Depressed, Down, & In A Rut? Listen To This.

You were listening to the How to Talk to Girls Podcast with me, Trip Cramer. Hello my friend and welcome back to another episode of The How to Talk to Girls Podcast. I'm your host Trip Cramer from TripAdvice.com. On today's episode, I wanted to talk to some of the guys who are feeling down, feeling like they're in a really bad, rot feeling just like they're stuck and just low on motivation. And that's what this episode is all about and it's with a guest who I interview and his name is Dr. John. John is a very smart guy as you're going to see and just a guy who is filled with positive energy and there's no one I could imagine who could be better to talk to than this guy when you're feeling like you're in a rut. And I say that now because the interview has been done and I've already recorded it and it was so nice to talk to him and hear his perspective. He is a professor, a researcher and we're importantly a community crisis responder and he is someone who helps people who are going through crazy traumatic experiences. I mean, like the real deal here. He's going to explain that in just a second, which you're going to hear on the interview. And like I said, it was refreshing to talk to him because he just has such a positive outlook and gives advice to guys who need help in this area. They need help with personal struggle, especially in the area of loneliness, depression, anxiety. So if you feel like you're dealing with any of that, then you come to the right place for the right episode and that's what John and I dig into. I just want to get right to it today. No more fluff. Here it is. Check out this interview, especially if you're feeling down. But as John likes to say, this is for all human beings. Hey, Dr. John, it's great to have you on the podcast. How you doing? I'm so good trip. How are you, man? I'm doing fantastic. It's always refreshing to have someone on here that has a doctorate and can just speak to a lot of the things that they've learned. They've studied and it's cool that you have that, but you also help a lot of people and you do it through your podcast, which you said is creatively titled. The Dr. John Deloney show. Yeah. There it is. There it is. How long have you been doing your podcast for? Man, we launched it. Gosh, maybe a month or two ago. It's relatively brand new and it's kind of taken off underneath us in a way that I don't think anybody really expected. So it's been fun and challenging and all the things in between. Cool. Cool. I'm sure a lot of guys who are listening right now can hop on over and check you out. Are you on all the different platforms in terms of your podcast? Is it on the big ones? Yeah, it's on all of the podcasts, places. My wife tells me I was born in the wrong century, man. So like when it comes to how tech works and stuff, I'm the worst. But yeah, they put it up on all the different platforms there. Cool. Cool. How long have you been doing what you do for? What do you do? Maybe give us your background. Tell these guys who you are if they've never heard of you and how you got into what you do and all that good stuff. So my background, I think going all the way back is my old man. My dad was a homicide detective in a swat, hostage to go shader, growing up in Houston where I grew up. And then when I was a freshman in high school, my mom started going to a local community college. She took one class and we took it together. And then in and around that time, my dad transitioned out to work with youth at this gigantic church there in Houston. And so I've grown up around parents who transitioned and moved and shift. But one of their cores was they were always in the middle of it when things got rough. And so we just kind of had it wired into us as young kids that when things get messy when the house is on fire, you go in and help, you don't run. And at 42, my mom took her first community college class. She took another one and another one and another one. And then she ended up getting her PhD. I think at age 57. And then she was a professor and she's 70 now. She's still just a gangster ninja, 70 year old college professor working with 18 year olds. And so all that to say is I grew up in this ecosystem that said, you will have a little help and you will get in the middle of messy hard things. So I started as a high school teacher there in Houston and transitioned to working in colleges and universities. And so for the last, gosh, 15, 16 years, I was a dean of students. I was a senior administrator at colleges across the country. And then one day I was given a talk at a university I worked at here in Nashville and somebody from Dave Ramsey's organization, the financial guru guy, the no debt guy. Yeah, sure. And then I got there and she was dropping her kid off and she knew that Dave was looking to hire a couple of more folks to help co-host to show with him to expand what they were doing here. And so she said, I want that guy to join our team. And so we started about 18 month courting process. It was a one and a million. Couldn't have been a weirder thing. I've got no experience in radio or any of this kind of stuff. My background experiences in mental health and in crisis response and just being with people, helping them get to the next crooked, wobbly step that we're all on this path that we're all walking. So when you say crisis response, pay me a picture for a guy, for example, of what that looks like, guys and crisis. So man, I've sat with guys who are 18 and they've come to college and they are devastated by a breakup. They are trying to figure out who they are. They are trying to quit various addictions. Parents have taken their life and they don't know how to grieve or their mom and dad have gotten divorced and they don't know how to grieve. And then I've done work with police departments after hours and over the years and have sat with guys who's, you know, his girlfriend has taken her life, has hurt herself and or who has tried themselves or have held girlfriends of guys who have taken their life in spouses. So I've sat in the ugliest of ugly situations and we've helped tell kids that their dad has passed away and we've helped tell kids that mom has passed away. And so when I say crisis, I'm talking