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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money By Making Real Friends - What I Learned From Dr. John Delony
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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. On this episode we are continuing along with our series of what I've learned from some of the past guests that I've had on my show. And on this episode specifically, it happens to go along with the main thing that I talk about all the time, which is connection and loneliness and all that stuff. And I talked about this with one of the best guys in the space, in my opinion, Dr. John Deloney. If you don't know who John is, he is a Ramsey personality. So he works over at Ramsey headquarters with Dave Ramsey. And he was unique because he was the first person that they brought on to the Personalities crew that wasn't like solely focused on career development and personal finance, business stuff like that. He's the relationship guy and so he's got a really, really cool, interesting background. And the thing that I wanted to talk to him about most was friendship and connection, because that's what we talk about on Travis Makes Friends podcast a lot. So here are a few of my core lessons and takeaways from my time with John DeLoney. Number one, loneliness is a physical health crisis, not just a feelings problem. John said it plainly. Loneliness can have a greater impact on your physical health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's not a metaphor. That's research. That's legit. People constantly focused on all of the, the checklist, you know, the oh, I don't smoke and I don't do this thing and I don't do this bad habit. But then they're extremely lonely and then that thing is actually worse for their physical health and all the other things that they're avoiding in their health journey. And the reason that your body reacts this way makes complete evolutionary sense. If you woke up a thousand years ago and your tribe left you, you were going to die, quite literally, you are. You are dead. You would not have been able to survive without all of the other people around you in your tribe. And your body still knows. Your brain still feels like that. It still fires those same alarm systems. The difference is now we're surrounded by people and can still feel alone, and our nervous system can't really tell the difference. We have not gotten to a place where we feel comfortable being. You know, you could go to Los Angeles or New York or San Francisco, like some of these, the biggest cities in the planet where there's millions of people and you're constantly having interactions with people, but you can feel extremely lonely, and that makes it a little bit more dangerous. Number two, convenience. Technology taught us that we're a burden, and that's destroying us. So John made this point that I keep coming back to when I order an Uber instead of asking a friend for a ride. The app works great, but the metamesage that I'm internalizing is my needs are an inconvenience to people around me. So when I instacart eggs instead of knocking on my neighbor's door, I'm slowly erasing the need for human reciprocity. And when you believe you're a burden, you stop reaching out, you stay inside, and you die a little from it. And this was. I think. I think I took this from Simon Sinek. He was talking about how sometimes. Sometimes friendship is about being. It's about being the person that's willing to go first. It's giving other people the blessing of going second. And I looked at this the wrong way for a long time, which was that, like, oh, I'm a good friend because I'm there for my friends when they need me. And. And then I would be going through something terrible in my own personal life or professional life or fill in the blank, and then I wouldn't be willing to share it with anybody else. And I. And I started realizing that that was something that was. That was affecting my interpersonal relationships. It was affecting my friendships, affecting my relationship with my wife, where it was just like, I wouldn't let anybody in. And sometimes, sometimes being a good friend is asking for help when you need it. Which brings me to my third point here. Asking for help is not a weakness. It's a gift that you can give to another human being. This was one of the sharpest things that he said. John pointed out that the research shows the greatest gift you can give your neighbor is to look them in the eye and say, I see value in you. Can you help me. That's the underlying message when you ask for help, is that you see value in somebody else. And if you constantly are just going to be like, you know what, I'm just going to solve the problem myself, I'm going to bear the burden myself, I'm just going to grit my teeth, I'm going to grind through this. I don't need to burden those around me with my shortcomings and my mistakes and my failures. I don't want to, I don't want to negatively affect. Because that's the thing is like I know it comes from a good place and it came from a good place for me when I did it all the time too. It's like I don't, I just, I don't want to, I don't want to cause any grief in somebody else's life. I don't want to make somebody else's day bad because my day is not going very well or I'm going through a tough season. So I'll just keep it inside, I'll keep it internal. There's almost nothing then, then nothing that feels better than spending a few hours helping someone and going home thinking, yeah, like that, like that, that I was actually able to help, I was able to bring value and we, we gain a sense of fulfillment and purpose from that. So when you deny people that feeling by handling everything yourself, you're not being strong, you're being selfish and then you're lonely to boot. So it's a recipe for disaster. And, and I think this probably, maybe this is me talking about talking outta my ass, but I think this probably affects men a little bit more than women because we're, we're sort of taught to burden everything and to shoulder all the responsibility. You're on your, on your own. And especially when it's something that you feel is like self inflicted, that's like, oh, this is, this is a result of a decision that I of I, that I made. I don't want to burden other people with it. But being willing to just go to the people who love you, the people who want to see you succeed, whether it's a parent you haven't talked to in a while, your spouse that you haven't let in to, how you're actually feeling about something, or a friend that you haven't talked to in some time, asking for help is not a weakness. It is, it is a strength and it is actually an indicator of being a good friend. Sometimes being a good friend is allowing other people to be there for you. And not just being willing to be there for other people when they need you. Number four, the Lone Ranger myth is a lie. Even the toughest people run