Hey, what is up? This is the Dr. John Deloney show. I'm John. I'm so happy to be here. I hope you're doing well. I hope you have survived Christmas, whether it was wonderful and exciting.

And you got to be with kids who got to open presents, whether you had to get up and go to work and serve the least of these, whether you're a nurse and your shift doesn't stop no matter what day it is or you are picking up the trash in the neighborhood and you got your headphones in right now. I hope you survived. If you had to go to your family's house and it was a disaster, I hope you are back on track.

You're doing OK. You're recovering whatever it may be. You may be listening to this in a closet in your cousin's. Bathroom, I don't even know who's got closets in the bathroom, it may be you, and so if it is awesome, we're going to do something a little different today. So I put out on the interweb on the social media the other day an AMA ask me anything. I've been getting a lot of requests, whether it's direct messages or emails or Facebook connections.

How do you see that Facebook connections? I send like a hundred eleven years old just then. Yes, Facebook messages. Yes, said James, otherwise known as the deity of my choice. Right. Asking me certain questions about why do I do what I do, how do I do it, what are the things that I believe in, what are the things that I actually do with my life? And so I thought I would compile all that, do an AMA and ask me anything and just go through some of these questions.

If you don't want to hear that, if you tune in every every time the show drops to hear what's going on in somebody else's life. If you tune in to just hear, like, who I thought my life was bad, I'm glad it's not that or I'm experiencing the exact same thing, then this won't be the show for you. You can just check out if you wanna have some fun and dig into some of the things behind the thing, some of the reasons I say what I say and where those things come from.

This is going to be a fun show. So we're going to jump in and do an ask me anything. We've got Kelly and James here. They can actually speak into the show today, which is going to be fun. And if I just blow by something or say something stupid, they are free to make fun of me and pop in like they always do. Can I do that from now on? On every show. Every show. You're welcome.

You do do that. Here's the thing, folks. James can speak into my ear. We're only I can hear him. And he can speak into everybody's ears. Everybody can hear him.

See, I don't know how much he tortures me. I look directly at Kelly and she sometimes makes faces that are worse than my wife and my mom combined. Yeah, but this is the first time that I can actually speak on the air. I know it hurts me, hurts and it makes me nervous and uncomfortable. All right. So let's go in. Question number one that came up all lot is what is my morning routine. I talk a lot about having routine, controlling what you can control, what are the things that you can do every day.

And it started with Ben Greenfield a decade ago. Ben Greenfield, fitness dotcom is a guy that I trust, a guy that I have high respect for and who practices what he preaches. Also, a few years ago, Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Workweek Fame came out with a book called Tools of Titans. It's about two or three inches thick and it just has morning routines and daily practices of everyone from, I don't know, professional bowlers to neuroscientists to astronauts and everybody in between.

And so consensus is that people who achieve things that help them be well and don't want to say success, because I think a mom of three kids who's making it work is highly successful. And I think someone who can put a man on the moon is highly successful, someone who's figuring out a mine, an asteroid is highly successful and somebody who works at a used car dealership and make sure people have a affordable car to get to work is successful.

And so an underlying theme there is that they have a morning routine often that they don't budge on or if they budge on it, it is barely. So here is my routine. I do it almost every single morning, sometimes with little tweaks and variations here and there. And we're going to put some of the stuff in the show notes. This will be a packed show notes thing. So if you don't want to just take notes, you can click in and check out the show.

But here's here's the way it works. I wake up somewhat early, usually between five and five. Forty five on most days, I try to get seven to nine hours of sleep, seven, eight hours. I really don't like to budge on that occasionally. Like once a month I'll sleep until seven and several times a month. I wake up at four thirty. If I get up at four thirty on my own I just get up and go ahead and go do the day.

I turn on the coffee pot, I make my bed. My wife is a writer and so she's usually up before me writing. So I make the bed boom. I started off the day with the wind turn on the coffee pot and I immediately go to my gratitude journal. If you're watching on YouTube, this is my gratitude journal, the actual one, and I write in it. I just grab a marker and use I grabbed out of my kids, but I write down five things that I'm grateful for.

They start with the sentence I'm grateful for. Then I reach over and grab a Bible. I'm a Christian guy. And so Scripture guides my life and I will write down a scripture that's going to be my guiding one for the day. And I put that on my little note card. My no card is what guides me. I don't have a fancy app. I don't have a plan or anything like that. I've got a note card that I carry in my pocket and I check on it and I mark things off as I go.

I then move to meditation, whether that's five minutes or fifteen minutes. Usually I use the Insight timer app. It's free and I don't make any money. I'm not making any money on any of the things I recommend here. These are just things that I do on my own and I will meditate for five to 15 minutes. I also spent a year with the professor who was a monk, and so I've done a number of my own chants and learned a number of my own meditations that through him.

And so I will do those two. I've got my own little Tibetan bill down in my little home office. The point of meditation is to be still learn to control my thoughts and experiences. And if you think of your thoughts like a muscle, meditation helps you bring them back.

And when they wander, you bring them back.

Then I head upstairs and I grab some coffee. For years I drink black coffee. I'm working on something now with Dr. Josh Accies, Green Moccia colostrum. It's an ancient nutrition product. It's pretty good. I like it several days into it and I like it a lot. I mix fifty fifty decaf to caffeinated and I think we the science is pretty clear that caffeine helps and we are way over stimulated group of people. And so I've been mixing it fifty fifty me and my wife, and it's helped our anxiety, it's helped our sleep, it's helped everything.

So I didn't put my feet. Bare grass just for a few minutes, this isn't something you do for an hour, a day does not go by when I don't touch my bare feet to bare ground, period. And I don't have caffeine after 10:00, except rarely. And that's just one of my little rules. I then go workout. I've been collecting gym equipment in my garage for years. If a Crossville gym is going out of going out of business or local, you know, Craigslist has something for sale, I'll go by and buy two plates or one kettlebell and I work out anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.

