The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)

My cerebellum healed years in a period of seven weeks. When I did not look at a screen, my memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile. There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment.

What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Hope you are doing so great. Hey, on today's show, we have a special episode of all things social media screens, the internet, all of it. If you're like me,

You know that this, and you're reading, you read Jonathan Hyatt's book, the anxious generation, you are paying attention to what's out in the world with the TikTok bands and the social media stuff and the insane rise of mental health challenges, especially with young teen girls, but I think it's actually gonna be a voice too. It just manifests itself differently. Everybody's concerned about it, social media, and they've gamified human connection.

It is hard to get off. It's hard to even cause like it's just the whole thing's chaotic. And if you pull your kids off of it, then they're crying in their bedrooms that they're missing out on friendships and birthday party. It's just the whole thing's a mess. So.

I've got a buddy here in Nashville. His name is Carlos Whitaker and Carlos wrote a book. He is an author and speaker. He's here in Nashville, Tennessee and I invited him. We went and had lunch and I was like, man, you need to come on a show and I want to talk about your new book. But more importantly, I want to talk about your experience as you unwound this thing. And this is one of the most important conversations I think I've had on this show. And I hope you will not just scroll past it.

because this isn't us talking about the science. You can talk, you can hear about the neuroscience of social media and the dopamine and all that stuff. And it's not a couple of guys just complaining and ranting and raving. I think this is the most honest conversation I've had on this particular topic about all of us and screens and real life and meals and family time and friends and what we can actually do about it.

So I'm super excited to have this conversation with my friend Carlos Whittaker. Check it out. Past this episode along to your friends. I think it's a really important conversation. And it's one that the moment it was over, I changed my life. My life's different now. So I hope yours will be too. Check it out, my conversation with Carlos Whittaker. I'm super grateful that you're here. You have tapped into something that's haunted me for a decade and

I often, I don't say this lightly and you don't have to, I'm super selective about who's here. And it's always somebody that has a direct impact on how I'm seeing the world or experiencing or somebody, I'm gonna do something different in my life because. And so to paint you a picture, in 2009 or 10, I was working at a university that was a beta campus for this new little product called Gmail.

And they were also a beta campus for this new little thing called, hey, we got this new thing. We're going to call it an iPhone. And so they shipped them to the university. And overnight, they passed them out to every student and said, we're going to follow it and see what happens. And we think this is going to change everything. And so I was working in Student Affairs, which is like Student Mental Health, Student Crisis Care, Drug Use, where they live, all that kind of stuff.

And I saw it in real time, the unwinding of what Jonathan Hite's writing about now. I watched it just in real time. And it was wild. And then let's fix it with this new thing called an iPad. Let's fix it with. And as I left, then I began working with students. And I've been working with students forever, but I've been working with different kinds of students.

And my 20-year higher ed career went from, hey, I think I'm going to do this job to, hey, me and my mom are struggling or to, I don't want to be alive anymore. And that arc went so fast, right?

The second thing, and I've talked about this to the people who check this show out, I had no social media when I took this job, and I remember a couple of years ago, I was in my closet, there's a door inside my bathroom, there's a door, inside my bedroom, there's a door, and my kids are running around, and I was in the dark scrolling, and I remember, I just started laughing, and I was like, oh, you got me.

Y'all got me. Y'all got me. I used to preach to parents. Like you got well played, well played. And so I found myself in this loop of, I don't know what to do. And I say that like I know what to do and yet.

Absolutely. And then your book shows up, and so I'm like, who's this guy? So I called him, but a mutual friend of ours, he's like, no, Carlos is a real deal. And so, and then you spoke this morning, and I mean, I literally walked out of the event this morning and talked to my wife, and I was like, hey, you hit the final domino piece for me. And so I'd love just to kind of start here. Yeah.

Walk me through. It's Sunday afternoon and that little tag comes across your phone. You know, Sunday afternoon, we all get it unless you've turned it off. Whether you're an Android user, an iPhone user, or iOS user. And the screen time notification comes across and it says you have averaged so many hours and minutes a day on your phone, which honestly, it's not a very impactful. No.

moment for any of us. We swipe it away or we see the number, which mine happened to be seven hours in 23 minutes a day. And I would see that for weeks on end or eight hours or nine hours or six hours. And I just swipe it away.

Okay, cool, whatever. But for some reason, this one particular Sunday, I decided to do the math. I don't know why. I was like, let me just do the math. So the math told me that I spent 49 hours a week on my phone. So I was like, okay, hold on. That's two entire cycles of the sun.

But awake time, that's like four days, right? So I'm not counting sleeping. Who's nose on the phone when they're asleep? So just being awake, 49 hours of awake time, that's actually four days. That's work plus over time. Yes, that's crazy, right? That is a full-time job plus over time. Yes, that I'm staring at six inches of LCD in my hand. So then I was like, well, that's kind of crazy. So then I kept doing the math.

and that math showed 100 days a year. So over three months a year, I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, oh my gosh, I know why the notification doesn't say this. Can you imagine if the notification said, you spend three months a year looking at that? That would change things, but it doesn't do that on purpose, I'm sure. Then I did one more equation.

And it showed that if I lived to be 80 some odd years old, and again, at the time I was 48, I will lose over 12 years of my life looking at a screen. And that was my tipping point. That was the point for me where I was like, okay, I don't want to lose a decade of what I have left staring at this stupid thing. What's it doing to my soul? What's it doing to my brain? What's it doing to my relationships?

I want to know what this is actually doing, the damage it's doing, because I know some of the good things that it does. I help people. It's our jobs. It's our jobs. I talk to people. I know that it helps people, but there's no way we weren't created for this. That began that tip my domino.

Um, and I just, I watched them fall and I, um, made a decision to not look at a single screen. So not a iPhone, an Apple watch, an iPad, a TV, a laptop, not a single screen for basically two months, seven and a half weeks.

And I wanted to see what would happen. So in order to add a little data to it, I got ahold of a neuroscientist in Los Angeles. And I said, would you scan my brain before and after? So I could at least see if there's anything that would happen. This is this is this is wise. This was wise.

