Off the Record With T.K. Coleman

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dr. John Delony Show

Episode: Off the Record With T.K. Coleman

Date: June 27, 2026
Host: Dr. John Delony (B)
Guest: T.K. Coleman (A)

---

Episode Overview

This candid conversation takes an “off the record” deep dive into modern struggles related to addiction, loneliness, community, technology, parenting, and the search for meaning. Dr. John Delony and T.K. Coleman—a philosopher and spiritual thinker—explore how individuals relate to their own addictions, the root causes of isolation in today’s society, the power and pitfalls of truth-telling, and the challenges (and necessity) of living by personal values. Both share personal anecdotes, cultural critiques, and practical wisdom for listeners navigating a disconnected, noisy world.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Redefining Addiction in the Modern Age

Timestamps: 01:46–06:42

• Addiction now encompasses more than just substances; behaviors like scrolling or consuming fast food mimic classic addictive patterns (“What is the feeling I’m trying to escape from?” –B, 05:36).
• Society lags in labeling new addictions, often dismissing their impact because they're normalized or not “officially” documented.
• Compassion, not condemnation, is essential: “It’s not a strength to say ‘I’ll never understand that.’ It’s a weakness.” –A, 07:30
• Helping someone with addiction requires probing into what drives their needs, not judgment about the surface behavior.

---

2. Humility, Judgment, and Human Fallibility

Timestamps: 06:42–13:35

• Both discuss the moral hazard of declaring “I could never do X,” stressing empathy and understanding the backstory behind people’s actions.
• Dr. Delony shares a lesson from his homicide detective father: “You better walk gently through the world because everybody’s at war with something you can’t see.” (08:07)
• The costs of arrogance and judgment are societal: “If you want to understand more about why people have such a hard time admitting that they're wrong, just look at how terrible people are when they're right.” –A, 11:23.

---

3. The Weaponization and Exhaustion of ‘Truth’

Timestamps: 13:35–16:21

• Delony and Coleman reflect on how winning an argument has become more about public humiliation than genuine discovery or growth.
• Anecdotes about childhood embarrassment and peer pressure illustrate how small moments of being “owned” get amplified in today's culture.
• “When we celebrate wrongness rather than the discovery of how I could think better in the future, it robs you…” –A, 14:11
• Emotional suppression—specifically the inability to just “be sad”—leads to unhealthy numbing and a culture of constant agitation (e.g., rage/fighting as outlets).

---

4. Is Technology the Cause or Effect of Isolation?

Timestamps: 16:23–20:20

• The chicken-and-egg dilemma: are isolating behaviors (scrolling, virtual relationships) the cause or effect of loneliness?
• Both see a feedback loop: increased loneliness drives people online, which in turn makes them lonelier.
• Modern family structures—nuclear families isolated in suburban boxes, without broader communal interactions—are highlighted as unprecedented and problematic.
• Loss of communal practices (shared grief, gatherings, confession) further intensifies isolation.

---

5. Parenting, Tech, and the Power of “Going First and Being Weird”

Timestamps: 20:20–26:41

• Parents feel pressure not to let their kids be the “only one” without tech, fueling collective inertia.
• The only proven solution Dr. Delony finds: “Go first and be weird. Somebody has to go first.” (21:56)
• His family implemented “phone basket” gatherings for middle schoolers; after initial resistance, kids appreciated being phone-free.
• “If we're going to have to enter into this world, then we got to be responsible… what must be true in our lives so that gap can be filled in a human way.” –B, 23:08
• Acknowledgement: not all parents have the resources or circumstances to do this, but the principle of creative risk and “emulating the weird” is universal.

---

6. The Necessity and Power of Creative Problem-Solving

Timestamps: 26:41–40:38

• Personal anecdotes highlight the importance of “finding what works for you” rather than simply copying life hacks or self-help advice.
• “How do I get these ideas to work for the life that is mine?” –A, 32:48
• The missing piece is always creativity and willingness to experiment, not blind optimism.
• Quoting Peter Daniels: “Read a thousand biographies… you’ll build a vast vocabulary for overcoming incredible odds.” (37:09)

---

7. Guardrails, Boundaries, and ‘No-Go’s’ as Paths to Freedom

Timestamps: 40:38–51:02

• Establishing absolute “no-go” boundaries (e.g. not borrowing money, not cheating, dietary specifics) provides freedom and creative constraint.
• “We're designed for some sort of boundary, and we're living in a limitless moment in history. And it’s unmooring, right?” –B, 43:46
• T.K. shares a medical experience leading to adopting strict dietary boundaries—not through logic, but necessity and repeated hard lessons.
• Boundaries free us to see possibilities within constraints: “It’s not until you have something that says ‘this is a no go for me’… you become smart at identifying solutions.”

---

8. Values & Calling: Who We Are vs. What We Do

Timestamps: 51:02–62:29

• The conversation pivots to meaning, purpose, and “calling.”
• “God doesn’t care what you do. He cares who you are on whatever it is you’re going.” –B, 54:43
• Fulfillment comes from orientation and virtue (how you treat people, who you are in your circumstances), not job titles or life stages.
• Both draw on spiritual and scriptural stories (Joseph, Jonah) to stress caring for those in front of you, refusing to despise humble work or adverse circumstances, and trusting that “if God wants your attention, he’ll get it.”
• Self-respect in any station, even “day jobs” like Burger King, fosters humility, dignity, and better treatment of others.
• “If you see yourself as a loser for working at Burger King, then how in the world are you gonna treat the people that work there?” –A, 59:34

---

9. Emotional Clutter and Self-Compassion

Timestamps: 62:29–68:39

• The true heart of “emotional clutter” is measuring self-worth against circumstances outside our control—and turning that same harsh judgment on others.
• “If you don’t respect yourself, you don’t respect other people. If you don’t love yourself, you don’t love other people.” –A, 63:25
• The story of Jonah illustrates that even deliberate avoidance can't foil a sincere calling if one is truly seeking purpose with humility.
• The work is to be loving, compassionate, and generous “with the life that I have”—not dreaming about sainthood in a fantasy world.

---

10. Memorable Closure and Mutual Appreciation

Timestamps: 68:39–end

• The hosts reflect on their friendship, the privilege and challenge of “being truthful” in public work, and supporting others through difficult realities.
• Notable moments of warmth and humility in mutual appreciation, reinforcing the show’s underlying theme: integrity, compassion, and courage are paramount.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Look at how terrible people are when they're right. We're now in a world where this is normalized and people are so much more isolated.” –T.K. Coleman (00:05)
• “Addiction is almost just: what is your numbing device of choice? ...What is the feeling I’m trying to escape from?” –Dr. John Delony (05:36)
• “It's always a better version of ourselves to look at that and say, ‘Yeah, I get it... I see how that guy could lose it.’” –T.K. Coleman (07:33)
• “You better walk gently through the world because everybody's at war with something you can't see.” –Dr. John Delony (08:07)
• “It’s not a means by which I own another person. [Truth is] a means by which I liberate another person.” –T.K. Coleman (12:08)
• “Go first and be weird.” –Dr. John Delony (21:56)
• “The goal… is not to emulate the other person’s success, but to emulate the weird that led to it.” –T.K. Coleman (26:10)
• “We're designed for some sort of boundary, and we're living in a limitless moment in history. And it's unmooring, right?” –Dr. John Delony (43:44)
• “God doesn't care what you do. He cares who you are on whatever it is you're going.” –Dr. John Delony paraphrasing a mentor (54:43)
• “If you see yourself as a loser for working at Burger King, then how in the world are you gonna treat the people that work there?” –T.K. Coleman (59:34)
• "If you don't respect yourself, you don't respect other people.” –T.K. Coleman (63:25)