I built my own squat rack using four by fours in a YouTube video. There's just not a lot of excuses for not working out at your house. Gyms can be cool. There's a good camaraderie there.

It's got everything there. But most of us have everything we need at our house or we could collect it over a couple of months.

Obviously, covid man dude, gym equipment's gotten expensive because people are stuck at home. Good for them. You can even run around your yard with rocks. You can fill up five gallon buckets with concrete. There is a number of things you can do to come up with weights and workout equipment at your house.

But I work out from anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, depending on my morning. I listen to my body sometimes. I've had several late nights in a row or I sleep terrible several nights in a row and sometimes I'll just take a walk. Often I'll walk everyday for a week, I'll walk a mile and a half one way and a mile and a half back. It'll be a three mile walk. Other times I'll take a walk, but I'll wear a backpack and I'll put a thirty five pound weight in it like a like a makeshift rucksack.

Right now I'm doing Choco's Push-Pull squat and lift protocol, but I'll switch them up. I'll do that for four or five months and then I'll go do something else. The goal here is this. I am in my 40s now. I'm in my early 40s and my goal has switched from pro. I want to squat and bench press. Now, my goal is this. I want to be able to roll around and wrestle with my grandkids when I'm 90.

I want to be a formidable opponent for my granddaughter and my grandson on a wrestling mat when I'm 90. And so I am working out on getting strong, getting lean, getting making sure I move often and then I'm keeping my strength up. When I went on vacation, like on Thanksgiving, we drove a van a thousand miles to to go to a ranch like a hunting field. And then we went to my parents house. I put some of my cattle belts and dumbbells in the car.

And it's not uncommon for me to do a 15, 20 minute workout in the parking lot of a hotel or off behind a tree somewhere in the middle of a field. It's just good to keep moving. I'm not going to hire a mobility a movement coach via online and start working on some joint mobility and some joint muscle strength.

I'll let you know how that goes, but I'm looking at that in the next couple of months. Then after my workout 30 to 60 Minutes, I hang upside down on my Teater. It's an inversion table. It's called a Teater. It couldn't have come up with it. I guess it's teeter totter, right? That's right. I'm just saying I hang upside down on my teeter. Just sounds weird when I say it out loud, but I could see James getting a comfortable to pretty much all this stuff.

Sounds weird, so don't worry about them. Exactly. So I hang upside down for three minutes. Thirty five minutes and then I go outside, I'm a cold tub, I have a middle watering trough that I got from a tractor supply store and I leave it outside in the winter and it ices over. This morning I actually had to break the ice and I sit in it for three to five minutes. You learn how to breathe still. And if I'm not in the cold shower, I mean, if I'm not in the cold, cold showers, cold exposure grows new to new mitochondria.

There's a cellular reason why. There's a scientific a biological reason it grows new mitochondria. That's the battery power for your cells. It makes you stronger from the inside out.

And it's good psychologically, but the whole thing takes about forty five minutes to an hour and a half depending on my day. And sometimes if I wake up early, I'll slow play it and do a long workout. Sometimes if I'm in a rush, I'll do forty five minutes. Sometimes, like today was a recovery day, I spent thirty to forty five minutes with my foam roller and with my mom, I don't know, jackhammer massage thing just stretching and getting loose and doing some squats and then calling it good.

I also build in a lot of hugs and touching and body contact with my wife and my two kids at Somebody Come Stay With Me recently was working through some personal challenges and they pulled me aside. One day we were walking outside and said, Do you and your wife hug that much all the time? Do you and your kids hug like that every day?

Just put on a show for me. And I said, no, we do that every day. Skin to skin contact, body contact, eye contact is critical. It's something we've lost and it's something that I'm highly intentional about in my house.

Sometimes we do morning dancing, singing or quiet. Sometimes it is silence in the house. And I can now I just look at my wife or my son. I can just note that it's me. Quiet day trading breakfast with my kids when I can. Sometimes I'm fasting, sometimes I'm not done with that later. Often after drinking coffee and a good workout, there is an epic bathroom event. I'm not trying to be gratuitous. I'm just telling you that's got to build that time into.

And then when I leave the house, I put in my human charger, especially in the wintertime for vitamin D and sunlight.

I jam the music, have silence, prepare for my show recordings depending on what's going on. Sometimes I write in the morning, sometimes I'll meditate for a long time. Sometimes I do weird things like work outside in shorts and nothing else in the freezing weather, whatever it happens to be. But that's my morning routine.

Pretty much do that every single day with little to no variation. Occasionally on Saturdays, if I'm going to be at a hunting ranch at 4:00 a.m., I'm going on a trip or something.

I'll I'll, I'll adjust it. But getting into a rhythm of life. All right. So the next thing naturally is what's my diet? What do I actually eat? Now, before I answer this, here's the thing. Diet is I could say, listen, I worship Satan and I would get less drama and hate mail. I worship Satan and I. I don't believe in God. I could say that out loud. And I'm going get less mean emails than if I say, you know, I think vegans are psychotic or I think, you know, people don't know how to read signs, whatever the thing I'm about to say.

So everybody keep your dietary things to yourself. I don't care. Quite honestly, do what works for you. What I will tell you is I've met with a bazillion researchers. I've spent 15 years figuring this out. And there's a couple of common themes throughout everything. And I also know that if you adhere to your diet more religiously, then your core convictions, you're going to make yourself insane.

So here we go. I have tried every I to keep spreadsheets of my diets right for 30 days. I would try to be, you know, try to be raw vegan or I would eat whatever it happened to be. I had my own glucose monitor for my blood. I was a nerd.

