CNLP 494 - With John Delony

This transcript was exported on May 10, 2022 - view latest version here.
Announcer:
The Art of Leadership Network.
Announcer:
Welcome to The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership change and
personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. And
now, your host, Carey Nieuwhof.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Well, hey everybody and welcome to episode 494 of the podcast. It's Carey here. I hope our time
together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. We are going to have an interesting conversation
today. I've got Dr. John Delony from the Ramsey team on. Tell you all about that in just a minute. Oh,
and today's episode has a PG-13 rating on it. So if you usually listen with kids in the car, well, I'm just
giving you a heads-up.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Anyway, today's episode is brought to you by Pro MediaFire. If you are a church or nonprofit looking to
grow online, apply for their Growth Program today by going to promediafire.com/growth. And by The
Unstuck Group. Learn how The Unstuck Group can help your church reach more people by going to
theunstuckgroup.com/start. So, why the PG-13 rating? Well, we're in talk with Dr. John Delony on why
married people have stopped having sex, theological malpractice, what does that mean? And why so
many young leaders are angry. So, John has some strong background in psychology. And, well, I think
one of the most important elements you can do in leadership is personal growth, just self development.
And I mean that spiritually, I mean that emotionally, I mean that relationally. So, we kind of talk about
all of those things and much more today.
Carey Nieuwhof:
And John Delony is a national bestselling author, a mental health and wellness expert, and host of The
Dr. John Delony Show. He holds two PhDs, one in Counselor Education and Supervision, another in
Higher Education Administration. We get into his background, why he got those PhDs, how this came
about. And before joining Ramsey Solutions, John spent two decades working as a senior leader at
multiple universities as a professor and researcher, and as a crisis responder. Now as a Ramsey
personality, he teaches people how to reclaim their lives from the madness of the modern world and
from their past. So, I think you'll enjoy it.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Hey, we're also getting really close to 500 episodes. If you've enjoyed this podcast and you haven't left a
rating and review, I would ask you to do that. Could you do that? Wherever you're listening right now,
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Carey Nieuwhof:
So, whether you're running a business, a church, or a nonprofit, here's an important question that will
help determine your digital success. What is more important, online content or strategy? The key to
growth online is actually strategy because content is everywhere. So, your strategy for creative design,
CNLP_494 –With_John-Delony (Completed 04/21/22) Page 1 of 35

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social media, and online pathways is vital to drive growth. But the challenge is, how do you do it with a
limited budget, lack of knowledge, or an internal team that's already overwhelmed? And that's where
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They have an entire team of professionals providing digital strategy and creative frameworks to help you
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Program today by going to promediafire.com/growth. That's promediafire.com/growth.
Carey Nieuwhof:
And if you want to lead a healthy growing church that continually reaches new people and helps them
take steps toward Christ, well, what do you need? You need a clear vision and effective ministry strategy
and a high impact team. And you're going, "Okay, how do I get that?" Well, that's where The Unstuck
Group can help. The Unstuck Group has a proven track record of helping churches of all shapes and sizes
create healthy growth for more than 11 years now. In fact, The Unstuck team has helped 500 plus
churches clarify their vision, where they believe God's called them to go, and their strategies, how
they're going to get there. And in the process, they've found health again. Six months after completing
The Unstuck process, nine out of 10 pastors say they would recommend The Unstuck Group to another
church because they're already seeing results.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, if you want to learn more and get started, have a conversation today by going to
theunstuckgroup.com/start. That is theunstuckgroup.com/start. Well, I hope you'll agree with me that I
find conversations fascinating and never boring. And this one is definitely in that category. Here is my
conversation with Dr. John Delony.
Carey Nieuwhof:
John, it's so good to have you on the podcast. Welcome.
Dr. John Delony:

You are the best. Thank you for being so hospitable, man. I'm so happy to be here.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So just before we hit record, you told me a little more about your background. Your dad was a pastor,
but after he what?
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah. So, when I was born, my dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator for the
Houston Police Department. He was a bad dude. And then about halfway through my childhood, he
always volunteered with the youth at various things in the community and at the big church we went to.
And the church called him in one weekend and said, "Hey, the youth minister is leaving and we'd love to
offer you this job." And he took it, over a weekend. And so, yeah, the next 20 years, 17, 18, or something
like that, I mean, it seemed like forever, but then he became a youth minister of a giant church there in

Houston and hundreds of kids that... And it's very similar to his detective work, let's be honest, for most
pastors, but-
Carey Nieuwhof:
The parents would have him on the take, right? "Find out what my son is really up to." Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah. I mean, yeah. And so, it was a wild childhood. I had a cop and a... My therapist loves me because I
had a cop and a pastor for a parent, right?
Carey Nieuwhof:
That's crazy. I mean, obviously that's your dad's story, not yours, but that's a really big pivot from
homicide detective to pastor.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah. Here's where it's been one of the greatest blessings in my life- my mom also was raised in a
household, and again, I don't want to speak negatively, but the women didn't need to go to college. You
had a role and a job and this is what was going to be when you get out. And at the age of 41 or 42, she
took her first community college class. My dad was always saying, "Hey, it's okay. Like, let's do this, let's
do this." And she just never like, "Ah, I don't know." She took her first community college class at 42 and
then took another one and then took another one. She graduated at 57 with her PhD and she's been a
department head at an English department at a fancy faith-based university, and she's 72 now.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, she had this wild second life. And so, I had these two pictures of these two folks who say, "This is
what I'm put on earth to do. This is what I'm going to be about, "Ooh, but I'm going to go this way. I'm
going to follow this wild call to the left or to the right. I'm just going to take a wild turn here." And then
all of a sudden I found myself in my early 40s with... I run into Dave Ramsey's Executive VP at a college
event and she's like, "You're coming to work for us," and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be a YouTuber."
And here I am, man, here I am. So, I had this beautiful picture of do the next fun, right, scary thing in
front of you.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah. So that's interesting. I was asking how you got connected at Ramsey. So again, like so many people
I talk to, everybody started something in February or March of 2020. It's like great time for a career
change. So you moved from Texas to Nashville. And tell us about your first two decades. Well, you were
in higher education as well.
Dr. John Delony:

So I graduated college and I wanted to be a movie star and you could see, you could see my faith. I
didn't work out. And I became a high school teacher. And I was a high school teacher and a basketball
and track coach for a few years. And then I taught K through five for one year at a small private school
there in Houston. And then, I ended up working at my alma mater, at the university, as an Associate
Dean of Students. And that began a almost two decade career working behind closed doors with
students and their families when things were just falling apart, and with my fellow administrators and

professors. And then I just kept moving along and moving along. I wanted to be a college president
someday, that was kind of the trajectory I was on. And I got my fancy pants, doctorate degree. And
there's nothing worse, Carey, than someone who just graduates with their graduate degree. The worst.
Carey Nieuwhof:
How so?
Dr. John Delony:

It's on everybody's email signature, they tell everybody. It's just so like, "Come on, man."
Carey Nieuwhof:
John Delony, PhD. Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

I was that guy. No, the worst is, master's degree, whatever. So, the more commas, yeah, it's directly
proportional to your self-esteem. But that was me. I was super that guy. And then, man, I had a fancy
job at a faith-based university. My wife was a professor. We had a little kid. And I was really crushing it,
to be honest with you. I was the business of Delony was good. And I come from a family we didn't make
a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of money growing up. My wife and I were making more money than
my parents could ever wrap their head around. And I was fancy pants, fancy pants, trying to earn and
achieve. And then all of a sudden my body fell apart.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

And I found myself experiencing things that I had never heard. I had heard of them, but they were for
other people. Like, anxiety and like, "I can't get out of bed," and like, "I don't even want to be doing this
anymore," and, "Would people be better if I wasn't..." You know what I mean? I started really getting
down the path there. And so the next decade was about... I took another job, we transitioned out to
smaller-
Carey Nieuwhof:
How old were you when that happened? When things started to fall apart, John?
Dr. John Delony:

I was between 33, 35, somewhere around there.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Can you break that down? I want the rest of the narrative, but I'd love to-
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah.

