How To Build a NON-ANXIOUS Life - Dr. John Delony

if you owe somebody money if Toyota Motor Company is telling you what you're going to do tomorrow or your mortgage company is going to tell you what you do tomorrow your body would be failing you if it let you sleep deeply it would be failing you if it lets you focus on sex and reproduction it would be failing you if it did anything other than screamed at you to say hey if you say one wrong thing at work or put one wrong thing on Twitter and you get fired you lose your home you lose your car you lose your food and your family goes and so we if you you can literally lay the U.S both Collective and individual debt loads and it Maps right on top of the trend line for anxiety and depression in this country yeah all right John welcome to the man talk show how are you doing today I'm Greg Connor thanks for thanks for having me on man yeah well thanks for being here I like I said I've seen a bunch of your content over the last year or two and really loved what you've been putting out and the conversations that you have and uh I know you've been sort of you've been around for a while you know you've been you've been in this game uh for quite a long time supporting people and helping people and so I'm I'm very excited to get into your work and uh you know your latest piece of work which is building a non-anxious life which I think is very timely for a lot of people because there's a lot of anxiety there's a lot of social anxiety there's a lot of existential anxiety there's a lot of individual relational you know health anxiety there's a lot of there's just a lot of anxiousness I think that's floating around so but before we dive into all of that um tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today I it's just such a good question go a hundred different directions here's the one that um just popped into mind um I was a loud mouth Brash idiot growing up like I followed Pantera around and um I had a bunch of friends who had were missing multiple screws and so I was very good at getting a group riled up and then slowly stepping back where my buddies would get into these shenanigan brawls and that was just like kind of my thing I all started and then these tough guys and then we'd all talk about like yeah yeah and um I spent my my teenage years in various mosh pits of punk bands and metal anywhere I could find a mosh pit that was going to go well it was when I got my first big boy job after college I was the dean of students at a small University and I had this moment where my somebody said something to my wife was we were coming out of an event and I remember thinking what are you actually gonna do because there's always that voice in the back like you're kind of a Wimpy skinny Punky loudmouth idiot and so I picked up a phone book and I we just went down the phone book if you if you don't know what a phone book is for you younger folks it's when they used to print off parts of the internet and just drop them on your front porch and so I went through the phone book and found fight gym and this is before MMA was a thing and um I just went to this local kickboxing wrestling Jiu Jitsu gym and they were one of the first in that area and it was between um Albuquerque New Mexico and Dallas which if you know anything about MMA that's kind of like the birthplace like Ken Shamrock and all these in Jon Jones all those gyms were going back and forth and so um I just walk in and it was three o'clock in the afternoon I knocked off work and this uh 26 year old male nurse named Mateo was this it was I outweighed him by about 80 pounds and I was about a foot taller than him he was so lovely and so sweet Connor he beat me sideways yeah I mean it was just a work over and then the coach came out and was like hey uh actual practice starts at 8pm tonight hope to see you back and I went home and then dude I went back and that was a defining moment was I loved the competition part of it but I also loved the I want to go back and figure this out and then I just fell in love with the whole thing but that gave me as I entered into grad school and kept going into doing harder and harder and Wilder things with my professional career my personal life that was the moment are you going to go back after just getting worked I mean I had everything proven to me which was you're not very good at fighting and you can't really do anything to protect your family you're just kind of that guy that talks a lot and it was that moment of I'm gonna go back and I I didn't stop going for years and it was a it was a good confidence boost so that was one of those before and after moments for me I love that I love that and uh it is interesting because when you started talking about the story I was like oh we've got a lot in common like I I wasn't a Pantera kid but I was definitely like Metallica Green Day Slayer you know uh and uh System of a Down you know all sort of like in that vein but you know it's interesting because do you think that there's something within most men that we at some point in our lives need to test our physical capacities I think Jordan Peterson has talked about this you know love them or hate them you know love and hate the rest you know wherever you stand on the Jordan Peterson Field he he said something around you know all men should know that they're capable of being dangerous you know some iteration of that and I found that for a lot of young guys there's this pull towards that like I got to know a lot of bar fights growing up I was a hockey player you know I was definitely you were the guy that started the fights I was the guy that like got into the fight you know and then like you know beat the crap out of people and that was just something that that we did especially growing up in Northern Alberta is like part of the culture you just you got drunk you got in a bar fights you drove your car through Farmers Fields right like that was that was pretty much that was pretty much it but what do you think it is about men or young men that were pulled in that direction and what do you think is the value of learning to use your body in that type of way I I let's back out um I live out in the woods in Nashville and the other morning my son and I just watched a mom a mother dear a doe walkout with two little deer and the deer didn't know where my son and I were sitting on my front porch just watching them and those deer started running around they were sprinting like maniacally as though they had had 500 milligrams of caffeine they were just they were bamming into each other and jumping up and down and there's this whole and you watch any videos on Bears all animals have this play that involves crashing into each other and at some level testing feeling um it's it's a kinetic response and so I think it gets over masculinated if you will and then ends up with those guys just get drunk in bars and then drive out in Farmers Fields I think there's a whole there's a whole gap between that we've just sucked out um that kinetic hitting into each other and testing each other and play in fun and bamming and bamming is the word I keep coming to mind here and we especially with little boys little girls too we tell them to sit in a chair for eight hours and if you can't do that you're somehow dysfunctional you're broken there's something wrong with you and um I think that's insane I think that's a Madness and then you move all the way up the up you know age-wise yeah man I think it's important to know um I think it's wired into us and only in the last few hundred years have we been able to think our way into positions of power right and we've been able to philosophize our way into um different hierarchical structures but I think woven into US is can you go get food for your family can you um stand shoulder to shoulder with a group of other men and protect your family from in your tribe from whoever's coming over the hill I think that's just wired into US man and I think it's um silly of us it's just nonsensical it's like pretending math isn't real it's nonsensical to just try to erase that with with a strongly worded letter or a couple of good Journal articles in academic journals that no one's going to read um I think the better ideas um how do you channel that where do you point that and where where does society create Avenues for the um useful Indulgence in that yeah I like the way you frame that and yeah my how old's your son he's 13. yeah so mine's two and a half and it's interesting to watch my two and a half year old boy go through that uh right now right like coming into his body jumping off the couch jumping off the couch to like you know Hulk Hogan on to me you know sort of testing his his physicality in that way but there is something you know I haven't raised him to do that that's just something that he started to do and to express and I do think I like the way that you framed it in terms of like the kinetic part of us wants to sort of bump up against you know other people and test boundaries and test edges and it is kind of insane or Insanity making to put you know kids into a chair for eight hours a day and expect them to just sit still and only use their brain and and it's almost like we we teach kids to disconnect from their bodies and and if you if you go back to the definition of trauma that's the definition of trauma is you disconnect from yourself and we do that systematically in order for the sake of order and predictability which are in and of themselves good things but man they cause chaos in the I mean in in a in a total feedback loop um and if you there's there's just reams of data on the importance of roughhouse play with dads and their kids yeah um just for that very reason and that's daughters too my daughter's a human hurricane man she's she's seven and dude it is like wrestling with a weed eater man but it's so good for both of us yeah I love that we have hey we have I have a roll out gym I mean a an Olympic rollout mat in my living room my wife is the most patient woman in the world and but it's one of those things like my daughter will just say are you ready for some of this Dad and I'll be like bring it and she'll go roll the mat out litter have a I have a role a mat in my in my living room and it's it's just so good for us that's awesome I've just gotten into the habit of like moving the coffee table out of the way and then we've got this big pillowy couch and we so we take all the pillows off and throw them on the floor and that becomes our little Arena yeah my son will just go wild on it but I wanna the reason why I'm going down this path is because I've always and I don't know if there's data to back this up or or if it's just sort of an inclination but I've always had this sort of inclination that part of the reason why specifically and I'm going to stick to men here but we can broaden it out to just people but part of the reason why men are starting to become more and more anxious in in some ways is because they're so disconnected from their physical form and what their bodies are capable of or even having some type of relationship with their body outside of okay my body drives me to work and then I sit at my desk and then I go home and then I eat and then I watch Netflix you know I think I think that part of this anxiety that's starting to brew up in a lot