Yes, just so I could see. And he's like, absolutely, we'll do it before, we'll do it after. And I'll do some cognitive memory testing on you as well. So I was like, sweet. So I go and he scans my brain. Now, in the middle of these seven and a half weeks, it's not like I just chilled or I didn't move to a cabin for two months and what I

Spent two of the seven weeks at a Benedictine monastery with 21 Benedictine monks. It's St. Andrew's Abbey in Valium, California. Then after those two weeks, I went and lived with an Amish family, a sheep farming family in Mount Hope, Ohio. And listen, I went all in with the monks and the Amish. Like, I became a monk. I became Amish. I'm all in. I'm going to do the thing. Yeah, I'm going to do the thing. I'm going to go on. Then I lived with them.

for two weeks, then my wife picked me up and I lived with my family at home for three weeks. Because I was like, well, they need to see the benefits of whatever's happening. Let me try this with them. They can still be on their screens, but I'll not be on one. So a total of seven and a half weeks and I went back and got my brain re-scanned and ended up writing a book and making a documentary. And I've hit a pain point that

Christians, Buddhists, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, like not a single human being doesn't know this pain point. And so what I'm trying to do, and we talked about this at once yesterday, what I'm trying to do is to approach this conversation in a different way than maybe a lot of other people have approached it. Because John, the truth is when the reason I made this choice to do this is that I went on Amazon, I started just looking up books on screen time and on how they're damaging. And there were all these books.

out there telling me the research shows and this and that, but I couldn't find the book from anyone that had done it. Yes. Yes.

Like I was like, okay, all these people are, these, you know, PhDs, all these people are telling me what it's doing to me, but no one's done it. So I couldn't find the book. So I was like, well, then I'm going to be the guy. I'm the perfect lab rat. Seven and a half hours a day on my phone, TikTok, Instagram, all the things I'm making videos every day, talking to the little camera that's staring at me, getting my identity based on what people think about what I post and likes and shares. And I'm the perfect guinea pig. So let me remove my identity. Let me remove everything.

and live it, and then that's why I'm sitting in front of you right now. And you offer the most compelling, what's next? And I like you, man. I've watched this in real time. I've lived it. I've had my own haunting experience with...

Just golf clapping. Sure. The tech guys, plus the neuroscientists, plus the guys that created digital heroin. They beat me. They have beat me. They won. And they beat my wife, who is a Luddite. She's from the wrong century. They beat us. He said a Luddite. I mean, she is. Yeah, it's so good. And I remember my two-year-old son. Dude, we were crazy. No screens, no TV, nothing. And I remember he was two.

They slid a, it was like a burger joint in nowhere, Texas. And they slid a laminated menu. And his two little non-functioning fingers, he was trying to, and I've never gone. But I told my wife, it's in the water. It's in the water. iPads were barely out. But he was trying to make it bigger. And I was like, oh, this is in the air.

I always, I go to two things that are compelling to me. Number one, when they discovered penicillin, pressures in a pear tree, do this to the death from infection, fell off a map. They solved that problem, right? And the other one is, and I always forget, one of the famous psychology Godfather said, I thought if I took away my client's depression, anxiety, I would heal them. And what I did was I made them empty.

Wow. The anxiety and depression were starting a role. Yeah. And so it was not just about removal. It's about what do we put there? Replace it. And I have not seen that. Wow. It's all been. Here's five steps. Here's the room. And so you give such a compelling vision. I want to start here. Tell me what happened with your brain. Yeah. Yeah.

And this to me takes it out of the woo woo. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Which is why I'm glad I did it. Now, to be fair to everybody that's listening, this wasn't a scientific experiment, right? No, no, no, it's a picture. It's a snapshot. So articles, I mean, it equals one. Yeah. So it was just me, the only lab rat, but let me tell you what happened to the lab rat.

Um, my, my cerebellum healed. He said years in a period of seven weeks. Now he's like, I see, I see, um, traumatic brain injuries. I see healing. So I can see a lot of healing. He's like, it's a, it's significant. Um, but the kicker was my cognitive memory score. This, this is mind blowing. Um, when I did not look at a screen for seven and a half weeks,

Now the cognitive memory testing is it felt like I was in stranger things like I walked into this office with fluorescent lights. It looked like a hospital room with a 1987 IBM computer and it would just flash faces on on the screen. And so it flashed different black and white portraits at me. And I'd watch it for like two minutes. And then it would stop for a minute. This is one of the tests. And then it would flash more faces. And every time I remember to face, I'd have to hit the space bar. Right. So those are the kind of tests that I was

Remembering numbers, numerals, all those things. My memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile. There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment.

So that is profound in a country where a cognitive decline is taking everything from us. And my father has dementia. I've moved my mom and dad a year ago into the house across the street because my father, who's one of the brightest minds, incredible speakers, communicators, now doesn't even recognize me and who I am. And so let me tell you, when I went to the neuroscientist clinic, I was not only

There was this fear. There was this fear when I first got the brain scan that he's gonna be like, oh, bro. I know you want to do this experiment, but you got about five years, right? Because they can see it. You can see it coming. And the breath that filled my lungs when Dr. Ayman walked in and goes, I know your father has dementia and I know you're worried, but I just need to tell you something. I've seen dementia brain. You don't have it. Like, bro,

it was like I could take the biggest breath. So, you know, the brain part was very important to me because I wanted people to know that things were shifting that I wouldn't have been able to tell just by telling the story. Well, it's not woo-woo, and it's not like a... Yeah, it's like a... I felt different. I did a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had that, but here's the kicker. When I was done, I didn't have to go back to his clinic, bro. I...

I was so freakin' sharp by eight weeks. I felt like a different human. I'm glad I went back to get the testing done because it confirmed what I thought had happened. Yeah, my brain changed. My brain healed.

It's so bizarre to me how I miss this. But one of the most magical parts, I think, the most amazing parts of the human body is how it diverts resources to things that are in use, and it takes resources from things that aren't being used. And every minute of every day.

I'm grabbing this phone. Where do I need to go? What's the answer to this thing? What does it look like? And I love you. You told the story. It was so great. It's so hot outside. That's not enough. I need to know the quantitative number that identifies how hot instead of just letting me just let it be. It would be real hot or not super hot. Totally. And so.

