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#141 Failing Your Way To Success
February 14, 2021
#141 Failing Your Way To Success
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Failure hurts. A lot. It’s not something any of us want to do, but I think it’s something we all need to do. We attempted to Summit Orizaba and failed. Epic story. But in that failure were many successes—if we look for them. In life, if we will acknowledge the successes and learn from failures we can have all the growth and ultimate success we want. Are you willing to fail in order to succeed? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gregory-denning/message

Transcript

Rachel Denning (00:00.974)
Good morning my friends. Welcome to another episode of the extraordinary family life podcast. I'm up again before the sun here in beautiful Mexico. We're just on this beautiful place. So inspiring. And today we're going to talk about the failure and success paradigm and how many times we are failing our way to success. I've got an extraordinary story.

about a mountain, a big, big mountain. But first I wanna share a little experience we just had last night. My friend Chris and I, he's got six children about the same age as mine. And we just went on a walk along the beach. Went on a nice, long walk and just talked. And just talked about life and talked about being a father and being a father of.

you know, of a growing family, teenage family, and a family where kids are about to start moving out. We talked about principles and practices and values and standards and beliefs and talked about the heart issues. And we literally were walking along the sand, got to watch the sun kind of set along the shore. It was amazing. So I just share that because I want to invite you all to do that more often.

How often are you having very meaningful conversations?

How often are you thinking about the things that really matter and how to do them better, how to be your best self? How often are you thinking about and talking about, obviously with somebody you trust and somebody who has something valuable to say, how often are you talking about the hard issues and the challenges and struggles that you're having?

Rachel Denning (02:03.662)
and the challenges and struggles that your children are having. This stuff matters so much and my guess is it's not happening often enough.

So just, just an invite this morning on this beautiful morning to be alive. Don't just go through life and it's so easy to go through life. Just busy swamped is just in survival mode or autopilot, just getting up every day and getting up into the list of things to do and putting out fires constantly and

the less often we have meaningful...

thought sessions and talk sessions, we'll call them. The less often we do that, the more often we have fires to put out and problems.

Rachel Denning (03:07.022)
more challenges, more struggles, more pain. Ugh. So give it the time and effort it deserves, my friends. And if you don't have anybody in your life that you can talk to about those things.

Go get them, man. Go get those kind of people in your life. You gotta have that. You gotta have that. You need relationships like that. You might need to change your circle of influence. You might need to move. You might need to get into a different community. If you're a man, you definitely need to join the Be the Man tribe.

Rachel Denning (03:51.726)
and the Be the Man Masterclass. Oh, a lot of this stuff, you guys. Okay, here we go, are you ready? I got a story for you about failing, an epic, epic fail. So for months, you guys know how much I love big mountains. I love hiking big mountains because they're hard, man. It takes a lot of training and preparation to climb the big mountains. It takes a lot of...

preparation and planning and a lot of travel. Most of these places are so far off it takes a significant investment to get there and you end up seeing and experience unbelievable things just in the journey to get close to the mountain. And this is true with Orizaba as well. It was incredible. And it's the biggest mountain in Mexico.

And our guide told us it's the third biggest mountain in the continent.

Big ol' yawn, big morning yawn. Man, so I think I've mentioned before in my podcast that I occasionally have 3 .30 a .m. mornings. You know, when you consistently get to bed at 9 .30, sometimes your body just pops up at 3 .30. And I did that twice this week. I got up at five this morning, which is kind of the usual time, five. But man, I had a rough night. We had a little...

We were a cute little four year old in between us and she was upset about something. Who knows what, it was turning sideways and she wanted to sleep sideways. So she was kicking me and hitting my wife and screaming at me about something. She was upset. I don't know what she was dreaming about. Oh man, one of those nights. So yeah, so I love the mountain. I love the challenge of the mountain. I love the beauty and majesty and wonder of the mountain and...