My weight attract everything how I felt. Here's a few guidelines unequivocally. No ifs, ands or buts. Sugar is killing us to death. Slowly, quickly. It's destroying us from the inside out. So if you have one enemy in your diet, it's sugar. So I have no sugar unless I'm going all in. So my rule is I don't fall off the wagon, I climb off the wagon, I park it and then I let it run over me.

So if I'm going to eat sugar, I'm going to eat sixty five cookies and eight bags of gummy candies. I'm going to scrounge my neighborhood for insulin and then I'm going to sleep for a few days terribly, and then I'm going to get back into it. So on the whole, I don't eat sugar. Very, very, very few grains, almost no grains, no sugar, no grains. I got that from many dautrich. I love that.

Just quit saying no sugar, no grains, especially processed grain. So I hardly ever eat bread or hamburger buns or rice or pasta.

Never. I do eat my wife's sourdough bread as a whole. Other reason for that. It's alive and it's processes all the gluten out, et cetera, et cetera. I usually go between 15 to 16 hours between meals, a minimum of twelve stuff. I quit eating dinner at six thirty eight again till six thirty the next day. Intermittent fasting is important sometimes twenty hours, sometimes one or two day fast. That's a whole other conversation. So I won't dig into that.

Lots and lots of fat, high, high quality fats, lots of high quality meats.

I get my meat from a grass fed butcher in Missouri actually drive and go pick it up. Lots of grass at Buttars. I do put heavy cream in my coffee when I'm not fasting.

Lots of vegetables and I eat frozen berries with heavy cream. I get big bags of frozen berries from Costco and I will warm them up and put heavy cream in there. I don't drink a ton, maybe a drink or two a week, maybe every two weeks. Usually it'll be whisky, occasionally beer or organic wine. But I just don't drink very much.

The more I practice not drinking much, the more I realize I just feel better. I don't sleep as well. If I have a couple of drinks I challenge. If I take 30 days off a drink and say I feel you're going to feel a lot better, then it goes to what supplements? We'll get to that later. I'm working on some cool things for you, the listener, when it comes to supplementation and I am super selective, but I am obnoxious about the supplements I take, so we'll save that for another one.

The next question that came up a lot was books. I read a lot and a lot. A lot. So a couple of things. One is I read as much as I can get my hands on whether that's science articles, whether that's books, whether that is the occasional, I don't know, blog post.

And I reread books a lot. My wife is a literacy expert, I like to come back to books with new eyes and experiences, and I learned this from her. And the book will mean and say new things to me. So I like that. So I'm going to run through a list here of the books that I love, books that have meant a lot to me that I still go back to. And here we go. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, Catcher in the Rye by Salinger, born to run by Bruce Springsteen.

That's a recent book. It's his autobiography. It's extraordinary. I don't want to talk about it by Terence Real, a book that changed everything in my life by Nassim Taleb is Antifragile. He also has a follow up called Skin in the Game, which is a similar book. But Antifragile was rocked my world from the inside out Come As You Are by Emily Nagorski is the best book on sex and intimacy I've ever read. Finding Meaning by David Kessler is a book on grief Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Dr Lindsay Gibson.

Everybody with parents, everybody with parents who left them, everybody who's parents, who has parents or have had a parent, which means everybody should read the book, adult children of emotionally immature parents. If you are a parent, you should read it because it's going to tell you about yourself, OK? Nadine Burke Harris, the book, The Deepest Well, I did some work with ACS Adverse Childhood Experiences and the ACS scores.

It is powerful and extraordinary and has the opportunity to change the world from the inside out. Very simply, any book by Gábor, Mattie, Mattie daring greatly, any book by Bernie Brown is good is worth your read. Irvin Yalom. The Gift of Therapy, which is an open letter to a young therapist, is good for people entering into mental health space, people who help other people. And it's good bye for people who are going to counseling to know what a good therapist would look like.

Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud is a classic. It's an extraordinary read. If you're a super nerd, behave by Robert Sapolsky. He's a Stanford scientist and researcher. It's a magical book, but it's also dense. And so if you're not a super nerd, it may not be for you, but it's remarkable for those leaders and business. Pailin Cioni, any book by him for just fiction. That's fun. Ready Player one by Ernst Klein. I love that book.

As a kid of the 80s and 90s, that book is Rad Mating in Captivity. But Esther Perel is an excellent book on relationships. Just talking about how relationships are shifting underneath this predictably irrational by Dan Ariely was awesome. Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. That's that's like a mystery novel into what has happened to our country the last hundred years. And it's remarkable. The Road by Cormac McCarthy for you dad's. Especially dads of sons read that book, you won't sleep well, but it's a good book.

Huck Finn is Magic Justice by Michael Sendhil. Anything by Tim Wise, Rob Bell. Richard Raw A.. Right. Richard Beck, these are guys I know people disagree with, but they stretch us. If you are theologically minded to they stretch and push and make you uncomfortable and make you think differently. Richard Beck is a close, close friend of mine. Anything but an Lamonte is good to keep score by Bessel van der Coke. And now here's a here's a here's a magic little tidbit.

I don't read any sort of anything scientific or insight or philosophical at night, I only read young adult fiction. So here's some of my favorite young adult fiction, the Harry Potter series, obviously The Wing Feathers Saga by Andrew Petersen. It's remarkable. The Wildwood trilogy by Colin Meloy. So Good and the Wild or Good series by S.J Dahlstrom. I talk about Tex's a lot. If you got young kids while they're good series by them all and buy them right now, they're excellent.

Also almost as important as books. Is I've had some transcendent moments over the course of my life with poets and with stand up comedians, so here's a little insight into me. I had my life changed with a group of poets from the Def Comedy, the Def Poetry Jam series, Lisa Connel. Lisa, Jesse Peterson, they spent a weekend with me and really transformed my life as a young adult, the Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. I'm a huge poetry fan and we can go on and on into that.