of people is that there's this disconnection from physical form in such a huge way and so I want to start to go down this path of and and again I'm gonna I'm gonna mostly pull us towards men but I you broaden it out to just people in general wherever necessary do you feel like there's a correlation between this disconnection with our bodies and our physical forms in this sedentary life and the escalation and anxiety that seems to be so prevalent within our culture I think there's one thousand percent yes um I for for your listeners who don't know I spent 20 years in higher ed I'm a nerd um as a researcher and a professor and as a dean of students just I'm just a dork of nerds nerd of nerds as my friends call me um and I think a lot of it started there with the specialization and you go to it one building for mental health and you go to literally another building for physical health and you go to another campus for medical health and you go to another campus for theological health and you go so I think um and then you go to the Campus Center for human interaction right and so we've created all these artificial bifurcations that aren't real and I one million percent agree with what you just said um we've we've told a generation of person that good mental and emotional health is getting all the thoughts in the right order and sit and talk and sit and talk and sit and talk and sit and talk and if you can't sit and talk Dope Up and there's a place for sitting and talking absolutely and there's a place for what a Exquisite sliver of History we live in where there's there's such powerful medications for certain things both those are great but man it doesn't get at the root which is we've designed a civilization that our bodies are not designed to live in and we're we're we're we've created a civilization our bodies aren't designed to live in and so we're mad at our bodies for being anxious and we're mad at our bodies we're being worried and frustrated and that's just Madness it's like that's like getting mad at the smoke alarm in your house for going off it's you want it there and if we look back at our bodies like not being frustrated with them about all the anxiety and all the worry and all the depression instead of saying what is our body trying to tell us in this moment right now that we have created chaos and um we're not designed for it and we need to solve for the root problems here um yeah I I think that's a great way to put it and it's it's interesting the smoke alarm analogy it's like now I gotta chuckle out of that because I feel like my smoke alarms just go off you know like when I'm cooking steak and in not once where there's an actual fire but yet I know that having them there is imperative you know like having them there is so important and it seems like that's a good analogy for what happens in our body in the sense that oftentimes the alarms are going off in our body for reasons that we don't even know about or you know that don't even make sense to us so let's just go let's let's follow that that analogy all the way down um I have a um and there's just reams of data on this too I am a sensitive guy and not in a pejorative way but my my smoke alarm if you will my anxiety alarms are very very sensitive they go off when there's the hot water is too hot right and there's steam in the in the house and there it goes off when you're cooking eggs in the morning my wife I mean the house has to be caving in on itself and she's like we should probably get out of here right so her calibration is different the the the work both of us have to do on either side of that barbell is not to go up and pull the batteries out and just or smash it with a hammer and say oh that thing's you can't make any more noise I have to know hey your alarms go off quicker than others so what do I have to do up River whether that's exercise that's moving my body whether that's making sure I got a group of men I'm I'm regularly in touch with whatever that happens to be so that I can clearly hear those alarms and when you're cooking steak you just know how that's that's the steak you don't instantly go fire everybody out because you know right and my wife has to know I don't tend to feel that until maybe the Tipping Point has already passed and so what I need to I need to be extra alert for when those things might start chirping at me right and so I think all of us the work is figuring out what our alarms do and what they don't do and then making our adjustments and our individual lives Upstream so for you anxiety I'm going to give you a two-pronged question one is just can you you know because there's a lot of talk about anxiety nowadays and I just I like to just sort of get your individual take on how would you define anxiety what is it and then secondly what are some of the in your experience in working with people what are some of the biggest quote-unquote causes that are feeding into people's anxiousness so anxiety just cut and dries simply an alarm for your that your body sets off generally speaking now you can have some brain lesions and and epilepsy and things like that but on the whole your brain is sounding an alarm that's telling you that you're not safe or that it has identified a scenario a situation or an environment that you're not safe it can also set off when it finds you that you're alone we're like we are wired in to be in a tribe and 250 years ago if you'd found yourselves on the Northern New York Plains in the woods and your tribe had left you you are probably going to die you're going to die of exposure you're gonna get eaten by something you're gonna run out of water so our bodies will sound every alarm we have when it notifies it then we were identified as a loan and our alarms will ring when we lose autonomy or freedom in our life when somebody else is deciding what we do and we think instantly of that that um just jerk boss right we are that guy that just you're gonna be here and answer my emails within 15 minutes we think of that some deeper levels that we don't think about is if you owe somebody money if Toyota Motor Company is telling you what you're going to do tomorrow or your mortgage company is going to tell you what you do tomorrow your body would be failing you if it let you sleep deeply it would be failing you if it lets you focus on sex and reproduction it would be failing you if it did anything other than screamed at you to say hey if you say one wrong thing at work or put one wrong thing on Twitter and you get fired you lose your home you lose your car you lose your food and your family goes and so we if you you can literally lay the U.S both Collective and individual debt loads and it Maps right on top of the trend line for anxiety and depression in this country in that system we don't think about right and it's just become so um unintentional of course you go get a car loan of course you go take out a 30-year mortgage um but your brain is designed to keep you safe it doesn't care about how good a deal you got um if you go even further our calendars are so chaotic and if you miss one if you're two minutes late to one thing at 8 A.M the whole week is shot um our our little league coaches are telling us you know our son's Little League coaches are telling us what we're going to do for the next seven years of Saturdays and Sundays and where thousands of dollars go somebody else is running our life in so many different areas and when your body knows you are not driving your own car you're in the back seat of your own life it will sound the alarms for you so um really I like Wendy Suzuki she's a professor up there at NYU she calls anxiety friend right she says it's it's good um I don't if it is if it's my friend I've been doubled over so if it's a friend it's not like a person I want to hang out with a lot but if I reframe anxiety as when I start feeling anxious or burned out or worry um and by the way there's a clinical anxiety I think I I just got kind of done with that it's become a colloquialism in our culture and just refers to any sort of discomfort but do you want to feel anxious if I can just stop for just a second to be curious like what's my body trying to tell me oh me and my wife need to sit down right now well my kids don't want to be in the same room as me what's happening in my life um man now you're talking about anxiety's a pretty good um indicator on your dashboard and that's it man that's it I don't want to over dramatize that's what it is no it's that's perfect you know I think as you were talking about the the debt and overlaying that on anxieties and depression I mean I think this this calendar year was the first year that the United States citizens credit card debt top to one trillion dollars right so Americans now have over a trillion dollars in credit card debt and I mean listen I I get it like I remember being in debt where my credit card was just maxed out they just kept raising the limit on it and it was just maxed out and maxed out and maxed out and I always had you know sort of like 250 to 500 little tiny breathing room right kind of like just sipping air like you're in water and the the room's filling up or you're just kind of sipping air from the top of the room you know it's like living like that is very stress inducing and anxiety-inducing I'm curious to get your take on with the cultural shifts that we've seen so the societal shifts that we've seen over the last few decades do you think that men and women have different uh different avenues that cause them anxiety like do you think that men have different things that are causing them to be anxious in their life yeah I mean I I think um I think it's all gonna it's all gonna distill down to some sort of identification of a lack of safety but I think that's gonna manifest differently right um my wife has notoriously we go into some place and I start chit chatting with somebody and she'll say she'll grab my arm so we need to go right now and when we were first together I'd be like you're come on we're having fun that guy's just being loud a hundred percent of the time she said we need to go it ended up being an issue something popped up and so now after being with her for a quarter of a century when she says hey we need to go I I don't even like I smile and I grab my stuff and I say hey guys I'll see y'all later and we leave and I don't even need an explanation anymore I don't uh it's right so she has an innate sense that hey there's something about to set off um I think in men there is a an innate where is our tribe and shame we're not enough and when our body begins to feel like we're not enough we're going to be on the outside of this thing um we either have to band together with a group of people which currently in this ecosystem is who we all hate together not what we're all constructively doing together but who are we all against which is such a naval gazing way to burn your own house to the ground um and you start looking for not ways you can go solve problems but people you can point at and it feels like you're doing a thing with a with a try but it is just a nasty gnarly like Cut Rate substitute for actual shoulder to shoulder we're solving this thing we're going to get food we are going to build right it's much easier to burn to the ground and um I think that's the difference I mean you see that over