Making Daily Choices and Knocking Out Anxiety, with Dr. John Delony

Dr. John Delony is a highly sought after best-selling author, mental health expert and show host covering relationships, mental health, anxiety, healthy leadership and emotional wellness. In other words, this episode is relatable to just about anyone aware of the opportunity to learn from adversity. John has been with Ramsey Solutions since 2020 and hosts the Dr. John Delony Show. Through his speaking and writing, he helps individuals work through past trauma and find a path forward. So often when dealing with a crisis, we feel stuck and alone. The wisdom John provided starts with a reminder that you are not alone in the room. His perspective and guidance comes from battling his own personal challenges, finances and discovering how to heal. John also spent 20 years working in crisis response and discovered how be a comforting yet strong voice of change. John’s most recent book, Building a Non-Anxious Life is the centerpiece of the discussion for this episode. His down-to-earth approach and advice has a tremendous appeal and inspires many across the world. For more about John’s background, his show, books, other podcasts and articles, check out his website.  To purchase any of his line up of products, go to the Ramsey Solutions store. To enjoy Bill and John’s discussion, you can listen here or watch here. 

Before Matt passed, he had become a fan of John's work and had made arrangements to have him on as a guest. It is wonderful to see this come to fruition and be another source of love and strength inspired by Matt.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ABOUT DR. JOHN DELONY:

·       John has two PhDs and over two decades of experience in counseling, crisis response and higher education. 

·       He is the author of the bestselling books Own Your Past, Change Your Future, Redefining Anxiety and most recently, Building a Non-Anxious Life. 

·       John has appeared on Good Morning America, Fox News and Fox Business and been featured in Real Simple magazine, Fast Company, The Today Show, and HuffPost.  

·       He has been a guest on The School of Greatness Podcast, The Minimalist Podcast, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, The Dhru Purohit Podcast and the Mind Pump Podcast. 

·       John’s goal is to help people navigate tough decisions, improve their relationships, and believe they’re worth being well. Follow John on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X.

Transcript

0:11

Well, hello with gratitude Matt listeners, my name is Bill Moran and I'm Matt's older brother and today I will be your host of the With Gratitude. Matt Show. With gratitude, Matt is a place people can come to find the courage to be grateful. Regardless of how powerful this storm is. With gratitude, Matt's goal is to reach and inspire more people to practice gratitude on a regular basis. Matt passed away this past August. Please know that Matt, his wife Mary and the entire Marine family appreciate all your love, prayers, support and generosity during his journey. We are so grateful and blessed to have such a supporting, caring and loving community. It's with a great honor and pleasure here today that we have one of Matt's heroes, John Delany. John is a bestselling author. He's a mental health expert. He's a podcast host, among many things. But more importantly, he is the father to two amazing children and he's the husband to a wonderful wife. So, John, with that kind of, to borrow your phrase, let's go. Let's do it, man. Thank you. So. One of the things that we wanted to talk about today was your book Building a Non Anxious Life and kind of begin with that from the beginning. What inspired you to tackle this massive accomplishment? So I think it goes back 20 years. I've just I've been working as a crisis responder and as a dean of students and a professor for for 20 years. And so I've watched I tell you, I've watched humans evolve very quickly from, Hey, can you help me with my homework to hey, I'm thinking of taking my life. I'm thinking of pass it away and everything in between. So I working with with young people who in their parents and families who had anxiety, had depression, had OCD, all these things. It was not an academic exercise. It was an every day, all day thing. And then I experienced it. And then fast forward, I mean, I experienced it. I was laid low. I made some wild decisions. I ended up on medication sitting with my buddy who's a medical professional, Like it was a chaotic time. And then fast forward to about four or five years ago, I joined this new media team. I left higher ed for good and then COVID kicks off and everyone's telling me everyone's calling into the radio shows from all over the world saying, I'm so anxious, I'm so anxious, how do I stop anxiousness? And finally, one day I just snapped and I was like, Hey, anxiety's not your problem. It's trying to help. What is the problem? And Dave Ramsey looked at me and said, You need to write that down. I never heard that. And that led to like a 60 page little book that ended up selling way more than anybody thought it was. And then, to be honest with you, when it came time to write this this book, a full length book, I didn't want to do it. I wanted to write a book on marriage or a book on friendship and adult friends and loneliness. And the publishing team said, Now you're going to write on this. And so I fought them and I was frustrated, upset by it. And then about halfway through the book, I realized, Oh, you don't want to do this because you're not living this life. And so the book became a very personal How do you turn this thing around? And while you got a wife or your kids, when you get a job, like what's gone wrong with all of us and then what do we do next? So for the listeners, you