God, I miss this that like, of course, that part of your brain atrophy's memory, insight, intuition. Of course, your brain doesn't use it because we've outsourced it. We've outsourced all of it. All of it. Literally all of it. But I think the part I didn't recognize is that's humanity. That's us. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. That's what we were created to be. That's it. And now I've outsourced

Joy yeah, I've outsourced um Justice yeah, I remember I used to tell my students yo when Martin was walking across the bridge they said they're gonna kill you and he said we walk yeah, you guys thumbs up in something is not the same thing right or How many times have I researched the article? I mean the workout yeah instead of just going to exercise yes

or I go for a walk and it doesn't matter what I feel like, it's what does this watch tell me, right? All of it, dude, we've outsourced our humanity. Everything, everything. We've outsourced sex to pornography, we've outsourced discomfort to, and it was this, and I knew this, but you saying, no, no, no, man, it took eight weeks and the brain's like, oh, I get to, when we get to humanity, it's cool. And I spent eight weeks

And I no longer could outsource any of this anymore. So I literally had to like, it was, I legitimately like detoxed, right? Like I, my body and my brain like wasn't used to actually living the way it was created to live. You talk about brain.

health and memory and there's a study done. I feel like this study was like 2016. So this was almost a decade ago that showed London cab drivers. Yeah, their brains are astounding. The ones that use GPS versus the ones that don't. The ones that use GPS versus the ones that use landmarks. The ones that use GPS develop a gray dense matter on their brain that the ones that were using landmarks didn't. So it's literally like we are at your, I mean, you're right. Like when you don't use it, it's slowly

Your brain's like, sweet. I'm going to go work on something else. Yeah. And it just lets it ride. Yeah. All right. So I've done some soul searching recently and I've come to the realization that I actually love the internet. Just kidding. It's the worst. I mean, it is amazing, but it's also the worst. And it doesn't matter if I don't like it because everything in my life in your life takes place on the internet. Our work, our personal messages, our communications, we buy most of our things on the internet now. It's where we

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That's almost 50% off their regular monthly rate plus 14 days of free training. Go to trainwell.net. That's T-R-A-I-N-W-E-L-L. Trainwell.net slash Deloney. I get the crack allure, right? I get the heroin or the fine. I get that. But I always want to look at what's underneath that and

Tell me if I'm wrong, because you've been working with people a long time, and I don't mind being wrong here. I feel like the meta message of the last 20 years has been, maybe last quarter century has been, everything out there is on a road to ruin, and everything out there is bad. Everything out there is you because of what happened to you, because of your lot in life, because of the cards you were dealt, are always gonna be less than. So you sit over here in the corner and patch on the head.

That's just what happened to ya. We got it from here. And the only thing I can think of is the meta message has been. And maybe it's from helicopter parents that we're learning now. We're actually teaching the nervous system of your kid is we don't think you can. Totally. But the cultural message has been, y'all can't. Yeah.

head to the sidelines and we got this. And when that happens, the only way to survive that is to numb it. Absolutely. And that's the only way I can think that made this stupid box, right? I went to an insane, I bought tickets six months ago, toy forgot. I finished an event and I got home and I was exhausted. And I got this little thing like, hey Tim, how's that going? It was a wild, old school hardcore punk band.

And my 14 year old sitting there and like t-shirt, I was like, you knew something crazy. And he's like, what dad? He has no idea that this really exists. And I was like, put on some clothes, dressed in all black, we're going. Yeah, that's amazing. And I said, you're going to hear some language and I'll prove a right, right, right. But I want you to know the high school. I want you to meet high school dad. Yeah. And he walked in in two or three minutes and he just like, he goes, dad, these are your people. And I was like, you're correct. That's awesome.

but there was a sliver of a night when there was an alternative reality. Let's go do a thing. And we laughed. My son, we got out of the car and the show had already started and you could hear the band from outside this little club and he was like, where are we going? And we had wonder and laughter and crazy and dead. This is nuts. And I look over halfway through and he's like trying to play a lot. He listens to country music. Yeah, I know totally.

and do the allure to go home and look at this thing. Yes, yes. And so tell me, am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. And not only are you not wrong, but this black box, whatever, whatever we're calling it, right? This thing, you talked about wonder. You talked about the allure. You were able to savor this moment with your set, like all of these things. Like I want us to, but everybody, everybody at the show,

We're like this. They're watching the show through the screen. Absolutely. Like you need your legends. Absolutely. Right? And you've seen the videos or the photos of there's this one famous photo that shows the juxtaposition between Michael Jordan hitting a game winning shot in like 1992 versus somebody hitting a game winning shot in like 2022. No, they all watch every single person.

in the Michael Jordan, it's just standing there with their mouths hanging open and their hands out like this. And then in the 2022, whatever, every single person has their phone up. And I'm just telling you that we have lost

the ability, and listen, I don't want this to be old doom and gloom, but I do want people to understand. You have to understand like you are legitimately losing decades of your life. Like if somebody is listening to this, that's 30, okay, I'm 50. So like, yeah, I may be losing 12 years, you're losing

30 years of your life. And not only, I don't want you to even think about losing 30 years of your life. I want you to think about like, what are you losing? Not just a life, but like these moments with your son, right?

walking outside, when I would walk outside and it was just hot, and I didn't, I would laugh because I was like, I don't know if it's 97 degrees or 100% humidity, or if it's 98 degrees or zero. I don't care, it's just hot and I know it's too hot to do what I wanted to do. So I'm just gonna, you know, like all of these uniquely human experiences that we were created to do, I got to do again. So the good news is like I fell back in love

with all of these things that we no longer do, that we were created to do as humans, right? Wondering, noticing, savoring, beholding, getting lost and finding our way. Just all of the community, the table, all these things that are gone now, I got to live it again. And so the good news, here's the good news, is I'm now addicted to those things. Yes.

And I'm no longer addicted to my screen. And it's crazy. It didn't take me setting up all these rules. It didn't take me like, OK, I'm going to make my phone lock at 10 PM. And no, it last night, for example.

yesterday. I'll just use a current example. I am putting out my Christmas decorations in my front yard. And the last few years, I've time lapse filled myself because I'm going to make a YouTube video and I'm like, no, no, no, no. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to just going to savor doing this without having to think about a video and all these things I'm doing.

I don't know, maybe 25 neighbors. No, so this was at the point of this recording election day. So election day here in America, and I'm putting up a 25 foot Rudolph in my front yard. The amount of people that just stopped and said, thank you.

I really needed this today of all days. I needed to see a Rudolph. I needed to see Santa. Thank you. And like, these are things, savoring these moments, having these face-to-face human-to-human interactions that normally we wouldn't have, but now like I'm addicted to those things. Those are the things I'm addicted to. Like I want more of that. So I pick up my phone less. And to get nerdy for two seconds.

I often tell people, if you don't have a tribe, if you don't have people, if you don't have close friends, your body would be failing you if they let you sleep all night, because you're all you got. That's wired, that's how we're built.

The peace you gave to your nervous system by making eye contact and waving and saying hello to 25 different people gave peace to your body in a really anxious moment. Yes. Right. Yeah. And it went home. Yeah. And we've taken that from ourselves. We've taken it. It's gone. We've these screens.