you've seen that for Generations in the Middle East right instead of seeing a tall tower and saying hey I can build that too it's you see a tall tower and I mean you're not gonna have a taller Tower than me let's knock it down and I think um we're we are on a bullet train towards that cultural attitude to kind of roll it over on us too um I call it Titanic syndrome remember when the you may be too young when the movie Titanic came out I don't care who you are it was the it was the most extraordinary spectacle ever I cried I cried twice when I saw it in the theater one of those times I went by myself Connor that's how that's how mainly I am to admit that out loud and everyone I'm I went everyone I went with the toughest biggest like everybody was like caught up in that spectacle and then once it became such a spectacle everyone's like oh that movie sucks and it was it was it became the most important thing to tear it down right and does it hold up over time I mean not great but it was it was what it was and we just aren't so uncomfortable with saying something's good but yes I think ultimately men and women they can their bodies can detect different sorts of threats and depending on where they happen to be um but I do think it's asking yourself what what's my body trying to get my attention for yeah it seems like the the cultural war that seems to be happening I mean one it's just it's so easy to get caught up in you know because there's something there's there's something almost intoxicating about the the route that happens online and on social media and it's so easy to have your nervous system be hijacked like I've I've been I've been saying on my show for a while like the the people who are the most successful in the next like 10 to 20 years are going to be people who are able to regulate their nervous system underneath duress you know when they're stress and duress online and offline because so many people uh have become so easily hijacked by the the narratives of social media and getting in the culture wars and getting to political Wars and yeah I mean it's it's almost like it gives us this illusion that we're a part of something I like the way you said that which I think ties into one of the things that I was going to bring up which is that it seems like on average not this isn't like the rule across the board but on average I would say that men are just generally loan than women and one of the things that you were indicating is that loneliness is a pretty solid predictor of anxiousness and so I would love it I would go as far to say it's causal and as a as a science nerd it's you got to be careful whenever anytime you say this equals that I'm I'm 100 confident in the causality if your body identifies you're alone and and by the way um so we've got these phones I can text my wife a thousand times today I love you I'm so grateful for you and what I'm doing is I'm giving her data I'm giving her zeros and ones what um and you've heard the statement and it's it's any number of Statistics I've I've tried to track this the actual study done I can't find it but 70 to 90 of communication is non-verbal we just sucked that out and I tell her I love her I love her and then I walk in that day I need to tell you I love you I've told you a hundred times today I go get my drink I sit down on the on the couch I throw my feet up I turn the TV on and her body says not safe her body says that guy's avoiding us um she misses the eye crinkles in the Embrace and the seeing my shoulders drop and exhale because my home is warm and I can't wait to see her and I've missed her all day doing stupid spreadsheets at work whatever the thing is and so we substitute um communication transmission for actual connection for friendship for actually solving a problem the most beautiful way I've ever seen this done is there was a group of guys um back in Texas when I lived there years ago and here's what they did um once a month they all got together on Saturdays and here was the rule um you had to bring your kids and you had to bring something to like eat or something or something to drink right so there's always just pizza and beer and cereal I mean it's just nonsense but they every at two o'clock whoever was left everybody put their name in a hat and draw it and then 30 days later um you sent out whatever you wanted done and a whole herd of people would show up to your house and like electrical work when you change the bumper out I need someone to paint the bathroom I need someone I need four guys to move six yards of sand over here and over the course of about a year everybody learned how to kind of do a little bit of electric work and everyone kind of learned how to level a yard and we all laughed and our kids all got to see us have friends and our kids all got to see their dads working hard but it was this sense of we're gonna solve a thing we're gonna accomplish a thing and we so we saved thousand tens of thousand dollars in labor costs we all learned some stuff we all laughed really hard some guys got terrible paint jobs in their house right I'm sure they had to hire back out but it was this sense of we're going to stand shoulder shoulder for something um and that's to take care of so that's just one example of man I I think if men and I even I even heard this recently that and I'm still letting it roll around that over the last 25 to 50 years the male obsession with sex and what kind of sex and how how like increasingly um erotic and um alive we have to is a proxy for a lack of connectivity in our day-to-day lives you take men over thousands and thousands of years millions of years who dug holes together and went hunting together all that's off the table now I sit in a cube next to somebody with my headphones on my body needs that connection and so all that gets dumped on my romantic partner at home I was on my wife and that she's got a she has to make all that aliveness that's on her right um and so I I don't know there's any data back that up but it sure said it sure rang true to me well I would imagine that that's a hard one to try and and put some research around but I would I would agree with you a hundred percent you know I think I've seen that in a lot of men where you know they come out to a weekend or they come to do some work with us and a lot of the challenges that they're facing is that their their relationship right because it's always it's almost always like there's something going on in my relationship I don't know how to deal with it it's in a crisis point you know what do I do from here and when I start to dig in almost always part of the issue is that there's no one outside of the relationship supporting the individuals in the relationship and they can't carry that much we're not designed to carry that much no I can't carry it's terrible I can't be a co-earner and a co-worker and a co-partner and smoke show hot 24 7 and your therapist and your Roofing buddy I can't nobody can do all of those things right uh it's in in your poet and also your you know your Finance Co it's it's Madness what we've done I think you'd make a good poet John I think you'd probably your wife has probably got some good poems from you gee my wife actually gets up every morning and writes poetry and I do not I do not yeah but I think I think that's one of the big pieces so can you I know this is maybe a little bit away from what we're talking about but can you maybe point to some of the things because you've talked to a lot of people can you maybe just point to some of the things that you that you believe are pulling male friendships apart specifically pulling men into more um atomized you know sort of Lone Wolf experiences I mean if I just walk it back my great grand I mean not my great my granddad David deloney was a World War II vet he fought Nazis shoulder to shoulder and then he came home with all that trauma and sat in his recliner and put up a newspaper there was no groups to go talk there was no veterans groups to go hey let's go hang out there was maybe the rally or whatever but that wasn't his jam and so he got involved in a local church in a very uh managerial kind of way not in a relational kind of way and he sat behind a newspaper he had three boys and his daughter and they're all savants they're all brilliant and they all saw you do Life by yourself you do Life by yourself and you go get what you can get he also grew up in the Great Depression so he straightened Nails because he had to right they had a big coffee can full of string I remember that as a kid like what is this and it's just wired in so my parents generation got the very clear message you are on your own and go get what you can get is whenever you can get it and they just happened to create this dope little thing called the credit card at the time and so there was it just became unlimited there was no there was no breaks and so I think where I sit and the men Bel like you know 15 20 years younger than me said is we have no models we have no mental map of dads who had friends who go hang out and even I think about this um I've become pretty pathological about it like anytime somebody we watch the fights every time we go do things together but my son doesn't see that he doesn't know that he just knows dad's not here and so I've had to find very intentional ways um my friends I'm notorious for if you invite me my son's coming unless it's gonna be we're out till midnight being stupid or we're going to some Dave Chappelle Show it's probably not kid friendly right but other than that like if we if you invite me hunting my son's coming you invite me fishing my son's coming my daughter's coming with us um and they need to see their dad having friends and so I think we've landed where we have no picture of that we don't even have buddy comedies anymore I mean remember like there's no Die Hard movies where guys are doing this thing like um or there's no what was like bad boys or those movies don't exist anymore they don't even make them anymore um and so we have no picture for what it looks like we do have a lot of Lone wolves and then you hand somebody a cell phone and Andrew Tate comes up on the thing and says follow me and you're Off to the Races or whoever the demigod of the day is follow me and I remember dude I um my dad was a homicide detective in a SWAT hostage negotiator he was a bad dude um and so I heard the stories and I saw him but I didn't see all the camaraderie because I was a kid right I didn't wasn't going out with him and so I didn't see all him shoulder to shoulder with all these guys making hard calls and then him going out and doing the thing um and then halfway through my childhood he quit and became a pastor at a local church at a giant Church there in Houston and so I got this toggle of my old man but I was desperate for somebody to look at me and say you've got power and strength too and that was just there was no there was no um it wasn't part of the culture Pantera gave me that and I remember shaved head Phil Anselmo standing on a stage screaming his head off and saying you can get up and go do it right and I I I really believed in the old punk rock message back in the 80s and 90s was the systems against you go get them you know what I mean like they were 20 years ahead of where we are right now and um that I bought it I bought it full full