not an excuse man and if I just look at my body acting anxious ADHD kicking up that's my body trying to get my attention that's my body's response to chaos that's my body's response to a lack of safety awesome it's also helps me be hyper focused and be better than anybody at this particular task it also helps me look out over the hill and see some a threat that might become it can be a superpower too if I choose to reframe it that way and because I'm a guy who has pretty gnarly time blindness I get in the shower at 7.58 for an 8 o'clock meeting and then I get out at 8.15 and I'm pissed at the clock just right kept going and then I got a 45 minute drive and I get in it at you know at 9 and I'm so mad that everybody else that they're mad at me that I missed it at the meeting it's up to me to get up an hour earlier that's my job to have three alarms that's that's my work right it's not to say I got this thing guys I can't can't do that anymore man we can do that's a context time blindness because I've seen somebody use as an excuse at work for not showing up it can never be an excuse it can't be an excuse I do struggle my wife you experience time differently I probably if I was honest it's like the cheapest I mean the chiefest form of disrespect in my life and it's a it's a choice to privilege myself and my time over that room of people waiting on me and that makes me a scumbag dude I need to fix that right so I can have all the diagnostics all of this it can't be an excuse I want to ask you something because you just did something right now that I do all the time and I recognize that this could be a problem you just said I'm a scumbag right now and I think that's hilarious I'll tell you if it is but but I do find that that and I find this in health and fitness too where the self shame can actually become a driver in the negative behaviors as well it can actually fuel the fire let's talk about that for a second like because someone may be listening like oh my god that's me holy cow I do that stuff and now I'm aware once you have the awareness of stuff that you do that isn't so great it's I think it's normal and natural be like well that sucks I shouldn't do that but how do we stop the shame spiral that then makes us keep doing it or get worse that's that's a that's a thing I need to work on yeah I mean my counselor's been after me family's been after me the people right into the show and they're like hey we love your show but dude stop saying that you're an idiot like it it kind of debunks and devalues our opinion of you because you're always talking you're not treating yourself like you tell us to treat other people and so yeah it's a default setting it's a well I suck and I just also honestly it's an excuse it's a way to get out of a situation right instead of sitting in that discomfort with my wife I can go I'm the worst I suck I'll figure it out that's easier than saying alright tell me what happened tell me how I made you feel last night that's a harder thing to sit in that so it's easier just it's just an off ramp man it feels like it's or at least for me it was a default because of an insecurity more than anything else right like like I remember I would do the same thing and it was because I felt inferior insecure right I didn't finish college I'm around all these people that are really intelligent so if I say I'm dumb and I can get to the I could beat them to the you're pulling their bullet out of their gun that's right I can't shoot you with it right yeah so I already said it I was notorious for that to me that's like what's that eight mile Eminem does that right yeah so good like I'm all these things and now you can't you can't wrap against me except life's not a rap battle right and well dude you're the one that told me in a private conversation and it was a it has echoed in a haunting way through my life John you cannot hate yourself to getting into better shape that will never work I can't tell myself that I suck towards being a better dad because you know where's that my son will wear that my daughter will wear that because they will be the reason why I feel bad need to fix my that's not their job right I need to say dude I love myself enough to do the things I need to do to give myself peace in this house because I love them that much right and this is an embarrassing thing um that's important to say it out loud all the education all the success all the whatever change the family trio that stuff guys six months ago this this wound is still fresh um the counselor that I work with she's just she's incredible but she said I want you to make a fist and so I did and she said put it in your chest like this and she said say the words I love this guy that's our laughing I was like ahhh and she's like say it I was like nah I ain't caught guys I couldn't say it oh wow it was so bizarre it was a weird like I couldn't even fake it I come on stages for a living and I couldn't like theater my way through it it was like how am I gonna say that and she goes that's it and she goes you can do all this other stuff you can have all these other missions you can do all the body work and in the air all the stuff but your kids know that man doesn't love himself he's unsafe they know that and so it has been a weird in my church growing up my religious tradition said if you love yourself that sin right that's not right my neighbors and I'm saying neighbors our community say if you love yourself that's narcissistic that's nah man that is you deciding I'm gonna take care of myself so that I can repel off you go take care of my family my neighborhood, my community, my country I can only do that if I'm whole over here yeah I had someone tell me with the whole the dad thing that well good dads don't ask themselves if they're good good dads don't look at themselves and try to improve so you know because I had that same issue like I'm not a good dad bad dads don't say that oh they don't ask that question bring more beer you came up with some in the book you of things people can do every day to help them deal