Caller: “I’m Paranoid of Going Broke”

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I'm a financial advisor, so I see every day for the last seven years, people who were doing everything right, and then something went wrong. There's no number in the bank account that has really brought any peace of mind that if something happens to me, I want my wife and daughter to continue to have a good life.

• 0:29Dr. John Delony?

  What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, taking your calls, real calls from real people, experiencing just the daily grind of life with their marriages, their relationships, their money, their jobs, their kids, whatever you've got going on in your life. Pull up a seat and we're going to figure out what's your next right move. If you want to be on this show, click the link in the show notes. And two housekeeping things, download the Together app. It's the best marriage app out on the planet. We've been working on it for over a year and it keeps getting better and better and better and better. So many exciting new features on it. It is available in the App Store right now. Go check it out and hit the, not the

• 1:11Dr. John Delony?

  delete. Don't delete. Hit the subscribe. Hit the subscribe and like and share button.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  You're doing a good enough job of getting us deleted. I don't need the listeners to do the same.

• 1:21Dr. John Delony?

  Correct. That's my job is to get us deleted. Your job is to hit the subscribes and shares and internet buttons. Let's go out to Tampa, Florida and talk to John. Hey, John, what's up, dude?

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Hey, John. Good name, by the way.

• 1:34Dr. John Delony?

  It's the best name. It's perfect.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Well, hey, if anyone wants a quick testimonial, my wife and I downloaded the Together app about six months ago, and it has changed everything in our marriage.

• 1:45Dr. John Delony?

  That's awesome, man.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Go download it.

• 1:47Dr. John Delony?

  Dude, high five to you, brother. Appreciate you, man.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, I appreciate your time and thank you guys for, for everything that you guys do, even Kelly.

• 1:59Dr. John Delony?

  Dude, this is my favorite caller of the month so far. Alright, so what you got going on, brother?

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, I don't know. Simple, maybe simple. We'll see how it goes. Shortest way is how do I get over what I would call an irrational fear of financial insecurity?

• 2:19Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, so I'm gonna frame it up for you and then I want you to walk through it with me, okay?

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:24Dr. John Delony?

  We're not gonna get over this. We're gonna go right through it.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:28Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. So going, going over it suggests, um, there is something in the road that we need to avoid. And instead of doing that, I want us to say, no, this is a, this is a real thing, and it may have some merit, it may not. We're gonna walk right through the middle of it. Cool?

• 2:48Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:49Dr. John Delony?

  So, so tell me what you're going, what you're experiencing, what you're going through, what's your financial situation?

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I would say when it started, um, my wife and I had our first child, um, a little under two years ago, so she's coming up on her second birthday. Um, and when our daughter was born, we made the decision, um, my wife always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. And thankfully, you know, we were in a financial position to do it. Um, and technically speaking, I mean, things could not have gone better. We are in a good financial position on paper. Um, I think it's, I guess a short bit of context, I'm a financial advisor, is what I do for work.

• 3:29Dr. John Delony?

  Gotcha.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  So I see every day for the last seven years, people who were doing everything right, and then something went wrong.

• 3:39Dr. John Delony?

  Give me an example.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Um, lost their job, got sick, someone died, they became disabled. Um, I was in Florida, hurricane came. I mean, any, any number of things. Um, and it seems like I've, I've met so many people where everything was good, and a couple of things went wrong, or they got a little off track, or they, you know, started spending a little bit more thinking it wasn't gonna be an issue. And 20 years later, they're sitting there relying on a social security payment, and, you know, they're, they're struggling to afford their medications. So, um, I have taken every logical step to put ourselves in a position,

• 4:22Speaker 00

  and my wife and I have together, um, to, to put ourselves in a position to not be there. And I think we've done a good job with it, but there's no number in the bank account or amount of insurance policies, or a savings rate, or anything that has really brought any peace of mind that if something happens to me, I want my wife and daughter to, you know, continue to have a, a good life and not have to worry about money.

• 4:48Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Um, where else in your life throughout, if you, if you look back over the course of your life, um, where else has this sentiment popped up? Grades? Um, am I gonna find somebody to marry? Um, athletic performance? Where else has this shown up?

• 5:13Speaker 00

  I think probably if I had to go to childhood, like my parents always had, I have, I have one sibling, um, and if he got a C, he got a pat on a back, a pat on his back. If I got a B, I got in trouble.

• 5:25Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  So, you know, I was always held to, whether it's sports, whether it's academics, whether it was college, whether it was career, um, you know, he's older than me and, and, you know, I'm thankful my parents did this, but they still helped him out financially. And any sort of financial help from my parents ended the day I graduated from college. They said, hey, you can go do this. So it, maybe I guess going back a little bit to that.

• 5:51Dr. John Delony?

  So, and again, you and I could talk for a few hours on, just kind of unpacking all what you just said, but let's pretend for a moment that one of the stories buried deep inside your chest is the following. I'm only as good as my performance. And I'm essentially on my own. And then all of a sudden, you get married, then all of a sudden you have a kid. And those two stories, those two people are anchored into you, and those two stories still play prominent in your, the way you see the world. There's still the glasses

• 6:29Dr. John Delony?

  that you wear when you view the world. And so now you're a guy walking around, I'm, I will only be worth being loved. My wife and daughter will never be able to be okay unless I show up. And I'm, I'm only as good as my performance. And B, there's nobody coming for me, and if this thing goes down, I'm out, I'm dead. And now there's two other people in the car riding with me.

• 7:01Dr. John Delony?

  That's a heavy, heavy burden to bear. And there's some semblance of truth in it. Both are true, right?

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:10Dr. John Delony?