about being in the worst of the worst of it. And sometimes that crisis though is less dramatic and more existential. Like the first time a guy realizes, I need to go get tested for dyslexia. I need to be honest with somebody about my addictions or I need to be honest about I'm at the guy that I want to be and I don't know where to start fixing that. So I think we tend to sensationalize, you know, particular crisis, but everybody's fighting to battle in their own parts and minds every day. Yeah, no, absolutely. There's probably a moment once every two months and I'm grateful it's only every two months where I realize that we are not immortal. You have those moments of like, whoa, I'm not going to be here forever and you freak out and I sit and I freak out for about like two minutes and then I move on with the rest of my day. But yeah, but it's a really rough two minutes that happens every couple of months where you're just like, oh my god, this isn't kind of last forever. That's right. But no, that's very interesting that you're really, I mean, we're talking about some serious crisis stuff. Like, yeah, that is the worst of the worst, you know, doing people who are close to you who have passed away and suicide and the worst of it. I think hearing all this, I want to get some thoughts from you in terms of how he can help the guy who's listening now, who's in a rut, you know, one of those dating rods, he's feeling lonely, he's feeling depressed, nothing's working for him or maybe, you know, he's not even dating right now, but he just doesn't even want to start because he's down depressed for, you know, whatever reasons it may be. I know this is kind of vague and not specific to someone where he can tell you what's going on, but do you have any thoughts or advice to give that person? Like, what do you do when you're in such a rut and you just can't get out? Or what do you say to people who are in that position? There's so much there, Trip. I think there's a couple of things that come to mind. One is for some reason we have stopped looking at relationships as a skill. We look at it as a pass fail, it's something we're all know we're supposed to be able to do. And yeah, if this guy agree with this, keep going. Nobody tells us how to do it. And so we end up watching stupid movies or we end up watching, fill in the blank or we have an older brother or a neighbor, you know what I mean? Or some idiot on a football team somewhere or some coworker down the hall. And these models that we have, our dads weren't trained on how to do it. They didn't know their dads had come back from World War II and they didn't know how to do it. And so we don't know what we're doing. And it just takes a couple of guys to stand up and say, hey, can we all just be honest for a second? Nobody knows what we're doing. And so we bring our crappy models to our partners here, these people that we meet and we're trying to fall in love with. We bring these wild expectations because we don't even know, right? We don't know. And then we bring no future, no plan, no skill set that we're going to try to develop and practice here. And we just all plop on the couch and say, I hope this is going to work out. And it doesn't. It just simply doesn't. And the data doesn't lie, right? If we were going to do it, we would have to do it. were a hiring manager and one out of two people we hired could on us and 25% of the remaining half hated being there. Then we would say we sucked at being a hiring manager. We'd go get a new hiring manager, right? So our model for what relationships is supposed to look like has got to change and we have to look at relationships as a skill. The same as playing soccer, playing, you know, whatever stupid esports or whatever things that we practice on a regular basis, playing the guitar or whatever. Relationships is something we got to invest in. And if you can just be honest with yourself and say, I don't know how this works, then I can start a journey that's not based out of shame or based out of a failure, but just based on, I don't know, right? I don't know how taxes work. So I'm going to learn how that works. I don't know how this lawnmower works. I'm going to learn how this works. And relationships can be the same. Second is, man, guys are we are formed from the moment we are shot out of the wound that our worth is based on achievement. And we have, we even have a question now in our culture. We ask people, what are they worth? What are you worth? And we have a number for that, man. And that number is all of the, the colleges you went to, the vacations you did or didn't go on, the cars you have or didn't have, how big your house is, your retirement accounts. We just say, what are you worth? And it's disturbing that we have given that a number, the answer to that question trip is never a number, right? It's never a number, but that's where we have it. So we've got this idea of achievement. And then we have this idea that relationships are at the skill of something you work on in practice. And so if I'm, I'm talking to a 19 year old, I'm talking to a 28 year old, I'm talking to a 48 year old who was thought he'd married to love of his life. He's divorced and he is trying to figure out what up end is, you know, what day is up and what weekend it is, I want to start back from square one and just let someone look in the mirror and say, you are have worth just because you're here. You've got an eight value brother because you're a person and because you're a citizen in the same place I live, you're a community member with me, you've got worth. And then now we're going to go back to square one and learn how to be a good, a good husband. You're going to learn how to be somebody worth dating. You're going to learn how to do these things like how to talk to people and be respectful and kind and listen. And all these just basic relational skills that we don't have anymore. I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second here. Just so to give you, you know, perspective of someone might be listening. Love it. Sounds good, you know, doctor, John, but what I'm hearing is this sounds like advice for a bunch of losers. Yeah. Like like, oh, well, you know, this is a skill. I got to learn this skill. How can I kind