Carey Nieuwhof:
I mean, you open your book with that a little bit. Was that around the time where you were crawling
outside in the rain, looking for your house split apart?
Dr. John Delony:

That's right. That's about that time. So my job was showing up in... The wheels had fallen off everybody
else's life.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

And-
Carey Nieuwhof:
You say basically as a dean, you're a cop. Like you're just there because things fell apart, right?
Dr. John Delony:

Well, you're both a cop and an ambulance and a counselor and a... But you're not trained in any of those
things. And so you're kind of just directing traffic and you're a presence and... But yeah, my whole life
was spent in other people's trauma. And so I was at hospitals a couple of nights a week, I wasn't sleeping
at all. And most importantly is I was running from... I didn't know how to be a new dad. I wasn't a bad
husband, but I wasn't good at it. And I didn't know any other path other than just keep going harder and
keep running.
Dr. John Delony:

And so when they were like, "Hey, we need someone to teach Sunday school," I was like, "I got that."
And "Hey, the college ministries," "I'm on that." "And can someone lead this big convocation program
every week?" "I'll do that too." "Hey, we need a professor. Would you mind teaching grad school this
year?" "I got that too." So, my life became about ribbons and stars and trophies and accomplishments
and achievements. And the one thing that I kept feeling along the way was my body saying, "Hey, you
got to stop. There's not enough money to earn here. I mean, you're using these ministerial platforms to
try to make yourself to prop up yourself, and it's going to fall down on you and those people that you're
trying to walk alongside."
Dr. John Delony:

And ultimately, I mean, this sounds such a Hollywood ending, this is how it happened. I had sold my
house. I thought I'd predicted the next housing collapse. I sold my house, moved my wife and kid. I was
like the beautiful mind, I was mad. And, here's the thing, can I tell you this, Carey?
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

I was bonkers and I still showed up to work every day. I was still doing good work. I was electrified.
People didn't like being around me a lot, but I was fun to be around.
Carey Nieuwhof:
What does it mean electrified? People didn't like being around me?
Dr. John Delony:

That means I was always the guy in the meeting going, "Oh yeah, but what about this?" I was always the
guy in the meeting being like, "Oh, well, I read this study, this..." I got my self-esteem by, "Can I be the
smartest person in this room?" And if you're working at a university, you'll never be the smartest
person. Like, right? And so, I was always trying to... And if I couldn't outsmart, then I would undercut.
And if I couldn't undercut, I'd go round. I was always trying to, "What about this? What about this?" I
could never just be present.
Dr. John Delony:

So, my wife tells me in her gentle way, "You are a lot. You are a lot." And the young ministers that I've
mentored and been around since then, I see that a lot. There's this sense of, "I can't say the words 'I
don't know. Let me find out'." And so, I find myself down these theological rabbit holes, or I find myself
down these leadership rabbit holes, or I listen to a podcast and watch a TED Talk and call myself an
expert. And I find myself way out over my skis when I'm trying to help a young mom who's just lost her
child. Like, I don't know how to do that.
Dr. John Delony:

A friend of mine gave me this line and it haunted me. He was a professor in an MDiv program,
somewhere in the country, and he said, "If somebody hires one of our MDiv graduates," this was his
words and I love it and it's haunting, "They're committing theological malpractice."
Carey Nieuwhof:
Whoa.
Dr. John Delony:

"Because I've trained somebody to take apart texts, and I've trained somebody to give an argument, I've
not trained somebody on how to care for people who are hurting."
Carey Nieuwhof:
Ooh.
Dr. John Delony:

And that was a heavy... like just... Right?
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yes.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, that was me in that season. That was me. That was me. That was me just running and proving
and proving and running and arguments and this, what about that? And finally, man, my body just said,
"I'm out. I'm out. I'm done." And we can call that burnout, we can call that anxiety. We can call that... I
don't care what word we use, my body just said, "I'm out. I'm done."
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, I want to get to that, but I do like coming back to this subject on this podcast, but drive, because
podcasts are listened to disproportionately by driven people. We have a lot of leaders here. When you
look back on your life now, knowing what you know now, where did that drive come from and what
parts of that were healthy and what was unhealthy?
Dr. John Delony:

Oh, I love that you brought that up because there's an elegant, beautiful tension between that. And
yeah, let's put a pin in the tension there. I think my drive, if I'm honest, it goes back to just childhood. I
think most of us get a model and a picture of what childhood is supposed to look like. And the picture I
picked up when I was a kid was, "You're not enough, but you can outrun it." And I was a good athlete
and my sister was wicked smart, my younger brother missed like two questions on the ACT smart. He
was... So I wasn't like that, but I could get by. And I was able to get... I was funny, I was loud, right? So I
could just kind of wing it through life with this underlying sense of you are phoning it in and the moment
they catch you, dude, it's all up. And so I lied a lot as a kid.
Carey Nieuwhof:
A huge imposter syndrome.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah. I lied a lot, I exaggerated all the time, and I'd steal stuff. I mean, I was always about, "The rules
don't apply, how quickly can I get through this thing? How can I cut corners here? How can I make sure
that I'm the biggest firework in the display bin?" Right? And it was just an exhausting track meet of a life.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Did you know you were tired?
Dr. John Delony:

No. Goodness, no. I interpreted that fatigue as cowardice or weakness, or you should probably get
another book. Go get another degree, that'll help it. Right? Yeah, it just was hollow, man. If you don't
look back, the shadow won't catch you, and you just run and run and run and run. I didn't understand
how heavy carrying a kid would be. I didn't understand how heavy trying to be a good married person
would be. I didn't realize how heavy leadership was when you have a team of people who look at you
and say, "Where are we going?" Yeah, or thousands of students that parents drop off with a massive bill.
Like, they're mortgaging their souls to you literally saying, "Please take care of my kid." I didn't realize
how heavy that stuff was. You can't outrun the shadows, man, when you're carrying that type of
existential weight.
Carey Nieuwhof:
What is your doctorate in?

Dr. John Delony:

I have one in education and one in counseling.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay. And which came first?
Dr. John Delony:

The education one. The joke is always, "Is this how dumb I was?" It was all about the credential, I didn't
really care to learn anything. I just needed that certificate on my wall so that I could say doctor in front
of my name. So then I could finally feel valued around my peers. And I just need to be able to say doctor
whatever. And so, let's get the... What's the first thing I can get a degree in that I can work full-time. It
was not about learning. The counseling one came because I'd broke. I was an ash. And I wanted to know
what happened to me, what was happening to my family, to my friends and my community. That was a
much richer, deeper experience for me because it was at a desperation. That was, "I got to know what's
going on here."
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, you're in maybe your early 30s. Locate it for me if I've got it wrong. You're convinced your house is
going to crack. You're in Texas. Do you want to pick up the story? That was a really interesting story.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah. So, I latched into a thing. And the thing was, "Huh, I've never noticed that little settling crack
above that door over there." I look over, there's one over there, there's one over there. If I back up a
little bit, my wife and I owed six figures in student loan debt from our big fancy degrees. My body was
telling me, "You're not safe. You have no business buying a house. You all just bought two new cars.
Like, ding-dongs. We are not safe because if we get fired tomorrow, the bank comes for all of us." Right?
I mean, it was that kind of... My body is trying to get my attention-
Carey Nieuwhof:
Did a lot of that.
Dr. John Delony:

... but I just kept moving. I had a ton of debt. I had now past... I'm saying this with all respect, my father
is one of the most extraordinary men, he never ran organizations. And so, what I found myself was I
found myself leading a couple hundred people making a big chunk of money and I didn't have anyone to
turn to for wisdom. I hadn't cultivated that. And normally, I could ask my dad, "How do I fix the car?
How do I mow the lawn? Hey, there's a police officer here. What do I say?" My dad was brilliant for that.
But once I got outside the scope of that relationship, I was on my own.
Dr. John Delony:

So then I tried to fake it, I tried to read enough books. I didn't have those relationships that someone
could walk alongside me and say, "What do I do now? What comes next?" And so, I just found myself
out on an island and instead of swimming back to shore saying, "Whoa, I found myself all by myself out
there," I just said, "This is my island. This is how this is going to be." And then in the midst of that... And
again, anxiety, depression, OCD, all the ADHD, those are our body just trying to get our attention that

things aren't okay. And I ignored all that stuff. And there's a world now that I mean just sells distraction.
That's just the world we're in.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, we can wallpaper over and we can take those alarms that are ringing and duct tape over the
alarms in our kitchen, and we can just go about our day because we don't hear the alarm anymore, but
they're still ringing, man. And then I bought a house and the house was the straw that broke the camel's
back. It was the three bedroom, two bath, dream that my body said, "We can't do this anymore." And
that's when I started saying, "Hey, there's a crack there and there's one there. Oh, this thing is falling
apart." And for some reason, my body latched onto that story.
Dr. John Delony:

And I had contractors come over, I had friends come over. I'd walk them through, I'd show them the
cracks in the grout, I'd show them the crack. And dude, this is Texas, it's a brand new house. Everything
settles. Everything was great. The house was great. I drove by it a few years ago. It's perfect, man. It's
wonderful. But the story in my head... And if I fast forward now and look around, when I look at this
political party, this group of people, this is the next big threat to the church or to leadership or to what...
There's somebody that's going to sell us a story about why we feel the way we do. And mine was that all
of the Earth's finances were going to fall down apart and turn to ash. And we were all going to be
shooting our neighbor for water and eating our dogs, whatever. I mean, I just created these caustic
stories, but it all came from this house.
Dr. John Delony:

And as the story goes, I was crawling around on my hands and knees behind some bushes looked for
cracks in the foundation one night when it was raining because I was convinced that when it rained, it
was going to flood through these cracks. And I was crawling around on my hands and knees at 2:00 AM.
I was in my underwear. I had like a flashlight in my mouth. And again, Carey, I wasn't crazy, that's the
thing. I didn't need to go to a... I just was fully in on this. And I remember sitting there and in the rain
and I just started laughing and crying at the same time and because my thought was, "Oh, this is when
they would call me and tell me to come sit with somebody."
Carey Nieuwhof:
Right. Right.
Dr. John Delony:

I was like, "Oh, no." And so the next morning I reached out to a couple friends there at the university I
worked at who I still love and I cherish to this day. And then I got in my car one morning, walking to
work... We sold the house, and then one day I got my car and drove to another city and sat down with
my buddy who was a doctor and said, "I need some help, man." And that started the journey back.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, yeah, you became fixated with any crack or flaw you saw in the house convinced it was going to fall
apart?
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah.
Carey Nieuwhof:
You're out in the pouring rain thinking, "That's it. My whole house is going to get flooded away." And it
finally dawns on you that all the friends, all the experts, all the contractors were right, there's nothing
wrong with your house and it was just something-
Dr. John Delony:

I'll tell you this. What I realized was in that moment, and it's hard to articulate this in a book, I wasn't
fully there.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

But I realized enough to know I might be the problem here.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

That was the first somebody move the curtain just a little bit to let that little bit of ray of sunshine in,
maybe it's me. And I kept thinking, "The contractors are idiots, my friends don't know what they're
talking about. All these people are more... I've got this figured out. How can you not see what I see
here?" And that was the first day I thought, "Oh, it may be me. Maybe it's me."
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, definitely not a psychologist not trained the way you are, but I often see and I think I'm seeing more
frequent examples of people who zero in on an issue. So you've got someone, if you click on their
profile, they leave basically the same comment on everyone's Instagram or Twitter or Facebook. It's like
they've got one issue and they're just like... away attacking people, or they get really narrowed in on
something and they can't let it go. Is that a sign that something's wrong? Like, what is that? If you've got
that like obsession with something?
Dr. John Delony:

1000%.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Oh, okay.
Dr. John Delony:

Anytime you find yourself saying the words, "If they would just." I don't care who they is and I don't care
what the just is, anytime you find yourself be like, "If they would just..." the problem is probably in the
mirror, it's probably not them, because the world's too complex, there's too much... Things are too

stacked on each other right now, everything's antifrag. So... I mean, everything's fragile right now. So to
just point at one thing, "If this family would just leave the congregation, we'd be okay," it wouldn't. You
know why? Because you'd still be there.
Dr. John Delony:

"If the bass player would just pick it up," nope, it wouldn't, because you'd find something wrong with
the keyboard. So, anytime you find yourself saying that, it's probably you. And you know what the worst
are? Is the nutrition warriors and political... I mean, there's a few things that, man, it doesn't matter
what anybody posts, they got to lob that grenade in there and it's just a few groups, man.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Right. Right. Right.
Dr. John Delony:

We can talk about this offline someday, but-
Carey Nieuwhof:
"If you would only cut out carbs, if you would only understand this understanding of God," blah, blah,
blah, whatever that is.
Dr. John Delony:

Yes. "If you just went to this church or if you just read this scripture the right way, or if you just got
degree at this place, then all this would..." "Okay, thanks man. Have a good day."
Carey Nieuwhof:
That is really interesting. Do you think that this is a bigger issue now where people get tripped up over
the one thing or? Or the other thing, there's sort of a meme going around that all the people who are
epidemiologists for the last two years are now experts on war, are now experts on... Right? But there's
that, "Okay, I'm going to move my issue, but like I have to deliver to my platform expert opinion on stuff
I pretty much know nothing about."
Dr. John Delony:

So, when our bodies go to fight or flight and you may have heard this, you may have had people on your
podcast talk about this.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

One of the beautiful things, when our brains go to fight or flight. So, why do we have fight or flight? It's
designed for... We're sleeping in a cave and a bear shows up at the front.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Right.

Dr. John Delony:

And it's designed to instantly pick up a stick and go to war against that thing or to sprint out the back
door. And if it can't do one of those two things, right? Then it freezes and there's a couple other things,
but that's the main thing. And it freezes so that that bear will bite off one of our legs, drag us out and
hide us under a pile of leaves, and maybe we can survive and live to fight another day tomorrow, right?
When our brains move to fight or flight, it literally unhooks... And again, I hate these mechanistic
metaphors, but here's where we are. It unhooks your logical thinking brain. Your brain doesn't want you
looking at the bear and going, "Huh, I wonder if that's a nice bear or if that's the hugging bear. I heard
there's a hugging bear around here." Because if you're wrong, it eats you.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Right.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, it unhooks that. And that's how a kid carrying a cell phone in the middle of the night in a dark
alley gets shot, because somebody has told that police officer somebody's got a gun and they're armed
and dangerous and scary. And that police officer's heart is beating fast. And then a kid pops up and pulls
their phone out, and their brain goes close enough. We're going home, right? And so it trades accuracy
for speed. And so, here's where we are, we're all in fight or flight 24/7, we're not sleeping, we're just
pumping this stuff in our heads over and over and over again all day, all day, all day. We are living lives
that are a hundred percent visible all the time, because we've built glass houses for ourselves with social
media.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

And we just stand in front of them, and then our bodies are going, "You're exposed, you're exposed,
you're exposed," and it stays in fight or flight all the time. And when we do that, we lose the ability to
take perspective and we latch onto a fear, and depending on our experiences and our genetics, our body
goes, "That's a fear." And what's beautiful in my life is I traced the economic obsession back to my
childhood. And we had some major financial issues when I was a kid that caused fights and that scared
me when I was a kid. And here my body was replaying this story 25 years later, "Oh, we know what
happens when there's money fights, everything falls apart, everybody gets angry. Like we got to watch
out for this one." Right? So my body remembered the story, it just found a new avenue to write it down,
right? To tell that story again. And we all do this.
Carey Nieuwhof:
We are learning an awful lot about the body and how it's related to the mind. And I really appreciate
those conversations. You talk about trauma in your book and you talk to a lot of people about trauma,
probably back to the university, now at Dave Ramsey, on the show, et cetera, et cetera. Leaders have
been through so much in the last two years, plus they've got their childhoods to unpack. Can you explain
to our listeners how trauma is? Like, it's not a question of if trauma is impacting them, it's a question of
how is trauma impacting them, agree or disagree? And then what does that look like? And how do you
recognize it?

Dr. John Delony:

Oh man, that's such a great question. So, let me do a couple things. So, all trauma is to distill it down is
when something's going on that exceeds our bodies built in systems to handle it.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

And it's just when our systems are like, "Here's a threat and it exceeds our body's abilities to handle that
threat, are overrun." Most trauma most of the time is not the thing that happened, it's our body
remembering in the present what happened, the story it has told itself about what happened. Memories
about traumatic events are notoriously off. And I've heard that weaponized, that probably didn't even...
I don't care. The fact is, I'm looking at somebody in front of me right now who is in deep distress and
they deserve peace, they deserve healing. So let's be here now, right? And so, I thought trauma was
always acute. I thought it was these huge grenades that went off, the big divorce, the big infidelity, the
death of mom, whatever happened.
Carey Nieuwhof:
The abuse. Something that happened that was traumatic.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah, in the systemic abuse, yeah, the sexual abuse, the... all those. I thought that was the trauma. And
I've had my personal experiences with that stuff, I've walked alongside people. The big shift for me was
my friend, her name is Dr. Lynn Jennings, and she's a trauma researcher, but she researches a special
niche that I didn't know existed. She called it secondary traumatic stress. And the word she gave me, I'll
never forget being in class with her and a light bulb went off, she said, "Trauma is both acute and is
cumulative. It adds up on you. And it's about the final weight."
Dr. John Delony:

So the way I describe that is trauma can be somebody throwing a cinder block at you, or it can be with a
backpack on and every day you just go downstairs and your mom's just scrolling that phone and you're
just saying, "Hey, mom, look at this picture," and she goes, "Uh-huh? Uh-huh? Beautiful." And that little
six year old girl's body is wondering, "Why won't my mom look at me? Why is it my job to make sure
daddy doesn't yell? I'll try. It's my job to make sure daddy doesn't get angry." And that body, it's a
pebble in the bag, a pebble. And over a lifetime, the weight of that trauma, those cinder blocks versus
those pebbles, their weight is the same.
Dr. John Delony:

And so then you're 32 and you're running a church. And every day you get 11 emails telling you, "What a
lame job you're doing," or, "You misinterpreted this," or, "You should watch this YouTube clip, because
this is the real truth," or, "Have you heard about the great Reset pastor?" And, "Oh my gosh, did you
hear so and so voted for..." Whatever's happening. And you get this all day every day, and it's a pebble.
And then you're going to church and then you're preparing your sermon, knowing if that one family's
going to side eye you the whole time, then you got to visit so and so in the hospital, but you can't,
because they want you to wear a mask and your church said you... Whatever the thing is. And then your

body just eventually leans over and says, "I can't carry this anymore." And it comes out in a bunch of
different ways, right?
Dr. John Delony:

That's the cumulative nature of trauma is what I want, especially pastors who are listening, that's what I
see most often is they're carrying around everybody else's stuff.
Carey Nieuwhof:
It's such a helpful definition because you're right, that's something we've all dealt with. I would love to
talk about how the body reacts. Almost every leader I talk to, it's increasingly common, that panic
attacks, sleep disorders. I had a little poll with a group I was coaching and I'm like... Just, I don't know, it
got really intimate, and it's like, "How many people need something to sleep at night?" And almost every
hand in the group went up. And it's like, "Whoa." And I learned that the hard way. When I was 41, I
burned out. And it's like, I wasn't going to stop. My brain was going, my heart was going, but my body's
like, "Okay, we're done here. You're an idiot. You're running way too hard. We quit." And I went through
six months of burnout. I won't go into a long story, a lot of listeners have heard it too many times, but it
changed my life.
Dr. John Delony:

Hey, man, you got six years faster than me. I mean, you went six years longer than I did. You're stronger
than me, man. Good for you.
Carey Nieuwhof:
There you go. You hit it around 35, right? So-
Dr. John Delony:

That's right.
Carey Nieuwhof:
But what were the physical symptoms? And what were yours? And then what are typical symptoms for
people who are struggling with trauma?
Dr. John Delony:

Got to be pretty direct on this podcast.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Dr. John Delony:

Is that cool?
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yep.