I mean, I'll just say that it's not real community. It's not. It's not. And there's people that are listening to this that, and I get this pushback a little bit sometimes, where people are like, well, I don't live in a tiny town. I don't have a lot of friends. I don't have, and so my phone helps me make friends. It helps me. And I'm like, I'm not saying that you can't make a friend on your phone, that you can't, but it's just not, it's not what it was supposed to be. Right.

And I tasted what it's supposed to be again. I don't ever want to taste the other thing again. It's not real. Well, so the magic that you propose here is, gosh, I just put this together just now. So I wrote a book about anxiety. And the whole thing was, I think, anxiety is usually right. So instead of trying to fix this,

create this life and your body will turn the alarms off. Similarly, instead of creating a bunch of rules, only four minutes a day, use this super planner with 40 ribbons in it, do this.

What if you created a life? Yes. It was rich again. Yes. And it's awkward and we'll be boring at first. Yes. And you'll have to face some demons like you mentioned this one like silence. Yes. You'll have to make peace with whatever demons you got. Yep. Yep. But what if you created a life that made this thing obsolete? Yes.

No, it really is and it's easy to make to honestly, I mean, I say easy. It's not complicated to make that life again. You don't have to move to Monastery. I did it for you. You don't have to go to Commons Farm. I did it for you. But I have laid out probably 17 to 20 things in my book that I think give people handlebars on what they can do to live this life, right? To get back to

being truly human again without our phones. I was joking this morning to the staff how we trust Yelp now more than we, it's taken our ability away to go to a restaurant that we actually just want to go try. It's like, well, I checked Yelp and there's a one star review. I'm never going there again. Not going there again. Some dude named Bob with taste buds that aren't like yours made that decision for you. You didn't. And so for me, I just think I have created

Through writing this book, I've given people handlebars on how to wonder again, let wonder happen. I think when I was, I think I'm a little older than you, but when I was in high school, I'd go to the CD store to go listen to music. And so I'd go to the CD store, not on my phone. I'd go and I'd walk up and down the aisles. And back in the day, you'd have to take the demo CD, put it in CD player, put the headphones on, and I'll never forget walking down the aisle once.

and seeing the most beautiful woman cut out that I've ever seen by this new CD. And I was like, who is that with her golden locks? I was like 17, 18. And I walked up closer and I said, Mariah Carey. And I was like, who's this Mariah Carey goddess? And I put the CD on and I listened to it and I was like.

Who is this? Yeah, she's an angel. I didn't know what's the... Then I took the CD to the person at the front and I was like, hey, do you know who this is? No, we just got it in. So they couldn't tell me. So I bought the CD, I went home and I just listened to it for weeks. Discovery. And I'm just listening. And I'm like, I don't know who this is. And then on MTV like three weeks later, there was like a three minute interview with her and I got three more minutes.

That's so unique to human. Just figuring things out. All of that is gone now. And I got to do it again with the monks and with the Amish. I got to literally live the purest existence. When I got back, my daughter said, because they got to live with me for three weeks without a phone.

At the end, I, because I, so I had a Sony camera with me. I was kind of self-documenting the whole thing. I asked my daughter, I said, so like, how's it been? And I'll never forget, she was 17 at the time. She said, this is the purest version of you I've ever experienced. God Almighty. That's it. And when parents ask, hey, my kids are so anxious. My kids won't sleep. My kids won't.

My answer is always, they absorb the tension in your home. Absolutely. That's the air they breathe. Yeah. And to think about that comment, that gives me goosebumps. Yeah, I do. To think that my son would say, I got to meet my dad. Yes. Not the quantified version of you. No. And they always optimized how many calories are we cutting it? Yeah. I just got to meet my dad. Yeah, dude. That's it. And to think on a punk rock floor. Yes. My son was like, oh, I got to meet my dad. Yes.

And thinking my eight-year-old daughter still doesn't really know her dad. And we tried to solve it in all these other bananas ways. You talked about something that got me choked up. And I immediately pulled my phone out and I texted my wife, here are some changes that are happening right now. Talk about dinner time. Yes.

So we know the stats, right? And this is an unpopular stats. I don't care. Families that eat together. The kids have lower mental health challenges. The family has lower conflict and the kids do better academically over time. Absolutely. That's what the data says, right? Yeah, it's there. Is it data or data? You're the... Both. Okay. Depends on how pretentious you want to be. I want to sound like John. I don't have a lot of friends. So I'm at the monastery.

Every meal, breakfast and dinner are in silence. Lunch you can talk. Okay, so that's weird. If you've ever eaten with somebody and all you can do is hear yourself chew, it's in swallow, it's like the same. I immediately like...

I'll set myself on fire. So like meals already were weird with the monster. Just chewing and slurping. Then I got to the Amish and bro, like I just remember that first morning I show up at Willis' farmhouse and after I was sleeping in a tiny house on their farm. And so I walked over to the main house and he's like, all right, Kathy's got breakfast for us. So I was like, oh sweet. And it was gigantic spread. Like I mean, you know, farm breakfast. But we sat there for like an hour eating.

and talking. And I'm like, bro, don't we have to farm? And there's something, you know, and then lunch was like an hour and a half. And then dinner was like two hours. And there was like, I don't know, 20 people at dinner, you know, other neighbors that had come over. And this happened day after day after day. No meal was longer or was shorter than an hour. And most dinners were longer than two.

And I just was like, Willis, why? Did you get antsy? Oh, bro. I was like, let's go. Let's go, let's go. Could I finish my bacon and eggs in seven minutes? I get antsy. You telling me that? Listen, listen, I finished my bacon and eggs in seven minutes. We sat there another 52, 53 minutes. And I was like, Willis, I'm done with my meal. He's like, no, you've just eaten. You haven't had a meal.

And I was like, what? How long did I even sit on that? Yeah. You've just eaten. You haven't had a meal. We don't have meals. We don't have meals. We don't have meals. And they have meals. And I was like, why is this taking so long? He's like, Carlos, we don't have Facebook. We don't have Instagram. We don't have Twitter. The only way we can visit and know what's happening in our community is over a meal. So every meal is an hour to two hours long. When I was doing research for the book after I got home, this was the kicker.

The average American meal in 1923 was 90 minutes long. That average length for a meal in America was 90 minutes long, 1923. 2023, it's 12 minutes. 12 minutes. That's eating. That's not kneeling. And we wonder, again, why we can't have conversations with each other? Here's the thing, the Amish are the Amish for a reason.