in their book, you talk about anxiety and I think it's let's get your definition of anxiety, maybe not the psychologist definition of anxiety, but yours. And then you always say that exactly is an alarm or what does that mean? Just kind of walk us through that. Yeah. Nerd speak, clinically speaking, like a diagnosis of anxiety is simply your body is experienced. X number of different symptoms can't sleep racing thoughts, depressed thoughts, any number of things for a particular amount of time. If you come in and say, I'm experiencing X, Y, and Z and I've been doing it for six months, they'll say, Well then sounds like you have X disorder. I think anxiety is simple. I think and I think this is borne out across the board. Anxiety is just your body trying to get your attention to let you know, hey, I've detected something in the environment that's not safe. It could be that we're lonely. It could be that we're about to lose our house. It could be They're about to lose our job. It could be that we're about to get hurt. But I've detected something long before you even realize I detected it and tried to get your attention that we get to fight this thing. We got to run from this thing or we got to hide. And I don't think it's much more complicated than that. There is times when that alarm gets wacky and gets out of whack and you need some medical intervention. And what an amazing moment in history that we live in a time when we can actually get that medical intervention. So what a blessing. But I think on the whole, the question we as a culture run from is why are all of our bodies all at the same time trying to get our attention and let us know that we're not safe, that we're not okay, that the life we have chosen to call normal is far normal. And what does that mean for all of us? And I think that's a much more interesting question. But at the end of the day, I just simply tell people I mean, all anxiety is is a smoke alarm trying to let you know that somewhere in your house is on fire, the smoke alarm is not your enemy. It's trying to let you know, hey, we got a problem. The enemy is the fire. Let's go find that and put that out. So. And you did a beautiful job of explaining that in your book and kind of walking through the six daily choices that that we make. And. Well, first of all, when you say we have a we we can choose to be healthy. We can choose to be good. We can choose that on a daily basis. We can choose a better life. You show us how to do that. Now it's going to take some work, But what are the first you know, what's the first thing that we need to start working on in order to live a better life? And I think it's I think I've got six choices. I think there's one that comes before it and that's just rejecting wholesale this idea that I'm the worst thing that ever happened to me, rejecting wholesale our culture story that it sold us. That is, if this happened to you, if you look like this, if you don't fit in the normal situation, if you had this bad thing happen to you, you're always going to be less. Then someone's got to come rescue you. You are now mal functioned. You're a diagnostic code in an insurance form. That's all you'll ever be. So I think once you decide, you know what? I reject that. Yes, I was abused. Yes, I was. I grew up the wrong color and I experienced some evil, awful things. Yes, I got cancer. Whatever, mom left. Whatever things happen when she rejects, though, that that's the sum of your parts and you start to believe in a no. I'm bigger than that is an experience. I had a bigger than that. I think the place you start when you're trying to build a life where your body's not constantly trying to get your attention, that you're not safe is you have to choose reality. What is the actual state of things? Are you overweight? What's the state of your marriage? When's the last time you talked to a counselor? Have you dealt with your childhood trauma? Are you still trying to please your dad, who was wrestling with alcoholism and you're still trying is still trying, still trying to get that approval. That's never going to come. What's the state of your relationship with your kids? That's yeah, that's where you have to start. You can't run a marathon unless you know where the starting line is, right? So you got to take inventory and and but I like kind of going back to that first point, I guess you got to realize that you're worth it. You're worth being good. You're worth, you know, And so so I think I love that. That's a beautiful beginning. Guys. Can I get can we can we click on that real quick? That Yeah, that idea of being worth it. The best I heard it heard it said and I've just been around the block so much and I've spent my whole career working with really smart people. I don't get stopped in my tracks very often anymore. And it was during COVID and Mike Rowe from the great Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs was here in the office. And he said something that stopped me in my tracks. And I remember going home and telling my wife, We're going to pay for this for 100 years. He said, When we told three, I mean, 30 million American workers, you are quote unquote, essential, so you've got to go to work. He said that was important for them. But in proxy, we told 300 plus million Americans, you know what, we don't need You just go home, we'll mail checks. And when we did that to ourselves, we went bonkers because we don't have a psychology for nobody need you. Nobody wants you here. Go home. I'm just going to mail you money. Do it as you will. And we always had this fantasy that the greatest thing we could do, the American dream, right, is to have enough that you don't have to do anything. That's one of the most insane lies of our time. You have to have a purpose, otherwise your body quits. It knows you don't like. Just