---

Structured Timestamps

• [01:46-06:42] Addiction redefined and the compassionate approach
• [06:42-13:35] Empathy, judgment, and human frailty
• [13:35-16:21] The exhaustion of weaponized ‘truth’ and stunted emotional response
• [16:23-20:20] Technology’s role in isolation and the loss of communal ritual
• [20:20-26:41] Parenting, technology, and “being weird” as a leader
• [26:41-40:38] Problem-solving, adaptation, and creative constraint
• [40:38-51:02] Freedom from guardrails and the necessity of hard boundaries
• [51:02-62:29] Meaning and calling, spirituality, and finding identity in how—not what—you do
• [62:29-68:39] Emotional clutter, self-compassion, and mutual appreciation

---

Takeaways for Listeners

• Empathy over Judgment: Seek to understand the stories behind people’s struggles; humility is transformative.
• Truth as Liberation, Not Weapon: Truth should be used to build others up, not humiliate or control.
• Boundaries Deliver Freedom: Clear “no-go” values or rules help creativity and foster a healthier self-identity.
• Go First in Community Change: Real transformation, especially for our kids, starts with individual risk and “being the weird one” first.
• Live Your Values in Your Context: Don’t judge your success or character by someone else’s story or situation; find the creative, faithful way that works for you.
• Worth and Calling Are Internal: Who you are in your current circumstances matters more than titles, achievements, or perfect alignment with a singular “calling.”
• Sustaining Healthy Self-Respect: Treat your present reality (even unglamorous jobs or roles) with dignity to foster respect for yourself and others.
• Self-Compassion is Foundational: The measure we give ourselves sets the standard for how we treat everyone.

---

The episode flows with warmth, wisdom, and practical insight—offering both philosophical depth and tactical takeaways for anyone feeling adrift in the technology-driven, isolating climate of today.

Transcript

[A]

If you want to understand more about why people have such a hard time admitting that they're wrong, just look at how terrible people are when they're right. We're now in a world where this is normalized and people are so much more isolated.

[B]

We're creating fake relationship machines now.

[A]

How do you even move the needle back in the direction of overcoming the isolationism and being a community again and forging relationships?

[B]

And the only thing I can come up with is. Is, Yo. Welcome to another episode, installment, whatever you want to call it, of off the Record with John Deloney. These are conversations I have with people that I am just fascinated by. People I'm kind of obsessed with or great friends. Sometimes all three at the same time. Today we talk to one of my favorite people on the planet. He's a great friend. He's been my friend for years. He's is a philosopher. He is a brilliant spiritual thinker. He's just one of my wise, wise friends. He's also a member of the Minimalist. I'm talking about the great T.K. coleman. This conversation, man, we go all over the place as conversations with me and my friends usually do. We talk about addiction. We talk about loneliness. We talk about space for God and what that even means at.

[A]

At.

[B]

At a high, high level. If you've ever wondered what's it like to have dinner with Deloney when he's with thinking friends, I do have some great friends. They're not all thinking friends. This is it. So pull up a seat and listen to my conversation with a really great friend of mine, T.K. coleman.

[A]

Man, you really put something on my mind when we were talking about scrolling and how we have these two conversations about addiction. One is the scientific kind of standardized conversation where things are officially documented and cataloged as addictions. We have years of research behind it, so we know that heroin is an addiction. But then there are all these things that are so new that we haven't had a lot of time to see what they're doing to our brains. We haven't had multiple generations go through it. But people are self reporting a lack of control. They're self reporting like experiences that sound like addiction, like. Like scrolling or like one of the ones we talked about, fast food, which has been around for a longer period of time. And we don't know what to do with those things because it's like, well, they're not addictions in the traditional way, but they're playing such a huge part of our lives, you know, and they're kind of sinking Us and really creating a lot of complexities for us that are kind of getting in the way of like that sense of wholeness that we're seeking. So I don't know. That's just something that you really made me think about, like, how do we talk about addictions that have not yet earned the right to be called addictions and that are very socially acceptable.

[B]

I think we're, we, we are coming out of. And it's, it's a very bumpy exit, like an ugly exit of everything that is real must be shown from a double blind, randomized control trial. And I'm a scientist. That's my background. I spent my whole career with scientists. Like, I believe in that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we've come so, like up against, like, there's scientists, by scientists running up against the end of science and going, I studied this thing for 20 years and we just made a new discovery that I have to exhale and say, there's something bigger than me going along. Going at the same time also. Right. But yeah, there's a tension when it comes to is this real? It's new. Well, it's not in this, it's not in this symptom cluster. So we can't count it or we can't measure it in the. We don't have the instrument to measure it in the exact way. Well, it's not real then. And I think that's messy because both sides of that get weaponized. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you can't measure it, it's not real. Sorta. And. And in fact, I'll reject that sometimes. And also, man, sometimes you can. You can measure stuff and it's too easy nowadays to be like, nah, fake. That's fake.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't like the way. I don't like the outcome of that. So I'm just gonna pretend it's not real.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we're just. It's a weird, bumpy figuring out what comes next. I, I've almost shifted. I've been like haunted by the word addiction the last few years. And I had a room. I had a memory of one of my counseling professors. And I can't believe I didn't. It's one of those things just gets lodged away and then just appears. But we were doing a case study in class one time and I finally blurted out in my arrogant know it allness, wearing my suit and tie, like, I was like, why doesn't this guy just stop drinking? And she said, don't ever ask that question. A, it's not compassionate and B, it's not instructive. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, alcohol works for this guy. She said the question to ask is, what has happened to this guy's life? That this is the best way he's figured out how to get through it. And if you want to help this person with drinking, help this person with their marriage. That's the question to ask. That's the answer that he needs. And so when I think of scrolling on a. On a small level, what is it about my wife and kids running around making noise that I feel like I need to hide from in my. In my bedroom, inside my bathroom, inside my closet, on the floor? Like, what am I? Like, I'm sitting in the driveway of my own house in my car. What is it about what's about to go on in there that I feel like I gotta hide here? That, to me, is. Makes the thing, my addiction of choice. Whether I'm listening to politics and getting enraged or whether I'm scrolling or whether I'm smoking a joint in the parking, like, whatever. What is the thing I'm doing or not? Not the thing I'm doing, but what is the feeling I'm trying to escape from? And so addiction is almost just what is your numbing device of choice? And it can be, for me, I'm a workaholic, man. I love working. And it allows me the sense of I'm taking care of my family without being with my family. Right. Or without the shame and awkwardness and discomfort, all that stuff that comes along with real relationships. So I don't know. It's a me. It's. It's. It's messy. Yeah. Fast food does that, right?

[A]

Yeah. You know, I like that lesson about, you know, how it's not instructive and it's not compassionate to just say, why doesn't he do that? You know, I've always thought that the statement, I will never understand people who do X is so often presented as a virtue. And it makes us feel noble when we say that. Right? Like, man, I will never understand how someone could, you know, talk to their kids like that. I can never. I will never understand how someone would be disrespectful in that way. Well, okay, it's morally permissible for you to be in a position where you don't understand that. Yeah, but that's not a strength. That's a weakness. Yes, it's morally permissible for you to be in a position where you have that weakness, but to ever look at another human being's dysfunction and say, I will never understand that is a weakness. Because it's always a better version of ourselves to look at that and say, yeah, I get it. I get it. I see how that guy could lose it. I see how she could have snapped like that. I see how that person could have thrown it all away for that pleasure or for that convenience. Yeah. I can see how they could have sold out. I totally can understand how they could have lied. And I'm not perfect. I can't do that. There are things I still look at and say I don't understand how someone could do that. But I. I try to recognize that as a weakness.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And I. I seek the grace to understand.

