#920 - Dr John Delony - Why Do We Date People That Need Fixing?

25:14That's the great, that's the Jim Carrey speech, right? Everyone could become Reggie Famas. It's not gonna fix that. Yeah, it's not a sense. And I think the alternative that we've got the last 15, 20 years is what I'm just gonna opt out and play video games. And that's a recipe for disaster too. I think we, you know, Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Price, which I think is a masterpiece. I think we have a culture that's allergic to discomfort. And so I think that tension is, that's where joy is. That's where meaning is is I'm enough and I can hold that loosely enough so that I can hit that guy real hard They they had it a breakdown in ESPN the other day of Alex Vera and His they're talking about how hard he hits that it's otherworldly and The they had interview with a referee is like he the sound it makes when he hits another human is different Right and I just thought man can you imagine me don't do that?

26:08but they say it comes from how come he is. Right? His ability to stay at until he uncorks. And my coach used to always say like, dude, you're like a bear, like so tense all the time and it takes away. And so I think if men knew, oh, she loves me no matter what, that actually drives that anchor deep into the concrete so you can repel off the edge and go do something for them. And it sounds counterintuitive. Yeah, that you don't need to push me. I'll push myself more if I know that I don't need to. I mean, I'm anchored. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's a phenomenal piece of advice. And I put that essay out and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of girls, women who caught a hold of it or follow me on Instagram.

26:53So, well, like, women want this too. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure they do. Can I take that, it drives me crazy. That makes me insane, dude. The every conversation has to be so universal at all times. got to equivocate. Karl Mardi, if I write a note on Instagram to dads, that's... What about moms? I guess, moms too, but I failed as a dad at this moment. I just read myself a note. You'll notice that it doesn't really happen in the other direction. Karl Mardi, dude. It's wild, it's wild. I had a conversation with Richard Reeves sat here. You know what Richard? Oh my gosh, yes, a boys and men. Yeah, so he's great.

27:29American Institute of Boys and Men. And it was the second time he'd been on and we went for like three and a half hours in nominal. And I mentioned I was getting a bit frustrated. The fact that every time I talk about the problems facing boys and men, I need to do this weird social land technology. Yeah, dude. About the fact, well, we must recognize that there is issues that women have faced and we have to remember that it's only been a recent time that men have been falling behind and we must not forget the fact that we've got to do the sexual assault. And after we've got all of that, let's begin to talk about men.

27:59It's the sign filled. Now that there's everything wrong with that, right? Everything has to I'm like, can I say this once at the beginning of my career? I never have to say it again. Because part of it's clipping culture that if somebody's able to pull you out of context by not having said the thing. And even if you do, if you say it at the beginning, this happened to me the other day, I said the thing, I said it, and it just got cut off. I'm like, right, well fuck, I get my insolent, you can't. But what about this, what if, as a society, we just chose, I'm gonna think the best of Chris. What, the problem is?

28:31God almighty. We don't like to think the best of people because hypocrisy on the internet is like catnip, right? Being able to catch somebody out, this was the reason, you remember when Joe got popped for his N word video, which is like five minutes of you hard, actually hard -ranging your way. Combination of A -ing and hard -ranging. Anyway, this video goes live and Joe's like, yeah, fuck that looks bad. That's not good. and the internet was told by legacy media, this is what this guy is truly like, and this is what it means about him. He's really the secret, bigoted racist homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, blah, blah, blah, that we've always known he was.

29:13They were saying this is the tip of the iceberg, and we know that below it is all of this. But the problem was, most of the people that were trying to convince are like, I've listened to 500 hours of him speaking. You're saying that this is the tip of the iceberg. I've seen the whole iceberg. I know there's nothing down there, or I have a reliable sense that there isn't anything down there. And that situation kind of taught me what gets sucked in, what causes people to get sucked in to this. And the precise thing is a vacuum of information and this speculation, the opportunity for people to point a finger and say, I got it, I got it.

29:52Yeah, and um not the the principle of charity is not extended to people on the internet But it's not extended to people in our homes like the godman say when you distill all the way down What makes a great marriage beyond all like religion funny is it are your friends? Like I've got a buddy who lives what five hours west of here his name's John too. He was fat John. I was hyper John and Back in the day, dude always leave cans out everywhere always always always always This single worst text responder in human history. It doesn't matter, a guy cannot respond to a text. It's phenomenal. Not one time have I ever left his house and thought he'd let leaving cans out.

30:34What is he trying to say about our friendship? Not one time. He doesn't respond. Not one time have I thought, does he not love me? What does this mean for us? Not once, he's my friend. That guy stood in front of me and threw him punches on my behalf literally. He's opened up his house to me for decades. He's my friend, right? And, but I don't give my wife that, what do these towels mean, right? Or like, what is happening in this house? Like, oh, there's a dish in the dishwasher. What is she trying to tell me? Right? And we make this huge character assassination. We just, it's madness. I don't think it, I think what's happening on the internet is a magnification of what happens in our homes.

31:10We're so unsure of ourselves. We walk around with these glasses on, trying to find where everybody else has holes, so we can be like, yep, yep, yep, yep. And that's the way we try to prop ourselves up to say, I've got value two, right? I can get value by burning everybody the ground inside my own house. A self -worth stands on the shoulders of other people's shortcoming. That's it, that's it. Instead of exhaling, saying, when I walk in the door, there's a pile of towels, good God, what must have her day been like? Let's pick up the towels. Or when I walk in a john's house, I just pick up the cans.

31:42Or when he finally texts me back, right? Like, hey, what's up? Yeah, I'm happy to hear from him, man. He's one of my best friends. So it's a madness. It's a madness. Speaking about challenges, why do you think people regularly get into relationships with partners that they feel like they need to fix? Yeah, I think that old adage in marriage therapy is true. You marry your unfinished business. I think the way I would describe it is your nervous system puts a little GPS pins in there when you're a kid and you're constantly asking, why doesn't that man love me? He's supposed to and or why is this shiny little box more important than me or why did my mom pick up that bottle of wine They're not pick up me and you constantly are trying to solve that loop and Man you get older and you want to your body repeats what it knows and you go and interest all that situation again You do it again.

32:34I was just talking to somebody in the outside of the grocery store They're they're just a minute ago about the same exact thing your body just goes in and tries to solve it again And solve it again and you got to get outside that loop otherwise you just repeat it and you repeat it and you repeat it because over time you realize seven year olds not the problem seven year olds never the problem. Well, I suppose you can become enchanted by a person that you're attached to. Yeah. Which fills a literal void inside of you and when this is a primary caretaker, this is good. But when this is an inappropriate partner, it's not.

33:09So you're used to, I think a lot of the time if you grow up around difficult adults, children can't change or get rid of their caregivers, so they just learn to cope. They learn to solve it? Yeah, they learn to hold on to the long enough in the hopes that maybe the person will take mercy on them and change. If you're five, you don't have a passport, you don't know how to leave the house, so you become, if you were not cared for in the way that you should as a child, you learned to become unusually good at surviving on a meagre diet of love. Or you learned to sing and dance and get it, right? I've got to perform.

33:51I remember one of the coolest things about going back to grad school as an old man is I had to do a practicum again and I was working with this brilliant man named psychologist named Dr. Michael Gomez. And I remember we were sitting with these kids that had some pre -remarkable trauma and one of the the kids was making straight A's and during a debrief, I said, uh, this, he's like, all right, who's, who's going to struggle here? Where do we go? And I said, this one's going to be okay. And I said, why? And he goes, well, he's performing well. He's doing great, he's making great grades. And he said something that has rattled me since.

34:24He said straight A's can be a trauma response to John. And you can burn a building down. You, you will be, you kids will find a way to be seen or they'll find a way to hide. They'll find a way to stay safe and they'll know the love against you. So I think kids are always trying to solve. And yeah, there's some that have to survive on just sips of oxygen, right? Through a straw, but others will be really good on that T -Ball field man, because that makes my dad exhale. Well, I mean, that's why when we look at, you know, the highest performers in business and the content creation outputs and the world of sports and all the rest of it, for the most part, what you should look at these people with is pity not envy.

35:04You think what has happened to this person to cause them to need to do that to themselves. That's not for me to say that all high performers don't have some don't have a good balance of desire for more and running away from past wrong and all the rest of the stuff. Many do. But most don't. Most are doing it because they need validation from the world because they didn't get it when they were kids. I remember watching that ESPN documentary with Michael Jordan and there's that scene where he's smoking the cigar in the hotel room, and he looks at the camera and he said, you don't want this life. And he can't go to the bathroom downstairs.

35:38Like, there's just full of people, right? And I remember it cuts to a scene of the banners and the rafters. And again, I'm sitting there on my couch in my small little house, and I just remember looking at all that saying, for what? Like, for six pieces of cloth, for glory. Like, for what? Right? It's a weird realization, though, especially when it comes to high performance, because we assume that if we had what they had, we would feel fulfilled and the reason that they're not fulfilled is because that ungrateful, not because the fulfillment is hollow. That's exactly what we're doing. The issue is with them, not with the thing that they've been given the fuel.

36:12That's right. Yeah, I think... Dude, I'm doing the same thing. Like, the moment my first book went number one, I was in a meeting two weeks later, be like, all right, what's the next one? Gotta be good. I got right on it, man. It is, dude, it just taps in, man. Fucking, we both do need act. But yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of different insights on the dating somebody that's a problem thing I think there's an allure of somebody who doesn't love us back There's an allure of someone but the allure is a question. Why can I solve this? Can I solve this? Can I solve this? Yeah, because a lot of us like fixing problems because we but we also export our value to somebody else Oh, yeah, right and if this person doesn't like me Can I morph and change and transform so that I can become likable?

36:57If we can convince someone who doesn't seem to like us all the time to care, maybe that means that we're worthy. That's right. Right. We solved the problem. Of course. If we can fix them as well, maybe it means that we're fixable too. In their mistreatment of us, we see reflected the same level of mistreatment that we give us up. Right. Right. We're like, I actually always did think that I wasn't worthy of right. Now it's been given to me and if I can redeem this person externally, maybe it means that I can fix what it is that I've proven to myself into as well. I think the weirdest element of this that I was thinking about was variable schedule reward, so the way that slot machines will.