if I quit using my arm, it atrophies. Well, if your system, if your tribe stops involving you, you atrophy. Right? And so we told 300 million of us, you know what? We don't you. We're all good. Just go home. Just go home. And I think at the end of the day, we looked in the mirror and were told if we believed it, you're not even worth it. Just go home. And I don't think we had a psychology for that. And I think we've paid the price for it. Our kids have paid the price for it, and our grandkids are going to pay the price for that insanity. And so, yeah, I think it all starts with, you know, what I'm worth losing this weight. I'm worth fixing my marriage, I'm worth healing my relationship with my kids. I've got a terminal diagnosis I'm worth the last four months of my life. I'm extracting every bit of life I can out of those moments. This is going to be going right. I'm worth it. I'm worth it. And that leads us. That's the jet fuel for. All right. And let's go do the hard stuff. It's going to take. Let's go do it. Well, Mike is Mike was right. And and thanks for sharing that beautiful explanation of of being worth and what it means. And on a really a global scale. So stand by me Benny King. We're talking about connections. Stand by me. Yeah. Yeah. So I call Europe team or your three and friends be a part of bigger something bigger than yourselves. Yeah. And, you know, kind of like, unpack that and just kind of walk us through the importance of human connection. And then in today's world, it's it's all about screen time. It's all about social media, it's all about posts, It's all about clever, pithy comments. And that's a dangerous road that we go down. But I think that the connection that you that you outline is so important. And just maybe just walk us through that. I think the headline is we've created the loneliest generation in human history, like full stop period. And I think the I don't think we did that intentionally. I don't think it was malicious. I think the idea that you have a hundred people that, you know, what if I give you a million, think how awesome that would be. And we didn't have any. It was just a giant beta. It was a big research experiment on how are people actually going to act when they're far enough away to not get punched in the nose? How are people going to act when there's anonymity? How are people going to act? And we found out not well, really, really poorly. Right. And so I think the illusion or the this reality that we're coming to shortly and there's a couple of social media cases in front, the Supreme Court right now is like connection is different than communication. I text my wife 20 times a day, I love you. I love you. I'm not connecting with her at a physiological level. I'm not letting her body know with me you are safe and you are loved. I'm just giving her data. And data is great, but it doesn't solve anything, right? You have to act on that data. And so instead of going to see our friend, would I see my friends when I consider you 14 hilarious memes in six, why would I sit through a whole episode of Seinfeld when I can just send you the two funny clips? What a waste of my time. And now we're all opening our eyes. Now that we've all we're all doubled over and anxious and depressed and can't function, realizing, Oh, that was the good stuff. The good stuff which is sitting by you and going, Did you just make that noise? Like, was that you like? Right, That's the good stuff. That's like, that's the beauty, not the clips, not the highlight reel. Going to the game with my dad. Yeah, it was fun at the very end when they waved. I mean, when they won, that was so cool to go to an Astros game when they won. But the Good Stuff was sitting there all game talking to my dad, having him just sitting there, buying me, having him knowing what actually is going on and him going to get pretzels that I know he couldn't afford, but he figured out a way to make it happen. That was the stuff that's encoded in my nervous system as a man now. And so I think we've all we're all going, oh gosh, we've gone wrong the wrong way, and now we don't have a map back. And so I think it's this understanding I can not function, my body can't function, my heart won't be correctly, my brain won't work right. If I don't have a group of men or women that I can call 24 seven 365 and who will show up and bring tacos and say, I'm here. What do you need? If you do not have that you are choosing to live a life of that is shorter. That is going to be demonstrably less good and will be more chaotic for those in your circle. And so I just think it's a choice that we have to decide to make. And by the way, it is miserable making friends in your forties. It's the worst. It's the worst. You go to politics. I don't know if you're going to cancel me out of your recording, my conversation. I don't know if you're into a weird Quito person or you're weird vegan person. Dude, I go deer hunting and I drive a hybrid car. I have no friends. I think all political sides are insane. I, I guess I don't know. You don't mean it's the worst. And yet I have to know if I choose to opt out just because it's hard. I'm choosing to die young and I'm choosing to rob my children of a present healthy dad. And I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. That means I got to go be weird. Well, that was one of the things that Matt always reminded his listeners of is to be present and that, you know, that you just you just said it so eloquently, but it's also, I think and I'm borrowing your words, you're choosing love, right? It's right in those connections. And that's it's a beautiful thing me. And that is when you do that you're going to go down a road of of really peace, I think. And that's kind of now, you know and I know we're bouncing around here, but I, I think one of the