of just had it? You know, like the other guys I see it's I feel it's so easy for everyone else. Sounds like I'm just a loser. So here's what I would tell that person. My my nerd world, right? So my research world before I left working at colleges, my research was on something called resistant influential, which is a term I made up. And it was referring to folks who quote unquote, make it. I was looking at doctors and lawyers, college presidents, like senior ministers, folks who are responsible for the well being of a lot of other people. And the professions with some of the worst mental health issues, especially for men are those who quote unquote made it. And so what I want to tell somebody who says practicing being in relationship is for losers is that everyone's losing, everyone's losing. And if you look at the the latest Jama articles, it's almost a year ago now in November, dude, the average life expectancy in the US was going down before COVID. And it was for their colinum diseases of despair, which is addiction and suicide and organ disease failures, right? And the super nerds, they call it long tail suicide. People are so lonely trip. We're dying of loneliness literally. And we keep pretending that this car, this job, that suit, that girlfriend is going to fix this stuff. And it won't because we don't know what we're doing. It's kind of like the kid who goes to little league practice and then comes home and says, hey, dad, in order to be a better baseball player, I need to get that bat in those cleats and that glove. And it's like, no, man, the greats use a stick and a little tiny rubber bounce you've all that's how they got good, right? And so we just got to go back to basics. And it's that attitude, man, it's that like those are just a bunch of losers. That's the problem, right? That's the problem. Yeah, no, it is. It is. And all that's just going to get you nowhere anyways, you know, when you're talking like that, what about the idea of like someone who, you know, like, for example, guys who are trying to meet women and they just get rejected over and over and over again. And you know, in my eyes, it's like, you got to just know that that's kind of part of the game. But what are your thoughts on that? Like someone gets rejected over and over. How do you pump someone? How do you pump someone up to keep going? You know, these people you talked to and I've never talked to anyone like this. We're like on the brink of suicide. And they've had so many losses in their life, or at least in their point of view, right? And things have just gotten so bad. Like how do you get someone out of that rut? You know, oh man, there's a lot there too. You're good at asking questions, Trip. So I don't kind of off the cuff notes, you're giving me a lot of good stuff here to go off of. Well, so I'm going off the cuff here too. When I think about rejection and I think about constant rejection, I come back to this, this idea that there is no external plug for an internal hole. And when somebody is constantly chasing relationships as a source of validation, then instead of chasing relationships for the value of relationships, there's always going to be this sense that I need that to fill what I'm missing. And that's where that rejection hurts over and over and over. Right? That's when I thought I was going to be the one that got promoted to be the vice president and Billy did. The money that would have come with that would have been cool. The new responsibilities would have been cool. But there's two kinds of responses to that one is, ass, so be it, right? My wife loves me. I got a job in the air condition and I'm doing okay. And then there's the, I want to burn this place down. I hate everybody. It makes me feel hollow inside. And so when I'm sitting with somebody who keeps getting rejected over and over in the heat of that initial rejection is not the time to start coaching somebody. It's not that's time to try to quote, unquote, fix somebody. It's the time to sit there and just go, Hey, that sucks. I hate that for you. And then, and once, right, yeah, it's being a human being, right? Being that silent presence that just says, I'm here with you, the most graceful, critical thing I can give to somebody else, the most important resource I have is my time and my presence. Those are the two things I can never get back. Right? I can go find other money. I can go find other things. I can never get back time and presence. And when I'm sitting with somebody who's hurting, that's at the expense of my family. So I'm saying time with you is my most important valuable thing. And I'm going to give that to you because I'm just going to be empathetic. I'm going to sit here with you because it sucks. And I'm going to be with you. And then over time, we're going to sit back and say, what is it about you, man? What are you bringing into the table here? And it sometimes when you're talking to somebody in that situation, it may just be they've got to run a bad luck. Are they have outsized expectations or they want other people to complete them, if you will, that nonsense. And then sometimes, man, it's it's basic stuff. Like brother, you got a bathe. I've had that conversation for years at colleges where I call some I get somebody reported to me and it's a humanitarian issue. It's like, hey, I'm going to be the one to tell you you've got to start bathing. You have literally like you need to clean yourself. Yeah, you got to take care of yourself. And folks are always grateful. You keep not getting picked for quote unquote teams or for group projects because you simply don't brush your teeth, man. And it's hard to be around you. And so I'm just being the guy that had that conversation with you. Those are hard, awkward conversations, but they're usually ones of grace because people don't know. And nobody wants to be that person, all right? And so what are some weird ones that you've had to tell people before? Well, those are a few for sure. What else? I'm just curious. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think I've made a career out of having hard conversations, hard, awkward conversations. But yeah, it's been everything from, hey, the way you're talking is making it so hard for people to want to be around you because all you talk about is you. If I had conversations, it's where I've had to tell people, you keep getting past your pre-motion because every time I circle up for groups, they say we do not want to work with this guy. And sometimes those are really hard trip because they're good people. They just didn't know that they did not have social skills or they did not realize that everyone doesn't want to hear about how great they think they are or or fill in the blank, fill in the blank. Yeah, and then all the way to hard conversations about telling somebody that someone they love is no longer with us. And so it's everywhere in between. But go back to the constant rejection, constant rejection. Yeah, I mean, it starts with being present and being empathetic. And then it goes through let's talk through your approach and that goes back to relationships or skills, man, they're things that we learn and practice. So the guy comes to you and he's saying to you, I got no wins here. Women don't like me. I'm lonely and I've tried, you know, because I know you're not a dating coach. You might not have the advice of what to do. But maybe they've tried. They've done it. They've done the research. They've listened to this podcast. They've put their effort into it and they're still getting nowhere and they just want to give up. Some guy says that too. What do you think you would say to that? I would tell that person to go get involved in some local group activities. And they're going to learn friendship that way. Instead of focusing on how do I become obtainable for some of How do I market myself so that somebody will find me valuable? I want somebody to take their innate value that they have and go be with a group of people. A, learn from the group what's socially normed. What are socially acceptable things? I'm going to meet somebody. My wife of 20, I don't know how long we've been together for 100 years, I think I met her through her brother. Her brother was a buddy of mine. It was a whole group of us and we hung out. And he pulled me aside and said, "I think you're going to marry my sister." That means we can't be friends anymore, but I'm going to introduce you. And that's how that works. So I want someone to learn human interaction skills without the pressure of an outcome, without the repressor of a reward of somebody telling you that I love you and that you're great. I love that. That is, I say the same thing in different words, but that sounds spot on in terms of, let's go do this thing without the expectation of an outcome. Because the person who is so upset about rejection is the person who's focused on that outcome. So they're only focused on that and they're allowing that to bring them down, right? Yeah, and can we, like, just, I mean, Trip, you've been doing this for a long time. You know when somebody's interacting with you for something, right? You know, you can feel it on them. You can feel the desperation. You can feel that. And in my current job, when we're traveling and speaking or when people are coming to visit, somebody will pull you aside and look you in the eyes and they will stare into your heart and say, "Hey, you've helped transform our family. You've given us some tips for X and for Y. Thank you." And then somebody else will pull you aside and you can tell right then that this is Anglin for something. And I think in a dating context, it's going to be very similar. Are you with me just because you find value in me and you want to hang out? Or are you with me for something? And I think we all just have a radar for them. Right. Yeah, because if we go to the ideal situation, it's that, you know, you love yourself. You got self-esteem. You have self-worth. Not, you know, related to external factors, like numbers, as you were saying earlier. And then you go into situations wanting to meet people. So it's not about trying to get them to like you for validation. It's just you want, you have an awesome life and you want to see if someone else wants to be part of that, whether that be your friendship or a relationship or what have you. That's right. Love it. Cool, cool. So let's talk about, let's talk about loneliness for a second. You were deal with the patient's clients. What do you call them? Clients? Students? God to say human beings, man. I'm meeting with everybody these days. Oh, I love that. We don't even label it perfect. Not, man. Just people trying to figure it out like the rest of us. So they come to you with this loneliness problem. What are some things you've actually heard? And what are some things you've said to that? I think that loneliness is the single greatest curse of our time. Especially now, right? People are getting more lonely due to, you know, this second life we have online. Yeah. And I think that we have exchanged connectivity for communication and those are two different things. And we've become a group of people who just transmits information back and forth to one another. We are trying desperately to find out who's on our team and who's not on our team, which is what your brain does when it gets anxious and it gets scared. It quickly divides up the world into us as in them. And so we are living that out loud. And we are doing most of that electronically, especially after the last, you know, seven, eight, nine months. And yeah, we have our amygdala's are the part of our brain that senses fear, that senses isolation is just ringing off the hook. And I say this often, all anxiety is just a fire alarm. It just says something in your ecosystem isn't well. And usually it's something that about disconnection or a lack of control. And man, you've probably heard of the research that continues to come out that shows that being lonely, when your brain recognizes that you are lonely, when you are separated from your gang, it is more damaging physiologically to our bodies than smoking. It's kill us. And then we set about trying to cover up that loneliness with all sorts of different addictions, whether it's busyness or alcohol or pornography and woman to woman to woman to woman or whatever it happens to be. We will do anything to not feel lonely. And we just end up compressing it and we just compound the issue one after the other after the other. So what do we do then? What do