37:42And just that, when you see someone that's in a crazy relationship, turbulent, it's hot and it's cold and it's all the rest of it, What the fuck is, like, what are the, both of these people getting from this relationship? And I get the sense that there's just, you don't know what you're going to wake up to today. So if you don't know what you're going to wake up to today, that might be really painful, but there's just a very, very ancient bit of your brain that's fucking loves it. But you know, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't be into hell of a drug. Well, and we've, I actually came to her book through you, Louis Perry's book.

38:20No, she was on again this week. There's a quote in that book that has just bounced around the center of my head at Haunt and me, but it's about, have we solved for so many existential issues that plagued humanity forever that were simply boarded to death? Oh, this is the exact, it was high -rocket needs thing. Yeah. Yeah, but see, I have an unsubstantiated hypothesis about you and that, that, that, Masels hierarchy we can talk about. But I think we're, I think we're bored of death. I think our brains are cooking because we've got food at the touch of a button, we've got water in every room in our house, we've got these problem solved.

38:56And then it's got, we need that slot machine, man. And we'll do, we'll get it from that guy. We need to expect, man, not, man, man, man. You know the idea of concept creep, where as the incident of something like, let's say, racism becomes less and less over time, the definition of racism expands. That's fair, okay. So the level of racism stays the same, but what constitutes racism has changed in order to keep the level the same, because the actual incidents have reduced. In the same way as, I think, climate -related deaths have decreased by 50 times. It's like 98 % drop in the last 100 years.

39:32Let's say something like that. 168 ,000 people get lifted out of poverty every single day So we've had to redefine what a climate crisis means and that's not to say that there isn't a fucking problem with the climate Of course, yes But yeah when it comes to in your life If you're the sort of person who is used to fixing problems and you don't have many problems anymore you'll begin inventing them. You will begin finding them in places where they don't need to be, not because you are a good problem finder, but because you were addicted to solving problems. Yeah, yeah. And my identity is found and I solve problems, and I will manufacture them, and I will create them, and I will seek them out.

40:13And my wife will often show, she'll gently pat the table or pat my leg when I get off into, and then in Syria, we're right here. We're in Africa. We're in Africa. And it's such a, like, okay, yeah, I can solve this one too. Thank you. I can be nicer to my daughter right now. Yeah. I think on the difficult partners thing, if you don't have a full tank of self love, how dare you deny the love of somebody else, even if it's tricky or filled with poisonous ingredients? You know what I mean? I don't think of myself that highly, and this person isn't treating me that highly either, but they're treating me.

40:57And it sounds like a cliche thing that I'm always, nobody's going to exercise, nobody's going to go through the pain of any sort of life change or any sort of relationship change. If at the end of the day, you don't think you're worth the change. Right? And so it's easy to keep going out and seeking these Non -sensical lack of reality like truths that exist in our world now Because I don't even think I'm worth doing the hard work to right? It's it's they're Ramses built an empire on live unless and you make and it's like that's insane, right? It's madness. It's just math dude, right? But we create all these other Alternate realities to make ourselves go I only think I'm worth the hard, the hard man.

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42:53Not worth it. Yeah, I've got it. With myself into submission. I want to ask you, Can I, can we pontificate? Fire away. I've been wrestling with Maslow's hierarchy. Once you get above physiology and love, I don't know that this idea of a steam and self -actualization can coexist on top of these things. I think they are interwoven. Okay. And I think that we may have given ourselves an illusion that you become actualized as you're choosing to love every day. Despite hard things and how to forgive, and you find a steam by consistently being part of safety and consistently being part of a community and coming back in when you get separated.

43:41And this idea that they're separate and somehow we're all going to become this little lighthouse on the hill. And I just don't think that I think we're at the end of self -actualization, this notion that we can somehow be all be little lighthousees on the hill. I don't think it's how we're wired and designed. I certainly think it's more difficult in the modern world because let's face it, the safety needs, the basic needs, the survival needs. They're lucked after. You don't have to do anything for them. So all of those needs, for instance, good example. You're not going to starve. Most people listening to this podcast, I would like to think I'm going to starve.

44:18But that doesn't mean that someone is going to cook a meal and put it on your dinner table. So there's a difference between having food in the house so that the people around you don't starve and serving them through something which they still need. Is that what you're talking about? You're sort of a relationship between the two. Well, I think implied, especially in the modern world, is, again, I don't know what Maslow was thinking, but there's absent participation in these bottom wrongs. There's an expectation that they're going to exist for us so that I can get to the the more important stuff of sitting in a room and thinking about how great I am.

44:54Or painting all food. Painting a whole food just got that sorted. The police have got safety sorted. Yeah, yeah. So the world owes me these things. The world owes me love. The world owes me these things so that I can get to the more important stuff which is on top. And I think that's false. I think the more important stuff I will find out. I'll become actualized through a constant lifetime of love. Well, there's definitely an element that anyone going through an existential crisis, anyone and asking themselves, am I really enacting my logos forward? Is this my highest contribution to the world?

45:26Yeah. Is in a position of ultimate luxury? That's it. Because the only chance that you have to ask yourself that question. But it diminishes the mom who day in and day out and day out and day in and day out. That's self -actualization. Dude, I want to make mom's great again. The day. Or the dad who, dude, doesn't do the job that we do. He goes up and down fifth and sixth street, collecting trash day after day, year after year after year. You don't do that and then hopefully you can get some self -actualization on the side. You're gonna look back and say, this city operated because I was a part of it.

46:00That's self -actualization, right? It's not this place you go to, this destination that you're removed from, these other things, they're tightly integrated. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, you know, I mean, how many people do you know that have reached some degree of success? Yes, two people that I think of, Tucker Maxx and Ryan Holiday, both of whom live in opposite directions out here from Austin, are two people who big businesses, very successful authors, well known, renowned, money, opportunities, blah, blah, blah. Essentially retired to do the thing that they used to do full -time part -time and to have a fence post in full -time.

46:36They'd ran Shane and Wrangling and fucking a hoeing the ground and fixing fence posts and the sheep's got stuck and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Well, why? It's because chopping, wording, carrying water actually gives you a sense of satisfaction that it's hard to find elsewhere. But I got a, I've been thinking an awful lot about where people take joy and satisfaction from in their work. And for people who maybe have a little bit of agency or self -determination to the sort of work that they do, it's really need to be a business owner, but they can maybe contribute to how the teams are put together, maybe part of a small business or a startup or maybe they are independent contractor or something like that.

47:13I mean, thinking a lot about bands and the way that bands, they have to work very hard, but it's a very enjoyable career. And performing and concerts rank as some of the highest happiness pursuits that you can do. Like huge, huge, huge studies that look at anything that's collective effervescence, especially if you're performing, but also if you're experiencing. And you have to presume that if you're performing, you also get the benefit of experiencing same time. And I'm I think it like, okay, so what is it that they're doing that's keeping them going when they're, you know, 50 dates deep into this big long tour and they're in fucking Japan and they're sleep deprived blah blah blah.

47:51And I think a big part of it is having other people to share the successes with. Yeah. To be able to, I don't just mean like coming home to your wife and her going, I thank good for you, honey, or whatever it might be. But a good thing happens and you have someone that you can go, ah, that fucking sick. You know what I mean? Like, and it wasn't your wife in that moment, but it was your manager. That's right. Right? On the phone to your manager, your manager's there screaming down the phone because you're both on a journey together. That's right. If you'd done your own buckings, who would you have screamed to?

48:20Yeah, I would have pumped my fist and been like, cool. And I'm forgotten about it. Right. Got this memory. That's right. You wouldn't have remembered it if it was on your own. That's right. You wouldn't have remembered it. Yeah. And then having my wife walk up at one of those events, she surprised me, walked up with a microphone and said, I'm so proud of you. I'm about to the day I die. Right? I'm a rather dead guy. Yeah, because it meant something. It was a shared experience. And kind of like stand up comedy, I've become obsessed over the last few years, man. I just obsessed. I live around the corner from a club in Nashville and I kind of go too much.

48:47I love it. But that end music, it's got a pretty tight feedback loop to it. Exactly. Well, I mean, you have immediate response from the audience. It's one of the last basins of human connection. Yeah, I play a good note. They make a noise. You tell a good joke. They make a noise. It's very quick. So, yeah, I think I think just one thing that's come to me, although the internet and remote working have afforded everybody the opportunity to step back and to, you know, I can work for anywhere man, you know, I can be on the top of a mountain, I can determine my own working schedule, I don't need anybody else, I just need a laptop and an internet connection, I'm good.

49:19That's great, but it's siloed you off from being able to do the thing that you actually wanted to do, which was enjoy the fucking process of the work. That's it. And if you look, some people are just looking to earn in pounds and spend in pesos and they have whatever, like fulfillment that occurs outside of their job. Fine. But if you want to get some fulfillment from your job, I don't think that you can solo sigma male loan ranger wantroprenerate in fucking Bali because who, when you nail this next client on a sales call for like the biggest deal you've ever, oh my god, like Hula Pakar are going to use our software.

49:58Dude, you just made 20 grant. You just made 20 grand. Oh, it's just me that made 20 grand. Who am I going to celebrate with? And I'm fired up kind of, but I'm not that fired up because the whole reason that you want to win something is so that you can go with other people. That's the wolf of Wall Street. The Caprio's character looks like he's he's addicted to the deal. I don't think he was. I think he was addicted to the room cheering. You know what I mean? To that, to that celebration. And the deal get you that, right? Yes. Yes, so that becomes the proxy. And all the money is just the number that you get to shout in the air with everybody out.

