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You Might Enjoy: The School of Greatness

The Iced Coffee Hour

October 18, 2026

Introducing Your Anxiety Is a Smoke Alarm, Not a Broken Brain | Dr. John Delony from The School of Greatness. What if your anxiety is a smoke alarm, and your body is working perfectly?

Speakers Lewis Howes, John Delony

TopicsEntrepreneurshipBusiness

Lewis Howes (0:01)

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Welcome back everyone to The School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dr. John Delony in the house. Good to see you, sir. Thank you. Welcome to the show. You are a double PhD and a mental health expert who works with a lot of people who are struggling. People who are hurting, suffering, and struggling with things they're aware of or things are not even aware of, but they know something is stuck inside of them and you help them really understand the anxiety, the suffering and the struggle or the stuckness in them. You help them be aware of it and you help them have steps on how to break free of it. So I'm so excited that you're here. You've got an amazing new book out called Building a Non-Anxious Life. It's available right now.

I'm curious, what do you think is the root of anxiety for people? Is it a societal thing? Is it a family history thing? Is it they have too many options? Is it that they have no options in their life? Is it that they have bad self-talk? What is the root of anxiety? And how can we be aware of that so that we're not thinking that we are bad or wrong? But this is actually something that a lot of people deal with.

John Delony (4:27)

So the true honest answer to your question is yes.

Yes. Anxiety is simply a smoke alarm in your kitchen, letting you know that something's on fire. And it can be, your back bedroom could be on fire, your bathroom could be on fire, your couch could be on fire. It's just letting you know there's smoke in the house. And so I love how you ask that question because if you're anxious, it often means, if you're anxious, it often means your body's working perfectly. It's letting you know. I've identified something in the ecosystem or a number of things that you're not safe, you're not okay.

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