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Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Chapter 2: How does empowerment differ from positive thinking?
people confuse positive thinking with empowerment positive thinking is about optimizing your life for things that make you feel expansive but that is not going to help you build a better life what will help you build a better life is empowerment empowerment is approaching your life like an engineer you need to first understand how the world actually works
What up? What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm so glad that you are here. So glad that you're here. I hope your relationships are doing okay. I hope your mental and emotional health is okay. Not that we have an election going on. Kelly, is the election over by the time we're putting this out? Yes, the election is over. We know. Well, maybe we know.
Maybe we know.
Maybe we don't.
Who knows? Who knows? Or maybe we are but a speck of dust.
I hope not. That's, well, I don't know. Maybe I hope so.
I hope not, but we won't know.
Yeah.
So alas, future usses, I hope that you are doing well in this wild season. Hey, we're continuing our interview series. with a guy that many of you have probably seen. Maybe you've never even heard of this guy, but he is a massive internet presence. He's a massive, he speaks all over the world. His name is Tom Bilyeu. And if you ever eat protein bars and you've seen Quest bars, that's this dude.
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Chapter 3: Why is choice significant in our lives?
Hey, in case you're wondering, that's how Kelly produces this show. Let's turn it up to 11. Nice job.
For those that don't know, Spinal Tap.
It's cool. Hashtag Kelly is old and her influence is just trickling down like Reagan economics. Hey, turn it up and check out my great conversation with Tom Bilyeu. So you know when you're starting to stumble into a new idea or you start hearing it in pockets and you read it and suddenly it's starting to make its way into a new mental model for yourself.
The word that has been circling for me the last 24, 36 months over and over and over again is this idea of choice. And the one thing as I worked in academics for 20 years and as I have transitioned out of academics, I recognized that I was a part of a system that I know internally, I know me and the teams that worked for me deeply loved people and deeply tried to take care of people.
And at the same time, we told a whole generation of human being, because of this or this or this or this, you'll never be fully enough. And so y'all go over into the corner and we'll pat you on the head and we'll take care of it for you. I realized how pervasive that is, that the metacultural narrative is there's something wrong with you're not enough and we'll save you.
Just you go into the corner, we'll pat you on the head. And this idea, almost this cutting the chains culturally is this word choice. Like, no, no, you can make a choice. And I don't think we have a psychology for that.
Well, we certainly don't enjoy being told that we have agency over our own lives.
Why? That feels like it's the most freeing thing.
Yeah. So it comes down. So everybody has what I call a frame of reference. Okay. Your frame of reference is your biology, your beliefs, and your values.
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Chapter 4: What is the importance of agency?
People think that they simply believe the truth. So Tom, why are you even talking about beliefs? And the reality is that beliefs are chosen because even physics, people don't
actually know how all of this works and so we're trying to approximate and in the approximation we confuse that for objective truth and people don't realize that they have just completely shaped their sense of what the world is this is why um
A lot of people, I think, underestimate the importance of like the first three to five years of your life, because that's locking in all these beliefs about how the world works. And you never realize, oh, that was a three-year-old's mind doing its best to approximate, like, how do I get safe? Not realizing as you get older, some of those beliefs may not actually be useful anymore.
And if you updated the belief- then you could approach the world in a new way. So anyway, you get this frame of reference. You don't even realize you have it, but it is a, it's like wearing a pair of glasses that distort the world, but you don't realize you're wearing glasses.
And you certainly don't realize you can actually shape the distortion so that you can see a slightly different variant of the world that may be more useful, even if it's not any more accurate, it's more useful pushing you towards your goals. And so, one, you have to know what your goals are. You have to understand your own biases and distortions that you live under.
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Chapter 5: How can our beliefs shape our reality?
I've heard you talk a lot about this. You know that you have a tendency towards anxiety. Of course. So it's like, okay, I have to think about that as I decide how to interpret the world because I'm not going to interpret it perfectly. I'm going to have this— I'm going to interpret it wrong.
Yeah, I'm wrong.