  And layer on top of, actually not on top of it, underneath it. Um, I think this is dramatically under talked about, and I know it is because of the people I sit with in my private life behind closed doors. A significant number of them are financial advisors. People who deal in the wealth of other people. And I've come to believe that y'all are first responders too. Right? And so if you're a first responder and most of your day is in an ER, or most of your day, like nobody calls the police when they're having a great day. Nobody calls a fireman when they're having an awesome day. Nobody

• 7:52Dr. John Delony?

  goes to the emergency room when they're having a great day. And when you live in those worlds, it's easy to come to believe, nobody calls a lawyer when they're having a great day, right? So it's easy to come to, like, that becomes your world, that things are bad, things, things could go wrong, things could go wrong. In an essence, you have, um, you get to peer over the edge of what could go wrong, but it becomes your every day, day in, day out, all the time. And not to mention, you're not just talking about the clients you see, you're also talking about your colleagues' stories, you're also talking about, no financial advisor can predict, could predict seven years ago where we'd be now, and especially no advisor can pick what we're gonna look like seven years from now, right?

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:37Dr. John Delony?

  And so there's a lot of risk and a lot of unknown. And so the challenge for you is gonna be threefold. One and two is unhooking from these other stories. I'm worth being loved, even if our net worth goes down. I'm worth being loved. My wife will still love me. I'll still be a good dad, even if we have to sell our house and move to a one-bedroom apartment.

• 9:02Dr. John Delony?

  Even I can be a great dad and not be good at this job.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Oof.

• 9:09Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And especially looking forward, I'm extrapolating out five years, 10 years. I have no insider knowledge. I'm making this up. Okay.

• 9:21Dr. John Delony?

  There has to be existential angst underneath this too, that AI is going to take a big part of my job. Who will I be? What will I do?

• 9:32Dr. John Delony?

  And that fear can paralyze you. Or that fear can spur you to what are other things in this realm, in this world that I can do to provide value, to put food on our table, to begin to expand the horizon of what I'm able to do to take care of myself and my family.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:53Dr. John Delony?

  And so it can be, it can be a thorn that, that freezes you, or it can be a thorn that spurs you forward.

• 10:04Dr. John Delony?

  But you can't change the fact that it's a thorn.

• 10:07Dr. John Delony?

  And the third thing you have to do is to have.

• 10:14Dr. John Delony?

  I'll give you the same recommendation I give the other folks that I talk to privately and that I tell every first responder. You have to have a group of friends that don't do what you do. You have to have a regular practice.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Every one of my friends is in finance.

• 10:26Dr. John Delony?

  I know they are. I know they are. It's the same way as every policeman has friends that are policemen. Every military guy surrounds themselves with military folks. It's, it's, it's everyone in my world, in podcasting world, those worlds get so small, that's all you talk about. And you end up just talking about shares and YouTube clips and what about this and what's your? And you lose the zeal for why you got into the thing in the first place. And so having friends that are outside of this thing, that have different worries, different joys, different laughter. It lets your body self-regulate. You go, hmm, right?

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:59Dr. John Delony?

  Regularly.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  I will say.

• 11:01Dr. John Delony?

  Go ahead, go ahead.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Um, sorry to cut you off. I mean, the other thing in, in, because I do actually have some friends who are not in, in the world of finance. But honestly, like, it's such a prevalent topic, like especially in today's world of everyone's talking about their houses and their debts and their mortgages or their rent or their car payments or whatever. And, you know, I find myself becoming incredibly anxious hearing about, I mean, all friends that'd be like, oh yeah, I financed this, you know, camera that I bought over 72 months and it like, hearing other people's financial decisions. Cause I think, you know, and I, I try to be there to, to help, but I don't offer unsolicited advice to people who don't want it.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  But, you know, hearing whether it's siblings or whether it's friends or it's, it's people that I see making so many poor financial decisions, right? I mean, the average person is the person that calls into the Ramsey show, right? And it's, you know,

• 12:03Speaker 00

  those, I, I want to be able to disconnect from those and just be like, hey, this is their life. And, you know, I'm not going to agree with most of the financial decisions that other people make. But, you know, beyond my own anxiety around my own situation, I find myself finding a lot of anxiety around other people's financial

• 12:25Speaker 00

  situations as well, especially when they're people I care about, because I know what that's going to lead to. Like, I mean, I've even seen it with my parents and like, I'm not going to tell my parents what to do. And when they come to me for advice, great, but, you know, I, I look at my dad and I'm seeing him, he's going to spend through everything. And he's going to have nothing left. And that, you know, I have a lot of fear for the people I care about and their financial situations as well.

• 12:51Dr. John Delony?

  And so there's a difference between fear and anxiety.

• 12:55Dr. John Delony?

  Fear is right.

• 12:59Dr. John Delony?

  You should be worried about your parents. If they're making unwise financial decisions and you have sat down with enough people to see the train wreck coming that is their life, you're right to be scared.

• 13:12Dr. John Delony?

  Anxiety is trying to go 20 years into the future and drag that problem home today and solve it for them. Which you can't do.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 13:25Dr. John Delony?

  It, it can be a matter of you and your wife sitting down saying, hey, here's the reality I see before me and my, our families. We're going to have to put a little bit extra money aside because there's a strong possibility that one or two or four of our parents are living with us someday. Cool. That is a thing I can do in the present to begin stacking bricks for a future flood.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 13:51Dr. John Delony?

  But once I, once I make that, like, I'm going to stack two bricks a month.

• 13:57Dr. John Delony?

  That's, that's, that's what I can do right now.

• 14:01Dr. John Delony?

  Then the next thing is sitting in the grief. It's, it's a bummer. And, and when you see everybody making financial mistakes, financial, like, like you say, you said, when you, when you first called, like, I see people doing all the right things.

• 14:16Dr. John Delony?

  If you're honest, a lot of people aren't doing the right things.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:22Dr. John Delony?

  You know what I mean? And so there is a collective, it's like being on the Titanic and watching people shoot holes in the bottom of the boat. Like at some point, all of these decisions affect all of us.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:33Dr. John Delony?

  Right? If everybody just collectively one Monday decided to not pay their student loans back, that domino would be just like extraordinary, right?