we do when, you know, yeah, we're looking at porn, we're dating one girl to the next, where I can't handle existence right now. I'm so lonely. Boom, look to your phone. Go on Reddit, go on Facebook, Instagram, whatever, see what's going on. How do we get out of this pattern? How do we accept this? You know, besides just being like, okay, I got to go meet somebody. I think the first thing is saying out loud, we're lonely, and men suck at that. I sucked at that. Right? We are not good at being honest with ourselves. We are good at blaming other people, at being angry. Those are emotions that dudes are allowed to have, and we are good at being really, really busy or eating a lot. Right? We're good at numbing. We are not good at just looking at the mirror and saying, dude, I'm lonely. And when we do that, number two, we have to recognize that loneliness is killing us in the same way that, you know, carbs and sugar are killing us if not worse, right? The same way that fill in the blank for any of the advice we have. And then the third thing, I'll just tell you what happened in my own personal life just because I know the literature and I know my own tendency. So, Trip, whenever I get stressed out, my tendency is to withdraw. That's where I go hide. I just withdraw. I can do it in a crowded room. I'm an ninja at it. And when I moved to Nashville, I lived in Texas my whole life. Every day of my life, I'd live there. And I moved to Nashville, man, within a few months, I was burning it all in. I was working all the time. What few minutes I had left went to my family, which is a whole other issue. But I actually knew what was happening to me physiologically. And I had a couple of family couples and we invited them over to our house. Imagine an awkward, this would be, dude, two couples and had them over to the house. One couple was a little bit younger than me and one was about 10 years older than me. And we sat down at our kitchen table. My wife and that dude and his wife. And I said, this is going to be weird for everybody. But I'm asking y'all to be our friend. And it got kind of quiet and awkward. And one guy goes, what? And he's like, I'm asking you if you will be our friends. And that means that I'm going to show up the middle of the night if you need something. And I'm going to call you if you need something. Your kids are always welcome at my house. I might show up to your kids games. And I'll hope you'll be invested in my kids' lives. But I'm asking you to be my friend. And I don't even know what that means. But I know that I'm 40 and I've got to have friends because I know that I'm going to die if I don't. And one guy and his wife were like, all right bro, cool dude. It was kind of weird and we kind of laughed. The other guy trip started crying. A veteran, someone who I looked up to and said, and here is the quote. This is a stud dude. Somebody with a doctorate, a veteran, a brilliant person, someone that I've, I allow speaking to my life. And here's the quote that got me. No one has ever asked me that question in my life before. And that was when I remembered thinking, but we got a problem. Because we're too cool for it man. We are too cool for it. And so yeah, it's, it's as awkward as looking at somebody saying, I want, will you be my friend? Now most dudes aren't going to do that. I know I'm an extreme lame case, but it is waking up every day with that level of intentionality. Meaning I'm going to refuse to go home by myself and watch Netflix. I'm going to refuse to it. In the same way that I'm not going to get a dozen donuts and three happy meals, I mean three big Macs on the way home. I'm going to refuse that. So I'm going to refuse this. I am going to not go to a bar by myself. I'm going to call somebody. I am going to go for a run with somebody else. Even if I don't like them, we're just going to run next to each other. And you may surprise yourself over time, but it's being hyper intentional about having other people in your life, especially other men. Damn. I mean, even I hear that I'm like, whoa, I don't even know if I could do that. It's a trip. Oh, yeah, dude. You know, like that's, I mean, that is definitely to the extreme just being able to talk so honest and open, you know, radically honest. That's definitely a skill in itself that needs to be built. But that's that I'm sure I'm curious where else in your life has a moment like that occurred where you were just so radically honest. You know, I had a, I'll call it a breakdown. I got so spun out with anxiety about a decade ago. I had finished my first PhD. I was a fancy pants at some university thinking I was high in my day. I was working 365 24/7. I was on call. So if students ended up in the hospital or their parents needed emergency, I was that guy. They all, all those things went through me. And I had a new son after several years of infertility challenges and the dude, I just, I fizzled out. The anxiety was so big. And on my wellness journey back, right? And I had to figure out what happened in my brain. I ended up getting a second PhD in counseling. I took a massive pay cut to go to another university, another city. And I started being open. I started seeing a counselor, started working with folks. And one of the things that came to light was this. Life is simply too short to have bad relationships to sit there and silence while fraud and and deception and dishonesty is going on around me. Life is too short to be disrespectful to people. Everybody's trying the best they can with what they got, man. There's very few evil people do, and I've sat with them and I know. And then sitting with people who had lost everything, they'd lost the love of their life. They had lost their family in a car wreck, sitting with those folks night after night after night. Trip life to short, man. Life is too short to simply accept that I'm not worth being loved and to accept short-circuited relationships that are gasping for air, just simply because I won't say what I need, right? And that comes in long-term relationships that happens in marriages, that happens in brand new relationships, right? But it's about loving yourself enough to be honest with what you need and be honest with what you don't need, and then having enough courage just to speak