50:35That's it, that's it. In the awe, in the oh my gosh, I should do that. That's amazing. So a perfect example of this. I'm going to go and do, it looks like, it's the first time I'm talking about it. I'm going to go and do a tour around America and Canada later this year. Come to Nashville, please. It's booked. Is it? Oh yeah. That's standing. So as a part of that, I'm going to get to... I don't need a warmer, right? It's two hours of me talking on stage. I'm going to take a warmer, because I want someone to finish the show with and fucking high five, and it might be Zach, my ex -housemate who plays guitar, it might be James Smith from Australia, it might be...

51:10Somebody, I might get guests come and do warmer, but I want someone there with me so that I don't go back to the hotel on my own and think about how good or how bad it was. You know what I mean? Like I've got friends who are DJs, dude. I've got friend DJing looks from the outside, like the most dialed life in the world. Let me tell you, it is on the come up before you've got your tour manager with you, before you've got an opener with you, before you've got like a structure around you. It's kind of a bit like hell. You're playing until three in the morning. If you've got back to back gigs, I have a friend who did play the gig on a Monday in Argentina, Buenos Aires, something.

51:47And the next time he got to sleep in a bed was Saturday. So it was Monday to Saturday and he played four gigs over five time zones of whatever it was. And he ended up basically having like a small psychotic break, talked about it on the podcast, a year ago now. And he had to, he came to in a supermarket, sat on the floor and he had laid around him one of every different type of hair product. He'd been scooping it up and putting it on his head. He realized he had this shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, grab the florative broccoli 48 dishwasher tablets and walk out. Are you like you had a full? Yeah, you know part part psychotic break you think huh That doesn't sound fun, but from the outside.

52:26So my god. He's living his dream against plays music around the world Like Careful what you wish comes at a cost man. Yeah, especially on your own. Yeah. There's always a trade. There's always a trade Talking about I guess the next step people get into relationships with those that they feel like they need to fix and Why do people stay in relationships even if they're not being fulfilled? Hmm. Talk to me about fulfillment. And I think sometimes that's the model you have. I think sometimes I'm not worth my needs being fulfilled. Sometimes I don't even know what that would feel like if my needs were fulfilled.

53:05And so, can I be talked about earlier? I'm just going to keep expanding what my needs need to be because my need is actually seeing you, how high you can jump. and it just keeps expanding, expanding. But I think for most of us, we don't have a model of what it looks like. Our moms and dads, if you look at the demographics across like, there was only one parent in the house where they were co -managers of the house, and even like each other, right? And I've got no picture of what someone who actually loves me and is connected with me and quote unquote needs. And by the way, I've been struggling lately and love to get your thoughts on this.

53:38I've been struggling with the idea of needs. because I think needs have turned modern relationships into a very parasitic relationship. And I think beneath that a more vulnerable scary question to ask is what I want. And I think it's easy. If I lob a need grenade at you, I need you to do these things. This, this, this isn't this versus man, I really want you to X Y Z. Cause one of those, I kind of take out the, I need this. And if you don't do this, then then you're not performing. Or I really want you to want me to do. You see me. That's lovely. And so I think most of us are so terrified at asking the want question of ourselves and of our partner that we cast it all as neat.

54:21Right, because the want can be denied, but the need can't. Most want should be denied, but the need shouldn't. If you deny my needs, you're an ass. If you deny my wants, because you might not want. That's different. One of those common questions I get from married men is I just want her, I just want more sex, right? I don't want more sex, I want better sex, et cetera. But they come at it with, I need more sex. But if you need something, then it goes on the chore list, along with the diapers, end of this, and I gotta clean the kitchen. Which is unbelievably sexy. I'll get you off, and then I'm gonna go to bed, right?

54:56A way more terrifying question from modern male is, to a wife with two kids, and it's exhausting and you're both working full time. I want you, do you want me? And if you don't, we need to have that conversation. What would desire look like? That's a scarier conversation, man. And there are basic needs, so I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. But I think most of this comes down to wants. That's terrifying. That's an awesome reframe. That's really good. Yeah, I think in the process of defining our wants and risking the potential for somebody to be unprepared to fulfill them for us, we feel less than.

55:38Yeah. Or we don't have a psychology for being wrong. I think you've talked about this on another show that I listened to. Before I went to college, I went to this very well -meaning Texas church camp and they took us 18 year old guys in a room and they're like, the world's gonna destroy you. So right down right now, what your non -negotiables for your life partner will be. Write them down right now because they're gonna get watered down and the edges rubbed off, it's gonna be bad. Oh, okay, so you were sort of at this purest. Yeah, before the world soils you. Right, I'm saying. Right down to actually what you really good one.

56:15You're 10 on a ghost. Yeah, yeah. I'm 26 years with the same person, the same woman, and I think she had two of the 10, and one of them was be a pretty girl, right? Like be a beautiful woman. And so it's what, when I say I want something, so often, my managers, that's his job. It's to be like, you don't want that. Like I really want this, you don't want that, right? And we don't have a psychology for being wrong. We just are so let around the nose by our feelings. I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, and man, I can get what I want when I cast it in the form of a need. You have to meet it. That's fascinating.

56:51I suppose as well, it goes back to, what do you think you deserve?

56:57And if... We don't have a, we don't have a... Man, if you had to fight in scratch and claw in singing, dance in a third grade math class to get your mom to look you in the eye. I don't think you're worthy of a want. You know what I mean? If you had to sing and dance on a soccer field for your dad to patch on the back, no I contact of course, but just patch on the back. You don't think you you don't you know worthy of wanting anything. Everything has to be a need. Also what was the model of needs and wants and desires being requested and fulfilled in the household. Because a lot of the generation that are growing up now and are asking themselves these questions, their parents, they didn't have that sort of communication education.

57:42There wasn't podcasts and fucking Arthur Brooks and all of this stuff. So you go, okay, well, what was the model of how to communicate the things? Well, what about passive aggression? What about shadow sentences? What about not requesting what you need and then getting bitter about the fact that you never got it? Yeah, we were cast in movies. We didn't even know we were in and we got in trouble for not knowing the lines, right? Yeah, you didn't attend a party you weren't invited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then how dare you not show up? Yep, right. Yep. And you don't know. So yeah, I think the sense of what are you worth?

58:20What are you worth? What should you get out of this? and do you even know what it is that you're asking for? I could be got an idea of it. And I guess, okay, moving one step forward from this, if somebody feels convinced that they should leave a relationship but they're struggling to accumulate the bravery to be able to sort of pull the pin, maybe they've got close a few times and they've bailed out, what would you say to sort of motivate that person and who deep down knows that it's the right thing to do, but as of yet, just the courage kind of hasn't come to them. Yeah, that's a great question.

59:00I think there's a practical aspect to this, and then I think there's a relational aspect to this. If there's a very real, the data's pretty clear that more women file for divorce, but women's net worth often plummets, right? And so there's a very real economic consequence. So if you're married to somebody, if you're living with somebody and you know, I got to get out of this thing. There's a very real math problem you have to solve. And that's unfortunate and that's scary and the social services are pretty tough, but there's a very real question. Suppose that the equivalent would be the same for men, but in reverse paying alimony and...

59:34That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. And so I think there's a there's a math problem there. Not to say, stay together for the math, right? That's I haven't seen that bumper sticker, but there's a very real reality to this. The other side of it is I know for most of us, when emotions are a sign, especially strong emotions, are a sign that your body's trying to protect you. And when your body's trying to protect you, you're not thinking. And so for me, it's been very important to have a couple of men in my life that I outsource some of these things to. Let's sit down with you, make sure I'm seeing this thing clearly.

1:00:04Because here's what I'm feeling. And it's been more than once in my life when I sit down with a few of my old 30 -year -plus writer -dive buddies. And I'm like, she's doing this and this and this. and they're like, have you looked at a mirror man? And they're able to see something, right? No warrior goes into battle without eyes in the sky. And so I think I often earn our lone ranger cowboy world we live in, man. It's, you gotta know all this, but I'll do it all by yourself. And so I'm constantly telling people, dude, go get a cup of coffee with somebody. Just exhale. And they tell them what's going on.

1:00:36And they may say, hey, there's a common thing on my show. Someone will call and be like, my sex life screwed up. We have only had sex twice last year. It's a disaster. It's fallen apart. And then 10 minutes into the conversation, it's like, well, we have a five year old, a three year old, a one year old and she's pregnant. I'm like, bro, hang up the phone and call me back. Like, you'll have survival sex. You all are figuring this thing out. Like, you're not broken. It's okay. Right? But that's just, you just need somebody to sit with you. But when it comes to courage and bravery, I think at some point we have to head into the discomfort.

1:01:06I mean, that's all that, that's all Judd Brewer stuff on anxiety, but you got to head into it. The thing that you're scared about and anxious about. We'll get back to talking to John in just one minute, but first, I need to tell you about function. Staying on top of your health requires more than just an annual physical, which is why I partnered with function. They run lab tests twice a year, the track over a hundred biomarkers and monitor for early signs of thousands of diseases. They even scream for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more than you get from an annual physical.

1:01:33You receive insights from a team of expert physicians who provide detailed written clinicians, summaries of their observations and phone consultations for any critical findings. Getting these lab tests done would usually cost thousands, but it'd function to only $500. And right now you can get the exact same blood panels that I get and bypass their weight list by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth .com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth .com slash modern wisdom. Yeah, I think some of the questions I've asked friends about when they've been on the fence, unsure, scared about being alone, about losing this attachment.

1:02:13One of the things is how much of your life is thinking about this breakup taking up. What other productive or peaceful or mindful thoughts is this taking the space of how often are you not present at dinner or not present at work or you know trying to meditate or train in the gym or do any of the things that usually bring you joy and you're not thinking about where you are. That's one of my when someone says hey should I break up with them and think about this is I always say absolutely you should break up with them and I just watch and if they're shoulders drop if they're face drops and maybe they're right move.