And then comedians. As a kid, I used to study comedians. My parents had comedy records and I would lay down and listen to them. I would keep notebooks or spiral notebooks of what jokes worked and why they worked and what was fun and what wasn't fun.

So I was obsessed with Cosby and Pryor. I think Dave Chappelle is leveled up over everybody right now. Obviously, everybody swears a lot. They talk about whatever fill in the blank. So these aren't for everybody. These are just folks who have meant a lot to me. Stand up comedians. I love them because they are the last great bastion of art. It's just them and a microphone. There is no filter between them and an audience.

And so they can connect in real time and they go there you go to watch a comedian with one expectation, make me laugh.

And they have to overcome that expectation in a really remarkable, unique way. Lewis Black is one of my favorites. I took my dad to a Lewis Black concert when we were adults, and I remember looking over, he was laughing so hard and I thought, he's going to die right now. He's laughing so hard. And then I thought, what better way to go? What better way to die than in a stand up comedy show? He didn't die, by the way.

He made it. Steve Martin records.

Obviously, Seinfeld was was good, is good. And they make Margolskee. Is that who that is? Nate Bogucki. Now, he's hilarious to that guy is awesome. He's one of the new comedians coming up. So those are folks that I love and I'll get into music. I'm all over the place with music, so I'm going to rattle it off. I'm not advocating for any of these groups. I'll tell sulkily. We both share a love for all Guns and Roses.

When Guns and Roses got back together a couple of years ago, me and my old buddies got together and we went to the show and about two songs in I was singing along. No, it was the first song I remember well. The first song was and I was singing at the top of my lungs. And then I just stopped and I was like.

Well, Mr. Axl Rose, I have a daughter and I can't sing the song, this is inappropriate and you're rude and you shouldn't be saying these things. And so as a parent, it's totally different as an adult and totally different as a Grown-Up. Right. But here are some of the groups that have shaped me. And occasionally I'll go back to them. Sometimes I go back to them a lot. I'm not going to tell you which when it comes to metal.

I was a huge obsessive Pantera fan. Deftones, of course, the big four. And if you don't have the big four artists go past that Rage Against the Machine Dream Theater. I love those bands. All 80s hair metal. I loved it. All of it. Poison was special to me. Obviously, all those bands, I mean, get into them, all of them.

Def Leppard, the best. Def Leppard was legit. I saw I saw them in concert. I remember thinking, like, these guys are really good. Like they could play well. They were awesome. I saw all those bands. They were great. Warren and Ratt and all of them. I love all punk bands like Bad Brains and Henry Rollins, Black Flag, one of my favorite bands of all time, The Social Distortion I used to love.

Sick of it all. I hate read all those hardcore old punk bands. I really love the killers. I really love especially old, but I love Foo Fighters. Those two bands are excellent, excellent. What I call pop rock bands. I was a huge fan of the punk New Wave bands, which are like Tripp and Daisy and Ned's Atomic Dustbin and then man, the pop punk like Blink and 30 Foot Fall and Goldfinger, all those bands I loved.

And then one day my wife, when she was my girlfriend, took me to a show and really everything stopped and changed for me.

And a guy walks out on stage with an acoustic guitar. He's a Christian singer named Bebo Norman. And I watched him capture an entire theater, just all the air sucked out of that room.

And he just started singing and people were hanging on. Every word had never been to a singer songwriter show like that. And I wish I had another word, but it's transcendent. And he was controlling an audience the same way I had seen Phil Anselmo of Pantera control an audience just hanging on every word. And so then I went down a rabbit hole and really became fascinated in love with singer songwriters like Cadence. Call Eric Peters, who's also a great friend, Andrew Petersen, India singer, great songwriters.

And then Ani DiFranco was an important influence in my life. Damien Rice, obviously Bebo and then some of the best living songwriters in the world, I think. Frank Turner, The Avett Brothers, Brandon Flowers, who's the lead singer of The Killers, Springsteen, Andy Peterson. I mean, just extraordinary writers. They're poets and they're songwriters. They're awesome. And then we get into hip hop and rap. Toby, in one way is hands down the best rapper out right now.

He's from Houston. He's incredible. I do love all Jay-Z and Biggie. And Dre was the beat and hook master, old Warren G and Houston rap, little Flip and Mike Jones. This was to house. Those things are near and dear to my heart. They're way down in my DNA for better and for worse. I love old Run DMC and M and Beastie Boys licensed to Ill Records up there. The top one of my favorites, old L.L. Cool J and Grandmaster Flash.

I love all CUV, all those. I love them. And then I really, really love old soul singers like Nina Simone and Aretha. I don't talk about that a lot, but I love them. I really love old guitar players like Hendrix and Stevie Ray. Ani DiFranco is a stunning guitar player.

And then the newest guy, Guy Clark, if you're not listening to Guy Clark Jr., that dude is something special. And then I love ambient electronica and lo fi beats when I am writing. And sometimes I love country like Johnny Cash and Willie and Garth and Merle and those guys and my buddy Aaron Watson there in Texas. He's, I guess, Texas country. They call him. He's good to. I like I like all of it. So real quick, here's the movies that were pulled up, pulled up.

You feel like you left out a really important 90s alternative band, Third Eye Blind.

Yep. Yep. There you go. Third Eye Blind can write a pop song and in between it, talk about heroin and murder and all these things. Right. And so you find yourself singing along like you did do it.

And then you think I shouldn't be singing it out loud and I'm going to have to cancel myself for it. But I was in middle school and I don't know, I'd have to think I was like, oh, that's what that we price. There you go.

So awesome movies that were impactful to me. Good will hunting. I saw good will hunting and I wouldn't change my major the next day from his journalism or business. I changed it to counseling not because of the good, because of the will hunting character. Because of Robin Williams.

Oh, back to comics.