with anxiety and the things that cause anxiety or at least the relationships that we have things I didn't prove them can we go down the list of what they are okay so what I try to do is this try to create a roadmap that I could give to my 13 year old hey man here's if you will do these things if you'll brush your teeth and floss you're less likely to have bad breath and if you do have bad breath you probably have a tooth infection and you'll be able to know what that is and you can go to a doctor and get it solved right so that's the idea here for my 13 year old and for my buddies with two PhDs who are trying to achieve their way to peace it's just not coming the first one is you have to choose reality what does that mean we say it altruistically we're in the attention economy that's a bull crap way to say that we are in the distraction look over here economy it's hard to sit in your feelings well Netflix dude they solved that you don't have to do this no more they just start the next show for you and by the way I already know what you watch and I know all the websites you go to I know you better than you do you're going to want to watch this and you're just like alright I'll watch that or all the distractions so choosing reality is really saying here's the starting line to my marathon it's an inventory what's the state of my marriage it's like you tell somebody we can get a blood test we can get a baseline so that we can then figure out where we need to go that's what that is man and that's hard it's terrifying because that means you sit down at the table and you say like I think she's cheating on me I'm sitting at the table and saying my kids can't be in this they keep walking in the front door and slam the door and they go in the room and shut the door and I laugh and I go I was just teens no that means they don't my relationship with my kids I need to figure out what's going on so inventory is hard inventory is scary is it recommended that you do that alone in like yourself or that you involve a partner because sometimes I would think that some people have a hard time even accepting their own reality or doing their own inventory so is it recommended that you use a wife or a husband to support that or it's something you need to learn to do I think it's similar to um I mean you guys all three of you behind closed doors I've asked you questions about exercise I've been working out for 30 plus years but I still need a coach to get going and then y'all gave me a roadmap I used maps in a bollock and y'all gave me a plan and a roadmap and then I have your number I can call you and check in if I need to but for me a guy who knows all about exercise I know about physiology I've been lifting my whole life I started with a coach I started with somebody and so if you have a good marriage that's great some people need a coach some people need a therapist I think you can start on a yellow pad first and your body will let you know like what's the state of your marriage oh yeah I need to have that conversation and if you can say great or not good but we've worked it out before I think it's different for everybody but I think you can never go wrong with an objective third party or second party so that first step is really just like here's what's going on that's it by the way that might be an event the first time you do that if you've never done that before it can be overwhelming you just get dropped in the ocean once you get to shore that becomes a 30 second check in every day how can I love you honey how can I love you today you check your watch and see my heart rate variability is good like I'm ready to rock and roll my heart says don't work out I feel good I'm gonna go for it so over time it becomes like this really quick and when something gets sideways you know it right this is exactly how we communicate fitness the parallels are yeah you do a full assessment a deep dive the first time to figure out all the imbalances and issues and drivers for why you want to be fit you dive into the cycle like you get a full check in and then the diagnostics later on because you know all that stuff is just a quick check in I'm not moving or I'm addressing that you guys have trained people over time especially the more elite of an athlete and they'll tell you there's a weird thing in the side of my knee and you watch them do one squat and you're like move your foot this way or whatever the thing is and so you get really good the further along the more you take inventory the better you get second one we talked about you got choose connection there is no mental or physical or relational health or spiritual health on a platform if you do this by yourself you cannot do this by yourself so you got to have some sort of community some sort of person by the way the data is jarring that the number of people it depends on 50 to 70% depending on what thing you read have no one to call zero I got to take my wife to the ER in the middle of the night I got nobody my wife has no idea that this church anymore my wife has no idea that I'm talking to somebody else that I'm struggling with our marriage and so you can be lonely in a crowded room you can be lonely in a bed you share with somebody you've been married to for 20 years you can be lonely in a lot of places but you have to choose that connection sometimes you got to hire somebody as part of it I think you're familiar with this study they compared being lonely to the health effects of smoking, bulb cigarettes a day how much? it's 15 I think that's become the sound bite I don't think we fully appreciate just how bad smoking is for you causes all death if you look globally lung cancer is the cancer it's just brutal I think attaching it to smoking we don't do anything about it I think saying there's a link between loneliness and stroke and loneliness and heart attack and loneliness in cancer and loneliness in Alzheimer's just go down the list and bigger than those things because that's hard if you don't get that workout in in 25 years you might have a heart attack people are