comments that I really okay, so we're looking for a peaceful life, but that's not going to be without strife. That's not going to be without aim. Right. Maybe kind of explain, you know, that little bit more. Yeah. I think somehow we sold ourselves a lie that if you just do all the right things in life works out perfectly and we can get to some sort of utopia and I think especially in the faith communities, we've done ourselves a really ugly disservice by people absolutely unspooling their entire faith. Walk ons unwinds when somebody they love gets sick, when somebody they love gets in a car wreck. Because we've told ourself the story that if you just don't say bad words or have beer on the wrong day or whatever, that everything works out perfectly in the end. And what I really try to hammer home in this book is building a non-conscious life. All that does for you is give you a firm foundation to have your feet planted in concrete when the storms come and they are coming right for everyone, whether it's personal, whether it's family, whether it's health, whether it's financial, whether it's political, they will come. They hit everybody all the time. That's my job, right? Is sitting with people and they've come. And the story in the book I write about is I had a cousin who just dropped it. I mean, he just passed away. And the fact that me and my wife spent 15 years working to not only Buddy, any money allowed me the privilege of just getting on Southwest dot com, getting two plane tickets, flying to Houston, sitting at his funeral. It bought me the privilege to be really, really sad. It did not keep all of my friends and family alive forever. And so I think there's it's getting through. It's choosing reality. Those phone calls are going to come was middle of the night. Phone calls are going to come. Am I ready or is my head in the sand? Right. And so that's why when it come back to choose love one the stories that tell in the book, it's a 100% true story. My buddy Kevin, he's about ten or 15 years older than me, dude. He is. He is a wild man, dude. He's been he's been a Grateful Dead, I think, 180 times or something. I mean, he's a wild duty, is a Renaissance guy. He's just he's bananas. He's awesome. He's a CEO of some company. He's been a leader all over the place. But one day we're off talking about some real hard we had some tough stuff going on each other's lives. And he just said, Hey, Dylan, I love you. And my instant gut response was, No, no, you don't like because I love my wife, I love the Astros and I love nachos and I love my kids and one of my dogs, and that's it. And then I spent several years showing up in the middle of the night with people who had just lost a loved one, just lost a kid, just lost a wife, just lost a brother. And to a person, they would have given me every single thing they have on planet Earth for five more minutes every day. They would have given me every dollar, every car, every shred of clothing for 5 minutes to say what they needed to say. And I thought, I am never going to find myself in that position. So I tell everybody I love it. How did you get to that? You know, you talk about that and thanks for and really thanks for being vulnerable here, because that's that's not easy. But how did you get that freedom? How did what steps did you take to uncluttered your life and really focus on what was real and what was true? I mean, when it comes to choosing freedom, it came back to me looking at my wife and saying, Hey, we're not in charge of our life. I'm I was a six foot, £295 Texas male. I was raised to believe that I ran Earth right as all good Texans are. And I realized the mortgage company ran out. They told me what I was going to do every day. My student loan provider told me what I was going to do every day. The Toyota Motor company told us what we were going to do every day. And by the way, college is amazing. And it was a big like don't go to college movement. I think that's nuts. I think college is really important. Good. I think having a house is really important. Good. My Toyota cause I still only drive Toyotas. Toyotas are amazing cars. And because I owed those individual entities money, they ran my life. Which means inherently I am owned by them. I'm not free. And when I looked at the clutter, I had my quote unquote collections, Right? All the stuff I was surrounded by and then the storage space, I had to get to put more stuff in. And it I really I'm not free. This stuff is having these are having imaginary conversations with me, my guitars, every time I walk in, my music room's like, Oh, you're not going to play this really? You just remember when you used to be cool, Maybe you're 19, you're going to be somebody, and now you're just a nerd and have walls of books, right? Like, remember when you used to be smart and used to read and now you're just a stupid idiot that wants to, like, play with your kids while you read us equipment dump. Like everything was always running their mouth at me, right? And then my calendar, my calendar was a mess because I was so insecure that I couldn't say no to anything. And I got my self-worth and identity out of how busy I was. And so I was running around and running around and running around trying to play Whac-A-Mole with my anxiety. I was using other people and other good things, acts of service as a Xanax. And so I was never really present. I was just using and all of a sudden I finally said it with the help of my wife and a good therapist and my doctor, like, enough, I am going to get back in the driver's seat of my own life. And that means I'm going to have to start a ten, 15 year journey to unchain myself from all of the stuff that my culture told me. I have to have. And it has been incredible. It's incredible. It's a daily choice that you make, right? Every day. Every