sale because I didn't have another picture right I had this awesome picture of this badass dad but I did not have a you can too right and so I think men are desperate for somebody especially in proximity to put their arm around them and say you you can and you have value and I expect more of you and not only that I'm going to give you a road map too and I think you either get all these road maps with no expectation accountability or you just get people screaming at you you do it do it um and we can't all go out and run 200 miles like David Goggins on a on a Saturday right and so there has to be an in-between which is mentorship and connection and friendship and bring your son along even though you're going to shoot less deer and catch less fish even though you're bowling league is going to suffer because your kids 13 is going to throw in the gutter every time you're playing a 30-year game and and um so I yeah I think there's no road maps there's no models for this and then um it's going to take a group a generation of men putting their arms around younger men and saying come with me I you know there's a lot in in what you're saying because I think it almost sounds maybe to some listeners it almost sounds like too simple you know and and I think and I think that that's the that's the catch like what I'll say is I had this moment with my son yesterday actually where uh I'm I'm like you he's two and a half but whenever I have the opportunity to have him do anything with me he will come and do it with me even though he just you know like I took him to go wash the car the other day you know at the wand wash like he doesn't understand what the hell is going on but he's just so freaking excited to get to help me and so yesterday I had this moment where um I packed up all the garbage he helped me take all the garbage and all the cardboard and we have this long driveway and the stuff's all you know at the end and so we pack it up into the car and then we drive it all the way down the driveway and then down the road where the garbage bins are and I had this moment where I pulled I I pulled up to the garbage I threw everything out he helped me throw everything in the garbage bins he's so excited he goes back and he opens the door gets back in the car and we drive back to the house and as we're coming back up the driveway I started to cry I started to get really emotional it could make me emotional right now as I'm talking about it and I realized that those were the things that I missed out on as a kid yeah you know those were the moments that I was like dying for as a young boy and it's it hasn't been until I've had my own son where I've actually realized like oh that's the loneliness that's lived inside of me you know that's the thing that I've been battling for so long it's just this kind of vacancy that's lived in me that I kind of knew was there but didn't really know how to identify and it's been in these moments of having my son and bring him along and having all these different experiences where I've been like oh that's it that's the thing that I was craving for and and I think that that's you know I'm fortunate in the last you know decade that I've really prioritized building out exceptional relationships with the men in my life um but I didn't have that before and I think it's part of the reason why why I bottomed out and so I I want to I want to double click on that like please as you're talking I kept thinking one sentence this is fatherhood it is not the big spectacle in the big like let's go on a camping trip with a sword I'm gonna Knight you that that that moment's good and important and fun right but like um my buddy Lane Norton he's the you know late weight lifter extraordinaire and uh Pro T probably the smartest guy on protein on planet he always is laughing because I'll text him hey what about this what about this hey call me real quick I need to ask you this and he's like dude you are majoring in the minors and you are tripping over 100 bills to go pick up pennies we like what you just described as fatherhood and there's a little nine-year-old boy inside of Connor asking what was so wrong with me that you wouldn't even take me to take the trash out what was so wrong with me that you won't even take me to like help your buddy move his boat that fell off the thing like and that question haunts us right what was so bad about me that my dad wouldn't even fill in the blank and I think it's um you mentioned it um I've had some great conversations behind closed doors with some of the best neuroscientists some of the smartest guys on planet and we've gone round and round a little bit but I think we have over over over intellectualized and over dramatized and as I've traveled the country over the last three years completely away from scientists and just sitting with guys who own gas stations and small business owners and single moms and truck drivers there's a desperation can you help me right now and it's like yes turn your phone off and call a friend over and get whatever crappy casserole you have left and you all eat that together that's how you turn this whole ship around and you can go down listen to all the nonsense you gotta have this app or this thing or this whatever AI is gonna get to know your freaking neighbors it's not hard I mean hold on getting to know your neighbors is excruciating but intellectually this isn't this isn't hard it's not hard um it's just really difficult it's hard just to eat less than you burn and to lift weights three to five times a week and then uh do some cardio it's hard to tell your wife that you love her and hold her hands in your face it's hard to get down on eye level with my seven-year-old daughter when she's driving me crazy and actually listen to her and let her be heard instead of me just barking orders four feet taller than her none of that's like innately I mean that's that's how you turn this whole thing around man and um that's kind of been my thing is dude we're gonna take all this drama and data and all the stuff I'm gonna let the dopamine researchers do the dopamine stuff and I'm gonna let the whoever's do the whoever stuff I'm gonna sit with firefighters and say hey your life can suck less if you would do these three things and it's just become like you said it feels so easy and I'm so glad you had that moment with your son man because that's fatherhood will you help me with the trash and I also want to be careful of this I have a buddy named um Nathan and he he texted me once um it was kind of a heartfelt lament he has a young son and his buddy's boat that's right he's got his buddy's boat fell off the off the trailer and so he texted a bunch of guys handy gel come help me put this back on bunch of guys showed up and he brought a son and his son was off to the side and started to get in he goes hold on hold on back up back up and then all these men lifted this boat back up put it on there they all high-fived each other and got back in the truck and he said he looked at his son and said wasn't that awesome we got to help so and so and his son said dad I didn't do anything and we can't lie to our kids either we gotta let him participate like you that want like taking your kid to watch your two-year-old to wash your car means you're gonna spend an extra hour there and have a soaking wet car on the inside outside and that is fatherhood man that's it that's the magic of it and let him squirt you with a hose and you squirt him with like that is fatherhood right that's it yeah yeah it's like the magic of of presence I try to like communicate I think in in you know certain conversations that I've that I've had that I think that there's this kind of um like nutrient or form of sustenance that we need you know that so much of what it looks like to be a man is presented through modeling you know and young boys they watch and they mirror and they mimic and you know all those pieces are incredibly important and so it's very hard to do that without without presence without somebody there and it's interesting because as we were talking about anxiety and anxiousness I think sometimes it can be the thing that is pulling us away from presence you know pulling us away from being present with our kids with our families with our partners or you know business partners I gotta says about presence these most men believe so little in themselves that they don't believe their presence with their kids is enough they don't believe just sitting next to their wife for 45 minutes or an hour and letting her exhale not even talk is of any value we have so diminished our role as human beings into this utilitarian I am only as good as the thing the problem I can solve I'm only as good as the action I am doing in this present moment and if I'm not if my wife doesn't need me to solve her problem at work she just needs me to sit with her while she says it out loud then she's stupid and I'm a I'm a waste of space and there has to be a revolution of men recognizing that they have innate value just because they are and then you've got work to go do but the work is often the presence and it's just our inability to sit still because we think so little of ourselves and that has to stop man that has to stop man I'll get choked up saying this my daughter here I am I teach relationships in marriage and parenting for a living that's what I do and the big dirty Secret in my house was my daughter would not hug me she was a maniac and I know she loved me and I'm not loud I don't we don't yell in her house I don't hit my kids or anything like that my daughter wouldn't hug me she wouldn't come near and when I would try to hug her she would dug and she had all I mean did it like she had all these maneuvers and dude Connor has started to get on me real hard and I was bigger than her so I could pick her up and make her hug me but she would get real rigid and then my wife gently said have you you're always teaching me about neurosception and all these internal radar systems with our bodies what about your body maybe makes her not feel safe and dude I was like so I went and sat with a trauma counselor and said some things out loud Connor that I've never told anybody not even my wife and some things about my childhoods and things that I had just locked in and I went through a whole series of trauma counseling and just yesterday I noted to my I can't get my daughter off of me and she she's like a monkey but there was a little nuclear reactor that said you're not enough you're not enough you got to fix you got to fix you gotta fix and my daughter internalized that angst and that anxiety and that nuclear reactor as unsafe and so my wife did too by the way she had just learned to stick her hand Into the Fire and reached across right um and my wife will is just constantly saying the whole house feels warmer because I went and did that work right um that's presence man the presence has a a masculine presence in a home has a powerful therapeutic effect on the entire system and it's not just about I can I can fix the cabinets right I appreciate you sharing that peace with us because I think it's it's so important for us as men to realize I think this is part of is part of my uh my beef I guess you could say with something like the red pill movement or the Andrew Tates of the world which is you know there's there's