#111 Rethinking How You Do Life

Rachel Denning (00:00.718)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the extraordinary family life podcast Have you ever thought about? living life differently Never maybe even daydreamed of Living a different way. Have you considered it? Have you maybe seriously considered it or some of you have you even attempted it? It's really interesting that there's so many different ways to do life

But most of us aren't exposed to it, to that idea, because we grow up in a certain way and that's what we know, that's what we're familiar with and kind of surrounded by. And so we just think, oh, well, this, this is the way people do life. Now it's really, it's really getting better because we're exposed to like social media around the world and, you know, YouTube channels and blogs and documentaries and stories on Netflix and TV and.

There's so much more exposure now than when I was, you know, 20 years ago, right? 20 years ago, Rachel and I were still, we were still in this mindset of like, there's this kind of one prescribed path. You go to school, you get good grades, you get a job, and you go through your job and you get a mortgage, you get married, have your little kids and just kind of follow this path. And we'd been married a few years when...

reading lots of books, we were kind of introduced to this idea. I literally remember the two of us kind of being shocked by it like, what? Like, you can do that? Like, there's another way to do life? And we just hadn't been exposed to it. We weren't aware and we definitely never given it serious consideration. But then we, you know, the more it got into our heads, we started to rethink.

the way we do life. And that's my invitation to you today with this episode. I want you to rethink the way you do life and maybe consider some possibilities that perhaps you haven't thought about before.

Rachel Denning (02:16.59)
What would you do differently? How would you live differently? And maybe throw off some conventional thinking and perhaps be a little bit of a nonconformist in certain ways. When we, you guys know, part of our story, if you've listened to us or followed us, like we, we packed up our kids after our fourth child was born. We packed up our kids and we drove down the Pan American highway to Costa Rica and.

we decided to do life differently. And it was bold, it was crazy, there wasn't a lot of resources or people to contact. And so some of it was kind of blind. And we just kind of wandered our way through Mexico and Central America. It was epic and memorable and wonderful. And while we were doing that, while we had been rethinking our lives and deciding to live boldly,

and do something totally different and people were really resistant like what are you doing? You're insane. People don't do that. That's crazy. You're throwing away your life. Wow. On and on and on. You can't leave this career. You can't take your kids and just on and on. Right. All the nice airs and the fear and everything. And it was just so different. And often people are afraid of different. They're afraid of change. Some people feel threatened by it. Some people in genuine concern and care for you. They want you.

They want you to conform. They want you to do what everybody else is doing because that feels safe. Right. We're just we're kind of wired for that to to look around and be like, OK, this is what others are doing. So so I will, too. There's safety in that. There's protection. Right. And in some senses that there is some of that goodness. But in other ways, we might just say, you know, but but my heart's not in it. I have other dreams. I have other goals. I have other.

destinations, I have other ways that I want to do life. And so we, we went and of course, well, I, I got to tell part of this whole story while we were driving that long, long road of the Pan American highway, we listened to this audio program by Wayne Dyer and he went through and he said, Hey, just take an opportunity to question everything you do. All of it, everything. And some of it.

Rachel Denning (04:36.302)
In questioning it, you'll be like, yeah, I love that. I'm going to come back to it. And you stick with it, right? And some things you'll question and go, huh, why do I do that? And is it necessary? And is it something I want in my life? And you might set it aside for something better. And this is everything. He was like, why do you sleep when you sleep? Why do you eat when you eat? If you didn't know you were supposed to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, would you?

Why do you live where you live? He said if you could, in your imagination, in your mind's eye, go off the earth and pretend you're up in space and you literally circle the globe from outer space and you can see every part of the earth, which part would you pick to go back and live in? And why? Why do you live where you live? Why do you live how you live? I remember,

This happens a lot because I get to travel and meet people and I love talking to people and sharing our story and and asking questions like this and I remember distinctly meeting Man two different two different times one was was out in the in the Rockies the other time was in Texas two different occasions where we just sat down with some young adults and we were just kind of sharing our story and They were blown away. These were young adults in their their early 20s. I