[B]

Or even if I don't understand how someone could have done that, can I understand? There's got to be a story behind that. Right. And not immediately dump to character flaw or morally bankrupt. Right? Yeah. But there's got to be a story that I would say in the top two or three things that my dad gave me as a homicide detective from a young age, he constantly was reminding me the worst part of his job was not the blood and the guts and those horrible scenes you see in the movies that he had to go see in real life. It was sitting at a table and doing with someone he knew had killed somebody. Hearing that story and how A +B +C LA Dizzy and him sitting back in that chair saying, man, but like three things. I'm that guy. And we think of like, murder, like a big blinking neon sign. But my old man being like, no, man, if this happens and this happens and this happens. And my dad had done that to me when I was a kid. I can see that. And it was just baked into us. A humility. You better walk gently through the world because everybody's at war with something you can't see. And it's such a. You know what I mean? It's just. It's just. It's a more graceful way to do

[A]

life, you know, It's. It's essential too, to be able to prevent further happenings or to protect you and your family.

[B]

That's the thing that I wish people would. Great. Would grasp is that's a power that I didn't know was being instilled to me at a young kid, which is the power to see a story unfolding and stop it before it gets there.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Or see a set of behaviors in myself that are starting to push a ball down a hill. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I don't want to get there because I. Yeah, I understand how that could end up there. Instead of being like, I would never buckle up, man. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. And even recognizing that distinction, there's a difference between me saying I would never do that and being able to say, but someone else would.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I can see why they would. Why do I lock the door to my home at night? Why do I click that car alarm when I walk away from it? Because I can see how someone can feel comfortable taking something that doesn't belong to them, entering into and exploring spaces that they have no right to be in. It just makes sense. Would I do that? I hope not. But I can imagine scenarios where I would be more tempted than not to do such a thing. And it's that understanding that, that kind of ability to relate to the unrelatable that helps you guard your heart with more diligence.

[B]

That's right. That's right. And backing out just a few rings. Right. Like, if I'm hungry, I would never go rob somebody. Okay. If your wife's hungry. Nah. Your kids are hungry. Probably not. Your daughter's hungry.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like you can get yourself just two or three or four things away and you go, right. And it doesn't make it okay. It doesn't make it wrong. And there's got to be accountability. All this stuff's right, but it's just a more open handed way to do life, which then keeps me out of cardiac events. Right. And keeps me out of strokes and things like that, you know? So, yeah, I appreciate that, dude.

[A]

That's a, that's a great burden because that, that brings us into a relationship to truth, that makes us responsible. And right now we're caught up in the cultural momentum of truth as a weapon, which is why all the videos are like, this guy owns that guy. You know, I've often said, if you want to understand more about why people have such a hard time admitting that they're wrong, just look at how terrible people are when they're right. You know what I mean? Like, we're not just bad at being wrong, we're bad at being right. You know, we're arrogant, we're prideful, we're self righteous, we're cruel. We don't want to leave room to change minds. We want to hold it over your head. Yeah. It makes sense why people are so afraid of being wrong because we raise the cost. You know, it's not enough for you to say you were wrong. I need to put this video of me owning you on YouTube and I need to punish you forever. But the way you're talking puts us in a relationship with truth where we have to say, look, it's not a means by which I own another person. It's a means by which I liberate another person.

[B]

That's exactly right. And I myself stay liberated at all times. I never thought about that, man. How the. The Michael Jordan poster shifted from look how great to look how. Look how weak. Right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

The Michael Jordan poster is no longer about Michael Jordan anymore. It's about the guy he's dunking over. That's the photo now.

[A]

Right? Right. Yeah.

[B]

And that becomes the.

[A]

Oh, look at that guy you got dunked on.

[B]

Yeah. And it's not about the. The Internet debate of, man, I had not thought about that. And I'm gonna go home and consider treating my kids differently now. It is, oh, that guy got smoked. And then I'm scrolling on to the next one. Right? Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's humiliation at sport or I'm right. Not be out of virtue or not. A truth or not. As we can all collectively go do something different with this new knowledge we got. Yeah, I got you. What an exhausting way to live, though.

[A]

It's so tiring. Yeah. It incentivizes a different type of behavior too. Right. So we've all had experiences like, I don't know, something small happens. You're in, like, sixth grade, and you're in class and maybe a classmate has some bubble gum, and you're like, hey, can I have a piece of that gum? And they're like, no. And it's just some small little thing. But this particular time, the whole class hears the conversation and you say, can I have a piece of that bubble gum? And they go, no. And everybody's like, oh, dang. Ooh. And now this thing that you wouldn't have had any time trouble getting over has just become so weighty.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

It's so embarrassing. And it's powerful enough to ruin your day and make you enemies with this person. That's what it does. Right. When we celebrate wrongness rather than the discovery of how I could be, how I could think better in the future,

[B]

or it robs you of what I think our culture has a big allergy to of just being sad.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I wanted my buddy to get a piece of gum. He said, no, we don't have a psychology for that. We're like, I wanted something to be away, and it's not. And now it has to. Dude. I was a high school Teacher for two years. The number of students that I would run up on, about to fight or fighting, neither of them wanted to be there. You know what I mean? They didn't want to be there. It was the ooh. And he said, and you gotta. You're gonna let. And it amps. Okay. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The one kid that was like, no, I want to fight. Hey, you don't want to tangle that guy. It's probably a sociopath. Like, they got stuff going on, right? But it just yet, instead of, man, my girlfriend kissed somebody else. Sad. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Grief, heartbreak. And when you're. When you're 13, it's gonna last forever. You know what I mean? Like, we don't have a psychology for that. Of my son coming home and me being like, dude, I'll sit here with you. That just stinks. You know what I mean? Like, that's a bummer. Instead, it's like, what are we gonna do?

[A]

You know?

[B]

Like, it's just a. It's an exhausting culture that we live in. And I. I wish. I wish going back to addiction. I wish rage or anger or constant amp wasn't the numbing device that we were all being fed. I wish we all had permission to sit. Like. Like my grandmother would sit by me and just be like, well, and that's what my grandmother would say. Well, and in that, like, presence was just, I didn't make the team. And, well, she'll sit here with me. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then I can go on and do the next thing.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

It's an exhausting culture.

[A]

Do you think our addiction to some of the. The pain, numbing things, like scrolling, for instance, do you think that's the cause of our isolation or the effect of it? It's kind of a chicken and egg question for me.

[B]

Yeah. I feel like it's on a loop. It's a. It's a figure eight. It's a dance. And like, each one of those things amps the other one, I think.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If I was to trace it all the way back, I think. I think lonely probably is the. I'm working on a. On a marriage project now. And one thing is certain, anthropologically, as the craziest experiment of all time was what we did right. In the 50s and 60s, which is you take two people and two to three to five kids, and one person leaves and you leave another isolated adult in a home in a box with these children, with no other human interaction. We call that Normal. That's never happened in human history. And so with no cousins and no aunts and no grandparents, just foom, foom, foom. And we'll put you in a suburb, in a street, away from everybody. And by the way, you send the other half of that partnership off to an office somewhere to work making somebody else wealthy. And then you come home and there's lonely, and then there's lonely. And then you get kids growing up in a. In a electrified air, right? And then if I. I mean, I just look downstream. And again, I always am hesitant for anybody to be like, this is the reason. But, man, if I go back and pull the thread to right there, you got a bunch of World War II vets that came, and we're not allowed to talk about anything. And they got. They got to work because that's what they knew to do, and they had spouses locked in a box. And I. That feels. It feels harrowing to think of it that way. And we've normed, you know, if, like, we've normed lack of sleep, and we've normed. Like, you and I talk all the time, like, about buying a ton of stuff that you don't need. Like, you. You're just scratching and clawing at some sort of thing to make this thing go away. That if I look back over human history, A, we didn't have the. We didn't have the privilege of having our own place with nobody else could come inside of it.