day. And here's here's what it looks like in like this is me being as vulnerable as I can. I had two number one bestselling books in back to back years. And then I had a product called Questions for Humans that went bananas. And then my show went to number one. It was it was a wild couple of years growing up, a cop's kid who then my dad was a minister like I grew up with nothing, right? We didn't have a lot in my wife. Her parents were schoolteachers. So suddenly we found ourselves in this wild new world. It won't last forever. I assure you. I'll get fired spectacularly from this job at some point. But I had enough money to go buy my dream truck. It was a new tundra and I was going to go buy it. And I met with the salesman who was a cashier. Salesman and I was going to go pick it up. And I went down there and man, I couldn't pay that much money. It was in the middle of 2021 when cars were just basically made out of gold, I guess, and I couldn't spend that much money on a depreciating asset. And I came home with a highlander, which by the way, was still insanely expensive. And it's a great car. But my wife was like, Wow, we're getting getting more groceries, huh? Right. I mean, even my wife is is it old text? And she was like, Wow. I thought that that I was married to a guy who drives trucks. But here's what it was. It was freedom. I didn't have to do anything. And so I put the other 20 or $30,000 back into our account for our kids. And I moved on about my day. You know why? Because I don't care what that guy next to me thinks about my car. He doesn't get a vote. I don't care what I. I got great gas. I get 35 miles to the gallon, and it gets me to work. And my son was like, Dad's got a third row. Good job right now. So it's simply a daily choice to unhook. I don't care what you think. And because I don't owe you any money, you don't get a vote. And if my boss becomes suddenly evil and says, Don, you're going to do this, or else I will smile and say, have a great day, said my last check to this address. I'm out. And it took 15 years. It's not it was not easy, but it became I want to live a non anxious life more then I want to impress people at a stoplight with a depreciating asset that spends most of its day in a parking lot. And once I unhooked myself from the Matrix like that, it just it's just become easier and easier and easier. My dad always said, when you compare, you despair. And I think that's true. I like that. And I think that's a way of you kind of what you just said, kind of summing it up. It's hard and it's hard work. And you just let's just be real honest. It's the worst. Do you know It's the worst? I have an oh six truck with 200,000 miles on it. And every time I get in it, I think I'm glad I have good life insurance because this is going to be my last trip ever. Like, except I'm not in a place where I want to go make that choice right now. And I have my wife and I have decided we have other priorities. And so, yeah, I wish I had one of those laser cars that was I don't know that the drove around by itself. It'd be amazing. And it's even more annoying when you have that money in your checking account. But, man, I've got peace. I've got peace, I got peace. I used to always joke with my wife. She drove a 200,000 mile Chevy Tahoe and and she would pull it in the church parking lot or a parking lot at Kroger or whatever. And she's like, Oh, you know, should we get a new car? And Mike And you've got the most expensive car in the lot. It is a Kenyan college sticker on, you know what that cost of two tuitions at Kenyan colleges. That's that's a price that we paid for that. So that's an actual rocket ship. That's exactly so I know what you mean. But so we're kind of walking through the six choices that we can make. We've covered, you know, a lot of them. Mindfulness is the next one on my list. I know you've touched on a little bit, but kind of how can we control what we're feeding our mind and in our own personal dialog, in our inner mind? Because I mean, just getting ready for this, I'll be honest with you, I was kind of like, Oh gosh, what if the power goes out? What if, you know, all all the things that can go wrong? And I'm like, man, you got to put into practice what John's teaching us. And so here I just know I have to put this into practice too, on a regular basis, but I think it's coming. The quicker I can get to that magical list of what can I control and what can I not control once I can get there? Like, what if the power goes out? I don't know. I can't do it. Think about it. I don't know how Transformers work and I don't know like I don't know how to office buildings are are powered up so really nothing. That's what I could do. And the faster I can get there, how could I get that kid in front of me who just cut me off on the highway using drugs? I can't. What I can do is take my foot off the gas and slow down and take a dangerous situation and de-escalate that. And dude, it feels so powerless and it feels so wimpy and it feels so like I'm like, not justice, right? Like, I'm letting you know, what? Do I care anything about it? I'm not going to give myself a stroke and rob my kids of their father because you can't drive. I'm just going to slow down. Right? And so I think I think for me, it's getting closer and closer and faster and faster. Mindfulness is simply extending the gap between what happened and what I am about to do. The longer I can extend that gap, the slower I can make my response. 