I am not Amish for a reason. So therefore, just knowing that we have a very large spectrum of beliefs, myself versus the Amish. I don't believe everything the Amish believe or else I'd be Amish. So as we're having these two hour meals, we're talking about the most hot topic, geopolitical, you don't, I mean, we were talking about all the stuff with the Amish.

We disagree on so much Willis and I, but bro, you cannot hate somebody for 90 minutes over a steak. It's too tired. And so we talk about something we disagree, and then we end up somewhere where we agree. And it's the next thing you know, I've got this cadence of disagreeing over something, but agreeing over what we love in the food and the relationship, and we've just lost that in America.

We lost the ability to do that. And so again, that's another uniquely human experience that is gone because we're either scrolling on our phone during a meal or they're just too fast. And I think what I'm rejecting in real time right now, not to think through this over a couple of months, but what we have done is not progress. No, we've de-evolved. Yeah, and I can see you're an efficient guy. Do you like efficiency?

I'm at constant war, which means I don't have peace because I'm laid everywhere because I love savoring. And yet I've plugged myself into these systems that don't savor and that don't. So a thing that happened when I moved here, it took this job. And actually it was a point of contention for a while here until we finally broke it down. Like we had a meeting with some folks. And I said, the single rudest thing.

in my fiber of being is when somebody's in a conversation is to cut that off. You let the conversation end. And they were saying, and they were right, the single rudest thing you can do is tell somebody, I will be there at three and they show up at 255 and you roll in at 340. That's disrespectful to dishonest. And I was convicting.

And two things can be right. They're both right. They're both right. And so it wasn't them. It was a matter of, oh, I had tried to plug myself into a system without being honest about what the cost was going to be. And I was trying to hang on to these things while still trying to extract the benefits of this thing.

And so I've been on the, I'd say I've been on 36, 45 months, three or four years of the optimization train. Every minute, everything, is it planned, is it this? How fast can you get there? If you're not growing your diet, like if you're not wasting that whole thing. And it was a couple of years ago when I was meeting with a buddy as a medical researcher, and we were talking about growth. And he's like, that is cancer.

Cancer is growth that just keeps growing. Yeah. If the growth isn't for a thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Then you can't. Yes. Oh, that's good. And I was like, oh, gosh. OK, I need to exhale on that. Yeah. But yeah, so efficiency has become

I don't know. It's not real. Well, yeah, it's not. And we've so... It's a hack. Yeah, we've so fallen in love with efficiency. And I just, when I was with the monks in the Amish, I just was like, yes, they're efficient with what they have, but that's not the goal. The goal's not. The goal's not to be efficient.

Um, you know, I feel like their, their goal is just to live this peaceful life into like, you know, Willis, I'll never forget we're, we're on the, on the back of the tractor and we're being pulled by these gigantic, forgigantic like Clydesdale horses, right? Plow in the field and we're just sitting there and I'll never forget. I turned to him and he's like, you know, Carlos, every day I'm out here on this horse, telling this field, birds are flying around me, I think.

I'm just so blessed. This is, there's a lot more efficient ways he can be pulling that field. There's a lot more efficient ways that the Amish can be doing a lot of things, but they've made a decision to maybe not be so efficient so they can be a little bit more human. And which is why I ask you that question, I ask myself that question all the time. It's like, am I trying to like hack my life away into like this thing? Or am I just gonna live it? You can live your life or your life will live you. And I just feel like so many of us are lives are living us instead of us living our lives.

I don't know, man. I just think that, you know, watching the Amish live the way that they lived with such purpose and such community. Well, it changed me forever.

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Walk us through, give me a couple ideas. How do you, if this is resonating, you know, you know, you know. And okay, your job's on a laptop, fine. Your job is in front of two big screens because you're a data person or whatever. Or jobs like ours. It's on a phone.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I did a talk based on my book to a bunch of video game developers. Okay, okay. That's their planet. Their planet is like, not only video games like on a console, but like VR, right? So like these people are not, they're immersed. So here's the no phone guy coming in to talk to video. And it's like, listen, it's,

It's more about falling back in love. It's not about the phones. I'm telling you, it's not about the phones. When you start falling back, so you're counting on your screen or whatever, a simple thing. If you're going to watch a movie with your family, the only screen you're allowed to watch is the movie screen.

Yes. Here we go. So now what have you done? You've cut, you've severed another screen out of your, and so now, because most people watch TV and movies now with a screen in their hands. Dude, I have, because I'm so sophisticated, I have social media on another phone because I'm more pure. I have both of them up.

Last night, I'll watch the election results. I'm texting on multiple text threads. And then I'm scrolling in. Yeah, so there we go. So that's simple. Watch a movie, just watch the movie. Be with your family, talk about the movie, laugh, just watch it. You're not there. Second thing, this is probably the most, has been the most powerful thing for me. You talk about being present. Now, again, I know not everybody can do this. I was talking to a bunch of nurses like in hospice care a few weeks ago and,

One of the single greatest things that I've done is I place my phone on permanent, do not disturb.

My phone, the only phone calls I allow, the only buzzing that ever happens on my phone. My phone will never buzz unless my wife, kids or my mom calls me, calls me, not text me. They know if they text me, I'm not gonna know until I look at my phone. So that doesn't mean that I'm not getting notifications. They're still on my screen when I decide to look at my phone. But for a year and a half, my phone has been on permanent, do not disturb, which I'm sure Whitney, my assistant or my manager or my wife. I'm sure it drives some people crazy because

Oh, my phone isn't in charge of me anymore. It never buzzes. I was, I was with the monks, day 10, sitting in father Francis's office, pouring my heart out. He's like, yes, young man, all these books around. He's his big, big robe and his phone. I'll never forget because bzzz, bzzz, while I'm like, and he's like, excuse me, young man. And he picks up his phone and he's like, Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Hold on. He puts it back down and I was like, did this monk

Did this monk just do? And he's like, oh, I guess I need to read your book, you know? But I spent two months and never had one ding or buzz on my body to take me away from being present with a person in front of me.

When I got home, I was like, I have to continue this. This has to be. So like, I will never be with somebody and my brain go away from the conversations we're in. Even though they don't, they didn't hear the buzz in my pocket. My brain goes to my phone for one second and then back to the conversation, I've left into an alternate universe. And so that's one thing I've done. Whatever it looks like for you to turn, do not disturb on.