[A]

But B,

[B]

like every faith tradition in human history has a gathering part, has the dance, has the confession part, has the exhale, has the grieving communally. And we just have extracted that. And I have to think that so much of our downstream pain, I mean, we're creating fake relationship machines now, right? Like, and I keep going for what? And it's just downstream of this, lonely on top of lonely on top of lonely.

[A]

You're making me think of that poignant moment on your show where the woman calls in, she caught her husband talking with the AI companion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not talking on the phone with another woman, having an inappropriate conversation, which is still a problem, but it's just another level now, right? The fake relationship, infidelity. And not just in marriage, but even infidelity to our authentic selves as well. You know, seeking something without that, that's meant to be found at home within. Yeah.

[B]

And it's an extension of. Right. There's. There's fake strength behind a keyboard and there's fake compassion behind a keyboard. Thoughts and prayers, really. Like, now I'm on to the next thing. You know what I mean? It's. It's. It's a. Just a distancing of that discomfort that's sitting right in front of us.

[A]

Okay? So if we had a time machine, we could go back to these moments where. Where we could identify, you know, when these things spawned and maybe change history. But we're now in a world where this is normalized and people are so much more isolated. We're intrinsically communal beings, but we're experiencing reality in a totally different way. And now you have these powerful arguments like, hey, I don't want my child to be the only one at school that can't access the website where they get their homework and upload their papers or whatever it may be. Or, I don't want to be the only parent who can't track my child to make sure I know they're safe. Or now you could say I had a buddy say a lot of the advice that my parents gave me, that was very good advice. It just feels like it doesn't even apply sometimes to my kids. So that they would say if they saw me glued to the video game, get outside. But he could go outside, and that would work because there's always somebody out there playing Wiffle ball or playing basketball or playing tag. But he's like, now tell your kids to go outside. You're pulling them away from their friends because all their friends are on the computer playing the games on the computer. And it's like, what? I'm just gonna go outside and be there by myself? How do you even move the needle back in the direction of overcoming the isolationism and being a community again and forging relationships? Do you embrace this and say, hey, this is how we do relationship. This is how we do relationship. Now we're just gonna go. We're just going to do it online. Or do you try to move the needle back? And if so, how do you do that?

[B]

Man, I've got two young kids. I've wrestled with this exact thing for a decade, and the only thing I can come up with is go first and be weird. That's literally the operating strategy my wife and I have adopted is every parent is sitting there saying, but I don't want my kid to be the only one. And so then my parenting philosophy is going to be, we'll be the only one. And that means if I pull my kid off, he actually is, right? My kid, my oldest, my son, he gave us a presentation. Talk about a nerd raised by nerds, right? My son Gave me and my wife a presentation Christmas of his eighth grade year about why he needed at least some sort of device to communicate. And he came back and said, at least you had a phone on the wall with that little spot spirally cord on it when you were a kid. When I walk in this door, I'm disconnected. I miss every birthday, I miss every inside joke. And I'm showing up to school in an entire world is going. And he was right.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

He was right. And that was on me because I'd pulled him out, I'd kicked his crutch out and that replaced it with something else. And so that meant me and my wife were like, hey, he's right. So what type of. If we're going to have to enter into this world, then we got to be responsible for draconian safety measures. And B, what must be true in our lives, me and her, so that that gap can be filled in a human way. Because if we're going to talk trash philosophically, then we got to live it out. And so that means, man, we're going to have to get off the tv. We have to have TV off all the time. We do. And we got to put our phones away and we got to have this house full of middle school kids at all times, which means we got to create an environment that middle school kids want to hang out here. And so what does that mean? It means we're going to spend money differently and we're going to do entertainment. The two of us, we're going to do entertainment differently. And so it does it. But I brought them into the world. That responsibility lies on me to curate a world. And what I'm f. What I found is we'd have middle school kids over all the time, and every phone goes in a basket. And I didn't know this was going on at the time. My wife circled back to every one of those parents and said, your kid's not gonna have their phone. If you need them, text me or text the phone. And your kid can go to the basket and check it. But I don't want kids running amok out in the woods or upstairs or whatever with the phones. And what we found in real short order was all the parents were in. The kids got to a point where they'd come to the house and they couldn't wait to get that stupid cancer out of their hand.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was a, can we come to your house? Can we come to your house? Can we come to your house? And it. But it was just. Somebody had to Go first. And you got to go be weird, man. It is weird for your middle school mom to call your kids, I mean, your buddy's parents. That's weird. And you might get some social. Like, it might come back on you socially at school. Your mom called my mom. I get that. And I hate that for you, dude. I do. Yeah. And I am living proof of a mind that can't get things out of it that were implanted when I was a child. And I cannot. Good conscience put that in your head. And so it's both things are true. There's a tension there. So the only thing I. Only thing I found is go first and be weird. And I wish it was more complex than that. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. I want to make an objection to it, and then I want to resolve it. And the objection represents my inner skeptic and perhaps in some ways, my sensitivity to other people's skepticism. You know, that's great for you, John. Yeah, that's great. Right? You have the perhaps charm or community or a living location where other kids are around and you can have them over, or maybe you have the kind of space that could accommodate guests. And you and I can easily come up with some scenarios where maybe the type of space you live in, the type of neighborhood the school you go to, you don't want the kids over, you can't have them over, or they're just not around. What I want to say in response to that objection is that the goal of every success story is not to emulate the other person's success, but to emulate the weird that led to it.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And we can all find our own way to take risk, our own way to think outside the box, our own way to be creative. And you didn't follow a roadmap that said, well, logically, what I'm supposed to do is xyz.

[B]

You make it up in real time.

[A]

You make it up in real time, and you didn't know it would work well.

[B]

And. And I'll. I'll caveat your objection. We lived in a rural. We lived out in the woods. And so my wife took it on herself to make an hour trip, round trip, to go pick up kids, to bring them to our house.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Now, were we fortunate enough that she wasn't working three jobs and I wasn't working three jobs? Yep, that's true. Yeah, that's right. But we had to say if our. If our values are this and our other value is, I don't like neighbors all that much. And so I want to live out in the woods. Then geography can't be a barrier to my son's social development. And so that meant my wife took one for the team and was in a. She'd go 30 minutes and pick up these kids and bring them to the house and they'd play for hours and 30 minutes back to drop them off. Because some of those kids. Parents were working their second job and it was like, so it is. And it's what I'm supposed to do. Drive and what maybe. What am I supposed to do? Come home and just let maybe. Right. And it's, It's. It goes back to, you know, I've had this conversation forever at the end. So much of our deal of us are dealing with not by our hand, but in our lap. You and I did not borrow $38 trillion. And it's increasingly look like we're gonna have to pay it back with whatever that means. Or at the very least, my kids are. You and I didn't bomb anybody. You and I didn't fill in the blank. And yet here we are. And I can sit here and say, but I didn't. But I didn't. But I didn't. Or I can say, my tree fell down across my driveway and I gotta get to work. So that means I gotta figure out how to get that tree off the driveway. And it's gonna be uncomfortable. I'm gonna get scrapes. It's gonna be awful. I'm gonna hurt my back. I gotta get that tree off the driveway. And if we started looking at our problems emotionally, if we started saying, okay, what can I do to solve this? Not, not, not. While also solving for comfort, while also solving for convenience, but solving for what is right here. I think you open up a whole different culture, both in your marriage, in your home, in your community, and then across the country. But that's hard, man. And I get it goes back to that. The great Michael Easter. It's like being 200 pounds overweight is hard. It's hard. And losing 200 pounds is a nightmare. It's not as though one is easier than the other. And so it's just choose the hard that you want on the other end of this discomfort. Like eating fast food. I drove through Chick Fil a on the way up here. That was easy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it will cost me for the rest of the day. Not because Chick Fil a is bad, whatever. But when I start my day with fast food, it just never fully takes off. Right. And so it would have been hard to come here hungry. And it will be hard dealing with the aftermath of starting my day like that. Both of those are hard. Right? And so do you choose the hard most often that's going to get you where you want to actually be, which is a kid that learns at 18, your mind is yours, and you are not a pawn in their creation of your. Your extraction. Right. You're not a pawn in what somebody else's thoughts are going to be. Your mind will be yours. And what do I have to do to reverse engineer that? And God help me if I default to yeah, but the Eagles are on, man. I gotta catch the game, right? God help me, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And also, dude, I get home going back to our original. Like, I'm tired, man. And I get wanting to just lay on the couch and watch the Eagles because I, I don't want to watch the Eagles. I don't watch Eagles. But, like, I want to just scroll out. I get. I mean, I'm there. I do it right? It happens.