Rachel Denning (05:52.142)
I don't love it, but I love it. You know what I'm saying? I don't love it, but I love it. The fact that mountains are humbling. They will humble you. And I've thought this, believed this, kind of in a life philosophy since I was probably 17 or 18. You get on the mountain and sometimes you conquer the mountain and sometimes the mountain conquers you. And you get to eat a big old serving.

of humble pie. And it's good to choose those things. I'm gonna share that in a second, but when you choose the challenge, it's a very, very, very different thing than having it thrust upon you. So we've wanted to do this. The mountain's about 18 ,500 feet -ish, right around there. So significantly higher than anything on the continental US.

And so we've been preparing for mods, we've been training. I was training with a weighted vest, first a 20 pound weighted vest, then a 40 pound weighted vest. We were running, cycling, we were just putting it in, right? And three of my teens were in on it, and they're 16, 15, and 14. And then two of my mentees who were in their early 20s, they wanted in.

So they came to join us and Rachel came with me. And so we've been, we've been training. It's great. And many of us have gotten in the best shape of our lives. So big success there, right? Again, here's the success failure paradigm. And you'll, you'll hear about the failure right here in just a minute, but we're going to, we're going to look for failures and we're going to look for success. So in many ways it was an

epic fail, but in other ways, it was a tremendous success. And we have to learn to look at life that way. Otherwise, it just feels like one epic failure after another. And if you if you're failing, but you don't feel like you're failing forward, or you don't recognize you're failing forward, then then what's the point, right? And you just start to check out. And you look at yourself as a failure.

Rachel Denning (08:12.526)
and you begin to be resentful and you lose the gratitude and the wonder and the awe of the opportunity to be alive people. And then you get angry and you get bitter and you get frustrated. And then you spend weeks or months or years or decades being irritated, frustrated, discontent.

feeling like it's never enough and you're never enough. You with me? You with me on this one? I think you are because a lot of you, you understand these feelings and these frustrations. But one of the massive successes is that we were all training together, which I can't even tell you how much I love that. I dreamt of this for decades to be able to train hard and exercise hard with my family.

And so we created so many memories all through Georgia and Texas and all the full length of Mexico training together, the five of us. It was so special. Well, and then our mentees, so six of us, right? And oh man, it was those memories just running and hiking through the mountains of Northern Mexico.

All of that, all those memories, all that training, all that grit, all the getting up early, all the going out when we didn't feel like going out. Like all of that, huge, huge, huge successes. All that way. So then we're heading down there, we have all these wonderful experiences together, and then the day is fast approaching, and so we're getting ready, and then we're gonna climb on a Friday.

It started on a Friday, and Wednesday, my daughter, who's 14, gets some kind of stomach bug and gets really sick. And we all kind of had little grumbly stomachs that just weren't happy about something that we ate, or maybe it was a little stomach flu or something, I don't know what it was. But anyway, she was throwing up like a champ, right? And we all know that when you're...

Rachel Denning (10:35.406)
when you're throwing up, boy, you get dehydrated, you get weak. And so she went a good 24 hours without any food or water. And in fact, she just kept throwing up, couldn't keep anything down. So finally I took her to a local doctor and she got a little injection that just settled the stomach and got rid of everything. So the next morning she was up and at them and eating and drinking and back at it. But it had taken its effect, right? She didn't work out and she had no food or water.

So then the next day, Thursday, I got it. Dang it. I got it. And oh man, I don't like being sick. I rarely ever get sick and man, I don't like being sick. Call me a wimp, but man, I don't like being sick. And so, and usually I'm like, okay, I'll just deal with it, whatever, but like, and we had a drive that day. We had a drive down to the city of Orissaba.

from where we were. And so we're driving, I started driving and I'm like, I'm so sick, I'm just, I'm like, I can't drive because if I start blowing chugs, I'm gonna be rolling down the window here, throwing up on the highway across Mexico while I'm driving, I'm like, that's not good. So I jump in the passenger seat and Rachel starts driving. And I'm just sitting in the passenger seat in the fetal position, just trying to think of my happy place, right? And just doing everything I can not to throw up.