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:44Dr. John Delony?

  Or if there's one tiny correction in, in this circular AI funding thing going on, we're all in for a ride, right?

• 14:54Dr. John Delony?

  And so I have to recognize my fear, my frustration, all that is real.

• 15:01Dr. John Delony?

  And then I have to go back to what can I do right now with the limited power and scope I have? I can love really well. I can make sure that I'm in service to myself so that I can show up and do these really hard jobs. I can be sober and honest about the future. And then I'm going to bring you back to a buddy of mine who's a finance guy. Man, this one sentence changed my life. It may not change yours at all. But this is years ago when I was, I mean, I was in the throes of anxiety. I was right, actually the age you were, like, I had a young kid, I was married, I was starting to feel this, just the squat bar of life just started getting piled up with weight that I didn't think I was strong enough to hold.

• 15:43Dr. John Delony?

  And I was just berating him, what if this happens? And what if the dollar does this? And what if crypto does this? And what if this moves and this Spain defaults here and it rolls over to Argentina over here and Brazil's oil exports dry up here? And he finally looked at me and said, hey, John, I don't have a meteorite plan.

• 16:03Dr. John Delony?

  And that, he said, if a meteorite hits the, the world, which is what you're describing, I'll deal with that then. And for whatever reason, that sentence freed me.

• 16:18Dr. John Delony?

  Cause this guy said.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  I mean, what?

• 16:20Dr. John Delony?

  He's not a Ramsey guy at all. He's a banker. So he, he, his job is debt and he writes checks for his cars. He has no car payment, I mean, no home payment. They bought a smaller house than him and his wife could have, I mean, they could have bought a 5X house than they live in now. And it's a really nice place they have now and he paid it off. He paid it off with a 2.8 or whatever percent APR, because he was saying, I am just clearing my side of the risk profile so that

• 16:48Dr. John Delony?

  all of the best case of the meteorite hits, but I'm not going to spend my days worrying about what happens if a meteorite hits. Because the world will be so different when it does hit that any of my pre-planning is going to be futile. Unless I have a billion dollars and I can build one of these bunkers that supposedly people are building, right? And even then they'll run out of food and electricity. And if somebody knows where your bunker is, that's where a million people are going to head, right? So it is just, is what it is. But that, that line of, I don't have a meteorite plan, for whatever reason, it set me free.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, and I've never, I guess, thought about it myself. One of my most common things I tell my clients is we can't plan for Armageddon.

• 17:26Dr. John Delony?

  There you go.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Which is basically the same exact thing, but, um.

• 17:31Dr. John Delony?

  And so if you kept a journal, if you kept a journal of the things that make you uncomfortable, make you nervous, that's right. And then if you had a thing that said Armageddon and you're like, yeah, I can't, if that happens, I can't deal with that.

• 17:48Dr. John Delony?

  And here's a couple of tips and tricks that I do myself and that I give to first responders. If you have somebody that you're sitting down with and their dad sports gambled all their money away, or fell in love with some catfishing scheme and sent away all his stuff, or got dementia and all of a sudden they didn't have a will and yada, yada, yada, yada.

• 18:10Dr. John Delony?

  Take the time at the end of your day to write that person a letter that you'll never send. Grieve with them, be sad with them. But what you're doing with their story is you're getting it out of your body and putting it on paper. You're distancing yourself from their story.

• 18:29Dr. John Delony?

  Cause at the end of the day, whatever happens in their life is happening to them, not to you, not to your wife, not to your daughter. But it's a way for your body to put a period at the end of their sentence.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Makes a lot of sense.

• 18:43Dr. John Delony?

  Right. But it's a, it's a practice. It's a, it's a health and wellness practice for first responders.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Okay. And not, you know, internalizing and taking everything that happens out there and picturing it happening in my own life.

• 18:57Dr. John Delony?

  Correct. And also, uh, I'm going to send you a copy of Building a Non-Anxious Life. And thank you for honoring yourself and all of us by going behind closed doors and helping calm the fears of a world spun out of control in the financial world. You're a good man, dude. We come back, a man asks how to protect his peace while fighting to protect his kids in a high conflict custody battle. Yikes. We'll be right back.

• 19:23Dr. John Delony?

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• 20:05Dr. John Delony?

  Delete Me finds your personal information on those data broker websites and their privacy experts get it removed for you, making you less vulnerable to personalized scams and spam. Delete Me keeps monitoring and removing your information throughout the year. And they send you reports showing you exactly what they found and what they've removed. They've saved me hundreds of hours if I had tried to do this on my own. And by the way, I wouldn't even have known where to start. Giving your info away is sometimes unavoidable, but Delete Me helps you take back control. Go to joindelete.me slash Deloney and get 20% off an annual plan. That's joindelete.me slash Deloney.

• 20:46Dr. John Delony?

  This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right. So the folks at BetterHelp just released their annual state of stigma report. It's full of all sorts of data about why so many people avoid getting help for their mental and emotional health challenges. Here's a data point that stood out to me that kinda shook me. More than three out of four Americans, three out of four, reported anxiety or depression symptoms over the last two weeks. If that's you and you're carrying stress, anxiety or depression symptoms, talking to someone can help you more than you could ever imagine. I want you to reach out to BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that matches you with one of their 30,000 plus licensed therapists based on your goals and preferences.

• 21:28Dr. John Delony?

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• 21:51Dr. John Delony?

  All right, let's go out to Calgary, Alberta and talk to Larry, Larry. What's up Larry?

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Hello, Dr. John. How are you?

• 21:59Dr. John Delony?

  I'm excellent, brother. How are you?

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Oh, living the dream, just waiting to wake up.

• 22:05Dr. John Delony?

  I was gonna say, anyone who says living the dream is not doing great.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  That's about, that's about right. That's pretty accurate.

• 22:13Dr. John Delony?

  So what's going on, man?

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Um, so I'm in a high conflict custody battle and divorce. Uh, it's been going on for, since February of last year.