[A]

Watch Eagles highlights.

[B]

I mean, that's the thing. Now they've contracted the game for like 30 seconds for it. So tell me this, how do you. You've written on this and thought on this deeply. How do you. We're talking a lot about actions. I want to talk about the shoulds and have to's and. But I can't those. You phrased it emotional clutter, which I love. Just a head full of stuff that in a strange way becomes an incapacitating identity. I am what I think and my thoughts are heavy and my thoughts are dark, which means I can't and I won't. Right? Talk to me about that. Talk to me about emotional clutter.

[A]

Yeah, well, one thing I do want to say is we see some emotional decluttering going on in the approach you took. What I love about your story is you gave yourself permission to do something that can't work for everyone.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

That's pivotal. That's necessary now. It's easy to scandalize something like that. Well, your solution doesn't work for everyone, but that's true of most of the best kinds of solutions. Because the thing about self help or watching podcasts and taking in life wisdom and insights about life is that it all sounds great in theory. But then you read some communications book or some conflict resolution book, and then you go home with your kids and your wife, you go to your job with your co workers or your husband or your friends, and it's like, oh, my friends might tease me in a way that the book didn't account for or my difficult coworkers might challenge me in a way that the book didn't account for. And so it often feels like when you're a kid and you go to math class and the teacher says, today we're gonna learn arithmetic. All right, Yay. Two plus two equals four. All right, I got three apples plus two apples. Five. Okay, now go do your homework. And then you get home and it's like negative 2.3 minus 1.1. It's the same principles.

[B]

And mom's screaming at dad, Little brother's beating up your sister.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the dog is peeing everywhere.

[A]

Yeah, do it.

[B]

Do it right. You're in a different environment, different context.

[A]

I gave you the principles in the classroom too, by the way, so you should be able to drive. And you just kind of feel hoodwinked. It's like, this ain't it. And so part of what we have to learn how to do with life is say, how do I get these ideas to work for the life that is mine? Because the other kids may not have the dog peeing around the house and the little brother getting picked on. And some people can figure out this a lot more quickly than I do. How do I figure out what works for me? And you learn little cheat codes that can get you through life, that can help you learn things. And, you know, maybe you have to turn everything into a song or whatever it may be. And not everybody has musicality, so they can't do that. But you've got to figure out what works for you.

[B]

Oh, can I? I don't want to miss that. Because that may be one of the most important things that said on this, these microphones in this calendar year, because that's rests on a very countercultural bedrock, which is you have to do something. We're at a place where we got to do something. And this idea that like, well, I can't afford the houses, housing is too expensive. I can't afford it. So. Well, I'm take a 50 year mortgage now. That's what I heard floated the other day. I'm going to. I'm just gonna. I'm math. I don't like math. It's inconvenient. Math breaks and, and demolishes this picture I had of my life. So I'm just going to go around it, or I said I do to this woman at the altar in front of God and our families. She's had some health issues now. And so it's just, you know, I'm. And it's like no, no, no. Stay in the principle of you've got to do right. And what does right look like? What does integrity look like? What does math look like? The rules don't bend and move. How do I do that? In a way that works in this context, in this environment? And I think we're at a place where either people have just collapsed and set them out, this is the way this is going to be, or the rules don't apply. And when you get enough people saying the rules don't apply, then the whole thing falls over.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I'm saying?

[A]

Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. There's a certain sense in which the rules don't apply. What I mean by that is we all might have universal aims, like, hey, we want to be the healthiest version of ourselves. And maybe we both can sit here and say, we can make some improvements with our diet, but we've got different strengths and weaknesses, different temptations, different circumstances,

[B]

different gut microbiomes that let you eat something. Right. We got different. It's different.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And so there's always that part of the equation where I've gotta. I've gotta. That's gotta be my input. Right. In order to get it to work. The missing piece is. Okay, T.K. what's that thing you're going to do that no one else can do because they're not in your precise situation. What's your input here? And it's not just effort. It's not just time. It's not just energy. It's like, what's my way of being creative and betting on myself? And so, yeah, sometimes it really does feel like life is crushing you and there's no way out and there are no solutions. But this is where we have to reaffirm some degree of faith in ourselves and maybe even beyond the level of faith. I often tell people, hey, I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm just asking you to be willing to try something different, to be willing to try something new. Don't put pressure on yourself to believe that there's going to be a positive outcome. I don't think when a lion shows up and there's a deer and that deer takes off, I don't think the deer is being a positive thinker. You know what I mean?

[B]

He's doing the next right thing, which is run.

[A]

Yeah, but he isn't running because he has a belief that it's more probable he will escape than not. He might know that it's highly unlikely that he Will escape, but what else are you going to do?

[B]

It's 100% certainty that staying where he's at. Yeah, it's over.

[A]

Yeah. He's running out of necessity. He's running out of. This is the only option that gives me a remote possibility of surviving. It's not an expression of optimism, and so we don't have to burden ourselves to do everything we do as an expression of optimism. Sometimes there's just the willingness to experiment, the willingness to explore, the willingness to say, hey, man, I don't feel like I have some compelling reason to keep going, but I know what's going to happen if I don't keep going. Many people have been in my situation before, so let me just try something new. I love this advice from Peter Daniels where he says, over the course of your lifetime, read a thousand biographies, because in doing so, you'll build a vast vocabulary for overcoming incredible odds. Now, I don't think you need to take that literally. You don't need to read a thousand biographies, but by familiarizing yourself with other people's stories for how they've overcome odds and learning to listen to other people's stories. Not through the lens of, yeah, but I can do that. Yeah, but I can't do that. Learning to listen to it through the lens of, hmm. But I can emulate that. So, for instance, if you tell me the Michael Jordan story, getting cut from his high school team, locking himself in his room crying and all that kind of stuff, I can be like, yeah, but that was the 80s. Now we got au ball, and everybody's good by the age of seven. So I can't apply that anymore. You can always do that. You can always say, yeah, but that was a different time. Now it's more competitive today. Whatever, whatever. But you want to listen to those stories by saying, okay, but what can I emulate from that? I can emulate the sense of using other people's rejection of me as a personal challenge. I can emulate the concept that even though my ceiling might be different from other people's ceilings, it's probably never true that I've reached mine. And so even though I can practice boxing all day and never be as good as Muhammad Ali, I can practice every day and be way better than me.