I was using all of my mental powers to keep my body in check as much as possible. So what was supposed to be like a three and a half hour drive took us eight hours. There was insane traffic for some reason. It was just crazy. So eight hours later, just sitting in the car in the passenger seat, like, please don't throw up. And I did not throw up. I kept, I was able to keep it all down.

but I did not eat or drink anything and it took its toll, right? So no workout that day, just the toll it takes on your body, no food, no water. So I got dehydrated, I got weakened. It was Thursday, the next day we're heading up the mountain. So let me get to our place, get settled in and I just crash. And then, oh.

Rachel Denning (12:57.454)
What was funny, man, we get to our place and it's always a wild ride when you're Airbnb. It's funny because people like, oh yeah, you know, you learn everybody's perspective. There's another like success failure rate. You learn about people's perspectives because they'll look at their place and they're like, this is amazing. You get there and it's a dump. And we ended up having to leave a couple of days later because.

We got there, there wasn't even a stove. There was no stove or oven. Like you gotta be kidding me. Like how are we supposed to eat? And they're just like, what? And they're like, there's a fire pit out outside. You could cook over fire. Like, uh, yeah, I guess technically we could. We gotta feed all these people. Oh, cause at that point then we had 13 people with us. Oh my goodness, it was awesome. So a couple of people flew in.

So I'm like, can't cook over a little teeny fire for 13 people. So we hired a local lady to cook for us. It was awesome. Ended up being really special because she hadn't had any work since COVID had started. And so she told us, it was perfect. It was like divinely orchestrated. Because their family really needed the money. And then it ended up being her daughter's 15th birthday, which is the quinceanera, right? Their big birthday. And so with the money that she earned with us,

which we were so happy to pay, she was able to buy all the stuff to throw a big party for her daughter. It ended up being really special. So we get there and we're like, oh boy. So we crash, then the next day our guides, our mountain guides pick us up. We drive all the way across the, we thought we were close, but obviously it just, it takes, it's hard to get to mountains, man. And so we drive all the way up to the refugio.

which is at 4 ,000 meters and that's somewhere around 14 ,000 feet. And so for a lot of people that was in our group, that was the highest they'd ever been. Just to drive up there and the drive was majestical. It was awesome. Just gorgeous. We stopped and take pictures and run along and just had this adventure and just even getting that high, you know, you feel it. So we get up there and we get kind of.

Rachel Denning (15:23.822)
We just settled in and it's cold. Well, the sun was up so it was beautiful. We're in t -shirts and then all of a sudden the sun drops behind the mountain. Boom, the cold hits hard, which is what mountains are like, right? It had been raining like crazy. And so in all the rain, of course, at that height, it was snow. And it hadn't, our guide told us he hadn't seen snow like that on the mountain for five years. And so there was snow right from there to Fuhio. We had to put in our, the next morning we had to put our crampons on right away because it was all.

And well, then it got really cold, so it was all ice. Right, so all the snow turned into ice.

So we, we were, oh, we gotta get to bed. So we eat something, I'm still dehydrated, still not feeling hot, Rachel's not feeling it. We're just all kinda, you know, a couple of the others were, they're just a little gut, and ah, man, just we'd taken this little bug. So we have some mountain house backpacking meals that we had brought with us, that was a nice touch, and then we climbed into bed, and they had these.

The refugio is just a big rectangle where you're out of the elements. You know, it's good. So we lay down on the bunks and try to go to sleep. I woke up during the night with this insane headache, realizing that the bunks were like slanted towards the back. So our heads were lower than our feet. It spilled all the blood like just slowly running towards our head. So I flip around.

Finally, and when I flip around, I realize that Rachel's just been sitting there and she hasn't been able to go to sleep because she's had such a nasty stomach ache. So she kinda gotten it, right? And just, oh, she was just nauseated, so she was feeling terrible. She hadn't slept at all. Oh, and here's the other thing. We lay down and we finally fall asleep. I mean, it could have been, it was like the perfect storm, you guys. It could have been great, but then this group.