1:02:54Yeah, because they've got a sense of relief. I've no, no, no, no. Yeah, they've got a sense of relief from that being understood. They're just asking you for permission. That's right. They're just asking you for permission. There's this great, you know Rick Hansen, hardwiring happiness. Dude, unreal. Okay. Imagine CBT meets Dharma wisdom, meet mindfulness, meet neuroscience. It's a hardwiring happiness by Rick Hansen. He's got a phenomenal, phenomenal podcast with his son, Forest Hansen. I think it's called being well. And he dropped this quote that said, a wisdom is choosing a greater happiness over a lesser happiness.

1:03:31And I think, you know, a lot of the time we assume that change is only ever going to make things worse, even though when we look back almost all changes have made things better. But we don't fear change with your loss. True. Yeah. But that's uncertainty. We don't necessarily feel lost. we fear uncertainties. That's right. Because losing an abusive partner isn't, you're not fearing that, you're fearing the uncertainty of what it would be like to be without them. We have two needs as humans. We have an exploration need and we have a security need. They're intention, right? Correct. Novelty and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:04:09Novelty, safety. You need to go out and get some berries. You need to go to a new bush because this one's empty. But also there's a risk of going next. There might be a line behind it in my kill you. I think one of the things that's really useful is to try and have faith that you are the sort of person who can handle change well. Like just to think about that is an ideal. It makes a world inside of your mind where you don't need to fear things adjusting because changes happened in the past and you seem to deal with it quite well then. Change is going to happen in the future. You're probably going to deal with that.

1:04:46So why not this one? Like why not back yourself to be able to be the sort of person who can deal with change well Like you've got this you're flexible and you're okay in different situations and Yeah, you know unfortunately a lot of the people who Have the opportunity to choose partners to to Not just have to settle for the first thing that happens to you know have different life opportunities to move away from that They are probably quite hard workers and the problem with being a hard worker is that you have to have a pain tolerance And if your pain tolerance is quite high that means that your pain tolerance of emotional deprivation is quite high Which means that you'll stick about in a relationship that isn't serving you for a very very long time.

1:05:28Just keep going You're going and going and going and going. Because that's what we do. Yeah You're used to putting your nose against the grindstone and things being tough. Yeah, and coming out the other side and going I wasn't that happy, but fuck I got through it. Yeah Because in the past, in other areas of life, in the gym, or in diet, or in building your meditation habit, or in business, or in skill acquisition, you have learned to associate delayed gratification. You're basically marshmallow testing your way through life, right over and over again. And you go, well, look, there's certain things that you just kind of need to embrace the suck.

1:06:03Yes, and on the other side of which there will be maybe not happiness but meaning and fulfillment and well -being and perhaps downstream from that You get some like fun and enjoyment and happiness and blah blah But probably not in your relationship, right? I didn't think anybody's going to congratulate you on your death bird for saying he suffered in silence Hmm, you know what I mean? Yeah, except that I don't know that I mean it takes two to tango, right? But I think that me makes suffering the inevitable outcome. And I remember when my wife and I were sitting across the table, like the message I sent to her, because we weren't speaking was no crying, no fighting, no screaming.

1:06:46And this was self -directed. I'm the emotional one. We got to say what we still doing this. This is it. Like, because the marriage we've had up to now is over. like, are we gonna keep doing this? And, but I remember that conversation, when we both came to the realization, we have both mutually chosen a miserable marriage. And the beauty is, we can choose a not miserable one. And I think that agency of choice has been taken away by a culture of disempowerment. So I think the idea of like, it's either bail or suffering silence, I think that's a, that is, I don't think it's that binary. I think you can also both be like, do we chose suck?

1:07:26And I chose, I did something, whoever you may be. I stepped out on the marriage. I, I, I, I gambled a bunch of money away. Like I did an extra bad thing, if you wanna frame it like that. We can both choose something different. And that to me is a, it's not on the table anymore. But if you look past, the same thing happens relationally. Those who stick it out and they choose something different, choose something magnanimous. which is very unromio in Juliet, right? You're supposed to just be star cross lover. It's stupid, it's nonsense. You choose it and you keep choosing it and you keep choosing it.

1:07:59Man, you see people who've been through hell and they're on the other side. That's the goofy guys that have real short shorts on and no business wearing that short of shorts at the beach and they don't care, right? Because that's the thing. Because she loves them, right? And it's a different kind of, it's a different kind of depth that love. I've heard you say before about how the time, I think this is your conversation with Arthur Brooks. The time when you want to pull away the most is the time when you're supposed to heading in. I did it last night with my daughter. She's nine years old, man.

1:08:35She's got a supernatural ability. She looks for every single hidden button. Buttons I didn't even know had. She just knows. Goosh. And she screaming and hollering and yelling and doing her nine year old stuff and started to walk away. and I literally went downstairs to head out the door with a dog to go for a walk and I stopped. This is that moment. That's where Arthur Brooks is ringing in my head and he turned around he walked back in and I went and climbed into bed with her and my wife's reading a book and I just climbed. She shoved me out of the way. I moved and then within 30 seconds she hear her breathing different and then she reaches over and grabs your hand and that's what dads do.

1:09:18Emotionally Yeah, you had a child on child war about to begin. It's my end in the nine year old. That's right, dude. It may have been. It may have been salvo stuff, and though that I called recently, and it's like, hey, I'm having a disagreement with my 14 year old, and he just started dial after me. I was going to stop you right there, and I was like, what am I doing? And I was like, I'll call, no, it was Lane Norton. I call him. I was like, hey, I'm arguing my 14 year old. He goes, how about I just stop you right there? And I was like, what do I do? right? Are you just for a living? It happens.

1:09:50Right? That's fucking funny. And then you roll it off and you move on, right? You know one final thing that I heard that I thought was such a fucking great rubric for, how do you know if you've sort of really given this as good of a shot as you can in a relationship before you decide to pull the pen? It was you know that you've made a serious effort by comparing the level of effort that you've put in to the people that you admire and the level of effort that they bring to something before they decide to quit. Just think about that. Think about how much effort the people that you admire, the friends around you, people in your life, the people you look up to.

1:10:28Think about how much effort they put into something before they go like, it's time to stop trying to grow roses in this parking lot. I think that gives you confidence in your view that it's time to move on. She goes, any other reasonable person would have said this is too much. Even the best of the reasonable people, which are the people presumably the I admire. So I think what everybody wants to hear when they've got a really existential disagreement in a relationship is, you know what, man? You're not crazy. Yeah. You're not crazy for thinking that. And you go, that's it. Oh my God, because I was fracked with so much self -doubt.

1:11:06And I thought this was me being petty. I thought this was me. And a lot of the times it is, right? Yeah. And you need to know that's why you got to have fucking glade on the outside. That's right. But I thought it was me being petty, I thought it was me being juvenile, I thought I was being rash. And someone goes, you're not crazy. You're not crazy for feeling like that. I think that's completely an acceptable position to hold. Fuck, well what do I do now? I actually have a fun fact, because you get stuck in, are my desires legitimate? Should I be able to, is it okay to want what I want? Yeah, and you know if you've had a life of marshmallow testing your way through things you have learned to Not want what you want that's it you've learned to put off the things that you want in place of doing something that's harder or more boring I think the illusion though is it's gonna feel a certain way Right wouldn't if I get what I want that suddenly it's going to to extrinsically fill that gap in my chest.

1:12:12And I think when you, I remember telling my counselor, recently, I just wanna feel what I know. And that was a heavy sentence that I'd never said before, but I know these things to be true, but I want to be able to feel them here, right? And that becomes the word, getting from here to here. And that's why a lot of people, especially now, you know, I do say, physiologically decapitated from the neck down. Love that. You know, they just exist. And you know, this is me speaking to me as I desperately tried to get more embodied with stuff, but, dude, feeling feelings is really fucking hard. Yeah, it's horrible.

1:12:51I went in a journey over the last year of trying to do it, speaking to Conor Beaton, speaking to every different expert that I could find to talk about, okay, so what does it mean to tap into your emotions? So what does it mean to feel feelings? You know, Joe Hudson, you're familiar with him? out of accomplishment, going on a seven day retreat, the back end of September with him called groundbreakers. And they've got clinical studies showing that it moves neuroticism, longitudinally, nudges neuroticism in the direction that you wanted to. It makes a bunch of other personality changes. But it's like Navy SEAL hell week for your emotions.

1:13:25So don't book anything for the next week. And I'm really excited. I'm going to get donned to it as as I get close to it. But yeah, man, it's one of the most interesting questions talking about wants is what do you want to want? I adore that question. It's an essay by Kyle Eschenroder from years ago. His website has now been taken over by like a Ukrainian pawn thing. You know, someone's got a hold of the WordPress logins and they changed his website. But I downloaded the PDFs, I revisit it pretty regularly. And yeah, the question of what do you want to want, because your desires define the path of least resistance that your life is going to take.

1:14:10And a lot of the time people, your desire, so the things that you want, your desires, will pull you in a direction that is the easiest for you to go. Even if that is very difficult. Even if it's very difficult, yeah, of course. And even if it is painful, even if it's toxic, even if it's malignant to the world at large, the things that you want, it's the old, the man who loves to walk will work. There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The man who is forced to walk or whatever. You're designed to find the path of these resistance inside of your life. Okay. So what you want to do is align the things that you want with the things that you want to want.

1:14:54Okay. Because if you don't ever step in and ask yourself what you actually want to want, you end up having your desires defined for you by the worst parts of yourself. That's exactly right. By society at large and by the way that you've dealt with past traumas and by the path of least resistance and all of this stuff, it all comes together. And then if you're not careful, you end up in a place not only that you don't want to be, but that you didn't even mean to get to. Yes. And it doesn't solve the problem you thought you were trying to solve. Because what you wanted was not what you wanted to want.

1:15:25So my wife's way of asking that question, we were sitting at that table, was one hand on the table, like, how do you want this house to feel when you walk in every day? And dude, I vomited. I was like, dude, I want you to want that I'm here. I want you to be happy that I'm here. I want my daughter to come running at me. Like she had a, with like a, like a, inside of a wrapping paper roll. I'm always in this sword fight with her that I don't even know him, right? I want my son making fart noise. Like I want the house to feel warm. Check, okay. Then you can't bring that last meeting in here. And you gotta work out.