And that will make life much easier for you. So if you already know that, then the frame of reference that you have allows you to take in new information. If you have a frame of reference that says I am valuable because I'm better, smarter, faster, stronger, then it's like when somebody's like actually know you're wrong about this thing, your whole worldview then destabilizes. Gotcha.
And people will do anything to restabilize their worldview.
There is what I would call an educated middle, a group of people who read well, who have great morning routines, who listen to all the right podcasts, et cetera, okay? When I think back over the last 20 years of the folks who spent 25, 30 years of their life studying a thing, people who I'd call true subject matter experts, maybe not application experts, but they know this thing really well.
And then I sit with people like you who have been at the top of business, who are putting their relationships on display in certain, like it's out there, right? No doubt. That group of people, they cannot wait to have their mental models disrupted. There is a, I don't want to say joy, but there is a revelation of being wrong or having someone be like, no, no, no, look at it this way.
And it's like, yes, it's right. It's like I got another plate on the bar. Yet this middle, this educated middle feels like, no, no, I've got to get this answer so I can lock into it and never let go of it. How do you teach a group of people to say, no, no, no, there's actually freedom in being wrong? Because you get closer to the truth.
There's not freedom in finding this right answer and dying on every hill. Because that feels like what we've done, right? And using your glasses analogy, it's like we're so afraid to take off our glasses that we're just looking for someone to say, no, you're looking at it the right way. Come be on our team. Does that make sense?
It does. So how do I teach it? What I try to get people to focus on is what I call the only belief that matters.
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Chapter 6: What does it mean to have an anti-fragile worldview?
So the only belief that matters is if you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will actually get better at that thing. That's so amazing how simple it is. Very simple. And if you actually believe that, like if I'm actually right about that, then how you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration. Correct. Because you are not locked into who you are today.
It's all a question of who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. Because acquiring those skills is not going to be easy. But it's like, wait, you're telling me I can be so good at guitar that Metallica would call when they go on tour? That call's coming. Hey, if you put in enough time and energy, it really could. That's the thing. No wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Actually, because they have a set of goals, and that set of goals is to touch as many people with music as humanly possible, to have a group of people that they want to be around, right? That honestly would probably be the hardest thing you'd bump up against, which is they have a clique of guys that they know and love and they've toured with and they've gone through all of that hardship together.
So something would have to happen where that would break. Now they're open again. They have a need. And if you have the skill set and the personality, you really could fill it. Now, people that live their life in that way, like the craziest dream that I have is actually within reach if I put enough time and energy into it. Those people have the only belief that matters.
And now all of a sudden they know what their goal is. They're working their butt off to get there. They encounter somebody who's like, let me show you how to do this a little bit differently. It'll be a little more efficient and you're more likely to achieve your goal. Now that person's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tell me more.
I want to know what to do. So I consider myself a filtering mechanism. Okay. What I tell people is I'm throwing the bat symbol into the sky and only batmen are gonna respond. Now, when you get here, I'm gonna give you ideas that I have seen in my own life are super efficient at getting you towards your goals. And I hope that I'm constantly learning from other people as well, so I'm updating it.
And I am testing my ideas against the real world. And so if I can get people to buy into that, you can close your eyes, imagine a world better than this one, open your eyes, and acquire the skills necessary to actually make that happen. I just sent this out in a tweet. I never know how people are going to respond. Here, the following statement is true.
People confuse positive thinking with empowerment. Positive thinking is about optimizing your life for things that make you feel expansive. That's wonderful. I want that for people. I want people to be able to on command make themselves feel expansive versus contracting down, shrinking, feeling like they're in fight or flight mode. Right. but that is not going to help you build a better life.
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Chapter 7: How do we define true fulfillment?
So there's just a lot of things that they don't understand. And therefore you're being manipulated by forces. It could be as simple as your microbiome is manipulating you to eat more Oreos. But if you understand, oh, like I have this strong impulse to eat this stuff because of my microbiome is crazy. Like who would have thought? So understand how the world works. Understand where you actually are.