[B]

Then I was. That's right.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. But me rhymed. That's the black preacher song in me.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

But, yeah, so. And this goes back to, like, you giving yourself permission, because sometimes what happens when we hear stories like this, we say, but everybody can't do that. And that's very important for me to speak to. And I wanna say, first of all, somebody can. Somebody can do that. Your solution, as particular as it was, there's somebody that's listening that's like, that's what I need to do. Right. 999 people might be like, well, I can't do that, John. But there's one person that's like, okay, that's my solution. If it doesn't work for everybody, still allow it to work for someone. If it doesn't work for you, still celebrate it as something that works for somebody. Don't allow what doesn't work for you to get in someone else's way. Don't use the fact that this doesn't work for everybody as a basis for arguing against it or fighting against it. Say, you know what? That worked for Dr. Deloney. That is so awesome, and I hope it works for somebody else. And now you're practicing a way of thinking where you're just looking for the possibilities, developing your vocabulary of possibilities. And if you learn to look at stories in that way, listen to stories in that way, your own vocabulary for how to see possibility and look for and see those opportunities in your own life will expand. Does that make sense?

[B]

Totally, yeah. How much is that is aided by having some absolute no gos.

[A]

What do you mean?

[B]

And I've actually learned that in the last four or five years, which is. I remember back when I was 21, I went to this event, ended up getting an acting manager, and I was like, bro, I'm gonna Hollywood. Right? It was the whole thing, like, I'm gonna go do this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was going out to Los Angeles for a couple of meetings, and I told the person that I was meeting with, the first group I was meeting with, the agency group, and I said, they're like, when can you move here? And I said, I graduate in cot with college. My college degree in May. As soon as I graduate, I think it's probably February. As soon as I graduate, I'm gonna move out here. I'll never forget one of them said, if you have a backup plan in this industry, you will use it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I remember thinking, I don't know if I want it that bad. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so. But it was a good. And you hear the story of Matt Damon being, like, a semester short of graduating Harvard and crossing. A, I'm not Matt Damon, but B, I was like, actually, I want to do this degree. I want to get that and that was a way to separate the. My priorities. So if I. My wife and I shake hands and say, in this house, we do not ever borrow money, and then we're faced with a situation, then I go back to what you just said, and I've got 50 options of this is how Deloney does it. This is how Coleman does it. This is how. This is how. This is how. But I'm resting on a foundation of. Of a line we won't cross.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I will not cheat on my wife. Okay, so she's got a major medical issue. You struggling with X, Y, or Z. Y' all aren't talking anymore. You have a backstop. You almost. You're almost anchored into bedrock in this principle that will then say, okay, then we got to come up with something, or I will not get a door. I'm just making up stuff. But, like, I will not physically hit another person. Okay, then what does that mean for your. Your set of choices? And I almost feel like in our current culture, we've just wiped the map with whatever you feel. Right. It's the next right move. And we have this. It goes back to, like, that choice psychology. Like, when you walk into a grocery store and there's 900 salad dressings, it doesn't matter which one you pick. You'll be haunted all day. You should have got the bacon flavor, Ranch man. Or you should have got the. The. The. You know, the cilantro plate bacon flavor. Like, you can't exit. And so something powerful about having some. As for this house, we've drawn this line. I'm by myself in my apartment, working two jobs. Like, as for me, in the center of my chest, here's my no go's, which then gives. Actually, it's almost like having a budget. Like, it then gives me freedom to run like crazy inside this. These parameters. And we don't like this, but I think we're designed for some sort of boundary, and we're living in a limitless, like, mom in history. And it's unmooring, right?

[A]

Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, we're talking about creativity with problem solving. And, you know, when you think about it, in. In music, there can be no improvisation without a structure, without.

[B]

Without your guitar being tuned right.

[A]

And I got to know what song you're playing. Yeah, right. You're playing My Favorite Things. That's how I know you're riffing.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[A]

But if all you're doing is riffing, it's like, there's no song. And now it's just noise, but it's that ability to have a structure in place that makes improvisation possible. And so it is with life. I know for me. So I had a day, this was, man, like a year or two ago now, where my stomach was hurting so bad.

[B]

Yeah, you were sick.

[A]

Last time I saw you, I was sick.

[B]

Super sad, man.

[A]

And I couldn't stop throwing up. And after a while, it's like I couldn't take anything. Every time I drink water, I thought it was food, poison or something like that, but I couldn't take anything. And so I eventually just called a doctor and she said, you need to go to the emergency room right now. It sounds to me like you have an intestinal obstruction. And so I go to the ER and I did. And it was linked back to a surgery that I had over a decade ago where those adhesions form. And it's possible as a consequence, with varying degrees of probability ranging from person to person, for the small intestines to kind of get tied up, so to speak, and things can't pass through. And so fortunately, we were able to get through that situation without having a surgery. And they kind of put the tube up my nose, down there, by the way, as soon as that tube goes up my nose and down to my stomach, I'm like, okay, I'm all right now. That felt so bad. I'm like, I just rather have the pain. It felt so bad. And they were able to get the obstruction to pass through, get everything to uncoil, and I was good. It happened again, like three weeks later, and I'm back in the hospital. And this time I'm just demoralized. The first time, it's like, this is all new. But now I'm demoralized. I feel so defeated. And the doctor says to me, I can't promise you that you'll never end up in here again for this. I've had someone who was here eight months, eight times. It's kind of random. She says, but I can tell you one thing that you can control, and if you control this, your probability of coming back here can be pretty low. And she laid out for me a low fiber diet and says, if you eliminate these things and you just don't fool with them, you can really lower the odds of you being back here. John, all the things that I needed to eliminate, I love them all.

[B]

Favorite things. That's right.

[A]

I love them all. And you better believe that I did not do the logical thing and say, all right, I'm just gonna do what the doctor says, and stay out of the hospital. I kind of intended and wanted to, but human weakness is the thing. I had some moments. I had some moments where I go, oh, and I pull up through the drive through and I get the thing, because I can get away with it, I think. And I did get away with it. And that was dangerous because once I got away with it, I was like, oh, I can probably do it again. It's not that big of a deal. And it did come roaring back. I didn't have to go to the hospital because I got lucky, but I felt that, like, my stomach is like a bomb that's gonna explode. And that was kind of like the wake up call for me. Like, all right, man, she didn't even ask you to eat healthy, bro. You know what I mean? She didn't even say you can't have ice cream or something, right? She just said, you can't have this, right? And so at that point, I was like, okay, I've gotta establish some guardrails. There are certain things I just can't do. Now, once those guardrails are established, you know what happens? You start noticing food labels.

[B]

You can eat everything. It's not that.

[A]

Yeah, you start noticing the variety of foods that are out there. Because when you have this option of I can eat whatever I want, you just stick with what's familiar. But then you start saying, wow, there are a lot of different types of foods. There are actually a lot of different types of fruits. You know what I mean? And you develop that vocabulary. So to your point, it's not until you have something that says, this is a no go for me, you treat it like I'm gonna die or my dreams are gonna die if I go in that direction. And when you have that, even if you don't know how you're gonna move forward, it's amazing how smart you become at identifying possible solutions when you don't give yourself that backup plan of doing the thing you know you don't wanna do anyway.

[B]

Yeah, that's where I found a lot of value in my house, with my wife and I backing up and saying, it's just establishing a set of values. Here's who we are. And when I was here, when I first took this job out of the university, and I was in these branding meetings, like, what's the brand going to be? And I finally snapped one day, I was like, y', all, I'm not doing a. I don't want a brand. I'm not that guy. I don't want to do that. And I remember a guy who works here, a brilliant man named Tim Newton, who said, hey, all a brand is is who you are when you're not in that room. What do people feel about you when you're not in there? And I was like, oh, so we all have that. And I took that question home to my wife and I was like, what if we asked the question, who are the Delonies when we're here and who are the dies when we're not here? And we created a list of this is who we are. The Delones are people who allow everyone to come to their kitchen table. The Delones are people who. And we established that list and it really, in a strange way was establishing. By saying who we are, it clearly establishes our no gos. Right. And then you're allowed to just run wild with freedom because it takes all that drama off. Right. Because we just don't go there. That's just not a thing. And we're human, so we do go there all the time. And when you get electrocuted, you're like, I know exactly why that. You know what I mean? It's not a shock or a surprise. It's. We went dance with the devil on that one. And we had already established. So there's something powerful about that exhale of who we going to be. I'm a guy that tries to be a good steward of my body. Well, for me, that means if I eat this in the morning, I'm going to. It's going to cost me all day. For you, you can't have apples anymore. Like, whatever the thing is. Right. But it's asking that who are you going to? Which defines my no go list. Which then. Man is such a place of freedom.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it almost. Yeah. Culturally, feeling like it's like we have an allergy to that.