like okay I'll get right on that there's something about I want my son to walk in the door from eighth grade and maybe we're the only ones that he walks in and he looks at me after a rough eighth grade day whatever that even is and he can't wait to tell me about it because I'm a safe landing spot that to me I get all the stuff downstream we'll get there but man I remember when I went to Yellowstone and we were in I think Wyoming right that's one of the states where it goes through I was there with my wife and I was talking with people living there and I was like man what a beautiful state it's so great and they were telling me about the state and they said oh yeah but one of the bad things we have one of the highest suicide rates I said what how could that be it seems so and they said well a lot of people are so spaced out and they connected that to suicide and I said holy cow that's true because if you got people around you they could you know kind of intervene or stop you don't have to say anything they know what's going on so we could see you yeah so you got to choose connection the third one is you have to choose freedom and I don't mean that in like the pew pew pew kind of way earlier when you're walking around in there with your American flag under your zone that's not what I'm talking about it's this idea and it doesn't play well culturally but who runs your life and if a like we said earlier if a mortgage company tells you like you're going to work tomorrow I don't care the state of your marriage I don't care how you feel you will go to work tomorrow because you owe me I don't care like if you're car dealership like you go to work tomorrow man I don't care if your boss is beating you down I don't care if you are under investigation you will go to work because you owe me your body knows they call it the nerd word agency or autonomy your body knows if you're in the backseat of your own life and so if you look at what you owe it's controversial in a weird way because the part of your brain that's designed for rational thinking man if you have an interest rate of 2.9% and I can put that cash in the bank right now and make 5% just in a high yield savings account mathematically it is stupid to pay off my house I'm losing that gap it doesn't make mathematical sense it's dumb and I call it a sleep tax or a soul tax your body knows someone could take our house this isn't mine until it's mine and so for me that 3% that's a simple simple equation right it's not going to make mathematical sense but that amygdala that's spinning you're not safe you're not safe you're not safe you're not safe what about this what about this what about this and if you just put yourself in that in that state of mind I got a co-worker she paid off her and her husband paid off 450 grand in stew loans they lived in one better apartment for 7 years they said we dug this hole we didn't know we dug this hole they lived on air mattress man they went all the way they were like they were all committed dude but this idea that you can't you can't governments got bail you out you can't you're too stupid you're too stupid we got to come bail you it's this idea that you're so incapable to a little god come rescue you right and you can you extend it out one step further like freedom from your calendar we talked about that freedom from an abusive boss freedom from a mother and I'll still tell you what you do every Christmas like whether you can afford it whether your family's exhausted whether this is the year to travel you're coming to Christmas in Nebraska I don't care who you like I gotta go to Nebraska a few years ago my wife and I started in September we send an email out to our families and we say here's what we're gonna do for Christmas and we love it if y'all joined us or we're gonna be in your part of the country on this day if y'all want to do presents that day that's awesome and if it doesn't work for y'all great and it's been such a gift because we don't spend money we don't have to drive to a place we don't want to be and show up pissed off at our family's house and I'm mad that they invited me we just say hey we're not gonna make it this year and there's some tension and some regret and some guilt but man it just adds peace and so it's choosing freedom who is telling you what you're going to do in your own life that next day the next one is choosing we talked about mindfulness and when I think of mindfulness I think of two things man curiosity and awareness I'm about to do this thing I'm not about to do this thing my wife just left those wet towels in the floor we just talked about that yesterday I can just start the story machine up she did that because she just doesn't appreciate me don't respect me that or I can think we just talked about this for her to do that again I can't imagine what happened in this in this house today while I was gone at work I'm gonna pick up those towels and I'm gonna get the dishes too one of those avenues leads to divisiveness and brokenness and stroke and heart attack and one of those leads to peace and empathy I get to pick which story I make up man I get to pick that track and maybe she did do it on purpose this isn't the moment to invent that it's later on that evening when I say hey the story I'm making up is you just left those towels in the floor man just to piss me off and she can be like I did that right we need to talk about that or she'd be like no I'm so sorry the kids were vomiting everywhere and then this happened this happened man what a different way to live right so it's just choosing that I keep reaching for a drink what is it about that or I keep hiding I keep heading straight to the toilet man and just sitting on there pretending I'm taking a dump and I'm just scrolling for hours right why would I rather be in here in a place where my poo poo and pee pee go than out with my kids that doesn't sound right that doesn't feel right and so just being mindful and then health and healing you know that you got to deal with your old traumas you got to get your body in a