And they, this was just last year and they were like, what? That's possible? I've never even heard of that. I've never met anybody that's lived that way. That's traveled the world with her family that just goes that way. Right. And so still, even with all of our, all of our exposure to social media and all of our exposure to the TV and series and the openness and the internet and the world getting so small, it's still so easy just to be familiar with what we're familiar with to be.

enclosed inside what we already know and They were just so blown away by the idea and it was super fun They were just start they started to consider new alternatives and they were having experience that we had early on Like really questioning can this can this be the way and? What we found now in our travels it was kind of it was really scary for us. It was really intimidating but we found

Rachel Denning (06:55.502)
lots and lots of people. We met so many different people, individuals, couples, families that had decided to do life on their terms. And can I emphasize that please? You and I, we win in life when we do life on our terms. That's it. That's the winning. That's how you win in life. You live life on your terms. Too many of us are

get caught up in this race for somebody else's terms or on a society's terms. And we feel like we're always racing, like we're in some kind of competition. And those of us who have noticed the race or the competition or what we call the rat race, we live in resistance to the race now. And so we're either in the race or in a reactive resistance to the race. And we don't have to do either of those. We can just choose to do life on our terms.

And so instead of having hard statements in our minds, we can start asking questions.

What if money were not an issue? What would you do? What would you spend your time? What if you hadn't been, and again, I get it. I was gonna say, what if you hadn't been born where you're born? You were, and that shapes your reality, right? But what if you hadn't been? What if you could just disconnect from the connection to a certain place?

certain way of doing life. I don't know this is just really all this is my friends just a fun invitation to just think differently just to rethink the way you do life and to ask questions in place of maybe hard statements and and say well this this is the way things should be done to just ask well how would I do life and if I could do it anyway how

Rachel Denning (09:04.302)
How would I do it? And it's been this beautiful journey.

meeting all kinds of people around the world. I have a friend who is an artist and a surfer. And so he moved to Costa Rica and he spends his day with his family and he paints these gorgeous paintings. And he's now got into molding and shaping surfboards. So he makes surfboards and then he surfs and they live right by the beach. And, and that's.

That's the life he's chosen. And others have moved somewhere to just be involved in contribution, in humanitarian efforts, and serving other people. Other people want to just wander continuously. They want to be going to new places all the time and experiencing new things. Other people want to have this idyllic farm or ranch.

out away where they can just grow their own food and have their own place. They can go out into nature, way out into nature, maybe kind of go out in Homestead. I have friends who are just out in the woods up in Alaska, and that kind of the last frontier. And it's a, you know, they're tough, tough old people. They're just doing their thing their way. Others who want to be...

right in the middle of it all in the big city in a small apartment on a high -rise building just with millions of people all around and some who want to eat differently and you know do their do their craft their thing create their art what if what if we saw life as as an art production?

Rachel Denning (11:04.206)
where it's your piece of art. It's your special touch. It's your thing. Right? I just love this. I just want you to, I want you to just invite you today. Just question the assumptions about what's possible for your life and about the prescribed path.

What do you really wanna do? Now sometimes when you ask that question, what do you wanna do? You're like, are you kidding me? I just wanna sit on a beach with a piña colada and spend my life. But after a few days, you're like, okay, I'm bored out of my mind and sunburned here. Let's get after it. You're not gonna wanna stop doing things. You wanna be active and productive and doing things because if you just spent your time entertaining yourself and doing nothing, you'd go crazy real fast. So you wanna be doing something, but what do you want to do?

How do you want to occupy your time? How do you want to raise your family and your children and educate them? Again, like, and the idea here is if we just start introducing some new questions, we start asking different questions, then we end up with different answers and different outcomes. And it's like, right now, I just finished the book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Excellent book. So good. And he lived a very different life. And he ended up being...

murdered by the vice president of the United States in a duel, Aaron Burr. And he died in his 40s on a summer morning, beautiful summer morning. He was shot and was killed. And his son was also shot and killed in a duel just a couple of years earlier. It was, oh, and his poor wife had to put up with all, I mean, deal with all of that, right? And so he left his wife and his kids behind.