it into existence. And again, not being a jerk about it, man. You don't have to be an idiot, but you can kindly and boldly and directly and with all the respect and gentleness in the world say, "Here's what I need today." And most people, most of the time, are desperate for that sort of direction too, right? And so we have a bunch of people not speaking honestly with one another all the time, all around us, and then look at the mess we've all gotten. Look at our political system, look at everything, right? I could go into that all day. I just did a podcast episode recently that's not exactly what you're saying, but it reminds me of some of the things that you're saying here. It was an episode I did called in the "I Love the Cheesy" title of it, the most important relationship you'll ever have. In the whole episode, I did about a week or two ago. The whole episode is about the relationship with yourself. And that's kind of what I'm hearing here is that you're not going to get too far if you don't have a foundational and successful relationship with who you are, or else it becomes a recipe for disaster. Maybe you can speak a little bit to that. Yeah, and I think you're dead on with one real important caveat. And that is our feelings are important. What we think about things are important. And science is pretty clear that we are most of the time wrong. And so it's critical in owning who you are and finding out what you love and what you don't love and the things that scare you and the things that excite you that you give permission to a select group of people to speak into your life directly. That could be a friend, that could be mentors, that could be leaders that you trust, that could be a professional counselor or a doctor. So yes, you've got to get to know yourself and you've got to recognize that you will never truly figure out who you are unless you have other people speaking into you. And most of us, most of the time, I don't know how interesting. What do you mean by that? So most of us go through our life, letting old stories speak to us, that girlfriend that said whatever she said in middle school, still banging around in our head, that thing our dad did or didn't say is still banging around in there, the time mom didn't show up or she did show up and she was too loud or too quiet. All those things are constantly narrating our days. And then now that we've got social media, everybody's weighing in on everything. And I let some author of some Yahoo news article that I have never met speak into my life in a way. It's ridiculous. And they never even would have had access into my life or into my heart and mind up to 10 years ago, right? And so here was a cool a cool thing that happened when I was in my my graduate program the second time around. A cool thing about being an old man, being in my late 30s, going back to college as I had to go through an internship again. And so I had to be I was an intern at a couple of different counseling sites. And I just started seeing clients for the first time and I was sitting in my class and we were talking about what happens if you've been seeing a client for six months and they come in and they tell you, Hey, you suck at this. I've given you $3,500 over six months. I tried your little exercise. My wife still left me. I did our other little exercise of asking for a raise and I got in trouble. And you're terrible at this. Well, I said in that moment, because man, these my new clients, I was they were intimate, right? And I said, man, that would wipe me out. That would really that would hurt. And one of my counseling classmates who'd been a therapist for years, she looked at me and she said, John, they don't get that. And I said, Oh gosh, is that one of your counseling, stupid, counseling things? And she said, No, man, here's the line. She gave me trip to change my life. She said, you get to decide who hurts you. Other people can frustrate you. They can take your livelihood away. They can take your life away. But you get to decide who hurts you. And to do that, you've got to have four or five people in your life that you trust. And then you have to let everybody else go. And so the image I give folks now is have a little box on your kitchen table and literally write names of people who go in that box. And it could be an old college professor. One of those is in my box. It could be two of my childhood friends there in my box. And you know, who's not in my box? My parents, my in-laws, my neighbors that I don't know. People on social media, none of those folks get to speak into. I don't give them access into the, it might inter-core. And so now, like I posted something the other day online, I'm still learning how social media works. I'm new to all this. You'll get there. I, but I hope not. I posted something and dude, I had a buddy call and he said, take that down. And I said, you know, that's funny. And he said, I will laugh of what you posted for the next six months. That's one of the funny things I've read. But you got to take it down because that's not who you are. You're trying to be somebody you're not. And it's insulting. It makes you look like it, like it makes you look like an idiot. And so I took it down. I didn't even, I didn't go any further than that. And I was, I was all, I was all pissed off. And I was like, two of those all of a sudden, but I gave it in permission and come to think, come to think of it. It was, man, it was painting me in a picture that I don't want to be painted in. It was something that two weeks later, I would not have thought was funny, but I did in the moment. And so all I have to say is I get to find out who I am through the eyes of people who I've given permission to look at me at 360 degrees, not just with the two eyes that look at my mirror back and forth. So yes, to go back to your original question, we have to be in relationship with ourselves. Honest, open, direct, right? Most of the problems in our life are not other people's fault. Most of the challenges are I make for myself are decisions that I'm making on a regular basis. And then I've got to have people in my life to hold me accountable. What are your thoughts on hard work? It's something that I preach a lot. I basically do just thinking of the principles