I loved watching Robin Williams stand by me as my number one favorite movie of all time. Meet the parents when my buddy, my oldest, best friend in the world was in a car wreck. He's a paraplegic now, but the movie Meet the Parents was on loop and repeat.

And there was something about the comedy of that and the friendship of that. That means a lot to me. Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky film Dark, Dark, Dark, but awesome. Spaceballs in Major League, Karate Kid, one and two.

And I don't care who you are. Titanic was awesome, and I feel like I did movie so lame. You're lying, you're lying. The movie Titanic was awesome, Jack.

I'll never let go. So good American History X was a powerful movie for me. All the early Sandler movies, Will Ferrell movies.

What's your favorite movie? And that's tough. Oh, no, easy godfather one and two. No question, no question. And you run the ship like Don Corleone, which is so great, kind of. Well, at some point in time, you will be asked, I will do a favor for you. You'll be asked to return it. Exactly. That's right. Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko, huh. Great music.

This tells you a lot about James and I, The Godfather series. Donnie Darko. Exactly. James, by the way, is dressed in all black right now. There's gray.

Yeah. He livens it up today for the ask me anything and he's wearing gray. And Kelly is got an AK 47 across her lap right now just just in case things go down. Hey, you know, you want to be prepared any time it can go down.

That's right. All right. So those are just the broad influences, the things I do. Here are some questions people started digging into, like my personal life. So these are fun. I'm going to go through them. How do you like living in the woods as opposed to the city? I love them both. I kind of love everything. That's the common theme in my life. I'm mostly like everything. I love being in nature. I like growing my own food.

We've got a big garden, chickens and deer and turkey, etc..

There is some great research about fractals Mandelbrot stuff. You want to have your mind blown. Read about Mandelbrot and fractals, how he came up with the patterns in clouds. It's extraordinary, but trees, clouds, holes in the ground, grass, hills, water.

We're designed for fractals, not for smooth lives of seventy to seventy to seventy two degrees from our home to our car to our office, to our car, back to our home.

We're designed for rises in temperatures and drops and temperatures and uncomfortable things and seasonal things.

We're not designed our bodies aren't designed to eat apples every day. We can't process that much sugar. And so I love being out in nature. I love being kept awake because the moon is so bright, because the stars are so bright. It's like someone's shining a spotlight over my house. That's awesome. I also loved living downtown. I love being downtown Nashville. I like walking around in the thick of things. I like the pulse of the city.

I love being able to just run over to a stand up comedy club or to go to concerts and then be home in ten minutes. I love all that. And I grew up in a suburb north of Houston. I love that, too. I love the community. I love the neighborhood. So it's it's really just deciding to be present and love where you're at. But right now, I'm really loving being close to nature. Next question. Why do you block out your kids pictures on social media?

Who the short answer is, I've been behind closed doors with tech people from all over the country and what they are doing with digital footprints, what do they do, what they're doing with facial recognition technology, the psychometric maps they're building of our kids, where our kids go, where our kids do what they think, their test scores, their facial recognition. All that just makes me uncomfortable. I hope people can use that for good. They may not.

And so at the end of the day, I want to protect my kids digital footprint. They didn't ask for this life. And so I want to let them opt in. And as we get into, you know, the facial recognition stuff, I don't want there to be a path of my child's life that script it out for them. That's my fault. And so the best I can, I want them to be able to tell their own stories, how they want to tell it when they are old enough to understand what telling their stories means.

And until then, I'm going to block their faces out. Pritch, they're beautiful. Yeah.

James is with me on the tech stuff. My kids are beautiful, hilarious. They're their mom is my wife is beautiful. And so they got good genes on her side. And I'd love to be able to show their faces. They're hilarious and fun to be around, but. I don't keep them off the Internet as long as I can. And by the way, we're weird about that. One of my best friends in the world came to visit recently, took out a phone and I said, hey, you don't take pictures of my kids.

And he was like, are you serious, you idiot? And I said, Yeah, I know it's weird, but I just don't want pictures of my kids floating around as much as possible. And so I protected as much as I can. We ask our parents not to post pictures. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. But that's where we're at. How long have I been married?

I got married in 2002, so it's at 18 years and we dated five years before that. So I have with a bunch of breakups, it's a whole thing. But my wife and I've been together more than half of our lives, and that's kind of cool and kind of weird.

What's my favorite food? An awesome hamburger with sweet potato fries, a giant rib eye that's cooked barely medium and deer and elk backstrap are my favorites.

I just love those. What's my anagram?

Myers, Briggs, blah, blah. So Ian Chron and I met. He says I'm a two. I guess he wrote the book on it literally, so I trust him. I've also been told I'm a four strong five and I also think I can be a three and a partridge in a pear tree. And I'm an INFP. I'm an introvert mostly, but also sort of an extrovert who has like an IED with a slash in between it. So here's my thought on these things.

They're mostly nonsense. They mostly don't have tons of research behind them. But they do have one thing that I love. I love any sort of tool that inspires people to go look in a mirror and be introspective. I don't like the tools because people use them predictively and prescriptively and they use them to label other people and they use them to label themselves.

So I've been in rooms where they're like, we need to hire them because they're an in F.J. or yeah, that person's a Ford.

So they're really going to struggle in this role. Using those tools like that is is evil. It's wrong.

It's very similar to well, you know, people who look like that aren't going to be a good quarterbacks or she grew up in this kind of neighborhood. So we probably shouldn't let her come work at this company.

I don't like that. In fact, I hate that. I don't like the judgment part of those type of tools. The people will use these tools to define and limit and judge themselves. And others don't like that. I do like when people look in a mirror and say, Ha!

I do have a default setting that kind of looks like that I don't want to be like that or maybe I can lean into that and fill in the blank. So when you use these tools in a positive way, reflectively, awesome. Knock your lights out with any and all of them. Patrick, you only just came out with one that is real short and I love it. It's great.