Dr. John Delony:

These are all directional signals that someone's not okay.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

Again, there's medical diagnostics, there's all kinds of things going on in the human body these days, but
directionally speaking, there's a couple of core things our bodies are designed to do that are even on
protected circuits, if you will. If you're taking medication to go to the bathroom, if you're taking
medication to have to be intimate with your spouse, if you're taking medication to sleep, that's a sign
that there may be something going on psychosomatically. There may be something going on in your
heart or your mind or your body that you need to go sit down and say, "Hey, what is the ecosystem I've
created here?" If you can't be present with your kids for more than 10 minutes, if you find yourself
driving down the road and somebody gets in front of you a little bit and you find yourself so raged out,
right? Here's a good one. If you are at a little league game and you find yourself angry at the high school
ref, that's a you problem.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

If you're at a dance recital and you find yourself swearing under your breath at the person who held up
the 7.9 and it should have been a 9.1, that's you, that is not them. That's you.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

If you find yourself on your fourth Netflix series this month, that's you. If you find yourself reaching for
another drink and another drink or another piece of pizza, if you find yourself choosing Netflix over
intimacy with your spouse, when somebody's... The one I hear a lot is people have stopped being
intimate, they've stopped having sex.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

Married couples have just stopped.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Why is that? Let's talk about that.
Dr. John Delony:

I think two things. One, I think we've become great co-managers of our homes and we have become...
Yeah, we're just co-workers now. Like you got this, I got this, you do this, I'm going to block this guy, you
pass the ball here, I'll be wide open over here, I'm going to run this route. I mean, we've diagramed our
houses, and we have to because we filled it so full of nonsense, so full of busyness and insanity that we
have to run it like a company now. And so, there's no room for intimacy.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

I think the bigger issue is this. This is a 50 year problem. All up until human history before 50 years ago,
and again, I'm speaking loosely here, you got married for two reasons. One, because your parents
wanted to expand their empire or it was some political connection, and so they pawned you off
somehow for many goats or whatever, or you married somebody because you were going to die young
and they were going to die young, and we can get through this thing, miserable, awful, brutish, short life
together. And we'll make some kids. And we'll grow some turnips, right?
Dr. John Delony:

And then 50, my grandparents celebrated 72 years of marriage before they passed away. Unbelievable.
They became each other's arms and legs, right? They became the same set of lungs. They became
soulmates after 70 years together. And suddenly 50 years ago, we tried to reverse-engineer that process
and say, "We need soulmates first, everything else afterwards." And what we've done by doing that is
we've said, "You have to be spouse, my security, my safety, my co-earner, my co-helper around the
house. Oh, by the way, you got to stay hot and it's super attractive and do weird sex stuff until you're
84, because now we're going to have sex forever."
Dr. John Delony:

You got to do all of this stuff, and we've saddled our spouses with a weight they cannot carry. We've
dumped every... We've abandoned our same gendered friends. Like, we don't have guys' night out
anymore, it's once a year now, or churches have to throw a program for it. We've just sucked some of
that stuff out. And then we've outsourced our identities to our kids, right? Like, they're a proxy for how
good of a parent we are. If they're fast on the track or good at little league or make good grades, then
we feel good about our performance as parents. And man, when I'm working that hard, there's no room
for intimacy or desire. And so now we're in a weird world where our church used to give us safety, our
community, our tribe used to give us safety, now I get that existential safety from my spouse.
Dr. John Delony:

Safety and desire, this is from Esther Perel, safety and desire don't work well together. And so now
instead of practicing desire, I got to practice safety. So think about this. You date somebody, you see
them. And I saw my wife, I'm like, "She's pretty, I want to go out with her." Desire is wired into that. I'm
going to practice safety. Is she going to show up on time? Is she going to text me back? Is she going to
get mad at me if we have different political opinions? We're practicing safety. Then when we say, "I do,"
we both say, "All right, we just handcuffed ourselves to each other." Now for the rest of our lives, we
have to be about practicing desire, and we have no models for doing that. I got to practice intimacy, I
got to practice leaning into this. And no one's taught us how to do that except for pornography, and
that's become the blueprint for everybody and created all kind of problems in our lives.

Carey Nieuwhof:
Wow. Okay. You could, and I don't think you're going down this road at all, but you could almost say
what you just said is an argument against marriage, right? That marriage can't... Debate that, but you
can't handle that, but that's not where you're going with that.
Dr. John Delony:

I would say the opposite.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay. Tell me more.
Dr. John Delony:

I think marriage has been elevated to its most extraordinary place.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

Both in our homes and in our society and our communities. What I'm advocating for... So let's use an
analogy here. Just because now we have solar roofs and air conditioning systems that take very little
energy and we have really fascinating hot water systems, doesn't mean that we go, "Oh, forget that,
man. I'm just going to go back to a straw hut." No, what I need now is some expertise and a new set of
tools to utilize this, where we are now. That's it.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

And so now what we need is a, and this is my chief critique of this church in this season, is we have
abandoned issues that people are desperate for, literally desperate, they're dying for them. Like
loneliness, like how to make friends, like how to re-engage sexually with your spouse. Like, these things
that our people are dying for, we've traded that for platitudes and political mumbo jumbo, and I think
people are literally drowning. I mean, they're not drowning, they're starving to death. They are
desperate for actual tips and tools on how to live good lives, not more rah-rah speeches. And so we
need churches that are going to speak honestly into people's lives today. But no, I am opposite. You are
not going to find somebody more high on marriage than I am. And I've almost blown mine up three or
four times. Like, I'm not great at it-
Carey Nieuwhof:
I as well, John.
Dr. John Delony:

But I am high on it.

Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah. Yeah. As am I. I mean, three decades into mine, we seem to be falling in love more and more
every year, and yet I heard Tim Keller years ago and I think he was quoting a Jewish theologian say that
with the death of God in the 19th century, right? Nietzsche, et cetera, et cetera, that people used to put
a lot of expectations on God and now they put them on their spouse.
Dr. John Delony:

Yes.
Carey Nieuwhof:
And hence you, fast forward a century, you get the Instagram wedding. Everything has to be perfect.
You fulfill me, you complete me, you're my everything.
Dr. John Delony:

You complete me, yeah.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah, exactly. And God is a nice also had, like we're glad to have you around. The traditional family,
families used to live in units, right? Multi-generational units. So now it's just me and the 1.2 kids, or
whatever that happens to be. And we kind of have everything that our parents had to wait. Like you
have in your 20s now what people waited in their 40s to get, whether you got that through debt or
whether it was just lifestyle has increased. And yet people arguably are not happier, they're more
miserable than they were.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So what is the antidote? Like, if you've lost that desire, I think that's really fascinating with Esther Perel
about the difference between safety and desire that they're mutually incompatible, if I got that right. So
what are some remedies to rekindling romance, to getting out of that crazy thing where you're triggered
all the time? Whatever you do, you can't pay attention to your kid. Like, start to point us in a better
direction, John.
Dr. John Delony:

Well, when it comes to the desire, when it comes to romance, if we can take our egos and just set them
down for a second, I can't think of a funner thing that I have to practice for the rest of my life than sex
and desire. Are you freaking kidding me?
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

That's what we're all complaining about.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.