place where it can operate well otherwise don't try to get your attention and that last one is choose belief man you got to take a knee to something bigger than you that's super unpopular wow when you when you were dealing because you said you know when you were you wrote this book you were doing stuff for yourself through this process how how was that journey doing both at the same time it was it I mean it must have felt very personal but also very cathartic or torturous both yeah so here's the I've talked about this in a few other interviews and I don't beat the story to death but my big dirty secret was I think you and I you may be the first guy told just privately behind closed doors my big dirty secret was here I have this show a mental health guy I've been doing this forever sit with parents and marriages whatever my daughter wouldn't hug me she's four or five and six and at first it was funny it was like her little like gotcha and then all little kids are trying to grab power in their homes and so it became like oh dad wants a hug I can hold that right but then it turned into a thing and then I would find myself I'm embarrassed to say I would find myself crying on the way to work because my wife would give me a hug my son would come up and hug me and I'd hold my son's face and I'd say I love you and I'm so grateful I get to be your dad I need to say thanks dad and he'd be like oh good but I knew and then I'd reach out and hug my daughter and she would do this Barry Sanders move and dive and turn and I'd get in my car and I'd be like yeah go do a mental health and parenting show with the guy that one of your daughter wouldn't hug you and it became a bigger and bigger deal in my house and it was my wife that finally said hey you're always talking about neuroception right this that scanning that your brain is doing 24 7 365 is this safe what if that little girl's body has identified the man who tells her every day that you love her every day that she's brilliant that she's beautiful that she can do anything but if she's identified you is not safe and I was like dude I don't scream I don't hit my kid I can't do any of that stuff it doesn't matter she said John I can feel that nuclear reactor here and that's what sent me to sit down with somebody and say some stuff out loud I'd never said ever a professional right and that led the whoo I'm not living some of this stuff I am I got real busy and I made different kinds of money and I got this big best-selling book all the stuff that I said I wanted and here I am nine months later and I'm super lonely again I'm hanging out with my buddies anymore I'm not calling people back I'm not eating right anymore I'm starting to skip workouts I'm ignoring my wife when I get home because I'm checking Instagram to see how many followers we got that like it just happened and it happened and it happened and a couple of weeks ago I said a sentence it came out of my mouth and I've never said this sentence and it was will you get off me because now I'm like a human jungle gym to them oh wow that's amazing literally nothing changed except I decided to deal with nuclear reactor I sat down with my wife and said hey we have to make a regular practice of connection us and with our friends I have to be intentional about our money I have to be intentional about these other things I have to quit pretending that the world revolves around me it doesn't man I gotta go back and figure out faith again for me what's that look like for our house what's that look like for me what's that look like for you and my body goes oh you're driving again and it happens faster now because I've been doing this for so long right similar if you got a shape you could get back because you know the steps you know the pain you know how to get there but tell you what man having a daughter that now goes off the top ropes when I'm walking upstairs and hangs on real tight it's a it's a it's a different kind of deep breath right and so you can talk about money and talk about success dude I want my daughter to give me a hug when I get home so wild how something that isn't like connected to her per se is what made all the difference it was something you had to fix internally there's nothing really to do with her to change that complete she was the alarm system yeah that's how many dads or and moms have that you know there's some disconnect with the kid or something's going on and they swear it's like this conversation they need to have with the kid or there's something that the kid isn't doing or they're not doing with that and it's like you know there's something inside of you you gotta fix and believe it or not they can they can feel it or sense it well they even consciously know they are well my and my wife this about a year ago she said what if you like you want your kids to like you what if you worked hard at being likeable and I was like stop the crazy right but like what if every interaction with my children wasn't like this life lesson that they have to learn and what if every time my 13 year old did a 13 year old thing I didn't treat him like he was a 35 year old employee of mine but I was like man we can't we're not going fishing until you get that done man like I love you you can listen to your country music and do it we're not going to go what if I didn't lecture my daughter every time she came out and her hair was sideways what if I was just a likeable guy and that doesn't mean I don't hold my kids accountable that doesn't mean that I don't have standards and values that means that I'm going to default to let's play dominos together over a lecture I'm going to default to every interaction is not this ROI it's not an investment in the future net worth of my kids intelligence and morality bro be likeable I got a comment on this because a lot of men listening right now can this is resonating because a lot of us didn't have that kind of relationship with our that's where you have it with your dad and so like I feel awkward with my especially my teenage kids how do I connect with my daughter