[A]

It's just.

[B]

We have an allergy to reality. Right. We have an allergy to reality.

[A]

Yeah. And I think you're. You're establishing something that's so much more important than defining things like calling, purpose and identity in terms of your career or your job. You're establishing it as how you will orient yourself towards the world.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I think that's such a.

[B]

That to me is the call.

[A]

That's the call.

[B]

That's calling.

[A]

That's the call. Because, you know, for anyone that's ever. For anyone that ever goes down the calling rabbit hole where you experience anxiety. What am I supposed to do? You find that it's disappointing how uninterested God seems in whether or not I ever work at a grocery store or as a plumber.

[B]

It's in your job title.

[A]

Yeah. It seems that whatever it is I'm called to do, God is certainly not above having me do something else for a job, either on my road to that thing or while I'm serving in that way. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that God's like, no, I can't allow John to ever bake a cake. You know, you might find yourself baking bakery. Yeah, exactly. And when we get wedded to these ideas that like, well, my calling is to only bake cakes and to do anything other than that is beneath me. And I must know my calling because I'm really afraid of wasting my time. And it's like, well, it's a little bit more of how you're oriented towards the world. It's a little bit more along the lines of the character and the virtue. Because these are things that can be manifest through different job types. They can be manifest in different relationships and in different places. You know, I think about this time where I was taking this night class at college, and the professor, the late Quentin Smith, he was a philosophy professor, brilliant man. And I loved his classes and I never wanted to miss them. They were one night a week, and one day I'm in my dorm room and I take a nap and I oversleep and I wake up and it's like 6:30 and the class is at 6:30 and I freak out because I gotta run across campus to get there. And so I take off and I'm like sprinting, heading to class, and I see in the distance, Quinn Smith, who is also running late. And as soon as I see him, I slow down and I start to walk with him. And now we're walking together and I'm no longer stressed. I'm no longer worried about missing out on anything because I'm walking with the professor. And so much of the anxiety around calling comes from this place of I'm afraid I'm gonna miss out on what I'm supposed to do. I'm afraid I'm gonna miss out on who I'm supposed to be. And my identity is tied to that. Maybe I'm meant to be an actor or a baseball player and I'm gonna miss out. And it's like, man, we were created to walk with God, you know? And if you're doing that, there's an interior sense in which you slow down and you get into the rhythm of that walk because you know that you can't Miss out on anything that is yours because of that walk.

[B]

When you're with the professor.

[A]

Yeah, when you're with the professor. Yeah.

[B]

So I heard. I was in a ton of angst as a young man over a job. Should I take it? Should I not?

[A]

Should I take it?

[B]

Should I not? And just a season of stress, anxiousness, like, looking for the. Looking for, like, the tree bark would turn a certain way. Like, oh, that's it. That's the message. Right? Like, whatever that means. And I remember a powerful mentor of mine named Dr. Dale. I mean, we were sitting out one night late, and I was like, I'm wrestling and wrestling and tell me if this passes your smell test. I'm not theologically astute enough, but it made such a important. It was such. It was one of those before and after conversations that we all have in our lives. Like, I'm different after that conversation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But he said, has it ever occurred to you that God doesn't care what you do? He cares who you are on whatever it is you're going, and if he wants your attention, he'll get it. But it was this. And we went on to talk further. Like, hey, there's a ton. Billions of starving children and dads ringing their hand across this planet, and you think they're out there being like, man, God really wants me to like. Or is it, who am I going to be today trying to get my kids fed? Who. Who. Who am I going to be in service of this job or baking cakes or the bakery closes and I gotta go deliver pizzas to keep food on my table? Who am I going to be when I'm doing that? And that felt like a infinitely powerful, more powerful call than, how do I get this job title and make this dollar amount so I can get this car so I can buy this house with this many square footage in it versus man? If you're the. If you're the guy getting up before your day job and Ubering all day, all morning, and then going to work a full shift and then doing ubereats at night so that your kids have a warm place to sleep this winter, I cannot help but think that God's not in that passenger seat of that car. Yeah, right there with you. Like, it's. Who are you going to be? Are you still going to walk up to that door and treat that exhausted mom who just Uber eats so you can treat her with dignity when she stiffs you because you don't have any money either? Are you gonna exhale and say a quick prayer on the way to work. When you drop off a businessman at the airport, like, who are you going to be wherever it is you're going? And for whatever reason, that felt right. It felt right. And it was a shift in an obsession with destination and an obsession on how am I going to treat that person in front of me that's so good. It just felt. I don't know. I don't know. It took the. The drama out of my life. That makes sense. And I'm a dramatic guy, so I've got enough as is.

[A]

That makes a ton of sense on so many levels. First of all, perhaps it is true that there are specific projects that God wants us to work on, specific places that he wants us to be. That doesn't mean we need to reduce it to an intellectual puzzle that we can fail to solve because we're not smart enough. Right. You look at the life of Joseph, who has this God inspired dream, and in the end he fulfills that dream. But it's not clear at any point along the way that he knew exactly how it was going to be fulfilled. It was God's dream. Right? And what I love about your question is how am I going to show up for the people that are in front of me? Is this isn't just a perspective that increases our sense of personal peace? Because yes, there is a difference between being passionate about my calling and being anxious about making a mistake. Those are two different things and they often get confused. But it also allows us to be more humane towards others. So again, think of Joseph. He's in jail and he's there because a lie has been told about him. Man. And if you read with imagination, things get really interesting. You don't have to put anything in there that's not there. But can you imagine if you had a job and you're so good at your job that the guy you work for puts you in charge of watching over other people?

[B]

Okay?

[A]

And then all of a sudden you stop showing up to work because you're in jail because of a lie somebody told about you. Is anybody asking questions? Does anybody notice? Right. Is anybody talking about him? Is anybody wondering whatever happened to him? Do any stories get told? That's kind of an interesting thing to ask. But here he is in a place that he doesn't belong. He's there because of a lie. He's there against his own will. His dreams are so much bigger than that, Chael. And yet he finds himself by providence before two men that are disturbed by their dreams. And guess who's there with Them. A man that has been given the gift to interpret dreams. And it's like, you know, God cares about your dream, Joseph, but he also cares about those two guys in jail who belong there because they did something that makes them deserve to be there. And you can complain about being somewhere that's beneath you, that you don't deserve to be in, or you can say, this is where I am.

[B]

Who am I going to be now that I'm here?

[A]

Who am I going to be in this place? And perhaps there is more for me. Yeah, maybe there is more for me. But right now, I'm going to use what has been placed within me to serve anyone. You know, I often say, before you quit your day job, please stop despising yourself for having one. Because, man, if you see yourself as a loser for working at Burger King, then how in the world are you gonna treat the people that work there? Yeah, you know what I mean?

[B]

Your co workers.