99.99% of the time the better. And so the more the quicker I can get to I can do something about this, right? If what happens if I drop the microphone? I pick it up. Okay, now I've got a plan. I can actually do something. What happens if the microphone explodes and burns my eyebrows off? Well, you know what? I'm going to handle that. My buddy is the one who gave me the line. That's that when I was the really transforming, when I was in the throes of anxiety, I was an anxious mess. One of my closest friends in the world is a state banking commissioner for the state of Texas. And we were sitting down and dude, I was let them have it. I was grilling him on the on the strength of the U.S. dollar and the deregulation and bond rates getting so high with low it. I mean, I was just after him and finally he looked at me goes, Dude, I don't have a meteorite plan. And I was like, What is that supposed to mean? And he said, Dude, if the U.S. dollar goes away, you think, Well, I'll just have some cans of coffee and then I'll go to work. He's like, If the U.S. dollar goes away, life as you know it is over. You will be shooting your neighbor for water, right? So, like, if a meteorite hits us, I will deal with that. Then I'm not going to walk around a meteorite. And for whatever reason, that just set me free. I was carrying what if what if this happens? And what if I do? What can really I do on my few little acres in the woods outside of Nashville, Tennessee? Nothing. Zero things. And that feels powerless. And I feel scary. I did grieve that. And now I just have peace like I'm a chickens will figure it out, you know? I mean, we'll figure it out. Well, it also it kind of leads into what you talked about in that epiphany moment where and your wife was a big part of helping you heal. And but it's also I think there's forgiveness in there. And then then the and the power of forgiving yourself, but then put it then being determined to put in this work that we're kind of talking about here. So how can you know, the listeners, you know, learn how to heal, learn how to take care of their health, their mind, body and soul? Really. I think that goes back to that idea of worth. Like, I'm worth being able to get up out of a chair and not hurt so bad. And I'm worth being able to roll around on the floor with my grandkids. And I'm worth if I do get struck with cancer to give my body a fighting chance by being in the best health I could be and to go as long as I can with with the life that I choose on, I get to. I'm not going to let that person who abused me as a child, they don't get the Roma life anymore. And that means I got to go spend some harrowing weeks with a trauma counselor and we're going to work through it. I'm a free my body. And then my kids get all of me right, not just the part of me that I don't have hidden away in a box. I and so I think it's just comes back to I'm worth that. I'm worth it. My wife is worth it. My kids are worth it. My community is worth it. My country's worth it. And I'm going to start from there wherever that road leads me here. Let's go. Right. Yeah. No, I think that's. That's the cornerstone. And you really laid that out Great. One of the things that, you know, and I said this at Matt's funeral and and I believe this and I saw this in my brother was I said Matt didn't view himself as the main character in his own heroic your journey, but he rather he viewed himself as a collaborator in a massive, sprawling human epic. And I think you've said that pretty eloquently when you're saying, hey, you know, we're taught to be the center of our own universe, and the sooner we realize that we're not, the better off we're going to be. And it's hard because, like, society's taught us that. And how how do we kind of rewire ourselves and then kind of be selfless, giving, caring, loving others? Yeah, Yeah. Such a great question, really. I came at this backwards. I came at the question of higher power. I came of the question of believing in God from an atheist lens. And the question I asked myself was just if I was to go back a million years and talk to Neanderthals, right? Or whatever for all of human history, I guess Neanderthals aren't humans. There's going to be some nerds out there. They're like, Wait a minute, sir. Like, whatever. It's not a history lesson, not a right, right. Archeological dig. Your anthropology concerns in the comments below, but people walked outside of their tent and they looked up to the sky and they said, Dear God or gods, please reign or my family dies. Right? Please let my crops grow. Please let our hunt be successful or we don't make the winter. And then about 150 years ago we figured out indoor plumbing and mass farming. And now I can just turn a knob and water comes out of my living room. It comes out of my kitchen, it comes out of my bathroom. I could push a button on my phone and food just shows up to my house. We have solved some of the major crisis that have plagued humans for all of human history, and we got real, real arrogant about our role in the universe. And then on top of that, every major psychological approach puts the self at the center. This idea of self-actualization. You do all these things and get all these things, then you can be the shining light on the hill. And I think our bodies are collectively acknowledging we can't hold up the universe and we were never designed to. And so it's this humbling moment for all of us. And I like to tell folks, here's the deal. You'll take a knee, you can do it, or you will be humbled in a really uncomfortable way. So I choose to bow out quick and take a knee and say, Dear God, please help me and my family. And that means I have to open my hands and stop trying to control every variable in the world. If you're a person of faith, if you're a Christian, you have to think, Well, our church may be our politics may be our whatever. Our cell phone system may be in trouble, but the kingdom of God is in trouble. It's not and it's not mine to keep duct tape together yelling and screaming at people to try to not my job. And so I think it's opening my hands and finding my place, which is in service to something bigger than me. And