what are we going to talk about like what do I do I don't know you know whatever and my wife was like just have her put a phone down and you guys just sit there quietly while you're driving she's like that's all you got to do and create space and I swear to God it worked it works just opening the space so I think one of the great curses men think they only have value when they have utility 100% and we only think we have utility when we have all of the answers or the checklist or the right tool in the toolkit and it took me a long time to realize my wife like academically she's way smarter than me she was Dr. Deloni before I was she's published before she's smart she didn't need my answers on how to solve this problem hmm she just wants me she said at the other night and I told her I was like if you had said that sentence 20 years ago I think my life would be different she just said hey I know you want to go to bed can we watch a lame show I need to borrow your nervous system oh wow co-regulate and she curled up next to me like a puppy and leaned in real close there was nothing sexual about it it was just and we watched some stupid show for 30 minutes and she literally got up and was like ah instead of in the past she'd say I almost spent more time with you alright what do we need to do what do we fix and solve this like what's challenging oh your heart rate is messed up alright here's what we're gonna do you need to take this supplement you need to do this dude I just need you I just need you I'm so uncomfortable without having utility not having like a list right our kids are the same way man uh Gabor Matei wrote a book with his child psychiatrist I didn't know existed he was like my favorite writer and I'll the name of the book escapes me but essentially it's this idea that your kids peers are their most important influence that is not evolutionarily the right way that happened when we all left the farms and went to the factories and dumped our kids in a school house and said y'all co-manage each other that's not normal kids are wired internally to want to be connected to the adults that love them and so if your kid is more interested in their kids I mean their friends that's not a normal like that's just the way it happens when their teenagers know man they're filling a gap and so that means I got to learn how to connect with my kid that's my mission and by the way there was no YouTube a few years ago and then they were like hey we should probably learn how to do YouTube and everybody figured it out similarly I don't know how to connect with my ninth grader that's the that's the goal that's the next that's the next mission right it's more important to figure out YouTube right I'm so glad you said that I'm so tired of people telling me how my relationship with my son is going to be when he gets to be a teenager because well how teenagers are and it's like nah I'm not going to create that same story for myself I think that's and it's unfortunate that we've defaulted to that we just oh they're going to be this age he was born yeah that they're going to be a certain way when they get to this age and it's like nah I get to create common common doesn't mean good I mean it's common for people to be unhealthy that doesn't mean it's good and is there literature about how there's a separation yeah but that separation is in autonomy that separation is I have my own thoughts it's not that I'm not anchored into some man who loves me no matter what you know what you said about utility really hits me because I'm like that like I had this huge epiphany with my wife recently where she gets migraines sometimes really really bad terrible migraines so bad that she's you know on the couch covering her head and you're just got ice the whole deal and when that would happen you know give her some meds give her some water and I get up and do all the shit in the house I'm gonna clean I'm gonna clean I'm gonna make sure everything's done so she's a and recently she had a migraine and I just sat with her and did none of those things and she's like that's what I want you to do when I have a migra I don't want you to do all this stuff I'm here trying to be useful and do things I just want you to sit with me while I feel like shit and I'm like well that's really uncomfortable for me what you need okay let's do this and that's where like not to get cheesy that's where my like mindfulness comes in yeah I'm sitting on the couch I have my hand on my wife's bear calf I'm just holding her and I'm watching TV and I'm like I want to do something and I'm like I didn't get my workout in I gotta go I should be curious why why am I so uncomfortable sitting with this woman who said I do like I need to solve that's the problem to solve it's not her it's not the work that's the problem I just figured that out John how how important is it to be comfortable being alone and not distracted this one is really really hard for me yeah there's a big difference between loneliness and solitude solitude is a spiritual practice that's important having a season and again I think it's something to be curious about and I think it's something you practice I was highly uncomfortable being by myself without headphones without noise without some sort of distraction oh man and I think you know I think that's what fishing I think it's what hunting I think it's what lifting is it's solitude and we have to wrap it around an activity which that's fine but finding a way to be by yourself and if you're uncomfortable with that what is it about me I don't like what is it about me I'm so uncomfortable with you know it's funny you just said that so our listeners like I brought this up before but I was watching pumping iron I've seen a billion times okay it's great documentary Arnold's fortunately the whole deal and I've watched so many times that I'll notice things in the background I'll notice that piece of equipment or that guy working out over there and then I noticed something that that I hadn't noticed before this was maybe a couple years ago there was