Rachel Denning (17:20.846)
this group of other hikers comes in and they come in so we are sleeping window basically we got into bed around i think nine and asleep we had to wake up at twelve for twelve thirty so the sleeping window we need to wake up twelve thirty this group comes in on ten thirty and they are still loud is a lot of her to elephant i mean it was crazy no respect at all no consciousness even

And it was funny, everyone I met up there, even our own group, the next one, our guides, I don't think they know how to whisper. Like, I don't know, I was the only thing I'm like, I can go over and whisper very quietly. They're like, hey, it's time, it's time to get up. Let's get going. Right? It's like, that's their whisper. I'm like, what in the world? So this next group, they weren't going to hike that night. They were going to hike the following night. They stayed up there two nights, which is one of our fails. There's another fail point.

because of our tight schedule for work and travel, we weren't able to see the two nights, which epic fail. Lesson learned on that one. So we, basically we didn't sleep hardly at all and we're still feeling cruddy. So we get up and we start hiking about 1 .30. And it's cold, my friends, and it is dark, except there was a full moon, it was just totally full moon.

on a clear night and we got to see a moon bow. This perfect ring around the moon. It was stunning. We would stop in that dark and just look up and oh my goodness, it was stunning. So it gave us some beautiful light and it was shining on the snow. It was incredible. And so we didn't sleep well, we'd been kind of yucky. And then you're at the altitude and then, ah man, we start going.

And it's just boom right at the gate, it's just straight. You're just gonna climb up. In a fairly short distance, you're gonna climb a lot of elevation gain. And your legs are burning, your lungs are burning. And I was so proud, so here's another success. I was so proud of everyone in our group. They pushed hard. Everyone.

Rachel Denning (19:51.438)
push their limits. So that's a major success. But here's the epic fail. Not one of us, not a single person in our group was able to summit. And so it's this epic fail, right? You go down to summit this mountain and the whole group with all the expense and everything, all the effort, all the planning, all the planning and training and all of it just feels like a failure, right? Because nobody summited.

Well, let me let me tell you, sorry. So we start going and little by little, like they're just starting to feel it and feeling the the yuck. And so and some of it may have been altitude. Well, I don't know that we have the stomach thing and then some of it may have been altitude, too. So my son and daughter, we were pushing hard. And again, they got up to higher than they'd ever been. And they were like, oh, man, we were just not feeling it. It was brutal.

just even to not sleep and then to be feeling yucky and to be up there in those conditions in the cold. So they did well. They hiked way up and they're like, yeah, we're going back. And so they started heading back and then my wife was gonna keep coming, but then she decided she wanted to go back with them. But she had gotten higher than she'd ever been in her life. My daughter had gotten higher than she'd ever been in her life. My son had been higher with me over in the base camp of Everest, but he was not feeling well. He went back and ended up vomiting.

Way back down at camp. They just went back down there and were sitting there just cold and miserable. Got their sleeping bags out and went back to bed and finally got some sleep. And so then the rest of us kept going and we got up to the saddle and man the wind was whipping up there and it was freezing and then my other son that's where he began to feel the the dizziness.

at certain altitudes you feel, and it's not everybody. Like our guides, they're so accustomed to it. They're like, whatever. I can do this thing blindfolded. They're amazing. In fact, so we had two different guides. One had done it 70 some odd times. The other guide that went the highest with me and Devin, he had done it over 200 times. And he's only like in his mid -20s. I mean, the guy just goes up all the time. He's...

Rachel Denning (22:17.87)
It's so skilled, such a skilled climber. This is amazing. And so we're going and my son is 15. We get to the saddle and he's feeling it. He's starting to feel the like the the dizziness and then you start to feel the nausea too. And he he was just looking at me like I just feel so dizzy. I'm like, yeah, brother, you better better head back. And so he

He took, again, way higher than he's ever been in his life, which was awesome, and he pushed his limits all the way. He did not want to give up, but he just was feeling the altitude there. And so then it was just three of us left, and one of them had a leg injury, again, and he pushed. He'd pushed through all that pain. He just was feeling it, and he'd hurt his leg the day before, two days before, but he...