1:15:58And you and I both know when you eat like this and this and this, we get the downstream grumpy dad three days later. And it became a very, but it became that, How do you want this place to feel when you walk in the room? What a great question. And let's reverse engine that. Who the fuck's your wife? She's Yoda, dude. Yeah, she's a Yoda. Absolutely. She's just a wise still. I didn't realize that you would the relationally retarded one in that. Oh, are you kidding me? Yeah, I'm kidding. The guy that's got the calling show is the one that actually doesn't know anything about it. But she never would have been a punk rock match pit if it wasn't for me, so there you go.

1:16:32It's very important. We each bring her pieces to the relationship. Yeah. Okay, taking one step forward, what is your advice for how people can better move on from breakups? They've got this... Gosh, that's a great question. Rumination, the struggling, checking the social media, everything reminds them of them. I'm never going to find anybody as good as how do people move on from relationships? We've got an allergy to grief in our culture. Like that's a natural process. We used to have a room in the house called the parlor where the body would... would rest for two to three to four days before it was buried.

1:17:09And now we outsource that and we call it the living room. I think it was a Southern living that declared it in the early 1900s, like it's no longer the parlor, it's now the living room, right? But we've just plucked grief out of our lives, just this reality that things don't always work out. And we had a collective group of people you sat in the home with a dead relative right there, right? That was just a part of the grieving process and the bodies got ways that you begin to breathe again. And somebody shows up with food. And somebody shows up with food. And somebody shows up with food. And it's like being at the beach and it feels like you're drowning, but you stand up in the water it's just only three feet deep, right?

1:17:45And we've just, so if you leave a long -term relationship, do the number of students that would come into my office and be like, hey, I'm depressed. My dad just moved out of my mom. And I always, like, Maybe you're clinically depressed, but I bet you're sad. And they didn't have a psychology for that. Like, we don't do that. That's the thing we solve. We solve for sad. Like, no, man, that's a basic human emotion. Let's just be sad. Like your family broke up. Your dad left. Let's sit in that. And so if you lose an important relationship, man, your body's working right if it wants you to stay under the covers for a while.

1:18:23Your body's working right if you don't want to go out. Your body's working right if you don't, like, if you're like wondering in my lovable. That's not something to be solved, man. That's something to just sit with. And if you don't have people in your life, and your body's gonna spin out on you, dude, because it knows it can't carry that burn alone. It is. We have to have, we have to have a place for grief, for being sad. And I think in our current world, the only way to do it is to be, what looks radical, right? I'm gonna block people. I'm gonna delete people. I'm gonna take my phone off. I'm gonna have a group of people that are gonna come to my house every night for two weeks.

1:18:59I'm gonna play stupid board games, something stupid, right or whatever. I'm gonna give myself permission to not go out for a month because I'm tired. I just feel dry. Like, man, that's just, that's called just honoring the system, man. You know what I mean? It's on the system. Because you're gonna duct tape over that thing in counseling. We say it's called call it leakage. It'll find a way out and it usually finds a way out of the real in an opportune time or you can honor it and invite somebody to sit in there with you. How can you tell if you've got leakage? What sort of what are the most typical forms of leakage?

1:19:32Rage. Saying the words if they would just and I don't even care what the other I don't care who and what you're talking about. If they would just the guy in the context of you. Doesn't even matter if they would just. Yeah, if you start making up imaginary stories about people like the I hear from most folks across the country that happens in the shower. You start having imaginary conversations with people that you'll never have in real life. If I see Chris again, dude, I'm gonna tell that dude that you're never gonna do that. It's your body just trying to spin up. Brunei Brown calls it dress nursing tragedy.

1:20:02When you are just constantly in a loop of planning the next sword fight that you're gonna just do the super move at the end, man. And your body doesn't know the difference, man. So it goes to war in the shower. You've done that you step out and you come out of your bedroom and your partners in there and you're mad. They have no idea and they're just eating, right? You're like, how can you just start eating? 15 minute argument with you though. And by the way, I crushed you in that argument. It's insane. Where you see your boss the next day after a night of like, I'm gonna tell, you're not gonna tell him anything, right?

1:20:34So it's when you go into solution solving mode, a rage, fighting, running, hiding. and we broke up. We had plans. I'm gonna sit here. Hey, this is gonna be weird. We can order my house, bring tacos, and I'm not gonna talk to you, because it's gonna be weird. So I'm just gonna say we're gonna play video games. Right? You can watch this stupid game with me. I'm going to show. I'm about to take a guess. We're going to show. No asking me about so and so, but we're just gonna go. You're too old to be mushrooming John. I know. We're going anyway. Right? And it's just honouring, you're supposed to be sad.

1:21:12You're supposed to be sad. And if you wake up 90 days later and it becomes, just keep it in the work and you can call somebody. Right, that's when it becomes a pathology. You gotta call somebody. This episode is brought to you by Aitsleep. If you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold, this is going to help. Just add Aitsleep's pod for ultra cheer mattress like a fitted sheet and it automatically cools down or warms up each side of your bed up to 20 degrees, plus it's got integrated sensors to track your sleep time, sleep phases your HRV, your snoring and your heart rate with 99 % accuracy, and it'll even start cooling or heating your bed for you an hour before bedtime.

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1:22:20A checkout that's e -i -g -t sleep .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. I seem to remember in... Lost Connections, Johan Harry's book. Yeah, man, what a great book. There's a carve out in the DSM for grief around depression. Yeah, which, to me, undermines the whole, you don't get me start on DSM, but that's a whole other thing. It makes sense to me though, that if you were to say, I feel depressed, my dad died yesterday. I broke up with my girlfriend yesterday. You're well, that, okay, the emotion might be that of depression, right? So the symptoms are correct, but the diagnosis that's caused the symptoms or the cause of the symptoms Seems to not fit.

1:23:09It's completely irrelevant. Yeah, all diagnosis is that the SM was a custom a symptom of cluster I mean a cluster of symptoms right that's it But it's totally devoid of context at the point being You should be sleep not sleeping or you should be sleeping all day You should not be able to control your thoughts or have just fog in your head correct all those things are right your dad died There's not a, it's David Kessler, who I think is the world's foremost guru and grief. He says it's like a finger print, man. Everybody looks different. And that's what you're going to solve it. I spoke to, he went about this, he was like the first episode that we did.

1:23:43And I was talking about getting over breakups and he said that it's the exact same circuits as grief. That's exactly right. It's death. The problem is that they're still alive. And you can be in touch with them. You can resurrect this dead person. So imagine that a person that you felt the closest to died, but you had a button that could resurrect them and it happens to be in WhatsApp. And there is always this sort of rumination, this potential, this, so I think, you know, that's why... It sounds cheesy, but I always recommend somebody have a ceremony. Okay, like a funeral ceremony. Yeah, and that can be like, section of the city, like this big lord, it doesn't have to be that.

1:24:21But it is, and I love Castler also says grief demands a witness can't agree by yourself. Just biochemically you can't do it by yourself. You got to have other people. And so I'm gonna sit with you and we're gonna burn the letter, we're gonna write the mean, whatever the mean thing is. But when we wake up tomorrow, probably a little bit hungover, a little bit exhausted, there's gonna be a period at the end of that sentence. And I'm just gonna be sad. Because I'm gonna reach to grab my phone to caller and she's not, I'm not calling her. I'm gonna pick up my phone I don't use amino tests. It's so interesting, the ceremony.

1:24:50Yeah, but you have to give your body a period of the end of that sentence. And we just rob ourselves of it. We just go to the next, go to the next, go to the next, swipe right, swipe right. And we got an exhale. You're not broken. I love that circuitry that gets reused was really eye opening for me. It's a loss, it's a loss. It happens a lot with parents too. When you become 35 and you're like, hey, that was abuse. And they're like, you're coming for Christmas and you're like, Like, I don't know, man, you know what I mean? That one's a tough one. It happened a lot during me too, where... How, that wasn't, that wasn't so dialed that he touched me like that.

1:25:31Well, it was like, well, it's like, he's a great dad. We have three kids. He's a good provider, a good husband, we have great time. Hey, I think that was right back in college. What do I do now, right? And it's a yeah, you're talking about like a real psychological train wreck man That's tough and those were hard things to navigate. I mean fuck that this is one of the Challenges I suppose of doing in a work of doing any kind of Interrespection that you site turning over these rocks or looking I'm gonna open these doors inside of this house I've lived in my entire life and then you realize that every so often you open one and there's a fucking demon hiding in there Come it in shit.

1:26:13Yeah. Well, and I wonder if we Man, we can go down a whole rabbit hole in this. That's prefer another show. I I remember my high school metal band. We played at this event at the end of our senior year called It's called mic stock as an old skating rink And Chris to say that we crushed it bro I'm talking legend any record exec on Planner was what assigned us that day. It was legend, crushed it. I went to college with my head held high, the band kind of dissolved. Then like my sophomore year of college, I'm at home back in Houston with my family. Somebody calls, right? Bro, we found a VHS of the show.

1:27:00Somebody had one of those big box VHS, dude, we piled around the TV. Yo, it was not good. It was so bad, dude. I forgot the words. It was a disaster. It was not good. I forgot somebody broke a string. And it got me thinking evolutionarily, like my body created a story for that moment. And me going back, this technology that has never existed, those old photo albums that have never existed for all of human history, I don't know if that's super good for us. And it's magnified now with kids who are like, Mom, take a picture. Mom, let me see. Can I see the video of me the thing I just did that sort of recursive world?

1:27:39And then we're just we're playing roulette with a nervous system. Strange right because in one we're not designed to see that stuff. Yeah, but as you just mentioned in one way, sometimes we don't want to remember the shit that happened. That's exactly right. So there's a protective measure to it. Correct. Yeah, the psychological immune system as it's known. Adam Masriani has this thing where he says the closest thing to an equation in psychology is tragedy plus time equals comedy. And yeah, something that's atrocious that happened a while ago can actually be funny. That's what healing is, right?