Dr. John Delony:

But the problem is, is we've turned every sexual encounter, every romantic evening into the super bowl,
and we've stopped using the word practice. And if we have a weird night, an off night, or, "Dude, we are
going to rock it till the wheels fall off tonight and we're going to go out to dinner first," and then
somebody gets gassed and then the night goes sideways, we turn every one of those moments, Carey,
into the super bowl. We got nowhere to go from there, instead of going, "Oh man." And then we're back
at it the next day, or, "Hey, I've got this thing that I've always wanted to tell you that I'm kind of into,
and I've never been able to tell," dude, I know couples that have been together multiple decades and
they still haven't fully been honest with each other about stuff.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, if you are holding on to secrets, secrets eat intimacy, it destroys intimacy. Shame eats secrets,
right? That's what the great Brené Brown said. Like, shame eats secrets for breakfast. You cannot be
intimate if you're holding secrets, and yet we try to balance this intimacy and this sexuality and this
romance with our parties we've been with for two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years. And I'm
celebrating two decades this summer.
Dr. John Delony:

If you had told me, "You know what?" Old people did. They told me, "You think you're in love when
you're married, you have no idea. Wait 10 years, wait 20 years." And I used to be like, "You're gross.
You're wrinkled. You're gross." And I wish I could describe it, man, but it's true, my marriage is a
thousand times better after two near nuclear disasters and ended, right? And how my idiotic young first
two years of marriage. So, it happens, but it's something you practice, man. We got to take the pressure
off. Start being honest with each other.
Dr. John Delony:

I said this for a joke on a live event, it's been the number one thing that someone has reached out to me
and said, "Hey, can I buy this?" It's called The John Delony Erotic Envelope System. Here's what it is. Go
to Walgreens and get 10 white envelopes for a nickel. And then you write five things in them that you
are interested in trying. And it could be, "I just want to hold hands and watch a show with you for a
couple hours." It could be something you've had in your head that you're like, "I don't know. I just want
to kind of try this." Whatever it is. And then both of you commit to A, being curious. If you open the
envelope and you're like, "All right, we're going to try this."
Carey Nieuwhof:
Try that.
Dr. John Delony:

Or, if you open it, you're like, "I don't know how that's physiologically possible." Instead of being like,
"What's wrong with you?" I'm going to say, "Tell me about this." And we're going to talk about it. And
the discussion is intimate, right? We've just lost play, we've lost joy in one another, and we've just
turned each other into these transaction, going back to because we're co-managers now. Your job is to
make sure I'm satisfied, my job is to make sure you're satisfied. Just like I turn in my weekly report here
at the office every week and then I'm going about my day. And we end up two inches apart and 2000
miles away from each other on the couch, me on my iPad, you on your phone, and we are so close and

so far away from each other, man. And so, bring the play, the intimacy, the "All right, I'll try that. Sounds
super weird, man. But I'll... I mean, okay, I'll try it," or, "My wife did this..."
Dr. John Delony:

Like, I just want to French kiss, and I was like, "Oh, really? Okay." And she's like, "Yeah, I miss that. We
used to hold hands and just kiss and then go home." I was like, "Oh, man. Okay." So, anyway, I wasn't
what I was thinking was going to be in there, but that's what it was, and we had a blast and we laughed,
we were poking fun and played silly music, whatever. So, have some play.
Dr. John Delony:

Going back to the other question about what happens when you feel the wheels falling off? Your heart
rate takes off on you, you can't sleep, you start choosing Netflix over intimacy. Some of these things that
are... You can't look at your emails at the office because you know, "Oh gosh, senior pastor probably
emailed me." When you find yourself there, there is no none, zero, there is no long-term behavior
change, there is no long-term life change that doesn't happen in the presence of other people. Period,
full stop. You can white-knuckle yourself to lose 50 pounds. That weight will find its way back on your
body, or it will find its way out in another addiction.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Sure.
Dr. John Delony:

You can get another degree and another degree and another degree and get that fancy job, you will go
with you, you will still show up that first day on that new job. The only way to truly transform your life is
to start with connection. And so those conversations I had with people who loved me and cared about
me when I said, "Okay, I'm not okay." Whew! That's when healing starts. That's when your body can go,
"Ooh, okay, the tribe's back. Now we don't have to be on 360 defense 24/7, 365. Now I can sleep. Right?
And then now we're off to the races."
Carey Nieuwhof:
I wonder if the problem got worse over the last couple of years because our social support systems kind
of broke down, we weren't allowed to meet with each other.
Dr. John Delony:

They vanished.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah, they vanished. And then the church we knew or the company we knew, between the Great
Resignation and the Great Migration out of church where lots of people quit, it's like, "Okay, we had a
stable social network that maybe needed a lot of work prior to 2020, and then that blew apart." And
we're kind of in the ashes going, "Relationally, we're just falling apart." And a lot of us probably have
gotten more comfortable being isolated than we were two years ago. Can you talk about that?
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah.

Carey Nieuwhof:
Talk about-
Dr. John Delony:

Go ahead. Go ahead.
Carey Nieuwhof:
No, no, no, I'm interviewing you. I want to hear what you're thinking about that.
Dr. John Delony:

Oh man, I got asked on an interview the other day that I think that what happened in the last two years
was as bad as 9/11. And I hadn't thought about this and it came out. My instant response was, "This is
way worse," and here's why. After 9/11, whether it was real or not, we had a perceived common enemy,
it was us versus them, same team. What happened the last two years is that I was told that my neighbor
walking her dog might kill me. The preschool kids at my Sunday school class might be carrying some
disease that will kill us all. So, the thing that keeps us whole is other people, relationships. That's why we
are in church. That's why the thing is... Jesus got 12 people to walk with him, plus all the others, right?
We have to have other people and that's what became the weapon was other people.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, the very thing that keeps us alive, it's like becoming allergic to water overnight. You only got
four or five days after that. And I don't think we've got comfortable, I think if you take all of that, those
feelings and emotions and pain and screaming and yelling, and you press it down, you compress it, the
other word for compress is to depress, I think our bodies have gone into freeze and just said, "We're
out. I can't keep screaming and running and sending the alarms between the election and between
COVID and mass on and vaccines on and off and... I'm out." Bodies have checked out on us.
Dr. John Delony:

And I think I said this earlier, but man, Netflix is happy to say, "You'll like this," and Amazon will say,
"This will help." And it just keeps a steady... It's like a Laverne & Shirley. Like, little line of just deep,
deep, keeping me propped up with the next article and the next thing and the next thing. And yeah, I'm
out. I'm just out. And that's when you have to weigh it out into the wilderness now, man. Now is the
season for courage and bravery.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Well, and the other thing that made it interesting too is even if you kind of got past the, "Okay, this
person could infect me," and you had your bubble for a while and a lot of people weren't in lockdown
for the whole two years, but then somebody that you might say is medically safe, we're going to hang
out with this person, turns out to be on the other side of the aisle from you politically, or has these
other wacko views that you've now seen on social and you're like, "I don't know that we can hang out
anymore," right? So, it just seems to have a-
Dr. John Delony:

It became ideological safety too. It did.

Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah, ideological. I don't know you anymore, I don't... I mean, I know you've experienced this, how many
couples have you talked to over the last two years that are just staring at their spouse going, "I don't
know who you are"? You know what I mean? Like, "What happened to you?" And it's like, "I've always
been like this," or vice versa. Like, whatever happened. Like, "What do you mean we're not going to do
whatever?" Or, "What do you mean you're putting a mask on our kid?" Whatever the argument was. I
just have heard over and over. Like, "I don't know you. Like, what happened?" And we just became
untethered. And then once we became untethered, man, we're just amoebas running around all over
the place, just wagging the tails, man.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Since we kind of went there and went deep, if you're comfortable, can you talk about how you blew up
your marriage? You can talk about both times, one time, but we've all been there before. I almost blew
up my marriage and so did my wife at one point. So, I'd love to know what happened to you.
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah, for me it's about a couple of things. One, it's about creating a solo universe. These are my plans in
my world. And what are you doing to contribute to my world? And whenever you do that in a marriage,
you force your partner to do the same thing to survive. They have to create their own world. So, I don't
think I want to go to this church anymore, to my partner, to my wife meant, "Oh, I'm going to have to
lose all my friends." And now her alarms are off to the races. "And I don't like the way this church is
treating whatever." And again, I was that idiot. I was always finding theological issues with this and that
and that and that.
Dr. John Delony:

In fact, we can put a pin in that one. I have a dark moment that was important for me on that, but I kept
hopping from church to thing to theological issue to... whatever it was, because again, my identity was
being the smart guy in the room, not being the most safe or loving or gentle person in the room, it was,
"I'm going to be the smartest. I'll show you guys."
Dr. John Delony:

And so, I created a world that was unsafe for my wife to exist in, which meant she had to get friends that
I didn't know about. She had to not lie to me, but not tell me where she was, like I'm going to go get
coffee with. And then what happens in that gap is that my body begins to feel the gap. I know that we're
not aligned, I know that there's an intimacy gap here, but I don't know how to bridge it. And so instead
of trying to... I don't have the language, I don't know how to say, "Hey, I feel like we're separate here if
we've gotten off course somewhere. I don't know what to do. So what do I do in the gap? I blame her
for it." Kids blame themselves, adults blame other people. So I blamed her for, "Oh man..."
Dr. John Delony:

My wife, she know I ain't coming home until seven o'clock tonight. It's ridiculous. Well, because she
don't want to listen to me for two hours droning on about how the world's coming to an end and about

how our church is terrible and everything. No, she wanted to hang out with her three girlfriends and
have an actual laugh every once in a while, right? So, in that gap, it spins tighter and tighter and tighter.
My world becomes tighter and tighter and tighter. And that's when you find yourself responding to that
text that you shouldn't respond to. That's when you... The words I used was, "I begin to outsource
laughter to other people. I begin to outsource, "Oh, she thinks I'm smart at work."" And let me be clear. I
never cheated on my wife and nothing like that.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Sure.
Dr. John Delony:

But I know enough to know that I wanted to tell this woman at work my joke, because she's going to
think it's funny. And I start thinking, "Oh, oh, oh, I'm going to show her this book," right? Not here, not
here. And I'm pointing to where my wife was sitting. And so, that tinny little gap gets wider and wider
and it's all innocent and it's all silly until you go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm going way... This
car has no brakes on it and you have to..." For me there was a couple of just throwing the car into park
on the highway while we're going down the road and we all smash up against the dashboard, otherwise
we're going to end up going off a cliff here, right?
Dr. John Delony:

And so, that's where it was for me. Everything started little, everything started small, but it was me
outsourcing different parts of who I was. "My wife doesn't like my music, but this guy at work likes my
music. So we're going to go hang out over there," or, "My wife doesn't ever want to come meet me for
lunch," because she had another job by the way, you arrogant idiot, but so these three women from
work, we'll all go to lunch together. And suddenly, I'm telling them about... You hear what I'm saying? So
it just happened super organically and it just moves this way and this way and this way, and you just find
yourself out on an island somewhere.
Dr. John Delony:

So, I got fortunate that we never crossed any lines, we couldn't get back from anything like that, but it
was very gentle, very, very like, "Huh, and all because..." And I'm a hundred percent I created a world
that was unsafe for my wife to live in. And so then I reacted to her trying to stay alive.
Carey Nieuwhof:
We put a pin in something and I want to come back to it. Was it the sort of anger and views on
everything? And my church was bad and like political views?
Dr. John Delony:

Yeah.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Like, what was that you wanted to unpack? I don't want to let that go.
Dr. John Delony:

So I have always prided myself on theological gymnastics.

Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

I love them. They're a sport for me, right? I love it. And I've given the last 20 years, 15 of which were
with faith-based universities with great world-class MDiv professors and then national conferences, the
whole... Like, I love sparring and getting in the ring with theological discussions. I love it. And as a
professor, my job is always to make sure my students are stable. Like, "This is the way this is. Oh yeah.
What about this?" My mom is a mythologist. So, I got a dad who's a minister now and a mom-
Carey Nieuwhof:
Like, M-Y-T-H? Mythologist?
Dr. John Delony:

Yes.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

M-Y-T-H. So, I remember going to her office and being like, "Hey, how come when I was a kid you didn't
tell me there was 20,000 flood narratives throughout history? You all left that one off the flannelgraph
when I was a kid." And she's like, "You want to have this conversation?" So, like I love that. And then I
brought that home. And so, the analogy I use is mixed martial arts fighters or professional boxers, take
Mike Tyson, when he went to the gym, he put his gloves on, he put his mouthpiece in, and he hit other
grown men for a living. And then when his practice was over, he took the gloves off, took the
mouthpiece out, and he could not go hit the woman at the grocery store when she didn't have the right
peanut butter.
Dr. John Delony:

I never took the gloves off. And so I took those theological sparring things with me to every church I
went to, to every poor Sunday school teaching volunteer, that I was like, "Oh, this guy's outgun and I'm
coming for him." I did it to my wife, I did it to my family. And here's what happened, here was the bell
ringing moment. When I was a kid, my parents taught me, "You stick it out with a church. You say we're
in, you're in." The great Richard Beck, who's a great friend and mentor of mine said, "What if we lived
our lives, especially when it comes to neighborhoods and churches, as though we could never move?
What conversations would we have that would be different? What meals would we have? What things
would we just get over instead of running all the time?"
Dr. John Delony:

So, when I was a kid, we stayed at the same place over, and year after year, the big fights, the church
splits, all the drama we stayed and we stayed and we stayed and we stayed. And then when my wife and
I experienced a bunch of miscarriage, it was a mess, right? And then my daughter comes out of
nowhere, four years later. Like we have my son and my daughter shows up. I called a couple of men who
were in their '70s, maybe even their '80s that had been with me when I was a child at that church back

in Houston. And I called them and said, "I just need you to know some of the lessons you passed along
30 years ago to me, I'm staring at my baby girl now, and I'm going to treat her differently because of
you. You have impacted my family tree."
Dr. John Delony:

And here was the moment I remember thinking, "Oh no, my intellectual arrogance, my decision to
monopolize theological drama over, 'Who's allowed in this building?' And 'Oh yeah, you hate that group,
well, I love that group, and the...'" I have robbed my son of those relationships because he's never been
at a church more than three years. We move every three years. And that's when we moved to Nashville
four years ago. I took a job at Belmont University here.
Dr. John Delony:

When I moved to Nashville to take that job, I looked at my wife and said, "You pick any box. I don't care
what box it is, I want to be around great people, and we're going to love this community. And this is
going to be where we go to church until our kids are out of here. No more. No more drama." And it's
been great and it's been hard and it's been fun, but my attitude has been totally different, a thousand
percent different. It's about relationships, not right and wrong. And I'll tell you what, I don't agree with a
lot of my fellow members, and we have lots of hot dogs together and we sit by lots of fires together and
we have lots of times that our kids are playing together, because that's what's important, not the
nonsense, man.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, one of the things I've noticed and you've hinted at this, and I'm not saying that's part of your story,
but I picked up so much anger online. Anger about politics, anger about theology. Like just people who
enjoy lacerating other people, tearing people down. And it seems to have accelerated, and underneath
that is a quasi militaristic, almost like, "I am so jacked, I got my weapons ready to go. If anybody messes
with me, I'm going to blow them away," kind of thing. I see that testosterone culture really particularly
strong in leaders who are 30 and under. Do you see that? And what is driving that?
Dr. John Delony:

Oh, yeah. Oh man, I think there's a couple of things. One, I think the lowest hanging fruit, and you're
going to get some mean internet comments about this, what I'm about to say. So, point in my direction,
it's fine, is we're what? Seven, eight, nine, 10 years into the Fortnite generation. We've got a group of
people who've grown up in a first-person shooter game. My dad's got some studies that he showed me
about, it alters your brain chemistry. These first-person shooter games are simply different now,
because you are in it and there is an action. And then you move that towards access to... It used to be, I
don't want to say it's less than noble because I think what many of these men and women are doing is
incredibly noble, but with what I was going to apply to FBI and the CIA right out of college it suggested,
"Do not tell people you are applying. This is between you and your government. You are entering into
service the moment you send on this application."
Carey Nieuwhof:
Wow.
Dr. John Delony:

You join the Navy Seals, this is for you and your team and your government. Now, it is my granddad
joined the service to serve his country. Now we join the service to get four years of college paid for. And
so, the way we go into the military, the way we do this is about these platforms now. And so, you've got
much more... I mean, I didn't know a Navy Seal growing up, now there's 500 of them with a podcast and
a story and a T-shirt line, right? And again, oh my gosh, those guys are incredible and there's so much we
can learn from them, but this brings me to the third thing.
Dr. John Delony:

So we've got a picture of what this looks like that we haven't had before. We've got a generation of kids
growing up on Fortnite playing army every single night of the week for hours and hours and hours. And
then underneath it all, we have no models of what a true man actually looks like. We have no picture of
that. And there's a generation of men who have been told, "You will shut your mouth. Anything that
comes out of your mouth is wrong or broken or deceitful or meant to hurt. You be quiet, we're going to
medicate you, we're going to settle you down, we're going to put you in this box over here, stop. You
are what's wrong with everything."
Dr. John Delony:

And then somebody comes along and says, "Oh yeah, you want me to show you what else is awesome?"
And it's such an appealing, appetizing alternative to take your Ritalin, be quiet, you shut your mouth,
nobody cares what you think anymore, you're the part of the problem to shoot this and watch what
happens. Right? It's a great counterargument to that.
Carey Nieuwhof:
I hadn't thought about that. I'll have to take some time to unpack that and...
Dr. John Delony:

What do you think, man? I just rattled that off the top of my head. What do you think?
Carey Nieuwhof:
No, you know what? Like, I've got a... And my kids haven't, to my knowledge, shown particularly violent
tendencies, but they grew up playing video games, Call of Duty, that kind of thing as well. And we
worried about that as parents, like very much worried about that. And I'm also Canadian. So, there's a
certain point of which Canadians... Exactly, John. Like, we don't understand the gun culture.
Dr. John Delony:

And I'm Texan.
Carey Nieuwhof:
You're Texan.
Dr. John Delony:

I'm Texan.
Carey Nieuwhof:

So you're Texas and Tennessee. That's about as heart of gun culture as you can get. So, I mean there's
part of it that I don't get.
Dr. John Delony:

But here's what's funny about it, you know who talks about guns in Texas?
Carey Nieuwhof:
No.
Dr. John Delony:

Nobody.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Really?
Dr. John Delony:

Nobody does.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Because everybody has one.
Dr. John Delony:

No. Yeah. I mean, it's just like a... That grandmother's got one in her purse. Like it just isn't is. And I had a
great professor, she was from Chicago, and she said the problem with the gun conversation is we talk
past each other. Because in Chicago, the only people I knew with guns were bad people. And so when
somebody says, "I want to give guns to everybody," I'm thinking, "What are you? Are you all crazy?" And
in Texas, my grandmother has one. And so when you say, "Everybody with a gun is evil," I'm thinking,
"My grandma is not." And so we just talk past each other, but there's an alt narrative, which is in fact
you're not the problem, you're the solution. And here's how you are a part of the solution. And then you
pump that message into somebody's head over and over and over.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah. And I wonder if it does get down to powerlessness to a certain extent that this is how I express
myself? It's really interesting. I speak a lot in Texas, so I'm sure the next time the plane lands I'm going to
get a lot of opinions on what I just said. So, just know-
Dr. John Delony:

I don't think so at all.
Carey Nieuwhof:
I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to understand. So let's work on this to get us to a place of solution.
Sex is dying in marriage, anxiety is increasing, your body is keeping score, you've got accumulated
trauma, secondary trauma. Is that what it was called? Secondary trauma?