• 22:25Dr. John Delony?

  Oh my gosh.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Um, but it was a result of an affair for five years that I've known for the last five years trying to fight for the marriage. Um, the issue that I'm constantly coming across right now is my ex-wife's partner is encouraging my children who are eight and five to call him dad. And, um, by reaching out to this partner's daughters on the advice of my lawyer, with all the stuff that we found, I'm constantly finding evidence. I'm trying to protect the kids and I'm just trying to, like, it just seems like I'm always buried on the phone

• 23:07Speaker 03

  trying to find the next thing on this guy, trying to find how I can protect my kids in the court system right now and...

• 23:15Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, hold on, hold on, brother. Stay with me, okay?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 23:24Dr. John Delony?

  You're at war with somebody who for five years showed you they're dishonest, they have no integrity and they don't care about you.

• 23:32Dr. John Delony?

  So you're trying to keep the honorable rules of engagement while fighting somebody who has no scruples.

• 23:40Dr. John Delony?

  And that person's hired mercenaries on their behalf who also have no scruples, who are weaponizing kids.

• 23:50Dr. John Delony?

  And so I'm telling you that to tell you, you're in an unwinnable fight. And the smart thing to do when you're in an unwinnable fight is to back out of a fight.

• 24:01Dr. John Delony?

  Okay?

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:03Dr. John Delony?

  You're burying yourself financially. You're burying yourself emotionally, you're burying, you're burying yourself spiritually.

• 24:15Dr. John Delony?

  And the very thing you're scared of is about to come to fruition, which is when you're with your kids, they see an exhausted, panicked, burned out dad.

• 24:26Dr. John Delony?

  And this other dude holding the lollipops.

• 24:30Dr. John Delony?

  For a child's nervous system is going to start to feel more appealing in the short term. I'm not going to give him that.

• 24:41Dr. John Delony?

  You, I don't think there's any law that says he can't say what he wants to be called in his own house.

• 24:50Dr. John Delony?

  As gross as that is.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Well, the, so this is where at first, if he would have asked me literally, probably a year ago, I, this wouldn't be even a question. But what happened is this guy started acting as a legal guardian and...

• 25:07Dr. John Delony?

  Does he have legal custody of your kids?

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Nope. There's no court order. There's no nothing. We're still in the early stages still.

• 25:13Dr. John Delony?

  How are we still in the early stages of divorce after February?

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Oh, the system had an overhaul in Canada as of January 1st or January 2nd of this year. Um, we were trying to do it all through mediation and four-way meetings and it didn't go successful. Now we're starting the, the next step. There's a whole process now with this new family law in Canada that we have to follow.

• 25:45Dr. John Delony?

  I'm sorry, man.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  It's been a nightmare. And even all lawyers agree that this new system is horrible, but it's what we're dealt with right now. So...

• 25:57Dr. John Delony?

  Is there a way to call the police and say that somebody illegally, an adult illegally signed their name to your kid's stuff?

• 26:05Speaker 03

  We, we dealt with that through the lawyers there, so they made it clear.

• 26:09Dr. John Delony?

  No, I'm talking about through the legal system.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. See, because my ex-wife granted that permission essentially. So on her behalf, he was allowed to do this technically, but not in a court system. Like this is definitely a strike on there from my understanding. Um, and it was, uh, to them, it was a one-time incident at this moment. There's been two other times that this has happened now and we're pursuing it unfortunately through family law. It's just a little slow process. We're hoping in the next couple of months, we'll be in court in front of a judge.

• 26:46Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. So, so let me ask you this. Now that you filed it and now that you figured it out,

• 26:54Dr. John Delony?

  is constantly going back for more helping you show up as the man you want to be?

• 27:03Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's, if it's that, or if it's just I have nothing better to do during the week.

• 27:10Dr. John Delony?

  There we go.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  For 50/50 custody and knowing that, knowing what I know, it's hard to just stand by as a father.

• 27:21Dr. John Delony?

  You're not standing by. You've done what you can. You've, you've sent the orders to your mercenaries, your attorneys.

• 27:30Dr. John Delony?

  And they're in a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking mess of a legal system.

• 27:38Dr. John Delony?

  But I think you nailed it on the head. What must be true in your own life? Knowing this is floating out there, and knowing you've done everything you can up until this point, and knowing it might be two or three months before you sit in front of a judge and can tell your story, and know that the fate of your kid's well-being rests on this judge's shoulders, not on justice.

• 28:03Dr. John Delony?

  And it sounds like it's a new system, so even your own lawyers are like, dude, you're one of the guinea pigs here. We're trying to figure this out. Knowing all of that, and that's real, and that's big, and that's a hovering shadow over your life, no question.

• 28:19Dr. John Delony?

  But what that doesn't do is give you permission to not do the other things that keep you well and whole. So that in three months, you show up as the best version of yourself in front of that judge. So that on the day-in, day-out interactions you have with your kids,

• 28:37Dr. John Delony?

  they see your delight in them.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. I know whenever I get them on the three weekends a month that I get them, it's definitely a relief in that, and I could definitely feel a lot different whenever I'm with them at peace. So I don't know if it's rubbing off that way.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Or if they know exactly...

• 29:03Dr. John Delony?

  How old are your kids, brother?

• 29:06Speaker 03

  They're eight and five.

• 29:07Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. You're playing a 10 to 15-year game now.

• 29:16Dr. John Delony?

  The situation you're in right this second is, I want to give them my full presence, my full love, all I've got when they're here.

• 29:28Dr. John Delony?

  And when they're 18 and 21 and 25,

• 29:34Dr. John Delony?

  I want them to have a felt-lived experience that there was one adult on our team, always. And it was Dad.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:46Dr. John Delony?

  Right? You're not going to get short-term validation, short-term win, short-term whatever. In fact, it's going to go the opposite.

• 29:58Dr. John Delony?