The anagram is is making is is helping millions of people. Strengths Finder, I was I went to the Gallup organization when that was rolling out years ago. I just want to caution people that those are not the end all, be all, and that you get to decide every single day who you're going to be and how you're going to be.

One of my favorite places to travel home. I'm so lame. I'm a homebody. I love fishing in Galveston Bay. I like fishing, but I'm just not huge on traveling. I like being home and resting. It makes me so lame. And that's one of the things that I want to start leaning into that I'm a guy who travels and goes on adventures and other places, not just adventures where I'm comfortable and safe, but that's just me who in history I don't want to hang out with.

Obviously, I'd love to sit down and have a meal or two of Jesus just to pick his brain here and there, see if we're how bad we've gotten off track. Also, William Glasser, he's the guy who developed choice theory. He died about a decade ago. I have some friends who knew him, met him, and they said there was something so warm and inviting so they would call Roger's probably.

Who had not a single judgment bone in their body and that when you were in their presence, you just simply you dropped your shoulders automatically, you just felt loved and not awkward or weird. He just looked at people as though, I'm so glad you're in my presence and I want to be around people like that. And I want to become that for myself and for other people. So those are the people I want to just hang out and meet with.

I guess George Washington would be cool.

Any of those famous guys? I don't know. Abe Lincoln, pretty cool, although he was kind of miserable. I don't know if he'd be fun to hang out with your probably kind of boring, like, I don't know, James a little bit.

How did you and your wife meet? So imagine this. I'm in the like the student center of my little college. I've got real long hair. I hardly ever shower because I'm a cool punk rock cool guy. And my buddy Justin shows up and he has a sister who's in high school, a senior in high school. She'd come to visit him and she shows up. She is West Texan. She has a braided belt. Her pants are tied just below her neckline, and she looks like she came straight off a farm.

And I look like I came straight out of a back alley somewhere.

And he said, This is my sister John had a wife, my sister.

This is my friend John. Y'all are going to get married someday. I thought you should meet now. And we were both looked at each other and were like, yeah, no, that's disgusting and weird. And then we.

She came to that college a year later than we met and we broke up, we met, we broke up, we dated, we broke up, I think we broke up five times total. And then we've been together ever since. And that's the story I got introduced by my brother in law. One fun story about that is once we started dating officially the next year, he said, hey, I know you're about to start dating my sister and we're friends, but since you're dating my sister, we can't be friends anymore.

And I was like, OK. And literally he quit talking to me. It was awesome. He's like, Dude, you're dating my sister. That's weird. I'm going to your friend. And I loved it. And then we got married and then it was back on. It was legit, man. And I spent a week with him last week out in the woods. And he's just a great, extraordinary guy, just a stud.

So that's cool things that get me the most anxious. What gets me the most anxious.

Broadly speaking, climate change and economic issues and not like, oh, do liberal bro, like I've sat in meetings after meetings, after meetings with climate science scientists and looked at the data and the tables.

And there's just some scary stuff out there, economic issues. What we have managed to do in the last 50 or 60 years is just unimaginably unsustainable. The way we have moved the stock market, the fact that we owe 25 trillion dollars, those things aren't sustainable.

And if you look back at history, they don't end well. And so it will take an extraordinary coming together of people making wise decisions that everybody's going to be uncomfortable, everyone's going to have to change everything, have to do hard things for a period of time for a greater good.

And just watching how we've handled covid watching this the last election season, like it's been hard on me because I thought people could come together over big issues. And this has made me doubt whether that's possible. And so I'm back to helping people in my sphere, people who call my show, who I interact with, everyday people who come to our events that will read the books that I put out. That's where I can be a person of influence on a person of support and kindness.

And that's the best I can do. And my hope is that we have a consciousness change, that we all begin to see each other as neighbors and not as people that we hate and people that we've got to work together on for the sake of our grandkids. But those are two big things that that make me anxious. And mainly it's because I can't do a thing about them. I can not owe money I can be a part of. Being honest about the banking industry, I can ride my bike more, right, I can get solar panels on my house, I can do those things.

But at the end of the day, some of these systemic things are just way bigger than me. And so those make me anxious. I got nothing about them.

I'm anxious about the future my kids are inheriting and I'm anxious about some kind of a movement towards. The pathologies of discomfort. You said something that made me uncomfortable, so you can't talk once we get rid of free speech, that's a that's a dangerous slippery slope. And that free speech means I can say what I want. And you can, too. And they can, too. And so if you go back to some of the ACLU stuff when they were defending Nazi sympathizers, that's evil and ugly and gross.

But the fact that we have free speech means people can say what they want to say, even if they're idiots, and so that's just messy. But again, I'm also super optimistic, kind of optimistic guy by nature. So how much money is in my swear jar right now? I swear, way, way, way, way, way too much.

A lot is what I'm going to say a lot. What was the biggest change coming from Tennessee to Texas, giving up my driver's license? That's just weird handing it over. It was, though, I don't know, I was losing citizenship. Mexican food, Mexican food and Nashville's bust.

Dude, Mexican food in Texas is legit, and I'm reaching my full attention. It's awful, right? It's just not Jewesses here. When I first moved here and I wanted really great Mexican. This was 20 years ago, too. And somebody was like, we've got this great place. It's called on the border. Come on.

That's like, hey, I know a great place to get a burger. Chili's. Yeah, no. Oh, I know. We could crush dinner. Applebee's. Nope. That's why we go home. I eat Mexican for like a week.

Yes. Yes. And so, hey, listen, if you want to make a million dollars, bring a great authentic not a million up a million dollars, bring a great authentic Mexican food restaurant to Nashville and Nashville.