That's been a game changer for me. Um, so now I'm in charge of when I'm picking my phone up again. You know, I, I talked about this morning, uh, to the staff, um, buying an alarm clock, you know, like, uh, the Harvard study showed that the last 30 minutes were awake before we fall asleep in the first 30 minutes we wake up. We're consuming more content than like my great grandparents generation consumed in a month. Right.

So, and again, we're running why we're so anxious. So just buying an alarm clock, plugging your phone in in another room, read a book before you go to bed. And so you're just save yourself an hour, right? So can this is the unpopular conversation? Yeah. I'm trying to think of the right way to say it. I'm just going to be disrespectful. Yeah.

If you live in a community, it's a rural community. You don't have tons of people around. Absolutely. The neuroscience still applies. If you have a really busy job, the truth is the truth is the truth. If the thought of, so here's the thing that happened here. I'll use myself as the

I never got home before 7 o'clock, maybe 6.30. If I was like, my wife would be like, hey, when I was working higher, I was always in the article to read another budget to do another student crisis to write out. And I was here and my boss, Dave, was doing a late night media hit.

He pops in, everybody's gone. I'm here at 6.30. Because first and last year, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he says, what are you doing here? And I was like, I'm finishing up these articles. I was reading mental health articles because he hired me to be a mental health guy. And he said, go home. All right, dude. Yeah, I'm finishing up. I'll be gone.

He comes into the little complex and he gets real close and he said, I said, go home. And he said it in a kind of a paternal way. I was like, oh, I'm grown man. And I looked at him and he said this, if you are no good there, you'll be no good here. And then he said, you will not use the name Ramsey as an excuse to not be a present husband and father. Go home. Wow.

I went home. So the next day, I was like, I'm gonna not do my work. I'm just gonna go home and everybody goes home. Carlos, I got home at like 5.30, 5.15.

and I realized I did not know how to be a dad and a husband from five o'clock to seven o'clock. There was a rhythm of my family that I was completely unaware of. And I injected my chaos into that. I was like, hey, son, what are you working on? I was like, dad, I'm going to homework. My daughter, I'm like, hey, and she's like, ah, in my life was like, hey, everybody's just quiet when you get home. They've had crazy days.

So if you're thinking about, what am I gonna do, just put my phone away? And I'm gonna have to face that marriage. I'm gonna have to face three kids that I know they love me, but we don't like each other, or I'm even not interact with them. Yes, this is so good.

You have to go there. I guess that's what I'm asking you to do is you gotta head into that. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's where the healing is, because that's where your life's on the other side of that. Absolutely, man. Is that fair? That's very fair. If you don't like what you see in the mirror, you gotta go have a conversation with your doctor. Yes. Or with like what, like we're avoiding reality and I think there's a reckoning with reality. Well, and that reckoning is what people are scared of. It's terrifying. And so, but I want to let everybody know that on the other side of that reckoning is so much freedom and peace. I know.

It's so much and I was the same way when I got home and I had no screams with my family like

We're always going to talk to each other. And my kids are like, Dad, will you stop talking to me? You know, like I just was like, hey, how's that? You know, and they weren't used to me being that present. And I'm telling you, it presents in solitude. It feels like a reckoning because it is going to be a reckoning for all of you know, and the CPA that's on their laptop, eight hours a day, you know, all I know, nurses that are on call 24 seven, you have to have your phone on, you can't put it on, do not serve.

There's caveats, right? But I promise you, every single person listening to this knows the one thing they can do to do the next right thing to get a little bit of that freedom back in their life when it comes to these screens. You all have an opportunity to do it. What's it gonna be? What's the one choice you're gonna make today? And again, I tell people, do one hour on a Saturday with no screen. Just start there. That alone gives some people a heart palpitations. And when you start doing this,

Admit to yourself. I got a problem. Yeah. Yeah, it's okay. It's like when I'm like, I'm not gonna eat candy for two weeks in 30 minutes in. I'm like, oh. I know, totally. I got a problem. You know what I mean? I got a problem.

It just is, own it. Yeah, own it. And just trust me when I tell you, trust me, trust me, because I may be the only person that you're listening to this, I'll say that you know me now. The only person you know that's actually done this for two months, I'm telling you on the other side of that reckoning, I love that you call their reckoning, on the other side is you're gonna fall back in love with wondering and savoring and being truly human that you're just,

You're going to be up. This is how I like to explain it. I moved to Nashville. This is what it's going to feel like. I put up a photo this morning of stars that it doesn't only work on God. Yeah. And so like that doesn't really work on like a podcast. But let me let me explain it this way. This is what it felt like when I finally got.

unaddicted to my phone. I moved to Nashville, 2010, and my wife told me about three weeks in that I'm wheezing every night. She's like, hey, you sound like Darth Vader when you're sleeping. And I was like, what do you mean? She's just like, like I can hear you breathing like heavy, like maybe you have asthma. And I was like, maybe I don't have asthma. I've never had asthma in my whole life. I'm 40 years old. She's like, he should go to anologist. So I went to a doctor and he did an allergy test on me.

I said, my wife says I'm wheezing. I don't hear myself wheezing. I feel fine. I'm working out every day. I'm running. He said, well, let me do an allergy test. So he tested my, all the allergies. He's like, dude, you're allergic to Nashville. Like everything, every tree, every piece of grass. He's like, let me do a breathing test on you.

So he had me blow into this tube and he goes, man, you're only using 60% of your lung capacity. I said, what? I feel fine. He goes, you feel fine because you're used to it. You're used to not breathing. But let me give you something. Then he pulled out this inhaler. I've never used an inhaler in my life. He's like, shake it up. I want you to take a hit.

And the second breath you take, your lungs are going to go from 60% to 100%. I said, okay, whatever. I did it. The next breath I took, bro, after months of living in Nashville.

I took a breath at 100% after only taking a breath at 60 and I almost started to weep because I didn't know I was suffocating. I start feeling right now. And this is what I'm telling people is when you do this, you may be thinking, I don't need to do this, I'm fine. I'm telling you when you take that breath after you're inhaler, you're going to realize this is what it's like to breathe and I haven't been breathing.

So there's another side to it. And that's this. And I always want to be honest. When I tell people, like, hey, you're heading on a journey, it's always day three, right? You're like, I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're new workout program. It's like, I'm so sore. I can't move. I was having lunch with a couple of fancy, fancy, fancy pants as you just got bank accounts. Not with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was not the cheeseburger car.