  Because my guess is, this person that you created these kids with is not a person of integrity. They care about themselves and only themselves. Even to the point that they will not do what's in the best interest of their kids, so that they can prop up an image of themselves, and they can hurt you.

• 30:20Dr. John Delony?

  And the war is not with the legal system, the war is not with the... The war is inside your own chest, which is, I'm not going to give them me.

• 30:33Dr. John Delony?

  And for them to not get you, you're going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time seeking light, seeking laughter, seeking joy, seeking exercise, seeking things that bring you fulfillment from the inside out. Because you're not going to get it from the outside in.

• 30:54Dr. John Delony?

  Do you hear what I'm saying? This is hard, what I'm saying.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:59Dr. John Delony?

  And you're going to have to let go of the shame of, I shouldn't have fought for this for five years.

• 31:05Dr. John Delony?

  You're going to have to let go of the, I should have, I should have, I could have. All those things, all those stories have periods at the end of the sentence. The only thing that doesn't is whatever story you write starting today.

• 31:22Dr. John Delony?

  If you don't show up to court, if you don't file the papers, then you're not fighting. But you've done those things.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:34Dr. John Delony?

  And pacing the house, and stirring up, and being angry and frustrated when your kids aren't with you. Man, I get it, but it's not in service to you. It's you drinking poison all day, hoping that your ex-wife gets sick.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're right.

• 31:58Dr. John Delony?

  And your kids need their Dad, man. They've had everything else taken away from them.

• 32:08Dr. John Delony?

  And the day will come when they're old enough for you to sit down, and they say, Dad, why did you do this? And why didn't you do that? And you can say, "I did the best I could with what I knew.

• 32:19Dr. John Delony?

  Your mom hurt me real bad, and I tried to love her as well as possible."

• 32:25Dr. John Delony?

  All right, but that day's not today. They're eight and five.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  I know they keep asking me why I made the wrong decision to leave.

• 32:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  That's always

• 32:42Speaker 03

  a tough one to try and...

• 32:43Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. And an eight and a five-year-old can't wrap their heads around reality.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 32:49Dr. John Delony?

  And so it's weathering those hard conversations, those hard statements, and you know what they're getting pumped full of on the other side of this deal.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  So then my thing is, how do I

• 33:12Speaker 03

  know the difference of protecting the kids, when to call it quits? And...

• 33:18Dr. John Delony?

  I'm not saying... Let me rephrase what I said. I'm not saying call it quits.

• 33:24Dr. John Delony?

  I'm saying

• 33:29Dr. John Delony?

  the hardest... Like, for the folks I know that work with high-end athletes, they always tell me the hardest thing for them is to get these athletes to rest. They've put in the workout that day. They've pushed their body to the limit, and they come home, and they take a nap, and they drink some electrolytes, and then they want to go do another workout.

• 33:50Dr. John Delony?

  They want to do another stretching exercise, or another functional move, and they're like, you need to just play video games. Your body's had enough today. And that's what I'm telling you. You've been fighting, man. And I want you to keep fighting, but I also want you to know when the fighting is actually wearing you out more than it's helping anything else.

• 34:14Dr. John Delony?

  And it sounds like you've made your cases, you've found when this guy violated the law.

• 34:19Dr. John Delony?

  You've handed that over to your attorneys. They're waiting for their moment in court. You're waiting for your moment in court.

• 34:26Dr. John Delony?

  And so you've done your really brutal, hard workout. Let's rest.

• 34:35Dr. John Delony?

  And if something pops up tomorrow where you've got to spring to action, you'll be ready to rock and roll, man. If they say, "We need more paperwork, we need more this, we need another example of..." Got it, I'm in. But if your attorneys are regularly telling you, "We've got what we need, we're just waiting on this ridiculous new system."

• 34:55Speaker 03

  No, actually, it's... The Hackett days just wanted to... Actually, he says, "I should be in the... I'm in the wrong line of work here. I should be a private investigator." Quite impressed with everything I've gotten.

• 35:08Dr. John Delony?

  Dude, you... Any parent, mess with my kids, and you'll find out what I'm made of, right?

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Oh. I'm not so...

• 35:17Dr. John Delony?

  But you've got your photos. Using your private detective, you got your photos, you got the smoking gun emails. Sitting out in front of that apartment for more hours, eating peanut butter sandwiches, trying to get more photos, like, at what point is that helping you anymore?

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:35Dr. John Delony?

  Or if you came home, and you just felt the emptiness and the silence in your home,

• 35:43Dr. John Delony?

  and you let it wash over you,

• 35:46Dr. John Delony?

  and you pulled out some pencils and some paper, and you drew your five-year-old silly pictures, and you wrote your eight-year-old an age-appropriate note, and you folded it in an envelope, so every time they come see you, they leave with 15 pictures and letters from Dad?

• 36:11Dr. John Delony?

  A, that would give them... That would give you something to do with your energy, and direct it towards where your heart's really broken, which is those kids are not in your life.

• 36:21Dr. John Delony?

  It would help you begin to restore some of your own dignity. I keep my promises to myself. I write my kids a letter every day. And I'm just making that up, dude, it could be every other day. I don't want to put something on you. But... And also, those kids would leave with a stack of stuff.

• 36:35Dr. John Delony?

  And maybe their new stepparent, or your wife, your ex-wife, throws them away.

• 36:45Dr. John Delony?

  But, man, they keep showing up, and they get a stack every time.

• 36:52Dr. John Delony?

  Y'all read them together, you go through them together, whatever.

• 36:57Dr. John Delony?

  But they'll remember the stacks. And eventually, it will dawn on them, "Hey, Mom, you keep throwing away my letters to Dad, like, from Dad." Right?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good idea.

• 37:10Dr. John Delony?

  It's a long, long, long game.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:21Dr. John Delony?

  And I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

• 37:27Dr. John Delony?

  I'm sorry, we're working through it, brother. If you haven't already, um,

• 37:33Dr. John Delony?