He'd push through, just had done so well. And so then we were tied together, you know, you got your ice axe, you're using your crampons, and this glacier is steep. And you feel like, you're like, we've come so far, it's right there, I can see it. But at that point, you're only like halfway of the strain. And then it's just hours of just grinding up this steep glacier, and you're kind of doing these little switchbacks, because it's so steep. And so you're just,

kicking in your crampon into the ice and stabbing in your ice axe and just kind of, and you have to take these teeny little baby steps because if you take a couple of big steps, you get at least a lot of people, I did especially, you start feeling the vertigo, right? The dizziness and the nausea. And I'd felt it before when we climbed Kalapatar in Nepal. You just have to take these little teeny steps and keep breathing because it just.

that the air gets so thin and the strain on your body. So we climbed for a couple more hours and got the unbelievable reward of watching the sunrise against this steep edge of the glacier and the sun kind of shining, rising right there with this radiant light against the snow. Oh, I'll never forget that view. It was.

Rachel Denning (24:41.198)
unbelievable. It was so beautiful. And then the sunrise after that long, long hike through the night and early morning. It was so beautiful and so inspiring. And then we got, we kept going and kept going and man, I was feeling the, I was feeling the vertigo, especially feeling the vertigo for me. And so we kept going, kept climbing. And then we got up to the point, and this is one of the special things about this volcano in particular, is it.

when the sun rises, it casts a perfect like pyramid shadow out across the Mexican Valley. Like a massive shadow that's miles and miles and miles. It's incredible. And I got to take a picture of that and we're up there. And we're pushing, going, and finally at one point I was feeling so dizzy and we were all roped together. And at one point I was like, man, this is...

I feel like it's getting dangerous because I'm getting so dizzy with each little step. And so we rested for a while, but we're getting cold. And so at one point I called it off. I'm like, yeah, I just, I don't want to be the risk to the group. So we better, we better head back down. And we were about, we were about 500 feet from the top. We were, we were close. You could, you could see, you could.

pretty much see to the top and see the people up there. Like, man, I'm so stinking close. I wanted it so desperately, but I was empty too. I mean, I was empty and we had to get off the mountain. And so we turned around and we just bombed it straight down that thing. It was actually pretty awesome. Just smashing your heels with the crampons into it and just.

straight down, we even got a picture afterwards, we just came straight down that thing and left this big old trail, the three of us bombing down there. Then met up with our other friend and the other guide. And then got down to the saddle and just pounding as much food as we can get in our bodies, we desperately needed the calories. And the rest is laying there in the snow. And so the mountain had beat us. It had beat us.

Rachel Denning (26:55.662)
but I felt, well, I got to see that sunrise, I got to see the shadow, and I felt like I had left it all on the mountain. It wasn't because, oh, I'm tired, oh, I don't feel like it. I feel like I'd pushed all my limits in those conditions and left it on the mountain. So again, that's a success, right? There's a tremendous amount of success when you push your limits. And the guys I was with, they had,

they'd gone far, much, much higher than they'd ever been either. And so in many ways, it's just the choosing challenge and putting that, voluntarily putting that strain on your mind because of the mental toughness and on your body, that's a win. And we didn't summit, right? But we win, and so that's a fail. And there is a failure, that's a legit failure. I did not summit. I mean,

perfect weather and I didn't summit. And so, well, we will go back. There's already a group of us. We made a commitment. We were going to come back and we're going to conquer that mountain. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to let that, that mountain win. I will come back and we'll do that again, maybe here in a couple months even. And our schedule might work to go back and do it again. But we, we learned a lot.

and gained a lot. And so I wanted to share, I just want to share that story in the principal and invite you to choose challenge, to purposely choose challenging things. And we were talking about that on the way up and especially afterwards, because all of us, you didn't sleep well, you don't feel well, you're grinding, you know, one o 'clock, two o 'clock, three o 'clock, four o 'clock, and you're asking yourself, what are we doing?