1:28:13That my body doesn't go to war again. It doesn't act as though it's happening again. Let's say, but you experience it with your psychoanalysis, right? It opens a bunch of loops, man. And now it's like, oh, I got a whole bunch of other work to do now. Yeah, and I think a couple of the things that happened there, a stand -hatkin, your brain on the best book on attachment I've ever listened to. Only exists as an audiobook, your brain on the love by stand -hatkin. Fucking outstanding. And he talked about how memories get moved from short -term memory to long -term memory, and sometimes they sit in both.

1:28:45And if you've got them sitting in both, that's really, really dangerous, because the short -term memory is this is still salient, and I need to keep a hold of it. The situation is like, it keeps on feeding it and feeding it and feeding it. And yeah, what you want to do is like clear that shit out. So yeah, it's two really great bits of advice for relationships. He doesn't want stuff to get into long -term memory. So he says, you have an instant that occurs with your partner, a triggering event of some kind. And he says, your goal should be, you need to be able to do this in less than about two minutes.

1:29:20So you need to plan and you need to talk about how you do this. something happens. Your partner sort of jibs you at the dinner table and it really sort of sets you off your in front of someone that you're trying to get a promotion. For almost somebody respect or just a friend or a family member or something in your partner does something that really, really, really gets to you. You need to be able to as quickly as possible in less than about two minutes. Go to one side and say, hey, look, like that thing that just happened and the partner needs to be able to at least bring you back down. They don't need to fix it.

1:29:48It's like, look, we can talk about this properly later on. I just wanted to tell you how much I love you. I'm really sorry that I didn't do that. To just like... Because the longer that you leave that, is it unspoken expectations or premeditated resentment. That's it, yeah. And that gets ported over into long term memory, and that's going to stick about. The other problem that you have is when, as you know from CBT, which is that, what's that eye tracking thing that they do? Indiar, yeah. Yes. What are you doing with that? You're trying to move things that are already too locked in to short term memory.

1:30:16your body still thinks that they're long -term memory with their short -term, they're trying to get it out of short -term memory and push it across it. Because you're not going to be able to get rid of from long -term memory anymore. So you have two choices. Cut it off so it doesn't go at all. But then sometimes it's gone and it's still here in short -term memory so you need to get rid of it from that too. EMDR for the stuff that stuck about for too long. And basically, as far as I can tell, if when you think about a memory, an uncomfortable memory, traumatic thing that happened in your past, if it still creates an emotional response inside of you, your heart rate rises, you get heart, you get flustered, it makes you feel agitated.

1:30:50If you see it from a first person perspective, if you're watching it through your own eyes, as opposed to sort of watching it from above and behind, if you can still sort of hear the sounds very viscerally, all of this suggests that it's still in short term memory, and I'm going to guess there's like a million ways. You know, I love that. Ethan Cross talks about a great way to get out of loops is to talk to yourself with the third person. Yes, that's the reason you want, right? That's fantastic. Hey, John. What are you gonna do about this? Yeah, yeah. What am I? What am I? What am I? All right, John, you messed up.

1:31:22Yeah. John, you should go tell her you're sorry. Yeah. Well, I need to tell her I'm sorry and man, we're off to protection. Your ability to argue with yourself is impressive. What would you say, you know, maybe someone's listening and, hey, fuck, ah, I think that thing that happened in my, in earlier on in my life, I think that was like kind of messed up and, huh, I haven't really dealt with that thing. and I think it's still playing in my mind a bit. Where do people start with processing bad events like that? If it's a traumatic event, if it's, I think it was rape, I think it was assaulted, I think it was abused, then how we think it's good to start with somebody.

1:31:57Yeah, it's always good to put it on the table. And Man, it can be really tough doing it with the person who, like going to your parent or to your partner who may have done the thing, because they're gonna instantly have to defend themselves and Man, that cascade is messy. So that's when you get a trusted friend or a counselor just to say this happened going back to what you said earlier. Am I crazy? And some of them might say, yeah, a good friend will say, yeah, you're kind of crazy. It's not a big deal. Or just sat with a counselor recently and she was like, no, that's a big one. What about something which is not quite, if that's a nine or a 10, what about stuff that's fives?

1:32:36That's right. It down in exhale. And there's something, I think there's something transcendent about getting out of your body and Looking at it on a piece of paper Like scriptively, what are you doing? Are you are you reliving it? You allowing yourself to feel the emotions of it? I think initially I want to know and I want to be able to write it down and say my fifth grader Has really been pissing me off lately, right? And then you can exhale and say it's a fifth grader Have the ability to piss you off because if so you're really the dysregulated adult, right? And you can have that conversation.

1:33:07If it is, I'm feeling like I want to hit my fifth grader, like I'm feeling this need, I just want to punch him through a wall, go talk to somebody, because he can hurt somebody, right? So some of that is, and then, gosh, what's the guy? He did all the great work on journaling. I mean, there is something really profound, about 15 to 20 minutes of sitting in it and writing. I haven't seen a lot of success with people do that by themselves, doing it with somebody else. So how do you journal with somebody else? Oh, I do that now. The guy named Lucla Fever, like you, like they give you prompts and then they have you think through it and they have you exhale for a bit and they have you right, 10 minutes for you guys.

1:33:46So this is like guided journaling? It's not like you're sitting with another person right at the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, that's cool. And what's that called? It's just a thing he does, but. He called? His name's Lucla Fever. Okay. He's out of natural. He's out of natural, yeah, yeah. But he's a guy that always, he's always journaling and pushed journaling and pushed journaling and I always kind of roll my eyes like I'm a grown man, I don't need a diary, right? And I knew the, I knew the therapeutic literature about like right down the stuff, that's good. But what I got really sophisticated at was writing down my injustices, writing down my gratitude and writing down my things I need to do to fix it.

1:34:25And all of that was neck up. And correct, and no punks. It's all next time. Outing into a moment. Yeah, yeah. So this is a, I mean, that's awesome. And is there a name of his course? Do you know, he said, I don't, I can send it to you. Cool. Yeah, but it's excellent. Yeah. So Rick is really, really good with this as well. We're handsome from Hardwiring Happiness. And what he has is the heel framework. So have in rich, absorb, and then optionally link at the end. So have a good experience. So a good opportunity right now might be, in fact, it's the first time I've met John, and like I'm really enjoying this and I feel competent and that's really fucking nice.

1:35:03This is my job. This is my work right now. Yeah, we're working right now. Millions of people that get to listen to this and I really hope it's helping them. And fuck, that's awesome. So have a good experience. You need to notice it, right? So you need a degree of mindfulness. So you need to be able to see, have the experience and notice it. So then you have Enrich, which is sort of I'm allowing it to sort of fill a little bit. And you're sitting with it for as long as possible. 30 seconds to a minute is really good. And then you have absorb. And absorb is imagine the experience sinking down and becoming a part of you.

1:35:31So I think that's a little bit more embodied, right? So you've got, oh, this is nice and I'm kind of up here and I'm in rich, I'm sort of feeling it's expanding and I'm sort of sitting in it. And then absorb, it's like sinking down into me and that's becoming a part of me. And I think you can do this, I'd mentioned before, and I did for a very long time, like 10, six month journals in a row basically with like minimal breaks in between it for the end of my 20s until a couple of years ago. But a lot of it just ended up being homework. It's like admin. That's it. And I'm like, I'm just paying fucking, in retrospect, I thought I was doing the thing and I can't, I shouldn't shout at a previous version of me who did the thing he thought he was supposed to be doing.

1:36:09Yeah. But I was largely just like filing stuff, whereas now, and this is half Tony Robbins, half Rick Hanson, and I've dispensed with most of the other stuff from journaling on a morning and just three things that you're grateful for, but as opposed to just writing them down, like take one minute for each thing and just really, so I had to call with my best friend, the guy whose best man I was at his wedding, had to call with him yesterday for like 45 minutes. I was like, I fucking love Zach. Like he always listens. He's always got awesome advice. He's in a good mood all the time. He's really receptive.

1:36:45He's so fun. Like he really cares, he really cares about me. That's so nice. And he like allowing that and sense. I think fuck, that took a minute to do. What was the other one? The fresh air this morning just smelled awesome, like coming through the window in front of my bedroom. Smells so good, it's really, really refreshing. What was the other one? I developed bravery and courage to overcome difficult things, and I wouldn't have done that previously. I think about how proud of yourself you are that you've done this stuff. Like three really, but one of them was literally the fucking wind. But so, and I just, you know, I finished that, I only had three minutes before the gym in any case.

1:37:21I was like, that was so fucking nice. A lovely way to start a morning. And yeah, I get the sense that a lot of journaling done badly kind of ends up being like a highlighter girl from school who has a very well organized ring binder of what she was doing that day. Yeah, for me it becomes like a weekly report for a business. Correct. What did I do? Yeah, what was my up or down? Yeah, yeah, that's a P &L. It's exactly right. A buddy of mine is going to a retreat right now and his wife reached out and said, hey, would you, the retreat director asked for a few of his closest friends to write a letter?

1:37:58And I don't know what he'll get from that letter, but I tell you what, it really was transformative for me. It was so much so that my 14 year old comes bebopping in just, you know, and his underwear and like, hey, like, I said, hey, I want you to read this. I'm gonna read this to you. Out loud. This is me. This is a letter I'm reading to my friend. owning him to hear what his dad, that his dad's got adult male friends like this. And it was cool for him to hear that. And at the end, he was like, cool dad, like in, you know, I just have to hope it's downloading somewhere. I was like, I had this big spiritual moment and he's like, all right dad, and he's upside down on that little teeter thing, just hanging there.