  I think you're, I think you're, it's time to go sit down with a professional.

• 37:38Dr. John Delony?

  A counselor, just where you can be completely vulnerable and completely open.

• 37:43Dr. John Delony?

  I'm just hurting. I'm a dad who's had his kids ripped away. I'm a, I'm a dad who's, I'm a husband whose heart got ripped out of his chest for five straight years.

• 37:53Dr. John Delony?

  I'm a citizen trying to do the next right thing. And the system,

• 38:01Dr. John Delony?

  I'm watching my kids wither in front of me and the system won't help. The system designed to help me isn't helping. It's making it worse. Just having a place where you can share that, some other men in your life that you can sit down and talk with.

• 38:14Dr. John Delony?

  And share this grief with.

• 38:19Dr. John Delony?

  An exercise plan, going to a movie once a week, a book club, going out and doing things, starting, I don't know, join an improv group. Go to a local church, starting things that I'm going to go be a part of because they inject life into me, into an otherwise lifeless body right now because my kids aren't here.

• 38:39Dr. John Delony?

  It's doing those small things, man, and fighting when you got to, but knowing when it's okay. It's time for me to put my gloves down. The, the round is over.

• 38:50Dr. John Delony?

  So I can be ready to rock and roll the next time. Sorry, my brother. I'm heartbroken with you, dude. Jeez, man.

• 38:59Dr. John Delony?

  Call us back in a few months when you get to go to court. I'm, I'm kind of invested in this now. I want to see how it goes out. My hope is the judge is 100% on your side sees, sees this madness for what it is. Unless a father who loves his kids actually love him. Thank you for the call, brother.

• 39:16Dr. John Delony?

  Man. We come back, a woman asks how to handle negative student evals without letting them define her. We'll be right back.

• 39:25Dr. John Delony?

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• 40:10Dr. John Delony?

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• 40:48Dr. John Delony?

  Let's go out to Boise, Idaho and talk to Nicole. Hey Nicole, what's going on, lady?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Hey, great. Thank you for this opportunity.

• 40:56Dr. John Delony?

  Thank you. What's going on?

• 40:58Speaker 04

  First I have to say that your ability to see and get people over the phone is a gift. So thank you.

• 41:03Dr. John Delony?

  Thank you so much. I'm grateful for that. Appreciate you.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Um, okay. So I, um, started teaching at a local community college about three years ago. Um, started as an instructor, uh, recently got promoted to assistant professor. So that's exciting.

• 41:16Dr. John Delony?

  Congratulations.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Thanks. But every semester, as you probably know, I think you said you taught, um, in the colleges, um, we get student evaluations and I tend to, well, I do hide from those. I read a few at the insistence of some friends over the phone with them. And, uh, anyway, I just, I keep hiding from them. I don't want to read them. I'm too afraid of what they're going to say. And I have in the past read a couple that were, you know, negative and they sort of stuck with me forever. So I just want to know how to, how to approach those. Um, I've had some people tell me, hey, you don't need to read them and other people say you should. So I just wondered what you had to say.

• 41:58Dr. John Delony?

  Um, man, there's a lot there. And, and I think this is instructive. So I appreciate you calling. Backing out, I had somebody the other day at church just lean over and say, hey, how do you handle

• 42:11Dr. John Delony?

  the mean comments? Right? Or, you know, physicians who are racing in to save somebody's life, how do you handle now that they all have a customer service scores, right? And all of us are surrounded by metrics that try to sum up the complexity of human interaction into a, a number, right? And it becomes the, i- i- if we, if we let those metrics, there's, there, there's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant book. My buddy, Michael Easter pointed it to me. Brilliant book by the author's last name is Nguyen, um, N Y G U E N, I think. And it's called The Score. I highly recommend you read it. Okay?

• 42:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 42:55Dr. John Delony?

  Because it talks about, he, he's a philosophy professor who studies games and how games are bounded, right? They tell you what to care about and then they give you the score of how to win that interaction, right? So on its face, basketball is kind of stupid. It doesn't make any sense in the practical sense of, I need to get this ball 10 feet off the ground into a basket, right? But the game binds it and then gives us the rules for how we can get that ball in that basket. And then we all suddenly care about it, right? The problem is we've taken that same gaming scoring system and we've tried to metric everything. Or you hear it like if you can't score it, it does, if you can't measure it, it does, it's not real, right? And we've tried to turn every human interaction into a series of

• 43:42Dr. John Delony?

  like biological interactions, yada. All I have to say is this. Um, you have to ask yourself what game you want to be playing, number one.

• 43:52Dr. John Delony?

  Are you into teaching to make everybody happy?

• 43:57Speaker 04

  I thought I was, but yeah, not anymore.

• 43:59Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 44:02Dr. John Delony?

  And the second thing I want you to ask yourself is,

• 44:06Dr. John Delony?

  or, or any teacher

• 44:09Dr. John Delony?

  is their job is to be the iron that other iron rubs up against to help sharpen that iron, right? You're the whetstone and your students are dull blades. That's what teachers do. And that means by necessity, that friction is, is uncomfortable.

• 44:28Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And we have a culture that's allergic to discomfort.

• 44:36Dr. John Delony?

  They think everything should be frictionless.

• 44:39Dr. John Delony?

  And so by its nature,

• 44:43Dr. John Delony?

  teaching evals are going to try to distill down a relationship between a teacher and a student into a customer service eval.

• 44:52Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 44:54Dr. John Delony?

  And you've heard this for, for professors, there's become this implicit unspoken contract. I'll give you an easy ride. You give me a good teaching eval and we all move on about our lives. You get your A or your B, I get my good score and we high five each other, move on. And what we've done by making that contract over the last 25, 30 years is we've ended education.

• 45:17Dr. John Delony?

  Right? Cause it's, it, by nature, this relationship should be uncomfortable for both, both the teacher and the student. So I tell you that to tell you this.

• 45:29Dr. John Delony?