no music playing in the background of the gym so back then they didn't start adding music until later back then you go to the gym and you would hear just weights clanging in people counting reps and I thought oh that's weird that's interesting so I experimented with it with myself first I took my phone away which I'll do that in between sets right oh gotta post something gotta learn this thing for the podcast put that away and then I did it without trying to really listen to music totally different experience I was much more present in the moment without any of the distractions other than the workout and the rest in between sets and I find if I've got like Slayer or old dead brains playing I'm a little more amped and like I get I don't say I get a better pump but like my work out's hard but if I don't have any like and I do it intentionally if I don't have any music playing it's a slower more meditative lift and it's different it doesn't leave me like yeah snap into a slim gym but I walk out having worked out hard and I walked out a little more peaceful as I enter back into the house a what a work in work out work in I didn't invent that by the way Paul checked out of that what we do talk about though all of us share how I think there's tremendous value in like different music for different mindsets going into a lift there's a time to put Slayer on and go rip that bar up off the ground and then there is a time to put Inya on and just meditatively work through your it's an incentive work through it with T-South he does you listen to Avril Lavigne that's different I definitely have but I definitely have different genres for what my body needs I think that's what you just said I don't want the audience to miss that that is so highly intentional and you have done the work to be so in tune with your body and you ask yourself the question what do I need right now most of us don't we are a slave to the calendar we're a slave to what we owe we gotta go what do I need right now what does my family need this holiday season that question that should be the path man and if you get like you sit with a UFC fighter as they're leading up if you know those dudes they're amped but they're super weirdly peaceful strangely peaceful and it's like I'm gonna go get in a fist fight with a guy I'm nervous I'm gonna be on a stage I can get embarrassed I can get hurt but they're not anxious because they put the work in they're in the driver's seat so it's not about hard stuff it's about I'm driving it's not about I'm about to do a crazy hard workout I'm gonna eat a little extra juice today so I'm gonna take this supplement I'm gonna put bad brains on I'm gonna turn up a little too loud it's where my ears are gonna ring because I'm doing this thing today but if it's every day just man over time your body starts to go dude I'm out you're not listening to us have you seen how do I explain okay just for reference to they give me crap all the time so much heavy metal it's even at 6 o'clock in the morning heavy oh you're getting this far I get two different effects from it I can get the amped and I can get the like PR sort of lifting kind of phase with that too but also it's very relaxing for me it very much calms me down it gets me in like a nice focused zone see so he says it really does my guess is that there comes a point you know I was telling you earlier and I don't want to make this a diagnostic thing some decisions as an example but depression and anxiety on the same trend line eventually your body tries to get your attention so much and you're not hearing it it shuts the system off right it shuts it down and you can't get out of bed like we're gonna stay here under these covers and so my guess is making this up and I'm a guy that dude I would listen to it 24-7, 365 too man until I found the Ava brothers and then my life kind of changed a little bit but I wonder if you can you push it so hard so that your body hits the off switch and that's that relaxation and I would wonder is there a way to get to that without having to like I earned the sort of that rest it's not even that you forced the rest instead of instead of working into it yeah you work that your body did that as a reaction to Lamb of God over at 635 in the morning right true story by the way true story he can't eat dairy right now now we're gonna tell him this about metal we need to start crying we need our hosts just rip everything out for me that I love back to the calm and athlete I don't know if you've seen the studies around when they've compared like some of the most like the Steph Curry's the downhill skier like their heart rate in those moments that's the one common thread amongst like all sports in these crazy what we would think like freaked out scariest moments of life their heart rates are like our resting heart rates in the middle of a game in the middle of an NBA game game on the line championship about to shoot a free throw to win the thing that separates those super superstar athletes is their heart rate is like resting so I moments how wild is that well my dad was it doesn't surprise me at all and I I the nerd of me wants to know is that just because Steph Curry's the guy that's in the gym until 4 a.m. taking shots and it's so wrote at that point or is there a another mechanism that he has a thing we don't have that just downshifts my dad was I think we've talked about this before my dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator so if somebody in the city of Houston had a bomb they'd call my old man and he had a mustache he was a little big guy and he would kind of walk out and sit by you and be like hey man what a rough day like he was that guy he talked to you on the phone and he'd come up off a building he'd be that guy but also he was a homicide detective so he walked into situations with brains everywhere and his bodies and all that and so when I started doing crisis work with the police department and I would go in the evenings we just had a cell phone and it would just say 1087 and an address and we show up 1087 was