Why are we on this mountain? This is insane. We should be back in bed. Like, what are we doing? Right, and you have to ask yourself that, and like, this is crazy. And it's because we choose challenge. You purposely choose challenge. You purposely push your limits. And yeah, it's uncomfortable, and so it's unpleasant. It's the same experience I had when I was doing triathlons. Every time, every time I was...

Rachel Denning (29:20.91)
In a triathlon, just a grind of it, I'm mentally like, why do I do this? This is insane, this feels horrible. And then I'd cross the finish line and be like, okay, when's the next one? There's something magical and powerful about choosing to challenge yourself. Voluntarily putting strain on your mind and your body.

And while I was climbing, it was a good two or three hours when it was mentally hardest. I was just focusing on this new group that I created, the Be the Man Tribe and the Be the Man Masterclass and thinking of you guys, this audience, and thinking of those men and pushing, right, thinking of them.

Literally was like okay. I'm doing this. I gotta do like you keep pushing my limits. I'm gonna keep taking more steps. You keep grinding Because I want to push my limits So that I can I can leave it all on the table I just just completely physically mentally emotionally spiritually exhausted spent empty

and say, hey, I pushed it. I pushed all my limits so that I can invite you, my friends, to push your limits and to voluntarily choose, challenge, and strain. And to put that on your mind and your body because that's the only way we're really gonna grow.

I've been thinking about that. Obviously there's this part of life where...

Rachel Denning (31:06.99)
It's the two -sided coin. On one side of the coin, you don't have to strain or struggle. It's like watching a flower grow. It's just growing. There's not a strain or struggle or fight. It's just this beautiful growth. And on one side of life, there's that, right? And we have a lot of friends like that. That's their philosophy, just kind of allow it to happen. And I think that's beautiful. It's a very beautiful thing. And I think there's parts of life.

that are like that. It's not the strain or the struggle or the push or the challenge or the... It's just allowing these beautiful things to flower and blossom in our lives. I totally agree. I think it's beautiful. On the other side of the coin, I think there is an element that requires the push and the effort and the strain to get past inertia, especially inertia. There's a lot of inertia going on. In fact, I think there's...

across the world, there's a massive amount of inertia caused, either caused or exacerbated by what happened in 2020 with COVID and everybody staying home and not going anywhere, doing anything. A lot of people have slipped into total inertia. They don't want to go out of their houses. They don't want to go anywhere. Sadly, they're beginning to think that people are the virus and they're afraid of other people and they don't want to be around people. It's sad when you start seeing people as a virus.

Oh, you've missed the mark. But they don't want to go anywhere now. And now that they got home and they're comfortable and they're in their homes, they don't want to go back out to work. They don't want to go back to life. And people who used to be active are now completely inactive. And so there's a lot of, well, there's a lot of good that's coming out of it, too. It's just, again, it's our opportunity to respond. So sometimes those failures have major, major successes in them. And so my invitation, my friends, is for all of us.

to fail our way forward to success. Push your limits. And sometimes you're gonna hit a limit and you're gonna collapse or you're gonna get past the limit and collapse. And you know, figuratively or literally. But that's where things are exciting and memorable and real. That's where we get unbelievable amounts of growth and gain and perspective.

Rachel Denning (33:31.277)
We get to see things and understand things that you never could otherwise. And having gone up the mountain, right, we get to see a perspective that very, very few people do relatively. And what's awesome is when you come back down, because you can't stay on the mountain, right? There's a great quote by Rene Dumas. It's like, why go up the mountain then? Because you can't stay up there.

And he says in the quote, he's like, because once you've gone up there, it's changed you. It's given you a perspective. So now when you come back down, you get to keep the memory of what you saw. You get to keep the vision of what you saw. And you get to bring that higher perspective back down to the lower ground, so to speak. And so I want to invite you with us.

to push your limits, challenge yourself, do it in family, do it in relationships, do it mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, financially, do it in business.

take calculated risks in these attempts to voluntarily put strain on your life. Again, in an appropriate way, measure it, but go for it. Live a great story. Be willing to try new things that may not work out. And be okay with that. Like I'm just gonna make an attempt here. Rachel and I are taking off.

today to go to Ecuador and we're going to go attempt Cotopaxi which is almost a thousand feet higher than Orizaba. Right? We're going after it. We're going for a higher one. We didn't summit the one. We're going for a bigger one. And then after that we have chartered a private yacht with some friends to sail around the Galapagos.

