Empowering Change from Anxiety to Peace | Dr. John Delony EP 513

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:10Your body is solving for reality. Take an inventory. What's the state of your marriage? What's the state of your finances? What's the state of your work? Is AI going to take your job? What's reality right now? I think this helps, even if it's bad, taking inventory and knowing I'm in a bad situation, but here's all the information you need to know about how bad it is. Gives you awareness to then take action. Anxiety is not about bad things aren't coming. Anxiety is about your body realized you're in the backseat of your own life. Yes. You get in the driver's seat and the alarm stops. I'm driving.

0:43I'm driving right in the middle of four years of no going to a restaurant because me and my wife are paying all our debts off. I'm going right into the middle of them. I'm going to have to get fired and I'm going to have to start applying for jobs. But you're not anxious. You have to solve a problem. It's going to be hard. You're going to be angry. You're going to be frustrated. But your body's going to let you sleep. your body's going to let you do what it needs to do, right? So it's about going straight into that store. I love the idea of taking inventory because how many people listening or watching know how much money they have in every account?

1:14You know, as a general, like, I have this much in savings, I have this much in my insurance, I have this much in debt or whatever it might be, and just have inventory of it. Most people are afraid to look at their finances on a monthly basis, you know, just to be like, all right, this month, here's my information. Pull your three credit reports for free. get a yellow pad and write in order of greatest debt to smallest who do you owe money to who is telling you what you're going to do tomorrow because you're not because the bank is because if you don't they're gonna take your house they're gonna take your car they're gonna take your groceries millions of people listen to this are like must be nice must be nice this isn't easy it's hard and it takes time very sacrificial it takes energy give up all yes no concerts yes don't go to a restaurant.

2:01What you're solving for, one of the next ones is freedom. Choose freedom. Who has a say in your life? Is it a political group? Really? They're going to tell you who you're going to hate and who you're going to love? Is that how we're going to do it? Does your mother-in-law still tell you what you can do for holidays? It doesn't matter if you can afford that trip. It doesn't matter if you've got time for it. Y 'all are coming to Christmas in Nebraska. Who's running your life? This is probably the most upstream action because we've outsourced everything. We outsourced our food and our water and our relationships.

2:29I remember walking out of La La Land. I love the movie, but I remember walking out of that movie, holding my wife's hand, and I stopped in the parking lot. She goes, what are you doing? And I said, I just paid two beautiful people to dance for two hours at jazz clubs. I paid them to do it. I should have taken you dancing at a jazz club. We outsourced our lives. We outsourced our romance. We outsourced everything. So there's something about who's running your life. And then you've got to deal with the ugly reality that a lot of people are. And so how do you slowly claw that back? In a couple of generations, we've gotten very arrogant that we are the center of the universe.

3:08Additionally, you take the great psychological theories. They all end in what? You solve for this, you solve for this, you solve for this. They solve for self-actualization. If you go back and read Freud, you go back and read some of Jung's work, we're here. We are self-actualized. We have everything. And we are falling apart at the seams. The self was never intended to hold up the universe, ever. And so to create a non-anxious life, you have to choose belief in something bigger than yourself. I'm a Christian guy. That's the belief system my family and I follow. I'm not prescriptive. I've got friends who are amazing folks.

3:48Our kids play together. I love them like brothers and sisters. and they are as atheists as the day is long. And they are fully dialed into birth and life and death and the cycle of nature and resurrection. I'm a part of something bigger than me. This place goes on without me, right? Whatever it is, you have to believe in something bigger than yourself because the self can't hold it all up. We are wired for worship. That's who we are. That's over centuries. We are creatures who worship. You will worship beauty and you'll never be beautiful enough. You will worship money and you'll never have enough.

4:20You will worship shiny things that will never be shiny enough. And ultimately, you end up worshiping how you feel. And then you expect the world to bend to how you feel. And that's our world, right? So I have to step back and say, I'm not in charge of the cosmos. Please reign. Belief isn't about holding things super tight. It's about opening your hands up and letting go. If you choose belief, if you choose to take yourself out of the center of the universe and be a part of something bigger than you, If you choose health and healing, you choose mindfulness, you choose freedom, connection, you choose to on a regular basis take inventory.

5:00How is my finances? How's my marriage? How are my kids? How's my job? How's my community? How's my neighbor? Your body won't be sounding the alarms all the time. It's almost to take inventory and do these things, then let go of control, you'll have more control. Peace. You'll have more peace because you can control what you can control. That's right. That's right. It's like you'll have more peace when you let go, but you're following these habits and these beliefs and taking inventory on your life, knowing you have no control over what might happen, but you'll have more peace. And peace doesn't mean that you don't feel bad.

5:37Right. Peace doesn't mean that you and your wife aren't in a big spat. Peace doesn't mean that your kids are always happy. No. It still might be very uncomfortable. Right. Right, right, right. We've gotten really good at numbing discomfort as opposed to saying, life is uncomfortable, let me lean into it. So I just become better at it. So every time that news station comes on and you feel anxious, what if instead of flipping the channel, what if instead of watching it and getting angry and going to their social media account and bombing it, what if you just asked yourself, what's my body trying to tell me?

6:07Why's it trying to get my attention?

6:17Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:07Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.