in packs. John spent years working with elite military guys, professional fighters. He said the. The. The strongest men that he knows are also the most interdependent. They're not tough because they go at it alone. They're tough because they know exactly who they need, and they' embarrassed to say it. So Navy SEAL doesn't get vulnerable because he went soft. He gets vulnerable because he literally cannot survive without his team. And it was sort of a reframe on this weird version of masculinity that we're seeing purported on the Internet all the time, which is this just this alpha bravado nonsense that actually doesn't really work when you look at the people, when you look at the actual real, epic examples of masculinity like John brought up, like professional fighters and Navy seals, they are very dependent on the teams around them. They. They. Even the. The professional fighters, like, they. It's a solo sport, sure, but they have entire teams of people helping them with training and helping them with nutrition and helping them with opportunities and helping them with promotions. And like, it's. It's. It's an engine. It's a system filled with a bunch of people. And they're interdependent on all of those people inside of those networks, which is what makes them stronger as a whole. So the Lone Ranger myth is a lie. Even the toughest people run in packs. Number five. Social media is the TV dinner of connection. Let me say that again. Social media is the TV dinner of human. This episode of the show is brought to you by Chime. Chime is changing the way that people bank. They offer the most rewarding fee, free banking that's built for you, not the 1% plus. Chime is rated five stars by USA Today for customer service. You get real human beings 24. 7. You're not just switching banks. You're upgrading to America's number one choice for banking with a Chime checking account. Get 5% cash back on a Chime card in your category of choice, like gas or groceries. Get savings that grow faster with their 3.75% APY, which is nine times higher than the national average. Plus, you get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and 24. 7 travel concierge included with your chime card. You can even get up to $500 of your pay. When you say with my pay. 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Connection. It'll keep you alive until it kills you. John's framing here was pitch perfect. TV dinners came out in the 50s and gave people calories that technically sustained them while quietly destroying their health. Social media is the same thing, except for connection. It's called social media, which implies it's solving the loneliness problem. It's, it's, it's social. It's, you know, built to make you connect more with people. Well, it's not more people focus on the social part of social media and not. Not enough people think about the media part of social media. It is quite literally media, especially at this point. Like, maybe at first when it was just like you and your, you know, high school friends on Facebook, that maybe it was a little bit more connecting at that point, but at this point, it's become media. It's just, it's, it's closer to Netflix than it is to, you know, having dinner with a friend of yours. And so if you're, if you're logging your social media time as connection time, you're solving the wrong problem. You're not actually, you're not actually doing anything to fight the loneliness that you're feeling. You're not doing anything to combat the social isolation that you're objectively putting yourself in all the time. It's just another way to consume media. And is there a social aspect to it? Yes. And I'm not going to pretend like social media is all terrible. Obviously, you're probably watching this on some version of social media or listening to this on a podcast app or something. Like, I understand that it has its place, and there's some really cool things about it. Like, it can be a great tool to make an initial connection with somebody. But if you're outsourcing your connection time to social media and then claiming that you do things that make you social without actually going and spending time with people, then you're lying to yourself and you're actually probably making yourself even more lonely. So log it as your entertainment time. Log it as your media time. Log it as your Netflix time. Because the psychological effects are much more similar to something like Netflix or YouTube than, than it is to hang out with your friends and actually connecting with human beings on a real level. And obviously, I think about loneliness a lot with my show Travis Makes Friends, because it started as a networking show, you know, how to, how to meet people, how to build professional relationships. But somewhere along the way, I realized that that was the wrong problem, or at least not the deepest problem, not the highest serving level of the problem. And John put words to something that I've been feeling for a long time, but couldn't articulate the convenience layer of modern life, the apps, the delivery, the on demand everything. It doesn't just solve your your problems, it quietly tells you that you don't need people. And every time you Uber instead of calling a friend, you're reinforcing the idea that your needs are a burden. And after a while, you actually start believing it. You stop asking, you close the door and your body, your actual nervous system starts treating you like you've been abandoned by your tribe. Which it's it. It signals that that fight or flight respons amygdala. And then that's why we're constantly walking around anxious and nervous and riddled with stress. Because we are not actually solving for the real problem. And here's what got me I realized that I'd been a good networker, but I was a bad friend. And I was really good at meeting people who could help me in my career. Really good at building relationships and adding value where it counted. But I was bad at calling the guy that I've known since kindergarten just to hang out and eat steaks and play video games and be kids again and actually have real connection time as an adult. And John. John helped flip that one for me. The people who matter aren't the ones with the most impre most impressive LinkedIn profiles. They're the ones who'd show up at 2am if something went wrong. I didn't have enough time for those people. That was the story I sold myself. And it's something that I've worked on a lot since then. I think I've improved a lot since then. So Dr. John DeLoney, if you haven't ever consumed any of his stuff, I highly recommend giving him a follow. He's got a really great book on anxiety as well, but he's also just constantly putting out a high volume of content about relationship relationships and human connection and parenting and spouses and friends and all that kind of stuff. So Dr. John Deloney, go follow more stuff from him. And that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.