Rachel Denning (35:43.373)
Oh man, bucket list stuff. We've been on the road of things for six weeks. We've just been cranking out the life list, the bucket list. It's been unbelievable. We're about to do it again in a major way. Things I've dreamt about and had on my list for years. It's go time, it's so fun. And we get to do things with life like that. And you get to write your own ticket. And yes, in all of it, anything you're pursuing, any great noble thing you're pursuing,

at least in my estimation, is gonna require some strain and some struggle and some risk and there will be some failures. Especially when you're trying something new or different, you're gonna fumble a little bit, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna take that leap and you're necessarily gonna have to try to figure things out. You're gonna start a new business or hire new employees and now you gotta figure out how to work with employees or work in this new business.

You're gonna try to build new relationships, right? Build new friendships and influence people and you're gonna mess up.

But we have to, I think, it's a beautiful part of life. I think it's a privilege and an opportunity to fail ourselves into success and to celebrate those successes, see them.

Keep a note of them, like write them down. In fact, I think all of us in our journals and where we're learning about life, I think all of us would just get tremendous value out of keeping an ongoing list of your successes and of your failures. And celebrate those successes, and honestly, we kind of celebrate the failures too, learn from them. There's a lot of growth and a lot of lesson, a lot of perspective that comes from.

Rachel Denning (37:40.493)
failures. There's a lot of fruit in failing. So let's do it, my friends. Let's do it. Let's go after it. Live boldly. Live courageously. Just be alive. Do not settle for a humdrum, mediocre existence. Don't hold back and be afraid because you're afraid of failing. Get out and fail. Right? Don't hold back because you're afraid of the failure. Lean into it. And if you fail, great. Learn from it. Grow.

Get after it. You've all heard this. It was Thomas Stanley, who was one of the founders of IBM. He said, somebody asked him what's the quickest way to success. And he said, easy, increase your rate of failure. You've heard that before, but are you doing it? Are you willing to do it? Are you willing to make the attempt? It's interesting as how, it's unbelievable. This comes up all the time.

almost daily with coaching and working with people is the fear of failure. And as I've mentioned before, for many, even more intimidating than the fear of failure is the fear of looking like a failure.

Be willing to risk that my friends. Prepare in every way you can. We prepared and we thought we prepared in every way we can but now having made the temp we realize ah there's a few things we could have even prepared even better. Which we will do next time and we'll go get the success. In fact we're gonna do it this time. We're gonna take the lessons we learned on Ori Saba and apply them to Koto Paxi. Ah yeah.

So there will be another podcast coming about that one. You can guarantee it. And from the Galapagos too. Oh, I love this. And for celebrating 20 years of marriage, we're doing this kind of anniversary trip. And it looked like a Valentine's anniversary trip. And a year ago, you guys, a year ago, we were leading a couple's trip in Thailand. It is just when they were starting to talk about COVID and we were in Thailand. In fact,

Rachel Denning (39:54.957)
Today, one year ago today, we were having a Valentine's dinner at the Ritz Carlton in Crabby watching the sunset into the ocean. Oh wow. I can't believe it's only been a year. We've done so much, had so many extraordinary experiences. Anyways, love you guys. Live life deliberately. Create an absolutely extraordinary family life and share it.

Share your journey, share your story, share this podcast, share the video, share the courses, or let's just join this movement to help people live extraordinary lives because there's too many people just settling into a humdrum existence in a life they don't love. And if it's possible, and it is, to live a life you love, then why on earth would we settle for a life we don't love? So share it, be bold, be courageous, raise your voice, find your voice and raise your voice.

and live your mission and your purpose and reach for your potential. And let's have these amazing lives together as we're raising our families and striving to be our best. All right, love you guys. Get out there, reach upward.