1:38:35But man, it lifted my spirits to know, I got a friend that good. I got a friend that good, man. And so maybe that's an important exercise, but it takes you back, right? He's the guy I called my wife when I'm a delivery. I don't know what to do, man. He's the guy who I called him and I thought I was gonna get let go from a job. He's the guy I called before, the very first parent I had to tell her kid died. I called him, because I'd heard him do it before and I was like, I don't know what to do in this right. And he said, you're doing it right, don't ever call him again, you got this, right? In that kind of blessing.

1:39:03That everyone's from their dad, right? And so it was it, but it took me back to those moments. Just you're remembering those moments. And man, but that was me running him a note. Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's it like for him to, but in some ways, you know, being selfless is one of the selfish things you can do. Right. Right. Because you get all of the positive sense of that. But yeah, you know, male normative ex -Elexothymia, that like it's so common now, among men, to not feel feelings that it's got a fucking name. And yeah, it's like that's like spray painting your dashboard. Like that doesn't make you tough.

1:39:39On your cool Texas pickup truck, just spray paint a black. I don't need these gauges. What a moron. That's dumb. You're gonna run a gas and get a wreck. Right. And also, if you drive constantly looking at your dashboard, you're gonna crash too. Right. Gosh, man. I just don't get in your in this world more than me. I just, I don't understand the, the tribal disassociation from reality. It's just so strange. I don't, I, look. It's bananas. I think it's bananas. I think that there is a big cohort of people in the world who need David Goggins screaming in their face to go harder. And that may be...

1:40:18Do they need that or is it pornography? Because I wonder from that. Perhaps it's some sort of like... Is it so like insanely sensational that it becomes... You give up saying? Yeah, I do understand. I get the sense that... Most people don't listen to shows like this. A type A people with a type B problem. They're hard charging insecure overachievers that need to learn to chill out. Gotcha. And play video games. But there is a really big cohort of type B people with a type A problem, who are too lazy, not sufficiently disciplined. They don't have a probability, they don't have a sense of agency, they don't feel like they have control over their life.

1:41:00And the problem is that people that have got type A, type A people with type B problems. Like, oh my God, sorry, you've just got too much discipline. Like you keep winning the marshmallow test all the time. No one's gonna give you sympathy for this. And - But they'll see your heart attack from space. Of course, right. But it sounds like if you are a David Gogginsy, like hard charging, pick yourself up, don't need to fucking worry about how you feel, just keep on going, guy. That sounds like every underdog movie that you've ever heard. because every underdog movie has a dude down on his luck who needs to swipe himself out by getting disciplined and there's an old Japanese guy who teaches him how to do kung fu and he gets the girl and everything's great, right?

1:41:45There are no movies about how to log out of Slack at 6 p .m. or learn to spend a day under a tree, right? Because that sounds opulent and bourgeois and privileged and a champagne problem. Like dude, just chill out. No one gets told to just work harder. Well, you need instruction to work harder. You don't need instruction to just chill out, because the assumption is that chill is the set point and work is the aberration. But that's not the case. For a lot of people, that's not the case. A lot of people. It's a great frame, dude. Yeah, type A people, type B problems, type B people, type A problems.

1:42:21That's a fantastic frame. I've always thought that the way the internet has taken a Gogg's message and spit it out, it makes it look like a running rocky fore montage. Correct. It's just that it's actually happening at all like in real time. Yeah, but it's happening in his life, but everybody likes Rocky. You would not have liked to that workout. It was cold, man. Like, you know what? It was stuck it out. It was really, it was cool. The music everyone wants to feel like. If things go badly for me, I can get myself back to where I wanted to be. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, dude. As opposed to if everything's going right for me, I need to learn to chill out.

1:42:56But you're right. I mean, you will see a few years ago, I joined a like just a local, you gotta be kidding me, like church league basketball, and my knees were like, no bro, we had a deal. I'm gonna stop. And yeah, it was two surgeries worth, man. But like we had a contract, but I was like, no, no, I can be 19 again. The, like I can't do. Bro, the most common, I used to be a college athlete, and I'm about to give myself like a double fucking tendonopathy is basketball, by far, by far. So I played cricket until I was 2021. I got my grades reduced to get into the university. I got into because I was going to go and play at a high level for them.

1:43:36It was, I'd done everything. Yeah. It was my entire life throughout my childhood. And I stopped playing for a decade in a bit. And then COVID came along and I was like, I should play cricket again. And the first game back, I snapped my Achilles. And that was 12 months of rehab. and three and a half months in a boot and a surgery, the first major surgery I've ever had, and I learned a lesson I already knew. One of my friends like snapped every CL, every CL. It is me, all of the CLs went. Tom Segura managed to snap his knee and his arm in the same move playing basketball. It's like, guys, look, if you used to be fit and you're now 40 pounds heavier, don't use to be and you've not conditioned anything and the only running that you do is to like you know avoid the rain going from the car to the house.

1:44:33Don't try that well because you're gonna fuck something up. But we do it with everything. We do it drugs. We do it relationships. Oh yeah. Like if people who abstain from cocaine. Oh I'm gonna fucking run this back. Watch me. I'm gonna I'm gonna start where I ended. Yeah exactly. Yeah yeah yeah. This is it's essentially like I press pause on a video game and that like sniffer 1000 video game and then I'm gonna immediately rebegin it. You're going to the gym taking a break. Everybody knows or marriage right you get out of the divorce and you try to date at the level of the marriage you just left like what are you doing man?

1:45:04Yeah, no. That's not gonna happen. Dude, you're fucking awesome. Well, I'm absolutely awesome and I can't wait to have you back on and today was so much fun and where should people go? They want to keep you. Hey, before we kick off can I ask you a question you got time? Yeah, thanks for time. I got two questions for you. Okay, so your ability over the last few years to dig in at what I would seriously call the doctoral level at evolutionary psychology. Tell me about that. Like I'm thinking of you as one of my grad students. Like it's been phenomenal to watch. Thank you. I don't know, I guess. And that's not me blowing smoke, because I'm going to all bait and switch here in a second.

1:45:41But I'm going to tell me about that. I got interested in it. Toward the back end of 2020 -21, I really started thinking about mating dynamics and I think it's so fundamental to how the world works. Survival and reproduction, survival thing has been sorted by medicine. Let's talk about reproduction and reproduction is mating dynamics. I really fell in love with understanding the nuts and bolts of how human attraction works, about how mate values work, about a mate guarding jealousy, male parental investment, all of this stuff. And I kind of got welcomed with open arms by the EP World, which I was very fortunate about.

1:46:22You know, people like Rob Henderson, William Costello, Dr. David Bus, Dr. Robert Plowman, even though he's behavioral genetics. All of that world of unspeakable, fucking like totally cancelable academics really were very kind to me. And I don't think anyone had fully stepped into the world of EP at the level that this show was at and is at now. I don't think anyone really opened it up and I think that it's very interesting. I think that, fundamentally, my question is, why are we the way that we are? That's, you know, I'm trying to understand myself in the world around me. And I think that EP gives us a really wonderful look into it.

1:47:00And then you can look at human behavioral ecology. You can look at evolutionary biology. but I just found it so compelling that I didn't stop. And then I spoke at HBAS, I spoke into human behavioral evolutionary society in Palm Springs. I gave it, I was part of a symposium there. I'm about to get my first, I don't know, it is citation authorship on a study. Congratulations, man. So this is gonna be cool. I'm gonna do this with Candice Blake and Mack and Murphy about every theory that people who are in shape will be more threatened by potential as empi -cus than people who are out of shape. Absolutely.

1:47:41Despite the fact that people who are out of shape would be having their, like, true selves denied as the fat acceptance movement falls away. You know, Lizzo is like in good, like, moderately all right shape now. I don't know what he's seen. She's lost, like, it must be over a hundred pounds. So she looks very different. But the reason being that if you are someone who's, quote unquote, in shape, I'm aware that ozampic doesn't make you in shape, it just makes you skinny. But if you're someone who's in shape, your fitness signal is being derigated. It's attacked by this person, being able to get an easy route to something that you had to use world power to do.

1:48:17And you're going to see that as a threat. And yeah, I've moved a little bit. My, my, I'm still super interested in EP. And if anyone's bringing out a new bucket, I just had a, a, a, Bilvon Hippelon. Okay. He's fun. I guess evolutionally anthropology technically. So I'm still ball -stepping it just did a great conversation with Matt Ridley about it's like birds, birds, sex and Darwin or something which is all about sexual selection that was yesterday. I love it and I'm super interested. I'm now moving a little bit more neuroscience emotions, feeling feelings. I really adore the neuroscience stuff but But so what is as can you point to something that EP is giving you?

1:49:02No, interest. In terms of it's a self -serving question. Like if you exhale and say, okay, here's what this has given me in my daily life. Over the last four years of just swan diving into this. Because your grasp of it is profound. What is it? What is the insight and the knowledge given you? I think understanding that all even the most mindful person in the world, even you are at your most peaceful, you have a sense that you are the author of your own desires, of your own needs, of your own wants, of your own actions, but realizing that you are basically a vehicle for your genes and understanding the myriad of different ways that they pull a bait and switch on you.

1:49:55And just realizing how little you're in the driver's seat has been oddly reassuring in a way because it makes you feel less alone because you understand that you're not personally cursed by this thing. Perfect example. You want one good example. So basically, your pathologies are not some unique idiosyncratic issue that only you deal with. They're endemic and they're a part of being a human. That would be like kind of, I guess. Well, they're not character logical. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So perfect example of this. Dr. David Bus writes a book and in it, he talks about how there is a part of the male brain which is rewarded with pleasure for looking at things that just look sexual.

1:50:38He talks about how guys will happily look at a pair of rocks that look like boobs. Right? And he goes, okay, it is inherently rewarding for guys to look at stuff that looks sexual. And he got this letter from a man who said, I just wanted to let you know that your book saved my marriage because I was looking at other women and I was finding them attractive, even though I wasn't going to go and do anything. And I thought that there was something wrong with my relationship. I thought that there was something, that was an indication that my marriage was broken because I found out the women attractive.