that I've come up with and I teach. And just, I'm just, you know, really loving just hearing your thoughts and in your perspective on it. So one of them is this idea of hard work. And I'm thinking about that because of again, the last thing you just said here is like, there's work to be done. And I say to people, the hard work is just part of the journey. And if you're aware of that, there's almost a calming because of that. Like the awareness of, oh yeah, that's right. This is not supposed to be easy. You know, because that's really bothersome. It's like when you're trying to do something and everyone's like, it's easy. Just do it. You're like, oh my God, yeah, it should be easy. But if you know that it's hard and it takes hard work, there's that kind of like, oh, yeah, that's right. And it puts you back onto earth for a second. And in a weird way, can motivate you to keep going. What are your thoughts on that? Nothing in the world worth anything comes easy. It all comes down to hard work trip. You are 1000% right. Marriage is the greatest thing in the world. And it is the hardest thing. Working the job you love will be hard on top of hard, on top of hard. And here's the deal, man. There is no workout you can do on Monday. That means you're in shape for the rest of the month, right? The suckiest part about getting in shape is that it's every single day. The suckiest part about being a good husband is you got to wake up every day and look over at your wife who's got crust in her eyes and who hasn't showered yet, whatever. And you have to say, I'm going to love her the best I know how today. You get to do that every day. It's hard work. And you said it perfect. Here's the thing. When you have a culture and a character of hard work, when you have people around you, whether it's coaches or counselors or mentors, people who push you, you got folks who you agree, hey, we're all going to read this book and we're all going to go through sober October. We're all going to get back in shape and lose 20 pounds. We're all going to quit, looking at porn, whatever the thing is, right? When you take those journeys and you start to find out who you are and what you're made of, then do those 41 years old. And I quit everything I'd worked for. I admit to the tip top at an extraordinary university, I was making money that my granddad would have never dreamt of in higher ed. I was a senior administrator at an awesome school. And I quit everything to go beyond the co-hosts or radio show with Dave Ramsey. Dave and I are different guys. We see the world differently a lot, but we both really love people. And I'd never been on radio. I had never done any of those things that I quit to go do this job for. But I knew that I had a culture of hard work in my heart. I had people around me that would push me. And then it was like, "Let's go get it done." So you're right. You end up walking a little bit taller. Your shoulders a little bit back. Challenges are exciting. They're not scary, right? They don't bury you. And you can- With that mindset, for sure. That's exactly right. You just work hard and work hard and work hard. And dude, working hard is fun, man. You have those days where you just like, dude, like, I'm going to do nothing today by three o'clock. That day sucks. You know what I mean? It just does. I still do it, man. I still do it a couple of times a month. I'm like, today's gonna be just a nothing day. And I never think that's a good idea at the end of that day. Yeah. If there's some reason, you know, those days where you're busy and you're getting stuff done, you know, afterwards you get into this weird flow where it's that flow state. That's right. You just want to keep going. You're like, it's like, ah, it's like, yeah, what else can I get done today? You do because it feels so good. And then you know what? You take your break and that break feels better than anything in the world, right? Yeah. Those couple hours or maybe you do take a day off during the week or whatever or in the weekends, you just, you know, take a day to yourself. That's like a well deserved. You know, but then you get kind of excited to go back into the productivity mode. If you've been doing it for a while, you know, and you've trained yourself to think that way or have that mindset, absolutely. My buddy Kevin, he was a CIO. He was a chief information. He was the IT nerd, right? And as a part of his leadership portfolio at a university, we both worked at, they gave him all the facilities and maintenance. And these are the hardcore dudes who are there 24/7, the plumbers, the, the HVAC dudes, the grounds and maintenance guys. And I'll never forget a talk he gave them when he took over because right, he's the, he's the CIO. He only works in the air conditioning right? He's a suit. And he went to them and said, here's the deal. I know that few people on this entire campus will ever work as hard as she do. And I know that I have to wear a button up shirt and tuck my shirt in. And so you have perceptions about me. And I can honestly say, I have no idea what you guys do. But here's my promise. I promise it every day. I'm going to put my head on my pillow and I'm going to be tired because I work really hard. And all I'm going to ask you guys to do is to promise me that when you put your head on your pillow at night, that you're exhausted. And then if we all agree to do that, the rest of the stuff will take care of itself. And I thought that was just the greatest leadership speech, man. Just promise me you're going to work hard and we're going to figure the rest of it out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The thing I say to guys, when in terms of hard work is just do the work. Don't expect the results. The results will come. Right? Field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Same idea is just doing the work, trying to enjoy the work. You know, a guy asked me recently, he's like, you know, if I'm trying to go out and approach women and get to know women and meet more women, how do you stay positive through this? Like, you know, if you're telling me overjections part of a rejections part of it, that can really bring you down. Like, how do you change that mindset? And what I said was, gamify it, turn it into a