- But first, I'm here with emotional wellness
and relationship expert, and our newest Ramsey Personality,
Dr. John Delony.
John, thanks for being here.
- Thank you for having me.
- Okay, so you're new to Ramsey Solutions.
- Yes.
- Welcome. So glad you're here.
- Thank you.
- It's great. How's it been?
- I'm on TV now. That's pretty awesome.
(Rachel laughs) It's been good. It's been good.
- Okay, so tell me a little bit about your story
and like what you were doing before you came here.
- I spent the last 15 or 16 years
working at colleges and universities.
And before that, I was a high school teacher
and an elementary school teacher.
But for the last pretty much two decades,
I've been working in crisis response.
And when folks, when the wheels fall off of people's wagons,
then I'm there with them.
And then I've done some crisis work
with police departments and SWAT teams,
and just seeing behind the scenes
when things get really hard for folks.
- Yeah, and their emotional and mental health
is big on your plate, and you've studied that.
And you have how many degrees?
- I have a Ph.D. in education, and I have a Ph.D. in counseling.
- Yes, so you deal with people on all spectrums
when it comes to their emotional health.
So, that's exactly why I wanted him on today's episode
because we're gonna be talking about
ways to become financially healthy.
And I've been doing a lot of research the past year
over the whys behind our spending habits.
So, the first step, when it comes to improving
your financial health, is to determine
where you're starting from emotionally.
So, determining that is really big
when it comes to tackling your money
because the emotional part is huge.
- [John] I'm so glad you're saying that. Yes.
- Okay, so tell me. Start from the beginning.
How do you feel like the way people grew up,
money or not, just in general,
how their backgrounds affect them today?
- The best way I've heard it explained is,
Brene Brown says that genetics loads the gun,
and environment pulls the trigger.
Everything about how we react,
how we experience holidays, the way we get angry,
the way we get sad, or the way we're happy,
the way we spend money,
all that is a result of, partly, how we're wired,
but often how we see and experience our parents,
our friends, our cousins, our church community,
those people around us.
And so, it paints the picture of what life looks like,
and then we just automatically live into that picture.
And so much of those thoughts and actions
and behaviors become automated.
- And it's wild, because for me,
I'm like, you don't even realize it
until you talk to a counselor or a psychologist.
I mean, you really talk to someone who studies this well,
and it's like they can just pull a thread.
And like, you realize there's so many layers to us as humans,
and a lot of it does start with childhood.
- Well, remember when you moved in
with your first roommate as a freshman in college.
It was like, whoa,
that's not how you put clothes in the drawer.
And that's not how you brush your teeth, weirdo. Right?
And that's kind of the first collision
that many of us have.
Or if you move to new home,
or you get a stepsister or a stepbrother,
that's when you start to realize,
whoa, the way I did it isn't the right way,
it's just a different way, right?
- Yes, so good.
Okay, so something you say that I love
is that the two things you can control
are your thoughts and your actions.
So, when it comes to people, when people hear that,
how do you help change habits in people
to really believe that and see that that's true?
- Often, when I see folks trying to change habits,
is they focus on a destination,
like where they're going to go, a goal,
and they start doubling down on their actions.
Like, I need to, I want to lose weight,
so I'm gonna work out.
I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this.
And we forget that thoughts are automated too.
And so, thoughts are things that just pop
into our heads all day long,
and they often skew towards protecting us
from other things, right?
So, we often focus on I need to work out,
I need to do this, and do this.
We forget that I grabbed a colleague's donut,
well, I'm out today.
So I'm gonna have seven burritos
and four hot dogs.
- It just plagues so deeply. - That's right.
- Yes. - Or I bought that one latte
on the way to work. I forgot we talked about our budget.
Well, forget it. I'm going to Amazon then, right?
I'm just gonna click, click, click, click.
Right then, in that moment, just stop
and say, what is my brain trying to protect me from?
And if you can catch yourself right before that action,
right when your automated thought goes,
and you catch yourself,
then you can say, what am I trying to do?
And usually, it's our brain trying to unconsciously
protect us from pain of stress,
or pain of exhaustion,
or pain of, my wife's asking me to do something yet again,
and we're not on the same page.
Or pain of, I make the money in the house.
Who can tell me what to buy?
And so, it just catches you right there.
So, if you can stop right before.
- So good. Because there is,
there's so many things that we do subconsciously
to protect us from that pain. Yes.