parts of what they're saying that are beneficial and then there's parts of what they're saying that are very non-relational and I think that that's you know a lot of what I gravitated to about you and your work is that I think at the core and maybe this is my own interpretation but I think at the core of our philosophies is a is a belief that um things need to be relation relational you know and that in relationships we find a lot of the answers and a lot of the solutions and a lot of the challenges and obstacles and just I mean you could just go on and on and on that we actually need as individuals and as a collective and when you move relationships and and being relational down the ladder um of prioritization and importance there's consequences to that you know because we begin to objectify people we dehumanize them we treat them less than we we become Superior or you know we take this position of inferiority that we're then trying to always get out of and so I don't know if that resonates with you but I I think it it seems like a big piece of your work is saying hey get back into prioritizing your healthy relationships whether it's your neighbors or your kids or whatever it is because that will inform either the work that you need to do or you know the thing that's important right in front of you I'll go as far to say based off John cassiopo's work which has been just Exquisite um and the Cascade of researchers that followed him there is none zero there is no mental health there's no emotional health there is no physical health that does not is that is not built on a foundation of healthy relationships period you can get abs great you're gonna die young you can um increase your bench press you're gonna die young you can um sleep with a whole bunch of people congratulations you're gonna die young or you're going to die a miserable catastrophically slow death you're going to Netflix yourself to death congratulations here's my golf clap right um and that's my beef with a lot of psychological studies these days is they take individuals and they put them in a room and they try to gauge their response and I contend that you can't gauge an accurate emotional health response you can't gauge an actual a a an actual neurochemical response that is similar to out in the wild unless you do that in a context of relationship you gotta have people around so that we can actually see what our brains are doing and our bodies are doing but you cannot you cannot be well you can meditate all the time you can eat a Mediterranean diet or a keto diet or a vegan diet whatever makes you feel good in the mirror you can have um a million friends on Instagram whatever the thing is you will not be well without a corked without a core tribe period end of story so you can we can all lie to ourselves dude and we can flex and do all these things um I've just been um like none of that matters if my kids don't want to talk to me none of that matters if I make my life my wife's life more electrified than peaceful none of that matters if when I show up at work my co-workers Flinch a little bit instead of going oh sweet he's here um none of that matters if I show up in my neighbor's house is on fire and they prefer me not to go in and help um what's the point what's what's the point man this is stupid and so uh yeah a hundred percent of this is on a foundation of relationship I'm going to take a little bit of a right turn into the nerdy um since that seems to be a little a little bit of your background and uh a part of who you are which I love um you mentioned neuroception and I would love for you to just break down um what neuroception is how it's relevant for the individual when it comes to dealing with something like anxiety and understanding the nervous system that's at play that might be causing the alarm the alarm Bell to go off within us I I think it's just simply it's the radar system that's scanning 24 7 365. as the great vanderkolk says the body keeps the score right that this is the scorecard and it just scans and it's why you feel your heart rate you get that email from your boss it says Be My officer four on Friday and your body's Off to the Races before you finish that email or even seeing their name on at four o'clock on a Friday your boss is like come into your email box you just see the name and your body's Off to the Races it is a step ahead of you and if it waited until you identified threat if it waited it's too late you know you get eaten right and so it's just that it's just that radar system that's going I think the problem is we want to continue to live lives that are insane we want to stay up all night eat whatever we want um watch pornography 24 hours a day we want to do all these things and not pay the piper on the other end and we so we have in Exquisite systems in our current culture to shut that alarm down shut it down turn it off yes this relationship's not safe dude I used to I used to do this thing when I was a dean of students at the law school in Texas um I would do this big long um survey I was out of Southern Illinois and I would give it to all my law students and then I would when I got all the data back it was all randomized so I didn't anonymize so I didn't know who it was I would read it to him and the single data point that always silenced this entire theater of law students was this the number of people who had to consume three or more alcoholic drinks in order to feel sexy or to engage in sexual activity and I would always get real quiet when I read that and I would always make a point to say if you have to drink yourself numb so that you will do something that your body is telling you don't do please don't do that thing whatever that thing is if you have to at nine o'clock at night take a whole bunch of caffeine so that you can go out to the club your body is telling you we need to sleep if you have to drink three drinks in order to sleep with that guy or that woman don't your body is telling you if you'll know on the other end when it's like this is go time like you'll know but your body's got innate systems right and so that that's a super over simplification and reception but that's what it is and so I think asking ourselves all the time what's my body trying to tell me um and let's make peace with maybe I'm not going to be a CEO I I can't run 20 hours a day that's okay I can I can be the best number two in this company that has ever ever lived I can be the best associate director of this mail room ever um while I was writing this book dude uh I had a conversation that stunned me and it actually sent me on a tailspin my son's baseball Little League coach is this was this extraordinary guy he's a veteran he's awesome his name's David and he was a literally coach and he was a great little league coach and when you know when you see a great coach you know it right they're just so good and they're good coaching and they're good holding kids accountable and they're good at making them run but also good at cheering them on and so we were talking one day just having a drink and hanging out and um he is the he runs the technology for a local middle school and I said like this is awesome man what do you do what's next are you gonna like take over the district and he looked at me and he said dude this is my dream job and I said what and he goes every day I get to help teachers figure out their technological issues so that they can teach these kids and I get to teach these kids how technology Works in a safe way he's like what else do I I mean what else do I want Conor I did not have a psychology for that hmm like I had a psychology for the moment you get this promotion and this raise you better be on to the next one and I watch a guy who lives a very different life than me but his kids sure love him and his wife sure loves him and he has a human magnet people want to be around him because he just operates life through peace and he's gonna have to drive different cars and he's gonna have to live in a different house because he's not ever going to make a jillion dollars but it's a different way and I I I didn't have a psychology for enough I didn't have that and so that's been my journey the last year or two is what is that what does enough look like what does we're my family's good um and so all I have to say is yeah man it it just I don't have a circle back to that presence conversation man when can you look in yourself in the mirror and say we're good like I'm still working hard and I still got ways to go but I'm worth being loved that's a scary tough question for a man to ask himself yes a hundred percent and I think that that piece about enough I remember working with a gentleman a guy that came to work with me and he ran this massive massive Law Firm like huge and you know he built it up and you know is making so much money and there were private jets and there was all these all this stuff and part of the reason why he'd come to work with me was about his relationship but the other part was that he was just pretty unhappy and I said you know in your in your ambition towards whatever it is that you're building did you ever have a a point or a piece of your vision where you knew that it was going to be enough where you're going to be able to say I'm satiated this is good and he's like well no not really and I said well I think my guess is that you actually don't know what to do with yourself when you reach that place like you actually don't know what to do and you create the space and the time to actually be present what I've learned in working with rockstars and entrepreneurs and doctors and you know just men from all walks of life is that it is insanely confronting for us to actually get present and slow down because when we do there we are right there we are every time and it's the thing that so many of us are running from is just us it's just what's happening in our mind and our bodies and the thoughts that we're having and you know I love what you were saying because in some ways I remember um reading about polyvagal Theory and sort of diving into that and then studying polyvagal Theory and learning that you know the vagus nerve that runs your the entire length of your torso up into your brain which is the main Highway between your brain and your body actually has 80 percent of the pathways into the brain and only 20 from the brain down and so it's like wait your body's sending eighty percent of the data up to your brain only your brain is only sending 20 down like I thought that you're you know I think before that I was like my brain totally controls my body and I was like wait a second like that's a that's a bit of a mind you know a a mind screw but so all of this to say I think that we we can do a better job of getting present we can do a better job of slowing down that finding moments that are just enough like I try and look for a couple of those every single day every day Mike is this enough right now you know well let's flip this on let's take let's take it out of a character cowardice bravery realm or courage realm um and I think that's where we lose a lot of men is we make those moments you either do this or you're a coward or you suck at being a dad dude I I think most men would give up anything for that to have their kids want to come sit in their lap or to have their wife like be so