Mexican food is good. It's got like unicorn and octopus in it, like it's all artsy and. Well, because we're a foodie town now. Yeah.

It's all fancy and it's one hundred eleven dollars for a like a miniature burrito that was, you know, like the goat grew up in somebody's home. Like, it's awesome, it's delicious. But I want like a pig roasting in the parking lot in the building. I will buy the stuff that like they're roasting it in the parking lot of the convenience store. Yeah.

I want Dirty to go to Antioch. And also there's plenty of that happening. I'm in there.

It's not too far from where we live. So come over. Okay, I'm in. What's my beef with Crosthwaite? None. Here's my beef with Crosthwaite. I just lied that they are looking for people who have beefs with them. You can't tell one joke about one. I love Crosthwaite. It's a great exercise program. They don't care about form at all. So you're going to end up with broken shoulders and elbows and knees or whatever. But they are great for community.

They're great for group achievement. I've got a great mentor and friend of mine, Dustin. Dustin is all in. He has changed my heart mind about it. It's great. He's a teacher. They accomplish great things together. It's a good and every group, every group get a sense of humor, chill out, be reflective. Do you ever find yourself being Dr. John when your wife just needs her husband?

No. And here's why. Because I used to be that and it almost cost me my entire marriage, literally not playing. So, no, I was so, so bad. I was Mr. Advice giving all the time. And it's actually why I preach against it so hard now, because I demoralized my wife so bad. I hurt the person that I love and care about the most in the world. And so, you know, when I get home, that stuff is off, off, off.

I actually ask permission. Are you asking for my input here? You want me to listen? And she says, I want you to listen. So, no, I only give advice in my house when it's asked for by my wife. And I'm pretty pretty open about that. Even with my friends, I've shifted over the last three or four or five years to just listening and not just being advice guy all the time.

What are some of my biggest influences on the advice I give? No question. Dr. Andrew Young and Young, who is my crisis team supervisor in Lubbock, Texas. He's an author. Check out his books. He's just an extraordinary guy. He's a great human being. And he is the master at going into uncomfortable, heartbroken, messy, bloody, ugly situations and bringing the temperature down, helping everybody in the room from the cops to the SWAT team to the actual victims, to the assailants, everybody.

And he's the master doctor, Jean-Noel Thompson, showed me how to fire somebody with dignity and grace, had to have hard conversations, how to be direct, how to lean in, how to talk, how to be open. Michael Gibson, who was my first boss, he was my first coach that hired me back in 2000. He taught me how to love young people, how to listen, how to be what showing up and being there meant. My professors in grad school, Dr.

Hendricks, Dr. Marberry, Dr. LaterA, Peggy Price, those folks were incredible. And then my dad, my mom, they're just extraordinary watching them over the years. My wife is a gifted communicator and she is good hospitality and creating a presence for people to feel safe to talk. And then my sister, my brother, those folks are good. And then the folks I've read and watched interacted with over the years, Yalom Glasser, thousands of people I've sat with Cabramatta, Terance Real, Henry Cloud, those folks who just bring their presence with them, the writers, etc.

.

So have I had my own mental health challenges?

Yes. If how did I overcome them? Get my new book. How's that? That was a pretty dope pitch is a long story. I'm still working through it, but it's a long story.

There will be a whole other podcast someday. What's my professional background? That's a whole a. A podcast well done later, um, as with all your knowledge and experience, would have stopped you in your tracks, good and bad, an alligator. That actually happened once my buddy and I used to collect reptiles, we'd sell them to a store in South in the swamps in Houston, we stumbled into some alligators once and that froze us up. Not what you're talking about.

The two things that have stopped me in my tracks. One was when I realized, oh, my gosh, my marriage is almost over. And there's a couple of times over the last 20 years. Those are frozen moments when you have a I'm going to lean this way or I'm going to stop and go back this way. Those are important moments that stop everything. I'm leaving work. We're shutting this thing down until we get this figured out. And then I'll tell the story.

Man. I was teaching a grad school class one night and. Now, you know what, I'm not going to tell a story, I'm going to leave that for another time. I'll tell you this, being involved in the suicide response of young people, any time I get that call from a parent or I have to give that call to a parent and say, hey, your son or daughter is no longer with us, any time I had to knock on a stranger's door and be there with a police officer and say, your child was involved in a car wreck, your husband had a heart attack at work.

Any time I was in those kind of situations, they always stopped me in my tracks, no matter how many times I've done them over and over and over again, they always make me stop. Life is so short, it is so precious.

And the stuff we worry about is so senseless and useless. And those always stop me in my tracks every time.

Um. What car do I drive a twenty six tundra with a missing headlight and a 2010 Prius? That's not very remarkable. How do I deal with having different opinions from Dave? I've got a YouTube thing where I talked about that and here's the deal. At the end of the day, he signs my paychecks. His name's on the building. Some kind of. I don't know, he's my boss, ultimate comfort food, gummy candies, marshmallows, burgers, mom's spaghetti, hash tag, Eminem.

My mom made this old spaghetti that was dope. I don't eat anymore, but, man, it was legit. Gummy candies and marshmallows like eating out of the bag. Who am I mentor? Dr. General Thompson. Randy Harris. Dr. Steven Bonner. Randall DeMent. Brett Hendricks. Aretha Marbleized. Susan Blastin game. Darby Dickason played an important role in my life. Dr. Ken Jones, my mom and dad. Dave, obviously, Chris Hogan's been a good influence on me.

How do I manage staying humble and being successful as I am number one month successful? Number two, the smartest guy I've ever met in my life. Is a Uruguayan immigrant named Gustavo Gustavo Mendez Menendez. And he's the smartest man I've ever met. He was an engineer. He married an American, an American missionary. They moved here. And because we're so awesome, we wouldn't recognize his his engineering degree from home from Uruguay. And so he started sweeping floors in a cotton gin in west Texas and he had 200 bucks in his pocket and an old beat up Ford truck.