  Ask yourself if that's the game you want to play. Cause you know how to play that game. You can get good teaching evals. It's pretty easy.

• 45:36Dr. John Delony?

  All right? Or do I want to be a teacher whose students look back and say, that teacher pushed me? And I may better fill in the blank because I had that person in my life. That's a long game and it comes at a short-term cost. And then let me ask you the complete opposite, okay? The teaching evals that you've read that have stuck with you, were they right?

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, actually when I first started, I, um, was new to the material. I mean, I was in my degree field, but I hadn't taught in a long time. And, uh, they were said something like, you know, just reads off the slides, doesn't know the material. No point coming to class. And in some ways that was true. I mean, I did rely heavily on the slides.

• 46:19Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, go ahead and sit in there for a second.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:22Dr. John Delony?

  Their feedback was right.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:25Dr. John Delony?

  Their feedback was right.

• 46:28Dr. John Delony?

  And that hurts. That stinks.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:30Dr. John Delony?

  Even if you were asked to teach a course that you weren't ready for, which happens to all, especially community college professors, like, but all professors, like, hey, I need you to teach this class. You got to teach this one. You got to teach this one. You're like, man, I haven't had that class since grad school and that was eight years ago, but I got to figure it out. And you're kind of learning in real time and trying to, that feedback's right.

• 46:49Dr. John Delony?

  And so the question I have for you is, since that you got that feedback and you, you metabolized it and you're like, man, there was something to it. Forget the score, just the, the, the notes, right? Is that right? And what have I done since then to make sure I address that?

• 47:12Speaker 04

  True, yeah.

• 47:15Dr. John Delony?

  So for me, teaching evals were, I, I always read them.

• 47:20Dr. John Delony?

  And I know that I'm extra sensitive and I want teachers who are sensitive. So the, the challenge for you is to not be so hard like your colleagues that have just said, I don't even read that crap anymore.

• 47:35Dr. John Delony?

  And, but to also begin over time to have some toughening of your skin, that is, there's always going to be one or two grenade throwers in every room.

• 47:47Dr. John Delony?

  And also I have to put aside the other side of the bell curve, which is there's always going to be a couple of flower givers in every room too, right?

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:59Dr. John Delony?

  What's the core sentiment of what they said? This was a good experience for me. Thank you.

• 48:09Dr. John Delony?

  But my deeper question for you is, how have you outsourced your self-worth? Because this is deeper than instructive feedback, or like, this has become a part of you. What is it about you, as a teacher, as a professor, where you feel the need to outsource your self-worth to this group of, this new crop of strangers every semester?

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a good question. I'm always, even in, I worked in industry for a while, and I even would be afraid of my boss's evaluation. Even though, you know, it was positive, it was always like, I just couldn't handle any kind of feedback that was criticism. It was hard.

• 48:50Dr. John Delony?

  So, let's back, let's rephrase that. Criticism causes a disproportionate response in my body. So, first thing we're gonna do is, we're gonna thank our body for trying to protect us. And we're not gonna use words like "can't." We're gonna use words like, "Man, my body's," we're gonna use curiosity words, not declarative statements. Why does my body try to protect me so much? In these situations? And then get underneath that, what am I scared of? What story have I been given throughout my life that I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop?

• 49:36Dr. John Delony?

  Because then it turns your body, not into an opponent, but it turns your body into a friend, a supporter, somebody trying to keep you safe. And then we're gonna deal with, "Oh, that, I used to not be safe. I used to work in a job that any Friday, given Friday, I could randomly be fired. I used to have parents who were very chaotic, and I, and I had to, it was a dice roll whether I was gonna get affection and have my needs met. But now I'm an adult, and now it's not the case anymore. Now I'm in a safe place."

• 50:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 50:13Dr. John Delony?

  Is that resonating?

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely.

• 50:17Dr. John Delony?

  You got real quiet on me. Tell me what you're feeling, what you're thinking.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  Uh, just crying a little bit, yeah.

• 50:24Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, I don't wanna make you cry, I'm sorry.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  No, no, no, it's good. I've had a lot of transition reasons, and stuff like that. So, and I've just started this in the Dave Ramsey, January, or June 28th, and I got my finances in order. And I've actually gotten a lot more confidence. But I still, you know, think about evaluations, and I go, get a little bit of pit in my stomach and go, "Can I read those?" But I do think I can, I just need to do what you're saying. Just like, it's not, it doesn't tell me about my worth, it just gives me some feedback. And surprisingly, I have, usually have every semester, a couple of students that will thank me and email, you know, for whatever.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  And so, I know that they're, you know, majority of them are positive. It's just that, yeah, I'm just learning to handle any kind of criticism and be able to push past it.

• 51:21Dr. John Delony?

  It, in my world, my line of work, we call it speaker's math. Where I can go speak to a thousand people, and 999 of them can tell me, "That was the greatest thing, I changed my life. I'm gonna have a better relationship with my kids and marriage, yada, yada, yada." And one person can go, "Ah, kinda sucked." And I won't sleep for a week. Like, part of that is, if you're good at communicating and building relationships with people, that means you have an openness. That means you have a relational vulnerability as a part of you. And that means, for folks like us to do this work, we also have to accept, some people are gonna come at us sometimes. And then I get to choose what I do with that information.

• 52:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:06Dr. John Delony?

  And, and it's not always pretty. I have, I don't read most of the comments on my stuff. A, I have a team, and Kelly will tell me, "Hey, this particular thing has really surfaced and bubbled up. We need to address this." Or, I can't tell the difference between bots and real people, who knows? I just don't know, right? And so, I do read direct messages often on my, on, I don't read the, like, big, long, like, "Hey, I need some help with these things." But I do read, I mean, people reach out to me directly. And some of that I can do something about, some of it I can't.

• 52:51Dr. John Delony?