grateful if they were home not like that you know most men are wondering like why does my wife not like me and um dude I think it's I think it's a skill set issue and so if I look at it as a set of tools in my toolkit I don't have um a great story here like so in my previous job I was on call 24 7 365 for almost 20 years that was just the nature of that job my wife knew at any moment's notice we're going to town we're going whatever if somebody's gonna kill himself um or was going to die by Suicide or there was some I'm out and I may come home in two days but we're dealing with this situation I'm gonna end up at some hospital and I'm gonna end up telling some parent that their kid has passed away like that was just the nature of my life and I took this job and my boss was walking through and he was hit they was doing media later that night or late late into the evening it was about seven o'clock and I was reading some nerd Journal articles and um he stuck his head in and said what are you doing and I said oh I'm just finishing up this thing and it was for work it was legitimately for work and he said go home I've been a boss for 20 years I've told everyone you're going home they're like okay cool but you gave me this project I got to finish so I'll go home when it gets done and I said I will I'll go home and he looked at me goes no no right now get up go home and I kind of looked at him and it was not a fun he wasn't playing and I looked at him and he said if you're no good there you will be no good here go home and be with your family and I did I got right up and what I learned over the next few weeks was I did not know how to be a dad from the hours of 5 PM until 8 o'clock I knew how to swoop in at 7 30 wolf down a meal with everybody at the table and act like I was Dad of the year and then Razz my son a little bit and talk to my daughter for three or four minutes and then bedtime I didn't know I mean it's I'm embarrassed to say that but I didn't know how to just be a presence in my home that was hey how are you how was your day just listen without trying to solve everything randomly kick a soccer ball with my daughter out in the front yard which is my numbingly boring and also that's Parenthood right and how to listen to my son's explanation of some I didn't know how to do any of those things and so it's been a I had to learn new skills it wasn't because I was a bad guy it wasn't because I was I didn't care about my family I just didn't have that talent I didn't have that skill it was it was a talent I didn't have so it's my job to go learn those skills and now I crave those moments when literally we're doing nothing but we have to do nothing and we get to just be with one another um that just took some time man it took some time but if I kept over dramatizing it and turned it into this like Jocko moment um who I love he's a buddy I love him but if I turn everything into a you got a crush I would quit I would quit I would find another way to go be busy I agree 100 and I think it is one of those skills that that I've had to learn because I couldn't sit still you know growing up and in my 20s like I was the kid with ADHD and in school and one of the I you know I like to joke that I was one of the first Lab Rats on Ritalin um and I used to beg my dad for real and he wouldn't give it to me no man you got to figure this one out yeah but um yeah I mean it's definitely one of those skills that I've had to learn because sitting still standing still being still being present who did not come naturally or easy to me and it's taken a long time oh uh you asked about the nervous system I think it's important to note um this isn't just woo-woo kind of stuff your body Maps out your nervous system when you're a kid and it uses Mom and Dad the two parents at home as the road map for here's what love looks like and feels like here's what safety looks like and feels like and if home wasn't safe or if home was chaotic or if your parents loved you to the moon and back but they both work 20 hours a day your nervous system develops based on that story and that nervous system is the highway that your body uses when you fall in love the first time when you get upset with a professor the first time when your boss calls you in their office and says hey if you don't improve you're going to be gone that's the same Highway and so often we find ourselves using the Adaptive tools we learned as kids hey dad's coming home we need to get real quiet and go in the room and shut the door mom's on one of her Rampages again let's go ahead and just go outside well all of a sudden when your wife is frustrated with something man I'm just going to disappear which kept me safe as a kid is going to destroy my marriage if I don't lean into that discomfort um and so or if every time my boss calls me I get nervous and freaked out my boss will feel that too and wonder what's going on why is this guy anxious all the time why is this guy sweating I have to learn that's my adult job is to learn how to lean into my nervous system and begin to create new Pathways and new behaviors and you can not do that by trying to out think it you have to out act it you have to go do I have to sit here in this discomfort then ask my wife how can I love you right now which is different than you need to tell that boss that he sucks and he that's not what she needs she needs me to sit here and just trust her wisdom too until she asks me right and and we have to so our nervous system is wired up it's good to go and we have to know that it's it's plastic and it can move and we our job is to create new New Paths man so let's let's go down that path and talk about some of the skills or the tools of dealing with anxiety um and and building a non-anxious life and so I think where I want to start is because I can hear my audience sort of asking the question based on what you're saying which is how do I help my partner who's anxious how do I support my partner who's dealing with anxiety because I think that's a very common thing that people deal with today so what would you say when people you know sort of pose that question anytime somebody says Hey the person I love is struggling with anxiety the person I love is struggling with these things the two things I always tell them is number one make sure you're a safe place to land which means you probably have to go work on you and that's a scary place for a lot of us because it's way easier to help somebody else than it is to look in the mirror and say I need to lose 50 pounds and I need to pay these credit cards off and I need to go sit with a trauma counselor and talk about my abuse and I need to call my dad and say I'm sorry like I it's much easier to sit with somebody else so that's number one is you have to do your work to be a safe landing place and number two you have to seek connection not seek to solve what does that mean that means hey honey would you be willing to sit down with me uh let me say this way the state of our finances scares me to death and I can't breathe would you be willing to sit down with me and make a budget like just plan and when you make a budget and it's funny I've been sending people to make a budget with their spouse for years because when you sit down and make a budget you have to decide what matters to you as a couple you have to decide what matters where you're headed where you want to be someday what kind of house do you want to live in what kind of college you want your kids to go to what kind of cars you want to drive it forces all these other conversations into a who are we gonna be and um but if you started with you spend too much and you do this and you're always anxious then she has to go to war with you she has to if you sit down and say I'm so scared I can't breathe I'm afraid in 25 years we're going to move back into my parents house within their 80s because we haven't done what we what I haven't done what I have to do would you join me in this and that's the magic moment right um I think sitting down and seeking connection not to solve you know you'd be less anxious if you just didn't eat grains or sugars that's not going to help I'm thinking about changing the way I eat would you honor me enough to make a whole house change here and just follow me for 30 days would you be willing to honor me that way um that was a conversation I had with my wife and she turned into such a gangster over a period of a year where she just would be like hey it's it's the first of the month what are we this month and I'd be like raw vegan and she'd be like okay and she'd she'd try to figure something out and then next month be like we're just we're just all carnivores you're like that sounds weird but okay and so she just rolled with me but it was because she was doing a love and honor of and respect for me not because I was pointing my finger at her right and so see connection man if you as soon as you find yourself trying to solve your partner that is a recipe to spin up that anxiety even stronger and stronger and stronger it almost like reinforces that there's something wrong in them 100 instead of honoring there's nothing wrong with your body's working exactly as it should let's figure out what's setting those alarms off and often it is an anxious partner often it is hey we keep staying up till midnight to watch the next whatever can we just go to bed at 9 30. it's often hey we have a pot of coffee and then another pot of coffee and then we both get a Red Bull and wealth door what if we just chill for a little bit often it's hey it's October one and November Thanksgiving is hell because your parents tell us what we're doing and we have to spend money we don't have and travel the places and your body just starts ramping it up because it keeps the score man it knows what's coming even if you're not thinking about Thanksgiving it sure as hell is because it went through it last year and the year before and the year before so let's set up some boundaries here so it's it's just honoring oh sweet her alarms are going off his alarms are going off let's get to the bottom of what's actually setting that off and what role can I play in that um yeah I mean I think a good example of this is like four years ago I decided to stop drinking it just entirely you know I kind of I I you know I hadn't been drinking a lot I was having like you know a beer when I would go out with friends or or or a couple you know sometimes but or ten that's cool or Oracle or a couple or more than that and uh you know I just decided like I want to see what I'm capable of without drinking and my my wife was like well what about when we go out for dinner what about you know if we have you know Italian food are you gonna have a glass of wine and I was like well no no no I'm gonna I'm gonna see what this is like and so she didn't join me at first but then probably about you know five six months into it we went out for dinner and I said you know you're gonna order a glass of wine she said no I think I'm okay and then you know a couple months went by and she hadn't had any drinks and I was like are you gonna like are you joining me or what what's happened what's happening here and she uh and she was like oh yeah no no I'm not drinking anymore either and she started you know she started like telling her family that she wasn't drinking I was