when I do that, my body goes, Oh, because we've been holding up the universe and our arms have been shaking in, our legs have been shaking and our knees have been weak and our heads have been racing and come to find out, it's like, it's like when you at the beach and you think you're can't you're drowning, and then someone else stand up and you stand up and you realize you're in three feet of water, right? You thought you were just getting taken out to sea and actually the water's below your waist. And so I think it's that I think it's that I think it's just as a culture saying, hey, overnight we thought we got real smart. We had the scientific method and we thought we just invented a bunch of things that we're smarter than everybody. We're not. We're not we're guests. And like everybody else, our guests are good and they make sense. That doesn't mean they're right. I'm going to stop playing God and I'm going to say, Dear God, please reign. So you give it over to the higher power, right? You kind of let you which lightens your load. I mean, one of the things and you know, again, this we're kind of Matt did 71 of these and I'm just kind of carrying the torch here. But Matt was a devoted Catholic and he had a deep faith and he had an utter, unwavering trust in God's plan. And I think that's a lot of what what you're saying in your one of the six criteria, the choices that we make on a daily basis in belief. You quoted one of my favorite pieces, the David Foster Wallace. This is water. Yeah. And I eat in you and I don't want you to you don't have to quote it. But when we're talking about worship and I think this his point and then you expanded on it, you know, when we're worship, what happens when we worship money? What happens when we worship beauty? What happens when we worship those kind of kind of sand? They just kind of fall through your hands. But it's not a faith. It's not a higher power. What happens? Yeah, I think I think the point, David Foster Wallace, who's an atheist, made that was so beautiful and the reason that speech has become so timeless. So it just it's so rich with truth all through it is, he acknowledges, out there, out of the gate, we are beings made to worship. We will take a knee before something period. End of story. There's not a discussion here. You will take a knee. If you choose to take a knee before beauty, you will never be beautiful enough. And if you choose to take a knee before money and worship money, you will never have enough. I didn't believe that when I first read it years ago. And now in my current job, when I'm around people who have millions and millions and millions of dollars and they can't stop, they don't have an off switch. They don't have the ability to their kids. I remember being at a luncheon once and a guy was kind of flexing a little bit. I mean, comically wealthy, like just insanely wealthy. And he's like, I want no offense, but I would never hire you to come talk to my company about marketing. And I said, Well, good. I don't know anything about marketing. And he had misunderstood the conversation. And he said, Well, then what do you know? And I said, I know your kids don't want to be around you. And he smiled, and you guys got big. And he goes, You have my attention. And I said, I know your employees struggle to be around you and I care way more about that stuff than I do, you know, And that started the conversation. So I think if you take a knee to anything that you are trying to hold tightly to, like goblins ring, it will end up owning you. The only thing you could take a knee that will continue to feed you is something bigger than you. And by the way, I've got atheist friends who believe in nature, right? Like that. Things are born, they live, they die, and they become part of the soil. And a tree grows like whatever I do at this point. Am I going? I'm going to make you believe in anything. But you have to acknowledge I'm not the center of the universe and I'm here a short minute and this whole thing not about make. And that is where peace is. Yeah. And making it better for others, too. I mean, gift giving to others and that's it's all a part of it. So we've talked about most of these six items. And I just want to go back to one of the points that, you know, that that I think is is important is if you if you if you don't anchor yourself to something, though, it's it's just going to it's going to eat you alive and you're not going to survive. What steps do we take to do that, though? Like, do we join a church? Do we do we read books? Do we you know, how how what's the book? Is the first steps the hardest? I don't know. A path forward that doesn't involve walking into a room of strangers and saying me to or I'll butcher it. But there's the great C.S. Lewis quote, which is The definition of friendship is, Oh, you too, right? And that's not that's not a verbatim quote, but that's the essence of it. And I think that's where you walk in and you have a group of people saying, we can't hold this thing up either, and you exhale if you're a person of faith. I think we have destroyed the idea of the Trinity, fostered the Holy Spirit by trying to take it apart like it's an engine and understand it in its smallest pieces. I think the way to look at it is it is a relationship. It's the through line. It's not those three points, it's the spaces in between. That's where holiness lives and and transact goes back and forth. And so I think there's a reason Jesus picked 12 people. There's a reason that everything is done in relationship, there's a reason there's a father son relationship, there's a mother son relationship, there's a husband wife relationship. All of this stuff is done with other people and what makes this whole thing, these steps, if you will, they're not like an in order set of steps. It's a wheel. And