1:51:06I wasn't going to cheat on my partner, and I love it to death. But I saw that the women is attractive. And your book told me that, yeah, you're a guy. You're going to see other women that are attractive as attractive. and you have a system that's inbuilt in you that you do not have control over. And that, okay. So when I don't eat for a while, I get hungry, sense. But for every, you know, behavior for a lot of things, it just makes me feel like, oh, I'm, you know, the things that I struggle with aren't some personal deficiency, they are just part and parcel of you being you. Huh? That's fantastic.

1:51:47I have to think about that. I like that a lot. That's good. One more question. And you can say, I don't want to talk about this and that's fine. I've been wrestling with the weight. So when I think of not weight physically, but weight of the jobs we have. And when I go back to an EP mindset, there's No way, endure it, like, X is an X is above where I'm at. There's no way we've got the cognitive or the physical worrying to hold this. Right? And so I'm wondering if things like anxiousness or depressive symptoms or a need, there's just kind of a path, I'm watching people like head down spiritual paths, I'm watching folks wrestle with autoimmune disorder, short, like, I'm wondering how much of this is, there's a hawk stront every corner saying, here's why you feel this way, here's why you feel this way, here's why you feel this way.

1:52:49I'm wondering if there's not something on the squat bar, there's just so much weight. And I don't have a, I don't have a, it's just a hypothesis I'm wrestling with, that at some point everybody, every physical and body, body has a different program for how do we, like some people shake, some people just throw the bar off, people try to do it anyway and they, you know, they blow their knees out. If there's something in Chris's body that's saying this thing's gotten really heavy. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, perhaps. Your discussion, the one podcast I just picked up was you had a really eloquent discussion.

1:53:28And I know you're not like talking about it, but I was really captivated by the just wrestling with the weight of somebody going to war with their body going to war with them. Yeah, I mean, like it's been a rough 12 months, physically for me. America is a fantastic country, but it tries to kill everybody that enters it. That way I can tell you a cure. That's to give. Yeah, the food, the water, the air, the building materials, everything, the cars, the fucking everything. And perhaps, I mean, you'd look, someone asked me a question about, and this is self -serving too, because I got my own stuff, not that, but look, here's the way.

1:54:06Here's a way to look at it. Most people are stuck. Most people that are hard charging are stuck somewhere on the spectrum between guilt and overwhelm. It's like, choose your direction, Western man. Because if you've got that type A energy, you are going to continue to want to do stuff. You're going to want to drive harder, more, more, more. I just did the number one best seller, but let's look over the shoulder of it. as I'm receiving it, correct, to ask what's next. And, you know, I, in some ways, this is very early because I'm still in it, right? I haven't fixed it. And if you haven't fixed the thing, you can't fully feel sort of appreciation for it, but trying to find some of the silver linings.

1:54:51One of the things it's really done is it's taught me the value of a slower pace, slower pace of life, taking pleasure in simpler things because when your capacity gets restricted, and this is for anybody that's going through health problems, it brings you back to a much more pure sense of yourself. You're not able to use bravado or momentum or distraction in the same way that you would previously. It's like strip back, right? You really see. Or a YouTube milestone doesn't matter. You can't breathe, right? Yeah. You see who you are underneath in many ways. And I think it reminds you of the stuff that really, really doesn't matter because if you can't do all of the things you have to do, a few of the things and presumably the few things you choose to do, much more important.

1:55:38So my feeling around this is I do not want to look back on a life or a career of miserable successes. I don't want and this is where you know I love homozy. He's a fantastic friend, but he is a one in a couple hundred million constitution and I don't think that most people are built to work like he is and that's where if I had to if I had an angel in a demon sat on either shoulder, the angel would be Chris Bumsted and the demon would be Alex Homozy. Chris would be saying you should just chill out and eat some chicken with your friends. And Alex should be saying, like, don't listen to your feelings stopping such a pussy.

1:56:24And I'm way more in the sea bum energy than I am in the whole mosey energy in the moment. And I think you can switch between the two. Sure. Or seasonally, right? Yeah, yeah, but I just get the sense that if you want to enjoy, presumably the reason you want success and you want to work harder so that you can find some sort of enjoyment at the end of it. And you have to be careful not to sacrifice the thing you want, which is joy and happiness, for the thing that's supposed to get it, which is success. Like you're literally cutting off at the knees the opportunity for you to enjoy things along the way, because you're so concerned about getting the thing that gets you what you want.

1:57:02That's it. That's it. The reason that you wrote the book was to enjoy something during the process of writing it. You were thinking about whether it was going to be successful during the promotion of it. You were thinking about whether it was going to be successful. And during the success of it, you were thinking about whether the next one will be successful. You got at no point have you arrived. It's like running toward a mirage. Every step you take, what the horizon, the horizon moves one further, step away from you. And um, yeah, the only fucking way to like win any game is to stop, first off, stop moving the goalposts because if every time you try and kick the ball toward it and it goes about to cross the line and then you, you like move the goal, go another hundred yards back and say, well, that's not going to work.

1:57:41So I'm very much in my at least trying to embrace my sort of slower, more considered energy, really, really, really hard trying to not take the same levels of satisfaction and dopamine from chaotic busyness. What you should be trying to do is move your life toward an outcome that you want and you have proxies for that because like the outcome that I want, like a good life, real amorphous. So you have stuff like I go to the gym every day and I make sure that I speak to my wife and I have a project that I care about and all of those are broken down into subcomponents right. I lift the weights in this sort of a manner and we have these kinds of conversations at this sort of a cadence and I have to answer psych and I have to do emails and so on and so forth.

1:58:30But don't mistake the little steps that you're supposed to take to get somewhere for the thing that you're supposed to be doing. And you need to regularly be reassessing, is the thing that I'm doing moving me toward my goal? Because when you start on a journey, a lot of the time you need to be answering every email and checking Slack all the time and you need to be like, chaos, go, go, go, go, like super Adderall mode. And then a little bit later, you think, well, I kind of don't need to do that quite so much. Maybe you're part of a team now in the organization that you're in or maybe it's your own business and you've got some people that can actually do that on your behalf.

1:59:03You go, your entire My reason for doing this was to not have to do things you don't want to do anymore. You are at the stage where you don't have to do things you don't want to do anymore, and you were addicted to still doing them because they gave you such a sense of completion, and you have existential angst if you're not busy every single day. You look at your calendar as a judge of your self -worth, and if your calendar is stacked, how can you be a piece of shit? I can't be useless. Look how many people need me. Look at all of the people that need me. If I wasn't here, what would they do? What would all of these just reaching out to check calls?

1:59:37That's why Americans won't take vacations right there. Oh, because they feel like they always need to be on the grind. They're not because they're all poor and they don't get any maternity leave. Well, there's definitely... Structural issues also. No, there's not a psychology for what if I'm not needed. It's not restful. There's a pastor in Nashville that says, if busyness is your drug rest will feel like stress. You can't. It's like being off -court for a week. A beautiful equivalent of that is the ancient Greek word for work is translated as not at leisure. So the Greeks saw leisure as the set point and work as an aberration.

2:00:15Oh, wow. Now in the modern world we see work as the set point and leisure as an aberration. So we've turned it upside down. And just to go back to the, how are you dealing with, is it pressure of doing all of the stuff, causing stuff to arise in your body, perhaps. And it's too late to fucking turn it around now, so I'm just doing my best. It's a realization. You know, I said to, fuck, is that talking to you about this? I can't remember who I was talking to. I do know who I was talking to, CEO of one of the companies that I work with. And he's about to have a kid. And he was saying, hey man, I am, like my drive's dropping a bit.

2:00:52I was like, you're doing your wife's eight months pregnant. Like, yeah. I was like, well, you know the science on this, testosterone drops in memory, when they get into a relationship, it drops again when they get, and the wife gets pregnant, they're about to get birth. You know that that's your kid. You're ready for this to happen. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, can we just for a second imagine that you might have had an aneurysm in five years' time and that this is safety from it? Because we don't know. We don't know what was coming down the path. Can we imagine just for a second that this gives you a new, more nurturing approach to being able to run your business, which actually stops some impending catastrophe that would have happened if you'd gone more hard charging, which just don't know where it's going to end up?

2:01:25And to, for the first time in today's conversation to talk about faith, George Janko refers to periods where people are struggling. And he says, every man knows God when he's at his lowest. And I think about that going back to a more sort of stripback version of you, sort of remembering, okay, I don't have momentum, I don't have ego, I don't have bravado, I don't have the charisma, I don't have the The charm, my stories are less compelling and my aura is less energizing and all the rest of it. All right. What's left? Yeah. Like who am I deep down? Who am I now? Yeah. One of my values in my virtues when I'm not quite as flamboyant as I usually am.

2:02:06Yeah. And do people still like me? Do I still like me? And I'm... I think... again, it's still early days, but I think I like me a lot more now than I did before I had to fight a ton of health problems. because it's reminded me that sort of the person that's underneath all of that stuff, when I have to go to bed at 8 p .m. every night and when I'm tired all the time and when my mood's not right and when I need to rely on people more, I think that's a good person. And I don't think that I would have realized that or I don't think I would have known that if I hadn't happened. That's fantastic. Where the Chris is, Chris is a guy worth taking care of.

2:02:46I think he's a guy worth feeling good to do. I think I like me. That's fantastic, man. What a gift. Thanks for sharing that with us, man. I appreciate it. Awesome. Dude, I can't wait to bring you back on. Appreciate you, man. You're fucking great. Where should people go? They want to check out all of this stuff you've got. Um, I've got a, I've closed the Ramsey show with Dave Ramsey talking about money and then I got my Dr. John Deloney show. It's Colin, it's like older Dr. Laura show. Like people call him, mineral health and marriage problems and we've, we've, we've got him to get him solved.

2:03:12It's awesome. Right. It's like everyone should go and subscribe. We'll see you dude. Until next time. Appreciate you. Thank you, brother. Now something unbelievable onゆ Sensome