Book Review: Own Your Past, Change Your Future by Dr. John Delony
Delony’s advice is "good, practical" and useful but not new.
Own Your Past, Change Your Future by Dr. John Delony. Narrated by Dr. John Delony. Ramsey Press, 2022. 7 hours (approx.).
I learned of Own Your Past, Change Your Future when I heard Dr. John Delony interviewed on The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. I decided to read it when Peterson declared the book had “good, practical advice” for making friends. But I was frustrated to find that most of the book had no practical advice on that topic. In fact, friend making is only discussed at length in the 10th chapter.
But Dr. Delony’s book isn’t about making friends. It’s about changing your life, of which making friends is just one component. Even so, “good, practical advice” only constitutes the second half of the book. The first half is devoted to understanding mostly untrue stories.
Delony says, “In my search to find out why everyone is struggling I found that almost everything we’ve been told is wrong.” What we have been told - or, sometimes, have told ourselves - make up the stories of our past that in turn shape our lives.
One such false story: debt is normal, a tool or even an opportunity. In fact, it is a trap, a prison. Anxiety is experienced when one feels out of control, and debt puts control in the hands of the creditor. This leads Delony to conclude, “... a person cannot be psychological whole or well while owing someone else money.”
Another false story: calls for freedom and responsibility have been distorted into “you are all that matters; that you can have it all and do it all, all by yourself; that you don’t need other people.” This has created a pandemic of loneliness. Delony says that according to the doctors Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo:
Loneliness has been associated with personality disorders and psychosis, suicide, impaired cognitive performance and cognitive decline, increased risk of Alzheimer’s and increases of depressive systems.
Moreover, Cacioppo found an association with a 26% increase in premature death.
Some stories are true. In Delony’s case he:
[S]tole and lied a lot as a kid. I violated the trust of my friends. I took the wrong job. I didn’t show up as a husband when I should have. I told too many jokes that were not only not funny but down right marginalizing and heartbreaking. I took on six figures of student loan debt. I’ve done things I shouldn’t. I did those things.
All this reminds me of existentialism as I understand it from Robert G. Olson’s A Short Introduction to Philosophy. Olson limits his discussion to the main ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
Sartre’s “being-in-itself” or “facticity” refers to “things as they are prior to and independent of human observation or awareness.” Humans can know this facticity in moments of anguish during which we see the world as “pure matter or solid being altogether meaningless and without value.”
Our consciousness “gives rise” to the world by projecting chosen values or goals onto the inert matter. This choice of values or goals means one is “absolutely responsible for the world in which he lives.” Moreover, “the circumstances of his life do not compel him, since in choosing his world, he chose the circumstances of his life.” The authentic person assumes full responsibility for his life and courageously carries the burden of his freedom.
To put it more bluntly: all the shit in your life is your own damn fault. The upshot is you can fix it.
To that end, Delony suggests the readers understand their unique stories by writing about them in a special notebook dedicated to that project. He offers a number of questions to facilitate the progress. How long are you on your phone? How much debt do you have? How often do you meet or call your friends? And so on.
To own the past, one must also “acknowledge reality,” as Delony puts it. This means grieving losses. The losses may be small or large, but in either case they add up to a backpack full of bricks. Each brick must be analyzed with “radical” honesty, and then, hopefully, thrown away.
Once the past has been evaluated, grieved and dropped, Delony continues with how to author a better future. He begins with making friends, the principal reason why I read the book.
First, friend-making must be a priority and a commitment. Second, get out of the house and into places where there are people. Third, connect with them on shared experiences or activities such as ball games, classes, church and so on. Fourth, show hospitality and make the first move by, for example, inviting someone over for dinner. Fifth, say yes to invites or new adventures. Sixth, help people or volunteer at a charity.
This advice may, indeed, be “good” and “practical,” but it’s not new with the possible exception of “go first.” More useful was Delony’s pep talk: it will be weird and awkward; it will take practice; do it anyway.
Delony moves on to changing your thoughts. “[I]f you want to change your thoughts you have to be intentional about letting the old ones go … and you have to be intentional about replacing them with new thoughts.” This is remarkably similar to Jon Acuff’s Soundtracks. Whereas Acuff devotes an entire book to changing thoughts, Delony offers a single chapter.
Nevertheless, Delony makes a new point: forgive others as well as yourself. He writes, “Choosing not to forgive someone is like poisoning yourself and hoping the other person will die.” True. And it reminds me of the Metallica lyric: “Like a poison that I swallow, but I want the world to die.”
Finally, change your actions. Our lives consist of small actions taken every day. So, improving these everyday actions will improve our lives. Not taking an action is an action, either moving us toward or away from who we want to be.
(Parenthetically, this also reminds me of a song lyric: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”).
Delony suggests, among other things, that you take an “action inventory.” What actions are currently being taken? Once that is done, determine what actions will need to be changed, replaced or added. For example, if you are frequently late then buy a planner or use a watch, be sure to set your alarm correctly or donate $10 to a charity every time you are late. If you are an anxious person perhaps quit social media, change your diet, exercise and so on. Continue taking an action inventory and evaluating each new action to see if it is working. If it is not, make changes as necessary. In other words, constantly A-B test.
This advice, as well as earlier advice to control the controllable, is similar to that found in a YouTube video by Scott Adams. In fact, Adams communicates much of the same information in Delony’s 7-hour book in a 13-minute micro lesson. So, if you are in a hurry watch Adams’ video. If you need elaboration read Own Your Past, Change Your Future.
In conclusion, Delony’s advice is useful but not new. I have found similar ideas in Olson’s A Short Introduction to Philosophy, Acuff’s Soundtracks and the aforementioned YouTube video. On the other hand, not everyone will be familiar with those ideas. What’s more, the few new ideas Delony brings are worth knowing.