they work together as like may, you can't be in worship to something else without sitting kneecap to kneecap to some other people going, Oh my gosh, me too. And you can't be connected to somebody else while still trying to hold up the balance of the world. Right. You'll crush them. And on and on and on. So all the stuff works together very synergistically. So there's a there's a some accountability there, too, when you're you know, when you're in that room. That's what submission is. It's what taking it is. Hey, everybody in this room, we've all agreed we're going to live like this. Yep. And cool. Everybody shake hands. Everybody agreed. Okay, so we all like and some people really get their hearts heard about the different denominations. I think they're a good thing. In this room we said, this is what this is going to look like. Everybody in everybody and cool if you step out. We've got some built in accountability here that we all agreed on right. We've walked through a lot of these these these steps. And and I'm we're going to share your book notes and all of your resources in the show notes. But, you know, we're kind of getting close to the end here of our time. And if there's any kind of closing comments that you might have that you want to share with the listeners, you know, please do that and thanks. I think that what we most desperately need in this world right now, I think people know politics is broken. I think people know media is broken. I think people know that their marriages are now they could be their friendships are I think people all know that. But kind of like it's kind of like if you had never seen a football game played and somebody explained football to you, all right, here's what's going to happen. This humongous guy is going to bend over and he's going to pass a piece of a pig between his legs to another dude who's then going to run back. And then 11 people are going to try to kill that guy and he's going to throw that pig across the lake. Right. If you explain that and then said, All right, guys, go out there and go get it done. Done. That would be it would just be pandemonium. Me chaos. Right. I think what people are desperate for right now is not about bunch of new information as much as they need a picture of what it looks like, a mob. I thought people were coming to my show at the beginning because I was so smart. Wow, this guy's so smart. He gets such smart answers. Come to find out. That's not why they were coming at all. Not even a little bit. They were coming to the show because they'd never seen somebody talk to someone who just admitted to cheating on their husband. They've never seen somebody who said, Hey, I've got cancer and I don't know how to tell my wife. And they've never seen somebody compassionate say, Dude, pull up a stool. I'll get the nachos in a glass of wine, we'll figure this out. And so what people have been coming have been drawn to is the model, the picture of what it looks like. And I say all of that as prelude to you are giving an example of what love looks like, of what show up looks like, of what was holding, you know, Moses arms up in the desert. Looks like what legacy and family tree looks like because you took your brother's passion and you said, I'll show up. And my guess is it was pretty dang clunky the first few times. Still, knowing what I know about podcasting, I didn't know what I was doing right now. But you kept showing up and you kept showing up. And so people can listen to this show. And I think, you know, from a mechanic standpoint, you know, you know, he did it better than this. But the of they're picking up is, oh, this what it looks like to step in the gap and to say I'll carry this button a little while longer maybe not forever but up here for a while. And so on behalf of humanity, thank you for being a big brother and I'm a big brother. I got a little brother. And I hope to be that kind of example moving forward. Well, you are that for so many people, especially the people that call into your show, I mean, you're the you're the ear, you're the voice, you're there, you're the guiding light for them. And they don't have the connection in their lives. And that is a well, it's a mission. It's a ministry. It really is, John. And I really thank you for that. Boy, I it's our time here has been great, John. I really appreciate it. And I don't want to cut you short, but if there's anything else, we'll we'll listen. I know you could talk forever. I've good. I talk to my wife and I talk way too much as. I think this is. This has been great. I really appreciate it. So I will remind our listeners to learn from John and how they can choose to put his words of wisdom to work in their daily lives, to make them healthy and have a good life. Matt always reminded us to do three things every day to live life to their fullest. One was find something that you're grateful for. Regardless of how powerful this storm is, the other one is be truly present to those that you're with. Number three is pay attention to what you're feeding your mind, your body and your soul. I'd like to thank today's guest, Dr. John Delany, for walking us through his book, Building A Non Anxious Life. It's something that Matt put into practice and John was Matt's hero and help guide him through his daily life. One of the things that Matt always reminded us to do at the end of his podcast was to do three things each day, find something you're grateful for, regardless of how powerful the storm is, be truly present to those you're with. Pay attention to what you're feeding your mind, body and soul. Again, today's guest, Dr. John, thank you very much. Remember to subscribe to the show, share it with friends and comment on the show with gratitude. Matt Listeners, until next time, find the courage to be grateful. Godspeed, my friends.