like oh that's super interesting and so it's it's fascinating how we can affect change in a relationship and and how and how often we're trying to sell the other person on the idea of the change versus actually just executing on it and moving the direction and creating an invitation and opening for them to join us and then all of a sudden we find them you know rowing in the same direction as us well and I think from especially for men but for women too uh for everybody this idea that I have to hold my partner so tight that they can't breathe the moment you can open your hand and realize there is one person on planet Earth I can control and that's me that's it and I would love if my partner would lose the 30 pounds because they don't sleep they're miserable they don't like the way they look they don't like the way they feel they take it out I would love that there is nothing I can do but I can make sure that I'm taking care of me and I can make sure that I'm whole and that I'm well and possibly I'm modeling here's what this could look like that's that's it that's that is it and you can say I'm worried about you and I love you I'm worried about your health you can say those things but I can control my thoughts and my actions and that's it and I think that's why we all get this existential angst around election time because there's so much drum up and there's so much build up and the pressure is so great and we get one vote I get my vote and that vote matters that vote is super important I took my kid into the the voting booth during the last election because I want him to see the process and how it worked and whose old man was all that but we only get one we get one toss of the of the the ping pong ball at the carnival and that's it and then we go on to the next and so it's just there's no relief we can control us that's that that's that and the moment I can release my wife from my control is the moment then we can start having a marriage worth worth fighting for yeah choice right like reinforcing that the other person has a choice that we have a choice and that one another's choices actually matter in the relationship because I think so often we're not actually asking somebody for their genuine choice we're saying here's what I want here's what I want you to do yeah you mentioned something important I think any time it's it's important to know anytime we make a change we disrupt the homeostasis of our current relationships and even if you like you stop drinking I bet every facet of your life got better your sleep got better your ability to pay attention got better you became a better husband and it left your wife on an island and whether she means to or not her body is going to try to drag you back too it may cause she may pick at you a little bit more or try to start a fight a little bit more or hassle you when you're tired a little bit more not trying to like I'm gonna get him to drink again not at all but her body wants to feel like the way it always is felt in relationship with Connor and you both have to begin to create a new relationship where we're going to be where we're going to create a new homeostasis and that's why losing weight so hard that's why I quit drinking so hard because all these other relationships get disrupted and they all want to pull you back like a tractor beam and it it's it's you just got to know that's coming and it Norms it and then you can go into the next right Amen to that man well let's let's maybe wrap with some of the tools because in in your book building a non-anxious life you have the six daily choices and you sort of break down some of the pieces and I got the fortunate enough to have the book here which is pretty awesome and uh I was cruising through uh a bunch of it I only got about two days ago I think in in reality we've actually been talking about a lot of these different pieces you know connection Freedom having Choice um can you maybe just speak to some of the tools that you write about that you found to be really effective for people to not sort of quote unquote cope with anxiety or deal with anxiety but to actually build a non-anxious life because I think that's a bit of a different pathway yeah so my the whole premise of the book is your body's a pretty smart machine and so if it's anxious then it is identifying things in your world that are unsafe so instead of trying to shut that off instead of racing to or let me just say it this way this is as bold as I can say it and as a mental health guy um more people than ever before in human history right this second or under the care of a licensed mental health professional more people than ever before in human history right now are being medicated for some sort of mental or emotional or relational challenge and the trend line continues to be a rocket ship directly a vertical rocket ship straight to the Moon and when they discovered penicillin when they medicalized it death from infections fell off a map because that solved that problem and so I had to look back and go what we're doing is not working I do believe in counseling I pick I think I've bought my counselor a new lake house I I believe deeply in it and I've had season when I was using medication it was very helpful but globally speaking that's not the problem the problem is something much greater so this book is like hey man um I'm gonna change the architecture of this home I'm going to bulletproof this house so that when that alarm goes off I know there's an actual fire um and so you can't do any of that unless you choose reality and I think we have to be cognizant of we live in the age of distraction man and our brains have been hacked our bodies have been hacked and we haven't been hacked that sounds like nefarious we handed it over right we hand it over on a daily basis and so um the whole goal is to make our lives unintentional I don't even have to think about pulling money out of my wallet anymore I just wave my magic wand over a little B2B and I can buy whatever I want and if I don't even have money for it I just will pay for it later and I can walk out the store with whatever I want right this second everything is designed to delay reality and so I don't think there's any mental health Foundation emotional health unless you choose reality what does that mean what is the state of your marriage what is the state of your relationship with your kids and if your kids are anxious that's almost always a function of the environment they are living in which means you as the adult in that house it's on you to begin to make make changes right and that's a very unpopular thing but that's the truth kids absorb tension in their environments um what is the state of your health what is the state of your weight what is the state of how much you honor your body what's the state of your relationships with your parents and your friends and your community so you got to own reality there and then we move into as we talked about you have to choose connection do you have a tribe do you have a gang and um this is especially challenging in like you were talking about the elite company um when you talk about military veterans when you talk about Elite performers you talk about entertainers and musicians their worlds become so small because they cannot have a single conversation without somebody wanting something from them or if you're playing with a band in front of 50 000 people or ten thousand people or two thousand people the cohesiveness that it took the months of rehearsal and practice and common mission to get to the point where you could play on that stage and then you perform that stage and then you all go home and then Dan your neighbor comes out in loafers and black socks to Moe's law and he's like hey Connor what's up like you're it's just a hard jump or if you've been to war and some other group of men and women were willing to die on your behalf and then you come home and get dropped off into some suburb somewhere some apartment it's very difficult your body knows what the anchored connection feels like but you got to go do it anyway you gotta go make friends in connection and be awkward and weird and invite people to your house and just say yes to things even when you're tired you've got to go connect the next one is you have to choose freedom and that's about calendar and finances and that is about boundaries that is about who is running my life how do I put myself back in the driver's seat of my life and then you have to uh gosh what's the other ones you have to choose mindfulness which makes you know if you say that word it sounds like some old dude with a beard sitting on a cloud somewhere all I'm talking about is curiosity and awareness why what is my body trying to protect me from that guy just cut me off in his stupid little square Kia driving 90 miles an hour down the road um I get to I get to invent the story is it because he's on drugs and trying to kill everybody in just a stupid Millennial or is he trying to get to the hospital before his wife dies I get to pick which one of those stories I chase down and choose to internalize one of those is going to give me empathy and peace one of those is going to kill me sooner I get to pick man and so uh and then the next one is going to be health and healing if your body keeps the score as we've said um if you had childhood abuse if you haven't dealt with the divorce and you're still asking yourself what you did if your dad beats you up and your mom was unstable um if you grew up with learning exceptionalities you had ADHD or dyslexia and you always found yourself on the outskirts whatever you have to deal with that your body created nervous system responses to those things and you can flex and be tough all you want if you want peace in your home you got to go sit with a counselor grief Demands a witness that's the great David Kessler says you got to say this things out loud it's why every major religion throughout human history has a as a confession component to it not just the things you did wrong but here's what happened to me and the body does that craves and health man if you live off Red Bull and cigarettes your body's going to be anxious all the time right then the final one this is probably worthy of a whole other podcast conversation um and as I finish this chapter I hit I hit send and I remember thinking this is going to get me in trouble with everybody um and I've had conversations directly with Jordan about this Dr Peterson about this I've listened to some Exquisite work by Esther perel so we've got everybody on both sides of the conversation um of the aisle here if you will this is a first generation in human history that walks outside and looks at the Sun and said we did that we haven't completely untethered society and throughout all of human history we look to the sky and had a series of gods or a God or some sort of system that was bigger than us that we took a knee to in submission because if you walk outside and look at the sky and say God please make it rain or my kids die that's a different level but now we've solved for hunger and we've solved for water if we pump it out of the ground we've solved for all these things and we've gotten really arrogant about it and so I don't believe that you can be non-anxious unless you have some sort of belief system where you are tethered into