  And if I hear several things on a particular call that I, that I think I blew it on, I usually know it. You know what I mean? And I take that feedback and say, "I could do something better." And I have a group of people that I trust. For, for you, the exposure part of this is less about, "All right, I'm just gonna turn the fire hose on." It might be you sending them to a colleague who agrees to bucket them for you. "Here's the overly negative, here's the overly flowery, and here's kinda the general sentiment." Or, "I'm gonna read four of them today, or five of them today, or I'm gonna block off half a day and read all these evals. And I'm gonna keep a note of, "Agree, disagree, needs improvement, crushed it."

• 53:36Dr. John Delony?

  I'm gonna take like, a qualitative coding approach to that.

• 53:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:42Dr. John Delony?

  But it's you, it's you doing something with that feedback, right?

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:47Dr. John Delony?

  But I think the bigger issue is feeling that pit in your stomach, like, feeling it? And then asking yourself, "Is this true?"

• 53:57Dr. John Delony?

  "Am I gonna lose my job?" No. "Have I evidently done a good enough job that I got promoted?" Yes.

• 54:07Dr. John Delony?

  "Did I feel good about how I handled the material, how I did this job this semester?" Yes. "Are there always gonna be people that just like everybody?" Yep. "Are there always gonna be people who just hate everybody?" Yep.

• 54:22Dr. John Delony?

  But the tension is the pathway here. So, it's like, the discomfort, I'm gonna head into it, but I'm gonna head into it knowledgeable.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:32Dr. John Delony?

  And what does that mean for you? That means, don't read these at 10 o'clock at night after two glasses of wine on a Friday. Right? Don't read these at the end of a long, long, long day when you're already frustrated and exhausted. Set up a time to read them with two other colleagues at 9:00 AM when y'all all go through them together.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 54:55Dr. John Delony?

  Have a review party at your house. Where two other colleagues show up and bring coffee and pastries or whatever, and y'all get your laptops out and each read your own reviews to each other. And use it as an iron sharpens iron thing, like, go back and forth with each other. At some events that I speak at, there's speaker scores. They get, you get like, the whole talk gets distilled down into a number. "Did I like it better than this person's?" And that person may be more entertaining, this person may be more emotional. Everybody's crying in the audience, this person may have way better information, but it wasn't delivered in like, a compelling way. Those scores are fine, and they're helpful and instructive.

• 55:38Dr. John Delony?

  But what's more instructive is to then circle back around with the folks in that room and say, "All right, given the, the event, given how you did, given the score, how do we think this went? And what can we do better next time? And what was perfect, we need to keep for next time." That's all helpful. And it doesn't always feel good, sometimes it feels awful. But it's serving a purpose for, "What am I gonna do next?" So, hopefully that helps, Nicole. I've been right where you are, too, I've been there. And this is for everybody, not just teachers, this is anybody whose entire job has been distilled down into a particular metric. And I got this from Winn, and it's a great question to ask, "Is this the game I wanna be playing?"

• 56:21Dr. John Delony?

  Because you get to often answer that question, how you best wanna answer it. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Deloney. You know why I keep talking about Cozy Earth? Because every Cozy Earth product I've ever tried has been great. Their bamboo sheets, I started with their bamboo sheets, and they're incredibly soft, breathable, temperature regulating. They're so great. I got Cozy Earth sheets on almost every bed in my house. And then I tried their towels, and they're awesome. And they're huge, and they're thick, and they're ridiculously comfortable, and they survive multiple loads in the dryer. And they come in different levels of plushness, they're the best. And then Cozy Earth pajamas are great.

• 57:04Dr. John Delony?

  They have that soft, stretchy feel that makes you wanna change into them way before bedtime, which the women in my house usually do. Most companies have one thing they're known for. Cozy Earth somehow makes everything amazing. Go to cozylearth.com/Deloney and use code DELONY for up to 20% off your entire order. That's cozylearth.com/Deloney with code DELONY. And if you get a post-purchase survey, tell Cozy Earth you heard about their amazing gear right here on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Make home the best part of your life. All right, Kelly, am I the problem?

• 57:40Speaker 02

  All right, so this is from Kylie in Logan, Ohio, and she writes, "My whole family is going on a beach vacation, including my younger adult siblings. My 25-year-old sister tends to wear next to nothing when she goes to the beach or the pool. Swimsuits are revealing anyways, but I'm talking, barely covering the important parts, and everything is hanging out. I know she will probably take it really personally when I confront her about it. But I think for a family vacation where she will be around kids, that a slightly more modest swimsuit choice would be better. Am I the problem?"

• 58:18Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 58:23Dr. John Delony?

  No, I mean, I, there's so much unspoken here, so, I guess what I would say is, if you're going on a family vacation, and you're bringing your kids along, and you have a family member that's doing anything that you think will be a net negative to your kids, to the point that you wanna have that conversation, then have the conversation. You can't control how your 25-year-old sister responds, you can't control, like, all you can control is you. Do I think you're the problem for wanting modesty around your kids on a family vacation? No. And do I think it's strange for a 25-year-old to flaunt their goods on a family vacation? Yes. I, that just seems strange to me. So, have the conversation. No, I don't think I'm the problem. What do you think, Kelly?

• 59:08Speaker 02

  I agree. I mean, first of all, the 25-year-old is old enough to have a little bit of awareness, be like, "Come on."

• 59:12Dr. John Delony?

  There's kids.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  There's kids.

• 59:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  And also, it's family vacation, like, your siblings and your parents might be there. Come on, ew. But, no, just have the conversation, be like, "Come on, put something, can you wear something a little more covering?" Yeah.

• 59:29Dr. John Delony?

  Ta-da. And some of that is just about, it's even beyond modesty, it's about wisdom, it's about, it's about dignity, right? It's like, if, if you wanna, never mind, I'm gonna get myself canceled. No, you're not the problem. Your 25-year-old immature sister is. And, yes, have the conversation, you can't control how she responds, you can't control her temper tantrums. But you can control how you show up. Love you guys, bye.