One of the guys at the table didn't understand what I was doing. And I'm new to this whole thing. I don't really understand what I'm doing either. And they're like, so you know that squinty, like looking at you like you're stupid, like they're gonna squint their way to figuring you out. And like, what are you doing? And I'm like, well, I travel around to speak. And he goes, I'd never hire you to come talk to my company. And I was like, why? I'm gonna talk to companies for it. So you don't really think about marketing sales. And I was like, I wouldn't talk to you about marketing sales. Right, right, right.

And he said, what are you talking about? Yeah, yeah. And then I just throw in spaghetti at a wall. And I said, I bet your kids don't like being in the room with you. Oh, Jesus.

And it went. Oh, wow. And I said, or, or you walk in and your kids either pick up their phones or they just get up and head to the room. And you say, that's just them being teenagers. And you know, it's not. And it was one of, he leaned back and he smiled real big in that way that only super rich people know when they got had and he smiled and he goes, you got my attention, right? Here's the, here's the reality. Yeah. Reckoning. There's peace on the other side of a reckoning, but reckoning's are hell. Reckoning is a reckoning.

And there will be a whole bunch of people that put their phones down and they realize their marriage has been dead for 10 years. They realize their kids are not okay. They realize their health is precarious, right? Or they hate their job and they don't have a path. And so I think there's a, I don't wanna use religious language, but there's a holiness to use or refinement to

The only path towards a real life is through the middle of that fire. Not avoiding it or walking around it. And so if you can put your phone down and look at your spouse and say, look, we got a choice. We can walk away. This is me, my wife. We can be done. Or we've chosen our way into this. We can choose an amazing something else and it's going to suck, but we can choose that too. Absolutely.

I guess I feel a sense of re-empowerment. There's something about put your phone down, meaning, do you get to choose what happens next? Yes. Well, and that, you know, again, not to revolve around religious language, but, bro, I had to come to a reckoning when I didn't have my phone, and I'm with these monks, and all of a sudden, like, I feel like God's silent, and I feel like, I'm like, what is this fairy tale I believe in? Next thing you know, like, everything fell apart. Yeah. And I'm like, I couldn't Google it to put it back together.

That's right, because it wasn't about answers. It wasn't about the chapter in the first. It wasn't about the, oh gosh, I'm sitting here with a swatterful yarn. I'm telling you, bro, it was, I had numerous reckonings you can read about in the book, but definitely a lot of reckoning and a lot of freedom on the other side.

I can choose to continue to live at 60% lung capacity and that life is hard. I can choose to say, okay, I'm going to figure this thing out. I'm going to be a band of people and we're going to figure it out and that's going to be real hard. But I don't think there's an easy option anymore. There's not an easy option. But just like that screen time notification came across my screen,

there's an aha moment waiting for every single person. The only thing I ask people to do is to do the math. So just do your math and do your math, see how many years you're losing of your life. Legitimately, I should have called my book, get half your life back. Because if you even just cut it in half.

I can legitimately say on this microphone, be on the shadow of it out, you will get half of your life that you were losing back. And if that's not motivating enough, like to think like, gosh, I can actually live 10 more years. Well, maybe not in length, but in life, in depth, you know, like it is. Yeah. So, you know, if you're a developer, if you're a

Like, chew on it. Let this be hard. It is hard. Like this isn't. And if you don't think you're worth another half, for God's sake, go talk to somebody. Yes, absolutely. Because you're not a burden on your worth. You're worth having that kind of debt. And if that terrifies you, that's the healing. Absolutely. You're worth the work, right? Yeah. Yeah. What are some things besides an alarm clock and a newspaper? Yeah. Rattle off some things that are going to sound like we are rolling back to clock a little bit. But I think it's the new progress. Yeah. I'm going to challenge you. OK.

I rarely, if ever, now drink my coffee out of it to go cup. If I go to a Starbucks, I need to let everyone know they have ceramic mugs. I was in Italy and I went to a gas station on a road trip, middle nowhere. And I went in to get it to go coffee. And they looked at me like I was crazy. I was like, can I get a espresso to go and he's like to go? And I looked down this middle nowhere country gas station and there's three

One old man, one kind of maybe 30 year old woman and someone else, leaning against the counter with their little ceramic mugs, sipping their espresso. And I thought to myself, if I don't have three and a half minutes to drink my coffee before it gets lukewarm out of a ceramic mug, then I'm moving too fast. So literally every single coffee shop I go to, I ask for a ceramic mug and I never get it to go. So that there's one thing that I do.

Savoring is something that I think we need to redevelop our skill set. We can get used to, you're in this world, you get used to good things. Something was great and then you have it all the time. It doesn't feel so great anymore. One of the things I now do is when I look at my life and I see something that I've gotten used to how good it is, I walk away from it for a second and I come back to it. Why? Well, if you walk into a bakery and it smells amazing,

Oh, it smells so good. And you get that croissant and you start drinking your coffee and you eat croissant. Well, five minutes later, you can't smell the croissant anymore. But someone else walks in and they go, it smells amazing. And you're like, I don't smell it anymore. What do you have to do? You have to walk out of the bakery. You have to come back in to experience it again. So I try to do that all the time. I try to like walk away and then come back in so I can recognize that I've gotten used to the goodness. Can we double click on that real quick? Yeah, sure.

Maybe the purpose of meals is not to go to Yelp and have a perfect meal every time. Maybe a big part of meals is going, that was terrible. That was great. I'm not going to eat there again. Or how many of us have, I remember seeing Paul Blart, I laughed.

And then I ran across a review, and I was like one tomato or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember feeling stupid. Yeah, totally. Nope. Totally. I get to think that movie was funny. That's right. Tommy Boy's funny. Yep, you get to. It's okay. It's okay. Yes. And so maybe the perfect isn't the perfect date and the perfect sex and the perfect isn't. No, no. Maybe life is this. Oh, yes, man. And that's the death. That's the richness. Get lost. How about this?

Don't put Chick-fil-A in your freaking GPS because you know how to get there. And the only reason you're putting it in there is, what if there's traffic and I can get it faster? Wait, no, just drive to Chick-fil-A. Stop putting everything in your, so many people tell me now they're like, yeah, so weird. Like if I'm driving a church or driving the office, sometimes I'll put my office in my GPS, even though I drive every day because I'm like, what if there's traffic? And I'm like, what if there's traffic?