something bigger than yourself or as David Foster Wallace says everybody worships and if you worship Beauty you're never going to be beautiful enough and if you worship your money you will never have enough and if you worship your cars they will always you'll always see that little dent so I'm not going to prescribe what it is I'm a Christian guy everybody's got a different belief structure and system you have to take a knee to something you have to believe in something bigger than yourself and you have to go all in on that I even have some atheist friends that I love dearly our kids play together they're some of my closest friends they believe deeply in the birth and life and death we are a part of a bigger system a Nature's great whatever the thing is you have to take a knee that you are not the center of the universe um I guess the last existential thing I'll leave you with is all the psychological theories over the last 150 years end with self-actualization with us being this shining beacon on top of a pyramid and I think if we look around at what Freud was talking about and where we are now what Ewing was talking about where we are now we are actualized we have everything we have everything and we are terrified because the center doesn't hold the self was never designed to hold up the universe it was designed to take a knee to the universe and say please Reign and I think that is paradoxically the cap on the non-exist life so that's the six choices and if you make those on a daily basis on a monthly yearly basis if I'm always checking with reality checking in with who's running my life checking in with my relationships Etc the alarms will begin to silence themselves because I'm going to deal with these other things right now I don't owe anybody any money me and my wife made that decision 10 years ago and only about anything if I got fired today I'd be pissed I'd be mad and I'd be uh sad heartbroken I wouldn't be anxious because it wouldn't be on to the next thing because I'm not worried about my family starving right it's a totally different uh I gotta sell this property because I leverage I don't have any of that stuff um we're gonna figure out what's next right so it's just living a non-anxious life I love that there's a lot of pieces and yeah I just do a lot at you there no no I agree I was like looking at them I'm like uh shoot like I only have a couple minutes here but pick one to pull it apart man if you want well no I would love to what I what I just was gonna say is I would love to actually have you back on at some point to talk about that last piece because I do think that it's important and you know I've been a huge um student of Carl young and developmental psychology in Gestalt and one of the things that young said is that that at the beginning of every kind of like what you were saying which is at the beginning of every um spiritual journey at the beginning of every good therapeutic modality is the step of confession and admission and it's such a huge part it's not the only piece but it is a huge part of it and then the other thing that he talked about in quite in a huge amount of detail especially towards the end of his life was that a lot of the crisis the crises that was going on within individuals were spiritual problems so so much the degree that when he started to work with people who had um addictions he there and there's a story about him working with somebody that ended up you know leading to the development of AAA in some capacity remember exactly what the connection is there but he essentially said you you don't have an a psychological issue you have a spiritual one and so you need to go down a spiritual path because it's a spiritual problem and I think in in our culture it's hard when we have this you know massive ballooning of spiritual but not religious people which there's not a problem I think I probably fall into that category as well in in a lot of ways but when there is a disconnect a dis yeah a disconnection from the self and the individual being the ultimate right like when that's the belief and there's a disconnection from there are things that are bigger there are forces that are bigger right even just nature I can walk out into my yard we have five and a half acres and feel quite small you know and be like oh this is you know something that I live within that's quite a bit bigger than I am that wasn't man-made that these trees were here before I before I was born and they'll be here long after you're gone right and so you know I think that there's there's there's hints of God's Source you know the the the bigger piece however you want to um label that all around and sometimes especially in a time where existential anxiety seems to be skyrocketing right um you know climate anxiety and existential anxiety and AI anxiety I mean there's all these pieces where you know people are worried about the end of themselves and the collective um having some type of remembrance of something bigger and some kind of connection to something bigger is incredibly important and it's a hard one I think for a lot of people to get to because we've been we've been told we are God we've been told if you just listen to the right podcast or read the right book you you too can have the keys to the kingdom and I think we have every key to every Kingdom and now the kingdom is like hey we'll just spit it out for you and um it goes back to that thing um you know Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs yeah yeah uh Mike was here doing a thing and we were chit chatting he said something that was so transcendent he said we talk about it was during the covid and he said we talk a lot about um uh jobs that were necessary right um or they were called uh um what were they called oh yeah yeah I know you're talking about um essential workers that's right essential workers there we go and he said when 30 million Americans were given the tag you're an essential worker he said we simultaneously told 300 something million Americans we don't need you just go home we'll send checks and we went mad we went crazy because we're not designed to not have purpose we're not designed to not have be a part of something bigger than us just go home we'll send you it was a an acceleration of where we're trying to head right we can just Outsource every job and just sit at home and eat bon bons and stare off into space um we're not designed for that man we are simply not wired for that um and I think the spiritual but I I think all religion and uh it's probably getting me in trouble and they think religion is a group of people trying to put into practice what does living out this spiritual belief that we share look like that's why I don't have any problems with you know 45 different Christian churches in my neighborhood right because it's a group of people saying hey we're going to live we're going to agree to this set of rules and this is how we read this book this is how we're going to live great um if you start burning down my building then we're gonna have a problem but religion is just people trying to solve that I think when you try to do spirituality by yourself you end up with nonsense like saying things like my truth which is is it does that doesn't even work right um and if you start saying my truth then you end up with how I feel is the barometer for reality and I need everybody else to I need nature I need human nature I need nature nature I need heat I need cold I need everything to bend to my feelings because I am the scent I am God in this world and I think that is a recipe for everybody ending up in Ash yeah there's there's a subjective truth there's an objective truth and then there's the truth of intersubjective reality right like there's my truth there's the objective truth within reality and then there's the truth that's embedded within story right because intersubjective reality is just the narrative that's the story that's right yeah I I agree I think I mean I did this whole mini episode that was interesting around how I called it the weaponization of modern psychology and really how we we've taken these terms and these labels and these Frameworks that are supposed to be very helpful for us as human beings and we've now weaponized them right you're a narcissist because you disagree with me and until you meet a narcissist in a psych ward you go oh that's what that is that's not my mother-in-law right yeah like I remember I asked the guy who trait was like one of my chief um mentors in in Psychology in mental health and I said hey just over dinner his oppositional defined disorder is that real Is that real and he goes yep and then he goes you've never seen it and I said I don't know there's any gestop me and he goes I was one time with seven grown men trying to hold down a five-year-old and we couldn't do it and he said then that kid got away from us and said he goes that was oppositional defense he goes you've never seen it but yeah you're right weaponized it all and that manual that was designed for practitioners to talk to insurance companies and for researchers to talk to other researchers as a way just to speak a Common Language has become our quiver of arrows that we fire at each other and that we shoot ourselves with right theology on its own you know like I think that that's it's become in some ways it's become an interim sort of replacement for the religious doctrine that people grew up in right and so they've traded in Christianity or Catholicism or whatever it is for you know a list of therapeutic Psychiatry that's right right that that they then need to to follow and so listen man I do have to pause our conversation enjoyed this I feel like um if I I wasn't paying attention to the clock we probably would have spent like another hour or two because we were just about to go down a path that I cannot wait to talk to you about let's do it again man I'm grateful for you Connor yeah I wish you all the success in the launch of your book for everybody that's out there listening definitely go pick up a copy building a non-anxious life we'll have all the list links for you in the show notes to John's site to his show to his book but anything John that you just want to leave the listeners with in terms of what they can go check out or where they can go to find you and more of your work I think the last sentence I'll leave is chances are you're not broken chances are your body's working exactly as it should and your mission is to figure out why it's trying to get your attention um you can go you can follow me at John deloney on all the internety things and you can pick up the book at John deloney.com uh yeah and the pre-order the pre-orders through October 3rd and if you pick it on pre-order as you know it helps all authors it helps out a lot so uh um go check it out man and I if you pre-order well I got a bunch of bribes in there to get you to do it early I love that bunch of bribes all right man well thank you so much for being on the show and for everybody that's out there don't forget to man It Forward share this episode with somebody that you know will enjoy it and until next week this is Conor beaden signing off [Music] foreign

Channel: ManTalks

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Length: 90min 34sec (5434 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2023