[A]

Yeah, you wanna fix that? You wanna get that right? You know what I mean? You wanna pursue whatever you pursue from a place of self respect. Like, hey, Burger King is your first investment. It's an expression of your creative power. Like you've got something that you want to do with your life and you took some action steps to get that job, improve yourself, and now you're creating value for other people, making some things happen, man, like respect yourself for doing that and respect the people that surround you. That's a place of power that allows you to be more humane, you know?

[B]

Did you know I worked at Burger King for four years?

[A]

I didn't know that.

[B]

Did you know this? Did you know the seeds of the job I do now were planted at the age of 16 when I would work the lunch rush at the register and I would see the, you know, the movie ticket lines of people just waiting to get up an order. And this is before phones. And so there was just a haze over every person's face that would come up to the thing. And I remember learning at 16, if I said, not, can I take your order, please? But how are you doing? It would. It was like a switch came back on and just simply say, I'm glad you're here, man. What can I get for you? Was a. It's just what you're facing, it just. You can't help it. You're just like, oh, hey, can I get, you know, can I get a waffle cheese? But I learned that there, that you have about 10 seconds to make someone's day or to destroy it. And that is that all that trend line. I believe nothing's wasted. That line goes all the way to. Somebody calls my show and I'm like, hey, I'm glad that you called. What's up? Like that same is exactly the same. And that's from sitting at a Burger King register for four years. You know what I'm saying?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And at 16, I was like, I'm above, you know, I mean, of course, I was an arrogant idiot, whatever. But it's like going back and looking like, man, if you're in a spot, you don't want to be at emotionally, physically, psychologically, relationally. Okay, who are you gonna be now? Right. And then I promise you, if you'll continue to scratch and claw towards that next right step, you'll look back and say, this was a. Doesn't have to be a good. I wouldn't wish that on you to go back and get sick.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah. You don't want to go back in that pain. You don't. You don't want to lionize that pain. It was such a good refining. No, it's terrible. It was awful. But now you got five foods that I'm not gonna put in my body anymore so that I can go. Right. There's something that I can take that's gonna help me in this. In this path moving forward.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't want it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But we got it. And what are we gonna do with it now?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Feels like a healthy move.

[A]

Can we say one more thing about the fear of missing out on a call? Can I.

[B]

Can we close with this?

[A]

Yeah. Okay. And by the way, this. This is a roundabout way of getting to the heart of what emotional clutter is about. Right? It's, hey, I work at Burger King, therefore I'm a loser. I'm not where I want to be, therefore I'm a loser, therefore I'm a bad person, therefore I'm less than this person. I don't have what they have, therefore I'm in a wrong place. It's all of the ways in which we use our circumstances and conditions, much of which we don't control, as a basis for incriminating ourselves. And is it.

[B]

What about incriminating others too? Like, that must be nice.

[A]

It's because we do it to ourselves that we do it to others. Because if you don't respect yourself, you can't fool me. You don't respect other people. You can pretend like you do. You can put on a face to avoid troublesome consequences, but if you don't respect yourself, you don't respect other people. And if you don't love yourself, you don't love other people, right? And so the ability to be. It's why when people have an easy time being merciful, an easy time being forgiving, it's because they've learned to be gracious. They often know what it's like to fail in their own lives, to go through hard times, to do stupid things. It's usually that person's like, man, you know, I put my foot in my mouth before too. Man. Don't worry about it. You know what I mean? But Jonah, here's a guy who knew what he was called to do. He's got the details that people want, or at least think they want. You're gonna go to a specific place and you're gonna give a specific message to specific people. And he feels the weight of that and runs in the opposite direction, right? And the circumstances and conditions of his life get troubled because God's trying to call him to wake up and come back to his calling. He wants nothing to do with it. But God arranges for that big fish to take him in. And it's in that darkness that he comes to know the truth. The truth that he knew, right? But he comes to know the truth that allows him to follow the truth that he knows. And he goes and he does what he's supposed to do. My question is this. If God can so arrange the circumstances and conditions of Jonah's life to ensure that he's in the place where he needs him to be, in spite of the fact that Jonah was actively running away from it, how much more can he do that for those who sincerely seek him? We never have to worry about God's ability to situate us where we need to be to do the work that he's called us to do, to use the gifts that are within us. The real question, the real hard part, is how can I be the most loving, compassionate, generous saint? Like being that I can be in this moment? And that's the hard work. Because it's so much easier to be a saint if you give me different circumstances. I love that story. I'd be a saint. If you gave me different circumstances, I'd be real generous. You gave me a different bank account. It's being generous is being good as the person I am with the life that I have, that's the hard part. But that's really the only work, man.

[B]

I guess it's the tale as old as time. I'm confident you've experienced it too. But you and I were both just like teachers, we're educators. And now we found ourselves in this world. And I'll tell you what, man, I went with me those same. You think you're insecure, getting ready to go to work, Wait till you're insecure in front of you, know what I mean? Or you think. You think your teeth don't look right, wait till that many people see them. Or you think you have a secret you don't want nobody to know about in your friend group. Wait till you. Right, so it's. It's that. Yeah, it's that Tales. Oldest time, man. It's that Jim Carrey quote, man, I just wish everyone could just get a million dollars deposit in their account and you could all get an Oscar so you could realize it doesn't. It just doesn't heal you. But deciding I'm going to live a life, life of mercy and grace, and I'm going to be the kindest version of myself as I can. And all the way, full circle this conversation. Like, I will see somebody in front of me doing something I don't like or saying something I don't like. And I'm gonna not default to a character assassination, a character judgment. Like, I'm gonna exhale and say, my God, the story behind that must be wild, because I got stories behind my stuff, too. And if I want to change that person's mind, hey, they didn't ask me. But if they. If I do, is a frontal assault the best way to do that? Or is, hey, come over to my house, bring some nachos, let's figure this out, right? Is that not an easier way to do life, right? Or even. Not even trying to convince you.

[A]

Nothing.

[B]

I was gonna make sure that guy's fed too. Right? It's easier to make better decisions on a full stomach, right?

[A]

Yeah, man.

[B]

Yeah. Well, dude, you're one of my. You're one of the first guys I met in this crazy world that we're in now. So thank you for being my friend all these years, man.

[A]

Oh, likewise, man. You're an inspiring, inspiring person for me. And by the way, I'm always impressed with the heavy questions that you can bring perspective to. You know, we're on the minimalist, man, and if people are like, hey, I have this typewriter that I don't want, what do I do? We're like, all right, let's dive into this a little bit.

[B]

No, Josh is always sending me screenshots. He's like, what is he. What are you doing, man? That always cheers me up, man.

[A]

Your question is they have so much weight. But like, I respect not just your compassion, but I respect your willingness to be truthful because sometimes it can be very tempting to just affirm the parts that should be affirmed and then leave it at that. But I see you every day sacrifice yet another opportunity to be liked for the sake of telling people what they need to hear. And a lot of people like you for it. But there's a real consideration of cost that has to go into telling somebody, hey, man, that ain't right. Hey man, you. You need to talk to your wife about that or. Yeah, yeah, you need to be honest with yourself.

[B]

Well, and you do the exact same thing. Like, hey, this is my great, great grandfather's typewriter. It's like, man, your grandfather's not in that typewriter. You let that thing go. And that's a hard. That's a hard conversation to have too. And by the way, y' all are reducing. You guys cry well of like to the center of the earth of thoughtfulness and depth. And so I appreciate that. Thanks for being my friend, man.

[A]

Hey, likewise, brother. Much love.

[B]

Athletic Brewing Company crafts award winning non alcoholic beers for those who want to be part of every round. With over 185 flavor awards, there are exceptional NA beers that fit your lifestyle and any social occasion. Summer's full of good times and Athletic fits right in. Go to athleticbrewing.com to have brews delivered to your door or find them at a bar, restaurant or store near you. Near Beer Athletic Brewing Co. Fit for all times.