Maybe you're supposed to sit and be still for a while. Something else that I do. If I'm ever, I don't do this when I'm flying, but when I'm driving now, I no longer listen to podcasts in the car. I only listen to podcasts if I'm on a trip, if I'm flying. You're going to have to figure this out for yourself. But solitude, we're the first generation of people walking the earth that have the opportunity to completely

get rid of solitude. This has never happened in the history of humanity. If anyone was traveling alone from point A to point B, up until 19, the one that car radio was invented, they had solitude.

we no longer have solitude. And so start making a decision. You're going to go on a walk without your AirPods. You're going to go on a walk without your phone. You're going to drive from point A to point for 30 minutes without any content consumption. So like even those little things I think can help you recapture this lost art of being human. That's literally the subtitle is how seven screen free weeks with monks and homage farmers helped me recover the lost art of being human. Cause it's an art that I feel like we all know, and some people are listening to this. Honestly, if you're 20 years old,

You've never known life. You don't know this. You don't even know this. It sounds like we're talking about living on the moon. Yes, and I'm telling you, give it a shot. Yes. Try it. And you're gonna be like, you're gonna have that hit of the inhaler. And it's the, I remember being under a tree in the field when I heard this, and it freaked me out. Yeah. Dude, it was a bird. Yes.

Bird wings make noise. The big, the bird is loud noise. I'd never heard it. Yes. And it made me wonder, what else am I missing? What else? And so yeah, occasionally going to walk without your. Yeah.

And right down, you, you, I'm not going to spoil it here. You got to get the book, but I'm going to start keeping this going to sound cheesy. Yeah. For all you beef. Okay. I'm going to try keeping a wonder journal. Yes. Stuff that I just rediscovered or discovered that I didn't know. Yes. I didn't know you could hear birds flop their wings. Exactly. I love that. Yeah. I didn't know there was this many different colors of flowers. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm going to start keeping a wonder. I didn't know this meal could taste that good or that bad.

Right, I didn't know it could be that bad. You know, I mean, gosh, even I talked about earlier today, slowing down to what I call Godspeed in miles an hour. Like, what in your life can you slow down? You know, when when when COVID happened and everyone's shut down and we're stuck at home, what everyone's walking, setting my neighborhood, my neighborhood looked like Central Park. And my family and I would walk around the neighborhood and so funny, I've lived there for seven years and I was like,

The first walk, I was like, what's that? Smells like a rose garden. And I looked in my neighbor's backyard that I've never seen before because I drive by at 30 miles an hour, but I'm walking and I literally smelled something I never smelled before. And I realized they've got an entire rose garden. And oh my gosh, they've got bees back there. I was noticing things I never would have because I slowed down. I'm telling you, we're missing so much.

Last thing, I was at the Atlanta airport and I decided after I wrote this book to count out of 100 people coming up the escalator, how many people were looking at the phone and how many people weren't.

I want to take a guess as to how many out of 100 people were looking at their phone. Is it 90? 100. Holy smokes. 100. And I just thought to myself, we're literally living our life looking straight down. Gaze up and glance down. It shifts things. I started a practice in airports. I'm in there so much. Yeah. And this sounds ridiculous. And it's hard for me to even to explain it to non-therapist.

There's a thing in therapy where if you're meeting a client and you feel yourself come fall asleep getting bored, like you're struggling to stay connected. Yeah. Is to imagine.

this sounds cheesy, almost care bear style. Like my chest is connecting, like there's a beam from my heart to yours. And I'm gonna consciously, and it was, it became this, it started as a cheesy, like kind of rolling my eyes, and then it became magic, which is walking down the, just the regular airport and looking at somebody and saying, I love that guy.

I love that woman, and you start to see those faces, and you see their exhaustion, you see their joy, they're seeing their nervousness, but it was just a simple practice of, I love that guy, I love that woman, I love that guy. But it became this, I will do a thing so that I see the people that I'm walking by, and it makes me slow down. And you can't do that if you're not looking up. And you can't do that with earbuds shoved in.

All of my house is paid for for people listening to me. So I get what I'm asking. Same, same. And I think there's a time and a place, but I think there's something about plugging back in. Yeah, absolutely. This is one of those moments where my family's life, my life, my marriage will be different today because of your time and the work that you put in. So thank you for that. I don't say that lightly. Thank you. I appreciate you. Unfortunately for you now, you got a new friend. We will have cheeseburger time.

Yeah, and we'll go, we'll go to a punk rock show. I got black skinny jeans. I will, I will hold you. I don't wear skinny. No, no, no. It's the one time I can pull out my secret cargo shorts. Yeah, yeah, the cargo shorts. The one pair I want to get rid of. You want to teach me how to do that. I was, I was looking at NWA. So like, you know, we will just train. Oh, yes. Hey, appreciate you, brother. Dude, thanks for having me.

Good folks, the modern world exposes us to things that our bodies had no idea even existed up until just a few decades ago. And I don't mean endless streams of cat videos or AI influencers. I'm talking about screens in our homes and offices, fluorescent lights, EMFs. These things can affect our mood, our sleep, our anxiety, and more. And that's why I'm so excited to partner with Bond Charge, a world leader in red light therapy and EMF blocking gear.

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That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E, bondcharge.com slash Deloney and use coupon code Deloney to say 15%. Go right now. All right, we're back. I hope you enjoyed that conversation and I hope you have already thrown your phone into the river. But before you do that, you can click on the link below to get all of his books and to find out more about Carlos where he might be out on tour and everything like that.

The book is a worthy read. It's a fascinating read and it's good, so go check it out. And just make a commitment to yourself. I'm gonna turn my phone off more. I'm gonna be present with my family and kids more. And if you find yourself present with your family and kids and it's awkward, it's electric, you don't know what to do next. That's right, get some questions for humans. Go for a walk, go dig a hole, go play in the mud, go throw stuff at each other. I don't know, play Candy Land for God's. I don't care what you do. Make a commitment.

to live life on the other side of the screen. Love you guys. Stand schooled on your drugs. We'll see you soon. Bye. All right, it's the new year and it's a perfect time to begin focusing on your most important relationship, your marriage. Every marriage needs intentional time and energy so that both of you can be aligned in co-creating the life that you both want.

That's why my friend Rachel Cruz and I have teamed up to offer our amazing money and marriage getaway retreat in Nashville, Tennessee, this time over Valentine's Day weekend. You and your spouse will head to Nashville for three days of laughter, hard conversations, maybe a few tears, intentional time together, and lots of practical teaching.

At Money and Marriage, we don't shy away from anything. We have sessions on sex and intimacy, communication, how to fight, money, building a new future together, and more. This is my favorite live event that I'm ever a part of, and I hope you'll grab one of the few remaining tickets. You are worth an extraordinary marriage.

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