little game with yourself. You know, you want to go out and approach women and as you again, reject it all the time. Don't focus on, I hope I don't get rejected today. Just focus on, I'm going to go out and have 10, you know, conversations today and just try my best and make it more of this game with yourself. So you can just phone love a little bit or just start to enjoy the journey itself instead of thinking what the journey will bring you. Meeting people for the sake of meeting people is, I think that's magic. And man, think about that. Do you ever say like, hey, I want to bench press 250 pounds and just run over to the local gym? No, man, you've got to work at that, right? And some days it'll be fun. Some days it'll be a grind. Some days it'll be cold and rainy. You don't want to get out of the bed, but you got to go. And we just think that we're going to walk into a room and meet somebody and that's going to be that. And then the rest of our lives are going to be made and easy. And that's just how that works. I heard this recently and you may have heard this too. Do you know where we get a lot of our modern romance nonsense, a lot of our dating expectations nonsense? I mean, if I have to think, I didn't hear about this somewhere, but I'm just thinking all the romantic comedies that we watched that are in Hollywood. It goes before that. It's a couple hundred years old, but most of our modern myth of Shakespeare love. It's right. Romeo and Juliet. Oh, and if you back out of Romeo and Juliet, that story is two teenagers that wanted to hook up, they get married, throw a temper tantrum and have a murder suicide ending. They're like 14 or 15 or 16. And so if we back up and just look at that story for the idiocracy that it is, it's a beautiful story. It's well written. It's an extraordinary play. I'm not going to hate on Shakespeare, but it is never intended to be a model for relationship. And yeah, now you pile on the notebook or Titanic, this idea that I'm going to walk into a room and just see them and they're going to see me and it's going to be all good. And it's like watching, walking into Harry Potter and being like, man, I'm just going to run really hard into this column here at the train station. I hope I just could absorb into it. That gets not real, right? It's a fantasy. And we've got to reframe what dating, what relationships with getting to know people, what friendship is. And you end up with a much richer, fuller life than running every time I go to the woods, if I was always looking for dragons, I'd leave, I'd leave disappointed. And I would leave the majesty of trees and of leave changing color and different animals and deer hunting. I would lose all that because I'm looking for dragons. It's not real, right? So you can reframe it, man. Wow, Lee, do you're talking about peace and your soul and connectivity that is going to change everything? Yeah, exactly. I love that. A way to explain the cliche of, you know, enjoy the journey. Absolutely. So we're coming to a close here and I'm just curious, you know, there's anything else you want to say to these guys. And again, and so the title of this episode is depressed down and in a rut, listen to this. So if you're talking to that guy and, you know, these are some of your last words to him, what would they be? I'm going to flip the script here. I want to tell every guy listening to this, you are a person of value with a period at the end of that sentence, not because of human doing, but because you're human being, you simply have value. Number two, be honest with yourself. If you don't know what you're doing relationally. And most of us were not trained. Most of us had bad models, or broken models, or crooked models, not that our parents were bad. They were doing the best they could with the tools that they had. And their parents were too, but recognize the pictures you have of what a good marriage is, what a good relationship is, what a great date is, is probably an alternative reality. And that means number four, you are worth being well. You're worth going back to the drawing board, figuring out how to do relationships, how to be a good friend, how to listen, how to not try to fix your friends like their car engines, but how just to sit with people and be empathetic and listen. And all that starts with you looking in the mirror saying, I'm worth being well. I'm worth stopping the nonsense scripts that have been running in my head since I was a six year old. The last, my dad left because he sucked, not me. My mom was busy. She was trying to do the best she could. It wasn't an indictment of me. And so on and so forth. But I want every guy listening to this to know they're worth being in relationship with. They're worth figuring out how to do that. And sometimes that's going back to the drawing board and the journey is always, always worth it. Hell yeah, man. That was awesome. Well said and very true, especially very motivational. I appreciate you being here on the podcast. And if there's guys who are interested in checking you out, we'll put the podcast in the episode notes. And I knew where else you recommend they go if they want to learn more about you. Yeah, the show is a call in show. So they can call in and I answer calls live on the air. And we talk through people's situations. And it's everything from relationship issues to mental health issues, to apparent issues and law issues. All of it's coming across pornography issues. Name it. We talk about it. So they can call into the show. And so yeah, you can go to the, to the show page, the Dr. John Deloney show show page and get all the contact info there. And you can follow me on all the social media, internet at, at John Deloney. And then I've got a YouTube channel too. YouTube slash John Deloney. Cool. Awesome. So yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. Dr. John, thank you for being here, sharing your wisdom. And I got a lot out of it, which means I'm sure that the guys listening got a lot out of it as well. So thank you very much. Hey, really, Tripp. Hey, thank you so much for doing this and for speaking to the hearts and minds of men out there. Guys, we're going to be all right. It's up to us to turn this around. So let's do it. I love it. Awesome. And thank you.