just a police code for a dead body and we show up it could be a four year old it could be a 40 year old it could be a 98 year old right and occasionally if it was a child usually we'd get the heads up it's a kid and there's you got to be there so mom because mom's on her way that kind of thing right and that was my job was to intercept mom before you know I remember leaving a house one night I mean the wildest thing you can imagine and I want to over sensationalize it for your viewers but there was a police officer mom was coming in and the daughter was there and there was the son had passed away and daughter said you will not keep my mom out of this house and the police don't want to arrest somebody in that situation my job would be to meet a mom in the front yard and say you do not want to go in the house you don't want that to be the last picture of your son let's let the last time you talk to your son be the last right so that's the conversation and she said you will not keep my mom out of this house I'm telling you right now she will go to jail it's gonna be a mess and so police officer pulls out a pair of gloves and he hands them to me and he puts his on he goes it's you and me right now buddy and we went into the back and then I met and we took care of that situation so that the medical examiner can get in and get that body that guy out so that when mom showed up it wouldn't be such a explosive situation it was a madhouse but I met mom and everything went and I called my dad the next day and said hey what are you what am I supposed to do if after 20 years of sitting with students who were suicidal or their parents had just died or what they kicked out of college whatever and now I'm doing this stuff too in the evenings what do I do if everything slows down for me in those moments I think that the thing I'm put on earth to do is to get people really bad news in a graceful way and he said be really grateful you found your thing you found your purpose and you make sure you do it real well because you honor people right and so I think all of us will eventually find that thing that time just slows down when I'm in this you know it's that flow state right but time slows down for me in this particular thing and I don't know if it's 20 years of reps or I don't know if it's just Jeanette who knows what it is man I'm sure there's somebody trying to figure that out but I think it might be when I'm sitting with somebody and they are struggling with the lift and they finally get it and it's oh my gosh time's up the session's over right we were already burned through the session I was so lasers in with this person whatever it is I think we all have that yeah I think it's probably a cross section of all that right it's probably something technically some people probably can get into it faster than others it's also probably something you absolutely love to do you lose time in it you know what I'm saying and then you're gifted and you get at it and you've also practiced it in our culture we give we give guys who can make shots we give them bajillions of dollars man and we give those who put on bullet profess we give them dozens of dollars right but I mean I think we put an economic value on it that is is not indicative of the worth or how important it is but John what's your favorite thing about what you do because you know you have a show very popular you talk to people you've written this book what's your favorite thing about all this my favorite thing is I think it's two things one it is painting a picture of providing a model I think most people want to do better most people want to feel better they want to not hurt as much they want to have better parents they want to figure out if it needs to be better whatever that is there's just not a roadmap there's no picture of what that looks like and there's a bunch of dudes on Instagram yelling at them or there's what their dad did or didn't do and that's their map and so I love being able to say here's a picture of something else here's three dudes that are my friends that are as yoked as you can possibly imagine and they're really working hard to be great dads and they're like good guys behind closed doors and they have struggles too it's all of it like there's something about showing that picture which I think is awesome the second thing is I can't think of a higher honor than somebody walking in the sand I don't know what to do next can I tell you the worst thing that just happened to me and not saying oh I know what to tell you but it's here's a grab a nacho and pull up a seat and I'll sit here with you and I think that's my favorite part he's getting in the mud similar to somebody coming in saying I'm tired feeling this way like will you help me in the gym you're like I got you right there's something there's something holy about for sure I want to go back to your open wound not to throw salt on it or anything but I do think that there's a tremendous value potentially there for a lot of parents that have struggled with connecting with their their son or their daughter and thinking it probably is something they're doing they need to do physically with them and it's something they need to work internally can you tell me like like I doubt it was like you went to therapy one time you made that connection then the next day she was all over you was there what was the what was the process like and how did you know like you were on the right track because with her like little baby steps in that direction like tell me how that unfolded so I'll just speak for my daughter when she was really young when she was four or five she was teeny tiny and I'm a big guy and I had muscles and so she don't want to hug me we're hugging right and she would get real stiff and try to fight me and she's a hurricane man so she would be like dad and throw punches I mean she's hilarious when it comes to that when it's four it's cute and funny and it was my wife who one day again I feel like I'm always my wife just like this Yoda character in my life but she was like you know