But he'd lived in the city, he'd been involved in politics, he'd been involved in business, they'd built a little cottage out in the country that he just loved, brought so much peace to him. And then, you know, just reading about his life, and then he died and she lived for another 50 years as a widow into her 90s. And you're introduced to all these people, to Jefferson and Madison and Washington and Burr and these other players in the founding of the US history.

Rachel Denning (13:24.366)
And it's just, it's just, it's on my mind, like how they did, how they chose to do life. You know, some lived in the city and we're movers and shakers and some wanted to be out in the country and just have their plantations. And then I'm reading a book called the charge, which is excellent book by Brynne Bershard, um, about the types of life that we can live. And if we want to be just filled with energy and excitement and love, and then, um, I'm reading.

to my son every morning we sit on the porch and read Magnus Chase to my nine year old he loves it and he said in there just it's a fictional book but he said he said my mom his mom had died he said my mom was a person who always radiated joy and that phrase struck me powerfully I want to be a person who radiates joy and to be really truly joyful we need to be occupied and busy and things that we love to do and long to do.

Right. And then I'm listening to another excellent book, um, listening and reading the combination of a book called money master the game, um, by Tony Robbins, which is a phenomenal book that I highly recommend all about the financial dreams of how you can chase down financial security or he has five security vitality, independence, freedom, and ultimate freedom and how we ought to seek out investments.

that will fund the lifestyle of our choice. And whether that's living as a total minimalist, which we have done, and I recommend that you try it sometime, just having an experience with very, very little, very few earthly things, material things. And then people who live in absolute opulence and luxury, and you should try that too. And we've tried that, right? And just experiment with life.

Try different things even as Emerson said go out and try different things and try try life But my invitation is just don't don't accept the the status quo you now question it and you might come right back to it you might question that part of your life and Examine it examine other areas and go. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna come right back to that with more with more conviction and More settled and like yeah, this is how I want to do life

Rachel Denning (15:48.942)
And other things, again, like I mentioned earlier, you might just question, say, huh, why do we do that? Why, why do we, as a society, grab onto that or why at this certain socio economic status, do we live this way and others live a different way or in different countries in this country, they do this in this country, they do this in this state, they do that in this state, they do that. And, and just examine it and just.

take a minute to examine your own life, my friends. I love it. This is this is all this is today is just an invitation to ask more questions and to rethink how you do life and what's possible for you. I think for some of you, this is going to be a catalyst where you end up doing life very differently. And and maybe that doesn't change many things physically, but literally just changes mentally and emotionally or spiritually for you or socially. You can just make a shift socially.

Think about how often we end up doing social things that we don't even like to do and we're just doing out of social expectations. You say yes to things that you want to say no to, well just say no. Right? And maybe you've been saying no and you need to say yes and you want to say yes and say yes. But let's do life on our terms. I guess that's my one thing I really want to emphasize today. You win, I win.

when we do life on our terms, not somebody else's terms, not social expectations, not social competition, not trying to keep up with anyone else or please anyone else, but just when we live life on our terms. And it's genuinely the best terms. I'm not advocating that anyone just say, well, that's dumb, I don't wanna do that and go off and just live a miserable existence because of really being short -sighted and narrow -minded. But I'm saying,

I'm saying the opposite, expand your horizons and your ideas, expose yourself to all the possibilities out there and examine the lives and teachings of the greatest thinkers and leaders of all times. And then measure all of that against the way you truly, genuinely in your heart and soul want to do life. And the beautiful...

Rachel Denning (18:13.614)
beautiful thing is that there's so many good ways to do life. Really, so many good ways. We meet so many people around the world who are doing life so differently and you look at it like, it's beautiful, it's all beautiful, it works for them, it works for them, that works for them, this works for them. It's really special, really awesome. But my invitation is that we're all more aware about it and more intentional, more deliberate.

and that life is lived on our terms. And it's an extraordinary life by our definition. And we are genuinely, truly happy and joyful and peaceful. Well, I love it. Love this stuff. Love you guys. Remember every day we're training for greatness and every day we have an opportunity to live life in a great way. So even if today hasn't been going so well, you can stop right now, just pause.

Take a deep breath, get your mind into a good state, right? Get into the right head space and shift, make a shift right now and re -engage with life and do it today on your terms. Reach upward.