- Go, go, go, go, go. Right.
So, you've studied and researched habits.
So, what is like the top things you've heard and researched,
what you've learned in your own life,
to create these new habits,
or starting with controlling those actions,
controlling those thoughts?
- So, for the last four or five years,
there's been a lot of cool,
hip new books out on habits, right?
Big habits, and little habits, and atomic . . .
all kinds of habits, right?
I like to think of habits on a bigger picture.
So, I like to look at the addiction literature,
and the choice theory literature,
and relationships, and get a big picture.
So, here's a couple of things
that, when I think about changing habits,
which is really changing automated thoughts
and automated behaviors,
the first thing is, context is really important.
So, for instance, if you and Winston
are gonna get in a disagreement,
and you get into the same,
every time you have a disagreement,
you sit at the same seat at the table.
When you sit at that table, and y'all look at each other,
you automatically get into . . . right?
That's why, sometimes, if you go hiking,
or you're on a road trip,
you have these great deep conversations.
Same two people talking,
and same important things we're talking about,
but the context has changed, right?
So, if we can get ourselves out of a context,
that will help change behaviors.
The second thing is,
and this is really fun for a nerd,
the liking part of our brain
and the wanting part of our brain are different.
And so, I really like the idea of me with a six-pack abs
but my brain is saying,
I want the gummy candy hit—the dopamine hit.
- Give me the pizza. - Yes!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love the idea of being debt-free,
but I want the dopamine hit of the retail therapy, right?
And so we forget that, or we often don't know
that those are two separate processes.
And so, if I can get to the wants,
then it's different than the likes.
The third thing is, you can't break an addiction,
you can't break a habit without a community.
Often, what you do is, you end up trading
one addictive behavior for another, right?
So, you have people that are credit card, credit card people,
and then they get on Dave Ramsey plan,
then they become lunatic, right?
Like, burn your debt.
Like, they'll karate chop
the credit card out of your hand, right?
So, when you have a community that can hold you accountable,
and they can be with you and walk alongside you.
And when you stumble, they can pick you back up,
and you lean on each other.
- I love that. And it's so good
for your emotional health to know all those things
and to really like apply that to your life.
So, what advice,
what encouragement do you have for people
that have made bad mistakes in the past,
money or not, right, just life?
And there's a lot of shame with that.
So, when I think about emotional health,
shame is like one of the top words,
I feel like, right now, people are talking about.
So, people have that.
They do have a lot of shame talk.
They have a lot of shame,
possibly from those past mistakes.
So, what what advice do you have for them?
- So, let me paint you a picture.
We're all born with a backpack.
I've been a tall, handsome,
super good-looking guy my whole . . .
I was trying to be funny, but you didn't think so.
- (laughs) I was just like, yes, John.
Have that self-confidence.
- Right, my parents are still married.
I was raised in a Christian home.
I was born in Texas,
which is the one of the greatest places on earth to live.
All these things.
So I had very few bricks in my backpack when I was born.
I had many friends who came from broken homes,
or from abject poverty,
or whose parents were immigrants.
They had lots of challenges.
They came into the game with bricks in their backpack.
So, fast-forward to to your question
about shame and making mistakes.
Let's say that me and my wife sat down,
and we have a really deep conversation
about being on a budget.
And then she's late getting home one night,
and I think, she's gonna make me do bedtimes again
for the fifth night in a row.
She's doing this on purpose.
And I get frustrated.
And we don't have any candy in the house
because I'm trying to eat healthy now.
And then I end up on Amazon,
and I click, and I buy the thing, right?
And so, then I feel guilty.
So, think of guilt as I'm picking up a brick,
and it's heavy, and it's uncomfortable.
I should be picking up that brick
because we made an agreement,
and I broke that agreement, okay?
Shame is when I take that agreement,
and I put it my own backpack
and decide I'm just gonna carry this sucker around.
And so, what I tell folks in this situation is,
put the bricks down.
And some of us come, to go full circle,
some of us come from families where part of our identity
is carrying as many bricks as possible.
That's how we show how tough we are
and how hard things are for us.
And what I wanna tell everybody is,
put your bricks down. Put them down.
- It's so good, John.
I mean, seriously, on a range of levels.
But I think it's so huge to start with
where we are emotionally and grow from there.
So, thank you. Thanks for being on.
(cheerful music)