you're just teaching her that regardless of what her body feels that one day some guy who's bigger than her and can physically out muscle her can have his way her body and I was like man that ends right now right and I was like she will know from her old man who respected her right so I was like I ain't doing that so that led to a season of overcorrection right to like oh yeah and I way over corrected way over corrected what I entered into I wish I had a better word for this but I'm begin courting my daughter I'm safe and so what that meant was I'm not gonna chase you when you run we're playing of course we're playing tag of course but like walk in the door and I say hey baby how was today and she walks away I'm not chasing her I'm gonna go sit down and be a dad that's a dad of peace even inside I'm like golly it sucks I'm gonna let her feel I'm a safe presence in this chair I'm reading a book where I'm talking to her mom I'm gonna treat her mom so well and I talked to my wife she's gonna watch how you receive me when I get home and you and I have been together for 25 years quarter of a century we already have it figured out can you be overly demonstrative for the next few months when I come in can you make it a point to give me a hug when I walk in the door can you make it a point to grab my face and say I love you I'm glad you're home because that's gonna teach her that's gonna show a picture for my daughter but it was a season according and then it was when she finally would say dad can I get a piggyback ride I'm so tired yeah I'm gonna make space for this hey can I read you a book tonight no mom's gonna do it can I read you a book tonight no I keep showing up and showing up too many adults let their kids hurt their feelings my kids don't have permission to do that I haven't given them access to my feelings they I don't want them to feel that responsibility that if I say this thing dad gets XYZ so I worked really hard and I let my daughter hurt my feelings she's a seven year old little girl I want to teach her that that's okay and that comes at a cost that means dad is gonna say okay and I'm gonna leave and she's gonna begin to feel that gap and so it was everything just keep showing up keep showing up keep showing up keep courting keep being a safe place hey I'd love for you to go to breakfast for me in the morning no dad I gotta be on school I'll take you alright dad and we make that not a alright one of the five things you're gonna do today but a I'm just gonna bring a coloring book and let's both color I don't know if you talk that much and then 15 minutes into coloring it's like dad there's this boy and now we're off to the races right but it's a it's a very anti-john program because I want like what's maps in a ball like how many squats what's the order and how much time and have you heard Slayer's new record let's do this it's the opposite of everything I know so did it feel like painfully slow as you were going through it or and or did you have this moment like literally like you like oh my god we've we've broke through or we've made progress or you're celebrating I'll tell you how my buddy Trevor explained it so the first time this is back in 2012 when my buddy who's a doctor said I think your alarm systems are so jacked up you've ignored them for so long they gotta be recalibrated you need some medicine for a season and I did I was crying at my kitchen table I failed my family what a loser am I taking meds that whole thing and I called my buddy who had taken them and he said dude you think you're gonna wake up tomorrow and just be not depressed like yeah that's not how that works he tore his bicep when he was lifting and it rolled up on him and he went and got it surgically reattached and had to go through all that painful everything and he worked in a print shop as a salesman and he said he went back to the shop like nine months later back to the back and a box started to fall and he reached up and grabbed it and he said I grabbed it it didn't hurt and he's like I didn't realize all the therapy all the stuff and all of a sudden then it presented itself and so for me I didn't it was so the steps were so minuscule I didn't realize until I was like will you get off me and then I thought I said get off me that means that she's on me so much that I'm like golly right and so it was this it was a moment that I realized oh look how far we'd come but I think if we over I think we over measure man I think we over obsess we don't look at trend lines we look at the what's the market do today what's it doing this minute let's look what has done the last year what's it in the last month what's it in the last hundred years let's give ourselves a picture of what that looks like you can see a lot more with a trend you can with this obsession it's a long game yeah John it's always awesome I always feel like I get so much out of talking with you just from these podcasts and before and after so I really appreciate you coming here man thank you guys yeah and I everybody's got to get your book it's so so valuable everything you talk about I think is so valuable to everybody who's listening right now so important right now we're so important let me say this and y'all are going to edit this out so please don't it's important for people who listen especially in an age where there's such a gap between who people are behind closed doors and who they are like with their song and dance routine like thank y'all for being guys that I call and say can you help right thank you for being guys that like I see something funny and I first person I think of is Justin like there's of all the people I know in the world he'll think this is funny because he likes this and this and this and I do too thank y'all for being guys that are who you say you are behind closed doors and in this world y'all know how rare that is and so for your listeners it's important to know that these guys where they say they are so thank y'all for that it means the world to me I appreciate that huge compliment thanks for your hospitality