Dr. John Delony:

Yeah.
Carey Nieuwhof:
And you're trying to lead. And you're trying to lead a divided people that don't like each other whose
community has died for about 10 different reasons. What is the path out? Like, how do you begin to
undo this mess and find yourself... If there's meth too, we can talk about that some other day, I don't
know. This mess.
Dr. John Delony:

I was going to say that's a great way to start, man.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah, that's a great way, just opening question on the next episode. What about meth? No, I meant to
say mess.
Dr. John Delony:

You get a lot done in that first week. Yeah.
Carey Nieuwhof:
That's funny. How do you begin to trace that out? And like you've obviously found a different operating
system, you've found a different way to live. And I'm sure that's going to continue to evolve, right? Like,
you're going to be different at 50 than you are in your '40s, but how do we begin to extract ourselves
from this nightmare that a lot of us are living?
Dr. John Delony:

I think these steps kind of go in a loop. And man, I'll tell you the thing I hate more than anything is like
being up at 2:00 AM and there's like seven steps to becoming a better pom pom thrower, like nine steps
to losing 40 pounds. Like, man, that's so reductive, I can't stand those things. So, these things I'm going
to lay out here they're not like, "Do these seven things and then all of a sudden you're..." That's not how
life works, man.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Right.
Dr. John Delony:

Because the moment you get your head screwed on straight, you're going to get a call and you're going
to step out and mom's going to tell you she's got cancer or your buddy's going to say, "Hey, my wife just
left me. I need you." And so, life just works that way. What I'm going to give you is a set of principles-
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

... that you go back to over and over and over again. And I just want to stop there for a second. I think
it's the great Rich Mullins that said, "The worst part about being a Christian is that it's every single day.
That there's not..." Like, I can't memorize all the great Abraham books and then like wake up the next
day and like be good to go, I got to go back and go again, I got to go again, or there's no workout you can
do on Monday that you never have to work out again for the rest of the month.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Would be amazing. Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

Wouldn't it be awesome? So the way towards wellness, this is from the Nagoski sisters, wellness is a way
of being, it's not a state, it's not a place you get to, it's a thing you do. And so, I think first and foremost
is you have to go to the mirror and you have to acknowledge these stories that are just going on and
that are on loop. "I'm not okay," I got to say that out loud. "I am over my head. I am exhausted. I want to
have sex again. And I'm part of that problem. I don't like that I've put on 72 pounds." Whatever the thing
you are wrestling with or things for most of us, you have to look in the mirror and have courage and say,
"I got to own this story." And then you got to own reality, man. And that's the like, "I wanted this life
and here's where I am." And most of us can't do that. That's a hard, hard thing to do. What do you
actually want?
Carey Nieuwhof:
A lot of us couldn't answer that question. Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

You know what? Of all the questions sitting with my research, with fancy pants, mental health, towards
I'm holding a single mom in the middle of the night because her son just took his life and I'm with the
police officers and she can't breathe, nobody has been able to answer that question over the last 20
years. What do you want? And we find ourselves... Like I just wanted be a youth minister, because that
was an easier job and I liked my youth minister, he meant a lot to me. And suddenly, I'm executive
pastor at an 800 person church because it paid... What am I doing? You know what I mean? I don't even
like this job. I like the house and the car, but what... And so anyway, like what do you want? You got to
acknowledge reality. I wanted something else and here's where I'm at, or I really wanted this and I'm not
there yet.
Dr. John Delony:

And then the most important thing is that's when you got to reach out and get connected. And for some
of us, that's a professional. For some of us, that's reaching out to Carey and your coaching groups and
saying, "I don't even know how to do friendship anymore, it's not safe." And here's where my
experience working with pastors they get completely blown up is they're given two people that are their
"go-to guys" or their accountability guys, or their... And they're also... They're their boss too. And so I
think about that in the public sector. Like, if my boss came and was like, "All right, you tell me all the
things you're struggling with, what you're screwing up with, the things that are making you not great at
your job, just tell me."
Carey Nieuwhof:

Right.
Dr. John Delony:

No, you're the last person on earth I'm going to attack.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah, because I'm the guy who decides whether you get a raise or whether you stay at this company or
church or not, right?
Dr. John Delony:

That's exactly right, or who gets edged out when we do the next building campaign or whatever, or,
"This political party, I don't think they're right on this topic. I don't hate that group of people. Am I
supposed to hate them? Because I don't. In fact, I read this..." So, there's nowhere to go. And what
pastors do a lot is they just swallow it, they just sit on it, and that trauma is cumulative, right? It adds up,
it adds up, it adds up. And so, you got to find people that you can be fully known, fully loved. Can I tell
the good stuff and the bad stuff and the dark stuff?
Dr. John Delony:

People who will show up for me at 2:00 AM, I got to have those people. And then and only then will our
brains go, "All right, now we can do the other stuff, like lose weight or start sleeping. We can start doing
the other stuff now because we got our tribe back." And that's how healing goes. And then you're about
changing your thoughts and changing your actions. But I really believe everything comes down to
owning your stories and then getting connected.
Carey Nieuwhof:
When you look back on the last decade of your life from that sort of crisis you hit in your mid 30s, what
were one or two inflection points? Because you're right, that's a lot of work. And for the last 16 years
I've been doing a lot of work in my life. And there are people who are like, "Well, that's great. I don't
have 16 years." So, if there's like an Archimedes' lever, if there's one or two things that you say, "Hey, if
you want to start, like start here." It's a long journey, you didn't get this way overnight, you're not going
to get out of it overnight, it is a journey, but if there's one or two things you should pay attention to now
to get some love back in your marriage, the anxiety out of your body, the polarization demonization that
you're doing all the time online out of your system, to quit these habits, what are one or two things
where people could get started today or tomorrow on that?
Dr. John Delony:

I'll give you three.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay.
Dr. John Delony:

And they're quick. Number one, call somebody, go visit somebody in person, that's above all, and say
the words, "Hey man, I'm not okay."

Carey Nieuwhof:
Wow.
Dr. John Delony:

"I'm not okay."
Carey Nieuwhof:
And in person, I want to underline that so people don't miss it.
Dr. John Delony:

Yes. I drove three hours, I was so paranoid I thought people were listening to my calls, turns out they
were, but that's for later story. But I thought... I was so paranoid, I was out of my mind, Carey. And I got
in my car and drove three hours and I walked into my buddy, it's one of those greatest blessings in my
life, he happened to be an MD. I've got another buddy who's like an assistant manager at NAPA Auto
Parts, I could've gone to see. My life would be way different if I'd gone to see him. But I went to see my
buddy who's an MD, and I walked into his office.
Dr. John Delony:

And hey, when I showed up everywhere, I was always a loud mouth. Like, "Hey..." Like, I always wanted
the party to get going. And so, I walked in, I didn't have an appointment, and he said, "Delony, what are
you doing?" And he says he still gets goosebumps when he thinks about it. I pointed at him and said,
"Hey brother, I'm not okay." And he said, "Something was so chilling about the way you said that." He
said, "Sit." I didn't tell my wife I went, I didn't tell my boss, I didn't tell anybody. I just got in the car and
drove. And he sat with me for two and a half hours. And that was the moment. So number one, go to
somebody if at all possible. Could be a therapist, it could be a pastor that's not a ding-dong that you
trust. Go to a human and say, "I'm not okay."
Dr. John Delony:

The second thing is, this is a courageous step because some spouses won't take it, but tell your spouse
these magic words, "I have made this home unsafe and I'm sorry. I'm going to work on healing." And I
made my house unsafe not because I was waving guns around or throwing knives, but because I was
radioactive. I was a sleeping bear. I was reading internet all day and conspiracy theorying and lecturing
and giving my thoughts on everything. I made a world where my wife was not safe to say, "I don't like
that," or, "I don't want to eat that," or, "I don't want to watch that movie." She couldn't say those
words. Not because I was mean or yelled or whatever, I just made it unsafe. So, "I've made this place
unsafe and I want to heal."
Dr. John Delony:

Often people will go to their spouse and say, "I'm not okay," and they dump that burden onto their
spouse. It's my wife's job to make me okay. They cannot carry that, that's your job. They can walk with
you, they can hold your arms up in the desert, but they can't fix you. So, instead of saying, "Hey, I'm not
okay," say, "I've made this place unsafe and I'm sorry. I'm going to get well." And then the third one is...
What is the third one? I forgot the third one. It was going to be the best.
Carey Nieuwhof:

I'm sure it was fantastic.
Dr. John Delony:

The first one is... Oh, here it is. Ready?
Carey Nieuwhof:
Yeah.
Dr. John Delony:

This is awesome thing. I didn't know about this until just a few months ago. All of our devices like
iPhones, iPads, computers, did you know they have this awesome thing on the side of them called an Off
button, and you can just push it and they just shut off? It just shuts off. It just turns off.
Carey Nieuwhof:
It's amazing.
Dr. John Delony:

And just turn it off. Turn it all off. Turn it off. And then you're going to find yourself... My buddy called,
he was the CIO of a fancy pants company, and he calls and he is like, "All right, Delony. I turned off all my
devices and now I'm staring at my daughters. What do I do now?" And I was like, "Well, here's where we
are. Let's start from there. Right? Like we're going to start having conversations." And can I tell you the
magic, Carey? Here's the magic. The other night I was here doing media until real late at the office, I
think I left here at like eight o'clock. And I got home at 8:30. My kids go to bed super early, because
we're psychopaths about sleep in my house.
Dr. John Delony:

And I go by and I like to pray over my kids' door or I want to whisper into their rooms, "Goodnight." And
my daughter, who's six, her light was still on. So I opened her door gently to see if she'd just fallen
asleep with the light on, she's reading a book. She's not really reading, she's just looking at the pictures.
And she said, "Daddy," and I looked at her and in a split second I said, "I challenge you right now. If you
dare to a game of air hockey down in our basement," I said, "Do you want to get demolished?" And her
eyes got as big as silver dollars and she hopped up and goes, "You're dead."
Dr. John Delony:

And I walked over to the bed, she got on my shoulders, I carried her down. Dude, we played for seven
minutes. We talked trash, she was like, "Ho ho, how do you like..." I mean, my six year old daughter was
letting a fly. It was incredible. And she beat me and then she got back on my shoulders, we went back up
in, I tucked her in. She'll remember that story for the rest of her life. And more importantly, I will too.
And there was no movie night, no go-kart night, there was seven minutes of something special between
a dad and his daughter. And that's what we need, man. Turn the things off and connect with those who
love us right there in our world.
Carey Nieuwhof:

That's so good. And I don't know whether it's a good thing that I'm watching this or not, but I'm one of
the billions of people watching Yellowstone right now, we're slowly working our way through that
series.
Dr. John Delony:

It's incredible.
Carey Nieuwhof:
It is. And I'll tell you, you know what gets me? Is when you see John Dutton just looking at the sunrise or
the sunset, no device, nothing. And he's just there for half hour or an hour or two hours watching things.
And I'm like, "Oh, I need more of that in my life. I just need to go watch sunrise or watch sunset or just
stare at some trees or the sky or something." And again, unplugged. I think that's so good. John, this
feels like a round one to me, I'd love to have you back at some point. This has been fascinating. We got
to a couple of the questions that I had intended to do that. So tell us about your book and then tell us
about where people can find you online these days.
Dr. John Delony:

I mean, I think it's a deep dive into some of the stuff we've talked about. If I had to describe the book in
one way, I would say this. We've been given really two paths forward. One is you are your feelings and
you are your emotions. And you invent truth along the way. It's unfolding before you as you see it and
perceive it. And if you feel uncomfortable, then that means whatever is in front of you is wrong and it
needs to change. The other path we've been given is forget your feelings. In fact, feelings and emotions
are a character flaw. It's a sign of weakness. Grind it, kill it, crush it, go get it, drag it home. That's life. Go
get what's yours. And both of those things are pathological, they are both insane.
Dr. John Delony:

And so, this book is really the new third way. It's you have to take grasp of what has happened to you,
what you've done, the things that you've been told, the stories that have been laid out before you. The
fact that people treated you differently just because of the color of your skin, the abuse, whatever, you
have to deal with that. And where the stories stops for us most in this culture is you got to wake up the
next morning and say, "Now what? What comes next?"
Dr. John Delony:

And so the back half of the book is, so what do we do now? What does healing look like? And walk
people step by step. I've worked with academics my whole career. And one of the most humbling things
coming to work for Dave Ramsey is, I've just talked back and forth with theorists and brilliant people
who love, love, love people. And coming here, Dave's mission is, "I want to talk to the over road trucker
and I want to talk to that guy that runs a steel plant and I want to talk to that single mom of three kids,
just trying to figure out what to do." And I realized over the last 20 years, I've been speaking over
people.
Dr. John Delony:

And so this book is my attempt to really distill down mental health and relationships into something that
everybody can understand starting with myself. This book is a love letter to myself really. And so, that's

what the book is and it's about 10 years in the making. So I'm excited to get it out there. And they can
just go to johndelony.com to pick it up.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Okay. And the book is called Own Your Past, Change Your Future. Dr. John Delony thanks so much for
being on the podcast today.
Dr. John Delony:

Hey, can I tell you before we go?
Carey Nieuwhof:
A hundred percent.
Dr. John Delony:

Thank you for putting good stuff out into the world. Like, there's a lot of people who do these podcast
sort of take someone else's light and make sure it shines on them, and you're not that guy, you're trying
to help people. We need more voices like you in the world. So I'm grateful for you.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Thank you. That's very humbling. And it's a privilege to be able to do this. And I think we've all been
down that road, we all have versions of the same story. And I'm really interested in redemption, really
interested in changing the narrative, really interested in trying to help people find their way back and I
think hearing other people's stories and getting behind the scenes. And you're right, I mean, a lot of
what we talked about, you cover in your book, but you went deep and you went personal and you went
transparent. And I'm really excited to see you as part of the Ramsey team and excited to learn from you,
not only today, but in the future, John. Thank you.
Dr. John Delony:

Thank you, my brother.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Well, I hope that one was good for your soul. And for those of you who are looking just to rekindle some
of the fundamentals of personal growth, your marriage, all of those things, well, I hope that was helpful.
Hey, we got a great bunch of episodes coming up, but I want to thank our partners. Pro MediaFire is
bringing this to you for free. And if you haven't checked them out yet, well, maybe today is the day. You
can apply for their Growth Program by going to promediafire.com/growth. And I've known Tony Morgan
and The Unstuck Group for years. And if you're looking for a way to help your church reach more
people, maybe you should contact them. Go to theunstuckgroup.com/start. That's,
theunstuckgroup.com/start.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Well, next episode we've got Tim Schurrer. He spent almost a decade of his career launching two
brands, StoryBrand and Business Made Simple, as COO, alongside New York Times bestselling author,
Donald Miller, who's also been on the podcast. He also worked at TOMS and Apple, fascinating
background. And we're going to have a great conversation with him. And well, here's an excerpt.

Tim Schurrer:
Because there's some days Don just needs a, "Yes, man." He just needs somebody to be like, "Cool. Let's
figure it out. Here we go." He needs that sometimes. But there's also times that he needed to lean into
my desire to slow things down. And so, I don't think that you ever really perfect that, you just learn to
live in the tension between those things.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So that's next time on the podcast. Also coming up a wonderful conversation with Susan Cain. She's an
amazing new body of work on bittersweet, the good and the... well, rather sad and tragic of life, and
how that works together.
Carey Nieuwhof:
Albert Tate, Daniel Pink, Seth Godin is back on the podcast. Just line that up. Ramit Sethi, Andy Crouch,
Karyn Gordon, Chad Veach, Nona Jones, and so many more. And so you get that automatically if you
subscribe. And again, closing in on 500 episodes. If you haven't yet left a rating and review, please do so.
We would absolutely love that. And if you like this episode, you can get a lot more of my content by
going to theartofleadershipacademy.com. Every day people are like, "Hey, can we connect?" And the
answer is, generally speaking, where I'm connecting these days is in The Art of Leadership Academy.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So if you ever wanted to connect personally and you want to connect with a group of well hundreds,
almost a thousand leaders inside The Art of Leadership Academy, who are doing what you do, who are
actually supportive, who don't have that negative vibe that you get online so often, and who actually
want to see each other win, and a whole team of mentors, and all my premium content, and monthly
live coaching, and a whole lot more, it's just $397 a year and it is at theartofleadershipacademy.com.
Carey Nieuwhof:
I would just love to hang out with you there. And I'm meeting so many podcast listeners inside. I
message everybody when they join, and what do they write back? "I've been listening to your podcast
for years, I've been listening to your podcast for months, I've been listening to your podcast since
episode one." And if that's you and you want to connect more personally, but not just with me, if you
just want to grow as a leader and you want to really make this a year of your personal development,
that's why we do The Art of Leadership Academy.
Carey Nieuwhof:
So, if you're curious, check it out. Go to theartofleadershipacademy.com, it's for business leaders and
church leaders. And I'll see you inside there. And in the meantime, well, we'll do another episode of this.
How does that sound? Thank you so much for listening, and I hope our time together today has helped
you thrive in life and leadership.
Announcer:
You've been listening to The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on
leadership, change, and personal growth to help you lead like never before.


CNLP 494 - With John Delony

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CNLP 494 - With John Delony

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