So what are you good at? What are you not good at? And then understand, the only belief that matters, that you can get good at a thing that matters to you and allows you to help other people, which becomes a really important part of my whole life philosophy. But once you understand that, you put yourself in the driver's seat.
so many layers to peel back, to get people to be emotionally safe enough that they'll actually do it. Because you will, if your world is predicated on I'm good, I'm smart, I'm talented, and then somebody says there's a better way, that's super destabilizing. And you have to first shift your worldview to something that isn't destabilized when it's challenged.
If your worldview grows stronger when it's challenged, I think I've heard you talk about this. So Nassim Taleb wrote a book called Anti-Fragile. So you want a worldview that's anti-fragile, meaning the harder people attack it, the stronger it becomes.
And the harder your life gets. The harder the external circumstances, the more robust you become. Correct. Yeah, which is extraordinary. How many people think they want a thing when they actually want something else? Here's what I mean. I liked the idea of imagining that James Hetfield calls and says, hey, John, we've heard about you and – We want to invite you out on tour.
By the way, I'm not that good. I spent way more time playing in front of the mirror with what I would look like than actually sitting down and learning how to play. Let's say that call came. Here's what that would cost me. I have a 14-year-old who's a freshman, and I have an 8-year-old who's a third grader. It would cost me all of their games.
It would cost me the nighttime wrestling matches with my daughter. And lately I come home and she says, do you want to dance or do you want to fight? And she's this little bitty hurricane. She's amazing. It would cost me walks with my wife. Like it would come at a cost. And so it's been important for me to peel back what's underneath the I want to be the guitarist of Metallica thing.
I want people to think I'm capable and I'm good. And the deeper the layers go, I really want my wife to say I'm proud of you. I really want my dad to call out of the blue, my old grizzled cop dad and be like, I haven't said this enough. I'm really proud of you, right? It has nothing to do with playing guitar. And so for me, getting to what are you really chasing here and for what?
That's been an important lesson for me because I thought that it was about being a number one, being a this and this. And the deeper I've gone, it's – I want my wife to be really proud of me. I want my kids to, when they grow up, to say, my dad loved us. He loved us a lot. And in a weird way, the more I've gotten there and anchored in, the freer I've become to go.
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Chapter 8: What role do relationships play in our lives?
Yes and no. So yes, I think people confuse the external things, which are awesome and really do have a thing. And the reason that people will forever want their version of being the guitarist in Metallica is it has utility and there really is a massive upside.
It's awesome.
Yes. It's awesome. And so people need to understand, okay, there's a reason that that will be pursued forever until the end of time. Mm-hmm. But what they fail to understand is that ultimately the only thing that matters is your neurochemical state. So I don't know how many billionaires have to commit suicide before people go, oh, money's not the answer. There's something else going on.
And I'll shorthand it to you have to earn your own respect. If you have your own respect. I like that a lot. People can attack you and you'll still be like, okay, maybe there's some things in there I can really improve, whatever. But you're still going to be like, I have a value system. I live up to my value system. And that's why I respect myself.
And so I'm here to update my value system for sure. But I said, these are the things that I was going to do and I have done them. And I really respect myself for that. Nobody does that.
Nobody respects himself.
I won't say nobody, but I think that- It's very rare culturally. People don't think about it. And so the reality is that we are both the shout and the echo. And what I mean by that is you are the things you do, the shout and the echo, what people say about the things that you do. We are a social creature and there is no way to detach yourself from that. You will actually break psychologically.
This is why the ultimate form of punishment is isolation, okay? So you have to understand I'm nested in a brain, first of all, that is designed for social interaction. And so there's no way to remove myself from I do a thing and people respond. So you're gonna have to deal with both of those.
But ultimately, in the combination of those two things, you will either have or not have respect for yourself. The problem is people over-index on the Echo. I did a thing and a wave came back at me. Now, the wave you don't wanna try to overcome is your own sense of what you're doing. You need to have resilience against simply being a puppet of the echo. Sure.
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