And he started a business called Gus's Lube Service, where he would show up to your house or your business and change your oil in your driveway.

Smart right now, he runs a massively successful mobile lube service business where he comes and fixes your car and he cares deeply about people and he reads and he watches and he listens and he hugs and he can fix anything. What I tell you that because often we talk about success as I've got these degrees, I am on a podcast. I make this much money. And it's hard to think highly of yourself when the smartest guy you know is a mobile mechanic.

He was very successful and he literally changed his life from the inside out. He's so generous and so kind. And so I think I'm successful in my family because my wife and I have weathered some storms. My kids are good. I'm humble because I know how this whole thing ends. When you sit with people who die and you sit with weeping moms and dads, you realize this is short. Man, I take none of this with me. It's all temporary.

I did work for years with folks with disabilities and one of my favorite quotes about working people disabilities is. Air everybody is only temporarily able bodied at some point. It breaks down for all of us, none of this stuff at work here defines me, my wife does, my faith does, my character does. This stuff at work is just awesome. It's just gravy. It's it's a fun, awesome adventure. I love helping people. I love getting to do what I love to do.

It's fun. But I don't take it too seriously. I don't hold my identity in that, so that's how I stay humble.

Somebody asked me, Jackson Dinkie or Chevelle Dinkie. Come on, people, this is a guitar question, Gibson, Les Paul or an SG or three thirty five if you're fancy or a Firebird if you really want to bring it down Marshall amps. But to answer your question, orange amps are pretty dope too. I can't afford them. But to answer your question, Jackson Dinkie all day, if you really have to. My opinion.

The Jazz Masters. Oh my gosh. Here's the thing. If you're a Fender player, we're probably not going to be friends. Tom de Scioli, he was the guy who was my guitar compadre for years. He played only Strats. He's the only guy to get away with it. And you, Jimmy James Childs, you can. Do you have a jazz master, don't you? Yes. Yeah.

In fact, I think I have only Fender guitars. I've won I've won Casino and have a casino, but I don't have anything with Humbucker so. Deal with it dealt my opinion on using weed and drugs recreationally. We're all high right now.

Actually, it's pretty cool. Not really.

I'll answer that question later. The big thing is don't do anything illegal, actually, is that right now, marijuana, psychedelics, the map studies, they're changing underneath our feet. I've heard remarkable stories and catastrophic stories in all. I don't have an opinion yet. It's illegal. In the state where I live, I have a very high opinion of clinical great CBD hemp extract. I've seen that stuff I've experienced. It's good, but I don't smoke weed.

I don't use recreational drugs. And in some places it's legal. And so people are working with their doctors to get the help they need.

I don't have an opinion on it yet. How do I keep. Balanced, if a question goes against my beliefs or morals, who in short order? People don't often call me with moral or character or belief questions, they calling me and saying help. So think of it this way. I may not like synthetic rope. I like rope made out of, I don't know, hemp fibers. And I walk by and somebody drowning and I see a synthetic rope on the side of the lake of the river.

What we often do is we see somebody drowning and we say we shouldn't be using synthetic rope. It's not good. And then they drown because we made a stand on an issue. And I'm sick of people being wrapped up in issues, whether they're theological issues or political issues, while people are drowning and so.

What I try to keep in mind when I'm answering a question is how can I help a hurting person right now? And if people call me and ask my opinion on certain things, sometimes I'll answer, sometimes I won't. I'm not going to do the heavy lifting for you.

But often beneath my beliefs and my morals is are a cornerstone of my moral, is help hurting people. A cornerstone of my beliefs is help hurting people. And so I don't care what issue you're struggling with. That's that is my morals, my beliefs, and again, that may be an easy answer, and I get that right, James. I don't know. That's what I think about it. What's your answer? Oh, that went against my morals and beliefs.

I didn't want to give my opinion.

I'm practicing. Well played.

Um, let's see here. Don't sit it on. That's it. That's that's enough for today. So that was a that's almost an hour today, right. Of ask me anything. Kelli, do you have a question for me as we wrap? No, I don't think we have enough time for all the questions I would have for you, that might be a little frightening.

So, James, if I'm good. You don't like jazz masters, we're good. These guys are the worst and the worst and the best and beautiful and handsome. All right, that's it. So as we wrap up today, I'm going to read you, like, for real. So I speak in hyperbole. This is if you if you stuck with us this long, you're going to get one of my top 3s of all time. This is for real.

One of my favorite songs. James on read the whole thing. Is that cool? It's a poem. Here we go. The screen door slams Mary's dress waves like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the Lonely. Hey, that's me and I want you. Only don't turn me home again. I just can't face myself alone again. Don't run back inside, darling. You know just what I'm here for.

So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore. Show a little faith. There's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right. Oh, and that's all right with me. You can hide beneath the covers and study your pain and make crosses from your lover's throw roses in the rain and waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets. Well, now I'm no hero.

That's understood all the redemption I can offer girls beneath his dirty hood with a chance to make it good somehow. Hey, what else can we do now except roll down the windows and let the wind blow back your hair. The night's busted open. These two lands will take us anywhere. We got one last chance to make it real to trade in these wings on some wheels climb and back. Heaven's waitin down the track. I'll skip down here to.

There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away. They haunt this dusty beach road and the skeleton frames burned out Chevrolets. They scream your name at night in the street. Your graduation gowns lies in rags at their feet and in the lonely cool. Before dawn you hear the engines roaring on. When you get to the porch, they're gone on the wind. So merry climbin. It's a town full of losers. I'm pulling out of here to win.

Oh, Thunder Road. Bruce Springsteen from the born to run record in nineteen seventy five The Boss. Merry Christmas, good folks, this is the Dr. John Maloney Show.